I had an argument today with my boss about the word "gaijin", because they overuse it in the office. Such as "how many gaijin and how many of us are coming to dinner?"

How about saying "guests", "vendors" (as such was the case), or, god forbid, people??

My boss drives me nuts when he says "Americans get angry easily", or "Japanese people like fish more than meat, but 'mukou no hito' (people from "over there") like meat more than fish"

I get angry (easily) when he says these things, and he says "I just mean in general" and I tell him not to speak "In general".

After reading book after book filled with stereotypes designed to help Americans deal with Japanese businessmen I've decided that stereotypes are useless, even if they're generally true. Stereotypes blind you to other aspects of a persons character, or they blind you all evidence that this particular individual is an exception to the stereotype. They will make you wait for bad behavior. If you read that Japanese people are evasive, you'll find evidence for it sooner or later.

And most importantly, we absolutely loathe someone for fulfilling a stereotype. When we find that obnoxious American or that lazy Mexican or that snotty Frenchmen, we hate him ten times as much as we would a non-steretypical person with the exact same traits. Even as we triumph in how right we were about them and their race, we abhor them and condemn them for it.

I think it's better to be stupid. If you have be surprised everytime you meet a latin man who loves to dance I think that is far better than expecting every one you meet to have the talent.

I told him that, rather than say "that gaijin", he should at least say "that American", or better yet "that tall guy" or "the guy in the red shirt". Of course in Japan saying "that gaijin" probably rules everyone but one out right away, and is the easiest method. And of course he told me that saying  "that Gaijin" is just easier and shorter.

I said that yes, of course it is, but in America we've gotten used to making a few sacrifices of efficiency for the sake of courtesy. For example, we rarely say, or we at least say quietly and guiltily, "that black guy over there".

Hiro asked me why that was bad and I really had to think about it for a minute. I just knew that it felt wrong and it felt rude. Now having been "that gaijin" for long enough I think I get it. To point somebody out by race seems to reinforce the attitude that we have looked at someone long enough to determine their skin tone and that is as far as we're going to get. In Japan people look at me long enough to see that I'm a gaijin, and anything else I decide to do is explained by that. I could wear a bright rainbow sweater or skip down the street or whistle in a crowded train, and no one would look at me more than a half second longer- long enough to say "ah, yappari, gaijin".

That's really what I object to, to be labeled as "Gaijin" in such a way that it eclipses all the other things that I am. I am female and I love logic puzzles and I eat sushi and I tell jokes to myself when I'm bored and I hate morning talk shows. Why not call me by my name?

This is usually the point where people tell me that I'm being too sensitive and that no one really means anything by it. Fine. Japan can call people whatever they want and treat Gaijin however they please. However, the fact remains that the women in this country are not having any babies, and sooner or later (in fact, currently) they are going to need people to come and live here and work here. And not just chinese girls to fill the ranks at lawsons or brazilian men to don the parachute pants and go work construction, but thinking people from all over the world to revitalize their tech industry and breathe life into their corporations. If they want to attract the best people here, they will have to start treating them better. Yes, Japan can call us Gaijin and make us feel as alienated and uncomfortable as they want. Hell, they can close their borders and go into sakoku again for all I care- but Japan will be the one to suffer from it. I'm sick of hearing about how Japan is an island nation and they don't have the ability to deal with these kinds of issues. This is a global era; there are no islands anymore.

This is what I told my coworkers, but I wish I didn't have to. Maybe we could be considerate just for the hell of it, not because we don't have enough national resources to support our population.  But that's probably too much to ask.

And I will take all these things in my body, and I will make them red and gold like autumn.

And I will take all my secrets and write them here, and then paint them black, and paint the page black too.

And I will take this feeling of infinity and wrap it up in the pure blue of the sky, of the unforeseeable future, of all the beautiful things that still exist in the world, yes I will take them up and wrap them and I will see all the things I long to see.

This feeling of longing that will not cramp itself inside my words but soars somewhere, this feeling I would follow off a cliff if it was only kind enough to lead me somewhere. But it stays and it soars. It leads me to write only these futile words and laughs at me as I do so.

I want to hear jazz music at a speakeasy in chicago in the twenties
I want to see the hills of afghanistan as sharon describes them
I want to caress a tiger
I want to sit in a palace overlooking an ancient mediterranean city
I want to watch the ocean breathe from far underneath it
I want to be in Berkeley in 1959 and feel like I am part of something
I want to lie on a cloud and be only 90% sure I won't fall through

Oh Lord give me these things and let me never be satisfied, for always feeding these desires is the happiest way to live. And when I get to heaven I want to see the whole world at once, all its mysteries, tragedies, and secrets. And then I can be at peace.

And for the record, one item on the above list would have been to eat fresh soba alone high in the Japanese alps. But I have done that one already.

Reading the writings of others fills me with the desire to write. And no, not the blog that I am supposed to be writing, but something for myself.

Yesterday I went to Ueno park for no reason at all. It is finally fall there, although the slow passage to winter has ruined the koyo of all but the Ginko trees. The sakura leaves crumpled a mottled brown and red long ago, and then threw themselves to the ground without so much as a warning. Even the momiji, what little there is, have no brilliancy, just a dull maroon here and there. But the Ginko trees are really my favorite anyway. They are brilliant yellow and flicker in the breeze. The trees have so many leaves that they can still look full even when surrounded by their own fallen circles, which look like piles of gold coins.

The performance artists were there, as they always are. One man sat on a block the same color as his cape and pointed his toes to the ground as though he was floating, motionless. Then, when someone dropped a coin into his hat he would flail his limbs, jaw agape, and then settle into some new position.

I went down to the lake, drawn to it as I am like a magnet, taking my usual circuit by the temple, and then out between the sakura trees. I was talking on the phone to my parents and just trying to keep moving. It was quite cold. I stopped at a patch of sunlight on the other side of the lake only because I was overwhelmed by the site of the park in fall. The great trees billowed up red and orange and brown, and the rotting lily pads in the lake had turned into wheat brown stalks, ready to be harvested. I suddenly realized that it was fall and, as often happens when you have been looking down and finally remember to look up, was in a hushed awe of it.

On my way out of the park I stopped to watch some peruvian musicians. I saw their feathered headdresses from far away and thought there may be some chance that they were native americans (as in, from the US). I suddenly realized that I really missed seeing the odd performance on Sproul or in school as a child. But there would be no room in Japan for such a complicated distinction. Everything that is American is American, and anything that comes here must fit the bill. That is why chinese-american english teachers can't find work, and why eminem, norah jones, and the doobie brothers all get played on the same radio stations.

I found myself both loving and hating the peruvians. They were playing beautiful handmade instruments, but they also had a tape in the background of synthesized piano, flute, and wind sounds. It was way too "as seen on TV" relaxation CD. It was cheap, and obviously a way to make their songs more palatable to the audience. I like my music raw, and a little scratchy. But when one of them started singing it still gave me shivers, and when he said his goodbye in spanish I remembered something warm inside me that is faint and nearly lost.

I joke that I have no culture, which is rubbish; I do have one. It is complicated and subtle, but it smells good, and is warm in sunshine and is quite open and amicable. I have come so far for someplace so cold and I have to wonder sometimes is it worth it, after all.

While I was watching the peruvians I saw three celebrities; gaijin talento that I saw once on TV. Two were girls, russian looking and strikingly pretty, and one lanky, unfathomably tall guy in a huge trenchcoat who stalks behind them all the time, rarely speaking and never looking down. They were walking with cameramen who were clearly done filming, and the blonde looked haugtily over at the performance, quietly surveying it. The brunette walked closer to the music, looking back all the time to see if anyone would come with her. She was obviously used to cameras following her and zooming in everytime she pretended to find something interesting. But no one did this time; the blonde just called jokes out to her in the manner of someone who knows shes being watched. I was watching, staring in fact, which they may have noticed. I could not buy their dignified mannerisms when I'd watched them titter their way through ginza, "heeeeeee" at shopowners and squeal over okonomiyaki. I can't really condemn their choices- I know they must make very good money. But I have no respect for people who whore out their white skin for a baito.

That afternoon a friend took me to a "party", which turned out to be a gathering of middle-aged women who were all in the same english conversation club. They'd rented out a flat in ikebukuro overlooking the city, a beautiful studio on the 25th floor of some highrise. We sat around some good food and spoke in English, mostly about where my friend and I were from and what we were doing in Japan, and where we lived, etc., but we also listened to them talk about their lives. For some reason English allowed them to reveal the most extraordinary things; they spoke of their affairs, the deaths of their fathers and their aging mothers, their children who were all grown up, and their sister's premature babies.

And one of them brought pizza from costco, which tasted so much like America I could hardly stand it.

To the people reading, like, my entire blog all at once:

Leave me a comment, so I know you're not a robot.

-weirdoalisa

I work in a small office. We listen to the radio. The radio is on my desk. The radio is tuned to "J-wave". I listen to J-wave all the livelong day. Every word. It's a very annoying radio station, and it gets much worse at 4:30. Every afternoon at 4:30 the "Grooveline" program comes on, hosted by the two most annoying DJs on the planet. Seriously, I would pay good money to punch either of them in the face.

Anyway, everyday "Grooveline" has a theme, and the DJ's ask listeners to send stories related to the theme. These are usually things like "Things you don’t want your boyfriend/ girlfriend to know.", "Friends you don’t want to introduce to anybody", or "I hate when it gets cold!"

Well the theme this Thursday was. "Gaijin Daisuki!", loosely translated, "I love foreigners!"

They always announce the theme about 30 minutes before the program actually comes on (to give people time to send in their responses I guess), and to be quite honest, I was preparing myself to be pissed. I've been pretty sensitive about the word "gaijin" lately. I haven't really talked about it much, but for those who don’t know, the characters for gaijin literally mean "outside person", and the word is practically pregnant with connotation. Foreign, strange, barbaric, white, blonde, loud, uncultured, but most important, NOT JAPANESE. Being NOT JAPANESE is like constantly walking around with a cowbell around your neck. It's my cowbell that makes my coworkers forget that I can eat sushi and why they occasionally stop and explain words that we use all the freaking time.

So, when the program started I had my ears extended to try and catch all the wonderful stories about how the J-wave listeners "Love Gaijin". Here’s a short list:

-They have nice hair, like Madonna

-Dimpled chins are "super sexy"

-They don't look like nerds when they dress up in costume

-They say "um", and "ow", and ooh!

-They're never cold

-They have "high noses" and so they can wear cool sunglasses without them slipping down their nose

-They can eat a lot

-They eat leftover pizza out of the fridge.

That last one was my favorite because it started the DJ's on a whole discussion.

Female DJ: Oh yeah, you know they give out a lot of food at restaurants and so people sometimes take home the rest of it. Its called "leftovers". Then the next day they just take it out of the fridge and eat it without heating it up. They can eat anything cold.

Male DJ: Sou desu ne.

I can't be offended at something as patently silly as those responses. Talking about charactaristics of "gaijin" usually pushes my buttons automatically, since they're basically describing everyone in the world who isn't Japanese- and what charactarization can you honestly make of that many people? But to have the radio tell me how "kakkoii" it is that I say "ow", well, it's... just too pathetic to get me angry, that's all.

I haven't been writing anything for myself lately. It has all been for others, or at least to others. I haven't been thinking anything for weeks now. Every mood that I have floats on the surface, immediately visible, but nothing sinks in.

If I lead a different kind of life I might suspect that my mind was keeping from me some inner ocean of anguish or despair or regret but, save a certain pain I am already sick of feeling, nothing tragic has happened to me to warrant such a deception. There are some vague worries in my heart, and stress to be sure, but mostly I am becoming bored again, and have simply been too afraid to tell myself about it.

If you have any interest in where all my words have been going, feel free to go see.

Tonight I had ray fin for dinner.

I also had fish intestines, fish liver, baby fish, and fish eggs, but those didn't make the list.

Ever since my arrival in Tokyo I've been making an unofficial list of "weird" things I've eaten. Highlights include pig ear, cow intestine, globefish sperm, and too many random fish-parts even to mention.

The weirdness of these things decreases as I become acclimatized to them, and also the number of weird things I'm exposed to is decreasing all the time. It would be tempting to say I've mastered it, but I can't remember the proper names of half the stuff I had tonight.

We started our meal off with a huge sashimi moriawase and we passed it to both sides of the table. I didn't load up my kozara because I was sitting in the middle and I figured I could grab some whenever I felt like it. I was being polite. The secretary said "Ah, yappari sashimi ha dame desune"- Oh, that's right, you don't eat sashimi. I stared at her for longer than I should have - my best "you're kidding, right?" face. When I realized she wasn't, I felt my face go red. We've eaten sashimi together about 8 million times. "I've been here a year!" I managed to blurt out. "Oh yeah...." she said "that's right...you eat sushi."

I'm never going to fucking fit in here.

People complain about American TV like we're the only country in the world with terrible taste. But let me tell you something, a week of Japanese television and you'll be watching "So you think you can dance" like it's masterpiece theatre.

I try not to watch Japanese TV as much as I can and spend my time downloading as much of the Daily Show as I can, but in places like the gym or hotel rooms, Japanese TV can be unavoidable. Not to mention that watching TV can be a surprisingly effective, albeit lazy way to learn a language.

Last time I stayed in a hotel I watched a drama called "Just one love". One of the many subplots involved a poor, drunk mother and her two sons, the older son being the love object of a rich girl who is taking care of the younger son, who has some sort of mysterious disease. I imagine the disease is probably fatal, and so everything he says is automatically tragic. At the beginning of the show he is drawing a whale, and he wants to go see the whales. The brother and the girl share a tragic glance at each other. The older brother then has to go to his job, where he is accosted by his skanky-ass ex girlfriend. The rich girl sees them together and is sad. The boy sees skanky-ass girlfriend at her skanky apartment, where her yakuza-esque boyfriend has just hit her. The boy gives her some money to keep her off the streets, but breaks all ties with her. He looks up to the sky, and the rich girls face literally floats in front of him. Finally, he realizes that he's in love. Unfortunately, at that moment the girl and the younger brother are sitting in the park watching some other kids play baseball. The little brother wants to play, but the girl says no, because he's sick. But, he really wants to play. He wants to have a life, baseball is for playing, not just watching. So, she lets him play and he hits a homerun. Well, it would have been a homerun, but for some reason running from home plate to first base triggers his disease, and he collapses coughing on the ground. The older brother rushes to the hospital, and yells at the girl for letting the boy be in mortal peril. Later he feels bad about this, as the rich girl's sister reveals that the rich girl too once suffered from a serious disease. It had gone into remission the past few years, but she understands how the boy feels. Ten bucks says that the rich chick is in a coma within 3 episodes.

But sappy dramas pale in comparison to the "talent" shows, where the same group of quasi-famous people get together and do... something. The show I was watching at the gym had collected a bunch of them and was putting them through various challenges. One of them involved a girl who was supposed to eat exactly 100 grams of extraordinarily expensive foods, like matsutake mushrooms ($400 a pop) or a rare shrimp ($150). So, for about 5 full minutes I watched a girl taking tiny bites of shrimp, totally oblivious of course to the rest of the talento on the show, who were screaming at her that one more bite would put her over the top. The impressive thing was that she actually pulled it off, and as a reward all the contestants got a bonus round. If all of them could complete a 30 second challenge, they would each get about a thousand dollars. The challenge? Not blinking. So imagine me, on my exercise bike, watching the camera zoom in on their faces one by one, as they sat there quietly, not blinking.

The "watching paint dry" challenge was on next, but luckily I had to go use the freeweights.

The Internet dissapointed me recently by not having the exact information I was looking for, and now, having gotten it through more... analog means, I feel compelled to fill the gap.

How to Renew your Japanese Work Visa
Renewing Japanese Work Visa
Renewing your Work Visa in Japan

There, that should take care of the googlers.

Anyway, to renew your Japanese work visa, you need four things:

1.)Your Passport
2.) Your Gaijin Card
3.) Proof that you've been working. I think a letter from your boss would suffice for this.
4.) Proof that you've been paying your taxes. Your company gives that to you as well.

You take all that to your nearest immigration office (for Tokyo, it's in Shinagawa near the dump), and you should be all set.

I've actually not done it yet; when the time comes I shall record it for posterity; fear not.

The thing about living abroad is that homesickness and a mad desire to stay an expat forever live together in the same instance, in the same mind.

Today I went to my favorite noodle place for dinner. The proprietress is a single chain-smoker in her sixties who once took me out to Karaoke. The first couple times I went there I randomly ordered anything I could read. Now I've settled on Inaka-soba. Soba is cold buckwheat noodles, and Inaka means "country", but as far as the actual ingredients are concerned, they could be anything. She makes it with cold noodles, assorted vegetables, grated radish, green onion, and even garlic slices, which is pretty weird. I love it. I was thinking about it all day, and when I arrived at the restaurant I had the rare pleasure of eating exactly what I had been craving. Of course, as I was eating it I realized that by eating it more than once I had created a craving which I could not always satisfy. Sure, it was great for me now, living a block away, but what about when I go home, or even to another part of Japan? No one makes this dish like this woman, and while California Sushi is one of my favorite foods, I don't know of any place, even in the bay area, that can serve up some really good soba. I've made room in my heart for something, and that space will eventually be a gaping hole that nothing can ever quite fill. Just like all the holes carved out by Berkeley, Hollister, my friends, and burritos from Super T.

Still, that expansion is so thrilling in itself. And as I was eating my soba, conversing with the staff and the regulars (who were speaking at a lightning speed), I was just happy to be following along with the conversation. And no one stopped, looked at me pointedly, and repeated something in heavily accented English. No, these were real people. And my coworkers at a salaryman restaurant explain to me what all the sushi is. But I already know what it is. I know a lot now that I didn't know before. And every once in a while, something will be so wonderful that it will move me to my core. It's a phrase I couldn't translate, or a ritual whose merits I finally understand, or just the friendship of one person who speaks no English.

And any ghosts who have haunted my room will know this one thing already: when it's good it's really, really good.