Waking up from a strangely vivid dream

The line to pick up my rental car is taking forever.

It feels a bit strange to not feel conspicuous for once. No one around me realizes that I haven't been in the US for the past eight months. To at once feel a bit out of place and to realize that no one else would ever think you were is a strange inversion of the expat experience.

Seriously, the 8 people working the counter can't get through more than one person every 15 minutes?

The only distraction, for my fellow line mates and I, is a television suspended over head.

It is switched to CNN. Robert Reich and some republican governor are each given approximately 2 minutes to explain whether Obama or Mitt will have an easier time "connecting" to working class people. Stewart and Colbert have made entire careers satirizing the inanity of these types of exchanges. Still when you haven't been exposed to it for awhile the stupidity of the whole charade does take you back a bit.

A middle aged women is audibly perturbed by the points made by the republican governor. I find it a bit surprising that anyone these days holds daytime cable news in high enough esteem to even be worthy of contempt.

When describing life in Tokyo, I often tell people that many things at first seem crazy, confusing, and arbitrary but then you figure out the reason behind them, the way to do them, it becomes very easy. You learn that if the train pulls into the station on the left side of the platform it will go into one side of Shinjuku station if it pulls on to the right side of the platform it will go to another side of Shinjuku station. And you find out that even if you screw up that there is a staircase tucked away on the back side of platform three that allows you to bypass most of the station to get to the other side.

This being my first time in Los Angeles I quickly realize there are corollaries in the US.

For example

Do not try and drive on the 405 expressway anytime between 4pm-9pm, you will go nowhere.

If radio station ads are any indication there are no "used" cars for sale in Los Angeles.

However, there are a plethora of establishments willing to sell you a certified "pre-owned" cars.

pre-owned

Wouldn't the standard pre/post usage rules mean if anything the term should be "post-owned?"

To live in Tokyo is to be constantly bombarded by advertisements, on the train, in stores, giant screens on buildings. But it all kind of blurs together into an unintelligible buzz.

I stop at a CVS to pick up a toothbrush and toothpaste (Tom's Maines!!!!). Walking in I seem to subconsciously walk directly to the toothbrush isle without even thinking about it. It feels much more natural to buy things here.

Yay! they have Snapple

A day later, I'm at my friend Sarah's apartment we're watching Community over dinner.

"You know it's weird that it's not at all weird that you're here just hanging out, like it's usual"

I laugh, "I know right!"

I'm grateful that that doesn't change

Cherry Blossoms and a Picnic with Thousands of People in Yoyogi Park

It's cherry blossom season here in Japan. During this brief week or two is the only time of the year when the trees will be in full bloom. 

It's traditional to have Hanami parties, basically outdoor picnics underneath the trees. 

It's cool to see the whole cross section of Japanese society out enjoying themselves in the park. The young, the old, foreigners, etc. Every single park in the city seems to be packed with people. 

The scene at some of the parks is fairly subdued. The National Garden at Shinjuku Gyoen is where I'm told all the old people go for their Hanami parties. The scene at Yoyogi park was a much rowdier affair.     

This guy came up to us and invited us to join him and his fellow animal friends for a game up jump rope.

 Along with their kids.

The catch to the game was that if you failed to jump the rope everyone would stop and cheer while you pounded your drink. 

The entire weekend was one continuous party. A DJ put on a show late into the night on Saturday, and by 9am on Sunday people were back at it.

I have to admit the visual of an entire canopy of white trees was quite arresting. The blooming of the Sakura announces the arrival of spring. 

The novelty of the scene and the knowledge that it's fleeting, almost command you to stop, appreciate the moment, and enjoy yourself. 

 Looking forward to the rest of the week and another weekend of Hanami parties in a few days.

The Hong Kong Sevens

She points at a thick man about twenty feet away.

"That man is on the all blacks"

I give her a blank stare

"He just won the world cup"

"I've actually never seen a rugby game in my life"

"You've never seen a rugby match and you came to the Hong Kong Seven's?!"

Fortunately, the HK 7's are only marginally about the rugby.

We're standing outside a bar in Lan Kwai Fong. The open British style pubs that line the narrow streets have all long overflowed with people. Brick roads, small footpaths and stairways wind their way steeply up the hill, each one filled with a continuous, well inebriated crowd. Music pumps out of every open bar. Above us sky scrappers reach upward into the night sky outlined with flashing lights.

I'm forced to use words to describe the scene because my phone, the pictures it contained and a non-trivial piece of my dignity are still in Hong Kong.

It turns out her and the other five women she's with are all doctors from London

Not exactly the type I had pictured when I thought of the people who would be traveling half way around the world for a rugby tournament.

The crew and I had traveled about a 10th of the way from Tokyo. Arriving on Friday evening around 10pm at the hotel we made our way straight to LKF to check out the scene that was already well under way.  The opening day of the three day tournament had concluded a few hours earlier.

Seven's, unlike normal rugby I'm told, consists of shorter matches of seven man teams. Each match consisted of two 10min halves.  Teams from around the world compete through group and elimination stages over the course of three days until one is crowned champion.

But as I said earlier HK 7's is only marginally about the rugby. It turns out the brit doctors were actually fairly representative of the people that come to this event.

I had been mildly anxious that I was walking into testosterone fueled three day sports riot. Instead, the mood was exceedingly cheery. The gender ratio surprisingly well balanced.

We took it easy and got back to the hotel by three am, we had a long day ahead of ourselves tomorrow.

The tradition at the Hong Kong Seven's (and possibly other seven's tournaments?) is to get dressed up in the most ridiculous out of control costume you can think of.

The majority of the people in the stadium were in some costume or another.

The real action was in the South Stands. Essentially a coral for the most committed partiers. There are no assigned seats, everything is open and first come first serve. We arrived at 9am in order to beat the rush to get into this coveted ground. By 11am the line to get in was over two hours long.

In my tuxedo I walk up to one of the 20 or so crew members of the Concordia.

With a grin on his face he asks, "too soon eh?"

"Well I'm a bodyguard for Whitney Houston over there," pointing at my friend wearing a dress and whig.

He laughs.

Depending on your perspective, and probably your degree of family relation to me you might say we over did it a bit

or did it precisely the right amount

Sleeveless tuxedo shirts were a great call. By this guy.

By around 1am I had managed to loose my phone. By that time we were back in LKF with the rest of the jovial crowd.

The next morning I got started a bit later. Not in any hurry to get going again I made my way back to the bar where I thought I lost my phone to see if they found it around.

No luck.

I spent a couple hours on my way back to the stadium just exploring the city a bit and taking a few pictures. Hong Kong has a totally different feel from Tokyo.

Visually Hong Kong is stunning. The dramatic skyscrapers trapped between the mountains and ocean. In Hong Kong you can always look up and see green hills.

The buildings are taller and much newer. 

Hong Kong feels like the future.

Tokyo is retro.

 

The city feels much more westernized. Peoples body language and gestures all felt very familiar.

People acknowledged others and excused themselves with a raise hand, no bowing.

Almost every shop clerk spoke perfect english.

But for all its arresting visuals, I felt Hong Kong lacked some of Tokyo's enigma. 

I took it easy Sunday for the most part as I was planning on heading into our Hong Kong office on Monday to meet some colleagues. 

During an introduction to one brit in the office he mentioned he had heard the American team had done well this year even reached a final.

"Really?" I asked

He laughed.

Oops

Bunruku and Japanese Theatre - Guest post by Christina

God I love the stupid theatre.


Just when I think I can let it go I find myself craving it, like some unfortunate drug addiction. 


Chiang Mai made that apparent. I finally came across one falang (foreigner) theatre group. Hell I missed the theatre so much I would have delivered coffees if they needed. Finally I made contact with a very nice man who informed me they were auditioning for two young female parts. 


Oh my God! 


I am a young female! 


Can you do a British accent? 


I’ll learn one just let me be in your show.


The possibility of working on something really lifted my spirits during a particularly difficult week in Thailand. So, you can imagine when this all fell through I was slightly heart broken. Poor director had to return home to England for health reasons... no one stepped up to take his place. 


I almost considered giving directing a whirl just to be involved. But alas, it was a no go. 


Thailand is a lovely country with picturesque landscapes, an exciting food culture and smiley folks. But as far as acting goes the scene is sparse…unless you count the acting that the young bar girls do to hook their 60 year old balding clients. 


After I decided to leave Thailand in November I chose to make a pit stop in Japan to visit my good friend Matt (Hoov) from university. I hadn’t seen him in forever. It was a fabulous plan, I was excited to see my friend. I was even more delighted when I remembered that Tokyo Disney existed. Then when I realized I could finally see traditional Japanese theatre, I was ecstatic. 


Back in high school our class studied traditional theatre from around the world. I remember finding Japan’s to be the most intriguing. So, naturally I spent an outlandish amount of money to witness this gorgeous art form in action. 


There are four different types of traditional Japanese theatre: Kabuki, Noh, Kyogen and Bunruku. Kabuki is sort of the daddy of the group and the others are sort of the offspring. 


My third night in Tokyo I was out to dinner with a group of few people, I mentioned to one Japanese man I was interested in seeing Bunruku, which is just like Kabuki but with puppets. He ended up going home doing a bunch of research found out there was a performance at the National Theatre while I was in Town and had the info forwarded to me through two people a couple days later.

The puppets of Bunruku theatre are not at all like your standard marionette. These mini people are operated by three puppeteers. One man controls the head and right arm, the second man is in charge of the left and the third man has the lovely job of leg puppetry. Notice I said “man”. Only men are allowed to be involved the Bunruku and as far as I know all traditional Japanese theatre. 

These men are very successful at bringing these puppets to life. So much so that I forgot a few times that I was indeed watching puppets. 


I immediately noticed there was the mini stage set over on the stage left side of the theatre. I learned that this is where the Narrator and the Shamisen (musician) kneel. The Narrator is the only person who makes any vocal noises during the whole production. He voices every single speaking character and manipulates pitch, diction and breath to do so. The Shamisen accompanies him on a three stringed instrument. He plays music that would not be considered pleasing to most Western ears because the distance in pitch between notes is smaller than that of a typical Western scale. 


This dynamic duo is switched out for a new pair for each act. Each new set wearing a spiffy new color of giant shouldered garments. One can imagine why. It seems exhausting to put that amount of effort in for one act, forget two. I was impressed with the vocal agility of the Narrators and their ability to control minimize emotional facial expressions. Not only did they all successfully characterize each puppet, but they did it with impressive projection. Microphones were not used and I could hear each and every sound out of their mouths. 


Of course I couldn’t understand a thing he said. Fortunately an ear piece translator was provided. 


My only previous exposure to puppeteers was Avenue Q where they are actors moving puppets. In Bunruku, they are not. The puppeteers are strictly mechanical engineers and do not in any way express emotion. That is the sole the responsibility of the Narrator. 


The puppeteers move in rehearsed harmony with each other to execute the specific stylized movements of each stock character. For example, female charcters, for the most part, move using small ineffectual steps. The male characters walk using varying degrees of giant, emphasized and purposeful steps. The more important the character or the higher their status, the more stylized the steps seemed to become. 


Much like commedia dell’arte, Bunruku uses stock puppet heads. The head for a young attractive female should look a certain way just as the head for an old warrior should have specific features. I observed that the whiter one’s face appeared, the more desirable they were to other characters. So naturally an antagonist can have a red face. I can appreciate this symbolism. I think it makes understanding for a modern audience much simpler. 


One aspect of the performance that felt awkward from a western perspective was, if there is a conversation or action we are supposed to focus on, the other action surrounding this halts until it finishes. I remember one scene in particular where a general from an army came to capture the leading male character. One would think this scene would have a sense of urgency. No. the general patiently waited for about 20 minutes while the leading male spoke to his wife about various events of the day. This was consistent with the pace of my entire experience. Now I know I was only listening to a translation but seriously this seemed like the most inefficient story telling ever. Things were repeated and explained with way more words than necessary. Take this, of course, with a grain of salt because my goodness we know how things can get lost in translation. 


I loved watching this art form. This was my ideal way to learn about a culture. The recreation and dramatization of traditional life in Japan is a wonderful commentary on what life was like and how it has developed. There was talk of clothing, food, battles, social norms, historic events, geography and interpersonal relationships. A wonderful introduction to an intriguing country.


By Christina Corsaro

On Skiing in Japan

As far as I know this says foreigners only.

自己責任(jikosekinin)- One's own responsibility, at your own risk

My Japanese Tutor, who happened to live in the US for several years, taught me the above word as I was trying to explain that in the US many ski resorts don't have any boundaries, areas off the main trails are simply identified as ski at your own risk.

Her response was, "this is a very western way of thinking"

Indeed.

Skiing and snowboarding is quite popular in Japan. According to some online sources Japan has more ski resorts then in the United States, although I would guess in the US particularly in the west the average ski resort is much larger.

I haven't been able to find any statistics on the number of people who go skiing each year in Japan or the US, but my intuition tells me that it's quite possible that more people go skiing every year in Japan than in the entire US. 

Japan has about one half the population of the US, but it is packed onto a densely populated mountainous island about the size of California. Dry, cold, Siberian air sucks up water from the sea before it slams into the mountains of Japan's northern island Hokkaido 北海道 and Honshu's western prefectures, ensuring these mountains are blanketed with some of the most consistent heavy snowfall found in the world. 

Japan's small size and fast, efficient transportation infrastructure means virtually the entire population is located within about two hours of hundreds of ski resorts. By contrast most of the major population centers in the US are not located within day trip distance to anything larger then a medium size hill. Chicago and the other major cities of the mid west, Texas, the south, DC. Even New York City requires many hours of driving/sitting in traffic to reach a ski resort.

The greater Tokyo area is home to 35 million people, about one quarter of the population of Japan. By bus or by train residents inclined to go skiing have hundreds of options well within range of a day or weekend trip. Cheap package deals including transportation, lift tickets and rentals can be found and further discounts for large groups negotiated. 

Anecdotally, I can report that on the weekends the major transport hubs of Shinjuku and Ikebukuro are bustling staging areas for alpine excursions. Thousands of Tokyoites lugging around gear finding their way to one of the many buses cued up along the street among the tall towers of the skyscraper district. 

Girls wearing high heals and skirts (yes in January) can be seen toting snowboard bags while simultaneously texting on their phones. 

After trying out six different mountains, I'm prepared to make a couple generalizations about ski resorts in Japan

First, Japanese ski resorts seem to take more responsibility for making sure skiers aren't placed in any danger relative to their western counterparts. 

In the 1980s technological developments allowed experienced skiers to navigate much more difficult terrain safely. To capitalize on these developments resorts introduced and heavily marketed the double black diamond trail rating. As I mentioned above, mountains like Jackson Hole in WY, opened up all of their terrain. 

In contrast here I've run into perfectly covered trails that were closed for no discernable reason (they hadn't been groomed yet perhaps?)

I took this picture of a closed trail on Iwatake in Hakuba. Large wide natural half-pipe with good snow cover. There were maybe a couple of lines down when we decided to check it out after lunch - I would bet from the Australian crew I met out of bounds that morning. 

We ducked under the line right infront of the lift operator are were treated to a great run in about foot deep powder. We proceeded to do about 5 more laps, eventually other people started joining us ducking under the line. 

The bigger issue is that despite huge mountains and great snow the trail designers of every mountain I've been to with the exception of Happo-one, seem to have gone out of their way to make them as bland and predictable as possible. Even the expert trails are just a bit steeper with bumps. You rarely see any kind of narrow chutes, drop offs, or glades. I haven't seen any double blacks. 

The lack of glades runs seems especially bizarre because virtually all of the trees are perfectly spaced without them having to do anything! Japan being the densely populated resource strapped island that it is, I think logged many of the forests covering the mountains maybe a couple hundred years ago so the resulting young forest isn't nearly as dense and perfect for skiing. In some cases the resort could just draw a line on a map and they would have a glade run.

Here are some thin alpine trees from Ryuo

This leads me to my grand theory about Japanese ski resorts. 

The primary consideration of most Japanese ski resorts is the visual aesthetic experience of skiing, not the variety of technically interesting terrain. 

The feasibility of putting in a beginner trail at high altitude with good exposure to scenes of stunning alpine beauty seems to be the primary characteristic determining the location of ski resorts in Japan.

I get the feeling that a bunch of Japanese mountaineers went to Europe back in the day and skied along those wide glaciers perched high in the Alps, and thought "Ah this is skiing we must recreate this in Japan."

The reason I think this aesthetic goal is the primary goal and not simply a byproduct is that often times it conflicts with making the mountain 

I found the most clear example of this at Ryuo, which features a lower and upper beginner areas. The upper area can be reached via tram. There is no expert terrain at the upper area. However the only way down from the upper area are two expert trails - one of which was open in the morning the other in the afternoon, go figure.

The mountain seems deliberately designed so that inexperienced skiers can get to ski at higher altitudes with better views, regardless of whether or not they could actually get down (most beginners seemed to be taking the tram down). 

Although it has to be said, the view was good.

Here Tsugaike 

Iwatake

Mountains with 1000-1500m vertical drops will have only two wide avenue trails to get down.

For skiers with no reservations about ducking under rope lines and shimmying around fences however this is almost the perfect situation. The best and most varied terrain of every mountain is always virtually untouched. You can find fresh tracks at any time of day.

Unlike say skiing in New England, which heading off piste can quickly turn into a bushwhacking adventure the trees in Japan are better spaced then many glade runs in North America. Personally I  prefer to explore the terrain on my own in just this fashion.

Japan the Math Part 2 - Womenomics

In my last post on Japan demographics I mentioned Japan's relatively low female labor force participation rate.

Fortunately there are people out there who know a lot more about this then I do. Here's Kathy Matsui doing the math and educatin foos.



Hat tip to Japan Subculture blog

Meiji Shrine at New Years

So in Japan New Years is kind of a big deal. I mean New Year's eve is a pretty big deal everywhere, but it's an especially big deal in Japan. From Dec 30th to Jan 3rd are national holidays, which most Japanese spend with their families.

One tradition is to visit a Shrine during the first couple days of the new year to pray for a good year. The Meiji Shrine in Yoyogi park is one of the most popular, about 2million visit the shrine during the New Years holiday. As the Shrine is right near my apartment I decided to go and welcome the new year in traditional Japanese style.

Here's the arch at the main entrence to the section of the park containing the shrine. Already there's quite a bit of a crowd.

Inside the arch there's a fairly long, wide path to the shrine.

Wine gifted from France to the Emperor of Japan

Here's where the line started in earnest. The screen infront you see played instructions to the crowd as well as commercials! 

Once I rounded the corner I could see the shrine, and the mass of people standing between me and it. 

Almost there!

In order to regulate the flow of people into the temple they had these policeman holding stop/go flip signs.

After about 45min I finally made it inside.

Show time. Everyone would walk up to this low barricade toss some coins and say a quick prayer. 

Outside there were all sorts of charms for sale. You could also get your fortune for the new year.