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14.08.18
o-kaerinasai. the airport greeting for all those who can read it. otherwise, simply: Welcome to Japan. The former implies a familiarity, a return, used in the family home. I can read it. Also, we didn't have to line up for half an hour with the droves of Korean, Chinese and other gaikokujin looking to enter Japan. Apparently our status as "residents" of the country enables us to bypass the Foreigner line for the one labeled "Japanese passports".
Anyway, all that to say we're here. In a month, of course this place hasn't changed. Still hot as the Amazon Rainforest, but quiet as this is Obon season, which has everyone heading to their ancestral homes in the countryside to pay respect to their deceased relatives. It was nice to return to such quiet.
Jet lag is a bitch and I am currently writing from its throes. Right now I should be snug as a bug on a relative's futon, air mattress, sleeping bag, ... instead i woke up after an inevitable afternoon snooze to the sound of bicycle ding-dings and traffic flow (in a sticky sweat of course). Still, it's good to be back. Trip to the grocery store was a shocker. First of all, the place was teeming with shoppers (no sky-high aisles of BIGFOOD all to myself), and filled with the usual (but slightly forgotten) array of fish products, packaged noodles and Japanified shrunken Western fare. But man, the prices. After spending a week in the U.S. where food is practically given away, and then to Canada where prices are inflated only to cover the exchange rate difference, I just about swallowed my tofu (package and all) at the $15 bunch of grapes, apples for 3 bucks each and the like. I settled for a one dollar can of mandarin oranges. Fish is plentiful though, so I picked up 2 tuna steaks. Just readjustment blues...
Our visit to the "Homeland" (ripping the word from George Bush's twisted yap) was awesome. I didn't expect to grab such energy from being back, but the people we reconnected with were absolutely fantastic. Everyone opened house and refrigerator to us. We were thirsty for the lovin' and we received it in pitcher-fulls (quite literally, at times). Made me feel premature and naive for having been so flippant about "home" and what makes one.
Still we are much changed for having spent a year amongst the Nihonjin, sleeping on straw mats, eating strange concoctions and losing mad weight, bowing and uttering phrases that 2 years ago would have seemed hugely unpronounceable and impossible to retain (OK, some things haven't changed)... a lot of people we ran into in NA know very little about Japan and were interested in the way things are done over here. Some of the questions:

What do people in Japan eat for breakfast? These days many claim to eat a Western breakfast of "pan" (bread), but a traditional breakfast would generally consist of natto (fermented soyabeans) and rice. Cereal is sold in tiny packages and there isn't much variety, so I assume it isn't eaten often. Jam is sold everywhere and is affordable, but peanut butter is quite rare and costs a fortune.

Do you get much American TV? No, thank God! :) Unfortunately Japanese TV is equally revolting and consists mostly of Reality TV like its Western counterpart. We aren't subscribed to cable which would get us a couple English stations. We are on the regular NHK set-up which consists of about 10 Japanese at-all-times channels. We're supposed to pay monthly even for this limited service, but we just hide out when they come ringing us, or claim linguistic ignorance even when the NHK rep starts busting out some English. We are officially the German couple. We live across the street from a Blockbuster-type place that carries a good selection of English videos (we just have to be careful to rent the sub-titled and not dubbed version).

Are things expensive? You bet. Rent in Tokyo is incomprehensible ($1500/mo. for a closet), but being a 40-minute commute from the centre has cut rent prices in half. As I mentioned earlier about the fifteen dollar fruits, food can be absurdly priced, but you don't have to buy those items. Sales, sales, sales. They do happen and that's when we eat ;) Basics like milk, eggs, bread, rice, veggies have stable pricing (although a little higher than back home) and we just play it by ear for the rest. Beef eaters would not be happy campers in Japan. My biggest lament is the fruit (oh mangoes, oranges, grapes and watermelons, why hast thou forsaken me?) And of course, this is a fish-eater's paradise-- affordable, fresh and plentiful. Entertainment costs are on par with Toronto, though I think generally cheaper than New York. Except going to the movies ($25/show), concerts (100 bucks), and so on and so forth. So our life is affordable because we live in the bedroom community of Soka, go out little and eat canned fruits. Removing the distractions in life helps us to produce. What else is there to do? for example, our excitement today has been to fight over who gets to read the single copy of Shanghai Baby by: Wei Hui that we were able to borrow from the Soka library.

There were a bunch of other questions, but I'm frankly too tired to go into any more lengthy explanations. Today has largely been about "killing time" as we wait for bed-time in hopes that tomorrow we will be sufficiently recovered from jet lag to make some positive contribution to life. We have a gazillion things to do in preparation for our September lessons, the English camp we're teaching at next weekend and, of course, our trip to Shanghai next monday. Apparently Shanghai's pretty tough to navigate without any knowledge of the language, along with the fact that it's incredibly crowded and polluted. We're only going for 6 days and we're also planning a couple days in Nanjing (formerly Nanking, famous site of Japanese invasion in WWII) which is a 3, 4 hour train ride from Shanghai. We need to arrange accommodation, probably in the universities of each city since it's all we can afford. But I have to work up my nerve and prep. pronouncing the Mandarin phrases from the guide book before making the LD call.
Well, before I sign off, I suppose I ought to make some comment on the "America" I just re-visited. On our arrival in NYC (from my journal): 2002.07.22 We're (back) in America. The home of the brave. Land of the free. Everything is bigga and louda and mo aggressive than I remember. And the junk food and beef positively abound. What kind of a place is this? :) I feel something like a tiptoeing fairy which is something compared to the aggressess I generally am back in Japan. It feels good to be back though. Cheese and bread (ummm... brown, oat, rye, barley, Italian, ...) and not everything contains fish and seaweed and rice. Nice to hear English again. Although some of the NY accents have me right baffled, and I find myself playing along much as I did in Japan. Just in general, hearing the machine-gun language, and being expected to understand, is baffling. Kissing ultra-conservatism goodbye for a month is nice. I don't have to worry when i wear tight tops, short skirts, the colour red! or any other thing that might attract even more stares. Clothing stores are filled with sizes 12 and 14 whereas in Japan, all the fun stops at size 8. I'm on the edge of the spectrum either way so it doesn't matter much, but interesting to see huge dresses on the rack, big enough to keep a whole Kanto family warm for the winter. Bodies are tatooed. Human rights are discussed on billboards. It's nice to see black, hispanic, white, Asian, brown faces and to hear the fracas. In general it is nice to hear the fracas. Like cowboys, Rod said. And it's true. Tough and aggressive and each man for himself ;) and these are my people ? for now, I suppose...
From the Big Apple, we bused up to Toronto where Rod's dad picked us up. His first comment upon seeing us: "Don't they eat in Japan?" Along with Mama D and plenty of good Filipino cookin', he proceeded to throw a good ten pounds on our skeletal frames before sending us back to Niponarexia. After Tokyo and New York, Toronto seemed so small and quiet, but amazingly clean and green. In Canada, Toronto is known as the "Big Smoke" for its apparently towering industrial size. Most Asian countries have at least one city with a population of over 10 million people, so in comparison, Toronto looks like a sleeping town equipped with entire forests all around. I also took a train to Ottawa and watched hundreds of kilometres of dense trees fly by my window. The Canada I love and resent. Nothing but bloody trees and winter. But how can one live without these things?
xoxo

TOP

What do people in Japan eat for breakfast?	These days many claim to eat a Western breakfast of "pan" (bread), but a traditional breakfast would generally consist of natto (fermented soyabeans) and rice. Cereal is sold in tiny packages and there isn't much variety, so I assume it isn't eaten often. Jam is sold everywhere and is affordable, but peanut butter is quite rare and costs a fortune.
Do you get much American TV?	No, thank God! :) Unfortunately Japanese TV is equally revolting and consists mostly of Reality TV like its Western counterpart. We aren't subscribed to cable which would get us a couple English stations. We are on the regular NHK set-up which consists of about 10 Japanese at-all-times channels. We're supposed to pay monthly even for this limited service, but we just hide out when they come ringing us, or claim linguistic ignorance even when the NHK rep starts busting out some English. We are officially the German couple. We live across the street from a Blockbuster-type place that carries a good selection of English videos (we just have to be careful to rent the sub-titled and not dubbed version).
Are things expensive?	You bet. Rent in Tokyo is incomprehensible ($1500/mo. for a closet), but being a 40-minute commute from the centre has cut rent prices in half. As I mentioned earlier about the fifteen dollar fruits, food can be absurdly priced, but you don't have to buy those items. Sales, sales, sales. They do happen and that's when we eat ;) Basics like milk, eggs, bread, rice, veggies have stable pricing (although a little higher than back home) and we just play it by ear for the rest. Beef eaters would not be happy campers in Japan. My biggest lament is the fruit (oh mangoes, oranges, grapes and watermelons, why hast thou forsaken me?) And of course, this is a fish-eater's paradise-- affordable, fresh and plentiful. Entertainment costs are on par with Toronto, though I think generally cheaper than New York. Except going to the movies ($25/show), concerts (100 bucks), and so on and so forth. So our life is affordable because we live in the bedroom community of Soka, go out little and eat canned fruits. Removing the distractions in life helps us to produce. What else is there to do? for example, our excitement today has been to fight over who gets to read the single copy of Shanghai Baby by: Wei Hui that we were able to borrow from the Soka library.