There's a Lump on my Testicle.

“Tuma” and an emphatic nod, was how I was told that my testicle is going to be removed in less than a week.

Wait, what?

The Japanese nurse sitting next to the doctor translated his diagnosis.

“The growth appears to be a tumor, he thinks you will need to get it removed as soon as possible, either this week or next, OK?”

Wait, what?

“He wants you to get tested. Please follow me.”

I went from laying on a paper sheet with my “shirt up and pants down,” to a roller coaster ride through the Japanese medical system. Fortunately my coworker Kuniko had phoned ahead, and the hospital had arranged for an English translator, a Japanese nurse named Nolico, otherwise I’d still probably be navigating the disinfected labyrinth that is every hospital in every country.

The first stop was a pee test. Somehow, I got the only squeamish nurse in the whole place—perhaps her English ability affected her sensitivities—so I had to nod and smile while she tried to explain how to urinate into a cup. Finally I had to snatch the plastic cup out of her hand and make my way into the bathroom.

“It is like teller window!” she called after me.

I stepped into the stall, dropped trow, and peed in a cup, careful not to go neither above nor below the ascribed line. Jesus this was going to be quite a day I thought as I pinched off the flow.

Next up was blood work, where Nolico bumped into her grandfather or great uncle or some shit and made excited conversation with him until she remembered that oh yeah this fucking gaijin has a lump on his testicle and she had to hold his hand through the whole damn operation. Lucky for their conversation, I was up next, and sat down at what looked like a fast-food counter for blood work. Two stools sat across from two dedicated nurses, who could find veins so quick Dracula’s head would spin. They punctured me and minutes later had filled 10 or so tiny vials of blood to be tested. I tried to peak at the old guy next to me, did he have more vials or less? But alas, I was whisked away for another test before I could count them.

This time I was able to leave my pants on, just the shirt had to go. The nurse was polite about my tattoos and copious body hair, and popped on her suction cups professionally. She pressed a button on a machine that spit out a foot or so of paper, an EKG or something? And we were off.

This time I needed an X-ray and only had to take off my button up shirt (the high this week was 4 degrees Celsius, so I had a few layers.). I stood next to a machine and made a variety of poses while the technicians hid behind safety glass, giggling and taking pictures. I swear I was doing tiger style and lotus hands out there while they sprayed me with X-rays. Needless to say I was sweating.

“It's warm isn't it?” Nolico asked.

No, I'm not fucking warm,

I MIGHT HAVE CANCER!

And that’s when I got scared.

The next test was a CT scan. My grandfather died from a CT scan. He had to swallow a fluid that the machine would be able to detect, but he had a bad reaction and never recovered. I told this to my English speaking nurse, who translated to the technician who told me not worry. If anything went wrong I could press a button.

Thanks for the reassurance, Doc.

But a CT scan was the best way to find out if the lump had metastasized and spread to other parts of my body, so what choice did I have? My grandfather was in his sixties and suffering from a cancerous liver, I’m 26 and healthy with a lump on my nut. Raquel appeared at this very moment, and I had time to tell her that I was about to attempt what my grandfather hadn’t lived through. She seemed about as relieved as I was that I’d have—thank goodness—a button to press! But we talked to the nurse again and she assured me I’d be fine, and to tell them if I felt anything strange. So in I went, and two minutes later out I came. I had no bad side effects, not even the warmth they warned me I might feel after the intravenous solution mixed in with my blood. The technician told me to drink plenty of water that day to help remove the solution and I was off to meet the doctor again.

Japan is nothing if not efficient, for though only two hours has passed, my results had all come in already.  Everything looks good. Blood work doesn’t show high levels of tumor markers, the X-rays and CT scan don’t show anything unusual in any of the common places testicular cancer spreads to, not my lymph nodes, lungs, or kidneys.

Yet, despite this tiny glimmer of good news, I will have to return to the hospital a week later to have my testicle removed, as this is the only way to find out if the growth is cancerous, and to prevent it from spreading if it is. Once it’s removed they will dissect my poor lost testicle to find out what afflicts it and has made it so swollen and firm.

I hear that the surgery can be painful, but in Japan I can stay in the hospital for free, and they want me to stay there for a week to pump me full of painkillers. So now I have nothing to do but wait, and try not to worry, and to tell everyone I know CHECK YOUR BALLS and your BOOBIES!  If anything is different, anything, please go to the doctor! I promise it won't be as awkward as learning you have a "tuma."

J.Darris Mitchell went through an inguinal orchiectomy (that's when they remove the cancerous testicle) in Japan. Click here to read about it.  It was scary, but you can handle it. And please, if you so much as THINK something is wrong, see your doctor immediately.

Dude, I Wrecked Your Car!

This is officially the worst week of my life. First, one hell of an awful visit to the doctor, and then today, I got in my first car accident.

What made it worse was that I was supposedly showing people how to drive. It’s hard to argue that that’s what I was actually doing considering the utter failure that ensued.

I was attempting to turn right on green, a task not without challenges but in no way difficult, and failed. One second I was following the car in front of me, the next a car horn was blaring and baring down on us. I hit the gas, praying to get out of the way in time and I almost did- but didn’t. It just hasn’t been that kind of week. The other driver swerved enough to only clip the back end of the car and smash his headlight, but seeing as how he didn’t want to risk oncoming traffic, collide we did.

Shit. Shit. Shit, are you guys OK? Shit.

The new English teachers were both sitting on side of the car that had been struck, and both looked more than a little freaked out. No one was hurt so now began the agonizing process of swapping insurance information with an angry Japanese man. I pulled the car over, turned on the flashers, and approached him, bowing and muttering gomenasai. I think that translates roughly to ‘I’m really fucking sorry.’

He wasn’t yelling, but he wasn’t too pleased either. It seemed to him I was in the wrong, and I didn’t have the heart to argue otherwise. After a minute, I finally made it clear that no, I didn’t understand a word he was saying, and that if he had a cell phone he better bust it out so I could call someone who did.

He dialed my Japanese guardian angel and coworker Kuniko a few times, but she didn’t pick up. Today was her only day off this week, and I’m sure she was trying to enjoy it.

When she didn’t pick up I just about barfed, but instead held it down and had him call another friend to translate, but alas only her Dutch husband answered and his Japanese skills aren’t quite up to snuff when it comes to settling insurance claims. So the driver and I stood and gestured, until finally my darling wife came over and had us trade information. I promised we’d call him soon, and with a suspicious glance at the roman letters on the piece of paper I’d given him, he let us go on our way.

“Do you guys need to go back home?” the new teachers asked.

I hung my head and nodded. Yeah, I’d need to tell the boss-man about this.

The new teachers wisely went on a walk while I called Kuniko, who finally answered and called Iwayama-san, who called the insurance company. Kuniko asked if we didn’t mind staying at the house for a few minutes so Iwayama-san could come check out the carnage.

I still can’t get over how polite the Japanese are.

Iwayama-san showed up grinning, like he always does. The only difference was that for once he didn’t have a cabbage or a bag of apples to give us. He asked if we were ok and I told him yes, and he asked me if the car still worked and I told him yes. I told him I was sorry and he just grinned and patted me on the back. Iwayama-san adores Gaijin, and believes we are at our cutest when we are at our most inept. I’m surprised his dog has all four legs really. He seems like the kind of guy who’d try to nurse a bird with a one wing or a raccoon without a tail. For all I know he’s pleased the car has a nice ding in it now, it makes it that much more endearing. He told me not to worry and that he had a good deal on the insurance. I asked if we could still use the car and he laughed and said yes and then was on his way.

So we piled back in the car, apologized to the new teachers who apologized to us and we all laughed about how we’re all becoming Japanese. We sat down to a cup of tea and I realized that this time last year, I had just won a beard contest and finished a marathon and that life’s not always going to be peaches and gravy and that sometimes it’s really, really hard, but—and this is from a man whose had entirely too much peaches and gravy in his life—when the peaches and gravy finally run out (and it will) there will still be the people who apologize for being in the car you smashed and the people that bring you bags of apples, and though there may be no peaches, there’s people like my darling wife- people who are more than willing to take the wheel when you lose control, and drive you home for a cup of tea when you need it most.  

J. Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama Japan with his darling wife, and two wonderful new teachers who will be using the car he almost destroyed. If you enjoyed this story please share it. Click here to read more about Iwayama-san.

Get Used to It!

My time as a teacher in Japan only stretches another fifteen days. I’ve broken protocol and started telling my students that I’ll be leaving. Neither my wife nor our coworker supports this. I guess they’re rip-the-bandage-off-at-once kind of people. Responses vary, and I’m beginning to think I should’ve just pulled a Houdini in two weeks.   

Most of the students only ask about the new teacher. “Boy or girl?” “Is she pretty?” “How old are they?” Most agreed a female teacher would greatly improve their current predicament. One group of seven year old boys, possibly resentful they were going to have to learn how to terrorize a new teacher effectively, spent the class period drawing piles of smiling poop on the board. Neither the promise of candy or threats in a foreign tongue could deter this behavior. Two of my adult classes stole my thunder by actually quitting the class moments before I was going to break the news. “Sorry, Joe. Last class.” I tried to explain that I was leaving too and that they didn’t need to apologize but they just bowed and made their exit while I tried not to feel abandoned.  

Not all responses were bad though. Two thirteen year old boys who refuse to speak English unless I let them play basketball cheered me up. Haruto asked me how many more classes we’d have together and when I told him it was only three.  He repeated “Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! Oh no!” on loop for the next three minutes. That’s the most English I’ve ever heard him say, and it hit me right in the feelz. Takumi, not as prone to bizarre and emotional outbreaks said nothing, only smiled. Haruto called him careless (We’d been studying adjectives but I didn’t have the heart to correct him) but Takumi only dug through a notebook. He found what he was looking for, looked me straight in the eyes and told me, “Good friends live on in the heart.”

I did my best not to blubber like a grandmother in front of two boys only interested in throwing a deflated rubber ball in a dented metal can.

But the reaction that touched me the most was from the first person I told. I let slip that I was leaving because Akira informed me he was going to be opening a Japanese style steak house. As in a place that only seats six people, and he will personally prepare every bite of food for his diners. He wants to open in November, he just needs a location. My mouth watering I confessed that I wouldn’t get to try his steak because I was leaving in a month for America. He frowned at me and reached for his dictionary. After thumbing around he said, “I got used to you.”

What a compliment. But there’s a lot in those words. Maybe it means I’ve adapted to life in Japan that such a simple statement could mean so much. But I guess that’s the truth of life. We only grow accustomed to the little things that make us comfortable. Coffee, how people say hello, all the little stuff you never notice unless you have to go without.

I had got used to life here, and damnit Japan, I mean it.

The Magical Ice Lord Yushi

An ice demon approached me scowling and carrying a banner. He was dressed straight from the legends and smiled with too many teeth. I called my friends over only to find that they too had been confronted by one of these ice demons, their King in fact, the Magical Ice Lord Yushi!

But let me back track, you’re probably lost.

When the water molecule falls below 0 degrees Celcius (a convenient temperature to be sure) it begins to exhibit curious properties. When a people evolve around this molecule in its solid state, they too begin to exhibit quirks and curiosities of their own.

A curiosity of my own caused me to pile into a car to see this man named Yushi. I’d been told he eats bears, owns a mountain, and creates an ice forest every year. When invited, I always say yes to meeting people like this. My wife on the other hand, had no qualms about ignoring a Magical Ice Lord. When I asked Raquel if she wanted to join me, she simply chortled and snuggled deeper under our heated coffee table. 

The lake never knew what hit it... Because it's a lake.

So I crammed into a car with too many foreigners and away we went to meet a man on his mountain, stopping only to throw snowballs into a frozen lake.

The ice forest began ordinarily enough. There were trees, and snow on them! It didn’t really seem like the kind of place that a Magical Ice Lord would want to live, but around a bend were confronted with a wall of ice.

It was 5 meters tall, and had swallowed up birch and pine in its hunger to expand. It looked like the prototype for the wall built to keep out the white walkers. Alex and I proceeded to insult it.

Lord Yushi's Ice Forest.

“That’s ice all right.”

“Looks cold.”

Giggle-giggle-snort-giggle-giggle.

I edged through the entry way into the festival proper. Nothing in Japan is free, but I’ve spent 300 yen in far worse ways. I once hiked 4 kilometers to find that the entrance to the sacred pond I sought cost 300 yen to enter (as in go past the fence not swim). I remember laughing at the foolish Japanese who’d approach the gate, peak around a corner, and leave, too cheap to shell out 3 coins! I paid the entrance and realized that yeah, it was just a stupid pond and I’d been ripped off. They didn’t even have none o’ dem fancy colored fish or tiny lil’ trees or nothin!

The ice forest was more impressive. It rose up on either side of snowy promenade for maybe a kilometer. Fathers dragged children on sleds, vendors sold roast fish, and tourists snapped pictures with Japanese White Walkers.

Eric introduced Yushi to me and like any good tourist I threw my arm around him and took a selfie. This was his family’s land, and every year the whole clan through this party and dressed up as beasts and priests and…a giant corncob? I looked to Nolico for an explanation but she only shrugged and mumbled something about this area growing good corn.

I swear, in Japan, everything and nothing is sacred. Here we were in this crazy winter realm, a land of demons and bears and ancient priests, and this dude was dressed up to hock corn. They weren’t even selling any corn! I don’t get it, but I guess I’m alone in this sentiment, for Alex giggled and asked if I’d take his picture with the stupid corn guy.

God he loved that corn...

I tried a new fish (always a highlight for me) and we all wandered around and took pictures until the sun went down and the cold set in. Lord Yushi saw us shivering and offered to let us use his hotel’s Onsen. That’s right, this mountain king even had his own volcanic hot tub. I nodded dumbly, this sounded too good to be true! And indeed it was, for though Lord Yushi was indeed generous, he was also hosting a festival and wasn’t really in the position to be giving guided tours. Instead he led us to the winter games.

Somehow Eric, Alex and I all ended up not only competing but in the same heat, even though most of the competitors were children or their grandparents. But with a grand prize of 3,000 yen on the way (about 30 bucks) we were not going to let those little bastards make off with our loot. So when told we had 60 seconds to stack a tray with as many hazelnuts as we could, we jostled for position as we neared the bucket of hazelnuts, and stacked those trays to the sky. I lost to Eric, but he was promptly beaten by some dumb kid’s mom.

Our heads hung low, we watched the rest of the competition until it was Nolico’s turn. She’d been watching the competition closely, and had quite the strategy for stacking nuts. She wobbled back with more hazelnuts in her tray than I thought possible. She ended up coming in second place! We patted her on the back and congratulated her until we found out that not only did she win 2,000 yen, every competitor received 500! We had drinking money! Alex struggled with the economics of it (“But how can they make money if they give away more than the entrance fee!?”) but when Nolico bought us hot sake he stopped complaining.

Maybe One day I'll be an Ice Lord too...

Everyone lined up to make mochi after that. To make mochi you smash perfectly good rice with an enormous hammer while a man dressed like priest kneads the dough between strikes. All the while an ice demon humps the person trying not to smash the preist’s fingers. I was shocked everyone in Lord Yushi’s family still had all their fingers. Mochi hasn’t really made the jump to America. I’m not sure why, It translates roughly to fucking-disgusting-rice-goo-that’s-impossible-to-chew-and-even-harder-to-swallow. But most people seem to like it.

Humped and tired, we knew it was time to leave when the band (playing on a stage made of ice) started playing a jazzy rendition of “let it Go” on saxophone. I made awful puns about “the cold not bothering me anyway” until actually it did start to bother me and we got in the car and drove home, happy to have a designated driver, and happier to have heat.

 

 

 

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!  

The Missing

With three months left in Japan, I’m already starting to wonder what I’ll miss. The people are what I miss most about the States (except for Gray Wind) and I imagine that’s what I’ll miss most about Japan. Only so many weekends are left of drinking at the Greatest Bar on Earth or falling asleep under Eric and Nolico’s kotatsu (a coffee table equipped with a built in heater and a blanket that I never want to leave behind even though it’s next to useless in Texas). I finally went snowboarding (more on that next week) so there’s not much left on my bucket list.

Instead I’m left to wonder what I’ll miss the most. I think it’ll probably be the little things. Of course it’d be easy to say the sushi and the seasons (though I won’t miss the cold) but I think it’s all the minute strangeness of Japan that has worked its way into me.

I imagine I’ll miss walking into businesses. Every one greets you with shouts of “Sumimasen” and says goodbye with deep bows and cries of “arigatoa gozaimasta,” even if you leave having only purchased a bottle of cheap whiskey and a package of horrid gummy candy.

I won’t miss that when returning a movie late can almost shut down an entire store. A day before, they’d called to tell us we’d accrued 500yen in late fees, or about 5 bucks. Undeterred by this amount we ventured back to the store for more movies (there’s not much to do when it gets dark at 5:00) only to cause the checkout girl to suffer a panic attack. She scanned our card, saw something awful flash on the screen, and malfunctioned. She looked from the screen to us and back again, unsure of how to proceed. Her manager noticed her plight and came to her rescue, but he too had to consult a clipboard with a handful of violators on it and had to enter an override code before the computer and the check out girl self-destructed. To think, in Austin they just asked us to pay it down to 8 dollars.

I won’t miss the snow, but I’ll probably miss the way it brings together the community. I never felt the sense of community to be terribly genuine in my neighborhood in the States. It seemed our relationship as neighbors revolved around keeping the front yard looking trim, an activity that always felt a waste of time to me. Why grow it at all if only to cut it back? It’s not like people were playing soccer on it. Mowing the lawn is truly a Sisyphean task; shoveling snow is no less repetitive, but it’s much more useful. If I don’t shovel out my car, I can’t leave the house, and besides that, I never had a neighbor mow my lawn for me or smile if I decided to mow theirs. Here, all the sixty year olds and I take turns unclogging the creek bed from the snow our insane landlord dumps into it. My neighbors know that my car may not be shoveled out as early as theirs, but by god I’ll clean the lines between our parking spots before they get home.

I doubt I’ll miss being in a land with a language I don’t understand, but even that has its advantages. It’s easy to read on busses, for no snippet of conversation will distract me, and I can speak freely anywhere and about anything I like. True, some Japanese speak English well enough to understand my complaints about the texture of the raw shrimp or boiled squid, but they’re so damn polite they’d never confess and embarrass me. Not even when discussing lingerie with my wife in department store did the little old lady my wife had been talking to in English for the last twenty minutes bother to tell me she understood every perverted word that left my mouth.

There’s a thousand other little thing I may miss: bowing instead of shaking hands (weird), NEVER tipping (awesome), the thousands of men’s hairstyles as diverse as tropical birds (strange considering women’s single hairstyle: long), women wearing short skirts under the down jackets even though it’s snowing, men shoveling snow and scrubbing windows in business suits, sitting on the floor at a fancy restaurant, udon for breakfast, and on and on.

Yet who can say what will stick? There’s dozens of things I’ve already forgotten about in the States that during the first month seemed barbaric to go without.

What I still miss about Austin is the people. My hippie parents, my hippier sister, Raquel’s mom’s cooking and her dad’s made up words, her sister and her boyfriend and their outrageously delicious hipster meals, drinking beer with Tam and Cole, playing D&D with Mike at his corporate headquarters, talking chickens with Organ, Mitch and Robyn and their baby who won’t be a baby by the time we get back. I miss y’all and so many more so much. I can’t wait to be back to see everyone (especially Grey Wind), yet each day closer to seeing you means a day less with the people here. 

So I must be strong and talk aliens and God with Chaba, hoist penis effigies with Steve, pick Kensei’s brain for the origins of rock and roll, and tag along to Nolico’s parties always drinking and talking, drinking and talking with Eric and Alex, for my time is short, and I don’t want to waste a moment of it.

J. Darris Mitchell will live in Takayama, Japan for a while yet. If you enjoyed this post please share with the people you like sharing with.

The Perils of Not Speaking Japanese.

Six months in japan and I have my regrets about moving here from Texas. I suppose it’s to be expected, after all my wife and I picked Asia because it would be different-whatever we thought that meant, and different it proved to be.  

My friend Cole once said, “Japan is different down to the smallest detail, but the big picture is the same.” Wise words. Truly descriptive of being in a land where people pay handsomely for bar-b-q’d chicken skin yet balk at the idea of eating eggs and god forbid- not rice- for breakfast.

However my friend Tam noticed something else about Japan, “The language is different.”

Truer words were never spoken.

The Japanese language is not easy. There are two alphabets, one for local words and one for imports, plus thousands of Chinese pictographs called Kanji that are said to possess some sort of logic that eludes me. And then there’s the pronunciation. Syllables almost always have two parts, a consonant sound followed by a vowel sound, and if that pattern is not respected, my words are not understood. It’s Ka-zu-ki not Kaz-u-ki, ya foreigner!

And thus my knowledge of the language has been laid before you in its entirety. I understand less than little. I have kindergarten students who speak better English than my Japanese. I can read the numbers on cash registers and nod during appropriate points in conversation (hint-nod when the speaker frowns, laugh when they smile) so people think I can survive here, but this is a farce that has worn through. Already the cashiers see me for the liar than I am. Even if I pay and nod at the proper times and smile my most competent smile, they always give the receipt to Raquel.

Not speaking the language of the locals is awkward at best, and terrifying at worst. If I’m lucky, and with some of my friends who do speak English, they’re cursed to translate everything I say until the group eventually splits in two, those who want to talk English with Joe the bearded fool and those who don’t. If I’m without such lifelines, not speaking Japanese can be truly terrifying, like when the bus driver doesn’t turn of the PA system on the bus and mutters under his breath for miles without anyone getting up to stop him. I realized then, that he could be threatening his passengers, telling us all to remain quiet or he’d drive us off a cliff, or he could be worshipping the benevolent supreme god of kittens and I wouldn’t have a clue.

After being here for six months, I dread meeting new people, Japanese or not, for they always ask the same question: “How’s your japanese?”

It’s not. It doesn’t. Its existence is negative. As in no, I can’t speak a lick. I can’t read it, write it, or anything else. The only thing worse than my Japanese is some of my students English.

I must have invoked the wrath of the Japanese god of language, for my last six weeks of teaching English been saddled with 3 extra classes each week, each with a group of students with more abysmal English than the last.

Please don’t misunderstand, not all Japanese speak bad English (I wouldn’t survive here if not for them) but, much like myself, some just don’t have the touch of tongues (my japanese is so bad when I try to speak a word of it to my six year old students they laugh and heckle me).

This week I asked a new student, “How are you?” to be answered with panicked breathes, wide eyes and “mudi-mudi-mudi-mudi-mudi-mudi!” Or “impossible-impossible-impossible-etc-until-your-breath-runs-out.” I mean, my japanese is bad, but I can at least say “Genki-des” at the appropriate point in conversation (though I’m probably saying that wrong too).

Another group of adults panicked when, I asked them to repeat pairs of difficult sounds. I separated “L” and “R” into distinct sounds, made in entirely different parts of my mouth. They looked as if I was asking them to make paper cranes out of starburst wrappers using only their tongue. They attempted to repeat the throaty and guttural, “R” and the tongue-titilating “L” and were met with only by my unenthusiastic support (its hard to fake being impressed when you see a group of grown men bite their bottom lip and attempt to make a ‘v’ sound only to spray saliva all over eachother). No one enjoyed those moments, except maybe the same god who likes watching me suffer any time I introduce my wife “Raquel” (there’s an L and R for those counting) to blank confused stares.

So, yeah, I have my regrets. Language is a big deal, and hard to get around. Not speaking the local language is a serious handicap, and has made me appreciate those who do speak my language. And yet, the very ability that I treasure in them, dooms me to not learning Japanese and not being able to speak with anyone else.

Aw well, as they say in Japan, mudi-mudi-mudi-mudi-mudi.

The Snow Won't Melt my Heart

Ah, a month in, and still the snow fascinates me. 

Bearded Kaiju, seen here fascinated by snow.

 

I am from Austin, and have only fleeting understanding of the cold. Wow! It rained and all the streets are covered with a thin film of ice! Chaos! Wow! It’s so cold you can leave the beer outside! Hyuk hyuk hyuk!

Here the cold is stronger, a bitter god angry at the joys of summer. I know there are fiercer gods of cold out there, “All you who live south of the Wall are Southerners,” but I don’t ever want to meet them.

Here, the cold is an entity, not a number that measures the absence of heat. Pah! I feel myself relating more and more to the ancient philosophers who believe cold was a force and not the base state that modern physicists define it as. To think the sun is the aberration in our universe is counterintuitive to the human experience. When the sun is shining and the ‘natural state’ of the universe is melted away if just for a cloud free afternoon, my world feels right, not alien. And the neighbors agree, albeit in their obsessive hardworking Japanese way. A sunny day means a day of watching sixty year old men scale rickety ladders up onto their roofs and hurl mountains of snow atop their sixty year old wives. A sunny day doesn’t mean less shoveling, it means a joyful day spent scraping away the bottom few centimeters of ice that make the road truly treacherous. Ah, a recent convert to Celsius, I relish the 5 degree days, and positively bask when its 8 degrees outside.

For the cold will return, it has each and every time so far, and I suppose if the physicists are right, it always will, soon as we shift out of the light of our freakishly optimistic sun, the cold returns, as inevitable as the dark.

I try not to get angry when someone from Austin tells me, “oh, its’ the same temperature in Takayama as it is here right now!” I understand. I’ve made the same righteously unsympathetic statements to a friend living in Boston and my family in Michigan. A moment of equality only drives the abject misery of living in the cold deeper into my frigid bones. For a moment when—gasp—it’s a few degrees above freezing in my home town and my current residence represents a huge difference in experience. For 3 degrees Celsius in Austin is one of the colder nights, here in Takayama, it’s a warm afternoon. That difference may seem pedestrian but it is not. Cold is not something that can be thwarted with a scarf and a cup of hot cocoa. It is a merciless, relentless enemy, who sees no attack upon my sanity too insidious to employ. 

A man must shovel the snow. Even in the face of more snow
This is right, and as it should be.

I’ve woken to find all the windows frozen shut, with a shirt hung carelessly close frozen to the glass, as if it’d reached out to lick the frost and been trapped there. I’ve woken to find the olive oil frozen into a brick (It’s been too cold to put honey in my coffee for months). I’ve discovered my washcloth frozen to the shower tiles, the shampoo beyond unusable. I’ve had entire days ruined because I’ve run down stairs at the crack of dawn to turn on the kerosene heater in the kitchen (no central heat for me) only to seek refuge thirty minutes later and discover the cursed thing was out of fuel and my kitchen still a frozen wasteland. I sleep with a hat, every night. I wear two hats and six layers during the day. I rant passionately about my heated coffee table (my beloved kutatsu). I value soup above all other foods. And, when given the opportunity to spend the night in a repurposed bakery up in the mountains, I leap at the opportunity, not because a bakery sounds warm, but because a night away from home will give us enough time to wash our sheets and let them dry.

So my wife and I found ourselves whisked away, up into the mountains, towards Mastumoto. I told my students of my plan to sleep in an old bakery in the mountains and they warned me of the drive.

“Be careful, the way between here and Matsumoto is very treacherous. Its full of twisting, frozen roads and haunted tunnels.”

I nodded, thankful for the terrifying advise, but explained that in fact I wasn’t going all the way to Matsumoto, I’d be stopping somewhere along the way.

“Oh! We’ll watch the news!” one of my students exclaimed, “If a bear comes down out of the mountains, we’ll know it’s you!”

Everyone laughed at the dire predicament I’d soon find myself in, and I lamented that despite my time here, I have not developed a Japanese sense of humor.

Still, the promise of adventure stirred my frozen bones and I packed my bag with enough calories to survive a hike out of the mountain.

The drive was spent in second gear, climbing six hundred meters along mountain roads that were only ploughed when they straightened out. Between harrowing turns and bone rattling bumps of ice, we found ourselves in old twisty tunnels. I always imagined tunnels to be pushed straight through mountains, but these beasts were like something from inside an ant colony. Dull flashing lights warned us of approaching walls and sharp turns. I mistakenly asked Eric why the tunnels were haunted.

“Because so many people crash and die here,” his wife Nolico said from the steering wheel before popping out of tunnel, running a red light and smiling, “oops!”

When we arrived at the bakery, I had never been so happy to set foot on an iced over road.

It turned out our host was far from a baker. He was a guitar player that—everyone but him likes to remind us—used to tour with Deep Purple. He kept the wood burning stove stoked as he wailed on his guitar, Eric played the harmonica and I did my best to insult Eric through rhyme between sips of sake. More people showed up, including Steve, who assured me that this was as good as it got, and even though we’d only been here a few months, we better damn well recognize that.

And you know, after getting slush in my boots, and snow down my coat, after paying for tank after tank of stinking kerosene, I got it, loud and clear. Nothing is better on this earth than warmth.

Warm people, music so loud it heats your bones, and fire. Be it from the sun, that unnaturally optimistic aberration, or from wood burnt to keep out that most vicious of gods, it doesn’t matter. For warmth, in all of its forms, is as good as it gets.

Sushi: 100 yen or 100 dollars?

Sushi.

That one word was enough to bring me to Japan. It is a global food, an international delight, known for its simplicity and its freshness, but I must say:

 I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Sushi is a different beast in Japan. To begin with, there are no sushi rolls. They just don’t do that here. Sushi means rice with vinegar, fish and a touch of wasabi. They look at California rolls and cream cheese with the same disdain you’ll feel for pizza with shrimp, corn and mayonnaise (yeah let me know when you try it). I have been served something wrapped in seaweed paper, sure, but it was masticated fish parts and rice, nothing more, no cucumbers, no jalapeno slices, and gods no mayonnaise. Get over the mayonnaise.

And don’t worry! You won’t miss all that crap designed to hide the quality of the fish. Sushi is omnipresent and hard to avoid in japan. It’s as ubiquitous as beef in Texas, and served in as many ways.

Mountain woman excited about massive tuna



Now, a disclaimer, I don’t live on the coast. In fact, I probably live as far away from the coast as possible, up in the mountains in the center of Honshu, the main island. Yet I am still closer to the coast than I was in Austin, and while I’ve had better in Tokyo, if you come to Takayama, the sushi is worth trying.

 There are many levels sushi.

At the bottom of the list is the stuff from the grocery store. The packs of six or eight pieces of seafood on rice is good for the price (think dollar burger at your favorite corporation) but the novelty wears off quickly. The tuna’s not the greatest, the salmon’s not the freshest, and they tend to lump a few too many pieces of mollusk in there for my taste.

 

Chicken, radish sprouts, miso soup, edamame, rice and
of course, tuna. Slice it yourself and its still good sashimi.

The best thing about the grocery store in Takayama is when they buy a tuna or two from the coast and haul it up for us mountain-folk. When the tuna appears, madness descends on the grocery store. Old ladies jostle for position in line, old men outbid eachother on who gets to take home the enormous fish head. If there is a whole tuna fish at the grocery store, you buy a cut because—even with inferior knife skills—you can prepare the most delicious fish you’ll ever eat at home. For about ten dollars, you can get a piece of lean red meat, the most popular of all cuts. Though if you’re feeling lavish, get the orange stuff from the same fish. It’s fatty and wonderful, and a bargain considering all you have to do is put it on vinegared rice with a touch of wasabi to make it as good anything from a restaurant.

Next up is train sushi. These restaurants literally parade pieces of sushi past your nose on a conveyer belt. Take all you want! They’ll count the plates when you leave. There are of course, varying degrees of quality at these places. I would avoid the restaurants that advertise ‘everything for 100 yen’ and go to the more upscale places that charge 2 or 300 yen for a piece of fish on rice (I know, big spender). The conveyer belt places are a great first stop for sushi because you can try all the weird stuff you’ve never seen in the states without a chef watching to see if your palette is refined enough to handle it (trust me, it’s not). I’ve tried baby squids, fish organs, a variety of fish eggs, raw shrimp, raw crab claw, raw scallop, as well as a handful of unidentifiable fish (my favorite is the purple one). Be sure to try the weird stuff in the beginning of the meal, otherwise you’ll be left with the taste of raw crab claw on your tongue.

Above that is the fancy restaurants with display cases of their favorite creatures chopped to pieces. While expensive, I’ve never been disappointed at one of these places, even in my mountain village. Though I’ve learned there is a difference between fine sushi in the mountains and fine sushi in Tokyo. When my friends from America came to visit we went to the best sushi restaurant in Takayama one day, and a fantastic sushi restaurant in Tokyo the next. Both were delicious, but the difference is clear. Here in Takayama, the fish was at the forefront of the meal. They served big slabs of whatever they’d had trucked in that morning, tuna, salmon, eel, and of course, the local specialty, Hida beef. The emphasis was undoubtedly on the quality of the fish, which was far fresher and richer than anything I’ve had in Austin, and I know, freshness is not the mark of great sushi, but I live in the mountains OK? Cut me some slack, the sushi chef in Tokyo sure didn’t.



In Tokyo, sushi masters can make even this mass of
revolting tentacles delicious!  

In Tokyo, the emphasis was on the interplay between the fish and the rice. Sushi is supposed to be about the rice, and Yazuda certainly followed this rule. His rice had fantastic texture and a subtle vinegar flavor that accented the fresh seafood marvelously. He didn’t focus on serving great hulking slabs of fish, instead he’d pair a piece of shrimp with just the right amount of course salt, or add a pinch of lemon to some creature I’d never heard of and bring tears to my eyes. He chastised my palette at first (a nice way of saying he talked a lot of shit) but I grunted at the appropriate bites so he left me alone.

As a Texan, I’d say the difference is like good steak versus good brisket. Steak is undoubtedly about the meat. You see the meat, you chew the meat, you swallow the meat, and damnit its good. Brisket though, is less about the meat and more about the entire sensory experience. The meat is still there, of course, but there’s also spices and smoke and fantastic texture, perhaps even a touch of sauce. Expensive sushi is like the finest brisket, it’s a labor of love that transforms the fish into something beyond fish, something transcendentally delicious that still somehow is unmistakably simple and familiar.

But, that being said, there’s still a conveyer belt place in town I haven’t been too… and sometimes there’s nothing better than a burger.

The Magnificent Tourist Trap in Halong Bay.

Halong bay is the most utterly gorgeous tourist trap I have ever visited. To appreciate it, one must charter a cruise and venture out on the water, where the natural splendor outside of the boat will distract you from your urge to abandon ship to escape the lack of substance within it.

Halong bay is made by the same forces that carved the Grand Canyon, yet is so different in composition it boggles the mind. As we sailed past massive boulders spattered with lush vegetation and hidden caves, I couldn’t help but think of the creatures that must live in the 1,969 islands. If Japan (where I currently live) is the land of Kaiju crashing through mountain passes into cityscapes; Vietnam is the home of dinosaurs. As our boat cruised between massive thrusts of limestone, I kept my eyes peeled, sure I would see a pterodactyl hunting a giant squid. It’s a place from another time, a world all of its own that can only be appreciated by chartering a boat, and going in, but therein lies the paradox: It is impossible to appreciate Halong Bay—kayaking through caves into hidden coves, boulders big as skyscrapers floating past each other, the screech of caca monkeys at sunset—without crowding onto a boat with exactly the things we go in to nature to avoid: drunken Spaniards, pretentious Frenchmen, and loudmouthed Australians.

Really I felt like the people on our boat must typify every experience that has ever taken place on a tour bus, boat or any other confined place with limited choice of weapons.

There were: a gaggle of horny, wine drinking Spaniards, an adorable family from Korea with adorable children that needed constant reaffirmation of their own adorableness, a British photographer bent on convincing me photographs weren’t realistic, loud mouthed Aussies, a French family that hated the food, various honeymooners desperate to hide from the rest, and us- the sneering tattooed American hipsters.

So close to paradise, and yet so far away

While we cruised around the bay, desperate for a glimpse of a rare caca monkey or perhaps a brachiosaurus, I overheard debates about the history of the word selfie, complaints about how the Australian booze was—surprise!—more expensive than the local brew, and lamented how my fellow travelers’ comparison of the food on the ship to a TGIFriday’s was appropriate, but their enthusiasm for the same meal was not. 

But the bay was always there, eager to reveal hidden secrets that have been discovered a thousand times over by a thousand different people and will inspire a thousand more thoughts of our humble place in the natural world.

And, despite the company, we still managed to have a good time. When the crew offered to take us swimming, and the men on the boat (your narrator included) eyed each other warily, no one wanting to jump in and no one wanting to lose face in front of his lady on this tropical cruise, Raquel dove over the edge of the boat without so much as removing her glasses. Everyone shrieked in surprise, and despite my best efforts to follow her, the two French teenagers managed to pause the games on their cellphones, strip down, and dive in next to my grinning wife before I could so much as get my shirt off.

Oysters so fresh you need box cutters to get inside

When the cruise took us to a fishing family’s floating home, we all laughed at the family dog that lived on the nearby island, enjoyed the strong-as-battery-acid rice wine, and let our jaws drop at the enormous fish the family was fattening up to be sold on the mainland. I was first in line for the oyster the grandmother of the family dredged up from the bay and handed to her son to be cracked open with a box cutter. It was seasoned only with the salt of the Pacific Ocean, and grown by this last of the fishing families. It was delicious. Once the bay was filled with whole communities of people like this, complete with schools and shops, but Vietnam—in its communist glory—deemed the natural splendor of the bay and all its creatures and coves more valuable than the traditional lifestyle it once afforded the Vietnamese. Aussies, Europeans and the errant American are willing to pay enough money so that the people here can protect the creatures instead of hunt them.

The quagmire of this family being allowed to stay on the bay because of their ties with the tourism industry that pushed the ‘genuine’ fishermen out bothered me less after seeing the oil floating around the houseboat’s engine. I don’t know if it’s a good thing exactly, but hey, it makes for glorious views and protected habitat.

The contradiction of clinging to a traditional lifestyle and embracing the conveniences of the 21^st century is a way of life in Vietnam. It doesn’t seem the façade that Japan sometimes touts so proudly. People here harvest their rice by hand because they have to, not because it’s the way grandmother did it. Our guide in Sapa had a cell phone, while in the capital of Hanoi entire city blocks sometimes have to go without power. That seems to be life in this crazy country, where a cheap beer costs $.30 and an expensive one costs 50,000 Vietnamese Dong. I don’t know if my presence as a tourist helps or hurts, but I know it’s a hell of a lot better than America’s history over here, and if all they want from me is a few extra bucks so I can experience the magnificence of Halong Bay, what am I to do but pony up with other tourists, snap as many pictures as I can, and tip handsomely.

Good evening Vietnam. I can’t wait to come back.

J. Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama Gifu with his darling wife. This is the third installment of a series on Viet Nam. Read about the rice paddies of Sapa or about Hanoi the communist capital