Japan, Natural Disasters and I: Chapter 1

Originally posted on March 13, 2008

You will always remember your first times. You will always remember odd events. And Japan is always ready to show you odd first times.

When my Japanese adventure started, I was aware of the intimacy between Japan and Natural Disasters. Japan is located on the “Ring of Fire”. Japan is proud to have more than 10% of active volcanoes of the world, and being on 3 major seismic plates.

The event of natural disaster is somehow embedded in the Japanese culture. They learned how to go around it. This is fascinating! But I never understood how Japanese dealt with it and lived with it as if life was normal… until my first time.

I was still fresh in Japan, didn’t receive “Natural Disaster Training” and didn’t read any “Manual to Survive”. In other words, I was not ready. Not ready at all!

Few weeks in Japan, and I needed to discover the night scene in Osaka. My friend Victoria was nice to take me out to the neighborhood’s club slash meet-market: Sam and Dave! We drank, we drank... we danced… I learned my first Japanese pick-up lines... and I applied. I was literally surrounded by fans from, unexpectedly, both sexes. Unfortunately, for me and for them, I wasn’t ready to go beyond practicing “how to pick-up in Japanese”. Let’s say that my heart and mind were still in Beirut. Jet lag issues?

All this is to tell you that I woke up the next morning with a light hangover. So, I woke up in my dorm room and stood up, bumped into almost everything (tiny tiny tiny room), then sat on the chair, opened my Japanese book and started reading. Few minutes later, my head started spinning (non circular spins). I shouted at myself: “Come ooooon! I can’t still be drunk, I didn’t drink that much! Goddam it”! But then, my room started squeaking louder and louder; my chair started moving and I couldn’t stand up straight. With that, an excess of adrenaline rushed into my heart and I realized that it was a “big” earthquake (relatively to the non-Japanese me).

I panicked! I didn’t know what to do. I was surrounded by the enemy: high closets, AC unit…… things that are ready to fall on me! I really felt that I was going to get squashed by these objects. I hated them. “I’m at the 4th floor, so I can’t jump”. So I simply tried to keep my equilibrium in the center of the room with my hands up in the air! I waited. 20seconds. Stronger heart beats. I looked outside: people were acting normal. WHY?!?!? 30seconds. Louis Armstrong fast heart beats. They are not panicking! Someone help me! 40seconds. Apollo 13 heart beats. I wish I had a picture of that minute: I looked so dumb and scared. 43 seconds! I was still alive, the room stopped its roller coaster ride. I laughed.

I called my friend: “Man, did you feel it? What should I do next time?”
Next day, he handed me a booklet: chapter 1, earthquakes; chapter 2, typhoons; chapter 3, tsunami alert; chapter 4, fire.

With that booklet, I felt safe! “Pillows and booklets” are my thing.

Japan: April 3, 2007

Originally posted on April 4, 2008

Almost a year ago, on an evening of April, at 4:40 PM, the Boeing 777 - flight EK316 - landed in Kansai International Airport, Osaka Japan. On that instant, and only that instant, I realized that my Japanese journey began.

I will never forget that evening. It was surreal. I was so much taken by the magic of this newly started journey that the world around me suddenly muted. I was hearing myself so clearly; each breath, each heartbeat. I had just stepped into a world that I only knew through books and through my father's stories. So, I was a new baby, born into a fresh new life. With no Japanese literacy, a kindergarten child had better survival chances than me.

The only person waiting for me in Japan was a Japanese Government volunteer with a list of names that included mine.
"Welcome to Japan!" she said. She smiled, gave me an Envelope, then showed me a form. "Sign here please".

I looked around and saw few other new-comers looking at the content of their respective envelopes. These faces were not scared, nor afraid, nor stressed but simply like me, in the unknown.

"Do you speak any Japanese?, asked one of them.
-No, not at all. And you?
-Just a bit.
-Where will you be living.
-Kyoto. And you?
-Osaka. Well, good luck for your adventure!
-Yeah, we need it!"

So, we had few word exchanges - in English of course - with a simple purpose: knowing that somewhere in Japan, an new born adult... will be, will exist. There is others! What a relief!
We were then taken outside. It was already dark, a black moonless dark. I was then led into a black typical Japanese cab. I bowed from my head to the taxi man. The door closed and I was, again, all alone.

The car was moving on a long bridge. It was so calm that I could only hear the sound of the wheels rolling on that bridge. It was a long bridge taking me to my new life. My eyes were looking all around, but there was only the bridge's lights and nothing else. Then, life came into the landscape: buildings with lots of colorful lights, colorful Japanese neon signs, and.. people.
I still remember this black suited man walking and playing with a "transparenty" umbrella. I smiled. And thought that, maybe, someday soon, this unknown terrain will be as familiar to me as it is to him. This was Osaka-city.

The cab turned left, then left again into a narrow impasse. The door opened. I stepped down, took my suitcase and looked in front of me. That was my building. The taxi man rang into an interphone, blabeled something in Japanese and then left.
An old man in a uniform came out, smiled at me and started addressing me, in Japanese. What was that language? I smiled back and guessed that he was asking for, maybe, who I was, or my ID. I showed him my name. I got lucky: he looked at a sheet then gave me a paper with few English words. I figured out that I had to pay some entrance money.. I think. After opening the Envelope, I handed the required sum. We entered an elevator, shiny metallic chrome. Fourth floor. He pointed out my room while talking to me in Japanese, I obviously didn't understand but followed him into what would be my place.

The old man left. I got into my room tailing behind me my suitcase and carrying my pillow; my pillow that I got from my bed in Beirut. I locked the door and contemplated my new "home". It was tiny silent cold fluorescent lighted room. Keeping myself busy from thinking, I briefly cleaned the tiny space, took out my clothes, put some sheets on that mattress, took a shower in the weird shaped prefabricated bathroom unit, and got into bed.

It suddenly hit me: I was in Japan. I couldn't believe it. I was scared of this new unknown. But that internal shiver made me excited because I had faith in the next day. Osaka will someday be my city too!

However, at that moment, in my bed, with the lights off, I felt all alone. I was somewhere in Osaka, far far away, in an unfamiliar world; and the only place I knew, was this room that I just discovered.

I felt the immensity of that day. But I felt safe: I had my pillow with me.

Harmony in Dichotomy

Originally posted on April 11, 2008

Far away, in the midst of the densely crowded streets of Japan, I am walking and the only thing I hear is the wind in my ears. It’s a soothing feeling. On the other side - inside - , my inner-self is too busy with the thoughts circling around my mind.

More than a year in Osaka and I survived. I managed to succeed in every step of my Japanese Journey so far. From being unable to walk on my own, I can now converse, read my bills and mail, joke and socialize. In other words, I now have a normal life: I found my second home.

However, a new semester started and I am officially a Master’s student in Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics, Economic Policy Program. So this year sets for me a new array of steps, difficulties and challenges. I am excited and looking forward: the material is extremely interesting, the professors are quite famous and there are new walls for me to break.

Since I previously graduated as an Engineer, it is the first time that I attend advanced economics classes. But not only it is a change of career, it is also a change in the language of instruction. The A to Z is in Japanese and my Japanese Language proficiency can be described as “daily life skills”.

A friend recently emailed me asking about my mood. So I answered her with the other side of the medal.

My mood? I am panicking but not conceding. I have this feeling when I attend my classes: it is all in Japanese. Amongst it all, you can find few economics formulas that I recognize because of the mathematical operators. Still, I need someone to explain what it is all about. However, the parameters are defined in Japanese and the professor lectures in Japanese. I pick up few words, few sentences, few grammatical structures out of the long explanation. But, after all, I only understand the edge of the material and not the core.
So I panic then hold my guts and say to myself: “it's normal to feel like that, I will manage, and it’ll work out fine like everything else”. I may be convinced or may be simply trying to brainwash myself. The whole thing is somehow like when you almost vomit but don’t; you just feel it in your mouth. My mood, my psychology is currently passing through that.

I am living a dichotomy where the strong side is suppressing the weak side, where the confident side is holding the panicking side’s hand, where the determined side is pushing along the lazy side. It is a dichotomy where I am mentally hugging myself. My only moral support is my fear and hence myself. After all, Japan took me away from home but brought me closer to myself.

As a friend once said to me “the important thing is that you walk the walk”, I am walking the walk and my ears are enjoying the sound of the wind.

Skirt Effect

It's a warm day for winter in Osaka, 12degrees Celsius. it's time, girls and boys are leaving from schools. An army of ants flows towards ant carriers, public transportation. Same hasty pace, same rythm, same walk, same song. Is it the invisible student status pheromones?
Here they are, waiting for the train to take them to night cram school.

Boys wait with boys of the same age and school; girls with girls of the same age and school. Each school has a different uniform, each grade a different variation. Suits for advertising, variation for age classification. Boys wear dark pant suits, girls skirts and long dark socks.
The wind is blowing. They are all talking, waiting. Minding their own business, they don't look around. I do. Boys seem calmer than girls; girls louder and more eccentric. Micro skirts have been in vogue after the ban of moonsailer uniforms in most schools. Moonsailer is equivalent of older men's fetishist tantric Pavlov effect. Homo sapiens are a branch of Primates that are descendants of homo erectus after all. Back to weird coupling reproduction instincts. I wonder if Lucie wore sailormoons.

Microskirts are not official school wears. They are simply 'pimp my skirt' versions. It happened that I witnessed this tuning slash remodeling, in a train wagon. It was 8AM and two schoolーfashionーuniformism victims were helping each other roll their skirts' upper sides. The more you roll, the shorter. And, they roll allot. I asked one of my Japanese friends about this phenomenon. He told me: 'kawaii naa'. A literal translation would be:it's cute!
Is it cute? I would call it enticing. Doesn't it push older man to have a new Pavlovian stimulus? How does it affect the future boys and girls' maturity?

Here's something to think of.

Well, the wind is blowing, nobody cares, no body looks (except older men or opinionated foreign residents like me). Here's the train, I bend my head, get in. The train will carry us to another colony.
Did I tell you that the colonies are developed around stations? This is another story, for next time.