'tis the season.

     I walked outside yesterday morning into a nasty, gray-sky day. It looked like it was going to rain, but the wind was blowing so violently that an umbrella would have been useless anyway, so I continued without one. Then, I heard the sirens. "Are those voices?," I thought, and I wondered what they were saying in Japanese. Naturally I assumed was a warning of some kind; what if the weather was getting so bad that the announcement was urging people to evacuate? Do they even have tornadoes in Japan? I looked for other people so I could see how the natives were reacting, but nobody was on the entire street. "Strange," I thought, as I found myself drawn to the rambling of the horns in the direction of the station. The speaker was very monotone; whatever he was saying, this was not a festival. The walk was about a mile, yet the horns sounded clear as day. In the distance I saw a large crowd of people, and I imagined the imperial Big Brother of Japan, loading buses full of willing passengers unsure where their government was taking them. To my surprise, upon reaching the crowd I noticed group of four old men in suits, standing atop a self-painted van, speaking to the crowd. They wore sashes adorned with their credentials and had a few news-teams recording their speech. I should have known; it's political season.

I definitely agree with Mr. So-and-So about that one point.

     Apparently in Japan it's legal to drive around town with a giant megaphone on the roof of your van and spout political nonsense. It makes me weary to think that there is a country with a more invasive campaign strategy than the United States, but Japan seems to be doing a pretty good job of intruding every half hour when they drive by in the cars again. The only other images I have of these mobile-audio propaganda machines is among the plighted countries going through revolutions, like in the movies about Nazi Germany. Sure, today, the Japanese people are probably saying, "please vote for better education funding!," but I imagine tomorrow it could be something along the lines of, "Find those Gaijin! They must be turned in to the police!"

3 Months in

Gamba-ppe, Ibaraki's slang for Ganbatte (Good luck)

When I look at my time in Japan it feels like I've just arrived, and yet at 3 months, I'm 1/4th through my contract already! I don't update this blog enough, and I never find the time to stop and appreciate my situation; the last thing I want is to finish my tenure here without a lot of great stories and details about Japan. So much about my life has transformed so rapidly, that I feel that I've done some things I never would have tolerated back home. Also, I enjoy lists. The following are things, after only a few months in Japan, that you'd be surprised to find yourself doing;

1)  Speaking in basic, plain, Japanese-coddled English to fully competent English speakers. Everybody I've met here does it, and the longer I'm in this country the less I find myself using big words or complex sentence patterns. After 8 hours a day of speaking in the most basic tongue to students and coworkers, it's difficult to switch back to the old vocabulary for some other Americans. Sometimes it's simple changes that make me sound dumb, like using "[subject], do you know?" instead of "have you heard about [subject]?" Another example is that every question must be asked with the keyword as the last word, inflected with enough stress to indicate a query, such as, "At university.... what did you study?" instead of "what did you study at university?". Typically you have to make this inversion for the Japanese students because they often can understand the beginning and the end of a sentence, yet fill in the middle; the second question would often register with them as "what... university." Needless to say, you just sound silly when you do it to someone who was a born and raised English speaker.

Look at that weirdo wearing the man-purse!

2) Buy or wear something you used to think was extremely gay. In my case, it was a small leather bag I could keep my personal items in. A man-purse. Japanese people are obsessed with bags and trinkets that they can individualize, and the same applies for the guys here. My theory is that because everyone walks everywhere here, you can't just keep your stuff in your car, and going sans-bag would be more of a hassle. It's super effeminate, but it's nice to have something to help carry my wallet and stuff. This rule, though, also applies to wearing bright neon clothing, hanging little stuffed animals off your cell phone, and getting really strange hats.

A traditional Japanese lunch. 

3) Start using a coin purse. Coins here are big! They take up a lot of space, and because the smallest paper bill is around 10-12 dollars in value, you'll be carrying a large amount of change at any time and unlike in the US you can't just throw them on the ground. Without a coin purse, these things will muck up your wallet and cut up the bills inside. Also, paying with change is really useful; there is rarely sales tax on things here, so very often you'll be able to pay in exact change.

A 20-minute special of a Panda fighting a Koala, MMA style.  In poor form, the koala paid off the ref and wouldn't make the count. 

4) Lose all respect for television. The other day at prime-time there was a super-live, commercial free showing of the Women's Doubles Ping-Pong championship. There were maybe 15 people in the crowd as 4 women played best-of-seven, 11-point games for three hours. Also, When you watch sports on the news, they will often show highlights of the Japanese players in the MLB. One time, I watched a replay of Ichiro dropping a ball in the outfield in a Mariners game five or six times, and yet the news didn't even say the final score of the game.