I'm Still in Japan

fyi

2007-05-03T18:11:00.000+09:00

I'm not still in Japan (see my post below), so I've moved my blog to the following address:http://windowsills.blogspot.comWondrous things await you.

late spring

2007-04-14T17:20:00.000+09:00

I started this blog about two and a half years ago, living in a borrowed room at a friend’s house, translating for free room and board, living on about $100 a month, rewriting essays until three or four in the morning. And now I’m sitting down to finish it, living in a borrowed room at a new friend’s house, my life stuffed into a backpack. In one week I'll be on the boat to China, not much sense

usa notes

2006-12-30T17:39:00.000+09:00

Catching the late commuter train back from New York. Two lily white couples get on at 125th st. Same age as me, but with haircuts and overcoats from income brackets in the stratosphere. One couple grabs the two free seats next to mine. On the commuter train the seats are turned front and back in little two and three seater pods, not the long democratic benches of the subway. On our three seat pod

I did it.

2006-10-27T15:00:00.000+09:00

I drove one of the fish hauling carts from the Tsukiji Fish Market.

a short list of persons who have emailed me about enhancing my penis

2006-10-27T11:48:00.000+09:00

What with all the dope we smoked I can't remember it too clearly, but I think the cornerstone of comedian Patton Oswalt's routine was a joke that went "Oh yeah, and to all you spammers in the audience, just one thing. Spell check your fucking emails." Even sober that joke is pretty funny. The problem is I think the spamming bar has been raised recently. I came in this morning to find that "Carly

fuck the bomb

2006-10-25T17:18:00.000+09:00

North Korea has the bomb. Most likely they are pointing it a few miles south of my apartment. Recently I’ve had a string of apocalypse dreams. Blinding flash of light, running through burning hulks of concrete and melting steel, silver rivers snaking across pavement. Stuff like that ... Recently everyone seems to be getting pregnant. Emails from elder cousins arrive with grainy

paranoia

2006-09-26T13:04:00.000+09:00

I bought a grey hardcover copy of an E.B. White essay titled “Here Is New York” today. It was one of those things you want to find more of in used book stores, little publishing oddities, a 54-page essay, hard bound, published by Harper & Brothers, New York, the name and address of the original owner carefully written on the title page. Even with one monochrome photograph and a hand sketch in the

It's A Boy!

2006-09-20T23:01:00.001+09:00

I'm sure all of you have been anxiously following the drama of the Japanese Imperial family, Japan's original reality TV show. Unlike the British royal family, who work extremely hard to provide the public with a fresh turnover of drama and scandals, with occasionally moments of unbelievable weirdness and irony (Lady Di, literally chased to death by paparazzi), the Imperial Family mostly just

monday morning

2006-09-12T21:44:00.000+09:00

I was shocked awake by the sound of the sky cracking open. The initial shriek of sound snapped me awake, and I was conscious in a second or two, eyes popping open, brain screaming on, fingers clutching the sheets. Slid open the screen by the futon and the shriek faded into lower grumblings that tumbled across the whole sky, and the city felt tiny beneath it. It had come from the south. Across the

sado-ga-shima

2006-09-07T23:32:00.000+09:00

“Oh, this must be a cheap hotel, popular with young people!” Three young Japanese men with their hair dyed strawberry blond sat around a table in the lobby, playing cards. At the other end of the room a few girls sat around looking bored and smoking cigarettes. Niigata City on a Friday night. “No Jamie, they’re not just hanging out, they’re, umm… working.” Chika had to explain this to me. Steve

sorry

2006-08-26T11:32:00.000+09:00

Okay, yeah, that took me entirely too long. The thing stretched out to twenty-seven single spaced pages in Microsoft Word, and for what? A few notes on a vacation? A million times during the whole thing I wondered: "the longest single blog entry to date, and it's just an account of a five day trip, without much of an purposeThis was basically me taking a crack at travel writing, trying myself

a golden week (VI.)

2006-08-26T11:19:00.000+09:00

VI. Nagano was overflowing, so I decided to give up on mountains and just find a place where there weren’t so many damned people. I hadn’t come all the way out here just to hang out with the same jokers that sweated and farted up my morning train. I’d had enough of Tokyo people. I spent the next two days with Hiroshi. Hiroshi had come from Tokyo, and he looked it. He wore his clothes

a golden week V.

2006-08-23T22:17:00.000+09:00

V. Humans recreating in the great outdoors can be divided into two main types: Waddlers and Gearheads. I formulated this theory on the first day of Golden Week, when I passed a big enough chunk of humanity to get a pretty decent estimate. The quiet, carefully tended trails I had hiked along the day before were now simply overflowing with people desperate for nature, vacation, relaxation.

a golden week (IV)

2006-06-30T12:20:00.000+09:00

IV. The book I had brought along for the trip was Kappa by Ryonusuke Akutagawa, one of the most gifted and most depressed writers modern Japan has produced. Akutagawa finished his short writing career in 1927 at the age of thirty-five by swallowing a handful of pills and jumping straight out of his skin into the land beyond. He left behind reams of short stories, several novels, a colossal

a golden week (III b)

2006-06-30T12:19:00.000+09:00

The straw donkey was about as big as I was, but the two straw humans balanced on his back wouldn’t have reached my knee. They had been woven with a quick and crude artistry, arms sticking straight out to either side, the woman with two lumps on her chest. They were riding through the basement of the Matsumoto Museum and Cultural Heritage Center, perched on a little roped off pedestal. Next to

a golden week (III. a)

2006-06-03T16:47:00.000+09:00

III. I awoke somewhere around three or four in the morning to the whispering sound of rain. It was demure and polite, barely making a sound as it tiptoed across the ground and over my sleeping bag, and I liked the thought of drifting back to sleep on this misty river bank. I changed my mind a few minutes later when the rain turned from Romantic to Biblical, fat drops falling like bullets

a golden week (II.)

2006-05-30T20:42:00.000+09:00

II. The Wrong City I’d made a promise to let the trip determine itself, and to simply walk onto the first train to pull up to the platform. This happened to be the local bound for Takasaki, which was just fine by me. I’d only had the pleasure of visiting Takasaki once before, and all I’d seen was the inside of the station. I’d been spending the night as a straight tourist at the gay bars

a golden week, (I.)

2006-05-22T22:49:00.000+09:00

a sort of prologueThere’s an urban legend out there that if you start a recording of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” at the exact second the MGM lion roars at the beginning of “The Wizard of Oz” that the 70’s prog rock album will match up exquisitely to the 40’s film. I tried this once in high school with a few friends, and the effect was unnerving. At the exact moment a black-and-white

suited up

2006-03-25T11:42:00.000+09:00

TodayI biked out to the interview in a week old haircut and a borrowed suit.Last night Craig showed me the proper way to knot up a tie. My ties always end in warped and weird shapes, but Craig’s method produced a beautiful bud perched just below my Adams apple. Zoe sat giggling in the corner as her boyfriend taught me how to strangle myself in silk and wear her boyfriend’s suit. I tried the tie

paying for it

2006-03-21T17:19:00.000+09:00

The girls and I have a running joke now. They see me stamping home through the neighborhood and press the hostess club flyers on me with an exaggerated sales pitch, helpfully translated for my benefit."Fun garls! Come on! Come on!" The standard response to this is the zombie shuffle, but after an hour on the trains I've had enough of the living dead, and want to infuse a little humanity into the

class reunion

2006-03-11T22:13:00.000+09:00

My friend Masa runs a small café where there are no right angles on the walls and you can sit on a fuzzy plush chair shaped like a mushroom.There were two guys sitting in the corner playing backgammon and sipping cups of tea. One had a slim face and great coiled dreadlocks, the other had cherub cheeks and a hemp hat, they both wore hunchy limp spines, loose billowy jackets and sweet chewy

embracing your inner android

2006-02-18T15:01:00.000+09:00

SARS. Remember SARS? The newest and evilest virus around, with a batch of super powers that dwarfed your regular bad guys Influenza and the Common Cold. SARS could throw on a cape and pass herself off as just a bad cold, batter her victims to death in an escalating cough in a few short days, then soar off cackling, unshackled by gravity and oblivious to oxygen, the kryptonite that shackled her

Idleness

2006-01-03T16:20:00.000+09:00

January 1999The first thing I did when I got back to campus was to tack an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper to the inside of my bedroom door with the following message printed in36 point Impact font:Concentrate!You are here to educate yourself intellectually, physically, and emotionally!While my roommate and best friend at the time just nodded and went back to his pre-med track biology course reading,

year of the dog

2005-12-31T13:14:00.000+09:00

It's been a little over twelve months since this little project ballooned from a lark to a small obsession, and my own little patch of the web has seen around eight thousand visitors. I suppose if I include daily updates on the health of my dog and lists of weird shit I saw in the supermarket I suppose it would be more, but you and I would rather enjoy essays with big chunks of style stolen from

commutes

2005-12-21T23:20:00.000+09:00

There is a film somewhere in my morning commute. Three days a week I have been shivering out at eight in the morning with a few million other souls to pump through the arteries and viens of Tokyo's railways.My movie starts with our hero’s morning routine: toast, shave, tea, shots cutting to the face of a clock, polished black shoes slipped on in the doorway. Hunchy shoulder walk trying to step

just when you thought the world couldn't get any weirder

2005-12-09T18:29:00.000+09:00

I'm currently reading this Philip K. Dick novel "The Penultimate Truth" where most of humanity has retreated underground in the aftermath of a planetwide war, fleeing nuclear fallout and chemical weapons. They continue to produce robot soldiers to fight the wars that rage above, and are urged to stay the course by their crusty and charismatic leader: Talbot Yancy, the President of the United

marrying people

2005-11-12T13:55:00.000+09:00

"So, have you ever been a priest before?" the gnome asked me over a cup of coffee. Miwa-san and I had met in Shinjuku to go over the details of the job the next day. "I would have liked to have you come down and see Terry do a service yesterday, but we'll just have to do with this." He pulled a videocassette out of the pocket of his Zippo windbreaker. "The order is a little different, but words

hodge-podge

2005-11-10T12:42:00.000+09:00

1. I got a new job. Like office. www.aflo.com. They take pretty pictures, I do stuff with Japanese and English and maybe learn about pictures.2. I made a Halloween band. We had a penguin for a lead singer. We rocked really hard. http://www.abeleikaiwa.com/party/2005/halloweenreport.html. (Check out the pics at the bottom).3. I turned 26 yesterday. The loot count so far:- 3 English books- 2 Miso

both sides of the fence

2005-10-17T17:14:00.000+09:00

There was a girl I knew from vaguely from college who once asked me what the Japanese character she had tatooed on her arm meant. "At the store they told me it means peace!" In combinations with other characters, yes, it can have that meaning. But sitting on its own on her arm it conjured up the rows of discount stores in Tokyo where the character screams "cheap! cheap!"Engrish.com has been

when the circus comes to town

2005-10-06T19:17:00.000+09:00

1.A. called at the same instant his face emerged from the photo paper. We hadn’t spoken since he’d moved back to the states to chase grants and scholarships to fund his perpetual art addiction. Both A. and darkrooms have odors of the occult about them, and the fact printing his picture had summoned a phone call from across the globe had a strange symmetry to it. Best not to ask too many questions

the first day of fall

2005-09-25T23:24:00.000+09:00

There are days when the accumulated weight of magic soaked into the world almost drowns you. Days when God seems like the director of some movie with you in the starring role, Gabriel doing the cinematography. Every action is careful and gorgeous, your heart flutters for hours. Just as cherry blossoms and spring are closely associated with the opening and fleetingness of life and love the end of

pastimes

2005-09-09T09:55:00.000+09:00

Our team may have had the home advantage, but the Ham Fighters had apparently been employing an amateur psychologist with vocal training to motivate their batters, placing him inconspicuously in section 10, row K. “Give us a hit Shinjo! Let’s see something here! Doesn’t even have to hit the stands, I’ll shut up if you knock us a nice line drive!”I wonder how in the hell they recruit the beer

fourteen seconds

2005-09-02T21:08:00.000+09:00

Like most news, it came filtering through friends and acquaintances, Japanese families where dinner is chewed to the rhythms of the NHK anchorman’s voice. It was dropped by people I’d just met, hearing I hailed from America. “How is your family taking the hurricane?” They ask me for information, and I don’t even own a television. I smiled and brushed away their concerns. Japanese news loves a

not a blog

2005-08-25T14:32:00.000+09:00

Whatever this website is, it's not a fucking blog. You were probably confused by that little url tagged at the top of the screen that says “jamieabroad.blogspot.com.” First off, blog is an ugly word – a squidgy four letter little turd of a word. Blog does not rhyme with strawberries, sunshine or kissing-in-the-afternoon. Blog does rhyme with snog, a hairball of a British word that reduces the

dance dance dance

2005-08-22T14:18:00.001+09:00

Where: Small club in Iruma, a spectacularly unremarkable Tokyo suburb. Although the music is exclusively hip-hop and R&B, the place is aggressively decorated with fake Hawaiian masks and coconuts. There is a grass hut stuffed with three or four tables next to the dance floor.When: Exactly one year ago, dead August heat.Who: A few local English teaching Americans, some Japanese friends from work,

a life in books

2005-08-20T13:47:00.000+09:00

“A book is a mysterious object... once it floats out into the world, anything can happen.” –Paul Auster, from Leviathan1. Fiction.Read one too many novels and your life starts to resemble one. Everyday objects morph into personal symbols (“beer cans”, “the rusty faucet”, “favorite pair of jeans”), you try to guess out your friends through internal character sketches, remembering a girl from high

dog days

2005-07-28T15:00:00.000+09:00

Today we slithered out from under typhoon number 7, hopefully the last in the Pacific’s annual attempts to skydive onto the Japanese archipelago. Half the shoes stacked by my door were mushy and dripping this morning, so they got set for a full day of drying out on my balcony along with my freshly laundered sheets and half a dozen pairs of red socks. What can I say, I like red socks. Perfect

being twenty-five

2005-07-22T19:38:00.000+09:00

How old are you anyway?Twenty-five.Really, I’m twenty-five. I dunno, you look older.I get that a lot.But I think the essence of being twenty-five is you always look older than twenty-five. How long ago was it when we were in our early twenties, toeing into jobs and speaking the language of adults but not really knowing it. I might say six hundred a month is a good deal on that apartment, but fuck

best japanese t-shirt in english i've seen recently

2005-07-22T18:54:00.000+09:00

Young girl maybe eighteen years old strutting down a Tokyo street with a purple shirt stamped in plain white letters:No shirt,No shoes,No juicy.Prize to anyone who can explain that one to me.

watermelon run

2005-07-21T19:34:00.000+09:00

Yokozawa-san stepped back to light a cigarette as Kaneko-san and I squeezed the last plastic crate onto the flat bed truck. The late afternoon sky was ribbed with white streaks and framed by the thick, chewy green of mountains in late July. We paused to check the fully packed truck. The crates were stacked three high, four wide, and at least six or seven deep, each one scrawled with the name of

a few more

2005-06-29T13:23:00.000+09:00

Last Sunday I was reminded of a universe of Japanese gestures that I'd forgotten to put into my last post. Got all wrapped up in unsconscious bows and squatting postures. In anycase, spent last Sunday at a country barbecue. Picked up by a friend of mine, this country boy with a scruffly face whose main past times are fishing and making techo-pop on his laptop. Spent the afternoon pulling cold

bows, handshakes, come hithers

2005-06-20T18:09:00.000+09:00

kinesthetics: (subset of linguistics) a new academic field I just made up which explores and lists the physical language specific to a culture. So far research has been confined to Japan and the US, with brief expeditions to Taiwan, the UK and Canada. I should travel more.One of my favorite modern Japanese artists is the painter and illustrator Akira Yamaguchi. Yamaguchi works in many styles, but

ghosts

2005-06-19T18:45:00.000+09:00

The air at work is stale and lifeless, seared through the heaters or frost-burned through the air-conditioning. For weeks my boss insisted that opening the windows would let in clouds of exhaust, dust and car horns, but I’ve finally peeled off those excuses to her real answer: evil spirits. I had never noticed half dozen wards wrapped in thin white cloth and scotch-taped along the walls before

downstairs

2005-06-19T18:44:00.001+09:00

The Indian restaurant on the first floor has been dark since last Tuesday. I thought they might be on vacation, but the sign says thank you for your business, we have closed. I can hear them in the apartment next door, the front door open, tugging to the end of the safety chain, thick smells of cooking and voices drifting out. I’ve been trying to guess out the emotional shape underneath the

crows

2005-06-19T18:44:00.000+09:00

The crows know that burnable garbage goes out on Tuesdays and Fridays, they tear the bags apart for fish bones and pork gristle. Last Monday night after I’d piled my bag with the others the alley across the street, I squinted at the black shape dangling over the garbage heap. I breathed easy the next day: it wasn’t a real, it was an inflatable crow carcass. Same squishy plastic as a beach ball,

urawa city blues

2005-06-17T17:11:00.000+09:00

Ikebukuro has the largest retail space in a single building in all of Japan, but I would like to dispel any ideas of a cavern-like Wal-Mart planted in north-west Tokyo. Like so much retail in Japan, this is an outgrowth of the train station. Ikebukuro is sliced in half by it's gargantuan train station, which is still only the second largest in Tokyo. It is the meeting point for a tangle of

our mamori-gami

2005-05-25T17:01:00.000+09:00

We left as the sun was just beginning to seep into the sky. The morning was holding its breath and the air was steely and cool. The lead van was loaded with mikes, mixers, two MC’s, a DJ, and enough alcohol to kill a horse. Our van was an identical white, a kaiseki chef at the wheel, smoking an American cigarette, a DJ stuffed between stacks of plastic ice coolers in the back seat, checking beats

vision examination

2005-05-20T17:03:00.000+09:00

Accosting people on the street is pretty much a standard business practice in Japan. The convenience of my living close to a rail station is offset by the fact that a walk around my neighborhood entails brushing off half a dozen folks flyering shoppers with little packets of tissues, ads tucked inside. If business is slow, just about every bar, real estate agency, hostess club and slot machine

my dictionaries

2005-05-16T18:54:00.000+09:00

If all the books had a party dictionaries would be the boring uncle in the corner, taking conversations literally and eating all the bean dip. Even the other reference books would fare better, thesauruses with their flowery stories about nothing and encyclopedias keeping their blandly told anecdotes bobbing with factoids. My dictionaries did nothing more than prop up my novels until I started

eulogy for a record collection

2005-05-13T12:45:00.000+09:00

I don't think I had ever seen two men who looked meeker than these two. They wore dull colored collar shirts (faded blue - mild yellow), had straight hair that brushed down to their eyelids, and punctuated every sentence with a suck of air. They stood in the hallway at a safe distance from my front door, clipboards in hand. Then again, they had come bringing news of death. Ten years of music

country gaijin, city gaijin

2005-05-08T12:51:00.000+09:00

The other morning I dropped my rent in the cash machine, settled my grocery and gas bills at the corner store, rode the train to Tokyo to buy a summer shirt and check out this art party. Early May in Tokyo feels like low tide, the Golden Week holidays draining out half the city to visit their families in the provinces. For a handful of days the city is craggy with the flotsam left behind, those

tangle

2005-05-05T12:49:00.000+09:00

If you think about it, the idea of noodles is a pretty strange one. Out of the myriad of ways to　raise grains from the ground and digest them into our bodies, pounding them into flour, molding them into dough, slicing them into fine strips and then boiling them is a pretty elaborate and time consuming way to go about it. Last year I worked for several months in a rural soba noodle restaurant

solidarity

2005-05-01T17:18:00.000+09:00

I lay in bed bed late this Sunday morning, reading a borrowed copy of D.H. Lawrence's "Women in Love." The air was wet and sticky but just this side of cool, perfect weather to read a classic novel in your boxers. My head was still heavy in images from the night out before, a beer or two at a friend's bar in Omiya, the girls I'd talked to, some guy friends I hadn't seen in a month or so, the

just a few things...

2005-04-29T12:38:00.000+09:00

When I first started this blog the posts came out of me in a long stream. All I had to do was turn the faucet and let them pour out. But in the past few days the essays have been getting tangled, all my ideas getting wrapped around one another. Although I’m not fully satisfied with it, this version of “off the grid” is the best thing I could mangle out of all the scraps clattering around my head.

tonari na no ni... (but we're neighbors...)

2005-04-26T12:46:00.000+09:00

They told me before I got here that you had to buy several packages of soba noodles whenever you moved into a new area, and present them as gifts to your neighbors. Whoever thought this one up had a pretty weak sense of humor, the logic being the word soba can mean both “buckwheat” (as in noodles) and “immediate vicinity” (as in the weirdos who live in your building). Like the infamous used

off the grid

2005-04-23T12:45:00.000+09:00

The few days before I had the power turned on my fresh new apartment felt like a temple. It sat modestly among the other apartments, quiet and unassuming. Speakers became bedside tables and lamps ornamented the ceiling uselessly. I would read until the sunlight left my floor, go out for a walk, sleep early and wake up to cook breakfast at dawn. The place is humming with electricity now, music

hard boiled

2005-04-21T12:59:00.000+09:00

One of the pleasures of living abroad is the way the language gradually opens up to you, every new character opens up whole new world of meanings. The other day I learned the character for spy, which is part of the compound word tantei, detective. Suddenly I looked around and realized the entire city was flyered with posters for private detective agencies.Or, to be more specific, one detective

bread of the faithful, opiate of the masses, cocaine of the fanatics

2005-04-21T12:23:00.000+09:00

“Hey, if you can read Japanese that well, are you interested in performing a wedding? You just dress up like a priest, read some greetings and congratulations then do the ceremony in English. Hundred dollars for one hours work. You’re tall and white, so you look the part. If you ever interested in subbing for me, just call the number on my card.”At the time I was fresh off the boat, barely a week

post-apocalyptic architecture

2005-04-16T18:54:00.000+09:00

When was it that previews got better than movies? If good art keeps the audience gasping for more, previews are the hit they give you for free, knowing full well nothing matches that first high.Maybe it’s just me, but Japanese movies, although uniformly terrible, have amazing previews. Flat bursts of high impact art; shorts that spray bullets and emotions that pierce the heart with equal force. I

american skies

2005-04-10T22:19:00.000+09:00

How can you stand it? Those American skies just keep on going, clouds quilting out patterns that roll on to the edges of the earth. It hit me hard this time around, the casual bigness of America. The stretches of forest simply forgotten between the interstate and the row houses. The freeway interchanges piled several stories high, looping in knots before pulling out to dead straight lines that

sweatered skyscrapers: new york

2005-04-10T22:18:00.000+09:00

The day after my parents met me at the airport I spent a jet lagged afternoon at their house sorting out phone numbers and gorging myself on the treasures of a well stocked American refrigerator. But by the next morning I was fingering a wallet of American bills aboard a lumbering Nixon-era rail car, creaking across the bridge to Manhattan, where I was meeting an old high school friend. New York

less fun than monopoly: atlantic city

2005-04-10T22:17:00.000+09:00

All roads may lead to Rome, but at the Port Authority I learned that all buses depart for Atlantic City. Once our coach reached the island two or three individuals shuffled off at the municipal bus terminal, but everyone else cleared off at the last stop: the Tropicana Casino. My backpack and I navigated the lobby to the Valet Parking drop off, where we made our rendevous, a small white domestic

brotherly love: philly

2005-04-10T22:16:00.000+09:00

A Philly cop's bad directions landed me on a trolly car to north-west Philly. I got off a mile or so north of where I was supposed to meet my college roommate. There are no neighborhoods like this in Japan.It is an oft repeated truism that 9/11 was the first foreign attack on US soil since the war of 1812, and that the US hasn't known a domestic war since 1865, but I don't know how anyone who

mud season: vermont

2005-04-10T22:15:00.000+09:00

We arrived on the first day of mud season.April is holiday season for Vermont locals, the short month between winter ski season and spring when the melting snow looks to flee to the sea any way it can, rushing into brooks, streams and rivers. Our first day there the state was wrapped in a thick fog, which gave way to a freezing April rain. The earth had softened to warm pudding in gravel lots,

homecomings

2005-04-10T22:14:00.000+09:00

I left New York yesterday shivering out the last gasps of winter and came to a Japan thoroughly soaked in spring. I had a long, sleepless flight, spent restlessly switching among the half dozen bits of Hollywood tripe played on repeat, a two hour coach bus ride from the airport, a few stops on the train, and a few minutes lugging my bags through the city and up several flights of stairs before I

tube feeding

2005-03-28T08:51:00.000+09:00

I have had this pet theory for a while that extended air travel is the best way to get a preview of the totalitarian dystopia we will be enjoying in a few years. Strapped to a narrow and confining seat and bombarded with corporate advertising, strictly segregated by income, you are fed at determined intervals, drugged with alcohol and strings of movies, bathroom trips the only possible excuse to

tear the roof off the sucka

2005-03-24T22:37:00.000+09:00

It's the way of the world I suppose.I owe pretty much my entire current social life to the Good News Cafe, a local bar and club run by hippy couple Takeo and Michiko. Thanks to them I have met a slew of local twenty-somethings who are making lives for themselves here in this lonely city north of Tokyo. Amid the regular crowd of beauticians, coffee shop part-timers and people in electronics sales

reset button

2005-03-23T18:31:00.000+09:00

This time of year is pretty unremarkable in America, the liminal days of late winter when everyone would be hoping for spring if the freezing rain and gray winds weren't crushing their spirits. Here in Japan however, everything here is coordinated to reset exactly on April 1st: the financial year, the school year, employee transfers, hirings, firings, moving house, and probably more than a few

123u456s789A!

2005-03-22T23:21:00.000+09:00

I'm Still in Japan... in America!Yes that's right. New York, Boston, maybe Philly, from Easter Sunday to a week after April Fools. I hear it's cold there. I wore a t-shirt today. Email me and we will rock and roll.

more free beck promotion

2005-03-22T00:11:00.000+09:00

warning: this blog post was written under the influence of innumerable bottles of sake and the new beck album, which kicks ass.I really dug Hamamatsu. The city didn't feel like Japan, it had this gritty world weary feel that transcended the provinciality that infects the Japanese archipeligo as far as Tokyo, where you get straight laced bartenders decked out in several hundred dollars worth of

wonderland

2005-03-19T22:56:00.000+09:00

You couldn't tell it by looking it this blog, but I'm an avid street photographer.Against all real reason I am also still a bit of a technophobe, and my photography is all film, black-and-white, lots of time and dark rooms and smelly chemicals.In anycase, I have a great story to share with you.The other day I had a midday meeting in Shinjuku, and, waking up to a starkly bright March morning,

portable euphoria

2005-03-14T14:50:00.000+09:00

The most purely American pleasure I have ever had was charging down a midwestern interstate on a bright May morning, destination several hours away, blissfully unaware of my speed, the rasp of Jim Morrison's voice mysteriously reaching out thirty years from the past, fuzzing my car speakers with "L.A. woman! You're my woman!"What is it about that strangely modern cocktail of speed and music that

the union marches on

2005-03-09T09:50:00.000+09:00

One of the main threads I keep on returning to in this blog is the tendency of foreigners (most specifically English teachers) to look at their time in Japan as some kind of extended vacation, albiet one with a salary and benefits. No matter that you spend two or three years here, Japanese society is something outside oneself, something that you interact with but do not enter in any significant

to my loyal readers

2005-03-06T12:12:00.000+09:00

Well, I'm back. Was shocked to look at the blog and realized I hadn't posted since February 22. Good lord, I was actually out there living a life instead of blogging it. Well, the moving is basically finished, and I found myself at a 24 hour internet cafe, which I feel very compelled to write a few words about.Tokyo nightlife revolves around the trains, safely whisking hordes of exhausted

public internet

2005-03-05T17:22:00.000+09:00

The internet has always been something I've taken for granted, there always seemed to be some free internet connection lying around somewhere, work, housemates or libraries opening me to a wide world of international pornography. I've been wandering around plucking email access like some kind of 21st garden of eden, but this all came to a screeching halt when my housemates moved out abruptly,

the new digs

2005-02-22T19:01:00.000+09:00

This is the sixth new place in just over two years.I don't think of myself as a wandering kind of guy. There are tons of foreigners here who blow most of their language teaching salaries on jaunts around Asia, treks to Thailand, Indonesia, China or India squeezed in on a week's vacation. Skews your sense of reality when it's no big deal to hear that someone got a few days off and few to Hong Kong

regret

2005-02-17T21:43:00.000+09:00

Ughh... whoa. What was that all about. I sit down last night after dinner to write a little something about my ambiguous relationship with television, and it turns into this massive sprawling multi-linked monster of a post. I was 100% sober, but it's like I was possessed. I wake up this morning and the thought popped open as soon as my eyes did: "What the hell? Television?!" That does it. No TV

boob tube

2005-02-16T12:41:00.000+09:00

Tomorrow I head down to the real estate agency to have a cup of tea with my new landlord, have a little chit-chat, and get the key to my new place. I'll start moving in tomorrow, the utilities will be on by February 20th, and I'll be sleeping there from March 1st. Since one of my housemates is moving into his girlfriend's fully furnished apartment, he's been nice enough to give me several of his

distillation

2005-02-13T01:24:00.000+09:00

I'm gonna miss my housemates.It's official, I'm moving out of my place by the end of the month, to a single apartment on the other, cooler side of the station where hole-in-the-wall noodle shops vie for space with national chain izakaya bars and the exciting world of shopping takes place. My current neighborhood mostly involves men making houses for people to sleep in and people who stumble back

21st century dating

2005-02-10T14:55:00.000+09:00

When I was in college and gleefully chewing up Japanese literature, one of my favorite novels was Kagi (The Key) by Junichiro Tanizaki. Written in 1956, the story is a remarkable experimental work, taking the form of two diaries of a married couple detailing their sexual life and innermost thoughts. The chapters alternate between the diaries, and while they start out independent of each other,

nippon vs. north korea

2005-02-10T01:44:00.000+09:00

I set out two unspoken goals in this blog: 1) no writing about "that wacky stuff in Japan" and 2) no whining about my personal life. Well, I broke up #1 with my last post, so I might as well muck up #2 as best I can.Tonight was the Japan vs. North Korea World Cup qualifier game, and I was invited out to a night of beer and soccer by an English teacher friend. While North Korea sometimes crops up

the nightcap of champions

2005-02-07T01:18:00.000+09:00

I remember one summer before I'd ever come to Japan, before I even turned twenty-one, buying those oversized cans of Japanese beer you sometimes see in the important section of US liquor stores. My housemate and I just couldn't fathom what the hell was up with a can of beer that approached 2 liters. We poured the thing out into two glasses between the two of us and pondered the mystery. Now as an

rinji jinsei

2005-02-06T11:48:00.000+09:00

Last night was the monthly Kuchi Kuchi DJ event in Omiya, a mix of domestic and imported DJ's spinning an array of genres whose distinctions I have a hard time understanding. One of the main organizers is an English teacher, and he pulled in a lot of white faces, mixing in with the local b-boys and hipsters. One of the people he pulled in was an old friend I hadn't seen since last summer, a

kaze

2005-02-06T10:18:00.000+09:00

Me and half the greater Tokyo area have nasty sore throats.

smarmy

2005-02-02T13:09:00.001+09:00

There was some psychology experiment I read about last year where some researchers tested people's stress levels when shown pictures of George W., Clinton, Rush Limbaugh and other polarizing political figures. Not surprisingly, the subjects political affiliations determined whether they would get pissed off by just looking at a picture of George W. for a few seconds. I know that I certainly

the other side of the pond

2005-01-31T11:50:00.000+09:00

There is an advertisement that has been frequenting Tokyo trains recently. Despite its muted tones and simple layout it popped out at me amid all the ads for fashion magazines, cram schools, beer and laxatives. It is a photograph of a New York art studio, fashionable but not unrealistic, with two young women, a Caucasian and an Asian, working intensely on some pottery. They're both wearing no

nowhere, japan

2005-01-28T01:14:00.000+09:00

Up til now I've basically relied on the loose metaphor that Saitama is Tokyo's New Jersey, and have said a few things about how it's very anonymity and lack of local distinguishing color makes it feel like one of the most thoroughly Japanese of all places I've been to. Obviously every place in Japan is Japanese by definition, but it's a loose thing, this Japaneseness, more of a modern invention

keigo

2005-01-26T18:51:00.000+09:00

Japanese is a notoriously difficult language. Everyone says so. If I had a nickel for every time someone here told me that "Japanese is difficult even for us Japanese", I would have a lot of nickels. Unfortunately my corner grocery doesn't take nickels. Although Japanese is an orphan on the linguistic tree, huddled along with Korean as a grammatical anomaly, this is not what people mean when

and now for something completely different..

2005-01-24T01:02:00.000+09:00

Just found an excellent blog written in English by a young Iraqi woman, Baghdad Burning.

seafood

2005-01-23T16:55:00.000+09:00

It's time to come clean. I mean, it's been years since I engaged in anything like that. Hell, I washed myself clean with years of hardcore punk shows in Cleveland and avant-garde performances in Manhattan. I haven't smoked pot in... well, can't remember the last time. Anyway, I can now confidently admit that my name is Jamie, and I am a former Phish-head. As a middle school student who couldn't

mastaa

2005-01-23T13:30:00.000+09:00

It was around this time last year when I first learned the word mastaa. I had just started dating a girl who lived about 50 minutes away by train. She had trekked out to the cafe I was working in, and I returned the favor by heading out to the place she part timed at. I wandered through the throng of bars, pachinko parlors and food stands that clustered around Omiya station until I found it: a

~shopping interlude~

2005-01-20T11:26:00.000+09:00

Last week I wasn't speaking all that much. Not to say I didn't want to speak, just that I was having a lot of fun reading squiggles on a page and making them into sounds in my head, which didn't put much of a strain on my vocal chords. After a few days of English teaching, blabbing and being blabbed at for hours on end, my vocal chords were a bit strained, and I woke up this morning with a nasty

time to take a breather

2005-01-19T13:20:00.000+09:00

Don't know how many of you are actually out there following this thing, but it's been occupying a much larger role in my life than I expected when I started it. Ever since I came to Japan I've been writing essays in my head, but never really had much of an outlet. It's now snowballing to the point where I find myself thinking over blog entries in my head whenever I take the train or have a spare

super kaimochi party

2005-01-19T01:11:00.000+09:00

Last night I took the train out to my old digs in western Saitama to a dinner party at my former co-chef Yoshiko's house. I was asked to make kaimochi (sobagaki for all of you who grew up in the Tokyo area), which are basically dumplings of unbelievably soft soba (buckwheat) flour. I made these every day during my two month apprenticeship in Yamagata, but never actually got any pictures until

2005-01-19T01:10:00.000+09:00

the making

2005-01-19T01:09:00.000+09:00

the tasting

2005-01-19T01:08:00.000+09:00

the food-ing (the sweet brown sauce is made from ground egoma, the dried seeds of a plant closely related to shiso)

2005-01-19T01:07:00.000+09:00

the eating

2005-01-19T01:06:00.000+09:00

the enjoying (left to right: Yokoyama-san, an organic farmer who sells produce to the cafe, Mai-chan, a new trainee at the cafe, and Eri-chan a new weekend staff member at the cafe)

leaves in hot water (tea time)

2005-01-18T15:29:00.000+09:00

I have made the Tokyo-New York direct flight more times than I or my wallet cares to count, and (at it's most reasonable), $500 is way too much to pay for two microwaved meals, a can of beer and three movies. Excluding the benefits of being moved from one side of the world to the other, a trans-Pacific flight is the most expensive triple-feature on the planet. At best the movies tend to be