Tuesday

Went to the Tokyo Dome after school for the Rakuten-Lotte game. I still have no idea why it was so crowded, but all the unreserved seats sold out and mostly filled. Me, I got a ticket in the 2nd row behind the Lotte dugout and could see into it. I almost yelled out hello to coach Kenji Morozumi, but couldn't decide if it would be worse if he did or didn't recognize me, so I didn't say anything. Craziness. The girl sitting next to me was a huge Karakawa fan, but Karakawa got shelled by the Eagles including a 2-run homerun by Norihiro Nakamura (WTF), and the Eagles won 8-2.

Randy Johnson threw out the ceremonial first pitch (I have some photos up on Marinerds). The other crazy moment was seeing the prospective pitchers for tomorrow -- Kenji Tomura is going to start for Rakuten! I used to watch him at Rikkio University all the time, this is his ichi-gun debut. CRAZY. But the game is in Koriyama, which is way too far away to go after school. Sigh... I would watch on TV but...

...I think tonight I will go see the Nodame movie, and then Friday night go see Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac before it leaves the theater. (it is only showing late show, so that is 1200 yen whenever I see it, as opposed to Nodame, which I would prefer to see normal show for 1000 yen tonight; if I don't see it tonight I won't have another Wednesday here to see it until May 12, not sure I want to wait that long).

Then on Saturday and Sunday I am going to Sendai with my friends. Well, or at least, I have a train ticket TO Sendai and baseball tickets for two days. What I do not have is a ticket back or a hotel reservation; I will do the latter tonight but the ticket back may wait until I am there. Hopefully it won't be a problem.

Between those, and Thursday being Japanese class, it is going to be a pretty busy few days for me, and next Wednesday I fly out to Seattle.

It is funny how things work out -- I have, indeed, been too busy to miss Mike lately. I dunno if that is a good or bad thing.

The Japan Rant, Part 1 of N

It's funny, I guess now that I am somewhat convinced that this is the year I will separate myself from Japan, I keep thinking about the good and the bad things here. I have a feeling there will be more posts like this over the next few months.


I get so angry and annoyed at Japanese people pointing at me and saying stuff to each other. I get more annoyed by big groups of people at baseball games all being like "OMG get a load of that gaijin! Look, she is writing kanji! In a scorecard!" and yet not making the connection that HEY MAYBE I CAN UNDERSTAND YOU, so that they then do things a little later like "That gaijin is so tall, I can't see over her head, do you know how to ask her to move in English?" "No.." "Well, that sucks". So I make a point of sitting up even higher in my seat and getting in their way more.

I hate standing in crowded subway trains or just normal crowded trains. I hate it more when, like the other night, a bunch of airhead girls stand there basically loudly ranting at each other for the entire ride home about how smelly the crowded train is, and casting disdainful glances in my direction, as if it is MY fault rather than, say, the natural result of crowding a shitload of people into a small space. It is only going to get worse as the year progresses and becomes hotter, I remind myself.

I hate the automatic assumption that a white person is an American tourist who is helpless in this country and is only good for English practice. I hate coming into a restaurant, speaking perfectly decent Japanese to answer "yeah, only one person, non-smoking section please, sure, a counter seat is fine with me" and then having them come up to say in broken English, "Do you English menu?"

I hate feeling so ridiculously fat here even though I realize I am only slightly above average in the US now. Of course, I am also gargantuan in terms of being tall, which doesn't help any... but not being able to buy shoes or clothes here easily is not a point in favor of this country either.

I actually like being a teacher, but I hate that it is the automatic assumption that, if you work here, you must be an English teacher, as that is the only job really fit for white people.

I hate getting snubbed from things just because I'm a foreigner. I've given up on counting these kinds of things. People moving past me in lines on train platforms as if I don't exist... clerks not wanting to help me because they think I can't speak Japanese... people at the train station not giving me packets of tissues because they think it's a waste because I can't read their advertisements. Teachers at my school who bring back omiyage from a trip and put a cookie on every single desk except mine, "because they think you wouldn't like it". People who will stand on the subway rather than sit in the empty seat next to me.


So on the other side...

I love the food here. I will miss it a LOT.

I love the trains, even if I hate a lot of the people on them. I love being in a place with such ridiculously good public transportation. I'm really not a fan of driving cars.

I love baseball here, although even that stresses me out due to the perceptions about the NPB and MLB, the perceptions of Japanese people about foreigners, etc. I hate that even though I have become somewhat infamous and do have friends to watch games with, I still think that like, the Fighters ouendan all hate me, things like that. I hate sticking out in the crowd sometimes, that I can't do things other Japanese people can, or that other foreigners can, because I know that if I do something that annoys anyone else, people will remember and talk about it later.

(Sometimes I admit it is good to stick out. People remember me because I am different. Sometimes that is good. But I also hated the assumption of things like "Oh, Brian Sweeney only talks to you because you are also an American", when that was patently untrue, he knew a lot of the other fans as well, the ones who talked to him at least.)

I like the country being safe, although people keep telling me it really isn't. I would still prefer to walk a mile home alone at 1am here than in the US, that is for sure.

I like the lifestyle here of being more preoccupied with accumulating memories than of accumulating things. I know that isn't uniformly true, but the lack of space makes it seem so. Being active is great, in a way I don't think I ever felt I was in the US.

And all things considered, I *like* trying to be an exception to the rule, a weird case to throw off people's stereotypes and assumptions. I get very happy about how far I have come with my Japanese study even if I also feel hopeless to ever really be as good at it as I'd like.


I dunno. I feel it is important to remember the things I like here and at the same time to remind myself WHY I need to get the hell out of this country before I become completely lost and paranoid.

Nodame again and stuff

Tonight I saw the "Final" Nodame Cantabile movie. I could basically just review it in three words: "Go see it", but that might not really do it justice.

Seriously, I suppose I am partially benefitting from actually having seen the entire drama and the specials and the first movie all now; when I went into the first movie I had only seen like the first 3-4 episodes of the drama. But now that I guess I kind of "get" all of the characters and the general way things are portrayed, this movie was very funny when it wanted to be funny and very sad when it wanted to be sad, and as always the music was great. Only part I didn't get is why they bothered having the side plot with the crazy theremin girl living upstairs. If they wanted to add random side plots, give us more Kuroki and Tanya dammit :P

I feel kind of like the first movie was just a big setup for this one, really, and this one was where they were getting back to the roots of it all, with the relationship between Nodame and Chiaki, with a brief nod to a few other big characters as necessary. Although in some ways that was a problem because, to be fair, most of the amusement value in the series comes from the side characters, and most of the pain comes from the relationship between Nodame and Chiaki.

Sreissmann's "Germanese" speaking gets more and more painful the more I listen to it :P

Eh, I dunno. I enjoyed the movie. Though I feel like they were STILL setting up for some continuations. I hear the manga hasn't actually ended yet, anyway? I have to wonder how much more they can drag out the plot -- I am still vaguely of the school of "Nodame should just find a nice boy to go out with like Kuroki", although I still wonder how the Tanya plot actually ends too.

So the upshot is: it was good. I might even go see it again after Golden Week.

Actually, something I really enjoyed was just taking it all in. Thinking about how much I enjoy going to watch Japanese movies and how much I'm going to miss it someday. It actually is a pretty neat thing that I can go watch movies in another language with no subtitles and pretty much understand 95% of what people say. How cool is that?

Oh, and there's going to be another Odoru Daisosassen movie! Holy shit it's been like 9 years since the last one. I still remember watching the drama on the international channel with everyone back in Pittsburgh like 12 years ago :) Also saw a preview for Beck, which of course I have never read or anything, but I know it has Yukio Tanaka, and that is all that matters.

Whee.