The 6th years at my Thursday school are trying to make picture books. This mostly consists of them copying down Japanese phrases and then showing them to me determinedly, as if they could will me to know Japanese and translate the stories for them. But some actually try to translate on their own. One group was doing The Monkey And the Crab. At one point the monkey slips in cow poop. I’m just wondering exactly what dictionary they’re using that’s translating “cow poop” into “shit” and “goddamned dung.”

Today I was walking up and down the aisles of one of my second year junior high classes, with nothing to do, when one of the girls beckoned me over. She asked me (in Japanese, no less, she didn’t even try English) how big my nose is and got out a ruler.

Well, at least I can always console myself with not being this dude.

Eric, the ALT.

In a sake and sakura fueled euphoria, former ALT, Will Ferguson, swore to his coworkers that he would one day hitchhike the entirety of Japan in pursuit of the cherry blossoms.  Unfortunately, everyone around him remembered this unwise oath and reminded him about it for three years until he finally decided to do it.  He wrote his memoirs of the trip in Hitching Rides With Buddha.

Will Ferguson was determined to hitchhike from Cape Sata, Kyushu, to Cape Soya,, Hokkaido, following the blossom season north. He would be mirroring the path of his hero, the hiker Alan Booth, author of Roads to Sata.  It proved to be a more difficult, lengthy, and expensive journey than he ever imagined.

Some of his travel tales are inherent to traveling anywhere, getting lost, getting arrested, marooned by poor weather, ineffable loneliness, fleeting friends and enemies, an unnatural fears of snakes; but much of it is distinctly Japan.  Where else is the traditional greeting for a Gaijin-san something so nearly as annoying as “Harro! Zis is a ben!”? Ferguson gets sucked into enkais of drunk salary men he had nothing to do with, and cannot escape.  He encounters a ghost with a business card. He tries the Japanese national pastime of reading standing up with a magazine teaching English pornographic phrases of questionable utility.

By hitchhiking he sees strangely intimate snippets of people’s lives.  He rides with a konyaku farmer and a pachinko company man.  Occasionally, families invite him into their homes.  He hears the nightmarish confessions of a Japanese POW and fawns over his little Godzilla loving granddaughter.

I do not known if this book would be so delightful to someone who has not lived in Japan.  Actually, it seems like a bunch of inside jokes for gaijin most of the time.  At the very least, Will Ferguson’s book is just so easy to sympathize with as a resident gaijin.  His introspective interpretations of his experience provide insight into the joys and frustrations of a foreigner.  He is alternately welcomed with smiles and insulted with aggression as he makes his way up the country.  One moment someone compliments his Japanese and tells him how much he understands Japan and the next moment someone is telling him how inferior he is because he is not Japanese.  He knows the outsider is always an outsider and no outsider can ever understand the hypocrisy of Japan.

Will Ferguson set out to follow the cherry blossoms, but they cannot keep up with him.  He is pulled along by the unstoppable momentum of the traveler, to the end of Japan, even past Hokkaido.  He is in a race with his money and his vacation days.  In the end, his journey sees less cherry blossoms and more strange towns and strange people.

Here’s an article about Japanese men trying to say I love you. It’s pretty cute and also heartbreaking in a typically Japanese way.

An interesting note… every Japanese person who I’ve talked to on the subject wants Obama to be chosen as the Democratic presidential candidate (although no one has any vehemence against Hillary).

No one has even brought up the Republican primaries.  No one has even acknowledged the existence of a Republican candidate.

 There’s a store chain in Japan called Don Quijote. You can buy anything there from import foods, to furniture, to cell phones, to pet supplies, to sex toys. And it’s open 24 hrs a day for your late night booze munchies.

You can also buy clothing. Look how Japan uses black stereotypes to market men’s underwear with a little extra room.

I just went in to buy shampoo. And look what they’re selling next to the shampoo. Oh good. Condoms. Wait… what’s this?

Um…. well… that’s specialized.