Tall Foreigner With Red Glasses

“Oh, Andrew? I Totally Forgot About Him…”

I want to start off by thanking those of you who have come to visit me in Tokyo. It really means a lot to me. In alphabetical order… not a single damn one of you. Bastards all.

But I forgive you. It’s not like there’s anything to do in the largest city on the world. No, no, that’s ok. You’re off the hook. It turns out I’m almost out of stick deodorant, which they don’t seem to sell here, so I need to come back to the US for a bit. I don’t have the dates worked out exactly, but I think I’ll be in San Francisco Sept. 6-14 and in New York Sept. 15-19.

I suppose now isn’t the best time for people to visit Tokyo, anyway. We’ve had three earthquakes since I got here, and typhoon season is about to start. Giant radioactive monsters don’t destroy Tokyo until spring, so anytime this fall should be good. But don’t worry about me, because they gave us disaster backpacks at work. There’s a flashlight and some snack bars and some bottled water and a cute little helmet. Most importantly, the backpack also contains a hand-cranked cell phone charger, just like the ones the Amish use to charge their cell phones.

Seriously, though, you should come see Tokyo. We have everything: You like eletronics? We got eletronics. Museums? Boy, do we have museums! Need a Hello Kitty Toaster? They sell them at convenience stores. Sushi? It’s pretty much free here. Want to see junior high girls in sailor suits? Keep it to yourself, pervert.

Everyone who ever goes to Japan ends up with a long list of reasons that Japan is so weird, because it’s so easy. I’m not going to break the trend. Apologies if I’m repeating myself to any of you.

I’m the tallest person on the train! And in this club! And at Disneyland!

There are Japanese people taller than me, but they’re pretty rare. It’s awesome. At the neighborhood convenience store, they have those markers by the door so you can gauge the height of the person robbing you, assuming anyone ever got robbed in Japan. Maybe there’s a ninja problem. I don’t fit on the chart. Sweet! I’m also considered extremely muscular and “macho” in Japan, so I mostly stopped going to the gym. If everyone at school got hit in the head with a rock, you probably wouldn’t study very hard, would you?

I was all about learning Japanese for the first three weeks, but then I got lazy. Worse than the time I’ve wasted not learning Japanese, I’ve trained all the Japanese people I know to speak English to me, so I have to break them back in before I can start learning again. But I’m totally awesome at Japanese when I’m drunk. I think. And I help out the guys at work with their English. I teach them “diaspora” and “ephemeral”, and they teach me “brown” and “hat”. I have managed to bust out the Japanese words for “racial discrimination” and “developing nation”, but it sounded pretty forced. I’m still holding out for the perfect opportunity to use “kaleidoscope”.

And whenever I feel bad about my inability to keep up with a conversation, I ask my favorite question: “What’s the name of the emperor?”. The first time I asked, I really wanted to know the answer (it’s Akihito). No one at work knew, and they couldn’t even figure it out using Google (it took me maybe 20 seconds once they gave up).

Now I just ask the question to be mean. I’ve asked at least twenty-five Japanese people, and only one has known the anwser. It wouldn’t be as amusing if they just said, “I don’t know”, but instead, they get really embarrassed and try to guess. They had better be embarrassed! Akihito has been the emperor of Japan for almost twenty years. He is their conduit to the heavens! In fact, he’s the only emperor. But no, it’s just not something they know. They all know the name of the princess for some reason, but not Akihito or even Hirohito. As one person explained it to me, “That’s like asking an American who was president in 1989! Who would know that?”. Please, please tell me more than 4% of you know who was president in 1989.

My Other Car is a Giant, Weaponized Exoskeleton

Last night I had a dream that giant, poisonous cockroaches had infested my home and trapped me in my room. The roaches were five feet long and evil, like in Mimic. Man, that movie sucked.

You know those games where you try to catch stuffed animals with a robot crane? They’re all over Tokyo. Sometimes you still win stuffed animals, but that’s so pedestrian. In Japan, you can win some serious swag:

Japanese fashion is… special. Many style choices long past their twilight in the States are still strong in Tokyo: hot pants, mullets, tube tops. It’s like I’m living in Hazzard County. And hats! I went shopping in Harajuku, Tokyo’s version of Greenwich Village or the Haight, and came away with two excellent head ornaments. One has skulls! Cute skulls, not goth skulls. On the negative side, everyone here seems to have red glasses. It makes me feel decidedly less special.

Speaking of goth, I was walking near the office the other day and was accosted by some female zombies. Seriously. I have no idea what they were saying to me, but one of them really wanted to give me a fan. She kept screaming at me and was covered in what I hope was fake blood. I didn’t really want a zombie fan, so I ran away.

Mostly, I Just Eat.

Cultural sensitivity prevents me from saying that the Japanese sense of taste is “wrong”. Eh, I haven’t been senstive so far, so why start now? They are dead wrong.

The other night I bought a bag of Pizza Doritos. I usually prefer plain old “Nacho Cheese Doritos” or “Cool Ranch”, the Dorito of the gods. But they only had pizza flavor, and I was drunk and hungry. I am not a picky eater, but these chips tasted wrong. Although the package contained the text “pizza” and “doritos” in large, English print, closer inspection revealed the much smaller Japanese text, “shrimp” and “mayo”. Shrimp and Mayonnaise Pizza Doritos? Seriously, Japan, if you don’t want Doritos, that’s fine, just don’t eat them. You don’t need to rub it in by mutilating them.

If you were to conquer an island nation and had the opportunity to dictate the One Supreme Flavor for your people, what would you choose? As soon as I’m in charge, we’re all going out for vanilla beers. But whoever had this responsibility in Japan chose grapefruit. They did this because they hate me. I think in the United States they put grapefruit in antifreeze and cleaning fluid so little kids won’t touch the stuff. Any time the Japanese can’t think how to flavor a food product, they go with grapefruit. It’s the only flavor of Gatorade. Gum, candy, alcoholic drinks, pudding — everything comes in grapefruit as a default. I hold out hope that this is some nanotech, evolutionary first pass at artifical flavoring and the billions of tiny robots are working their way up to toffee and Arctic Blast. $3.50 Worth of Octopus

Other than the Doritos and grapefruit, eating here is pretty awesome. It’s not unusual for me to eat sushi ten times in a week. My other meals are mostly ice cream. There are a few things I know to stay away from, and otherwise I just order whatever I can read off the menu.

And the textures! Everything is squishy or crunchy or has suckers. How can you go wrong with that? Look how much octopus you can buy for under four dollars! I ate them all in one sitting. And where else can you buy barbequed squid on a stick from street vendors? Even if you could buy that in Mississippi, there’s no way I’d actually eat it.

My chopstick skills are closing in on my knife and fork skills. If you’ve seen me use a fork, you know not to be impressed — food still goes everywhere. Sometimes it’s not my fault, though. They seriously expected us to eat enchiladas with chopsticks? Worse yet, the nicer the restaurant, the less likely it is to have napkins. They’re not supposed to be optional, Japan!

That reminds me: what I want more than anything is a burrito the size of my head and some psychodelic-colored Gatorade.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 25th, 2005 at 5:25 pm and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.