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Japan – Day 4

Well, I had a big post about Tsukiji, the fish market in Tokyo, all ready but I need to figure out how to upload a large video of the tuna auction on Youtube, so y’all will have to wait until later.

So for today, I’ll post about general Japan randomness.

Yesterday, I went to work. All by myself. When you don’t speak or read the local language, small victories like navigating the subway system are to be celebrated. Granted, my big commute involved only a 15 minute walk and a single train ride to Shibuya, but whatever. I did it all by my self and I got to work okay. Getting home was another matter, though …

On the way to the train station, I stopped at the local combini, the term for a convenience store. I was looking for one of the hot coffee beverages in a can but instead found a cold case filled with Starbucks to go cups (and a bunch of knock offs). At first glance, I thought they were Starbucks to go cups, but they’re actually cold drinks in containers that look like to go cups. Genius marketing and design! Those cups have become synonymous with coffee and portability, and imply a certain level of quality, consistency, and taste.

In any case, I picked up a cup of Mt Rainier Mocha Coffee. Again, another case of genius co-opting of brand identity.

If Starbucks = Good Coffee

and

Seattle = Starbucks

and

Mt. Rainier = Seattle, Washington

then Mt. Rainier = Good Coffee too, right?

At work I made my best Japanese snack discovery of the past few years. I’m not quite sure what it is and the packaging does little to clear things up. As far as I can tell, it’s some sort of peanut/crispy noodle mix, that’s apparently a favorite of beer-drinking big-lipped panda-headed sealmen/people. Seriously, WTF are those things? They look friendly enough. In any case, these peanut/noodly-things were tasty. Crispy noodles, plump peanuts, meaty/savory and slightly spicy. Bring some with you as a gift when visiting Dr. Moireau’s Island of strange genetic abominations. The sealmen/people things will thank you.

And finally there’s Love Body by Coca-Cola. Which is really just iced tea. And it’s not even that great Engrish, except that Ls are pronounced like Rs and Vs are pronounced like Bs in Japan … so I enjoyed a nice big bottle of Rub Body. And who doesn’t like to kick back with some Rub Body?

Oh, lastly … getting back home was a bit more of a challenge. Shibuya at 6:30am looks entirely different than Shibuya at 5:30pm. The difference? Oh, about 2000 people hurriedly going about their business. I got a bit turned around and ended up wandering around Shibuya for 20 minutes, looking for my train. Granted, I could’ve looked up the train name before I left or asked someone for directions, but really, it was just right here, I tell you!

I finally found the right station/platform … and I was even brave enough to ask the station attendant if I had the right train. Well, in actuality all I said was “Takaido ….?” And she said something in Japanese, nodded, and gestured “1” with her finger … by which I think she meant Platform 1.

And then it happened again. Whenever someone speaks Japanese to me I end up replying in one of the other “Foreign” languages I speak. English and Portuguese are “Not Foreign” to me; the only “Foreign” I “speak” is Spanish and French. So … if someone here speaks “Foreign” to me … I automatically reply back in “Foreign”. The agent attendant lady told me Platform 1 in “Foreign” (i.e., Japanese) … and replied … “Si … muchas gracias.” I even threw in an extra “Foreign” sounding Castilian lisp … “muchas graTHIAS”. See, I’m totally fluent in “Foreign”!

Yes, I’m retarded.

Too tired to write anything of much wit or substance today, so you’ll have to be content with random pictures from Tokyo.

Quick braindump on today’s activities:

• Woke up early and repeatedly.
• Went to the hospital to see Grandma. She woke up and recognized us all, which was great.
• Walked to Royal Host for lunch. Saw that they had something called “Black Demi” on the menu, which made me think of Angela Basset for some strange reason.
• I had the spicy chicken on rice, which was actually very good.
• Split up and hung out with Mom and Dad. Went to the Tokyo Museum of Modern art. Saw some cool pieces, especially 8 Scenes from Japan by Julian Opie. I’ll google that later.

I always get silly when I’m traveling with family, especially in Japan. Once I came here with my younger brother and we spent a full month honing our humor and jokes to be maximally effective … to each other. Unfortunately, this level of humor specialization does not generalize well to larger … or different audiences. After a month of completely cracking each other up, we came home to the silent stares and uncomprehending looks from our friends. I actually remember thinking ” … hmmm …, guess I have to recalibrate my humor again …”. Which is all a really long way of explaining this next shot:

This is a game my friend Matt introduced me to. The game is called “Ass or Elbow”. And what better time to introduce this game to one’s parents then when walking around the Tokyo Mueum of Modern Art … steps away from the Imperial Palace?

Back to the itinerary …

• Ate some sweet potato from the cart on the street. In New York you get hotdogs. In Tokyo, you get sweet potatoes.
• Took train back to parent’s hotel. Took picture of the “Women’s Only” subway car advert.

• Walked up and down crowded shopping-mall-cum-street. Very cool if totally busy shopping area.

• Bought a friend of mine a “Slim Mouth Piece” mouth exerciser. Not that she needs it. She’s got a gorgeous smile but I know that this will crack her up. I’ll do just about anything for a good punchline …

• Ate at a kaiten sushi place, which was really good. Though my mom suggested I try the fermented bean sushi. She described it as being both “interesting” and “good for you”, which should have been a clear warning that it would not be tasting anyting approaching “good”. As she predicted, it was interesting. If by interesting she meant slimy and gaggy.

All in all, it was a totally draining day. I’m going to hit the sack as tomorrow we’re getting up at the asscrack of dawn to go to the tsukiji - the big fish auction/market, where they sell huge tuna for tens of thousands of dollars. I think I saw something about that on the Discover or Food channels.

Oh, last thing. Tokyo still has a ton of Japanese. Last time I was here I was struck at how many Japanese are here. And it’s still the same now. I WAS counting, and we saw about 2 dozen gaijin today (not counting Mom and SiL) and we probably saw about 5000 Japanese. Yes, some of you will say “no shit” but growing up in the states does not prepare you for such homogeneity. I guess maybe if you’re in the middle of Wyoming you’d expect everyone you see to be white. But then again, Wyoming has a population of about 500K, which tokyo probably has about 20 mil. So take NYC, double it in size, and change the demographic so that it was about 99.9% white and 0.1% non-white and you’d get close to seeing how many japanese people are are in Japan. Crazy…

Japan, Day 1.

So I’m back in Japan for the first time in about 12 years. My Japanese grandma is in ill health and it’s her 90th birthday on Tuesday, so my mom and dad, older bro, his wife, their baby girl and I are doing the Filial Piety Tour 2007.

I haven’t seen obaachan in a while, so long I can’t remember the last time. That’s one of the drawbacks of being an immigrant; with all of my relatives (save immediate family) continents away, it’s hard getting close to your relatives. Throw in a language barrier or two, just for fun, and things really start to get interesting.

Like last night’s dinner. Older Bro, SiL, Baby G, and I arrived in Tokyo around 3pm, local time. After long train and cab rides, we reached our uncle’s house, where we are staying. Uncle Teiji and Aunt Satoko are in Hiroshima for the weekend, so we were met by our two cousins, Hiroto and Megumi, and their friend Stephan (a friend of theirs from Taiwan). Now Older Bro and SiL both speak Japanese, having lived in Osaka for two years. Me, not so much. Not beign able to speak the langue of half my family is something of a personal disappointment for me. But there are ways to get around that, it just makes for very awkward conversations.

Luckily, I speak English. Realistically speaking, if you’re only going to speak one language, you’re better off if it’s English; It’s today’s Lingua Franca (ironically enough). Legend has it that there are more English speakers in China than in the US. If a Thai meets an Argentine while traveling in Switzerland, it’s English they are going to be speaking. So if you’re going to be a monoglot, consider yourself lucky that English is your only glot.

So last night, I could speak with Megumi and Stephan, both of whom speak English. And I could somewhat communicate with Hiroto, as he speaks Spanish and I speak Portuguese (hah, I ain’t no culturally stunted monoglot!). So the conversation last night drifted between Japanese (which I understood 0%), Spanish/Portuguese (40% comprehension), and English (100% comprehension).

It might have been the jetlag, but dinner did start to feel like a GRE question: Hiroto speaks Japanese and Spanish. Megumi speaks Japanese and English. Stephan speaks Japanese, Cantonese, English, and Spanish. Older Bro speaks English, Portuguese, Japanese, and Spanish. SiL speaks English and Japanese. And I speak English and Portuguese. We are all sitting down for dinner (delivery from Shanghai Express). What is the ideal sitting arrangement at the table so that each person can speak to the people on either side and across the table. Assume a rectangular table with 2 people sitting on the long sides and 1 person on each end.

Hmm… I have no idea what the proper order is. If you’re feeling bored, drop me a line with your solution. Me, I’m going back to bed.

I don’t know what any of this is supposed to mean, but here are some men that are hot:

Daniel Craig, from Casino Royal, Tomb Raider, Layer Cake, and probably a bunch of other smaller movies. Why’s Craig hot? Well, to start, there’s this:

And he’s smart. Well, I have no idea if he’s smart or not but he looks like the thinking man’s (or woman’s) bad-ass. I’m sure the British accent has something to do with it. Why is that British accents sound smart and French accents sounds sexy? And what do Italian accents sound like? Hmmm … also sexy? Maybe Romance languages have generally sexy accents. Spanish? Sexy. Portuguese? Also sexy (okay, so I may be slightly biased here…). Romanian? Hmmm … I have no idea. I’ve never heard a Romanian accent. But let’s agree that it’s sexy, in an Eastern European kind of way (and no, I have no idea what that means, either).

Ira Glass, from This American Life. Or as they say on their new Showtime show:

Or not. Crap. I was going to include a cool graphic they show at the beginning of the new This American Life show on Showtime. Let me see if I can describe it (while doing it absolutely no justice whatsoever): Black screen, with nothing on it. A clip-arty image of a hand appears, fingers closed except for the index finger, which is extended and pointing to the right. Next, and map of the United States appears to the right of the hand. And then a little green bean sprouty-cartoon thingy fades in to the right of the map of the United States. Quite clever, isn’t it? Well, I’m sure you’ll think so when you see the actually graphic. Reading a text description of it is quite inadequate, I assure you.

So yeah, Ira’s hot. He’s got this laid back yet geeky yet ultra cool yet casual demeanor going on. Ask any of your NPR listening hipster friends, man or woman, gay or straight, and they’ll back me up on this: Ira’s hot.

Dan Savage. Sure he’s a smart ass but he’s also like 6′ 3″ and fit. Not bad for 44 … or however old he is. Though he goes go a little over the top with his schitck sometimes. Like the whole licking of the doorknob fiasco. I’m as fond of crossing the line as the next guy, but that was a little out there, even for me.

Oh, and what a list of hot guys would be complete without George. No, that not George. THAT George is the complete antithesis of a hot guy. I mean THIS George:

He’s the smoothest, chillest guy around. Women dig him. Men wish they were 1/10 as charming on their BEST day as he is when he is on his worst. Imagine Clooney with a bad case of “digestive issues”, sinuses chock full of lemon curd, and Tourette’s and he’s STILL more charming than you are. And you would have to imagine that because this is a purely hypothetical situation. When you’re THAT smooth you have a natural immunity to all things un-smooth.

All right. So that’s all I got today. Not sure what any of these means.

You should definitely file this under too much information. In fact, if you’re a bit squeamish you might file it under “don’t wanna puke on my keyboard”.

For the past week and a half I’ve been struggling with a cold. I don’t often get colds but when I do I get whinny and this time was no different. I’m a big fan of the whole oxygen thing and spending a week living like a mouthbreather is no fun.

Luckily, I rediscovered the joys of the Neti Pot. I hadn’t used one in ages and I don’t remember having a good time with it in the past. Maybe I didn’t have the salinity of the water right. Maybe I didn’t like it back then because my ex was pushing me to do it. Like any invasive procedure, you can’t really force someone into Neti Pot-ism. They have to embrace the concept themselves.

I’m getting ahead of myself a bit. What is a Neti Pot, you may be asking. A Neti Pot is a ceramic pot, shaped much like a genie lamp, that you fill up with salt water, stick it up one nostril, tilt your head, and let the water flow in your nose through one nostril and out the other. That’s pretty much it, but wikipedia, as usual, has a much more informative article.

What that article (or any article on Neti Pot) won’t tell you is the sheer amount of stuff that lives inside your head, especially if you’ve got any kind of sinus infection. Yes, I supposed that it makes sense that if you put warm salt water up your nose stuff is going to come out. I expected that. What I didn’t expect is that amount and … uh … consistency and color of the stuff.

I’m in awe of the shit that came of my head after using the Neti Pot during this cold. I guess I never knew how much space there is in my head for snot. I figured that much of the space in my head was allocated for functional organs, like the brain, eyes, ear canals and … crap, I don’t know … just head-stuff.

But after a Neti Pot or two of nasal lavage I’d get handfuls of snot. Well, maybe palmfuls. In any case, the sheer volume of snot that came out makes me re-evaluate what my head is really for. I’m going to revise my previous estimates and say that about 75% of it is functional and/or structural. The other 25% is hollow space used for the secretion and accumulation of various fluids of differing viscosity.

And that leads me to the other “thing” … the “various fluids of differing viscosity”. It’s like the snot hat comes out your nose after Neti Pot is a version of self-secreted gelatinous diamond-like material. After each expulsion I’d find myself rating the new arrival on color, consistency, clarity, and carots. Sometimes the specimen was small and clear, with a lightly gelatinous consistency, almost like frothy Karo Syrup. I think of these as the industrial diamond equivalent in snot… unremarkable yet abundant.

Occasionally I’d find a slightly cloudy, pale nugget, perhaps a bit more viscous that the clear samples. These were a bit rarer, but still not awe inspiring.

The truly awe inspiring specimens were very rare indeed. Only twice during my cold did I find something I considered especially noteworthy. I’m not claiming that these were Hope Diamond-like in their snotish grandeur, but they would definitely merit a spot in my own personal Museum of Natural History.

Like most discoveries of this significance, both took me by surprise. I’d finished my Neti routine and spent a few minutes blowing out the low-quality, industrial snot. And both times I figured I was almost done with the process and was just doing a final blow to make sure.

That first time I plugged my left nostril, blew gently out my right, and felt a little resistance. I took another breath and blew a little harder, hoping I wasn’t getting congested again. I felt my breath snag a little … and then things get a little hazy. I felt a sudden pop and out comes this … pellet, a little larger than a quarter, the color and consistency of slimy pumpkin pie filling. My first thoughts were “What the fuck is that thing and how long has it been living inside my head?!”. It looked a bit dazed, clinging to the side of the sink, like some kind of shell-less mollusk that had been roused from its hiding place. I wished I’d taken pictures of it now, but I panicked and quickly washed it down the drain before it could come to and attempt to reclaim its lair.

The 2nd great discovery happened last Saturday. I was feeling a bit stuffed up and decided to have another go. Same situation as last time. The Neti process went smoothly. I’d perfected the salt:water ratio so there was no stinging. After a pot in each nostril I was blowing out each nostril a final time when a huge yellowish mass suddenly splatted against my hand. This time there was no warning like with the pumpkin pie mollusk incident. One second there was nothing bit a little clear snot and some salt water and the second I’m looking at about 2 tablespoons of lemon curd slapped against the palm of my hand and the side of the sink. I blow again - another slap of curd. As with the first time I am so shocked that I immediately wash it down the sink. I try not to blame myself for my rashness … really, both instances were so unexpected that I wasn’t really thinking about the photo-journalistic possibilities here.

I may be experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance here, but having gone through these traumatic moments of nasal self-discovery, I think I’m a slight bit addicted to the Neti Pot. I can’t help but to think about what else may be inhabiting my head … and that I need to do the Neti Pot again to dislodge these sinus invaders.

I keep thinking back to that scene in the Wrath of Kahn where Kahn puts that grubby Ceti Eel thing in Checkoff’s ear. I know there’s one of those up my nose someplace and I’ll be damned if I let it breed up there.