my apartment; a visual tour

a day in the sei

so imagine this- in the deep american south, on a steep dirt road winding its lonely way through the forest toward wide expanses of rice fields below, an elderly female farmer comes across a fallen poplar tree hopelessly blocking the progress of her chevy pick-up.

suddenly an enormous giant of a japanese man skids his bike to a halt behind her, leaps off and wordlessly runs to the fallen tree, and begins to struggle mightily with the large shaft slanting diagonally across the road. apparently discerning the physical impossibility of this (its trunk is still securely attached at the base), the giant then attempts to scramble up the muddy imbankment bordering the left side of the road clad only in flip flops, and appears to violently twist his ankle as he falls heavily back down. the farmer utters her first words- "Stop! It's too dangerous!" but the giant either hasn't heard her or is too absorbed in his simple but urgent task to heed her cautionary pleas.

after a brief inspection of the slope he takes a dashing start, leaps up to grab the protruding trunk and frantically hoists himself over the edge, scrabbling clumsily over the top and sending dirt flying behind him. regaining his footing and replacing a flung flip flop, he strides to the base of the mighty poplar, braces his knees over it, and begins to pull. at first nothing happens. then, to both of their surprise, the trunk slowly lifts out of the ground with a deep tearing sound until it is miraculously free.

grinning broadly with this unexpected success, the giant then clambers back down to the road, and together he and the lady maneuver the defeated tree into the woods, safely clearing the forest path once more. the farmer bows courteously to the giant and softly says "Thank You", and he responds with a smile and a cheery grunt that falls somewhere between "No!" and "House!". climbing back in her pick-up, the old farmer proceeds to the base of the wooded slope, across the rice fields, and up the opposite side of the valley toward her home and family to relate the strange and somewhat unsettling incident.

her family is worried they haven't seen the last of this giant, for there are rumors circulating the small village that a similar-sounding giant was recently seen buying a six pack of beer, a miniature folding stool and some goldfish food the day before, while several parents have reprimanded their children for creating exaggerated stories about a strange grotesquely-bearded man who shows up to their school seemingly at random every other week or so to teach them how to order coffee or a coke in Japanese, or reads them dramatic guilt-inducing short stories about the devastating effects of the atom bomb in World War II, or just sits silently and awkwardly with them as they eat lunch. now if you switch japan and japanese with american and english, chevy pick up with miniature white k-truck, and poplar with hollow bamboo tree you have a pretty good idea of what happened in Ueki last thursday afternoon.

nani ga ichiban suki desu ka?

in no particular order, here are some of my favorite things about Japan:

1. onsens. these are giant, traditional japanese baths, which honestly look like the picture at the right (pulled from the web). every onsen has two separate sections for men and women, and you wear about as much as you would for a bath at home. which is why i haven't been able to take a picture of one yet. you pay between 300 and 800 yen ($3 to $8) to get in, and there is usually an indoor facility with rows of washing stations and complimentary soaps and shampoos, along with several pools of varying temperatures. you then leave through a doorway and enter the outdoor area, which is surrounded on all sides by lush foliage, carved out of natural (looking) rock, and has at least one pleasantly gurgling waterfall and one shrine-like wooden-roofed pool for escaping from the rain. the water is not chlorinated or excessively salty, and is quite hot in the largest pools. in the winter i'll be able to watch snowflakes drift down onto the water's surface and turn into little puffs of steam while i stay comfortably submerged in one of the baths, but during these hot humid summer months i've fallen in love with the small pools of cold water. uniquely refreshing and invigorating. each onsen also has a steam room, usually with a funky tv inside. my little town of Ueki has two beautiful onsens within a ten-minute drive, and the nearby town of Yamaga has a great one that's open all night. a bowl of hot japanese ramen (which bears little resemblance to the ten cent Maruchan packets in the US) from a road-side stand followed by an hour long soak in one of these at two in the morning made for a great end to a friday night a few weeks ago. it was in such an onsen, while having the tension gently drawn from my body by the small pool of cold water hewn into living rock, watching the setting sunlight glow through the trees surrounding me as a warm breeze stirred the many-colored leaves, that i truly started to love japan.
2. efficiency. japan has grown to be the second largest economy in the world despite considerable limitations in natural resources and relatively tiny land-mass through endless ingenuity and the efficient use of space and resources. there are simply too many people sharing too little space for things to work differently, and so efficiency is deeply ingrained in the culture itself. while other, better examples abound, one of my favorites in daily life is the typical japanese toilet. almost every toilet i've seen in a japanese home or apartment has the addition of a little sink on top. as with american toilets, after every flush the toilet bowl is filled with clean water, which is first stored in a tank behind the toilet. the tank itself is filled with fresh water directly from the pipes. the difference with japanese toilets is that after flushing, the fresh water runs through a small faucet atop the tank which you can wash your hands in, before it drains directly into the tank, to be sent to the bowl after the next flush. very economical. fancier toilets with bidets and seat warmers exist elsewhere, but i appreciate the little toilet sink in my humble apartment. on a related note, my bare-bones japanese cell phone comes with a 2 mega-pixel camera, full internet browsing, an IR port for sending/receiving contact information when held close to the IR port of another cell phone (extremely convenient and vaguely sexual in practice), a full japanese-english dictionary with the capability to read (with the camera) and translate kanji, hiragana and katakana into english, and a micro-SD card slot which can be used to load mp3s onto the phone and listen via headphone adapter. I can also watch any broadcast TV station in decent resolution on the thing, which is about half an inch thick. japan does exist about 16 hours in the future, after all.
   
3. generosity. the average japanese person is surprisingly kind and generous. if you ever need directions the person you ask will inevitably lead you right to your destination (even if it's fifteen minutes away), and they are happy to help you before you can even ask for it. i went out to a local bar on my first friday in Ueki, and after a few minutes the bartender called up his english-speaking friend to come and help translate. not only was i able to learn about and drink the best types of japanese beer, wine, and alcohol, but this was how i first met "Spooky"-san, my first japanese friend. he chose the nickname for his band name- he plays a mean guitar. during our first meeting i mentioned i needed some things for my apartment, and he immediately offered to take me shopping the next day to find them. he has since lent me his acoustic guitar and helped me find a good piano-keyboard at a second hand shop, enabling us to have some righteous jam sessions. this kind of generosity engenders reciprocity, and i've found myself making efforts in return that would have been rather rare during my 'former' life. i can only hope it rubs off on me and sticks, because it's certainly a good way to do things.
4. nature. Kyushuu is beautiful. there are bamboo-forested hills surrounding ueki, and large expanses of wooded mountains to the east in the Aso region and to the south where another JET and i have hiked in Kosa. the sunset is from this last sunday evening, seen over the fields which run behind my apartment. the picture with the bike was taken with my cell phone, of the same nearby rice field. a scenic bike trail running from Kumamoto to the south and Yamaga to the north passes within five minutes of my apartment. the bridge shown here led to a large grassy valley where the Volcano Aso music festival was held. I went with Spooky, Alex (my friend and fellow Ueki JET, between me and Spooky in the picture below) and Holly, another friend and JET who lives in Kumamoto city. Which brings me to:
5. music. Japan has many shared musical tastes with America, along with several new and well-received additions. i can sing along to pink floyd and the red hot chili peppers when i go to a bar, then get exposed to some popular japanese music. i won't be listening to much J-pop, but i'm starting to get into the dance/trance/electronica that's getting big among the twenty-somethings around here. the Volcano Aso festival featured an all-night line up of talented DJs, one of whom incorporated video game noises from the original Nintendo NES system in brilliant fashion (Chris Lukes, if you're reading this and interested, i'll try to send you some samples). at Volcano Aso we pitched our tents and drifted around the valley, dancing to music, hanging out with Spooky's friends, and catching a two hour nap during one of the more relaxing sets. i think this dance floor sign just about sums up the experience. on october 2nd Alex, Holly and i will take an overnight bus to Osaka to see Radiohead in concert, which may include a tangential trip over to Kyoto. next month the slopes of Aso will host another music festival- Country Gold, led by Kumamoto's world famous country band leader "Good Time Charlie", which i'll need to attend. in the meantime, the owners of the local Ueki bar are all musicians, and i'm hoping to bring my keyboard over and add it to the existing line-up of drums, guitars, bass, and turntables they have set up. along with occasional piano sessions in the junior high music rooms, i can already tell playing and listening to music will be a big part of my experience here, for which i'm very grateful.
   

ohayo gozaimasu

good morning. it's 10:11 on monday, september 22 in ueki, japan. first off, let me apologize for the lack of capitilization or proper punctuation throughout this; these things become slightly more difficult on a japanese computer.

now, i am sitting in the teacher's staff room at a junior high school where i teach english, using a laptop designated specifically for my use (an "FMV" model which appears to be from the late nineties, and is set in english by default, making it invaluable). two hours ago i left my modest apartment in the middle of suburban ueki on the ten-minute bike ride it takes to get here, then taught my first class of the day. these usually consist of me slowly weaving through the network of students desks as the teacher speaks, occasionally correcting grammar and spelling in the students notebooks, and periodically being asked to read sentences and passages from the english textbook with my golden american voice. i say golden because my ability to read aloud in my native tongue is the primary skill that qualifies me for this wonderful job- an assistant language teacher (ALT) through the japanese government-run JET program.

i'd like to keep these entries relatively short and readable, so i'll wrap this first one up with a quick story about this last weekend. i caught a silky smooth train ride up to fukuoka (the largest city on my southern island of kyushuu) along with a group of other JETs in the area, and went out to dinner and a dance club. a very capable DJ coupled with an epic breakdance-off helped the club stay entertaining until about 4 in the morning, after which 8 of us JETs attempted to share a room in a japanese "love hotel". love hotels are special private hotels intended for couples, but their focus on privacy is rumored to make it easy to move a large group of people in to a single room to crash for a night. unfortunately we chose the higher end of the spectrum in terms of both luxury and security, and the extra 6 of us were kicked out on to the cold, cold street. in reality it was quite warm and pleasant- which is why after searching in vain for another option, we settled down in a nearby public park like any friendly hobo. this was my first time sleeping outdoors in a city park, and i remember waking up slowly and peacefully, with the warm september sun on my face and the sound of children's playful laughter surrounding me. literally- there were children surrounding me since i had fallen asleep on a platform by the top of a slide.

after everyone dusted themselves off we made our way to costco, where i bought an annual membership and massive containers of a few essentials- barbecue sauce, beef jerky, nutella, and sharp cheddar cheese among them. beautiful.

soon i'll start uploading pictures to this blog to add some visual aids to these stories. in the meantime, i am having the time of my life here and will try to keep this updated in order to explain why. if you know me well enough to read this far, then i am missing you and would like to hear from you. anderskg@gmail.com is what i use these days, so please throw me a transpacific line.

ja mata,
ken