I’m not really sure what all this is about, but it seems to be a montage of how Japan is pathetic.

A couple weekends ago I went to Guam.  I have a friend who’s a stripper there for a few months.  I wanted to see her.  I wanted some sun and some warmth.  And Guam’s only a few hours away by plane.

Originally, I wanted to go the weekend of the 24th because we had an extra day off on Friday for Labor Thanksgiving Day (It’s a lot more like Labor Day than Thanksgiving).  But because of that one extra day, tickets were around $1,500 and most flights were sold out.  I would have had to take a 9-hour wait in the Philippines.  It seems like all the businessmen in all of Japan were going to Guam on that 3 day weekend to look at titties.

So I decided to take a couple days of vacation and go the weekend before.  Tickets were only a bit above $400 and I got a direct flight.  My company told my schools that I was going home for a bit, since that is apparently a lot more acceptable than taking a vacation.  Since I had a bad cold a couple weeks before, everyone freaked out thinking that I was going home because I was really, really sick.  Because people don’t just take off for no reason.  I’m getting the feeling that it’s a lot more culturally taboo to take off work and have fun than it is to grope young girls on the train.  I bet Japanese businessmen to the latter a lot more than the former.

Guam is a very, very strange place.  There are a few native Chamorrans, mostly living in poverty.  It’s mostly populated by Navy and Air Force troops.  The rest are strippers, prostitutes and Japanese tourists.  The main strip in Guam is lined with luxury hotels as high as you can see and accommodated with glittering water parks and beach fronts.  Along the edges of the road are tourist trap bars and restaurants and high-end fashion malls.  There are at least two Chanels, Louis Vittons, and Burberries in a three-block stretch.  In between such decadence are loud, dimly lit strip clubs and all night massage parlors.

It felt nice to have the tables turned a bit. I only had to speak Japanese once and that was just to tell some lady to wait a moment because she was about to take the table that was supposed to be for my friend and me.  Instead of being the one wandering around desperately hoping to find someone who spoke my language or to find a menu I could understand, it was the Japanese who were confused.  But not much.  Popular “Western” restaurants like TGIFiday’s  and Outback Steakhouse had Japanese menus.  The luxury market of Guam seems mainly to be targeted to the Japanese tourists.  Most stores have Japanese speaking staff.  Since Guam is technically part of the US, it runs on US currency.  But many places accept yen.  Since I was technically in the US, I was hoping to find some cheap clothes that fit me.  But in the tourist area, I mostly just found Japanese styles, in Japanese sizes, at the equivalent of Japanese prices.  I guess the Japanese wives shop till they drop during the day and pass out in the fancy hotel while their husbands go and spend an equal amount on strippers or full body massages at night.

There were so many Japanese people.  In the tourist area of Guam I sometimes forgot I was in Guam instead of one Japan’s of the south islands.  Kanji, katakana, hiragana.  A lot of times the Japanese tourists still gawked at me as if I were the foreigner.  Ack!  Tall blonde freak!  Gaijzilla!

Outside of the high-end shopping area, the main tourist attraction seemed to be Kmart.  I shit you not.  On the plane ride back to Japan, everyone was trying to stuff all their brimming plastic Kmart bags into the overhead compartments.

But in Guam, the Japanese are only well taken care of in order make it easier to take their money.  I do experience racism and discrimination in Japan, but we were definitely giving it to them in Guam.  Many of the seedy places in Japan explicitly refuse foreigners.  In Guam, they let them in with open arms, they just charged them a lot more money.

The man of the hour (or 15 minutes) in Japan right now is Yoshi Kojima.  He’s a Japanese comedian and all the kids (big and little) love him.  The kids are always imitating him and they try to get me to do it too.  I don’t trust them one bit.

As far as I can tell from what I’ve seen on TV, he only does one thing.  He comes in on the camera sorta making low squeals.  Sorta like an old lechy grandpa.  Then he pretends to hump something.  Then gets up and chants something and does a downward punching motion with his hand while kicking back with his foot.

I have no idea what he says.  All I know is that it is rude.  It ends with “Hey, opapi!”

He just does that one thing.   And everyone goes wild.  People are going to get tired of it eventually.  They have to.  But what can I say?  It is pretty ridiculous and charming in a Japan sort of way.  That or I just think he’s really hot.

Even he seems to realize how repetitive he’s getting.  He has a slightly bored look on his face when he does it recently.  It’s like he’s rolling his eyes inside.

But in an effort to get the junior high kids to pay attention to my lesson on  prepositions, I made this diagram.  For you English teachers out there, feel free to use it.

Hey Opapi!

Passed out outside Shibuya Station 9/23/07

Passed out outside Shibuya Station 9/23/07

Sleeping outside Kitatakasi Station… at 1pm, 11/11/07

The kitten was ravenous. At first I didn’t feed her much because I thought she had been a starving stray and I did’t want to kill her by overfeeding. Then I budgeted a can and a half of kitten food a day for her. Within two days she needed two. Then two and a half, and then that wasn’t even enough. I learned that when she meowed and nibbled on my figers, she was hungry. She grew noticably in the span of days. The feel of her bones became less sharp.

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A couple weeks ago, the ninensei went on a field trip to Akihabara in Tokyo. The English teacher told me a few of them want to visit a maid café.

A maid café is a restaurant where the women are dressed in frilly rococo or French Maid dresses and use exalting form of the Japanese language (rather than simply the normal, or respectful form) to serve male customers coffee and food. “Here is your cuppacino, master.”

When I was on a middle school field trip into the city, the boys wanted to visit Hooters. We were expressly forbidden to enter Hooters.

And here is we see the defining difference Japanese and American sexuality. The Japanese adolescents want to see women dressed as little Lolitas making them feel important and the teachers think it’s cute. The American boys want to see big tits and short shorts and the teachers won’t allow it.

At home the men visit strip clubs to see bare titties and asses swung in their faces. Here, the men go to hostess cafes where pretty women in low cut and tight dresses pretend to like them.

In one country they inflate their egos, in the other they just inflate their cocks.

I can’t decide whether I’d find the customers more irritating as a hostess or as a stripper.

I went to my first hostess club this month with two gaijin men and our middle aged Japanese doctor patron of the evening. The Japanese doctor tried to hide the fact that it was a hostess club from me. He kept calling it an “international conversation café.” Oh, honey, I’ll play innocent for your sake, but I know exactly where we’re going and why we’re going there.

In elementary school news:

At my Thursday elementary school one of the kids caught me off guard. I could have misheard him but I think he leveled the back of two fingers at my face in the British flip off and said “Fuck,” very matter of factly.

Usually, I only see kids wearing dirty Engrish shirts at my Thursday elementary school. But I have seen the same shirt at both my Thursday and Friday schools. It’s dark blue with white writing. In big letters it says:

Rapid Growth 69

And then there is print all over the shirt that says the following:

Just now growth!
Dynamic
Stability
Action at the right time
Mission Got a backbone
A.M.S.
Mission of men

I couldn’t stop thinking about the kitten when I was in Tokyo. I knew that my friends were very trustworthy and would treat it at least as well as I would. Probably better. But I had this weird superstition that something bad would happen to it if I weren’t there to watch it myself.

When I got back to Maebashi, I took a nap and got on the computer. No one had responded to any of the emails or postings I had made looking for someone to take the kitten.

I couldn’t wait to see the kitten any longer. I wanted the kitten and I wanted to show it off. I sent my friend, R, a message and drove off to my catsitting friends’ apartment.

And now, a little about R. R is from Texas and once worked as a janitor in a professional wrestling arena. Until recently he had a big Confederate general squared mustache and beard. He likes motorcycles, owns a PT Cruiser with neon blue underlighting, and has a concealed handgun license in his wallet. Somehow he also has a computer science degree, plays World of Warcraft, and is perfectly tickled by my theatrical, melodramatic antics. R and I trade LOLcat macros and videos of kittens on YouTube. Seeing as he shared my dark obsession with small furry things, I decided to invite him up to show off my fuzzball. (more…)