Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

The Ferris Wheel of Death

Wednesday, January 16th, 2008

Before she left Japan, my roommate, Nads, was determined to go on the ‘World’s Biggest Ferris Wheel’ in Yokohama. I don’t have the stats on hand, but I seriously doubt it’s the biggest in the world. ‘Biggest’ from a Japanese perspective, maybe, but not in the world. Anywho, I agreed to go with her.

 

Neither of us had spent much time in Yokohama, which is only about a half hour outside Tokyo. I met her there after work. It was already dark and raining. We had no idea how to get to the famed Ferris wheel, though we could see it in the skyline, so we just followed that. Needless to say, we got completely lost. But we did manage to see some of the other sights Yokohama has to offer, such as ‘the Tallest Building in Japan’. (Seriously Japan, you gotta stop with the hyperbole already. That ‘tallest building’ was maybe 20 stories).

 

Eventually, we found ourselves in a fairground, so we figured we must be nearing the elusive Ferris wheel. The rain was now coming down pretty hard and a strong wind had joined it, leaving both Nads and I with pretty unsightly hair.

 

The fairground was like a ghost town. It was eerie how all the rides were going but no one was on them. Thinking back, it was probably because most people had the good sense to know that those weather conditions, plus fairground rides, would not equate to a good time.

 

Eventually we found it and climbed a few flights of stairs to the Ferris wheel (that’s why it’s the biggest Japan, because you didn’t build it from ground level – cheaters!)

 

Not surprisingly, there was no line. We walked straight up, paid and got on. The wheel started moving. We got up about 20 feet when a huge gust of wind sent our carriage rocking violently in mid-air.

 

Nads and I gripped our seats as we swung out of control. I really didn’t feel like plummeting to my death, especially when I was having such a bad hair day. All I could think was ‘I hope this isn’t some London Eye shit that takes 30 minutes to go round once.’

 

We were on the World’s Largest Ferris Wheel, on the world’s windiest day, in the world’s most earthquake prone country. Fun times.

 

As the wheel edged higher and higher, I couldn’t believe that whoever was operating this machine wasn’t trying to get us down as quickly as possible. Wasn’t there a big button that said ‘ABORT!’ somewhere? Screw getting my money’s worth – I’m trying to live! Get me down bitch!

 

After what seemed like 2 years, the wheel got back to its starting point.

 

Nads and I got off, our legs like jelly beneath us. We then went back to the World’s Smallest Apartment after what appeared to be the World’s Biggest Waste of Time.

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Lift Your Voice

Tuesday, January 8th, 2008


Where I taught in Japan, classes came in two forms: normal classroom lessons or the Voice room.

 

In theory, Voice should have been a nice break from the monotony of the classroom, but it became the bane of my life.

 

It’s a big room with comfy seating, a white board and a few tables. It’s designed to be a place where students can have ‘free’, ‘natural’, ‘open’ discussions on topics of their choice. The irony is that it was always the most forced, unnatural conversation you could ever have.

 

Firstly, let’s refer back to the ‘comfy’ seating I mentioned. Whoever designed furniture for these rooms must have forgotten that western people are taller, have hips and generally speaking, weigh more than an Olsen*. I’d spend the majority of the forty minute class shifting around in my seat trying to figure out how I could get both my ass cheeks on there at the same time. And my ass ain’t that big!

 

Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty of Voice: The chit-chat.

 

The whole point is for the students to practice their English in a relaxed environment. At some schools, there’d be a crowd of students who were Voice regulars and had no problem chinwagging among themselves. Those sessions were a blast. You just sat back and observed. But my school was full of shy students who wouldn’t utter a word unless prompted. To say it was like getting blood from a stone would be an understatement.

 

Then of course, during your orientation training, you’re given a list of topics you’re not allowed to touch in Voice: the war (apparently Japan’s still a little touchy about it), sex, drugs, blah blah, the usual. So basically, anything interesting is out of bounds.

 

I tried a variety of approaches to Voice; going in prepared, going in completely unprepared, playing games and the majority of the time, failed miserably. I just couldn’t get these people to talk without having to constantly prompt them with questions.

 

Plus the whole culture in Japan doesn’t lend itself to free and easy discussion. They’re all so concerned about hierarchy, respect, weird dynamics between men and women – the whole thing is just uncomfortable.

 

A friend of mine, Jay, who taught at another school, told me of a great Voice session he did once. He went in the room and wrote ‘why?’ on the board. The students looked bemused. He told them to discuss and he didn’t say a word for the remainder of the forty-minute class. After a few awkward moments, they began to debate the ‘why?’ as Jay sat there looking on. Minute 35, he asked them for their answers and they’d come up with pretty impressive ones. On minute 39, Jay said ‘no, the answer is ‘why not?’’ Minute 40, the bell rang and he was outta there. After this, I hailed Jay as my new God. I wanted to try it out, but I just didn’t have the balls. I knew that my lot wouldn’t take the bait and I couldn’t bear forty-minutes of silence and their blank stares as I shifted around trying to get my ass in the chair.

 

And thus, every Voice class turned into a discussion about travel or hobbies. And even though the students were meant to interact with each other, they never did, leaving me to fill in the awkward silences with lame questions about their trip to Hawaii or love of tennis. At times it was very difficult not to scream ‘I can speak English motherf**kers! You talk, damn you! YOU TALK!!’

 

After a year of this, I’d rather stab myself in the neck with a pencil than have one more discussion about vacations or sports.

 

But there were two characters who were the saving graces of my Voice woes:

 

Mr Miyagi: OK, that’s not his real name, but he was the Miyagi to my Karate Kid. Oh Wise One. And he even had Bonsai trees! Every Wednesday afternoon, he’d come for two Voice lessons before going home to dinner with his wife. He was a small man, bald, late sixties/early seventies and he was delightful. Usually he was the only person there and he could talk your ear off. He was a fountain of all knowledge and he taught me far more than I ever did him. I always looked forward to Wednesdays and seeing him. It was a relief to talk to someone so open and honestly and every week, I learned something from him.

 

Wax on, Wax off Mr Miyagi – I truly do miss you.

 

And then there was Mr Misery: Ahhh, the Japanese George Clooney. He had salt and pepper hair, wore pastel colors, had his shirt collar popped, his sweater tied over shoulders and always teamed it with chinos and deck shoes. He was straight out of a catalogue. Super-suave and utterly miserable, he was completely indifferent to everyone in the room. I don’t know what he was so pissed off about, but I found him unbelievably sexy. It became my life’s mission to make him smile. During that mission, I discovered that aside from being devilishly handsome, he was also verging on being interesting. And I’m sure he didn’t realize this, but I actually made him smile six times during the course of the year. He smirked a lot of times and I got two big laughs out of him. When I told him I was leaving, he looked sad. Given, he looked like that most of the time, but I like to think I had a little something to do with it.

 

So, in my assimilation back into the western world, I have marveled at people coming together in one room, with comfy seating that your ass can fit on, discussing a plethora of topics, sometimes sans awkward silences and the urge to stab myself in the neck with a pencil has all but disappeared.

 

.* An Olsen – a unit of weight measurement based on the assumption that one Olsen twin = roughly 75 pounds.

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The Onsen

Thursday, November 29th, 2007

When I was in Japan and heard about Onsens, I immediately wanted to go. Outdoor hot springs just sound so relaxing. Then my students told me you had to go nude. This threw me off somewhat. It seems very un-Japanese to get butt naked and frolic around in water. But whatever – I was down to nude it up.

 

So, on our day off, me and my roommate, Nads, decided to venture to an Onsen. Our new roomie had just moved in, so we invited her along because we thought nudity would make that whole ‘getting to know you’ thing easier.

 

We caught a train to Hakone, which is a couple of hours outside Tokyo. Once there, we found out the Onsen was up in the mountains so we had to catch a bus. We were told to wait in the middle of this bridge and the bus would be along in about 10 minutes. As none of us had planned on ending our lives that day, the ‘middle of the bridge’ instruction lacked appeal. But we walked there and waited. Cars whizzed past us as we huddled at the edge of the road (of course, there was no sidewalk). We started to think this was a cruel joke the Hakone natives played on foreigners.

 

Soon enough, the bus came. As if waiting for the bus wasn’t hazardous enough, the driver had a death wish and drove like Mel Gibson on a bad night up the steep, narrow, winding streets.

 

Ten minutes later, we arrived and got off the bus, a bit shaky from the wild ride we’d been treated to.

 

It was the equivalent of $5 for a whole day at the Onsen. On the way to the changing rooms, they gave us towels and robes. We stripped down, donned the robes and began to walk outside. An employee stopped us and started babbling. She was an older Japanese woman and we couldn’t understand a word she was saying. We looked at each other and shrugged, then realized she was speaking Portuguese. Great. As if the English/Japanese language barrier wasn’t enough to burst your brain. Yet the more she talked, the less the words mattered. It became clear she was trying to tell us we couldn’t wear the robes outside – we had to parade out there in the buff.

 

This woman became a kind of ‘house mother’ to us due to our complete and very obvious lack of knowledge of Onsen etiquette.

 

So, slowly we disrobed and readied ourselves for our nude debut.

 

Now, I’m not body conscious, but letting all my alabaster skinned goodness hang out in front of a bunch of Japanese women, who are bones with a little skin wrapped around them, was a little daunting. Nads and I (who are normal sized people, I might add) thought we’d look like a couple of heifers. (The new roomie was Asian, so her tiny frame would blend right in).

 

The towels they gave us were no bigger than dishrags. You could cover one nipple at a time, your groin or half a butt cheek.

 

Brave Nads led the troops to the great outdoors. Once outside, we were greeted with the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It was nothing short of breathtaking. [Cue harp music] We were up in the mountains, pools of hot springs dotted about, trees and flowers everywhere to shade you, steam rising from the water and rays of sunshine peeking through the trees – it was like something out of a fairy tale.

 

After taking a moment to absorb all that, we got in one of the hot springs to relax. But then, something became increasingly hard to ignore – Japanese women have never heard of bikini waxing or a good ol’ Trim ‘n’ Shape.

 

‘Holy Jesus! What is going on with the pubes?’ I say to Nads.
‘I know!’ She says while averting her eyes from some woman’s offending jungle. We then hatch a plan to import Trim ‘n’ Shapes, become traveling saleswomen and sell them at Onsens.

 

We laze around at the Onsen for a few hours and then decide to take the bus back down to the town and have a look around. We explored and did a little souvenir shopping then got on a train that’d take us on a tour up in the mountains.

 

The train didn’t seem to go anywhere. It just zigzagged up and down the mountain. People were getting off at the stops as if this was their regular route. Every time someone got off, we debated; ‘what are they doing? Who the hell lives here? There’s nothing but hill and trees damnit.’ We put this down as another conspiracy theory to confuse the hell out of foreigners.

 

People neglected to tell us that Onsens make you very lethargic, so when we were on the mountain train to nowhere, it was all we could do to keep our eyes open. The higher we got, the more intense my headache. Since we didn’t know where the hell we’d end up, we thought we should get off at the next stop, cross the platform and go back down.

 

On the descent, there were a bunch of schoolgirls in the next carriage over. (Where the hell was this mountain school?) The girls saw us and started giggling and waving in true Japanese schoolgirl fashion. We waved back. Then they started rummaging around in their bags. A couple of minutes later, they had written a note and held it up against the window between the carriages.

 

“You are cute,” it said.

We found some paper and wrote back. “So are you.” This was greeted with fits of giggles and bows from the girls.

“Where are you from?” They wrote.
“England, Canada and Australia”

“Do you like Japanese food?”

 

This conversation went on for an age. We were scribbling on random scraps of paper (they were much more organized with a seemingly endless notebook specifically reserved for meeting random foreigners on mountain trains).

 

At one point, the whole of our carriage seemed to be involved in our note passing. There was a group of Chinese tourists sitting near us. As I was writing and my pen seemed to be running out, new roomie, who can speak Cantonese said ‘This guy says he’s got a pen you can borrow if you need one.’ Go team!

 

The never-ending train ride finally came to a halt and the schoolgirls took some pictures with us on their cell phones.

 

We boarded the train back to Tokyo, refreshed but exhausted. We hit Tokyo just in time for rush hour. Ahh, how we’d hate to miss that. While on the subway squished between an armpit and a briefcase, I fantasized about my new life as a Trim ‘n’ Shape saleswoman. I’d bring pubic jungle freedom to all and be hailed as a Japanese national hero.

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