As I lie here in a tiny bed in a tiny room in a tiny hotel, I find myself fuming in anger. The anger is not directed toward the Japanese heat, the 14-hour flight, or the signs of early onset jetlag. No, the anger is directed towards my nose, the very nose that betrayed me when I got off the plane at Narita Airport today. The very nose that revealed me as a gaijin, or “foreigner,” as sweat drip-dropped off it and onto my traveler’s checks as I feverishly tried to sign them all. It appears that my nose has somehow become the primary viaduct for all of the sweat that my head and face manages to produce. Instead of stealthily running down my neck and burying itself into my shirt or spreading itself out into a fine sheath of stick on my face, all of my sweat seems to race towards my nose where, like a neglected faucet, it coagulates into bulging opaque drops. These drops managed to gain the attention of my fellow students, travel agents, currency exchange kiosk employees, and native Japanese. And with their attention gained, they yell, “Gaijin! Gaijin!”
No matter how hard I try to deny it, I am just another gaijin. I am just one of a multitude of foreigners who travel to the Land of the Rising Sun every year in order to pursue….something….
What do we pursue? Some, allured by the Saturday morning cartoons of their youth, come to Japan to search the streets of Harajuku in the hopes of discovering an anime nirvana. Others may come seeking respite in its ancient temples from an unbearable Western lifestyle of power lunches, corporate haircuts, and backbreaking deadlines. The specifics don’t matter. The reality of it is that everyone who comes to Japan arrives with a purpose. They want to seek something, discover something, touch something unknown to them that they think they desperately need.
As I lay on my stomach with my traitorous nose picking up the ghosts of cigarettes past, I find myself wondering, “What the hell am I doing here?”
No seriously, what am I doing here? I could have learned about Japan and Japanese culture at Ursinus. I could have learned about anime on the Internet. I could have sought solitude in church. So why am I here in Japan? Well, maybe I should consider how and why I am here in the first place.
Well, one of the reasons I went to Ursinus was because they promised that I could go to Japan for a year if I worked hard enough. So I went to Ursinus, worked and scrapped my way to the top of my class. Well, second of my class. One of two people that I am going with is Saumya Kurup who is the top of my class and is for all intensive purposes the alpha female of the group. But more on that later…
So, two years at Ursinus have brought me the promise of ten months at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Japan. The ten months will be shared with two other Ursinus students, the aforementioned Saumya and another girl named Megan Ormsby. All three of us love Japan and are thrilled to go and can’t wait and yadda yadda yadda.
Well, that explains why I am in Japan, but I still don’t know why I wanted to come here so badly. Japan was my motivation for Ursinus. But what was my motivation for Japan? Hopefully I will figure it out in the next ten months…
In the meantime, since I am sure that my parents are dying to know how my trip was, I guess that now is as good a time as any to talk about it.
Well, when we arrived at the airport, we greeted each other, said (several) goodbyes to our families, waded through security and customs, and piled onto our airplane. The flight was going to last for over 12 hours. My survival on the long flight was due to two things: in-flight movies and my Hanukkah Nintendo DS.
First, the in-flight movies. Yes, that means that you will have to wait to discover what the heck a Hanukkah Nintendo DS is. Consider it a kind of insurance to make sure that you keep reading.
Okay, where was I? Right! In-flight movies! Each seat was decked out with screens attached to the back of the chair in front of us. We could select movies out of a surprisingly well stocked library. Seriously, I have never seen a movie library that has simultaneously offered both Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” and Ford’s “How Green Was My Valley.” Needless to say, I was in heaven.
I watched three movies during my trip. The first was おくり人, or, as it is known in the States, “Departures.”
It was the first Japanese film in over fifty years to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It definitely deserved it because I was crying throughout the entire film. As a great lover of Japanese cinema (as can be seen from my personal film library which includes Kurosawa’s “Ran,” Ozu’s “Tokyo Story,” Mizoguchi’s “Ugestu,” three movies by Suzuki Seijun, and a Teshigahara Higoshi boxset) I can confidently say that this is probably one of the only Japanese movies to come out in decades that could hold up against the godfathers of Japanese cinema. Seriously, it should be seen by everyone.
That means YOU Mom and Dad!!!!!
No seriously, go see it now. I’ll wait. ……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………
Oh my gosh! Wasn’t that old man hysterical?!?!
Anyway, after that cry fest, I decided to see something lighter. And by lighter I mean Sophie Coppola’s “Lost in Translation.” Seriously, the world should enshrine Sophie Coppola and Wes Anderson for reviving Bill Murray’s career in the 2000s.
After two masterworks of cinema I decided to round my experience out with another classic, the eternal masterwork “Dodgeball” with Vince Vaughn and Rip Torn. Oh, how that movie brings me joy.
Anyway, the second thing that helped me survive the flight was my Hanukkah Nintendo DS. Why is it a Hanukkah Nintendo DS and not just a regular Nintendo DS? Well, it lasted the entire 12 hour flight. Yes, I played on it while I watched movies. What? I can multitask!! My Nintendo DS has always had a charge of 5 hours tops. Well, I am still playing on it on my second day here in Japan. Such is the stuff of legends…
Anyhow, when we arrived at Narita Airport, we went through the usual rigmarole of going through customs and getting our luggage. Customs didn’t give the ladies any trouble but they held me up. I suspect feminine wiles were involved….
We met up with two representatives from ICU, Ayaka and Miyuki, who helped us navigate Japan’s labyrinthine train system. Meeting them was a clumsy experience, what with Japanese hands unaccustomed to shaking and American backs unaccustomed to bending. But we communicated well and they were extremely helpful and kind.
We said our goodbyes and checked into our rooms. This is where we came in, with me lying on my bed typing furiously away. I didn’t have long to type before Megan and Saumya came to my door and announced that they were going out. Reluctant to leave my bed after a long day of being uncomfortably crammed into planes, trains, and heavily laden automobiles, I consented and we hit the town.
With our pockets full of freshly converted yen, we were eager to find some kind of food. We discovered that the best, and cheapest, way to get a good dinner in Japan is to go to a department store and pick up a ready-made meal. One of the things that the Japanese love is fresh food. At night, before they throw out the food that they prepared in the morning, it goes on sale for half price. So, we treated ourselves to 和食, or Japanese food. I got a combination of fried rice, noodles, and three meat sticks. I call them meat sticks because I have no idea what kind of meat they were. The first was beef, or at least I thought so for the first two bites. Then, by the time the third bite came along, I realized that it wasn’t meat at all. It was mushrooms…
There really isn’t anything else to say about my first night. After food came sleep and after sleep came indigestion. Well, such is to be expected. This is Nate from Narita writing as just another gaijin.
No comments:
Post a Comment