Snowboarding

A good friend of mine once said that the cold is awful, but at least there’s winter sports. In other words, to survive it, embrace it. With this in mind I eagerly accepted an invitation to go snowboarding for the first time. 

If this uncoordinated fool can snowboard, you can too!



And eager doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. I’ve always been one to get overly excited. The night before catching a plane, or even the first day of school, I can hardly sleep. I wake every a few hours only to find that alas, it’s not yet time to make coffee.

The anticipation of snowboarding definitely fell on my excited spectrum. I went to bed at ten; we were to meet at seven am, and I had to get my rest! I woke a few times and always fell back into restless dreams of snowboarding in Colorado with my brother (an event that’s never happened). I had gotten out of bed, eaten coffee and drunk my breakfast by 6:15, only to realize that 6:15 is too early for even me to eat anything. Undeterred, I fixed my wife a cup of coffee and lured her out of bed. I spent the next ten minutes dressing and undressing (though I’d already laid out my clothes the night before) polishing my goggles, and going over what little I knew about snowboarding from youtube. 

Raquel finally came downstairs and drove me to McDonald’s. I bid her farewell in the parking lot and proceeded to chatter inanely to Steve while he drove us up a mountain through his hangover.

We found the slopes nearly deserted. There were maybe 5 other people braving the early morning cold. Excellent I thought, no one to embarrass myself in front of.  We marched into the ski lodge and I demanded the largest boots they had. They fit- barely, and with a nod and a Daijobu to my instructor, I was ready.

Fukushima-san was always encouraging.

A note on my instructor. Steve introduced him as “Fukushima, like the nuclear meltdown.” Fukushima-san had patient eyes, and just a touch of gray hair that poked out from his ski cap. His snowboard though, was what held my attention. It was hardly wider than a ski, as tall as he was, and black as obsidian. It looked like a super villain’s snowboard, or perhaps something made to surf the rings of Saturn. I looked at my own fat red rental with relief. His board gave me motion sickness just looking at it.

We went to face the mountain.

“Skate?” Fukushima-san asked me and I tried to mumble an excuse that would both make my soon to be obvious lack of snowboarding skills understandable yet explain why I was willing to go snowboarding when most people were still asleep under electric blankets.

I went with, “not really for a while… er… ever.”

It seemed to have the desired effect because he showed me how to strap in my boots, and pushed off across the flats, using one leg to propel him every few meters, then balancing on his board until he slowed down. I looked at Steve and tried to explain myself but he just laughed, “Yeah I hate this shit.” He skated away on his board with a bit less grace than Fukushima-san.

I half-slid, half stumbled after them, and was relieved to find that unlike skateboarding, snowboards can’t shoot out from under you and roll off into a busy street, instead they bring you down with them. But the snow was soft, and after a few slips I was at the bottom of a shallow hill. Fukushima-san was already at the top, Steve was tromping up after him, using the edge of his board to dig into the slope. I followed, already breathing heavy, yet when I got to the top, my heart truly began to race.

They had brought me to the ski lift.

 

This can’t be right! Where’s the bunny slope?



“This is the bunny slope,” Steve said and shuffled after Fukushima-san who’d already boarded a lift and was rising up the mountain into the growing blizzard.

I stumbled after Steve and managed to get next to him before the ski lift hit me in the butt and I crashed down next to Steve.

“Careful to lift the nose of your board up. If it gets caught you’ll get sucked off the lift and bust your ass.”

I lifted the nose of my board up.

After a frightening five minute ride, we disembarked and I tried not to get smashed by the ski lift. The whole day nothing was more difficult than getting on and off that cursed ski lift. It’s the adult version of those rotating gates at swimming pools that kids can exit through but not enter. I kept imaging myself twisted and mangled, hanging from the wires, my blood forming red icicles, and going up and down the bunny slope for a frozen eternity. 

By the time I shuffled over to the top of the hill, I was actually ready to snowboard. Anything seemed better than that damn ski lift. 



I kept my board perpendicular to the slope and slowly eased forward off the edge, and, just like that I was snowboarding! I coasted maybe 20 meters before plopping on my ass. This was fun! And just by slightly adjusting the angle I could go faster! Why didn’t anyone tell me how easy this was? Steve boarded up next to me and offered a pat on the back, and Fukushima came over and gave me an encouraging thumbs up. I noticed he still hadn’t strapped his one of his feet into his board, though.  

I pointed the nose of my board down the hill and WHOOSH! Away I went. Faster and faster I plummeted, only to realize that I didn’t really know how to stop. In an effort to not create a sonic boom and cause an avalanche I turned my board perpendicular to the mountain and….

YEEEAAAARRRRHH!! I tumbled head over heels down the mountainside. Eventually coming to a rest within earshot of Steve laughing maniacally. Fukushima-san boarded over, still with only one foot strapped in, and said only, “slower, like a falling leaf!” and thus I was a snowboarder.

We went down the bunny slope again and again. I learned to dig my heels in to brake, to cruise back and forth across the width of the slope to keep my speed down and to always, ALWAYS fall on my butt and not on my face. We even tried the course on the other side of the ski lift, and though terrifying, I managed to bridge the thick powder, avoid the ski lift poles, and get back to main course without hurting myself too bad. I was a natural! I was born to do this! Not since Tonyhawk’s Proskater had I found a sport that suited me so well! Sure, the ski lift still terrified me, children were skiing circles around me, and I could only ride on the backside of the snowboard and never the dreaded frontside, but that would all come in another fifteen minutes!

I was so sure of my natural aptitude that when Steve suggested we go to the higher (aka highest) slope I didn’t protest, not even when Fukushima-san looked at Steve then back to me and said, “crazy,” did I protest. I knew how to stop, how bad could it be?

The much taller and more terrifying slope,
complete with slalom course.

Ten minutes on a nearly abandoned ski lift and I was quaking in my ski boots. I had just seen a snowboarder plunge off the top of the hill and vanish. Like, literally. One second, he was there, real as the cold, then he pushed off and was gone. He reappeared seconds later, a tiny blur at the bottom of a long steep hill.

Fukushima-san gave me a thumbs up and I asked to see him go first. Mistake. He vanished just like the last guy, to appear as an even faster blur even farther down the mountain.
That obsidian board of his was really something. I was beginning to wonder if I could put sandpaper on mine.

But with a nod from Steve I plunged onto the course. Well, maybe not plunged. More like kept the back of my board dug into the thick snow, and slowly slid down the mountain. We’re talking glacial speeds. Not my finest moment. People skied past, a lot of people. Hey at least I was giving the pros an obstacle. But the hill started to flatten out, my confidence returned, and away I went, not really trying to keep up with the blur that was Fukushima-san, but at least staying close enough to be seen if I crashed.

We came to an even smaller and more precarious ski lift than the last, and rode it back to the top of the insane slope. This time I accepted that I would go down the mountain slower than thawing snow and actually enjoyed myself.  Steve and I traded places as we boarded in and out of each other’s paths, Fukushima-san raced through a thick layer of fresh powder and I followed, then pulled ahead, eager to impress my teacher, only to discover that snowboarding through thick fresh powder looks way cooler than it actually is.

I crashed, and found the snow had molded itself perfectly to my body. Try as I might, I couldn’t get up. I looked up to find I’d crashed directly under the ski lift, and people were either awkwardly avoiding looking at me (in japan, sometimes I can taste the awkward) or just laughing their ass off at the giant westerner who’d stuck himself in the snow. I struggled and thrashed but could not move. I’d push myself into a sitting position, only to have the snow collapse and engulf me yet again. Fukushima-san couldn’t stop laughing and Steve was demanding I give him my phone to take a picture. I should’ve, but I didn’t see how I could possibly reach it without sinking deeper. Finally Steve offered me a corner of his board, I unlatched a boot from my own board, and pushed off Steve to half-crawl, half-drag myself free of the snow. I was steaming with sweat, my glasses were fogged, my breathing labored. Fukushima-san and Steve queued up for the lift, and I shook my head.

I couldn’t do it.

Steve nodded and told Fukushima-san they’d do a few more runs than meet me back at the lodge. I nodded, pretending I understood the Japanese and not just Steve’s look of pity when I asked the way back.

Fukushima-san pointed to a narrow path before me that zigzagged through the woods.

It would have been beautiful if I wasn’t so exhausted and terrified I’d find myself in another snow drift. The path was almost empty, and had gentle slopes that connected flat stretches of fresh snow. I boarded back and forth, my thighs burning, stopping at the beginning of each slope so I wouldn’t have to skate through the flats. Old men skied past with their grandchildren. Snowboarding babes tried not to giggle while they asked if I was alright. I’d nod and give ‘em all a daijobu and push on.



Thus, I was a snowboarder.

I finally found my way back to the lodge, unstrapped my board and drank some Sports Sweat, as the athletes do here in Japan. Steve and Fukushima-san showed up a while later and we feasted on ramen and hot coffee from a vending machine before trying to bunny slope a final time. 


I managed to make it down with only falling twice, a personal best, but the second time I fell forward so hard my head spun, and when Steve told me he didn’t usually like to go back out after lunch I nodded weakly, blamed the early afternoon crowds for compacting the snow and making it more difficult, and bowed my thanks to Fukushima-san. 


 

He told me to call him if I ever want to go snowboarding again. Kind words, I thought, until I remembered how hard he’d laughed when I was stuck in the snow. Anything to break up the monotony of winter I suppose, and nothing warms the heart like laughter. 
  
 J. Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama Japan with his darling wife, and is waiting for the snow to melt. If you enjoyed this post check out the rest of what he did in January!  

Sumo

A Shinto pavilion hangs in the air above a ring of straw, buried in 2 feet of clay. Two hulking men, wearing only silk mawashi beat their chests and hurl salt in the air. Another man, dressed in an elaborate silk robe armed with a sword and fan waits for the men to lunge at eachother, and for a fingernail or a follicle of hair to hit the sand.  

According to the pamphlet I purchased, the Japanese people wouldn’t exist if not for Sumo. The Japanese won their island when the god Takemikazuchi bested another rival tribe’s leader. Legends aside, Sumo dates back 1500 years. Sumo is the oldest unchanged sport in the world, rivaled only by another of my favorites, the Highland Games. The Superbowl hasn’t even around for 50. Shit the Olympics have only been around since 1896, and they’re always changing the events. Sumo wrestling has more history than most governments. Sumo has changed its rules less than most religions. Nearly every breed of dog, cow, and chicken have existed for less time than Sumo wrestling.

So, steeped in history, I arrived at the Sumo Tournament in Nagoya in awe.

The tournament was inside an air-conditioned stadium, so maybe it’s changed a teensy bit. We arrived early to find skinny rikishi grappling in the ring. These weren’t those goliaths you know from tattoos and the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon, these were skinny dads and fat college drop outs who just loved to wrestle. They didn’t throw any salt or stomp around the ring. Their referee wasn’t even allowed to wear shoes. These were the up and comers and the old timers who either never made it big or joined too late to have time to build the physique of a master rikishi, the yokozuna.

There have only been 71 yokozuna, or Sumo masters since the title was created, sometime before 1749. The title of yokozuna, is older than the office of the president of the United States (The history of Japan never ceases to amaze me). Since 1909, the only way to become a yokozuna is to win two tournaments back to back. A difficult task made nearly impossible by the other prizes rikishi vie for. Rikishi can earn another title, sort of like streak-breaker, if they beat the last guy who won and the current yokozuna. So not only does the rikishi have to win one tournament, he has to win the next, with 41 boulders of muscle trying to throw him to the ground. But once a rikishi becomes a yokozuna, nothing can take that title from him. If he begins to lose, he is expected to retire from Sumo.

Currently there are 3 yokozuna. So we’re in a golden age of Sumo, at least that’s what Ko said, the man who sat down next to us with his wife and son. He vanished after a moment and reappeared with three skewers of tender chicken. One for his family, two for me and my wife.

“Do you like chicken?” he said in American sounding English.

“I do like chicken,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the ring. The big guys were coming in, the Makuuchi, the 42 rikishi who are currently the very best Sumo wrestlers in the world.

“Ah,” Ko pushed the skewers of meat towards us. We did what we thought was polite, and took one to share. It was delicious. Tender, sweet and salty. Think the best teriyaki you’ve ever had. I wasn’t missing nachos just then.

Ko was confused. He stared at the uneaten yakitori, then at me. I looked at him, then the chicken. Tensions rose. I’m not eating that! I thought. Ko looked from the chicken back to me. That’s for your family!  I looked from Ko’s eyes to chicken. Eat, EAT DAMN YOU! Ko finally ate the skewer. Thank god. We’d stuffed ourselves at the train station earlier. Still, we’d made enough eye contact to last a life time in Japan, so we were fast friends.

“So… do you like Sumo?” I asked.

Ko’s grin was so big it spread off his face, “Yes, you could say I like Sumo…” he proceeded to tell me if its history, its strongest players, the current up and comers, home town favorites, as well as which wrestlers he didn’t care for and why. He’d studied English in Chicago for three years and I’m pretty sure he bought us that yakitori so he could talk about Sumo and practice English at the same time.

The crowd cheered and we looked up from our beers.

“Eh… that’s Endo. He’s a crowd favorite, but I like Tochinowaka,” Ko said.

“Why’s Endo the favorite?”

Ko tried to explain that he’d joined the sport late in life, after college, and was pursuing his dream at all costs, something the Japanese truly admire, but his wife cut him short. “He’s handsome,” she said with a smile, and went back to watching the match. Ko lost his wind. She must have been right. Endo won and the crowd went wild. Yay for pretty people not figuring their life out right away!

I pulled out my camera and asked if Ko knew this wrestler was.

 

“Oh yes, that’s Osunaarashi. He’s is the first Arabian Makuuchi.”

I had been taking pictures of the Makuuchi entering the stadium. They were stoic, unstoppable forces. I got the sense that if a puppy fell in front of them they’d rather it crush it than break stride. Osunaarashi was different. Like a scene out of a bad movie, a woman dropped her handkerchief, and with a smile and the flick of his wrist Osunaarashi returned it with a slight bow. That was very un-Japanese of him. He outranked everyone there except for the yokozuna.

“He’s only twenty-two, but has already defeated a yokozuna this tournament, he has real potential, but needs to refine his skill.”

Alright! He was a lover and a fighter.

Raquel had her sights on another. She came back from the gift shop with a towel of her favorite rikishi, the yokozuna, Hokuho.

“Why did you get that?” I asked, already offended she wasn’t supporting my boy Osunaarashi,

“Because I asked the vendor who was the best, and she said. Hokuko. Hokuho Ichiban! Hokuho number one!”

I admitted that was a compelling argument. Still I had my loyalties.

The tournament continued, the matches nonstop. At one point I met Santa Claus. He was there to get on TV. Turns out he’s British, lives in Japan, is a drinker and avid youtuber, and said I should start a channel.

“You’re good-looking. You could be popular.” I guess that means I’m on the nice list. When I told him I had a beautiful Latin wife his jaw hit the floor.

“She should have a channel. You both should be telling everyone what its like to be here!  You even have the multicultural angle.” Thanks Santa. Advice taken.

Soon only two matches were left. Raquel and I screamed like banshees.

Osunaarash was up against the yokozuna Harumafuji. They entered the ring and stamped about, pausing only to slap their chests and glare at eachother. The first five minutes of any of the Makuuchi matches are spent displaying strength and intimidating the other rikishi. Osunaarashi knew his stuff. His leg lifts were high, his chest slaps painful. Harumafuji had a better salt toss, but Osunaarashi’s didn’t look half bad. They each ran to their corners and wiped themselves down. It was time.

The match begun and was over before I could blink. Harumafuji started with a powerful lunge but my boy was ready, and deftly stepped aside and pushed Harumafuji to the ground.

VICTORY!

Only Hokuho remained. Raquel screamed until her voice was horse. The only person more excited for the bout was the six year old girl behind us.

“Hokuho!” they both yelled. “Hokuho!”

The yokozuna didn’t disappoint. He easily outmaneuvered Kaisei and had him down in the sand in seconds. It was a great night. We walked through Nagoya back to our hotel, having more fun than I thought possible at a sporting event, and we even go to take a rikishi home. Though I don’t like the idea of him touching Raquel when she gets out of shower.

Learn to speak Australian! (very EXPLICIT)

CAUTION: This post has Australians in it, so there is gratuitous use of the word cunt. Sensitive cunts are advised to tune out.   

Our first few hours in Nagoya were spent driving around in a sweltering car listening to our GPS yell Japanese instructions on how to get to Immigration. Somehow, we found the place, and got our residency cards.

Yay! We get to stay. Time to celebrate.  

We arrived at the hotel ravenous and headed out in search of food without showers. Bad idea. We found a restaurant in a basement and were served dumplings by the Chinese chef’s children, who were raised in Japan and spoke English. Energized by the globalism of the experience, we pressed on.

My wife wanted to go shoe shopping, and after 2 days of festival drinking, I was obliged to go with her. She thinks the women’s fashion in Japan is lame except the shoes. “It’s all tan and pastel pink, but the shoes are boss.” Unfortunately she was a half an inch too big for every pair of shoes she found. She doesn’t even have big feet. She’d squeeze into some sweet spiky platforms, stand and pout. Too tight. Eventually Raquel’s stench overwhelmed her and the salt flats growing on my shirt betrayed my misery, so we went back to the hotel.

We showered, napped, and went out to a bar called the Elephant’s Nest after hitting up the arcade next door.

The Elephant’s nest wasn’t very crowded, so we sat a table next to a group of gaijin. We caught them glancing at us, and not knowing how else to make friends, we glanced back. After a few sips of beer they asked us to help settle a bet. They wanted to know where we were from. “America?” We nodded. Their friend lost the bet, but he left before buying the next round. “Where do you think we’re from?” the two remaining gaijin asked, sidling closer.

“England?” I guessed.

“England? Do we sound like a couple of English cunts to you?”

That makes two times we have switched the Aussies and the Brits. They both hate it. We kind of love pissing them off. 

They guessed what part of America we called home by asking what kind of food we liked.

“Cheese steak?”

No.

“Pizza?”

Uh-uh.

“Bar-B-Q?”

Bingo!

“Texas! You cunts are from Texas? We fucking love Texas! You cunts like the Rangers yeah?”

We pretended to care about baseball but the charade quickly fell apart.

“So you’re saying this cunt here’s been to more baseball games than you?”

We nodded, but explained that we were going to the Sumo tournament the next day, so it’s not like we didn’t like sports or anything. They were going too, and that somehow convinced them we were sports aficionados “Oh yeah, what sports do you like? Rugby?” No. “Cricket?” Nope. “You cunts would love cricket!” They showed us videos of glove-less catches while I tried to think of something else to talk about.

The beers set in and we talked of travel tips to our homelands, of kangaroo steak and the beauty of Sydney, of the pros and cons of 6^th street and the Bar-B-Q hierarchy in Austin. They explained the rankings of cunts in Australia (Good and bad cunts are both good, as is sick cunt, in fact cunt is a compliment unless you’re called the dreaded annoying cunt). The conversation only grew heated when it turned to the metric system.

I agreed with them mostly, the metric system is superior in a lot of ways. I mean, who really knows how many feet are in a mile? What’s the relationship between gallons and tablespoons? Why are their two kinds of ounces? But I would not budge on my love of the Fahrenheit scale. Fine, use Celsius for science, but for the weather, Fahrenheit is ideal. Each degree of the Celsius scale covers too much sweat. Fahrenheit is more precise. Why does Celsius use negative temperatures when it regularly gets that cold? Zero degrees in Farenheit means you’ll lose a toe, plain and simple. And why only use numbers up to 45? In Fahrenheit, if its triple digits, you know it’s damn hot or you need to go to the doctor. The Aussies didn’t agree.

“In Celsius it’s hot if it’s over 30.”

“But that’s not really that hot.”

“Yeah but in Celsius 30 degrees is 30% of the temperature of the water boiling on your stove.”
Right because that’s what I compare shorts-weather to: a pot of soup.

“Why bother have days that are negative?”

“Well we got a right smart cunt here don’t we?” One Aussie asked the other.

They tried to talk to us about politics. It’s mandatory to vote in Australia, so it’s probably mandatory to talk about politics, but I deftly changed the subject.

“Whoa is this 1-Direction?”

“This cunt likes 1-Direction! You fucking cunt, you!”

We all laughed and finished our beers and agreed to visit each other’s countries once we got home. We hoped to meet again at the Sumo match, but being sports fans, they had much better seats than us, and we didn't see them again.

“I can’t believe these American cunts are going to’ve seen more Sumo matches than Baseball games.”

 

Yup. That’s me. The American cunt at the Sumo Tournament.

Joe Darris lives in Japan with his darling wife. Normally he lives in Takayama, but sometimes the schools close down for a week to give the teachers a break, and he gets to travel. If you enjoyed this story, please +1, and share with any Aussies you know. SUBSCRIBE if you want more!

Tune in Thursday to hear about the Sumo match that almost ended our marriage!

Gion Festival: Eating, Drinking, Collecting

Kyoto holds a false glamor. It’s a tourist town, filled with expensive cameras, sweaty foreigners, and overpriced souvenirs. I’m sure this is unfair, but that’s what I experienced. Kyoto’s power emerges, like a cicada from its mystical slumber, during the festivals.

During the day, Raquel and I went sightseeing like the tourists we were. We saw the Golden Pavilion overrun by Germans and hiked across the city to find Kiyomizudera Temple covered in tarps. The only thing I really liked was Inari Shrine.

Inari Shrine is home to more Torii Gates than any other place in Japan. There’s thousands of them, each paid for by someone (corporations included) eager to appease the gods. It might sound hokey, but I like it. Millions of dollars are spent to be part of this place’s power, and you can feel it. It’s not just me either, more people were praying at Inari than anywhere else I’ve been in Japan.

Walking up the mountain path, through the gates, is glorious. Tourists huddle here and there, and they add to the magic of the place. Because of their presence, you truly notice the moments when you round a bend and find no one. No family. No Germans. No National Geographic Photographers. All of a sudden you’re alone, with 1000 Torii Gates to yourself. When this happened to us, we’d do what any good tourists would do, I waxed philosophic about the timelessness and beauty and blah blah blah while Raquel shamelessly shot videos on her phone.

The real fun of Kyoto comes out at the festivals.

Raquel was eager for street food and I was excited to buy tallboys of Asahi “The Extra” and drink them on the street.

Crowds overflowed the Gion festival. People of all ages were dressed in Kimonos: beautiful couples, young women with exquisite hair and self-conscious men with that special look of pride and foolishness that only comes when a man knows he’s doing something to get laid. There were respectable older women taking pictures of floats, single twenty-somethings preening around for other single twenty-somethings, grandiose old men, adorable children and more beautiful women. There were so many people that one point that crowd simply stopped moving, completely, for 3 long minutes. No one seemed to know why, but we were all glad to escape the crush.

Everyone was there to see the floats. The floats are astounding. They tower over the crowds, decked in lights. Each is unique, hundreds of years old and home to the Kami, Japanese deities somewhere between a God and a spirit. Each float had a stamp, and for the low low price of 100 yen, I too could have a stamp in my notebook! This confirmed my suspicion that collecting is a deep rooted part of the Japanese psyche. Figurines, pokemon, stamps of the Kami, they collect it all. I, a former pokemaster, queued up with the locals. I got seven stamps before I got too drunk to continue, and I’m damn proud of that entire statement.

Meanwhile, Raquel was hunting for food. We bought ayu earlier (read more) but we also ate stir-fried noodles, crepe on a stick, tentacle on a stick, meat on a stick, and Raquel’s favorite,cucumber on a stick. It was lightly salted and served ice cold. She was in heaven.  

 

Other entertainment of the night included catching fish with paper nets, a task as impossible as it sounds. I am a pet addict, and could not pass up the opportunity. Drunk, I mangled my paper net in seconds. I resorted to dunking my bowl into the kiddie pool of dying fish. Victorious, the carnie (do you call them carnies in Japan?) bagged my catch and sent me on my way.

Raquel was not happy.

“What are you going to do with those stupid fish?” she fumed.

I laughed and boasted but quickly realized she was right. In my drunken stupor I believed I could get them back to Takayama without issue, but once there I’d need to buy a pump, a filter…

“Darling, do we have any big glass bowls or vases?”

“You are not putting those stupid fish in a Kitchen bowl.”

These fish were going to eat into my beer money. I needed to dump them, and fast.

Adults are for the most part, rational, sane human beings, so I targeted the exception: parents. “Sumimasen!” I’d yell to a dad already carrying a bag of fish and hold up my catch. They cursed me with cold smiles, then politely declined before their children realized I was offering them more heartbreak they’d have to flush down the toilet.

Then, I saw them. A young couple, sitting on the curb, holding plastic bags of water up to the light of a thousand paper lanterns.

“Sumimasen!” I said, and held up my bag of fish.

The woman hopped up and held out her own bag, eager to compare our catches. They had turtles. Perfect. Getting turtles at a festival is even more irresponsible than getting fish. This was my moment. I held my fish to my chest, then extended them towards her. From me to you. She scratched her head, careful not to mess up her perfect hair. I repeated the gesture, gave a little bow. Thank the Kami. She understood.

She slowly reached out for my bag of fish. I shoved them into her hands, desperate to be rid of the commitment and the guilt I’d feel at their eventual death.

“Arigato Gozaimas!” I yelled, and got the hell out. I glanced back and saw her boyfriend staring at the fish, terrified of all the time and money the little bag implied, of all the work and energy I had escaped, then I lost them to the paper lanterns and silk.

We stumbled back to the hotel, carefree, drunk on irresponsibility and “The Extra,” glad to have experienced Kyoto, and glad to leave.

 

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan with his wife where eats weird things, drinks too much, and generally makes an embaressment of himself. If you enjoyed this story please +1, share and subscribe for more! 

Notes on Teaching in Japan

I think teaching English is a lot of Westerners’ ticket into Japan. We’re inherently qualified, we feel confident in our abilities to speak our own language, and understanding Japanese is sort of a disadvantage because it allows the students to speak Japanese and not English (much like living in Takayama, a tourist town, allows me to speak English and not learn any Japanese). The few English speakers that I’ve met either teach English, or started out teaching English and then changed professions once they obtained a work visa.

I was a teacher in the States, and while I’m definitely not one of those holier-than-though teachers who think children are little miracles and the guiding light of our future, I do enjoy teaching the little bastards. I learned from my mentor, Jorgan, that teaching is a lot of fun, and that turning a roomful of animals into (somewhat) civilized human beings can be a very rewarding process. Don’t get me wrong, if my novel goes platinum I’d quit as soon as the school year’s over (speaking of which you can get it on your ereader at smashwords) but I don’t mind teaching, and can’t think of a way I’d rather pay the bills. So I think I’m a little different than the average English teacher, because I saw how things were done in the States. And believe me, there are more than a few differences between teaching in the States and teaching in Japan.

An American I met here summed it up nicely: “Japan and America are backwards.”

It’s true in a lot of ways. In Japan you drive on the opposite side of the road, vegetable gardens in your front yard is normal, sushi is cheap, and hamburgers are expensive. On the train, elderly people actually stand up so kids can sit down. In the States, I can’t count the times I’ve seen adults blithely ignore an elderly person on the bus while they yammer away on their phone. Men don’t even hold doors for women anymore. Some do, guys trying to get laid and pastors, but I think manners are generally thrown out the window when college starts.

That’s the biggest difference between Japan and the United States. In Japan, adults are very polite, and the kids are rude. In the United States, children are expected to be very well behaved, and the adults get a free pass. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with some real terrors, but in general the kids in the States are expected to be seen and not heard. Getting school clothes dirty is a frowned upon, as is running around a classroom screaming “Ancho! Ancho!” with your hands clasped together and ramming them up your teacher’s ass-crack.

That’s all OK in Japan. The playgrounds have mud pits, where the children are encouraged to either roll mud into spheres (with their hands!) or dig trenches and generally make a mess.  “Ancho” is a real thing, and while its frowned upon, most of the teachers seem to think its endearing, like a kid yelling out the correct answer without raising his hand. In the States, if I high fived a student, there was a fear of legal repercussions, I probably could have been hung if a child’s hand found its way between my cheeks. Here, I’m expected to pick the kids up, twirl them around, endlessly rub their heads and let them crawl on me like a jungle gym.

The first day in the classroom was beyond enlightening. My boss finished his lesson (a nice euphemism for dancing around and chanting in English for 30 minutes) and left the room to go help with lunch. All of a sudden a 5 year old Japanese boy came running out of the bathroom butt-naked. As in nothing. No shirt. No underwear. He wasn’t even wearing socks. He started shaking his little wiener for the class to see and to my horror they all began to strip. Boys and girls just dropped trow and let it all hang out. Within a minute I was surrounded by a 30 naked Japanese children.

What was going to happen when my boss, or even worse, their actual teacher came back? My life in Japanese prison flashed before my eyes. Would I be confined to a wicker cage, or forced to kneel on pointed tiles as they laid stone blocks upon my thighs? Would someone stick bamboo shoots under my fingernails or did that task now belong to a robot?

 

My boss chose that moment to return. I clutched my passport and looked for the exits. I was on the second floor, but maybe I could shimmy down some bamboo. No such luck. I was trapped. Goodbye Japan, hello hari-kari.

“Today’s a splash day, would you help them get dressed if they ask?”

He turned and left without batting an eye.

Oh. Duh. They just had to change clothes. They’re just a bunch of naked kids, so what? They all paid more attention to my gold toenail polish than to each other’s naked butts. And rightly so. We’re all the same after all, especially at that age. After a little thought (and a couple of beers) it seems like a more natural view of nudity than we have in the United States.

I’ve been in the same position in Texas, a roomful of kids had to change into swimsuits to go splash around outside, but it was a much more frightening experience. The first grade teacher ushered out all the girls while she eyed me like mother hen eyes a fox. It was just us boys, but not one of them hurried to change. Instead they all scurried to the corners of the classroom to change clothes in shame. Is it really a good thing for a six year to have issues with his body image?

It’s not like there’s people naked on the streets in Japan. Again, I think Japanese adults look more put together and professional than American adults. I’ve never seen anyone in their pajamas at the grocery store here, something that’s commonplace in Austin.

There’s a shift in Junior High, when kids start to go through puberty I guess. My junior high students are very serious about school, and always tell me how tired they are from hours of school, extracurricular activities and the endless English classes (Japanese students are required to take English grammar tests that I’m sure I would fail). They don’t climb on me, or threaten me with anchos and they would never change clothes in public.

But the kids get to act like kids. They catch bugs, jump in puddles, and smear their teachers with all sorts of goop.

I think it’s impossible to go through life always being well behaved. Manners and customs have their place, but I think we all need to rebel against them to appreciate why they exist at all. It’s part of life, we have to exercise the animal in us, so we know when it’s time to shape up and act civilized, damn it.

I like that the kids in Japan get to be the animals. After all, they don’t know any better, they’re kids. They have plenty of time to mature, and they do. They grow from little ancho-ing banshees into incredibly polite adults, and isn’t that better than wearing pajamas at the grocery store?

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan with his darling wife. If you enjoyed this story, please share with your friends on your favorite social media!