What happens after Japan? After half heartedly scouring the internet for jobs in Europe, I begin to question the doctrine of “adventure” for its own sake. I remind myself, that just like “Japan” as a concept, “Europe” as a concept is equally vague and deceptive. I have never been there, and that is all I know about it. Finding a way to live there will take work, more work than I am used to doing. Most stages in my life have flowed seamlessly from the one before it; “the next logical step” has lead me inexorably in this direction; a shocking consequence of decisions I essentially had no control over. People talk about direction- what direction! I’ve spent my whole life shoveling coal into my steam engine, running myself ragged and gearing up to become something really great, and when the time finally came to choose a path, I panicked. I waited until the last possible second, and then, when no help arrived, screamed frantically, “Forward, forward!” and here I am.

Goals? My goal in life is to be so good at what I do that I can dress, think and act as I please without fear of rebuke. I want to write, but I don’t write. I want to travel, but I don’t travel. I have taught myself to worship these things, but when am I HAPPY? I’m happy at Home, in Frisco, in Cali, with my FRIENDS!

Any wandering spirits that haunt this pit in which I live and am too afraid to escape will have heard me say, that when it’s bad, its really bad. What’s worse than the loneliness, is feeling like I’m missing out on a formative part of my life. Making love to effervescent international friends is a charming and thrilling experience, but sitting on the couch with a friendship a decade in the making, where conversations can thrive on half- formed thoughts and sidelong glance… Isn’t that what makes a human connection? What am I doing in this house filled with ghosts of wanderers and short-term researchers?

As usual I have put his face on this inexpressible fright and tension that has beset my heart, but that isn’t fair.

If you get off the train and begin walking on the platform in the same direction the train is traveling, a weird thing happens. The train shuts its doors and begins to move, slowly at first, and then faster until it completely passes you by. But there is one point, although it may be just a second or so, when the train is moving exactly as fast as you are walking. During that brief second, if its night and you keep your eyes on the train windows, you have enough time to lock eyes with just one person on the train. Just one, and then they're gone forever.

Jessica has one of those apartments that lets a lot of sunlight inside, and the sky goes especially blue for her, out of appreciation.

Everytime I come here, the view looks like this; a refreshing blue with painted white cumulous clouds as much a fixture of the skyline as the endless line of bleached concrete apartments crowding out the distant mountains. When the wind blows in on her piles of CDs and her tatami matts, it brings in the air of Osaka, and a weird quiet along with it.

Today I heard the drums and chimes of a festival somewhere near her apartment. The sounds grew closer and closer, until I heard the chanting and saw the movements of costumed figures between buildings. Then they were gone, and the wind blew in quiet again.

I am here in Kyoto on a business trip, visiting a company the name of which I will not disclose. Of course, the semiconductor scene in Japan has so few actors that anyone who cares probably already knows where I am.

So I live at a hotel and I commute every day to the factory. We spend the mornings in meetings and the afternoons in the cleanroom. We wear badge cards around our necks, and we have to swipe them to open every door we go through. Before we can go into the cleanroom we have to put on our clean suits, our clean boots, our clean head covers, gloves, masks, and safety glasses. Then we wipe off all the stuff we're carrying with alcohol, and step into the air shower. The whole idea is to keep particles and dust out of the cleanroom, as it can dirty and damage the wafers. As a novelty for a couple weeks, I find the process kind of fun. The suits are thin and the cleanroom is air conditioned, so I rarely find them as hot and uncomfortable as most people say. (Then again, I'm not crawling around in a tool fixing a leak or schlepping around quartz baths.) The only thing I really hate about them is that the mask traps my breath so that my glasses fog up every time I breathe out. It's taken me this whole week to perfect a breathing system so that that doesn't happen, but I still get sick of breathing my own breath. The engineer I'm working with told me that at intel they get spaceman suits with fishbowl helmets that are air conditioned on the inside. I bet that's cool.

Translating is this whole nother thing all together. My boss abandoned me, but the project team we're working with has one senior engineer who speaks very good English. Sometimes he feels like interpreting, but sometimes either he doesn't understand or he doesn't feel like talking and I end up having to do it. Sometimes, it's exhilarating. I feel the words coming out, the honorifics and technical terms I have recently learned, and the complicated sentence structured I was forced to swallow and regurgitate years ago, and it sounds correct, and they nod and "hmm, hmm" at me, and its great. Sometimes though, its frightening. Like if one of the engineers gives me a five minute explanation that I felt like understood as I was listening to it, but doesn't seem to want to form itself into more than one, partially grammatical English sentence. When this happens, the problem is usually that the conversation has gotten so technical that I don't even know what part I'm not understanding. At this point, I usually give them the "deer in the headlights look", turn, and then spit out as much English as I can squeeze from what I just heard. The worst feeling is when they give me that disappointed look, and crane their neck to find someone else who can help them.

Every day the engineer and I eat in a special lunchroom down the hall from the staff cafeteria, and every day they give us what I call the "gaijin special", which is basically a plate full of fried food and mayonnaise, plus a knife and fork. Technically, it's all Japanese food, but all stuff the Japanese perceive to be "western food". Here's a sample menu:

Tonkatsu- Fried, breaded pork cutlet
Fried, breaded shrimp, plus tartar sauce
Two forkfuls of macaroni salad
Fried squid with sweet and sour sauce
A small lump of shredded cabbage with thousand island dressing
A chunk of ham
Two bread rolls
3 grapes
2 orange slices
1 candied cherry
1 dixie cup of Qoo, which is basically tang

Good God, just writing it out makes me feel sick. We tried telling our hosts that we'd be happy just to eat in the cafeteria (hell, I'd be happy with just rice and an umeboshi), but they insisted we continue to accept their special meals. The thing that bugs me is that I KNOW they must have special Japanese meals for normal visitors, and I bet my ass they come with chopsticks.

It's at times like this that I have to remember that, for every time I get pissed at a Japanese person for marveling that I've managed to feed myself in their strange land, there is one backwater gaijin who comes all the way to Japan and eats at McDonalds the whole week. I'm frankly astonished sometimes at how little people are willing to adjust their diet; some people won't even eat rice. Rice!

In the clean room I met another (japanese) girl who has the same name as me, and it made me happy. I'm learning more and more how well people can communicate with hardly any language at all, especially when they have something major- such as an area of technical expertise- in common. There are times when the engineer gets along fine just by talking clearly and gesturing a lot, and I'm not needed at all. Still, being able to speak Japanese means I can chit chat with the girls in the changing room, and understand their jokes when they're talking amongst themselves during a meeting, and I can be polite in the way they're used to people being polite. It kind of rules, actually. Plus, having a history in Kyoto makes things go a lot smoother. The dialect is easier for me to understand, and one of the engineers was much friendlier to me once he heard that he and I both went to Doshisha.  The human connection is very important in business, I'm observing, especially when it's a joint project like this one is. Issues of trust, disagreement over the best way to go about things, and different expectations all get compounded by the language barrier, and that shift from fighting each other to moving forward together is a difficult one to make. I'd like to think I'm helping with that, just a little bit.

Business trip in Kyoto

Everything is going well.

Looking back over my life, I realized that I have belonged to two main groups of girlfriends, not counting my one best friend from elementary school. The first I met the first day of jr high, and stuck like glue to until high school ended. The other consists of the two girls I roomed with my first two years of college. I still keep in contact with both groups, but I considered it to be quite natural that we no longer saw each other on a daily basis. I mean, people grow apart, right? However, I realized today that the girls in both those groups are currently living together, in Monterey and SF respectively- two places I certainly wouldn't mind setting up camp.

People on myspace like to say "my friends are my life" and it sounds so damn cool. But, although I love my friends, and consider them to be both influential and important to me, I always seem to be away from them. I didn't think about my friends when I chose a college, or chose to go to Japan to study abroad, or when I chose to come back here to work (or at least, not in any way that would have stopped me).

I have always put a premium on adventure, and assumed I would only reap good things from it, but sometimes I think that there is another life that I could have been leading, and that life has good things in it too. It is at these times that I remind myself that I have made my choices, and I have made them in the way I have always made them. And these choices are making me, into the person that I am becoming. And that person is made of something as enduring as steel, if as cold.

Recently, somebody found my page by googling the word "ojouzu", and came up with an entry I wrote a few months back about failed language exchanges between foreigners and the supremacy of English. For fun, I googled the word myself, and, beating me out of the top spot was this dude, a gaijin Japanese citizen and permanent resident, who has written numerous articles about all things Japanese, but mostly about the way Japan treats foreigners.

His original beef was the little routine nearly all Japanese people put Gaijin through upon their first meeting. It goes a little something like this:

1) doko kara kimashita?-- Where are you from?
2) Eee- Nihongo O Jouzu desu ne! -- Oh my, your Japanese is so good!
3) Nihon ha nagai desuka --- Have you been in Japan long?
4) Nihon ryouri ga suki desuka? Do you like Japanese food?
 -- and the peripheral questions -- Can you use hashi (chopsticks)? Can you eat natto (smelly soybean dish)?

His point was that many of the questions asked by Japanese people to foreigners are ones that clearly marked them as foreign, and also marked Japan as special. Is Japanese so difficult, is Japanese food so unpalatable, and are chopsticks so inscrutable that any competency at all is to be met with such shock and awe?

The implication that these things are far too complicated for a foreigner to understand adds to the quite understandable annoyance of being asked the same questions over, and over again. However, I would like to say that, for once in my life, I am able to write out these grievances without a trace of bitterness; Tokyo has been good to me, and has kept these conversations to a minimum. When I still encounter them I accept them as a fact of life and keep in mind the good intentions of my interviewer.

My current problems present me with a greater measure of grievance; namely, when people I know and respect, who know me and my abilities very well, attempt to "help" me in the most infuriating ways possible.

Example: the other night our customer and a good friend of my boss took us out for shabu shabu in Ginza. He has known me for about 3 years now, and we have been out to shabu shabu together before, so I was spared any superfluous explanations about the "tabekata"- way to eat. We ate, drank, and were merry, and I got all the way to the end of the meal- the rice course- before-

"Kore ha daijoubu desuka"- Are you all right with those?
I looked down at the small plate of pickles that had come with the rice, and prepared myself for a fight. "Naze daijoubu de ha nai to omoimasuka?" --Why would you think they wouldn't be alright? I replied confrontationally.
He shrugged. "Nihon no tsukemono dakara..."--Because they're Japanese tsukemono...

I then proceeded to explode. "Be careful!", my co-workers warned him, "She gets angry when you tell her something she already knows!"

Pickled vegetables- tsukemono- come with, I would say, 70% of Japanese meals in restaurants. If what you ordered comes with rice, you are getting some damn tsukemono. And, I would like to point out, what I had been served was not pickled baby swordfish, or pickled cow toe, it was pickled cucumber. It was just plain pickles. I had some just like it in my fridge at home. How he thought I could have lived more than a year and a half in Japan and never encountered tsukemono... but it's better not to think about it.

It's true that for several months at the office, my catchphrase absolutely became "Wakatteimasu!" -- "I KNOW!!" The civilities that reigned me in for the first month at the office withered, and I became less and less able to bear what I deemed insufferable condescension (a word which I have yet to find a suitable Japanese translation for) and xenophobia. These included: asking me if I could really eat unagi (eel), and expressing surprise when I answered in the affirmative even though we had all eaten it together the week before, randomly explaining the meanings of words we used several times a day in the office, speaking as slowly and deliberately to me as they would to a retarded child and, most notoriously, explaining to me quite clearly that the trees whose blossoms I was enjoying were not sakura, but "Those are plum. We say plumb. Plumb blossoms". "sore wa ume. ume to iimasu. ume no hana desu."

When I complained about this later, my offender said "Well, I thought you were thinking that they were sakura. I didn't want you to be confused." From a stranger, this could be tolerated, but anyone who lived through a spring in Kyoto and still can't tell a sakura tree apart from any other seriously just ought to be deported.

The chief thrust of my complaints, and also the complaints of Debito-san (on whose site I spent several hours), is that there was a pervading opinion that Japan is special. That is, more special than other countries are special. That there is something different about the Japanese language, culture, and people that makes them quite sperate from the rest of humanity. This specialness is something they have all been brought up to believe, they write books about it, and scholars study it. Nihonjinron- the study of "Japaneseness".

I'd hate to get into Nihonjinron. I'd love to get into Nihonjinron. Gaijin like myself, who keep their eyes open long enough to find flaws with Japan (believe me; there are those who don't), like to rant about the purported "special" Japanese. They like to explode with indignity at the chopsticks question, and they like to get together and swap infuriating stories and theories, becoming more self-righteous as the conversation wears on. But all gaijin have a dirty little secret-- they totally buy into it, or they did at one point.

Most Gaijin- (for safety's sake I will exempt nikkei, refugees, and people born here- and I confess I am directing this at Americans and Europeans) came to Japan because they thought it would be something special. From the most deluded rice chaser who thought Tokyo would be just like it was in "Ghost in the Shell", to someone like me who was exposed to the culture by people who were incredibly nice to her, we were all seduced by something that made us want to wrap ourselves in Japan and all things Japanese. After a few months in reality of course, the illusion is shattered. Japan isn't like it is in Anime, and not everybody is as warm as one or two people you may have met in your home country. Most Gaijin at some point get bitter and cynical, and some leave. Others cultivate a new, more realistic understanding of the place, and stay. But no one ever forgets the naivete with which they first alighted in the land of the rising sun.

One day I want to write all about Gaijin, all our ins and outs, our feelings and our reasons. Why do we come here, and why do we stay? What is it we resent so much about being "foreign" here, and why is it so addicting?  Do we want to be special, or do we want to blend in? Are we lonely or happy? And, why do we leave?

Yesterday, Jessica and I throttled the hell out of this city, and had fun doing it.

We started off by getting organic food at mominoki house in harajuku. (Jess was feeling under the weather and wanted something "healthy".) I found the place on the net... I was surprised at how many "organic" restaurants there were, while a search for "vegetarian" restaurants only turned up a bunch of blogs by people complaining there was no vegetarian food in Tokyo.

Mominoki house seemed the least snobby of all the places I found (though still pricey). And plus they only use de-ionized water for their cuisine so... I've got that going for me. All together it was very homey and pleasant, with a location far enough away from the crowds of sweaty gaijin and poser kids of harajuku not to have to smell them anymore, but not so far as to be inconvenient.

We got out of harajuku as quick as we could (after making a brief stop at "book-off"), and went to Ginza to see Match Point. I took her to Cine Switch again, my new favorite theatre, and we got free gum for filling out a really dumb survey. (yeah for providing valuable demographic info!)

We caught dinner in Shibuya, feeling it was a good place to find decent indian food. Find it we did- the staff was all Indian, the naan crispy, but warm and soft in the center, and the curry just spicy enough not to embarrass us(although I think Jess can take pretty much anything).

We met up with an old friend for drinks and, after being rejected at TGI Friday's (why do we keep going there?), we went to a nothing Izakaya four flights up a nothing building on a nothing street. Our friend ate dinner while Jess and I sipped plumb sake, and we chewed over old times. All of a sudden I hear-
"Alyssa?"
I couldn't think of anyone I knew in Japan who would be in Shibuya, much less pronounce my name that way, but I turned to find an old classmate from Cal, who was friends with Jess. I freaked out, because Honestly, what are the odds? 

We caught up, exchanged keitai, and got over how freaking weird it was, then he left. After a few more laughs, Jess got tired, and we ventured on the last train home.

The last few trains out of the city invariably reek of sake and are crowded as hell. The Yamanote-sen out of shibuya was no exception, although the stank wasn't as bad as I thought, and we got seats. Jess and I listened to the prattle of drunk Japanese dudes until she had to leave. At another station a couple in their early twenties came on, tipsy, the boy sitting his girlfriend down next to me, before taking the seat across from her. I was going to offer to switch seats with him, until I noticed how much fun they were having mouthing words at each other and making meaningful gestures and faces. I decided not to interfere.

I got off at my station, and my train streaked by me, going faster and faster until it disappeared, revealing a group of 8 policeman on the opposite platform, herding a drunk onto a stretcher. There are always vomit spots on the platform late at night, but this guy couldn't even get himself home. He could barely get on the stretcher actually; his body was like a limp noodle. I couldn't do anything but stare, and then leave.

I flounced out of the station, unable to believe how pleasant the air was, and how cool. It was an autumn breeze, to be sure. I passed the police box, which was totally empty. (they were all attending to the drunk dude, no doubt). Pleased at what a quaint country Japan still is, in many ways, I walked home slowly, and went to sleep.

I've been in my apartment two days in the last two weeks, but it feels like longer. Going back to the place that was first "Japan" to me has erased what it has now become, and something fuller, and almost wistful has taken its place.

I went on vacation by myself in the mountains of Nagano, first to the central alps, the yachiho kougen, then to Nagano City, and then to Yudanaka, or hell valley to be exact. I don't know how to describe the experience without being trite, or worse, cheesy. Details I guess, details. I saw shooting stars from an outdoor bath (rotenburo), and lightning strike over a mountain lake. I climbed a mountain in flowered etnies and talked politics with the owner of the hut I was staying in, who had the thickest inaka accent I have ever heard. I communed with monkeys and accepted a ride from a stranger at a bus stop (sorry mom). I felt independent, but most of all grateful. I felt grateful that I could travel on my own, that I could read enough Japanese not to lose my way in the forest, and grateful to my boss, Hiro, who has shown me enough of Japanese culture so that I didn't totally embarass myself- so that, at breakfast, when I saw a bowl of rice and a raw egg, I knew what to do with it.

I was sorry when it was over, and barely had time to breathe and do laundry before I had to leave again on business to Kyoto, where I lived from '03 to '04. Kyoto broke my spirit, and to be perfectly frank, nearly turned me off to Japanese and Japan in general. When I left, I was sure I wasn't coming back, not for a long while anyway. So, to return to it as a moderately integrated member of Japanese society was a little surreal to me. I'm known for my Kyoto-bashing, despite all the things I like about it, but I had to bite my tounge when my friend Helena invited me to her house in the hills by ginkakuji, a creaking old Japanese house, complete with tatami and tanuki. She has a view of half the city from her bedroom, and the the thunder rattles her window panes.  That it can be quiet in Japan is a revelation to me, and it makes me want a life better than the one I have in Tokyo.

And so it is hot, and so it rains, and so the wind blows. And the air is moist, but every day relenting. Summer is over.