A Week Goes By.

Tokyo orientation’s last full day was more of the same; interesting workshops (though less useful than Monday's) and interesting conversation with people I wouldn’t see again. We meet with our prefectures, and they promised to send us to Sapporo in the morning on a Pokemon plane with a Pokemon interior. YES. Unfortunately, the Pokemon plane never actually happened!! I did see it though I wasn’t lucky enough to ride in it. It’s kind of amazing to me how Pokemon started so much earlier here than the U.S. and somehow it's still alive and kicking in Japan today.

For my last night in Tokyo, we skipped dinner to take the train to Odaiba, the area in Tokyo that was made artificially by dumping tons and tons of earth into the ocean. I’d been planning to get there somehow, but one of the doods I’d been hanging out with invited me along with his friends so it made things easy. We hopped on a few trains and the humidity almost killed me. I’m so glad I’m going to be living in the North.

The gundam was AWESOME. Full scale, surrounded by a practical festival and throngs of people, with head and lights synced to music. LOLS. I’m glad I went, just disappointed there aren’t better pictures of me with it. You had to wait in a really long line to go touch it.

I returned to my room for a while, and eventually I was so hungry that I went to wander the hotel looking to make change for a 10,000 yen bill (~$100). As it turns out, pretty much anywhere takes large amounts of cash because Japan is a cash culture. In this process, I did not find food, but I did find a girl who’d gone with me to see the gundam, and together we followed a group of boys to Tokyo’s Nichoume. More on that later! It quite a late night after that!

Homosexuality and Japan

On my last night in Tokyo, I was lucky enough to be invited along to find Tokyo's Nichoume neighborhood, which is essentially the "gay part of town." I was tired and starving and it was late, but I really wanted to see it!

I'd read on another ALT's blog that Japan still holds homosexuality at arm's length because it strays from the "social norm," but it doesn't have the prescribed hate for it that some parts of America have on account of the Christian foundation in the U.S. I'm told that there's all sorts of interesting sociological essays on the topic, but I haven't read any of them.

Initially, one of the girls I'd gone with to see the gundam and I were following a group of boys headed to a specific gay bar called "Dragon" in English. I had an interesting conversation with a particularly flamboyant guy who said he was always amused in Japan because people in the U.S. always took one look at him and instantly knew he was gay, whereas all the times he'd been to Japan, no one had any idea because their culture is so different from ours. I've been told that overall Japanese high school boys actually do a lot of experimentation with gender expression, which is pretty cool. They have no problem hanging all over each other and showing affection and being cutesy (which isn't surprising, what with the universal affinity for cuteness in Japan). My predecessor said that during English camp it was totally acceptable when one of the boys wore the bonnet from a maid costume for the entire weekend and nobody thought it was strange. I guess when they grow up though, they turn into the stifled businessmen we think of stereotypically. As far girls, I've heard nothing, but that's not surprising that their embrace of cuteness is acceptable life long. As far as lesbian culture, I also know nothing.

Nichoumei, as it was, is quite reminiscent of our gay bar districts in the states, with playful names for the clubs like, "Pink Kiss," "MAN-soon" (get it, monsoon?), "Dragon," "Queen," and so on. We got a few funny looks, seeing as it's not a place foreigners often go, especially women (it's mostly men's bars, though there are a few lesbian bars too). One man stopped every 5 feet to stare at us in bewilderment. We found Dragon and it had a charming interior with a beautiful mixed-media dragon with glowing eyes slithering across the ceiling, and what I'm going to call a "penis butterfly" painted on the wall, flying its way through a fairyland drawn in glow-in-the-dark paint.

By then I was really starving, so we went to a conbini (convenience store) to pick up a bentou (boxed lunch). It was really fun sitting on the street corner having a picnic. I think the locals got a kick out of seeing me do that, too. Unfortunately, I didn't chose my bentou wisely and got a bentou with all fried foods and a "melon milk" drink, which made me pretty sick because in the ingredient list I mistook the word for "corn syrup" as the word for "grape juice." So I thought I was getting something healthy, but really I was getting a sugar typhoon stomach ache...

I'm really glad I went, not only because I was able to take a picture with the Japanese Harry Potter movie poster on the way and a stuffed llama vending machine, but because I got to see a little bit of international gay pride. Granted, Tokyo is a metropolitan city, so it may not be like that all over Japan, but just like in the States, gay people are people too.

Impressions

The next morning I flew into Sapporo where one by one they gave us away to our supervisors. Mine is a very hip man (faux hawk, FTW!), maybe in his 30s. I'll call him K-sen because that's a nickname I feel is cool enough and it's what I call him in text messages to my predecessor lol. He speaks the carefullest of dainty English and is very composed. He doesn't have a lot of English practice, but he's still better than almost every other nonnative speaker I've met here. I like him a lot. Lunch and the long car ride was awkward. I think we were both shy, but he's a good guy so I'm optimistic that we'll have a good relationship as we get to know each other.

He took me to the school straight away so I could look around, meet my predecessor, and go home. As we pulled into town I was a little disappointed because it was foggy and dismal, so I couldn't see the ocean (apparently, the ocean and a mountain are normally visible). Initially, all I saw were car repair garages and grey, which is odd because as far as cars go, there isn't a single old one on the street anywhere in Japan.

The school itself was large and also looked a little bit in disrepair. I was getting the impression that most of the city was old, but not in the "it's so old it's beautiful" way, more like "these things were all put up in a rush during the 60s and haven't been touched since." The layout was also very confusing.

Unfortunately, they could not get a hold of my predecessor and she was out of town, so they took me around a bit and I waited in the office for a longer bit as I browsed through the textbooks I'd be using. I met two more of the teachers, Mick-sensei and One-sensei. Immediately I noticed Mick-sensei sounded something like a cowboy and while I wondered why I was a little too nervous to think about it. They made cheery casual conversation with me, unlike the more reserved K-sen. They seemed to have a good rapport with each other and they had a lot of words to say about my predecessor's disappearance.

Suddenly Mick-sensei announced that since we couldn't get into the apartment, he'd call his wife and tell her to prepare another plate for dinner because I'd be spending the night with them. aaaaaaaaaahh! I'd been in a suit all day, living out of a suitcase for almost a week, and jet lagged, now on my first night in Japan I needed to stay over in a Japanese house with no prep on Japanese visitor etiquette?? STRESS.