Letters from Japan: 9/25/2002 "See No Evil"

Hi Kids,

I came to the internet cafe tonight for one reason and one reason only, to find out info on my return flight and of course the woman hasn't gotten back with me so I am not a Happy-Jap. She has been e-mailing me every day for the past few days and the ONE day I do not feel up to being here, she doesn't e-mail me! I should be flying home in November. I gave my 30 day notice today. I guess that is my big news of the day.

Kazuko had a class with me today. She is the old blind woman who wanted to have me and Michael over for dinner. Instead, she and her husband are going to take me out to eat in 2 weeks. They are going to take me to some tempura place on the 12th floor of some building a few cities away. If you never hear from me again, I have been abducted and sold into sex-slavery. Just thought I should give you a heads-up. I say this because she said something odd to me when we were talking about
where to meet. She said something like, "Look beautiful." Why would she care what I look like unless she wants me to be eye-candy for her husband? Maybe she means that I should dress nice for the place they are taking me. Who knows, I just thought that was strange but she is a sweet old woman. Sometimes when Japanese people say things, they don't mean exactly what they say, but it is the best words they know to communicate with. Did that make sense? I think that was a very poorly constructed sentence but I don't feel like rewriting it because I am sick and have no patience tonight.

In other news, Paul and I may go to Kamakura tomorrow and go into big Buddha's belly and see old Japanese temples. But he is broke and I am sick so we may pass on that outing. I need to explore more before I leave but it's not much fun alone, especially when you get lost. Paul can speak Japanese so it is handy having him around.

I guess that is the latest. Now I will sit and wait for my mother's frantic e-mail about the million evil intentions Kazuko may have and how I had better do a background check on her before I get into a car with her. Love you, ma.

Write soon,

Rachel

(Me, Kazuko, and her husband)

Letters from Japan 9/24/02 "A Whole Lotta Nothin'"

Hi All,

I am sicker than a dog so this will be short and sweaty...

Last night after work a bunch of people went to Family Mart and bought some beers and sat in Chofu Park by the fountain and yapped for a while. You are allowed to drink in public so instead of going to an izakaya (a bar), people just buy their alcoholic beverages and sit in the park. That is not why I am sick, in fact, I did not even drink because I could feel myself coming down with something but I wanted to be social so I went along. There is always something going on in Chofu park, especially at night. People like to show off their musical talents (or lack thereof) so there is usually at least 4 or 5 "entertainers" and bands singing and playing there every night. One guy who is always there sings into an empty coke bottle and puts on a show like he is performing for an audience of 100,000 screaming fans. The other entertainment of the night was watching an old man pee for 10 minutes on a tree. I went home when it started to rain! , I figured I did not want to make myself sicker than I already was getting. Everyone else was die-hards and sat there hoping to wait it out.

My roommate moved out today and she managed to take the trash out. Let me explain why this was a notable event. Trash day is every day in Japan. One day is cans and bottles, another day it is cardboard, another day is plastics and "unburnables" and two days are burnables. The horrible thing is that you can't put your trash out at night, you have to set your alarm for 7:00am and take it out, so guess who has been being the responsible one... Well, you are WRONG! I have been the responsible one! She has not taken the trash out ONCE until today. She will apologize once a week for not taking out the trash but don't mistake that apology for any future intent on her part. So I guess she figured she would take it out FOR ONCE before she left. What a princess. I guess I figured Chinese folks were clean-freaks but she is just another Chinese hooligan that the Japanese police will end up wrestling down in the streets for doing hooligan things that Chinese people do here.

On a totally unrelated note, one of my students today said that she has been a hair stylist for 4 years and has studied hair-stylist-stuff for 3 months in France so I am going to get a free haircut from her sometime this week. So that is pretty cool.

Well, I guess that is my latest uneventful news. I'm sure it will get better once Michael gets here. We are going to go to Hakone which is were EVERYONE is suggesting I go. It is about 3 hours away from Tokyo and our hotel room will overlook Mt. Fuji and there are all sorts of hot-springs there and you can sit in some of them like hot-tubs so that should be cool. So like I said, my stories should be more eventful after this weekend. Feel free to skip over any e-mails I send before then. These are so boring, I am boring myself! But the compulsion to write is always there, like a disease, and you shall all suffer for it.

Love Rachel

Picture of the Japanese guy in Chofu park who sings into empty Coke bottles and dances like he's a rock star putting on a concert.

Letters from Japan: 9/21/02 "Words that Only Rhyme in Japanese"

Hi All,

I have 20 minutes to write so we will see if I can produce anything of literary value...

Last night I got a phone call and I thought it was the wrong number. Just as I was about to hang up, the voice said that I met him in Chofu park, then I remembered HIROKI! He is the teenager that Chris and I met in the park about 3 weeks ago. He has a band and they are playing in October and he invited us to come. Well, he called that night to remind me and I THOUGHT he said that he had a tee-shirt he wanted to give me. You know, like wear it and show your support for the band kinda thing? So he asked if I would meet him in the park the next morning for work to give me this tee-shirt. SURE (although this DOES require that I wake up BEFORE normal, which is not cool, but oh well.) So I get to Chofu park thinking he will be easy to find because there aren't many people in the park in the morning. Well, that was a mistake! The place was PACKED with people. It was kinda like "Take your kid to work" day but it was "Take your shit to the park" day. A MILLION people were there with all their worldly possessions, selling them for a buck. I guess it was a sort of flea market but it was mostly old clothes and toys and crap. So I walked around looking for Hiroki for a while and people-watched. One poor boy lost his mom and stood on the outskirts of the crowd screaming bloody murder... "MAAAAAAAAAAAAMA....MAAAAAAAAAAMA...MAAAAAAAAAMA!!!!!! I felt helpless because I could not help him, I couldn't communicate with him. He was about 3 years old and I am pretty sure he did not speak English. So I stood and watched to see if mother-hen would ever emerge from the crowd, beckoned by the agonizing screams of her little brown chick. Sure enough, she came within 3 minutes, just as he was cranking up the volume. Thank God.

So after that mini-drama drew to an end, I decided it was time to call Hiroki (I would never find him in this crowd.) I was really excited about getting my free tee-shirt that would surely have some cool Japanese print on it. When I called, Hiroki answered and said that he was running late. I told him that he could drop it off at my work if he wanted, just tell them it's for Rachel. So we agreed.

Well, about an hour into work, one of the office ladies comes back to the teachers' area and asks if I know a Hiroki. Yes! I DO! And I raced up to the front for my free concert tee-shirt; hopefully it was a white shirt maybe with black hiragana or kanji. Black tee-shirts just wash me out unless I have a tan. Or maybe it has a picture of his band, that would be cool, too. Instead, Hiroki stood there with 2 orange tickets in his hands. He didn't say TEE-SHIRT, he said TICKETS! And not only that, THEY AREN'T FREE! THEY COST $15.00 BUCKS EACH! And not only THAT, he wanted ME to buy BOTH tickets, one for ME and one for CHRIS! WHAT???? OK, we have a slight misunderstanding here, Hiroki. I won't even ASK about the free tee-shirt, because OBVIOUSLY, your poor pronunciation of the word "tickets" is the whole cause of mine own mental debacle. But now THOSE aren't even free??? (Of course I did not say any of this, I just told him that I had to work until 9pm that day so I did not want to buy tickets to a concert that I might not even be able to see). He ended up giving me the tickets and I told him I would pay him if I could come. And that was the end of that. You never know how much a free tee-shirt means to you until you have it YANKED right from under your nose. That sucked. Maybe life in Japan is getting too mundane for me now. Maybe it's NOT the hormones after all, it's BOREDOM! I suppose I need to go catch an Express train from Shinjuku to Chofu, life is NEVER boring on the good old JR Express (That stands for Japanese Railroad). Well, more than 20 minutes has passed since I started writing so I suppose it is time to go pay the piper. Keep the e-mails coming, it adds excitement to my otherwise boring life on this side of the earth. On the brighter side of things, Michael is coming in 6 days! I'm sure that will breath new life into things, which means BETTER WRITING MATERIAL FOR ME!!!!!

OK, that is all for now.

Love me

Letters from Japan: 9/15/02 "The Riddle of the Change Purse"

I have absolutely nothing to talk about but I have paid to check my e-mail so I am going to force myself to use the rest of my hour to write about SOMETHING! So I am not promising that any hilarity will ensue..

Friday, when I bought that blouse, I also found a cute little change purse. I thought it would be handy since yen is mostly coins (talk about a heavy purse!). So I bought the cute little change purse and raced home to dump all my coins into their new happy home. The problem came when I discovered that it did not hold many coins..WHAT KIND OF CHANGE PURSE IS THIS?! Upon opening it, I also discovered this strange round, black thing that was about as big as a gum-drop (if you whacked it in half) and attached to the change purse by a string. After some investigation, I realized that I could open this strange black gum-drop and inside I found a spongy orange thing. I pressed it with my finger tip and looked at my finger to find that the orange stuff was now on my finger. It was a sort of ink. HMMMMMM...maybe it's for fingerprints...what else could it be???? With a little more investigating (I asked my roommate), I found out that Japanese people all have their own stamp with their family name in Hiragana. They need this stamp to get certain things (like a video card or library card, etc.) Without it, you are denied certain privileges. EVERYONE in Japan has a family stamp. OK, now I know what you do with the strange back gum-drop with the spongy orange filling, but that still doesn't explain why my change purse barely holds any change!

So the next day, I take it to work and ask the Japanese office ladies what I have purchased. They confirm that the black thing is ink for your stamp. But what about this wimpy change purse? Why can't it hold more than a few coins? For those of you who have already figured out this riddle on your own...WHO CARES! QUIT LOOKING DOWN YOUR NOSE AT ME! For those who haven't figured it out, follow me to the pond of knowledge. The "change purse" is the STAMP HOLDER! You carry your stamp in the stamp-purse which also contains the ink for which to stamp! IF I could get any more retarded while I am here, maybe I can get a designated spot on the train next to the designated spots for pregnant women and old, decaying seniors. The stamp is shaped like a cigarette but a bit shorter and fatter (sound like anyone you know?) The good thing about this whole retarded experience is that one of the Japanese office girls was kind enough to call and order me a stamp so I can have MY OWN STAMP!!!! I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really think so! (Please refer to your 80's record collection for that joke). So in less than two weeks I will have my own stamp with my FIRST name written in Katakana (they said my last name is too weird in Japanese...) That's ok, because the Crawfords are weird folks anyway. I'll just be "Rachel," sorta like "Madonna."

OK, like I said, I have nothing to share so you get one goofy story and now I get to go home and eat sardines and Raisin Bran (THANKS, SIS!) I'll be regular in NO time!

Feel free to write me so I have something to look forward to when I open my yahoo mail box! What's the haps in good ole U.S. of A. ???

Much Japanese love,

Love Rachel

Letters from Japan 9/19/02

I'm not in the mood to write but I am going to because I have a half hour to burn here...

One quick note of interest...you know how Americans will point to their chest when referring to themselves, like "Who, ME?" Well, when Japanese people are referring to themselves, they put their finger on the tip of their nose. It's kind of funny.

OK, next story...there was nothing on TV last night so I ended up watching this REALLY stupid show. I STILL don't know what the point of it was but is was 3 young girls and 3 old men running around Shinjuku doing stupid stuff. When I first turned it on, they were all in some hot-tub, spa room and the 3 girls climbed into the small tub with their towels on. Then the one old guy tries to climb in the tub with them and they scream and push him and he falls into the big hot tub and they all laugh and so he tries again and they push him again and he falls into the hot tub again. Then he takes his towel off and spanks his butt (BARE BOTTOM) in their direction and they all scream (yes, I screamed, too..THEY SHOWED HIS BUTT ON TV!) and the insanity continues...next they all have robes on and are walking down the street and go into some store and start playing some game of who can toss a role of toilet paper into the toilet from 10 feet away (they are in some kind of appliance store with a bunch of demo toilets and tubs, etc.) So the one girl who makes the shot ends up having to get into her towel again and get in a tub with the 3 old men who are also in their towels again and they fill up the tub with water. Then they all get back into their robes and go to some fancy hotel and get a room with ANOTHER hot tub and after they eat, the girls get into their towels and get in the hot tub and eventually the guys get in the hot tub with them. Now if at any point in my story you can figure out the plot/purpose of this show, please feel free to e-mail and enlighten me. I guess this is their version of REALITY television, minus the entertainment value.

Then I was watching this other show the night before and I was SOBBING and I had NO CLUE what they were saying! It was a bunch of short "documentaries," if you will, with a camera following around a family for a day. Each family had like 7 or 8 kids and they were poor. I asked one of my students about the show and she said Japanese people like stories about poor, struggling families with a million kids. So that answers that question. Anyway, this one family had 7 kids and a mom and dad and what I could figure from watching it was that the woman used to be married to a guy whom she had 6 kids with, then they divorced or he died or something and one day, the meter-man or lawn guy or something, comes by and they fall for each other and he marries her and they have a kid together and this meter-man or lawn boy supports this huge family of 9 people and he looked rather young but he is this really soft-spoken, shy sweet guy that you can tell is a good daddy. And then it's the wife's birthday and the family is sitting around on the floor at the dinner table and the lawn-boy pulls out a ring from his robe that he has probably purchased by mowing extra lawns or reading extra meters or something and he is all choked up giving it to her. Then her oldest boy who is about 12 goes to his book bag and pulls out a note or poem that he has written for his mom and the little boy starts getting all choked up reading it and the meter-man gets all choked up and all the guys are crying because they are so moved and the mom is just sitting there listening (she obviously is NOT the emotional one in the family) and then he hands her the letter and I think the show ends soon after that (well,at least, THEIR story ends). So here I am CRYING because this Japanese lawn-meter-man-boy is all moved and the boy is all moved to tears so I join them. So you thinks it's my hormones?

OK, my time is up! Gotta run. More stories to come. Remind me to tell you about doko.

Love Rachel

Letters from Japan 9/18/02 "Drunken Poets Corner"

Once again I have nothing to share with you but I mistakenly came into work 3 hours early so I decided to trek it over to the internet cafe to to entertain myself. Speaking of trekking, that reminds me of a student who said she liked to go "tricking" on the weekends. We had to put a stop to that mispronunciation FAST! Try explaining prostitution to someone who does not speak your language. This job teaches you creativity if nothing else.

Speaking of creativity, part of my job requires that I write 8 sentence dialogues for the students to practice conversation. I usually use names like Bob and Anne and other simple American names in the dialogue. Well, one day, I decided to use Japanese names so that they did not get confused (sometimes, they don't realize that an American name is a name and not a word). I was just starting at Nova at this point in time so I was unfamiliar with Japanese names, so I made one up that SOUNDED Japanese...Yasu. So I had them practice the dialogue using the name Yasu. There is no funny ending to this, just that they snickered when I said the name and I stopped and thought to myself...What if "Yasu" means asshole or something in Japanese and I have my students practicing dialogue calling each other asshole? "Hello Asshole, how are you today?" So I decided that making up Japanese names was not a safe practice and I went back to Bob and Anne.

OK, I have to share some co-worker humor. I told you that the guys I work with are characters. Well, they started a wall of poetry at work and there are a couple Haikus up there along with other kinds of poems. Pete wrote one that cracked me up. Pete is this skinny British guy with quick wit. His haiku was...

Writing a poem

In seventeen syllables

Is very diffic-

I haven't written a poem for the wall yet (although I have been strongly encouraged to make my contribution...) The pressure it TOO MUCH! Most of the poems are written about co-workers and they are usually sarcastic. Mine will have to be carefully crafted...

Another quick, funny story (although it might be one of those you-had-to-be-there- stories...) There are two Nova schools that I teach at. There is one on the north side of the railroad tracks and one on the south side. On the weekends, I work on the south side. This weekend, Dave and I were the only teachers at the south side. He had been out drinking late with the guys the night before (Friday night is guys night out) so Dave wasn't feeling too hot but he was his usual goofy self (he is the crazy redhead from Canada). Anyway, he came back into the teachers' area after his 3rd class of the day and said, "That had to be the WORST class I have EVER taught." I asked him what happened and he said, "They wouldn't talk, they just sat there and looked at me. They didn't want to participate. The one girl didn't say one word the entire time until the end of class when she looked at me and said, "Have you been drinking?" I just about died laughing. You had to be there. It was funny.

Anyway, I have to go because my hour is up and I am CHEAP!

Write soon, love me

Letters from Japan: Sept 18, 2002 "Just the Facts"

Originally titled "Test...testing...testing"

Hey kids,

I have less than 20 minutes to write this so it will be short and informative (not funny, just interesting).

Interesting fact #1...People who want to be elementary school teachers in Japan have to take several tests...could you be a teacher?

1) Swimming test...swim a mile
2) Piano test...play fairly well and read sheet music
3) English test...read, write, and speak English (or, in our case, Japanese)

Interesting fact #2...Most young Japanese people die their hair orange.

Interesting fact #3...Japanese don't feel very patriotic about their flag. It reminds them of the old Emperor who used to make men be kamikazes. The older generation wants a new flag.

Interesting face #4...At weddings, the big-wig of the company that you work for gives the speech.

OK, I told you it wasn't funny, just interesting facts I will test you on upon my return...

Love Rachel