I THINK I AM IN JAPAN?

I'm bored right now so I figured I'd bust out my writing skills and give you all a fewo of my more unorthodox stories of Japan. As I listen to the sweet rythyms of Wilco I will type out as best I can, the sexual awkwardness and cultural discrepancies I have been introduced to during my time in Japan.

Sexual Tension, and the French.
Living in a cheap guesthouse you tend to get a lot of new people coming in for only a few days and leaving, bringing in new people. Most of these people are relatively faceless, and noiseless. I usually have my own routine and am too busy doing my own thang to care about them. Usually.

A few days ago Pierre and Ruth the French couple made their way into my life. Being French, they are what you might call french. That is to say, Pierre will often be heard down the hall singing, or yelling in a highpitched Mickie Mouse voice, which is not his natural tone I might add. Ruth on the other hand is for the most part quiet, but I can only imagine her nymphomaniacal tendencies behind closed doors.

Anyway, these people are loud. Their first day here they broke the toaster oven. I was standing next to it trying to give it the special touch it needs to start toasting again when Pierre and Ruth approached me.

"How doesss eet work?"
"Thees means stop?"

He pointed at the little Japanese character for "Start", which was obviously implied, as it was the first thing on the dial. I told him that, no, it did not mean stop. I also told him that if he breaks it you simply have to push the dial in and wiggle it around until it snaps back into place. Also, you can't forcefully turn the dial back, because it breaks it. He nodded okay, and I laughingly informed him that I did the exact same thing the first day I was here-A friendly anecdote or a carefully packaged and gift wrapped come on?

The next day I observed that the toaster was broken again, and could hear the Frenchies do everything. Pierre squashed a cockroach and asked Chikako (the manager) if,
"Een Japan... eet ees bad to keel?"

Yes, Pierre, cockroaches are revalled as Gods in Japan. Whole shrines are dedicated to them. If you kill a cockroach you must carry a 200 pound golden Buddha over your shoulders for 6 days, one day for every leg. During wedding ceremony the bride and groom, instead of exchanging rings and a kiss, throw cockroaches on each other, and then lick them, ever so gently. What you just did may have very well caused the Jenga tower that is the French/Japanese foreign relations to faulter if not topple completely onto its side. Spilling its aged wooden blocks made from the sweat and blood of not only YOUR ancestors but the Japanese ancestors. Way to go.

Chikako just said no and gave him a weird look.

What I at first figured was simply two childishly retarded French vagabonds staying for a few weeks at Green Peace turned into something much frighteningly more.

It all started when I decided to go to sleep a few days ago. The doors at Green Peace are the same as all Japanese doors. They are wooden and slide closed. The doors however do not slide perfect closed, there's about a 4th of an inch gap between the wooden door and the door frame. If you look at the right angle (simple straight at it) you can see through the doors and see a little of the room. I noticed this but, being the nice guy I am (I didn't want to get caught, it'd be embarassing) I never took advantage of this feature.

Five minutes into falling asleep I woke up from the noise of the coin washing machine right outside of my window. I looked around confused and still had the burn marks in my eyes from my bright fluorescent light. I sat there, in my dark room, with eerie burn marks in my eyes everytime I closed them. For a moment I thought I had been abducted by aliens, and what seemed like 5 minutes was 5 hours, and the burn marks were from the brightness of the space ship I had just been tossed from. These thoughts faded away quickly as I heard footsteps outside my door. For a second I had the stupid thought,

"What if someone tried to look through my door? That'd be creepy."

Immediately after dismissing this thought I saw someone head through the small crack in the door. The head started from the top of the door and went down to the bottom. Someone was obviously trying to see through my door. My futon is positioned in the back right in front of the door basically. I sat still with my eyes on the person, my heart beating ever so slightly faster than normal, wondering what the hell was going on. Finally a full thirty or so seconds later the person walked away. What were they doing? I had no idea, but what I heard next did not surprise me in the least; French.

Pierre and Ruth started talking right outside the door. Judging by the silhouette I saw the person looking through my door was Pierre. Why he wanted to look at me while I was sleeping, I'm not too sure about. About fifteen minutes later I decided I had to pee, so I went downstairs, knowing Pierre was down there.

The bathroom is divided from the shower room by an outside alley, like they are two different wings of the house. There are windows on the bathroom and shower room, right next to each other, so you can see through into the shower if they are open, or vice versa. I heard Pierre rumbling around beyond the shower room and he probably heard me. I looked through the window of the bathroom and saw him move past the shower. There are two sets of stairs in the house. One is right next to the bathroom - me, and one is right next to the shower - Pierre. In the time it would have taken me to get to the stairs Pierre could have been all the way up and into his room, but I didn't hear him go all the way up. As I made my way to my set of stairs I happend to glance over to the other stairs. He was standing on them with one foot on one stair, the other foot on another stairs. One arm was dangling on the rail and the other was kind of in the air on the ceiling. He was in boxers, with no shirt. He smiled creepily at me, and I managed to say "hi". Is Pierre coming on to me? Pierre and Ruth, the swingers.

I rectified the peeping problem by hanging my drying towels over my door, so they would cover the crack, and finally got to sleep. The next morning everytime I saw Pierre and Ruth they would stop dead and their tracks and say "hi" to me. I'm not against being friendly but proper etiquette is to usually say "hi" once, and if you see the person five minutes later, the "hi" is still pretty much implied and assumed. They persisted and seemed ever so interested in me, Pierre always smiling coyly at me, and Ruth greeting me every chance she can. I figured the French were just friendly.

Two days progressed and they now greeted me by name (Jaayykuh). When I was walking to my room Pierre let out a girly little scream and said "Jake, we have same slipper!" and it was true, we both had a plaid blue slipper. I responded with "Yeah, mine's a bit bigger though." and went into the sanctity of my room.

The shower room has a hard to use lock, so I never bother to use it. The fortunate thing is, Japanese showers have easy signs to determine if they are in use or not.

1.) The door is ALWAYS open when not in use, so it airs the shower out.
2.) The light switch it on the OUTSIDE, and it's easy to figure out if it's on or not. The light is only one when the shower is being used.
3.) Your slippers are RIGHT OUTSIDE THE DOOR if you are using the shower.
4.) Falling water and yourself drying off with a towel is an easy to hear sound.

I figured with all of these methods of determining vacancy I did not have to mess with the annoying lock.

While drying off I could hear Pierre and Ruth outside of the shower milling around. For a moment I thought how much of a coincidence it'd be if one of them opened the shower door on me, even though it was obvious I was in there. They even saw me go downstairs holding a towel and my shampoo. Naah, they'd never open the door.

Ruth opened the door.

I was completely naked save for the towel in my hand. The shower is so small that you have to stand right in front of the door when you dry off. I was maybe half an inch from the door when it opened. Ruth said "Whoops!" and I said "Sorry" (it was a reflex and it makes no sense that I would apologize). She closed the door and I went back to drying myself off. I reasoned that I didn't know these people, and will never see them again in a few days, so I wasn't too worried about it. Five seconds later the door started to open AGAIN. Slowly this time. Before it could open enough I shut it hard, harder then I meant to. It slammed closed and I bent down to initiate the locking mechanism. I finished drying, unlocked the door, and walked out. Five minutes later while I was completely naked changing my clothes I heard a knock on my door.

All I could think of was "god damnit".

I put some clothes on and the knocks persisted.

"Yoohooo... Jaaayke?"

It was Pierre. Finally after awkwardly putting my shirt on I opened the door. Pierre was standing outside my door holding my boxers, smiling. It seems I forgot my boxers in the bathroom, trying to escape the curiousity of Ruth. I took them and said thanks, then got dressed in my real clothes.

Now I'm sitting here, typing this out. I can smell food cooking in the kitchen right next to me and I can hear Pierre singing in French. I figure it's only a matter of time before they ask me to be in a threesome - a menage et trois. Just think of the internationality I would achieve. In Japan with a French person. Unfortunately the "male to female" ratio is not enough in my favor for reckless sex with the French to be a possibility, even though it probably sounds like a fabulous idea to our little metrosexual (or should I say "French male") Pierre.

Robots, cameras as small as quarters, and holes in the ground for toilets.
After watching War of the Worlds with Ayako I agreed to go look at fireflies with her family. We met them outside of the theatre in their pimped out SUV and her dad was driving. I said hi to everyone - her mom, her dad, and her older sister Ritsuko. Her dad was a cool guy, and a police man. He made all kinds of jokes and had a scary Japanese smoker voice you'd expect a Yakuza or crime boss to have.

They asked me if I could eat Ramen, and I told them Americans are completely unable to ingest noodles. I think they almost believed me so I said "Yes, I can eat Ramen." We drove around for a little bit and finally found a place. It was small and the owner had gold teeth. I ordered pork ramen and confusion was had, and they kept pointing at everything. I nodded and decided to change my order to vegetable ramen. Her mom laughed and Ayako asked me "You can eat vegetables?" I laughed and told her that we usually just keep whole cows in our house, and rip pieces off everytime we're hungry. They finally let me order vegetable ramen and they also ordered dumplings.

I answered a few questions about America. The dad made some jokes and we ate our food. They payed for me (aagh) and we headed off to see fireflies. I spent most of the time up talking to Ayako and Gion Matsuri. We pulled onto a sort of dirt road enveloped in rice paddies and stopped a ways ahead. We didn't see ANY fireflies and were kind of bummed out until suddenly our eyes adjusted and we saw hundreds. We piled out of the car and ran around catching some. Japanese fireflies look the same but are much smaller than the ones we have. They also light up way more than ours. I know when we look for them in America it's hard as they light up briefly, and then it takes another 30 seconds before they light up again. These lit up every 5 seconds, some simply stayed lit. It was very cool. There was a fence along one side of the road and they tried to tell me something about it. Finally the dad mimed touching it, then flailed around going "bzzzzz!" (in japanese it sounds like "beeeeeeeeej") - electric fence! I made a note to stay away, but it didn't keep me from pretending to push Ayako into it. We caught our share of fireflies and piled back into the car. They decided to take me to the highest point in Kyoto, and on the way we exchanged animal sounds, which was interesting.

Japanese think the following animals make the following sounds:
Dog = Ba Ba Ba
Cat = nyuu nyuu
Bee = Bnn Bnn Bnn (I laughed and asked them why they thought Bees went Bnn)

They also thought guns went "Baaaaooo Baaaooo" I went "Psht Psht" and they all laughed at this, I thought it was a good imitation. Shows what they know.

We arrived at "The Point" (I couldn't figure out the name, they got confused when I asked about it) and boy I wish I had my camera. You could literally see the whole city of Kyoto from that point. It was dark out so you could see all the numerous lights. It was misting a little bit and I asked them what it was called. They said something about "grave" and "shogun" and "tokugawa". I know Tokugawa Ieasu and his family were the shogun, but I asked where the grave was, and they were confused. So oh well.

I'll take this point to state that I had not taken a crap for two days prior to all of this. I'm not too sure why, but it seems everytime I need to use the bathroom there's a meeting going on outside the door, so I try to avoid it if at all possible. On our way down the hill I kind of felt my stomach bubbling. It wasn't that I was sick, it's that I had two days worth of food inside of my, and it couldn't hold anymore. I chose to ignore it, thinking I'd get home and all would be well. The family asked if I wanted to go for Coffee (kohii) and I said sure, thinking if it gets too bad I'll just use the coffee place's restroom.

Well, instead of coffee they just kind of drove us around and showed me some of the sights of Kyoto. They took me to Gion and showed me some of the old streets (hundred of years old) and we all looked around like little girls for Maiko (young geisha apprentices) and Geisha. We didn't see any but I had my picture taken with Ayako at some of the Gion areas. She also had me go to a shrine and make a wish, while ringing the bell. After that we got back into the car and went around some more. The pressure was building and it was a sharp pain, much like I would think appendicitus would feel like. They showed me a temple and I can't even remember the title, I was in that much pain. Each red light was like a jab at my stomach. They asked me if I wanted to see Nijo Castle, and I was too polite to say no, so I said okay, knowing I needed to go to the bathroom, and in the very near future.

Finally I couldn't take it any longer and told them I needed to use the "toiretto". They probably saw my wrinkled-up-wincing-in-pain face and knew I wasn't joking around. We got stopped at a red light and the dad broke out in English "In a Moment!" everyone except me laughed. Finally we found a convenience store and Ayako took me in. I found the bathroom right at the last moment and gazed upon the third ring of Hell. A Japanese squat toilet.

I had no time to even think about it, so the pants were down and I was trying my best to get in the right position. The best way I can describe what happend next without getting into details is by of course giving you a comparison-

You know in the old Looney Tunes cartoons when you'd see Wil-e-Coyote or some other character standing still? You'd see a small round shadow form at their feet, and it'd get bigger and bigger, at this point they'd usually hold up a sign with "Ouch." or something similar. A big 5 ton "ACME" anvil would then fall on top of them? Okay.

After the deed was done my legs were shaking in pain. Asian people do EVERYTHING squatting, they read, poop, eat, probably give birth, in a squatting position. Americans however don't do much squatting. We've got more of a "king and his throne" mentality, choosing to sit whenever possible. I don't consider myself a King but I'm apparently not Asian either. Finally I was done, all sweaty from my recent explosion and my awkward stance while doing it. I washed my hands and opened the door to see Ayako looking worried. I imagine I looked a lot like Tom Hanks did after emerging from the house at the end of "The 'Burbs" a little dusty and shaken, defeated.

I told her I was not feeling well and should probably go home. It was already 11:00pm so I was tired anyway. They were worried about me and thought the "ramen and long drive" made me sick. I think we drove for an hour at most, if they only knew the crappy transportation system in America, and the long drives we all take for granted. I assured them it wasn't either of those and then pulled out a lie that I was allergic to peanut butter and accidentally ate some earlier.

They took me home and I said thank you, they were worried that I was dying and I assured them I would be okay. Relations are still good, but I probably made them all think Americans can't eat noodles.