I consider myself to be a pretty savvy consumer, not easily swayed by promotions or ad campaigns. Having been burned before by empty promises and exaggerations- makeup that didn't make me look like angelina jolie, McDonalds fries that turned out NOT to contain that last monopoly piece I needed for the big screen TV, etc, I've developed the bullshit detector necessary to survive to old age with credit card intact. I'm only human, however, and sometimes I find myself purchasing something totally unnecessary for stupid reasons. My notorious PR weaknesses include new flavors of kit kats, breakfast food branded as "healthy", and the Aflac duck (Although my near-obsession with that duck has never translated into a purchase of supplementary insurance, you can bet that if I were in the market, it would).

But one marketing strategy everyone falls for sooner or later is "the free gift". The free tiny bottle of conditioner that comes with your shampoo, the prize in your cereal, the Nicholas Cage movie that comes in a DVD two pack with different, crappier Nicholas Cage movie. Japanese people are masters of the free gift strategy, using it when it really counts, such as when you are in a convenience store staring at a fridge full of bottled teas, waters, and iced coffees, distinguishable only by label and 10-20 yen. That's when they strike, strapping tiny plastic bags around the necks, not only increasing visibility, but also inticing curiosity. Picture the consumer, a middle aged Japanese man, facing the infinite rows of chilled beverages. He's not used to making the tough decisions, such as whether or not it's too hot to wear a tie, or which sauce should be used on which item in a bento box. He just wants to grab his tea and go. But people are beginning to stare, and the pressure is mounting. So he grabs the one with the prize, convinced he's made a smart business decision as he sips his tea and enjoys his brand new collectable cell phone charm, mini-pen, or figurine.
  I however, have reached a certain age where I no longer feel the need to collect useless things I'm just going to end up throwing away. And what with all my ticket stubs, museum pamphlets, and foreign currency I haven't got room for them anyhow. But my heart stopped and my wallet opened when I saw a bottle of water strapped with a bag promising, and I kid you not, a tiny plant.

I grabbed it and ran back to the office to see what was up. What I found was a hard, quarter-shaped brown pellot, a pot only slightly larger than the lid to the water bottle, and a packet of seeds. Following the instructions carefully, I filled the pot half-full with (bottled) water and dropped the pellot in. Within seconds it blossomed into very fertile looking soil. I tore open the little packet of seeds and placed them gently in the soil as instructed, and then all I had to do was keep the soil moist and wait.

By the next morning the seeds had split open and wormy-looking things had sprouted out of them. A few days later they were standing up and one had leaves. I have no idea what kind of plants they are. They look like something you'd see in an organic salad.

I've had the thing for about a week, and the experience has been surprisingly educational. The amount of soil, water, sunlight, and plant involved is so minimal that anything I do to it produces immediate results. Leave it out in the sun for a few hours, and the soil dries and the plant withers. But a capful of water is all it takes to perk it back up again, so fast I could actually watch it as it happened. I'm beginning to understand its moods, how fragile it is, yet how resiliant. I'm getting to the point where I'm growing attached to it, at least enough to be afraid of killing it.

I'm not going to go into a whole thing about the miracle of life, and fresh green buds emerging from thin seeds or anything like that. I'm not even going to go the freud route and say that I've clearly been searching for something to nurture.

I will say that fairly soon my little plant is going to need a bigger pot. A bigger pot needs more soil. Where the hell do I buy soil? Moreover, where do I buy only enough to fill, say, a teacup? I may have to resort to going to the giant department store near work, where I'm sure they have tiny designer pots with designer soil, possibly with plants already in them. All in all thing is probably going to cost me at least 20-30 bucks, not including all the bottled water I've been giving it. But I guess thats what you have to be prepared for when you bring a life into this world... assuming it doesn't die this weekend while I'm out of the office.

How I survive my morning commutes at:

fiveminutesoba.blogspot.com

Um, am I allowed to talk about my emotions on here?

I always get this way when I feel like there are too many people reading my blog, or rather, too many different sets of people. This sort of feeling leads to spin off- blogs that I don't tell anyone about which I eventually abandon because... no one is reading them. In any case, without a forum in which to write about my "feelings", I stop feeling them, and a sort of hollow space gets created in my brain.

I haven't been feeling a damn thing since I've gotten back from Thailand; I've been coasting along on routine and busywork. Yet I can see the symptoms of emotional turmoil popping up in odd places; in a persistent stomachache, worse than usual procrastination, sleeplessness, and boredom at work. My body is screaming at me what my mind isn't ready to deal with yet.

Today I got up at 5am to go to Tachikawa and to a customer meeting. I went for the first time "officially" as a interpreter, although that was mostly because salespeople aren't allowed in the cleanroom. It went pretty well- there were no misunderstandings and I understood everything well enough to convey it. Of course, translating from Japanese to English is one thing, but English to Japanese is always dissatisfying. Although they understand me, I know my grammar isn't perfect, and I tend to forget how I should end the sentence by the time I get to it (Japanese verbs are at the end and sometimes I forget what conjugation the verb should be in- politeness complicates this since polite speak requires verbs to be conjugated differently or sometimes replaced all together). And, no matter how well I do translating I'll never be satisfied unless its perfect, and since its never perfect, I'm perennially dissatisfied. Language: the perfect career choice for the masochist.

I totally sold out to nihonjinron in my five minute soba blog.

check it out at

fiveminutesoba.blogspot.com

1) Who the hell thought it was a good idea to eat ice cream with flat wooden spoons? They taste bad and they hurt your lips.

2) My gym has been overrun by gaijin.

Let me explain that.

In my experience, gaijin go through three phases in their interactions with each other.

1) The "Hey, you're white too!" phase.
Oh, pity the fool in their backpack and khaki shorts, landing in Narita for the first time. They thought Japan, as the second biggest economy in the world, might be somewhat civilized but no! No one speaks English, nothing is written in English, and everywhere they go they seem to be standing in the wrong place, eating with the wrong utensil, and talking much too loudly. Is it any wonder then that when they finally see a pair of eyes as blue as their own, at roughly the same height as their own, that they would jump for joy, or, at least, wave and smile?

2)The "I'm not like you" phase
Greenhorns no more, a Gaijin of 6+ months no longer needs the safety net of other gaijin. They've learned the language to an extent, they've learned their way around. They know where to stand when waiting for the train and how to order food in a restaurant. They've got their Japanese girlfriend in tow and they do NOT need to be reminded of how sorely they stick out by some grinning, cock-eyed newbie who thinks they're buddies just because they happen to be foreign. "I'm not like you!" says the stage 2-er, quite clearly, as he grips his girlfriend's hand and stares fixedly at the ground until the offensive tourist is safely out of range. After swimming in a sea of Japanese faces day in and day out, one begins to learn the subtle differences between them, even to the point where Korean and Chinese faces stick out a mile away. What a shock, then, a white face must be if accidentally spied in a mirror! Well, that mirror is another foreigner, an no self respecting gaijin in the midst of their tireless efforts to become Japanese, wants to be reminded of how painfully they stick out. Too bad.

3)Acceptance
Finally, the gaijin realizes that they will never, ever be accepted into Japanese society. They can follow every rule, and do everything right and say everything perfectly, but they're still "gaijin", and they might as well accept it. They cultivate meaningful friendships with other expats and travelers, who provide a nice counterbalance to the Japanese friends they've collected. They're comfortable with their language ability and the life they've created and they're more than happy to share experience and wisdom to those just starting out.

Now, what does this have to do with my gym? Well, as a general rule, gyms, or "fitness centers" haven't really hit the mainstream yet in Japan. I can see that the trend is moving that way, but as a general rule the target market (20-30 year olds) are either too busy or involved with an actual extra curricular sport and are in little need of a gym. The one I happen to attend occupies stories 4-6 in a small building above a Kinko's, and is patronized mostly by old women who just come to use the sauna, and inexplicably ripped old men who walk around in bicycle shorts and hernia belts who all seam to know each other. The spaces in between are filled in by young women who are a little, uh, larger than most of their Japanese comrades, and slightly older women who just wanted to get out of the house and make friends.

This leaves a lot of space for gaijin to take over. I would say on any given day that 10% of the people using the gym are foreign, which is huge, even for Tokyo. This high percentage means that the reactions stage 1,2, and 3-ers usually have with each other are intensified, sort of a microcosm of the gaijin world as a whole.

As far as I can tell, I'm the only gaijin female there. The rest are male, and classic stage two-ers. For the longest time they avoided making eye contact, made a show of chatting in Japanese with the staff, and in general we pretended the other wasn't there. Once, one of them, clearly in the throes of stage 3, asked me if I wanted a job teaching at his trade school, and on another occasion advised me to use the precor treadmills, as they were easier on the knees. He's been in Japan for 18 years, which is, I suppose, how long it takes to stop being afraid of other white people.

My gym, for all the early 90's R&B they play in the locker room, is actually not that foreigner friendly.-They don't have any advertisements in English, nor do they have an English webpage. Its not terribly easy to find, and none of the staff can manage more than greetings in any language but Japanese. Still, recently one non-Japanese speaker has managed to stumble his way in, his English piercing (as English does) across the room in unmistakable tones. This unexpected addition of a stage 1 gaijin has somehow lifted the fog amoung the rest of us, and we've more or less started acknowledging the other's existence. Case in point, a rather tall lanky gaijin passed me as I was on the arm weights. He stopped near me when one of the buff old men asked if he'd lost any weight. They had a short conversation and then he passed me, without so much as a glance, and headed toward the water fountain. "I'm not like you", he said, as the Japanese rolled off his tongue. Then, the newbie came up from the dressing room and the two of them had a short dialog, in English. They smiled and parted ways; the lanky stage 2-er coming back to me. This time, lo and behold, he looked at me and smiled.

This absolutely fascinated me, and I spent quite a bit of time thinking about it before I figured it out: in speaking Japanese, he could pretend that he and I had no connection to each other; in speaking English he admitted that we did, and had no choice but to acknowledge me the next time he came by. Once he let slip his native English, his rouse of trying to be Japanese (fooling nobody but himself, of course, but still), was foiled, and he had to self-identify as a foreigner. Once he did that, of course he had to greet me! We're fellow countrymen, stuck together daily on a few square feet of exercise bikes and freeweights.

It shocks me how many gaijin stay permanently at stage 1- never learning the language, never making friends with any Japanese people, just coasting along at expat hangouts, teaching English and living in a bubble. This saddens and confuses me. What shocks me less but annoys me more are gaijin who never get past stage 2- gaijin who live in permanent denial and contempt of other foreigners who are going through the exact same shit. Maybe they think they're Admiral Perry, alighting upon an isolated world where they are the only foreign explorers. Guess what pal? Uh-uh. There's no place to plant a flag anymore, kid. If you've said it or done it, or been there, some other savvy gaijin got there long before your pale freckled ass. My boss learned this the hard way when he took me to Nokogiriyama, a remote mountain in chiba that houses a 300m Buddha and a 100m high Cannon carved out of rock. "No gaijin has been here, probably in at least 10 years" he told me, not 10 minutes before we saw a bleached blonde American and his J-girlfriend taking pictures in front of the Buddha. We're everywhere.

Its my hope that we can all learn to accept that we're not alone in feeling alone in this exceptionally isolating city. I'll settle at least, for a friendlier atmosphere at my gym.

To my dear roommates:

So long, and thanks for all the pictures. I didn't really see Japan until I saw it with you.

Wow, I'm pretty dissapointed that blogger doesn't have a blogring feature like xanga does. My blog feels sort of isolated without being able to click around to related topics, and it looks like the tags feature only calls up entries in that same blog, rather than to those of other users as well. Well the google people are no slouches; they'll figure it out eventually right?

Anyway, I posted for the first time on fiveminutesoba.blogspot.com. Check it out, tell your friends. 

I'm covered in mosquito bites and the sunburn is finally peeling off of my face, which I suppose are the signs of a successful Thai vacation. I'm afraid to open my backpack and get out my clothes, as I'm sure they still smell of sweat, sand, ocean water and thunderstorms.

My 6am flight out of Bangkok was short and arrived early, and before I knew it I was back at my airport, my train, my station, my apartment. It all happened so suddenly that, with the slight exception that I was underdressed for Japanese Spring, it felt like I'd never even left. I have work first thing in the morning and laundry to do, and that's about all their is to it. Only the random flashes of sights, smells, and tastes betray the illusion. The street merchants and traffic in Bangkok, the yellow rest stops, wats, and truckloads of durian on the road to Trat, pickup truck taxis and rolling waves on Ko Chang, and the calm, crystal waters surrounding Ko Mak. The sand there was the soft yellow-white of seashells, some crushed by the ages into fine powder, some brand new and whole. At low tide the lapping waters pushed through paths of bigger peices, making the shells clink together softly as they receeded. It sounded like rainsticks, and it was just beautiful.

I do have photos, but there was so much we didn't or couldn't take pictures of that I would hate to base my entries around just what I have locked up in my camera. I'll post them later. Anyway, its good to be home.

The thick wet air, germans in bikinis, elephants, pick up truck taxis, the emerald forest, a marble sky, internet cafes, tailor shops, durian, expats in open shirts, bungalows, rain, beaches. Waves rolling in underneath a tiki-style bar on a pier. Dark mounds in the sea draw close and then break -ah- into white and kitty lick their way to shore. Lightning hops from one obscured cloud to the other, and the darkness isn't dark anymore.

I'm in Thailand.