It takes diff'rent strokes

I just watched an unbelievable video on National Geographic's YouTube channel.

In short, the video shows a West African village ushering a boy into manhood, and it involves brutally killing and eating a dog.

It's part of a long-running tradition and respected rite of passage; they believe that eating a dog will imbue the boy with qualities like courage and loyalty. The dog was raised solely to serve this ultimate purpose, and when its time comes, it's bludgeoned to death, its blood is smeared on the ground, and it's roasted over an open flame.

Okay... if living abroad for eight months has reinforced anything, it's that a lot of things are culturally relative. What's totally weird in one place could be perfectly normal in another. Kinda like how some Southerners think it's okay to eat pickled pig parts (from Food Lion, no less...), or how Midwesterners think Vera Bradley is fashionable.

Naturally, my initial reaction to this video was disgust: How more messed could you get? It's almost up there with the Chinese fur trade!

Well, one of the old dudes in the video says something to the effect of, "We're doing this because our ancestors did it." Yeah, you can argue that tradition doesn't make it right, but it's still an integral part of the coming-of-age process in Benin. I'm sure there are loads of American customs that non-Americans may find inhumane, or appalling. How is raising a dog to be killed for a ceremony any different from raising a cow to be slaughtered as livestock? Isn't it equally barbaric? Who's to say what's "barbaric," anyway?

It's weird, because a year ago, my cri de coeur would have been to stop such animal cruelty, but now I find myself torn. I think the dogs should be saved, but it's culturally imperialistic to judge the people of Benin, or to try to "correct" them. The more options, benefits, and detriments you consider, the more ambiguous and inconclusive your opinion can become.

Closed-minded people have it easy.

All for one

The Japanese are a people of quiet subtlety. These are people who rarely look you in the eye, sit in silence on buses and trains, and say six variations of "excuse me" while hanging up a phone conversation instead of saying "goodbye." They are totally indirect, are frighteningly polite, and would rather drop dead than be a disruption.

But at my school, when it comes to expulsing germs and mucus, they're as loud as humanly possible.

It's hay fever season in Japan, and I'm sitting in the computer room right now amidst a cacophony of hacks, snorts, whoops, sniffs, rasps and croaks. I can't help but be annoyed. The guy next to me is being so loud, my ears ring for a solid second after his every sneeze. There is no way these people can sound so exaggeratedly sick--and all at the same time. It's crazy, because I'm totally unaffected, and I usually get a good sinus headache around this time of year, at least. But nearly every Japanese person I encounter sounds all phlegm-y and like they're going to die.

So many times in Japan have I felt like everyone is in a secret club, holding meetings to synchronize everything they do. Everyone just "knows" when the beach closes for the year, when crossing guards will be randomly placed on arbitrary street corners, when to start wearing suits to work, when grocery stores will stop selling a certain fish, and when everyone is expected to participate in group clean-up, picking up litter from outside their apartments. There is never anything spoken about these events. Nothing on the news, no emails, nothing on any calendar, no nothin'. And apparently, group illness is just another one of those things. I swear to God--it's like they all call each other the night before and agree to get sick together. They're like the Heaven's Gate of allergies.

I have no idea what's going on.

Watch for falling skiers

Let me go on record with saying that skiing is one of the most difficult things I've ever had to do in my life--ever. My weekend trip to Nagano was my first time ever on a pair of skis, and combined with my innate lack of coordination, it was something of a disaster. After my ninety seventh tumble, I found myself sliding down the mountain on my ass, legs and skis splayed in the air, like a crippled chicken laying an egg while lying supine on a greased treadmill. It was a bona fide, freezing, slightly bloody fiasco. And the real kicker is that everyone else--literally, everyone else--glided effortlessly down the slopes like they were Picabo-freakin'-Street. And yes, I'm including children, who had to have been pre-preschool, along with people who were texting while skiing. It was truly unbelievable.

I had better luck with snowboarding, truth be told. I liked it a lot, and really want to get good (read: able to stay standing). Unfortunately, being able to do an indy nosebone on 1080 for Nintendo 64 (B button + down-right) is not a transferrable skill to the actual sport.

I really like the whole skiing/snowboarding culture, though. Skiing towns are great. We stayed in a cool lodge in the former Olympic village and had easy access to a lot of different slopes, not to mention an awesome Mexican restaurant. It was the first "real" Mexican food I've had since I've been to Japan. A bread loaf-sized chimichanga drowned in guac and Cholula was a welcome deep-fried oasis in this land of rice and fish. (Rice and fish are still delicious, though... I'm chowin' on an onigiri as we speak. I'm gonna miss 'em come August. Yo America, you can start selling rice balls by the time I get back, right?)

It's like a heat waaaaave!

...well, not quite. It's still colder inside my apartment than it is outside, which kinda sucks, but it's supposed to be 70 here tomorrow. I think Shizuoka-ken's unusual climate and Japan's nonobservance/bastardization of American holidays make it seem like I'm living in a time warp. I've lived in Japan for almost seven months--ha-WHA? I have to say, completely skipping Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, Groundhog Day, Leif Erikson Day , Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day and Waffle Week was almost too much to bear, but bet yer whiskers I'll appreciate them even more next year.


Anyways, not much is new here. This is what life is looking like for the next few weeks:

-- trip to Tokyo to go to the Miyazaki Museum

-- skiing in Nagano!

-- graduation, which means saying goodbye to the lovingly incorrigible 34 Homeroom

-- formally abandoning my quest to find quality Japanese beer

-- hopefully trying Kobe beef

-- finding out what happens to the Japanese teachers when transfers start in March--who stays, who goes? Sorry, no immunity challenges here

-- start jogging

-- spring break in Australia and New Zealand! (What nest egg?)

-- AND MUCH MUCH MORE!


Also, for those of you who aren't my parents (likely nobody), shoot me an email with your home address. I gots me some postcards!

Happy Groundhog Day!

This is why many Japanese people--mostly girls--constantly ask me what my blood type is. Embarrassingly, I don't know it, but people think I'm an "O."

And this nonsensical notion isn't just confined to Japan, either.



We'll always have Punxsutawney,

B

It's all downhill

Today marks the halfway point of my time here in Japan.







The first six months were great--here's to the next six!

I am The Mole

Would you make a good spy?

This test says I would! Guess I've got this if the whole journalism thing falls through--you think the CIA asks for references?

Cultural factoid of the day:

Apparently, Japanese high schoolers think Americans all have blond hair, blue eyes, and take bubble baths every day.

...as my keitai would say: O_o

And oh yeah, it's official! I told my vice principal I'm not recontracting. Forms have been filled out and faxed. Signed, sealed, delivered, I'm yours, America! Come August, anyway... hopefully the economy can emerge from the turd tank before then, but not counting on it.

My seniors (who I only have two weeks left with, by the way--graduation is right around the corner) are writing poems in reading class, so that should yield some funny bone-tickling Engrish. I'll be sure to take pictures... sheesh, I'm a dick, ain't I? Oh, well. I'm sick, so maybe karma sucker-punched me preemptively.

No matter how sick I become, though, I refuse to succumb to this...

My Typical Day:

7:00 AM - Wake up to my cell phone alarm (a default ringtone called "Outstanding Employee") and crawl out of the chrysalis of warmth that is my electric blanket. Curse Japan and my apartment's lack of central heating.

7:10 AM - Stand naked in my freezing shower and wait for the gas to come on so I can bathe in heated water. While waiting, hop or run in place to keep internal temperature up and avoid digits and/or genitalia from freezing off my body.

7:45 AM - Drive to work with Christina in our glorified golf cart.

8:15 AM - Arrive at school. Enter the teacher's room (the only heated room in the school) and rejoice.

8:20 AM - Morning meeting. Everyone stands up and says "Ohayou gozaimasu!" ("Good morning!") and about four different people give announcements in breakneck Japanese simultaneously. (At first, this part was chaotic, but now I just tune everyone out and think about what I'll have for lunch.)

8:50 AM - 12:40 PM - Morning classes.

12:50 PM - Walk over to the sandwich shop to grab some lunch. (Students have remarked that eating a sandwich and potato chips for lunch is "strange" and "cute," among other things. I should probably start eating a bento like everyone else, but I kind of like baffling people with my ham on white, potato sticks and the rest of my Western eating habits.)

1:15 PM - Lunch begins to wrap up, and teachers usually begin brushing their teeth or clipping their nails in the middle of the teachers' room. (?! This was really weird at first too. I guess they could be doing worse things, though... like cleaning out their belly buttons or filing their corns.)

1:25 PM - 3:15 PM - Afternoon lessons.

3:20 PM - Cleaning time! Students clean the entire school, empty trash cans, sweep and perform other such custodial tasks for about a half hour while the school song plays on the loudspeaker.

4:00 PM - Go home!

4:30 - 1:00 AM - Sit on my ass and do absolutely nothing. Listen to NPR, play Chrono Trigger DS (What's up with those new sidequests, by the way? Redundant much?), talk to friends, Facebook, unearth YouTube gems, relax, burn incense, eat grocery store tempura and corn dogs (called "American dogs" around here), etc.

My apologies if this post is a touch negative. I really shouldn't be complaining, I guess. "Winter" in Shizuoka sees a tepid 40 degree average, while the American Midwest is enduring -30 windchill, so Ma Nature's on my side. I suppose I'm a little homesick, and the isolation is really starting to get to me.

But wait! I get paid this week! And I'm going strawberry-picking this weekend, plus I've started to book spring break flights. Sweet, ne?


Wishing he could be in the States for Obamarama,

Buraiyan-sensei

Filet-o-Sea Kitten!

I wonder how well this new PETA campaign would go over here in the land of sashimi...