Crabistmas

I was a bit lonely this Christmas, despite being all over the show. I think I mentioned it in a previous post, so I won't carp on.

After a phonecall with my whanau in the morning and some present opening via webcam, I made a cameo appearance at work in the afternoon. After all, Jesus didn't ever make his way over to Japan, so his birth's not a national holiday.

Just when I thought I was destined to go home and be bored for the rest of the evening, Yukiko gave me a call to say I should come out with them for dinner. For those of you playing the home game, Yukiko is an English teacher who I helped last year, and subsequent hangings-out with the family has turned them into my home-away-from-home in Osaka.

So, what was Christmas dinner? Ham? Turkey? Pasta? No. It was crab. I kinda felt Jewish. Though it was good crab.

O-Pa-Pea! (Ocean Pacific Peace)

My friend's kid (Louie) is awesome.

Here's his impression of Yoshio Kojima,


It might make sense to watch this first:

This guy is currently wayyyyy too popular among the youth of Japan at the moment. It's a phase thing, one we're all hoping will fade out fast.
I asked some kids why he's so popular. Responses ranged from "Because he's gross" (mainly because of the melon-flavoured Speedos) to "Because his voice is cool". I'm still confused. FYI, his main catchphrase is "でもそんなの関係ねぇ" ("demo sonnano kankei ne-!"), which basically means "But that's got nothing to do with it!", though it sounds more slang (perhaps "What's that got to do with the price of fish?"). It's a gimmick, but that's why the kids love him.

Meanwhile, more entertaining than that is Louie singing Thomas the Tank Engine in Japanese.

Priceless.

Christmas

So, another Christmas devoid of the family (my 3rd ever). Last time I had a girlfriend to soften the blow, and the time before I at least had a date. But this time it's no family, no girlfriend, no Sam, nothing!
Oh well, guess we'll have to find a new family.

I do have a few filial connections in Japan, one of them being Mio's parents in Mie (near Nagoya). So in a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing on Saturday night, I decided to pay them a visit. It's only a 2 hour express train ride to Nagoya (about 3,500yen, or US$30). And in a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, they decided to give me a Japanese yukata jacket! I forget the proper name.



Mint.

"Where America's Day Begins"

When you work in a Japanese company, the word 'vacation' isn't one you hear in the office very regularly. This isn't because everyone speaks Japanese and they say "休み" (yasumi) instead. It's because, well, Japanese don't really go on holiday, at least not often. When they do, it's always 2-3 day trips, so they can surround the weekend and not lose a week of work. You're not likely to find a week long tour program designed for Japanese in NZ, because noone would use it.

So when the boss told us we're all going on company vacation as a reward for a bumper year, I assumed it meant we were all going to get a half day off to play golf or shop. Turns out we were going to get a MASSIVE 3-day trip to...Guam? I was not expecting to head somewhere I had to look up on a map.

3 most famous things about Guam:
1.) American naval base.
2.) uh....
3.) I'm out.

I probably know Guam better than you - well, obviously now I've been, but even beforehand. In Japan, it probably makes the Top 5 Most Popular Travel Destinations for Japanese. To sum it up, it's like the American Okinawa, which is the Japanese Hawaii. So its the American-Japanese-Hawaii. No, not the same as just "Hawaii".

After having spent 2 days exploring a portion of the main island within the confines of our tour options, I can say the following:

1.) Guam culture is a soft-collision (or an indifferent near miss) of three cultures; American military and the American legislation, Guam locals (the Chamorro) and their laid-back, Micronesian style, and... Japanese tourists. The island is essentially bi-lingual, and if you want a good job then you gotta learn Japanese. American may have won the battle for Guam, but without Japan's tourists coming en masse to enjoy the beach, Guam would need serious financial aid.
2.) It's not a US state (obviously), but on all accounts it should be; it has a governor, you need an American visa to get in, people drink Bud and Miller Lite... and one of the most popular tourist attractions after the sand and surf is the firing ranges. Although I guess in America the guys on the streets would be pulling the gun on you, not calling out as you walk by "Hey bro! You wanna fire a gat?"
3.) Shit's expensive. All the wonderful delicacies of American culture (see: Reece's Pieces, Oh Henry!s, Taco Bell) have to be shipped across the Pacific to get there. And the local stuff has to be expensive so the locals can make a living. Thus, like any good tourist spot, it ain't cheap.

Still, despite a lot of people saying to me either "Guam has nothing", or "Where's Guam?", one thing it does have plenty of is coastline, and that's more than enough for me. I ached for 3 days afterwards from all the wake boarding, scuba diving, para sailing and jet skiing. That's not to say I achieved anything. I'll have to give the wakeboarding a serious go before I can stand up regularly (I don't know if it's being tall or having bad balance, or just being plain old clumsy, but I only stood up once from around 30 tries). The scuba diving wasn't exactly taxing, seeing as none of us had a license to dive far. I was surprised how simple para sailing was - kinda like a big back to front swing. Its easy to forget you're suspended 30-40 metres above the water by straps no bigger than seatbelts - that is, until you look down. Oh, and when you weigh as much as me, and hit the boat on the return with enough momentum to skin your knee, you think once was maybe enough.


Despite being rained out on the second afternoon, Guam was a typical Pacific paradise, only slightly marred by the military and tourism. It's a bit out of the way and not exactly cheap, but if you've got time and money on your hands, there's certainly plenty to enjoy. I figure you may as well hit Thailand though, if you want the same longitude without the US navy.

Amberger

The day McD's makes burgers that look as good as in the photos...I'll eat a lot of them.
Is it just me, or is this just a bit full on?
The good news is, it's Aussie & Kiwi beef.

Lunch Break

The last few weeks work has been slow (hence the sudden burst of blogging), so I thought I'd use the chance to show you how in-the-middle-of-nowhere our factory is, and what I usually do for lunch. I guarantee nothing in terms of how interesting this video is. Apologies for the schizophrenic filming too: most Japanese do not expect you to be wielding a camera in a convenience store.



I'll commentate for it later, and there's also a second half to it, but for now it's bedtime.

How to use your blog to your advantage

David & I melt the camera. (Photo March 07)
DISCLAIMER: This is a blatant plug.

Last night I went out for okonomiyaki with my Spanish mate David. David's gig is a PhD in Nara, but he's more well-known for his blog. And I don't mean like, World Famous In New Zealand kind of famous. I mean like, Borderline Political Influence famous. There are people who read his blog besides the people he's already met. His blog pays a percentage of his mortgage on his house in Madrid. Even more exciting is the term connections. Especially when accompanied by the term business.

So, naturally, the first thing I did was tactically grill him for his fame-inducing techniques. Lord knows my middle name is I-want-to-be-famous-in-Japan. After an hour of conversation over garlic chips, beef&konjac okonomiyaki and beer, I had learned next-to-nothing. No get-rich-quick schemes, no secret password, not even a phone number for blogging consultants.
However, like I said, I learned "next-to-nothing". David got his blog famous by accident. OK, that might be stretching the concept, but he didn't go out of his way to get there. The two things he did do were:

1. Post every day.
2. Comment on everyone else's blogs.

And lets not forget

3. Write in Spanish.

If you're clever, it only takes 20 mins a day to do the first, and around 20 mins a day for the second too (NB: I'm not clever. It takes me hours to post. I'm the equivalent of a writer who balls up the paper he's writing on and three-points it in the trashcan every 5 mins). But number three? Damn, got me there.

These days everything imaginable has been blogged, at least in English. The Spanish advantage comes in that the ratio of English to Spanish blogs has got to be more than 3:1 (Wikipedia will tell you that English, as a first or second language, is used by around 1.8 billion people). Add in the fact that Japan is having a vogue phase in Spain (both in culture and business), and suddenly people want to know what you have to say. Loads of his followers are Japanese language students in Spain & South America, hoping to lift a bit of information about the country they're studying.

All this made me feel fairly inferior, but mostly confused. What does his blog offer that my blog doesn't? I can read enough Spanish to know I'm a more creative writer than he is - isn't that all people want in literature? Something that's interesting to read?
I think I've sussed it out though. Firstly it was the information he supplied in his blog: telling you stuff you might be able to learn in books, but as more of an "eye witness", confirming that yes, Japan has temples and tanuki and silent trains. Now it's got to the point that the following is the self-sustaining point about it. It's almost like a BBS with a forced topic each day. He sets up posts to go off daily, sometimes weeks in advance, and plans out topics for up to a month's worth of blogging. Talk about turning it into an industry.
99% of money he gets in the blog is from banner ads requested by companies (eg. La Liga betting), but occasionally he gets a mail from some company who want a bit more in the way of "product placement". "We'll pay you 200EUR to mention that you used our flights website to get the cheapest flights back to Spain." That's perfectly good business, but does anyone else feel a bit dirty when they read that? As far as I know, David doesn't write anything he doesn't believe in, so rest assured, you can trust his word. (Having said that, he's a convoluted bloke when it comes to relationships, something I both envy and think is a bit wrong. But then again, it seems to be the status quo for any guy in Europe to have a few on the take)

For those of you who read Español, check out David's blog (Flapy). For those, like me, who just want to look at the pretty pictures, check out his Flickr (Destebani). He's not too shabby with a camera.

Computing in the name of

I could write a review of how wonderfully awesome Daft Punk's gig was two weeks ago (I rate their Alive tour as hands down the most entertaining live act I've been to). But there's plenty of reviews out there - if you want to find one, be my guest. I have different fish to battle.

Best Remix I have heard this year (and I've heard a few):

NB: Its only audio, and there's 3 mins of deadness at the end, so don't bother listening after it ends. Also, I think someone has blended the remix with the original, because the remix doesn't usually have the last third of the song.

This guy, and his mate Kaspersky, are also French (like DP). I don't know what they fed the babies of the late 70s in Paris, but they grew up to make awesome beats.

$265 Shoebox

You want floor space with that?
So I'm back in Japan. That was fast. If this was a movie, and my life was the plot (I wish...), then the time since the last post can be considered a missing reel. Hey, Planet Terror did it, I can do it too. I won't even explain the time lost. Instead I'll refer to it like you've already seen that part. Weren't paying attention? Want your money back? Go talk to Tarou in the box office. The homeless guy down the street who lives in a box, not the movie ticket place.

I moved out of my apartment when I left, a strenuous exercise if you don't have a moving team or a car. I can relate to people who have had to move on their own. Your pain is my pain. Man, if I have to think back to the amount of times I had to go into the room, pick up a bunch of badly packed junk, waddle out, along the conchord and into the room next door...
OK, so I only moved 20 metres. I'm in a room that has walls touching my old one, so I can tell how annoying I must have been for the previous occupant. These walls are hard enough I can bend a nail when I try to hammer it in, but they're still like tattoo parlour beads when it comes to blocking noise. What's more, the wall separating me from my roommate would not meet the Oxford dictionary's definition of a wall. Its a shoji, or rice screen door (this one obviously made from fake plastic rice), and it doesn't fit the frame, so there's always a sizeable hole that acts like some kind of stethoscope, funneling the audible activity from next door. Best contraceptive ever.

5mm of plexiglass separates you from an audience
during sex.

I'm lucky my roommate's a bit of all right. A Canadian 30-year-old girl, she works opposite hours to me, but for some reason the noise when she comes home doesn't bother me. I guess after living with 5 family members for so long, I actually prefer a bit of activity. Though she's yet to have fights with me over the TV (we don't have a working one, and who would want to watch Japanese TV. I'd have more fun licking my pillow).

My room, at \30,000/month ($US265) is cheap for central Osaka. But what you pay is what you get, and thus its something of a solo sardine tin. Japanese measure floor space in 畳 (jou), which is the size of a tatami mat. There are 4 tatami in my room, which gives me around 6.6 sq m to play with. Add my futon (3sq m), TV (a completely useless 1 sq m), suitcase, shelves, and accumulated crap, and you have approximately negative 2 square metres in which to reside. We have a bigger bathroom in my parent's house in NZ. This makes that look like a concert hall.

It's not the worst living conditions in Japan I've ever heard of, and it's cheap like the budgie. Plus, without a room like this, I'd run out of fuel for my cynic comedy fire. Tatami burns well. So does the glittery walls. Not wallpaper. Walls. I don't know what they're made of or what they were thinking when they made them

Seems OK from long distance, however...

(I'd ask, but I think the architect died 30 years ago). Still, they don't moult like the room next door. I used to wake up thinking I had the worst dandruff ever recorded, and it sparkled.





On closer inspection, someone shaved a mirror ball onto the walls.
This kind of room is quite common in Japan, where size has to meet costs and demanded rent prices. You'd think the Japanese would have a cute name for them, making light of the cramped conditions. Instead they stole a word from English that is actually more embarrassing than humourous: they're called mansions.