Posts Tagged ‘Japanese chicks’

Letters From a Japanese Roomie

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

Before I left Canada, my Japanese roommates got me a lovely card and a gift. It was possibly the cutest card ever given in the history of card giving. I thought I would share their notes here.

Just so you know, the ‘okonomiyaki’ they refer to is a kind of Japanese food that we made together once.

Dear Muireann,

Last time ‘let’s okonomiyaki party’ was so excited, right? I hope to do ‘let’s okonomiyaki party again with you. But you have to go back to Britain. I think lonely. Anyway, I hope to. May all your dreams come true. Thank everything. From Aya 1.

I love you!!

You are a wonderful lady. I thought it always. I wish you every happiness. Come whenever you like again. From Aya 2.

See, I always thought Aya 1 had the better English, but Aya 2 kinda craps all over her here (and wins extra points for declaring her love for me).

I think I’m gonna make like Gwen Stefani and just have a crew of Japanese chicks following me around at all times. I may have to move back to Tokyo for that, but I’ll figure it out somehow.

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International Relations on the Homefront

Monday, August 31st, 2009

I live with two Japanese girls, both called Aya. I used to think that Aya 1′s English speaking abilities were lacking, until I met Aya 2. Let me preface all of this by saying, I know how hard it is to learn another language. I lived in Japan for a year and am pretty sure there are a bunch of Japanese people dining out on stories of the various gaffs I made while attempting to speak their language.

Aya 2 has been here for six months, learning English. I’m not sure what they’ve been teaching her, but I think it’s fair to say, progress has been slow. Her sentences are typically made up of three words and some charades. It’s on you to fill in the blanks.

A few weeks ago, she was showing me some stuff she’d picked up at a flea market. One of them was a old set of knives. She took one out of the box and said ‘For when I have boyfriend!’ and then made some stabbing motions with the knife. I was a little taken aback. ‘You’ll….kill him?’ I asked, now a little scared of my seemingly innocent roommate. She looked confused and conferred with Aya 1 in Japanese. They both giggled. Aya 1 clarified ‘No, she cook for him!’ So now we know both her English and cooking skills are shitty. When even the charades are confusing, you know it’s bad.

It’s gotten so I dread being alone with Aya 2. The awkward silences, the desperate scrambling in my head trying to figure out what the hell she’s talking about. Aya 1′s English isn’t great, but next to Aya 2 she looks like Barack Obama’s speech writer. Mind you, I don’t help much. I do all the embarrassing things we English speakers do in these situations. I start speaking in pigeon English too, thinking this will help her understand me better. I talk louder, as if her hearing is the issue.

Over the weekend, Aya 2 and I crossed paths on the doorstep as I was taking my bike out to run some quick errands. She said ‘Have a romantic time!’ Umm, what? What does that even mean? I couldn’t even hazard a guess at what she was trying to say. I mean, I love my bike an all, but not like that. But rather than question it, I greeted it with a smile and a nod and said ‘Thank you, I will.’

One day, Aya 2 will grasp the basics and before you know it, she’ll be chatting it up with the people of Toronto like never before. I, on the other hand, will still suck at Japanese.

Whatever you’re doing today, don’t forget to have a romantic time.

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Breathe in and Zip

Friday, January 18th, 2008


The first time I went shopping in Japan, I thought I kept wandering into the children’s department by accident. I stumbled across size 22 jeans and figured they were for teenyboppers, but apparently fully-grown women really are that small there. It’s like living amongst The Borrowers.

 

I’m a regular sized chick; 5’9” 140 pounds. I have these things called ‘hips’, which are apparently unheard of in Japan. Japanese women, beautiful as they are, tend to have the bodies of twelve year old boys. Luckily, I don’t have any body issues, I’m happy the way I am, but it would’ve been quite easy for me to feel obese in that nation of Twiggies.

 

Not being able to buy clothes there wouldn’t have bothered me so much if the clothes weren’t so damn nice. Tokyo is, by far, the most fashionable city on earth, streaks ahead of London, Paris or anywhere else that matters. Everyone there has a built in sense of style, from the Harajuku girls with their verging-on-comical costumes, to the designer divas of Ginza. Virtually every woman you see has a designer handbag; Dior, Fendi, Prada, Gucci, Louis – all so common there they’d throw their laundry in them. I never saw a badly dressed person there. I kept hoping I’d see someone break out a shell suit to throw everyone off, but it never happened.

 

As a ‘big girl’, shopping in Tokyo is a cruel form of torture. Occasionally, if I searched hard enough, I could find a top that could contain my swimmers shoulders, but anything for the bottom half was pretty much a no-no. I once tried on a pair of trousers in one uber-trendy Shibuya store, but I couldn’t even get one butt cheek in them. Handing them back to the assistant, she said in her broken English “Ahh, you’re too big!” with a slight smirk. I gave her a polite smile and thought about the day she’d be giving birth. Bet you wish you had my childbearing hips now don’t you, bitch?!

 

Another store, where I was being forced by the sales assistant to try things on, despite me trying to explain that I was too big for anything in the store, she actually resorted to getting me men’s jeans to try on. That’s not embarrassing at all. The only store where clothes fit was Zara. I wasn’t a big fan before I went to Japan, but I single handedly kept that store afloat while I was there.

 

What’s crazy is that as tiny as Japanese women are, they have all the same body issues as western women. I lost count of the number of women I knew on diets and various weight loss programs. When I was younger, I hated how I was taller and a bigger size than all my friends. These days, I’m happy to have hips and not just hip bones. I have an actual stomach, as opposed to a concave space between my chest and pelvis. I embrace my lovely lady humps for better or worse!

 

So, if you ever find yourself shopping in Tokyo, don’t lose sight of the fact that you are a normal sized person. Forget the ‘I’ll just lose a couple of pounds’ culture, love your curves and take your fat ass to Zara.

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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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Stomping Grounds

Monday, November 26th, 2007

I wear heels most of the time. I wear them because I look good in them and I can strut like a champion. My mama and grandmother are constantly on at me to wear more comfortable shoes, to which my response is; I’ll worry about being comfortable when I’m middle aged. Right now, I’m young, I’m hot and I’m wearing heels – deal with it.

 

My footwear of choice is usually a good pointy toe, with just the right amount of toe cleavage, a three and a half to four inch heel, which gives me that lift to accentuate my derriere a little more, that slight arch of my lower back and make my already long legs look killer. Yes, there’s an art to wearing heels and when I see high heel abuse, it irks me so.

 

There are several things to consider before you throw on a pair of heels. Terrain is the most important factor. Cobbles, hills, grates, certain escalators, a narrow stairway, will there be grass involved? Or a pebbled driveway? All of these can throw off a perfectly good strut.

 

Cobbles and grates are particularly hazardous and can lead to the dreaded ‘lunge’. Ladies, you know what I’m talking about. You’re strutting along like a diva, when all of a sudden, your heel gets stuck and as you stride forward, your back heel stays put, forcing you to lunge it out like you’re in a bad ‘80s workout video.

 

The ultimate purveyors of heel abuse are Japanese girls. They all do a kind of pigeon-toed-shuffle, which, when coupled with high heels, makes for some major shoe damage. And it’s not like we’re talking about some cheapy Steve Maddens – they’re wearing very high-end designer shoes and stomping them to death. They have enough trouble walking in regular heels, but they seem to like to challenge themselves with mules and slingbacks. Although the results are comical for me, I imagine there’s an epidemic of broken ankles in Tokyo.

 

I once saw a girl walking down a flight of stairs at Shibuya subway station. She stumbled, managed to regain her balance. Stumbled again, but grabbed the railing just in time, only to stumble a third time. The final time she fell flat on her ass and one of her shoes flew off. I would have pulled her aside and said ‘bitch, take the shoes off, walk to the nearest Footlocker and buy yourself some sneakers’ but with my limited Japanese ability, I could only ask where the bathroom was. When heels become so troublesome you can’t make it down a regular flight of stairs, with the aid of a railing – admit defeat and invest in some hush puppies or something.

 

Another girl, another train station, another dead shoe. She was coming to the top of the escalator and rather than take a step, she did the Japanese girl pigeon-toed-shuffle which resulted in her heel getting caught in the top of the escalator and her doing quite a mighty lunge. She stepped all the way out of her shoe. I shook my head and watched as she spent a few minutes squatting down trying to yank the shoe out. All the sex appeal of heels is lost when you watch someone do that.

 

The one thing worse than a Japanese girl in heels is a Japanese girl in heels, wearing sunglasses, in a nightclub.

 

Look at all the hazards:

 

- Japanese girls in heels (see above examples)
- Sunglasses worn in an already dark nightclub (quick side bar; if you are someone who wears sunglasses in a nightclub, stop it. You look an absolute wanker).
- Complete and utter lack of rhythm.
- Complete and utter inability to dance
- Alcohol
- Possibly a strobe light

 

Combine all those factors and you better take cover (or do as I did; pull up a chair and wait for hilarity to ensue). Hang around long enough and you’ll see plenty of chicks falling down stairs, tripping over themselves and if you’re lucky, walking into walls.

 

My point is this: the entire reason for the existence of heels is sex appeal. If, when you wear heels, you shuffle, limp, drag, stomp or wobble – then they’re just not for you. It doesn’t make you less of a woman, it just means you can get a head start on bringing the sexy to orthopedic shoes. Good luck with that.

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