chestnutvinegar

“Do you ever have it where you don’t know if something was a dream or not?” She asked me.

I said without much interest in the conversation, that yes, there were I suppose things I had like that. There were times I had memories that I was not sure if they were real or not, or memories that I had, but once I truly focused on them I would realize that they were completely untrue. I’m not sure if this was what she was talking about or not.

“This will probably sound silly, but I have this really vivid memory or something, and I’m not sure if it is real or not.” She continued as she stared into her beer, as if what she was saying was written in her dark beer.

“I thought it would’ve tasted different, it’s just a normal dark beer.” She said.

Before this, I had been talking about how I wasted the other day just watching TV.

“What had you been watching?” She asked.

Netflix.

“Oh really? What are you watching on Netflix? Anything you can recommend?”

Not really, I really like Star Trek. I’m recently addicted to rewatching Deep Space Nine, the Star Trek series from the late 90’s when I was a teenager, a show that was perfect for a dorky teenager, with plots about a foreign religion, and delving into the complexities of foreign races. I don’t say all of this to her though, I don’t really want to admit how much I actually like Star Trek, so I ended up (without consciously thinking of any of this) just saying that I’m watching a Star Trek show I liked when I was a kid.” That’s when she asked about dreams.

“This dream, well, I am now assuming it was a dream, but I’m really not sure, was about Star Trek. I’ve never watched Star Trek, so it is a weird thing to dream about, and perhaps a weirder thing to be true, but there was this book which was about people from now, from our time, who were transported into the time of Star Trek. It was about their life there.”

“I have searched my parents house up and down for the book, but I can’t find it.” She continued as she finished her beer. She scans the menu again for a different beer, pausing at one that caught her interest until she noticed it was only 4.5% alcohol, and she continues scanning up and down the list.

“The beers are expensive, I don’t want to spend 1,000 yen for a pint and not even get a buzz! We’re trying to have fun here!”

“Anyways, as I haven’t seen Star Trek, or at least I don’t think I have, and while the memory of this book is vivid, the contents are not, and so now I can only guess what exactly this book was exactly about, why the memory of it is so vivid, and what it all means.

She had decided on her next beer. It was 8.5%. I had finished my fruity beer, and was thinking of having a wheat beer next. We had commented how she was having manly beers and I was having girly beers. Neither of us minded, well, she minded that her dark beer tasted so average, but not about much else.

“To me Star Trek is this world where everyone wears these gold uniforms and looks all serious. There’s some sexiness, but in a very 1960’s American way. Is that when Star Trek started? It’s all futuristic and serious, but people are sexy in that pre-hippy way. I’m not even sure if that makes sense.”

“People travel on expeditions in small groups. They get transported to locations. They look around. They have lasers.” (I didn’t interrupt to say “it’s phasors”).

“There are green people and blue people. Each different race has one facial difference compared to us. A big chin, a weirdly coloured nose, pointy ears. Anyways, that doesn’t matter.” Our next beers came, and while I didn’t think her semi-correct description of Star Trek was especially deep, I enjoyed listening to it. My wheat beer was good, and she enjoyed her beer too. I forget what it was besides the alcohol percentage.

“They transport to those locations. They go to a small village. There’s a peace, but then a confrontation and some lasers go off, the Star Trek people learn something, they are serious, but there is some sort of moral and they all transport back to their space ship.”

“This beer is good, do you want to try some?” I didn’t. My beer was already making me feel full, and we had another pizza coming.

“We can always take the pizza to go you know. May as well enjoy the beers without worry! Anyways, that’s how I imagine Star Trek, I guess. Now, the book was about people from our time going to that world. Can you imagine? If right now you and me, eating pizza and drinking beer just suddenly were transported to this world? There were serious 1960’s sexy men and women all around us, making peace with us, they are nice to us. However, then there is a confrontation, perhaps we do something that they find morally wrong. Perhaps people don’t kiss anymore? Maybe alcohol is banned? I guess if it was banned there would be none to drink though. Anyways, we upset them somehow, and then their lasers go off. Maybe one of us would then die. That would make all of them serious, looking at us, thinking about how they killed one of us and what it all meant. All we wanted to do was kiss or something.”

“They’d probably kill you I guess. They wouldn’t kill me. If this was a book, a woman being angry would probably give greater pause to the reader, no? It would also give pause to the Star Trek people. They’d empathize with me crying, or being hysterical, assuming that I was crying or hysterical. They would look at each other, and they would have all learned something. You would be dead, and I would be stuck in that Star Trek universe.”

Our next pizza came. It had lots of veggies on it. I was sipping my beer to make room for it, but she was already half done her beer.

“I guess there would need to be a happy ending though, right? I mean, would the point be that people in our time can be viewed as weird? Then we would need the happy ending. Or would that just get ignored, and would whatever moral lesson the Star Trek people learned be enough?”

The pizza was great. It was a little hard to eat, and I didn’t want to eat like a pig in front of her, but I settled for destroying the napkins around me instead of actually attempting to eat it with the class that anyone over the age of 12 should have. Washing down the pizza with my wheat beer was great. As I do this and she is now focused on eating her pizza, and washing it down with her beer, I think about the story where I, or someone like me, is dead. Where she, or someone like her, is (hopefully?) hysterical, and what sort of ending the story could have.

I went to go to the toilet and look at my phone. I scrolled through a feed on social media of people angry, happy and nihilistic about various things. I came back, and she goes to the toilet, so I continued to use my phone. I posted a picture of the pizza and beer with some dumb comment.

When she came back and we got ready to pay the bill.

“I wonder if this book really exists? I wonder if it is similar to what I described? What a stupid thing to have such a strong memory about, isn’t it?”

Then with clarity I remembered being 6 years old, living in the Haida Gwaii, and having someone offer me grey potato chips. I’ve never seen grey potato chips before. I wonder if this was a dream. I wonder what it meant.

Every day feels the same. I go to my favorite bar. I say bar, but it’s not a bar. It’s a chain restaurant that people mainly go to to eat gyoza. There’s no “bar”, there’s no older guy behind the bar who will listen to whatever is bubbling inside me that I know no one really wants to hear. There’s a restaurant that’s too bright, tables that look too clean or too plastic or too something. There’s me walking in sheepishly, avoiding eye contact with the staff who is an international student from somewhere in southeast Asia, meekly muttering “for one”, and after being told I can sit wherever I want, sitting in the same seat that I always do.

I don’t need to look at the menu, but I look at it anyways. I don’t want to let on that I don’t need to look at the menu, that I not only have it memorized, but also that as soon as I found a comfort zone in the same food that I like, I would never actually order anything else. A highball, 6 pieces of gyoza, and some kimchi. The kimchi made me feel a little adventurous when I first ordered it, but that was already over a year ago, and I come here almost daily.

Today starts the same. I finish work, and I think I would have my “dinner” , a highball, some gyoza and some kimchi, at my usual place. I walk in, don’t look at the international student staff, say for one, and sit where I always sit. I grab the menu without thinking about it, and without looking at it, staring off into space, think about something that I had done that day that perhaps I shouldn’t have done, or something that I shouldn’t have said.

I regain awareness of my surroundings, and I notice the woman beside me, not a student, is drinking a beer. Something about her sweater makes me fixated on it for an instance, and when the server comes, I mistakenly order a beer instead of my usual highball. As soon as I snap out of my trance, notice that I was staring at the woman’s sweater, embarrassed, hoping she didn’t think that I was leering at her, I realized that I had ordered a beer instead of a highball. I had stopped drinking beer because I thought it would be healthier to drink a highball. I think about correcting myself, and changing to a highball, but I didn’t want anything to think I would have made a mistake, and it would be saying something outside of the limited sentences I can say while sounding fluent. I didn’t want to break any illusion that I was actually not fluent, that I was just like everyone else. Today I would have a beer.

For whatever reason, this affects me more than I should, having to drink a beer when I’m trying to lose weight. Never mind I haven’t actually exercised in months, and that I was planning to eat gyoza. I feel that when the stupid beer finally comes that I should have a big swig. Perhaps that will also impress the woman beside me? You never know.

I haven’t ordered any food yet. I usually order the gyoza and kimchi with my highball, but as I ordered a beer, I forgot to do so. I decide to look at the menu and see again what there actually is on it. Doing this I see that I didn’t have it memorized after all. I think about getting the staff’s attention, but I know that whenever I try to do so they don’t hear me, and I don’t want anyone to think that I am unable to get the staff’s attention.

When they come with my beer, I decide to order some fried octopus and wieners. No gyoza. No kimchi. Whatever, today would be different. Maybe the woman sitting beside me would be impressed that I can eat octopus. I think some people think that Westerner’s can’t eat octopus. It’ll show that I’m courageous and strong.

I decide to take a big swig of my beer. A real man takes a big swig, right? I grip the glass in what I think is a manly brisk way, close my eyes and bring the glass to my mouth. As I continue to swig more and more beer, I can only feel foam come into my mouth. I can’t stop drinking just at the foam, people might notice that, so I continue to drink, but eventually it’s too much. I put the glass down, somewhat exhausted, but try to not let anyone see that I am exhausted. I look at my beer glass, and see that I’ve already drunk three fingers or so of the beer. There should have only been about one or two fingers of foam on the beer, so I don’t get why I wasn’t able to get any actual beer. I quickly look to see if the woman beside me has noticed, and I don’t think she has. I regain my composure, and go to have another swig of beer, this time less to impress anyone, or for the beer itself, but more to just want to prove that I can actually drink beer. I grip the glass again in a manly brisk way (there’s no reason not to), I close my eyes and bring the glass to my mouth once again. Foam. There’s only foam again. It doesn’t make any sense.

My food comes. Forgetting to squeeze lemon on the fried octopus, I pick one up with my chopsticks, and eat it. It’s way too hot, and burning my mouth, and reflexively almost take a swig of my beer, but think against it, as I don’t want anyone to know that I can’t handle the hot octopus.

I go to have more of my beer, and it’s only foam again. Something seems off with the universe. I wasn’t supposed to order beer. I have another sip, and it’s only foam again. I glance at the lemon that came with the fried octopus, do an over-exaggerated gesture and laugh that I had forgotten to squeeze it on the octopus, pick the lemon up, cover it with my other hand so that the juice only goes on the octopus and doesn’t spray elsewhere, and squeeze it, as if I’m on a stage and the whole world is watching my every elegant action.

I go for more beer. More foam. No beer. The beer is now three quarters done. I think about drinking the beer while looking at the glass, or pouring a little bit into a bowl and drinking it from there, so that I can definitely have beer, but that would make me look weird, so I decide against it.

I see out of the corner of my eye two of my colleagues come in. One notices me and comes up to me.

“Hey! Didn’t you know that you like this place too! Good to see you! I could really kill for a beer, mind if I take a swig of yours? Thanks!”

The idiot said this all without allowing me to get a word in, and before I could say anything he grabs my beer and takes a hearty swig. His way of holding the glass wasn’t as manly as mine though.

After he sets down the glass he says, “that tasted great! It’s still quite cold. You must be a fast drinker!”

I say before having any time to think, “didn’t you only get foam?”

“What are you talking about? Look at it! Do you see any foam in here? You always were a quirky joker! Thanks for the swig! Anyways, K is waiting over there, and she hates to be kept waiting. Talk later!”

He didn’t get foam? He didn’t seem to be pretending. I figure that I must’ve imagined the entire thing, perhaps after having worked too hard, and finish off the rest of the beer.

It was all foam.

I leave the fried octopus and wieners. I don’t care what the woman beside me thinks. I pay my bill without saying good bye to my colleagues. I won’t go to this place again.

My parents bought me and my brother a Nintendo Entertainment System all of a sudden one day. They always said they hated video games, and thought they were dumb, and then they bought us a Nintendo Entertainment System. It came with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt on the same cartridge.

For Christmas that year, we were given 5 games. I didn’t know at the time, but my uncle had bought the 5 games, and given them to various family members to give to my brother and I. This would be Christmas 1990 I am assuming. I would have just turned 7 that December. We were living in “the rancher” in North Delta. My grandparents lived in West Vancouver. They had a very nice house.

Anyways, the games we received are written below:

– Super Mario Bros. 3
– Contra
– Guerilla War
– Blades of Steel
– Final Fantasy

Today I would like to go on about Final Fantasy.

Final Fantasy wasn’t a Japanese game for a Canadian 7 year old in 1990. It was a game that had a cool “old fashioned” font on the cover, with a picture of a floating castle in an orb behind a crossed sword and an axe. In 1990, a 7 year old can go to town with this. This was the first time I saw weapons crossed decoratively, and I drew lots of weapons crossed. Spears, axes, lances, swords, chain sickles (a Dragon Warrior thing) and more.

The game also came with a world map, and each location was numbered in the order that you were supposed to go to them. Dragon Warrior games also came with such maps I believe, but this map made a lasting impression on me, and I would be taking printer paper, and drawing these elaborate world maps for games that only existed in my head, numbering the order to go to places. (A moment of silence for printer paper.)

There were two places on the world map that had numbers on the side where the location names were, but not on the map. These places were not on the map. My mind was blown, and I thought about these places long and hard, and thought about the concept of places that were not on maps long and hard. One was a floating castle, and the other was the final castle (here the word castle is being used similarly to how dungeon is currently used in video game lexicon).

I forget if there was an items table insert that came with the game. There was a list of the monsters. The list of monsters listed the HP of each monster. Any bosses that had 1000 HP were hardcore. HP means hit points. When you attack an enemy, you take off hit points, and once their hit points reach zero, they would be slain. (Once your hit points reached zero, you would also be slain.) The translator for Final Fantasy had settled on the word slain for death I believe, and that led to me at 7 knowing the word slain. Slain.

7 year olds can read, but it’s not like they really enjoy savoring on every word, especially when playing a video game. RPGs were still a fairly new thing, and this sort of calm style of playing video games was new. I was excited at playing a video game, and would not read carefully. I didn’t get why the intro scene for the game was after I fucked around on the world map for a few hours, and died at some guy in an old castle up north where he had the princess. When I first reached the intro (a king builds a bridge, and when you cross is things get all emotionally misty and the credits go across the screen), I had thought it was the end of the game. 2 or 3 hours didn’t seem to bad for a game, and I could’ve definitely played it a few more times.

I’m going to jump ahead, but my brother and I didn’t understand the concept of equipping weapons until near the end of the game. Our “black belt” (these days called a “monk”) was always our most effective character in battle because they didn’t need weapons to be strong. Our “fighter” was weak as shit, despite being called a fighter. We didn’t get that. We got it after we learned that you could equip weapons. It was a eureka moment for us.

The game rewarded you in fun ways. When you beat the pirates, you got a ship that could go all over the inner sea. The sea seemed so huge! It was fun to explore. Then, after you beat a wizard, some elves or dwarves were all happy, and that somehow lead to blowing up this small piece of land between the inner sea and outer sea. You could then explore the outer sea! When thinking about these seas, please think about the Mediterranean as the inner sea, and the rest of the world as the outer sea. That’s how I thought of them. At 7 I felt the spiritual connection with my cultural European ancestors in their own inner sea quite strongly. I may’ve even subconsciously thought about Northern Africa and its historical identities.

From the outer sea you could go to the Lich’s hole in the ground. He was the fiend of the earth. There were four fiends and they all made their respective element (Greek element) go to shit. Lichy had made the earth rot. I didn’t really get this or care at the time, but that’s what he did. You kill him, and then an orb on the status screen glows. Progress. Then you get a canoe, and can traverse the small rivers. You go into a volcano (a volcano!) and kill the fiend of fire. Another orb glows. Fires can be made again. Two orbs are yet to glow.

These orbs would later become crystals in other Final Fantasy games. Four crystals would become seen as a Final Fantasy-esque thing. When Final Fantasy IX half-assedly had crystals in it, it was seen as a return to the roots. I have no idea if the orbs were called crystals in the Japanese version, but I have to doubt it because they were orb-like in shape.

RPG progression was going well. Inner sea, outer sea, canoe. Next was the ice cave to resurrect the airship (it was buried in a desert). With an airship, you can go anywhere! In Final Fantasy, this was the final barrier, but newer RPGs also had areas that were inaccessible to airships because you couldn’t land in the area. It was all forest or mountainous terrain. It’s impossible to land airships in such terrain. In Final Fantasy II (IV) there were Black Chocobos (a Chocobo is a flightless bird that you ride) that could fly and only land in forests. Final Fantasy IV also had a hovercraft that would go over shoals (I learned this word from Dragon Warrior II, which I have already talked about), but not over mountains. Hovercrafts can ‘t hover above mountains obviously.

Once the airship is obtained, 7-year-old kids get their first sense of the subjectivity of perception. When you first get the boat, you feel that the boat moves a lot faster than walking. The boat feels really fast. The airship is much much faster. It speeds along across the entire world. When you ride in your boat after getting the airship, it feels so incredibly slow. My first thought was that the game slowed down the boat, or that there was slowdown (slowdown in games was a norm). It took me a while to get that my brain was getting used to the certain speeds in the game, and they were making me perceive them as fast or slow depending on what I was comparing them too. (If the boat actually slows down, then I have been had my entire life.)

As a kid, things like getting access to the outer sea, or finding the airship makes you feel like there’s just much more world to explore. However, when you think about it calmly, you realize that there are just two new towns you can access when you reach the outer sea, and likewise with the airship. I say this, and I felt like this, but the truth is actually a little more nuanced.

There was a third town you could reach with the airship, but everyone spoke a weird language. Well, they spoke gibberish until you talked to this guy in a town way before who knew the language. If you talked to him, then he would teach you the language, and you could speak it. I wish language acquisition were that easy. There are many languages I would love to know. Perhaps I’m talking to the wrong people.

The above guy in a town “way before” blew my mind. A town “way before” is a town that you have already gone through, and in my brain was a town that you have already “completed”. The people in that town will forever say “thank you for defeating the _____, you really saved us!” However, that did not happen with this one guy. You had to remember that he originally said “I like languages” or “I’m a scientist” or something, and then go back to him.

Back to the fiends, once we got the airship, we didn’t really get where the next fiend was, but after randomly talking to everyone a few times, we finally found out that we reached his lair from inside a town. His lair was underground, and he was the Kraken. He gets slain. The orb glows. I suppose the seas stop being restless, but you would have to wonder if they were restless before, how boats were being used. I think 25 years later Bravely Default (another video game) addresses this.

The final fiend was in the floating castle that was on the box of the game. To reach the floating castle, you needed to first go through a tower in a desert. You could not enter this tower right away, but there was a trick that I forget. You probably needed an item to open up the door. There was not sense of accomplishment much like being in a floating castle ready to fight the fiend of the air.

The floating castle had a futuristic feel to it. In current RPGs, the area with a futuristic feel always makes my heart sink because it is a dull boring area, and will most likely take over the aesthetic of the rest of the game. However, when you are 7 in 1990 and get into a tower you couldn’t get into before, get to the top of it, and get transported to a floating castle in the sky, you get pretty excited that it is futuristic.

The fiend of the air (or the wind, this may have changed in translations) was a floating dragon I believe, and once he was destroyed, the final orb would glow, and the wind would calm down (or perhaps start blowing again).

As kids like to look at charts for hours on end, and allow their imaginations to imagine countless scenarios, I looked at the enemy charts for many hours. There was this one enemy that I had not found, the “war mech”, and so I thought I would go looking for him. As he was a mech, I assumed he would be in the (futuristic) floating castle, and so I looked for him in the floating castle. I found him.

The war mech was stronger than any fiend in the game. He was a tough foe (foe is a word learned from I believe Final Fantasy II (IV)), and I remember I beat him with only a fighter left in my party. I gave myself a pat on the back for beating that one enemy on the enemy chart that I had never beaten before, and continued playing the game. Many years later when I was a jaded older elementary school student, I learned that the war mech was almost like a secret boss that most people couldn’t find, and definitely couldn’t beat. I felt mighty big when I heard that. In an ideal world, this is a tidbit I could whip out at dinner parties when people are talking about their stock portfolios. (I don’t have a stock portfolio. I honestly probably should.)

I had no idea why at the time, but once all those orbs are glowing due to beating the fiends of all the elements, you go back to the castle in the north where you rescued a princess at the very beginning of the game. By doing so, you are transported back in time to fight the last boss, Chaos. He had 2000 HP ,which was double a war mech.

I didn’t have any know how as to how to beat a last boss of the first Final Fantasy, but I was 7, so I had a lot of time. I spent hours making my characters stronger, and wandering Chaos’s castle in the past. I got to Chaos a few times, and he destroyed me. I could feel his power and got excited that I was battling such a power enemy. There are no power bars in most RPGs, and you had no idea when you are close to beating a last boss. You do read on the enemy chart that he has 2000 HP, and so you do the math in your head with every hit you take off him, but you’re 7 so your math may be flawed. The second the game lets you know that you’ve beaten him is a magical second. When you defeat normal enemies, they disappear right away, but with Chaos, it was a slow disappearing, more like a tower crumbling, or a statue disintegrating than anything else. The 20 seconds or so it took for Chaos to finally disappear were euphoric.

I sometimes wonder how my uncle chose the game, or how he came across the game to give to us. Was it in some sort of bundle pack? Did he randomly pick them up at the store? Were they stolen, gotten from his friend near the docks? Regardless, he probably got the games, and thought that kids like video games, and it would keep us busy for a while. I would bet that he didn’t think the 7 year old would be 32 in a café in Japan writing about the game. It all sounds kind of lame when I say that.

I wake up naturally around 5:30am. There’s no need to set an alarm, and there’s nothing I have to get ready for, but in the last few years I have taken a liking to going to sleep early and getting up early. Our bedroom (or “where we sleep”) is on the second floor of our house, and so we do not close the shutters up here at night. This means it gets very bright very early in the summer mornings, and it’s easy to wake up early for me.

My wife is still sleeping and will probably still be sleeping for at least a couple of hours. There is no reason for her to get up, and she always goes to bed a lot later than me.

We sleep on futon mattresses on the ground here. When we bought this big old house with tatami mat in every room, we decided we wanted to get rid of our bed and sleep on futons like people usually do when this live in big old houses in the countryside.

I wake up and go out onto the balcony from the sliding door from the room we sleep in. We have already lived here for a few months, but I never get old of looking at the Isumi River. It winds along in the southeast of Chiba Prefecture, and it always feels peaceful to look at it.

“We’ve actually done it. We’ve actually moved deep into the beautiful countryside,” is usually the thought going through my head when I look out. I remember once going for a job interview in Okinawa, and I was sure I would get the job. I had the same feeling one night in my hotel the day before my interview. “It’s actually happening, I will break free,” or something was the thought going through my head.

I look into our “yard”, and look at all the fruit trees my wife planted and her farms. I will probably go down and have a look for any ripe tomatoes that I can eat before I sit outside with a book. I think it is because I’m from Vancouver (or somewhere that’s not bloody hot at 5:30am in the summer) that regardless of the season, I want to have a hot cup of tea in the morning. I don’t mind sweating. I want to be properly dressed (a polo shirt perhaps), sitting on my chair outside with a hot cup of tea and a book.

For better or worse I’ve been rereading books exclusively over the last few years. We broke a huge comfort zone to get down here, but then with literature I am too scared or stubborn to break any new ground.

There’s the weekday Sobu that I ride to work everyday with “the strangers who faces I know”, but there are other Sobus as well. I’ll get to the weekend Sobu last (as that’s what I ultimately want to talk about), and start with the late night Sobu. It always seemed depressing to me that the Sobu train I usually ride from Iidabashi from around 6:30pm is a lot less busy than the one from around 9:30pm or 10. The days I ride it this late I think that I have done a lot of overtime, am mentally exhausted, and then join the majority of people who finish at this time daily. There is the chance that they start work later, but I kind of doubt it. My rare exhaustion is their daily occurrence.

Later than the late night Sobu is the last train Sobu. I rarely ride this on any day of the week besides Friday. On Friday, I want to assume that we are all drunk and going home to our holes for two days of rest, but I always assume everyone is drunk when I am drunk (and everyone is sober when I am sober). My quick glances at pretty ladies may be leers (hopefully not), I’m asleep more than I am awake, and I need to check my Twitter and text messaging app in the morning to ensure I didn’t say anything too stupid to anyone. If I did, I apologize, and the person wonders why on earth I am apologizing.

Then there is the weekend Sobu. During the weekdays at different times of the day the situation is different, but the characters stay the same for the most part. People are commuting to and from work, from Chiba to Tokyo, then Tokyo to Chiba. We have chosen to spend 3 hours a day of our lives for countless years sitting with each other thinking about whatever with think about, doing whatever we do. On the weekend, I am usually riding the Sobu for the specific reason of meeting friends, and that means I’m usually riding it into Tokyo in the late morning or early afternoon. Weekend mornings are for video games, jogs, lazy breakfasts and a cup of tea or two. My wife is recently obsessed with the gym, and doesn’t enjoy embracing the stillness as much as I do, so she eventually goes to the gym. On the rare days where I have a plan, and that plan is in Tokyo, I get to experience the weekend Sobu.

Perhaps it’s obvious (it all feels damn obvious), but there are more women on the Sobu on the weekends when I ride it. This is actually a skewing of facts, but I kind of want to go with it. (It’s a skewing of facts because there are more women on the Sobu during the day in the week as well, especially from around 9-11 I would say. However I don’t think anyone wants to get into comparing this to comparing the weekends in the morning. If we were to get into it (and I guess we are), then the early morning weekend Sobu is usually filled with junior high school and high school kids who didn’t get shitfaced the night before, and are excitedly meeting their friends somewhere (Harajuku for example) at 9am, and so they get on the Uchibo line at Anegasaki (where high school students live), ride the Uchibo for 20 minutes to get to Chiba, and then get on the Sobu. However, to get even deeper into it, it is very rare to have the long distance Sobu rider on the early morning of the weekend, as the rapid is faster, and chances are you are going to get a seat on the rapid too. This is why Harajuku is a good example (thank you) because one can ride from Chiba to Yoyogi on the one train and then you’re just a hop and a skip away from Harajuku. Anyways, I hope it is painfully clear why it is easier to skew facts. End bracket.)

More women are riding on the weekend. There are more young children on the weekend as well. There are fewer men in suits, but there are still men in suits. When I have to work on Saturday, I don’t feel embarrassed to break the theme of leisure, but pervertedly proud for being important enough. I understand that this is silly.

On my most recent weekend Sobu trip, I was going to Harajuku (hence my empathy or solidarity with the high school kids) with a friend. She had wanted to take the Tozai line, as riding on the metro earlier would make the entire journey cheaper, but we were running late, and the local Sobu was an easy and (relatively) fast way to get there. We had timed it so that we would get to Harajuku exactly when we would need to be there. It turned out that I would really need to pee when we changed trains at Yoyogi, but with bravery and determination, I went on to Harajuku, and this eventually led to a conversation with friends as to whether the Gap would have a bathroom or not. (We eventually decided that it would not.)

My friend and I went through the gates at Chiba Station, walked past the Newdays (a convenience store that seems to be the only convenience store allowed to be inside stations, I’m not sure if it is owned by Japan Rail or not), and walked up the stairs to the local Sobu platform. The train stopped was empty, so I chivalrously took the coveted end seat, and forced my friend to take the consolation seat beside me. She didn’t view things in such terms, so it worked out okay.

We were talking about our friends, our dreams, our weeks, and whatever else friends talk about, and after a while it became incredibly obvious that the old man beside my friend was listening to our conversation. I don’t mind it when people eavesdrop on other people’s conversations. We are in a public space, and we are not exactly talking about the revolution in hushed voices. However, his way of listening to us really bugged me. It had something to do with his smirk.

He was a typical old man, and I mean that in a good way. He held an obvious pride in the way he dressed that many people under 60 just don’t have. There was a comb in his hair in the morning, and perhaps even some other stuff. The pants (trousers) he was wearing could be definitely called slacks (they may not have been light blue, but they may as well could have been), and his collared shirt was without wrinkles, and tucked into his slacks. I assume he had retired. I assume he was inquisitive about life (not like a child though). He was the age where the Japanese economic miracle would have been kind to him and the decades of stagnation would not have been so mean. Maybe he was transferred to Brazil as a young man? Maybe he was paid to study Portuguese before being sent there for two years? Maybe he was paid to do a Masters in Boston? The miracle had been good to him. He was now retired. He and his wife saw each other more than they ever did. He was bemused by this too, but his wife probably wasn’t, and his bemusement probably was slowly grating on her. In this way I considered him a typical old man.

He sat at the edge of his seat. I forgot if this was due to having a backpack on or not. He was looking at the train door, and therefore diagonally, so that he could see my friend and I speaking out of the corner of his eye. I couldn’t imagine where he was going. I bet it was somewhere respectful though, that I would hope I go to at his age, but most likely will not go to at his age. It wouldn’t have been a Go tournament. I don’t think it would have been some sort of museum. Perhaps it was to visit his grandkids? But then his wife would be with him too. Perhaps she went over on Friday, and he was coming later? Perhaps it was all a façade and he was just lonely putting up appearances riding the train? You never know.

While I usually try my hardest to never mix Japanese and English, I often do so with the friend I was with. It’s not adding a word or two of one language into the grammar of the other, but it’s switching between the two languages on the fly. Starting a thought in one, and then ending it in the other. I admit that I sometimes do say words in English when speaking Japanese and vice versa, but that’s only because I can’t think of a word in the other language that means what I want to say, and instead of staying true to my rules on how to live, I just say the word in the other language. An example is setsumei-kai, which would literally mean, “explanation meeting”, and I would usually call an “information session”. However, because it’s something I usually talk about in Japanese, I find it incredibly unnatural to say information session, and so I feel much more comfortable when speaking English to just call it a setsumei-kai. (I give setsumei-kais at work on occasion. It’s a living.)

So my friend and I were talking about whatever (as mentioned above), and mixing Japanese and English like we were madmen (this is the gender neutral madmen). This old man was staring at the train door, looking at us out of the corner of his eye and having a very bemused expression on his face while looking like an average old man. He was enjoying listening to our conversation. He found it quaint. It almost felt like he wanted to join in. In retirement he wasn’t having chances to get paid to learn in Boston. He had his wife who looked after their children and their big house, a 15 minute car ride from Honda Station on the Sotobo Line. He made me incredibly uncomfortable. My friend didn’t mind, or noticed and minded, but not enough to do anything. I am a man of action though.

Once we reached Makuharihongo, I suddenly, sounding spontaneous, but being oh so calculated said, “Oh look! We’re already here! Let’s get off the train!”

My friend, startled, said, “Oh! I didn’t realize! Already! Okay!”

She got up, took all the stuff she had with her (she had a lot of stuff with her) and we got off the train.

As we rushed down the platform, I then said, “I’m sorry, I really couldn’t stand that old man beside you! He seemed a little weird how he was listening to us. Let’s quickly get another seat in another carriage on the train!”

My friend was mainly shocked that we weren’t actually switching trains, also surprised that I would do this, but ultimately went along with it, and as we got on another carriage she said, “but what if he sees us?”

To this I replied, “Don’t look back! Let’s continue walking down the train in the opposite direction!”

I can assure you it was very dramatic and our hearts were beating quite fast. We couldn’t find a seat, and so we stood at the part of the train on some carriages where there is room reserved for a person in a wheelchair to sit (in their wheelchair). Feeling incredibly high from our escapades, we continued to talk about whatever.

After a few more stops, perhaps around Higashifunabashi, two seats opened up close to us on the next carriage. Seeing this, before people could get on the train in that carriage at the station, I hurried over to sit, and my friend followed suit.

This does not go against any train etiquette that I know, but regardless it’s a bit of a shock for the people who are getting on the train. As the train pulls up, they see two seats open, and perhaps a pair (as there was) thinks they’ll be able to sit down beside each other. They don’t say anything, but in their heart that expectation has been innocently and strongly formed. There are two open seats beside each other. I will sit down with my friend. It’s simple really. Then, when they get on the train, the split second when those seats are out of view there is some foreigner and his Japanese hussy (she’s not my hussy, or a hussy at all) come out of nowhere and are sitting down in the seats.

You may think that no one truly thinks like that, but the stare of death that we received for a few seconds in my mind confirms that this did in fact happen as I imagine it. I don’t blame this woman, but I didn’t break any of the train etiquette, so all I can call it is an unfortunate circumstance for her. I believe she was with her autistic son, but I could be making that up. She wore those big round sunglasses.

From Higashifunabashi all the way to Yoyogi my friend and I were in these seats. We chatted, and it was fun. These were the bench seats at the end of a carriage, so there are only three seats on each side. I sat in the middle, my friend on the side away from the door, and some stranger beside the door. This stranger is not important.

Across from us there were three people sitting down. A mother and whom I assume are her two daughters. All three of them were wearing very nice dresses. The older daughter I would have guessed was around 7, second grade, and the younger daughter I would have guessed was in her second year at kindergarten (assuming she did the optional first year at age 3). I assume she had already turned 5 though, perhaps her birthday was around May. I assumed she was in the second year of kindergarten because she had a confidence that I don’t think most kids in their first year have. The 7 year old was also quite inquisitive, but she was 7 and therefore already knew a little bit how to be adult like, and had greater concentration for doing so (albeit not by much).

When talking to my friend, I was staring straight ahead, in the direction of the mother and her two daughters when her mother suddenly scowled and slapped the oldest daughter. This wasn’t a slap that you would call violence or abuse or anything like that (or at least not in Japan), but it was a “stop that” smack. The 7-year-old girl was not sitting like a lady should sit wearing a dress and the mother was not impressed. I assume immediately they were going to a piano recital, because that is the only thing I can imagine little girls would be forced to wear fancy dresses for.

The smack had shocked me, or waked me out of a trance looking straight ahead. The mother was scowling still, and looked very stressed. I wondered if she looked stressed due to her little monsters not behaving like ladies, or if there were other stress in her life. With the dresses, I would have had to guess that they were well off, but I couldn’t tell if it was due to her professional success, a rich husband, or a rich family. I didn’t think it was her own professional success, but that is me being stupid, because I subconsciously think professional women wouldn’t force their daughters to wear fancy dresses on a Saturday, and I have no basis for that.

The younger daughter got very excited (the train can still be magical for little kids) and sat on the seat with her shoes on looking out the window behind her seat giggling. Her older sister joined her, and her mom scowled, pulling the younger daughter down. The mom didn’t look happy and I wondered how this would affect her daughters. Would they be sad, scared of her, or forever emotionally damaged? It didn’t seem like it because the younger daughter sat down with a smile on her face looking out the window behind me, and after 5 seconds forgot about her mother getting angry at her for standing on the seat, and stands up again looking out the window behind her.

In these 5 seconds, her mother had time to ensure that her dress was not having any creases, and that the 5-year-old child was sitting lady like.

I was talking to my friend about dreams of living in the country, and right in front of my eyes was the socialization of two children into middle class women by their agitated mother.

I didn’t know what to think of it, but I felt that it was surreal to watch it unfold in front of me. These two children were being children, and their mother constantly correcting their behavior. If the 7 year old had as much trouble as the 5 year old being proper, does that mean that all these corrections would ultimately have little effect on the 5 year old for at least the next two years?

Is it really for the mother? She wants to make sure that those around her know that she is against her daughters’ poor behavior, and therefore she is correcting their behavior and getting angry not for her daughters and their socialization, but to save her own face, and to shout, “I am a good mother! I am trying to make my daughters normal! I agree that they are freaks!”

I wonder if she was angry or genuinely scared and afraid. I mean, I don’t think she was, but when I think about my own behavior in public, I know that sometimes I stupidly act for the masses to not get the wrong impression of me, and I didn’t really see this mother being above that sort of behavior. Especially if the 7 year old was only a little bit more aware compared to the 5 year old, it must be something she only cares about in public?

Could it really be a piano recital? Was it both of the daughters playing? Do 5 year olds play the piano? Wouldn’t that be torture for a 5 year old, or is that only for 5-year-old proles? Maybe they play “Hot Cross Buns”? I bet I could have played that at 5.

Eventually the train got more and more crowded. Even on a weekend in the early afternoon, by the time we got to Hirai and Kameido, it was impossible to see the mother and her two daughters. By the time the train started to empty out around Ochanomizu, they were all gone. They had probably had to change trains at Akihabara to get to the piano recital. Piano recitals would be around Ueno perhaps. That seemed like a fancy area where the mother would feel at home, and where she could properly socialize her daughters to act the proper way, showing the world that she was doing a good job.

Maybe it wasn’t a piano recital, but maybe they were meeting the mother’s mother. They were meeting grandma, who lives in a fancy house somewhere in Tokyo and forever scorned her daughter for marrying some hick from Sodegaura, and is always relentlessly attacking her daughter for how she raises her kids. Maybe grandma was going to come to the piano recital in Ueno? I don’t think grandma was a sweet lady.

My friend and I rode the train until Yoyogi. I wanted to go pee, but didn’t. We transferred to the Yamanote Line, got to Harajuku, met our friends, went to a burrito restaurant and I went pee.

It was a fun day. I watched a movie with a colleague at night.

The typical old man went where he went. The woman and her two daughters in fancy dresses went where they went.

Sitting on the Sobu is usually just like a cramped café. I always get a seat (or else I don’t get on the train), and there are people all around me. I always have my own little space. My table is my briefcase across my lap. (The items on my table are usually a device to play video games (a 3DS or a Vita, never both), my smart phone, and depending on the season, some tissues.) It’s crowded, but I’m not actually with anybody, and I feel a bubble around myself. This bubble does not burst even if something falls onto my lap, the person beside me is sleeping on my shoulder, or the person standing in front of me’s foot is touching mine. The bubble on the train is perhaps stronger than most bubbles are.

One day, in between Chiba and Nishi-Chiba my bubble was popped. I suppose in a way I popped it myself, but only in a natural way possible. Everything, for better or worse, was done without thinking.

Between Chiba and Nishi-Chiba, there’re always a lot of high school students, and for some reason I get the feeling that the majority of them are girls (I say this without conviction as I may only notice the girls, which is something I wouldn’t really want to admit). They come on the train in groups, never sit down, and giggle a bunch until the next stop- Nishi-Chiba- and then get off. I am able to view about 2 minutes of their lives every day. Usually the two minutes look very happy, but I am sure I am not seeing everything. Perhaps they have the energy to put on brave faces for those two minutes.

One day, a young high school girl had what I assumed was a friend with her. It was a foreign looking guy that looked a little older, but then again teenagers from overseas often look much older compared to their Japanese counterparts. I immediately assumed that he was a new exchange student, and was doing a homestay at her house. I thought for a second that it was strange to place him in a house where the high school student is a girl, but I didn’t think much of it.

This high school girl was by herself, excluding the foreign guy who was following her. I thought she was at times saying something to him, but I was not sure if it was small talk, directions, or awkward replies to stop him from talking. I’m not sure if her friends just weren’t with her that day. I may’ve thought that they weren’t because they were nervous about speaking English, and they thought they would leave their English-speaking friend to what she did best. I’m not sure if she spoke English though. I later found out about the foreign guy’s English ability.

As the two of them got on the train to stand in front of me, the foreign guy was mumbling something to the girl, and then wanted to do something between shaking and holding her hand. The girl didn’t really seem to understand, but obliged to shake the guys hand, and then they continued to stand there. At this point, something seemed off about the guy, and the easiest explanation was that his mind was fucked up on drugs. It could have been a million things, but this was the easiest explanation.

The girl’s smile the first time she agreed to shake his hand was a smile that perhaps could have been mistaken for being happy by someone new to Japan, but it most definitely was not. She was awkward, scared, and didn’t know what to do. I still wasn’t sure if this guy was a foreign exchange student, or knew her at all, but he was definitely making her feel uncomfortable.

The next time he tried to shake her hand, again mumbling something, she avoided eye contact with him, stopped smiling, looked down and rapidly shook her head. The guy then tried to use what seemed like persuasive language to do it again, but it was not any English or Japanese that I could understand. He either didn’t mind that the girl was incredibly uncomfortable and scared, or he didn’t realize that she was. Again, my theory was that he was fucked up on drugs, and only wanted to touch a Japanese high school girl’s hand, which isn’t an excuse, but just what I assumed.

Usually I think it is very easy for a white male to make his presence known on a train, and when that presence is known, it usually leads to a situation defusing. I remember once on the Uchibo Line there were two junior high school girls happily chattering away, and then the old Japanese man beside them yelled very loudly, “shut up!” The girls got really quiet, didn’t say anything until the next stop, and when the next stop came they got off the train, and got on a different carriage. It was almost all according to a drill they had practiced many times on what to do if a weird person confronts them. Meanwhile, I continued to give the old man the death stare for a few minutes. He noticed, and gave an apology to me.

I think I had forgotten that you don’t usually give death stares to angry people on the train, at least not in Canada or any other foreign country I have been to. I know that Japanese people don’t do it in Japan as well, but there’s something that came with the experience of being a foreigner in Japan that seemed to make me feel it’s almost my duty to try and defuse situations by doing things I couldn’t do in my home country, and the people around me can’t do in there’s. Also, it’s an incredibly passive aggressive action. I’m not really confronting anything. I’m not speaking or passing moral judgment: I’m just letting a look know that the situation pisses me off or whatever. More than the action having value infused in it, I feel like it is a tool that can be effectively used in certain situations. I could be overanalyzing or misanalysing it. It’s not too important.

So I stared at him. I stare and I stare. He noticed I was doing so quicker than people usually notice. He found it funny that I was staring at him, or at least he started to smile in what seems like disbelief. He started staring back at me with a big smile. The most important part of the story is that at this point I have the attention of the assumed fucked-up-on-drugs foreigner, and the high school girl who he was harassing could leave the area and rejoin some friends of hers. (We can ignore that her friends let her be when the guy was bugging her, presumably at least from the station. Or there’s still the theory of her being a part of his host family I guess.) He stares. I stare. It honestly has never really played out like that before. He did that thing where you open your eyes a little wider and move your head a little closer to the person you’re staring at (me).

I then felt something that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I feel scared for my safety. In these few seconds where we are staring at each other, me with a death stare and him with a goofy grin, I really had a lot of time to consciously think about the experience. Who was I to be scared? If a beer gutted 30-year-old male is scared, then how does the little 15-year-old high school girl feel? I did the only thing that I could think to do, which was to ask the presumably drugged-up-foreigner a question in English.

“Are you alright?”

“What?”

“You, are you alright?”

Another foreigner “tool” to gain an upper hand in a situation that thinks needs defusing is to speak English. There’s never any reason to yell (at least in my warped head there isn’t), and so I sometimes calmly ask questions to people. This is usually not to irate foreigners, but to Japanese people. It takes them off guard, and everyone’s happy and calm in the end.

Finally his response was, “Yeah, man… yeah”

He couldn’t speak English very well, but he knew “cool English”. He knew of English, he had lived a life with English in his periphery, but it was not something he had a command of. I imagine he’s from Syria at this point because he kind of reminds me of a Syrian classmate I had. Cool guy, came across like a dick, and could only speak bits of “cool English”. The Syrian classmate had amazing Japanese, and the university we were at allowed him to stay more than the usual one year because of the horrible civil war in his country. I don’t think my Syrian classmate was actually a dick though; he just didn’t prescribe to whatever rules I have set out for all of humanity. I doubt he tried to touch high school girls’ hands on their commute to school. I hope not at least.

Anyways, the drugged-up-guy was not my Syrian classmate. He was a drugged up guy. I asked him another question.

“It seemed like something was wrong. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”

“Yeah… yeah… “

Okay, situation defused. Nothing is wrong. We could all deal with the situation in our calm 30cm voices with no issues.

He started holding onto the vertical pole dividing my seat and the seat of the person beside me. This gives him the ability to give a not-so-subtle middle finger in my direction, and also mumble an ever so quiet “fuck you”.

I learned at this time that the situation was not defused.

Then I see under his shirt this giant bright tattoo. Perhaps due to my long residence in Japan, I suddenly equate this with being some part of a scary underground gang. He’s no longer just an exchange student new to the country being a bit pervy on his host sister, but he’s a gang member telling me to fuck myself, thinking of ways to skin me alive. I could only ask another question.

“What’s that?”

“Huh?”

“I thought I heard you say something. Did you say something?”

“No man… no man… no”

“You didn’t say anything? Are you sure?”

“No man.. no man…”

Silence. Hand back on the bar. Quietly he said again to me, “fuck you… fuck you…”

I suppose American movies are good for ensuring the world knows basic swear words.

My death stare has evaporated and the only thing I know to do is to ensure he doesn’t think I’m in any way intimidated by him, and laugh in his face as much as I can. I think this is what I used to do if I was ever being bullied in school. It wasn’t always effective.

“I think I heard you say something again. You seem angry. Are you angry?”

“…”

“Why are you angry?”

“Not angry… not angry”

“You’re not angry? You didn’t just say, ‘fuck you’ a few times?”

“No man… no man…”

The train starts to slow down, and we are reaching Nishi-Chiba. At this point I am thinking my entire commute is going to be with this idiot who must be from an underground gang who kidnaps young high school girls and white guys in their 30s who have beer guts. However, after all the high school girls get off, he started moving towards the door too. Maybe he is just a new exchange student?

When he gets to the door of the train, he stops again, and in a louder voice he says, “fuck you! Fuck you!”

Now that there’s some distance, he’s getting angrier. I didn’t realize it at the time, but this is a surefire sign that he’s just a little shithead, because he cannot be angry to my face, but only when he knows there will soon be a barrier between us.

So all I can do at this point is laugh. I’m not as cool as perhaps I am making myself sound though, my heart is beating fast, and I feel scared that I’m going to get stabbed in a few seconds. After I’m stabbed to death, there would be the news that will talk about these two foreigners who got into a fight on the Sobu Line, and there would be panels talking about how foreigners are violent and its all my fault, and then due to my death visa regulations for Canadians would get a lot stricter. However perhaps the people around us would take how I valiantly stood up for some high school girl by staring quietly and angrily, and there would be parades for the silent Canadian who just wanted to save the world one high school student at a time.

Anyways, he finally got off the train. At this point he decided to knock on the window glass behind me. I decided that I wouldn’t turn around, but I will only do a fake confident laugh so all the people around me know that I am not scared, and that I am like the heroes in the American moves (with a beer gut).

The knocking continued, and it eventually became banging, frantic banging. At least he was not following those high school girls. I imagined the banging must’ve hurt his hands after he got out of his drug-frenzied state. He was banging away as the train slowly started to pull away from Nishi-Chiba and start on its way to Inage. Only then when the train pulled away did I make eye contact with the frenzied idiot, so he could see me shake my head and laugh.

At this moment I started to process a few things that I had not processed before. Two highs school girls were talking, and commented to each other how it was amazing that foreigners can just talk to people they don’t know like that. My bravery of looking at someone is getting explained away by being foreign. I didn’t think that was fair at the time.

I then thought consciously about my fellow commuters, who I have been commuting with for over a year, and have never said a word to. There were walls and ideas broken about myself, and that made me feel naked and vulnerable. On a train commute, one can quite easily control how they are being presented, as there are few things you can do that can be judged by others. Are you on your smart phone the entire train ride? Do you sleep on someone’ s shoulder? Do you play really cool video games on your 3DS or Vita on top of your briefcase table? There are really only a few options.

I also realize how incredibly fast my heart is beating. I post what happened on Twitter to try and normalize the experience, and make myself feel better. I try to think of myself as someone that’s not a coward getting scared at the smallest confrontation. I think about how Japan really is the only country that I can live in now.

I dread the next day, when perhaps he will be back on the train to make my life a living hell. I get flashbacks to high school when I did have the feeling that tomorrow there would be somebody I would have to be near who would want to make my life a living hell. I then feel a lot more weak and scared than I had felt in a very long time. The confidence of the death stare was behind me due to some little shit with big tattoos wanting to touch a high school girl’s hand.

I felt like a coward.

I remember this drugged up neo-Nazi couple that I came across at Surrey Central bus station on my way home from university over ten years ago. They were screaming “heil Hitler” and talking about killing foreigners in loud voices. All I did was sit beside an old Indo-Canadian man, and talked about how times were changing. I didn’t confront the neo-Nazi couple. A woman in her 40s told them to shut up. The neo-Nazi woman punched her in the face, and at this point the people around me woke out of their bubbles to help. After I see other people standing up, I stand up too. The neo-Nazis get scared, and run off. Police are called.

I talked to another young guy how we were totally ready to get in there. We were totally ready to stand up to the neo-Nazis. We were totally going to punch them.

The drugged up foreigner on the Sobu line never came back. The high school girls are laughing on the train as usual. I think one night as I was leaving the ticket gate at Chiba Station I see the foreigner once again, but he’s walking fast in the other direction, and I had no intention of slowing down.

My bubble on the train is back. My Vita or 3DS are back on the table I created with my briefcase. I’m studying kanji these days.

I sometimes thought she was an assassin. Other times, I thought she was living a mundane office worker life revolting by always wearing black. I thought other stuff too. I usually didn’t seriously think she was actually an assassin.

I didn’t have much to go by. I got on the Sobu at Chiba, she got on the Sobu at Makuhari. We both got off the Sobu at Shinjuku.

There sometimes seems to be this very fine line to me between someone looking like a model out of a magazine, and someone being considered incredibly unattractive. I think it must be connected with how people can think ugly ducklings can turn into beautiful swans. It’s not like their entire features change, but something very subtle changes, and what was once irregular in a way that society sadly deems unattractive suddenly becomes and exotic or elegant beauty.

When I say she was near this boundary, I in no way am putting a personal opinion in whether she was beautiful or not. I found her neither. However, I thought that in the collective consciousness of us all, her mystique hovered around that line. Some people would most definitely find her incredibly attractive. Other people would most definitely find her to be a woman always frowning and turn their nose as to how she was always wearing only black.

She was slender, but that doesn’t really say much. Her black clothes were always a bit loose, so there was no way of knowing if it was because she was keeping in shape, was naturally skinny, or unhealthily slim.

Like all of us, she had her routine for this hour of her day. I first noticed how entrenched her routine was when she broke it ever so slightly with a book.

Before I noticed her black clothes, before I noticed her dangerously dancing between beauty and whatever else, I noticed something that was much more important: she always had a 3DS with her. A 3DS is the current Nintendo handheld device needed to play Nintendo handheld games. The 3DS didn’t do as good as its predecessor, the DS, and many games that were supposed to help it mimic the sales of its predecessor did not do so. One game in Japan was what can be considered a huge bloody hit, and that game was Animal Crossing. This is the game that this woman was playing nearly every day I saw her on the train with her 3DS for almost 2 years.

I have never played Animal Crossing for the 3DS, but I played it for the Nintendo Gamecube, which was a console to play video games on television sets. The Gamecube had its heyday perhaps between 2001 and 2006. There was also an Animal Crossing for the previous Nintendo device to play video games on television sets (the Nintendo 64), but that only came out in Japan, and during this time I was a resident of Canada.

Anyways, I am mentioning this so it is aware that my bias for the woman playing Animal Crossing on her 3DS is through glasses that are tinted with only the experience of playing Animal Crossing on the Nintendo Gamecube. I was taught in high school that identifying bias is important.

Animal Crossing games are the types of games that non-gaming journalists are ordered to cover due to their influence in the larger world. Journalists then create narratives, do some “investigative reporting” (play the game) and churn out an article about how Nintendo is quirky and a toy maker who “gets” things (or conversely does not if sales were less than expected).

It’s not the point A to point B kind of game that used to be big.

In Animal Crossing, you have a house in a village, and you can decorate it with furniture. There’s various ways to get this furniture. You can also get different types of clothing. A big part of the game is doing favors for your neighbors. Sometimes they want a beetle, or to have a letter delivered to their next-door neighbor. I forget what happens if you do these favors, but I think it would help you get furniture and clothes to make your house and person look more nice. I feel nicer and more nicer are distinct here.

So the woman in black always played Animal Crossing. If you don’t play it everyday, there are negative consequences in the world. Imagine if you just ignored your neighbors for weeks? Would they like that? No, and neither would your Animal Crossing neighbors. (Perhaps Time Magazine compared it to Tamagotchi here?) Weeds would also grow in your yard. I think an angry mole also appeared and got angry.

She would get on the train at Makuhari. She wouldn’t wait to sit down. She would stand in front of a person, and she would take out her 3DS. Her 3DS was in a gothic-style case. It wasn’t the type of overpriced case a dorky foreigner would buy, but one of those cheap cases that anyone could find in a Yodobashi Camera that happened to have had a goth design on it. She would unzip the case, put the case back in her purse, open her crimson red original 3DS (there are many types of 3DSes, but it’s not really too too important).

She definitely knew where to stand. She was doing her commute long enough to have a reasonable idea as to where was the perfect spot. She knew about the slightly overweight, kind of weird guy in those big framed glasses (that look like they were big in the 70s everywhere, and still big with Japanese politicians here) would get off at the next stop, Makuhari Hongo, and therefore she would stand in front of him if he was available to stand in front of. If he was not, there were Plan Bs, Plan Cs and so on. Sometimes she would have to stand all the way past Suidobashi. During these times I would look at her face to try and catch any hint of frustration or fatigue. I never saw either once. I wouldn’t say Animal Crossing entranced her either.

She was usually able to sit down, because she was usually able to stand in front of the guy in those glasses that got off the train at Makuhari Hongo (you have to wonder about a person that gets off at Makuhari Hongo). Whether she was standing up or sitting down, she was playing Animal Crossing on her crimson red original 3DS.

I never really “got” Animal Crossing (me and that Time Magazine journalist) and I never really cared to look and see how she was doing in it. She also very rarely was sitting beside me. That was always okay by me because at this time I was playing lots of 3DS myself, and I always thought it would kind of stick out to sit beside someone else playing 3DS, and I didn’t want to stick out (a dumb wish for a white guy in Japan perhaps). I was never playing Animal Crossing though. During this time, I was probably playing Dragon Quest VII. I did my best not to look at her screen after confirming that it was in fact Animal Crossing that she was playing.

I usually didn’t need to look at her screen to confirm that she was playing Animal Crossing though. The 3DS has a feature “Street Pass” where an avatar (a “Mii”) you create gets wirelessly and automatically transmitted to 3DSes around yours. Your Mii, with cartoony facial features that can resemble your own face if you like, walked into their 3DS, and was able to say a few words. It also told you what game that person was playing at that time.

So our Miis would say hi to each other, exchange greetings, and let us know what each other was playing at the moment. During this time when Animal Crossing was quite a hit, one could Street Pass about 30-40 people a day in Tokyo. I’m sure it’s very different now. When you met a person multiple times on Street Pass, you were able to send them a personalized greeting, and let them know if you think they are “great” or not.

It was common courtesy to let everyone know that they were great, and it was quite rare to give people personalized greetings. I sometimes got them, but it was usually a pain for me to try and reply in what seemed like fluent Japanese. At this time in my life, I still wanted people to think I had perfect Japanese despite not having perfect Japanese then (well, or now).

I said she was great. She said I was great. She played Animal Crossing. I played Dragon Quest VII. I was going to a job at a company that didn’t pay overtime, and had a boss who would call people into his office just to yell at them for a few hours, she was a mystery wearing all black, going to kill people, or sell clothes, or manage an engineering firm. Something. It was impossible to read her.

On some Fridays, she wouldn’t only have her usual purse which had the gothic case that housed her crimson red original 3DS. She would also have a small suitcase. Seeing the suitcase always made me smile because I assumed that she was planning a trip for the weekend. She lived in Makuhari, and worked in Shinjuku. It is much easier to get on a bus or train from Shinjuku than it is from Makuhari. Shinjuku was a sort of bus hub, and it was good for trains as well to various locations.

I imagined that she was going to Karuizawa in the summer to escape the heat. It was hard for me to think if she was going alone, or if she was going with a lover or a friend. Well, I always imagined that she was going alone. I imagined that she probably would’ve liked that better.

Whenever I imagined she was an assassin (the stupid thought came into my head more often when I saw her suitcase for her supposed trips), I always imagined that character from Murakami’s 1Q84. The character was an assassin, and liked to have sex with married balding middle-aged men. I doubt the woman in black liked to do the latter. I bet she couldn’t be bothered and preferred to play Animal Crossing. Despite not being a fan, I did kind of respect that rejection and total acceptance for what her village demanded. Maybe it was meditative?

Some days when she came on the train she didn’t pull out that gothic 3DS case. Perhaps she didn’t even bring her 3DS on these days? Instead she had a book with her. I think this happened twice for about two weeks each time. I guess that’s how long it takes to read a new book. Regardless of her profession, I imagined that these books would be the latest by Natsuo Kirino. I was happy and sad when I saw her with a book. She wasn’t playing a video game on a dedicated video game console anymore, but she was branching out and doing other things. Good for her! Her face wore the same expression with the book as it did with the video games, and that being expressionless.

On a day that wasn’t in one of her book periods, nor on a Friday where she had her luggage full of clothes for Karuizawa or weapons for killing, I did something that was quite out of character for myself. I sent her a personalized message via my 3DS to her 3DS. I forget what I said, but it was something inane. “The train’s late again!” or “Isn’t it hot?” or something. No, that wasn’t it. It was a rare time where we caught the same train home from Shinjuku, or at least we Street Passed each other on the way home as well. I think my comment was something like “wow, [we Streetpassed] twice in a day!” or something. She replied to my personal message (you have the ability to ignore them as well) with something like “we did, didn’t we?” I’m assuming (I don’t remember). I sent her another message, and she didn’t reply to that one.

I think I had thought what I had said was “too much”. It was probably something like “works a pain, isn’t it?” which may not sound like too much, but it was too much to me because it is going into what could turn into a personal conversation. I hadn’t really any interest in doing that, but I was intrigued to communicate with this person, and therefore I guess got carried away to being invasive with a “works a pain, isn’t it?”

Nothing changed. There’s no real end of beginning, except for the when I started that job in Shinjuku, and when I quit it. She never changed. She played her 3DS. On the rare Friday she had her suitcase. If she was really into a book, she would read a book for a few weeks. Then she would go on to wherever she went, to do whatever she did, wearing loose black clothing, having a frown, and seeming somehow (somehow?) very content and happy.

My wife and I planned to sleep in our van down by the beach. When writing it out, it sounds a bit dirty or “low class”, but it is actually a very comfortable way to travel. Whenever we would sleep in the van, we would lay down two (or three if feeling luxurious) futon mattresses in the back of the van, pack two coolers full of food and alcohol, two camping chairs, and a camping table. It was great fun to get to the beach with fresh food and a bottle of wine, watch the sunset, talk until it gets dark, and then sleep comfortably in the van to the sound of the ocean waves.

The plan was for this Golden Week. After much deliberation about the day (we both have various things we want to do and have to do in the Golden Week holidays), we decided on a day, and after packing the van with everything we needed, we set out for Kamogawa in the south of Chiba, near the bottom of the Boso Penninsula.

The weather turned out to be crap, and we went back and forth as to whether we actually wanted to sleep at the beach.

“It’s windy, it’s going to rain overnight, and there won’t be any clear skies. It really seems like the only reason we would stay overnight is because it was our plan and to stick to the plan, without taking into consideration if it’s a good idea or not.”

That made sense to my wife, and after going back and forth some more, my wife decided she wanted to go for a quick surf before we go home.

That was fine by me, I knew she was going to be surfing, and I had packed my laptop and a collection of Haruki Murakami short stories. I had decided that I wanted to write a bunch of stories about the Sobu Line, and that they would basically be complete ripoffs of Haruki Murakami stories. I can have my own style and whatever else later. For now I just want to write as much as I can, and get a feel for writing.

We parked at the beach, and my wife went to surf, and I got into the back of the van, with the trunk door open so that I could feel the breeze and look at the ocean as I read and wrote.

Before doing this, I was on my smart phone doing a quick check of Facebook, and someone had posted some video that looked like a woman was giving a blowjob, but was actually eating a chocolate bar. The crudeness of it piqued my interest for a few seconds, and in those few seconds an old man rode by on his bicycle, looking in the side van window as he did. Then in front of me (behind the van), he stopped his bicycle and started to stare at me. I irrationally panicked that he would start going off on me for looking at porn in public, but I couldn’t see that happening in Japan. He eventually crossed the street and sat on a public bench, beside another old man, and talked loudly in heavy dialect.

I put away my smart phone, and picked up the short story collection that I had brought. The story I started was a story about coincidences, or things seemingly being connected or similar. As I was reading it, the old man came back and stood right beside the open trunk, looking in at me. My first thought was indifference (I had already rationalized that he wasn’t going to run to the police, my wife and my work to tell them that I was looking at pornography on my phone), and I continued to read about Murakami being at concerts and record stores.

“America?”

‘He’s talking?’ was all I could muster to think.

“America?”

“Eh?”

“America?”

“No, not America.”

It looks like he had stared at me not because I was looking at what would have been considered porn, but because I was a foreigner. That had made him… perhaps excited? And he wanted to strike up a conversation.

“France?”

“No, not France.”

Perhaps it seems cold, but I honestly didn’t have any interest in telling him where I was from, and usually don’t in these situations.

However, after (what was for me) an awkward pause, I gave up.

“Canada.”

“Huh?”

“I’m from Canada.”

This seemed to have ended our conversation for the time being. I’m not sure if he was desperately trying to continue the conversation and just could not think of how to do it yet, or if he was super relaxed, and no other question came into his head.

Looking at him, he didn’t really look disheveled. He was properly dressed, as an old man would dress: a vest over a button shirt, and some sort of slacks that were in old-man colour. There was something white on his bottom lip that kind of grossed me out. It didn’t look like food or anything, but more like something sickly.

After about thirty seconds, my thoughts about his mouth were interrupted.

He said something, and I couldn’t understand it. His dialect was too strong (or so I tell myself).

“What?”

He repeats himself, not slower, or in more standard Japanese.

“Excuse me?”

The third time, I guessed that he was asking where I lived, which is honestly not one of the usual questions I get asked in these cases, but I had decided that that was what he was asking me.

“Chiba City. I live in Chiba City.”

He mumbled something, and went away. After a few seconds of digesting that I had just undergone human contact, I got back to my short story. Murakami’s gay friend was turning down a proposition from a married woman who had just bought sexy Italian underwear. I go back onto my smart phone, look at things that don’t look like women giving blowjobs, stare outside, stare at the ceiling of the van, and eventually get back into reading about Murakami’s gay friend.

While I do this and forget about the old man altogether, he decided to come back. First, he looks at me from a far, and then he stands right beside the trunk door of the van, not speaking.

It is not that I felt vulnerable per se, but a man standing right by the open trunk door from where I feel the breeze is something very hard to ignore. It is something that demands a reaction, be it something friendly and social, or something angry and hostile.

Eventually he spoke again:

“Are you married?” he asked as he looks at my wedding ring.

“Yes, I’m married.”

“Are you married to a Canadian?”

“No, I’m married to a Japanese woman.”

This usually gets a big reaction from people, but it didn’t from him. That would pleasantly surprise me if I didn’t want him to go away. He stopped talking, so I decided to ignore him and get on with my book. Murakami’s friend had just dialed up his sister he hadn’t talked to in ten years or so.

Then, any comfort zone that was still there was broken.

As he reaches in the van to touch my stomach (which is showing as my shirt rode up when I lay down), he said to me, “Wow, your stomach is quite hairy isn’t it?” with a smile.

I muttered an, “uhhh… yeah”, briskly adjusting my shirt, now feeling violated, weirded out, and basically wishing for him to go away. He sensed the change in atmosphere, and I think he sensed that he had basically lost. By this time I had completely imagined the man as a lonely old man. Perhaps his wife had died, perhaps his wife couldn’t stand him. Perhaps his children and grandchildren also couldn’t stand him. Perhaps he could sometimes talk to people on the beach, but he was so shit at communication, that no one wanted to talk to him. Or perhaps it wasn’t his shittiness at communication, but just that everyone was busy leading their own lives, not wanting their hairy stomachs touched.

None of this mattered, because I just didn’t want to talk to him, and nothing was going to change my mind to want to humour him with monosyllabic answers anymore. He left again.

I didn’t really want to find out what Murakami’s friend and friend’s sister were going to talk about anymore. I just didn’t want to have to deal with the old man. I put the book away, closed the trunk door, locked the van and went for walk along the ocean.

I got back to thinking about how moods can change so quickly. How one person can just say one thing, and then suddenly everything changed. I remembered a female friend of mine a few nights before told me in a LINE conversation that she is doing pole dancing classes to get in shape. My initial reaction to this was that it sounded sexy, and so I said so. The rapid LINE conversation had suddenly halted when I did so, and I wondered if at that time I had changed the atmosphere. After 10 minutes waiting for her to reply, I mentioned how I maybe shouldn’t have used the word sexy, but that admittance of consciously thinking about it also sounded weird. I eventually gave up and our conversation had ended.

I think about such things too much, but while walking on the beach I compared my own actions to my friend (commenting on her sexy pole dancing), and the old man’s actions to me, and thought about how vulnerable and lonely one can easily feel.

As I walked back to the van, I decided to walk right beside the ocean on the beach. My wife saw me from her surfboard and waved at me, and I waved back. I thought about watching her for a little bit, but the waves weren’t very good, and I thought I would grow impatient waiting for her to ride a wave, so I went back right away.

Back at the van, I once again opened up the trunk door, lay in the back (I am unsure if my stomach was showing or not), and finished reading the story. Not to spoil it, but the sister had breast cancer. So did the woman who wore the expensive sexy Italian underwear. After finishing the story, I looked up to see my wife coming back from surfing, looking cold in her wetsuit. After she had successfully changed, and warmed herself up with the hot water tank she brought, I said, “An old man touched my stomach while you were gone.”

She laughed and said, “In the van?”

I noticed her before I noticed him. I think that’s because I’m a straight male, but maybe it’s for another reason. I would say she is in her late 30’s/early 40’s, and would also say that she takes really good care of herself. The first thing I noticed was her eyebrows which always seemed perfectly trimmed. They weren’t trimmed in any desperate attempt at beauty, but they were trimmed because of a meticulous attitude regarding what should be done. In the winter she wore more formal business attire, and in the summer her clothes were more colorful. I remember her more from the summer than I do the winter, but I do remember both versions of her. I didn’t feel any attraction to her, but I did think she was beautiful. I sometimes feel guilty when I don’t feel an attraction but still think the person is beautiful. Like perhaps I am thinking they are beautiful as a sort of consolation prize. Like my being attracted to somebody is first prize at some American county fair that everyone fights for or something.

I get on the Sobu Line at Chiba, and she gets on the Sobu later. I’m going to guess Makuharihongo, but it is just a guess. It’s been a few years since I saw her last.
Makuharihongo is about 10-15 minutes after Chiba. Chiba is the first stop on the Sobu and therefore I always get a seat. Sometimes she would stand in front of me, but the more I saw her on the Sobu, the more she wouldn’t. That’s her being smart. I got off at Shinjuku, and she got off before that. If she wants to sit down, she would learn quickly that there is no reason to stand in front of me. However, sometimes she did absentmindedly, or perhaps a “sit down strategy” never crossed her mind.

He got on the train after Makuharihongo. I’m going to guess Higashifunabashi, but again, it is only a guess. He was older than her. I’m going to guess he was married as well. He had a very fair, meticulously (again) trimmed beard. He was also in very good shape, and had a tan. If he was a high school teacher, he could’ve been a soccer coach. With the way he dressed, and the time of the train he rode, I highly doubt he was a high school teacher. He just had that air about him.

I was convinced they were having an affair. She was single. He was married. She loved him. She looked forward to looking around as the doors opened at Higashifunabashi, and her usual cold face lit up when she saw him. He would stand next to her, and they would talk. I don’t think he didn’t love her, but it was more complicated for him. Maybe he had kids too? Maybe he just couldn’t divorce his wife. Maybe he loved his wife, and this woman was amazing at sex? Maybe he pitied this woman.

Their relationship changed in the 15 months I rode the 8:15 Sobu local from Chiba station.
In the beginning her face was cold. She stared at her mobile phone. One day when she sat beside me I checked what she was always staring so intently at. I half assumed it would be Twitter (which I would think is cool), and half feared it would be some stupid farming simulator (which I would think is lame). It was neither. She was constantly looking at clothes to buy. Perhaps much like I can look at the prices of video games I never have any intention of buying almost meditatively, she did the same with clothes. That doesn’t mean I forgave her for looking at clothes on her phone. I was allowed to look at stupid video games, because I’m a complex person. She’s merely a guest star or extra in the train portion of my life, and therefore my conscious was not as forgiving or understanding with her as it was with me.

I didn’t notice the man at first, and I don’t think he was always there. Maybe he was and they just didn’t talk to each other. She would get on the train, wearing some sort of business suit in the winter, and more colorful clothes in the summer (I vividly remember a orange-reddish skirt that went to her knees), look at clothes on her phone with her perfectly trimmed eyebrows, hair parted in the middle, perfectly combed, nails professional done, but not with beads or jewels on them like many women get.

I first noticed that she was talking to someone else, which took me by surprise. An image of a person on the Sobu commute changes once you hear them open their mouth. All that you imagine can come crashing down. Her voice was a lot warmer than I thought it would be. He made her laugh. Either I never really heard what they were talking about, or I didn’t remember. It may’ve not left a big impression to me, and there were more important matters to think about. Did they have sex in the morning or in the evening? I suppose the evening is obvious. How would they have sex in the morning? They would’ve had to taken an earlier train after they met.

They got off the train together. I suppose that could allow one to assume that they were colleagues. At the time I never pieced that together or really cared. In my head, I like to assume they were not colleagues. If they were coworkers, it would be apparent that I was only seeing half their train story. They also had an evening train story that was likely close to daily. Either one would inconspicuously wait for the other to give signs that they were about to leave, and then pre-emptively start leaving themselves. Sometimes they would mention in front of others that they were leaving together (as it would make sense if they lived on the same train line), and sometimes they would meet outside their workplace, as you don’t want to let people know that they were taking the train home together daily. They would start talking then.

If they didn’t work together, it would’ve been much more romantic I think. I wonder who would’ve approached whom, and how they would have done it. I hope it wasn’t they were both drunk after their respective drinks with coworkers. Perhaps it was. Perhaps they saw each other on the platform, one of them forgot that they actually didn’t know each other, and without thinking greeting the other, thinking “hey! It’s you!” Then they realized that they had never actually talked, and suddenly became embarrassed. Let’s say the man did that. The woman, having drunk a little was more confident than would usually be, and could admit to herself that she had always wanted to talk to him, despite never consciously realizing it herself. They talk, and when the train comes, they don’t get on it. With drunken confidence, the man asks the woman if she wanted to get a drink at a bar. Does the woman notice his wedding ring? (Did he actually have a wedding ring?) Has he taken it off? The bar leads to the hotel. He couldn’t stay all night, and lives about 50 minutes away. Does he eventually get home? Does he tell his wife something? Did they use protection?

If they weren’t drunk on a Friday night, then I imagine they by chance stood beside each other, and a seat opened up in between them, and the awkwardness led to them talking. Or perhaps one of them was in a hurry running and dropped something. Then the other picked it up, and ran after them. I can’t really imagine this leading to romance though. Maybe it sadly had to do with alcohol.

With alcohol, I imagine it would lead to embarrassment the next time on the train. Maybe this is when they started talking to each other a little bit on the train. However, over a few months suddenly her clothes are more colorful, her smiles are wider when we reach Higashifunabashi, and they converse more and more openly. I forget if they ever held hands on the train, but I doubt they did. I think I once remember they did something that was overly overt. I wonder what it was? Maybe she held onto his arm.

This time was very fun to watch. The woman gets on the train. Let’s say in a white blouse and that orange-reddish skirt that went to the knees mentioned earlier at Makuharihongo. She looks at some clothes on her phone. After Tsudanuma she starts looking at reflection in the window in front of her. When the train announces the next stop is Higashifunabashi she would have to suppress her smile, to not let anyone (including herself) know that she was excited and happy. The man would come on at Higashifunabashi. Perhaps there was always some tension if he would come over to stand beside her or not. At this time, he would. They would talk happily, and get off the train together, to go either to their workplace, or to separate workplaces.

I think this lasted for quite a while, perhaps five or six months. I mentioned sex earlier, but perhaps it was much more than that, and I am just being a stupid guy. Perhaps there were flowers, dinner, discussions all night. Perhaps he read John Donne to her. When his wife was out of town, did they take a trip to some hot springs in the mountains of Shizuoka or perhaps Gunma? Could she wear a yukata as they went to watch the fireworks together? Would he go to see the fireworks with her when he could?

Anyways, it didn’t last forever. One day, I noticed that he didn’t get on the train. This had happened before, but other times it did not take the woman by surprise. This time she was doing her usual routine of looking at her reflection and suppressing her smile. He did not get on the train. I think I saw a split second look of heartbreak on her face, but it was literally only a split second. The strong cold face returned, her mobile phone was out, and she was back to looking at clothes. She had allowed herself a split second of pain.

She may have realized at this time that it was a shitty idea all along, but I don’t think she did. The man didn’t get on the train the next day as well, and when he finally did, he didn’t talk to her. He found a seat somewhere. She found a seat somewhere else. I wondered why he just didn’t take a different carriage. Maybe on those days when I had assumed he didn’t get on the train he was actually taking a different carriage?

One day he did talk to her, but it was very different. Perhaps he had an interest to talk to her again, but she would never open herself up as she did before. She would never embarrass herself again by being happy with him. She was not rude. She wasn’t even cold. However, her manner of speaking was closed.

Shortly after their relationship went bad, I changed jobs, and while I still rode the Sobu everyday, I rode it 40 minutes earlier. I wonder how they are doing now. Do they still ride the same train every day? Do they perhaps now ride in different carriages? Perhaps they have made up. I hope they haven’t made up. I hope they could appreciate what they had, but ultimately know that it was a mistake. Or perhaps the man divorced his wife, and lefts his kids to be with her? Would they have made them happy? Maybe they have a child themselves?

She was beautiful, but I was not attracted to her. He was tanned, muscular and confident. I was reading or playing video games, watching a portion of their story- their morning commute- while thinking about all there is to think about.

This is an account of the time I was a children’s English conversation teacher. I was a children’s English conversation teacher between the ages of 21 and 23. I got the job offer in Vancouver, Canada and it is the reason (professional reason) that I came to Japan. I started on October 1, 2005, and quit after the third week of March in 2007. I was there for roughly 18 months.

This will be split up into parts. The first part will be my time at the Kenshu Center in Nagoya, Aichi. Kenshu means training, however, we didn’t call it the training center. It was the Kenshu Center.

I was eventually “stationed” in Kimitsu, which is a factory town halfway down the Uchibo (Tokyo bay) coast on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture. Before that I had training in Nagoya, Aichi for two weeks, and after training I had a week of “hanging out” in Nagoya, Aichi before the company was ready to ship me out.

When I got to the airport in Nagoya (after an uneventful transfer at Narita), two other Vancouverites found me. They were on the same flight as me, and were also starting their Japan adventure. We were giddy with being at the brink (or over the brink) of the unexpected. The guy who was supposed to pick us up was late. He was a British guy who lived in Nagoya, had married a Japanese woman and had two daughters. At the time, I thought that was kind of lame.

The British guy eventually came, and we all got into the company van he was driving. In hindsight, I think I was trying to be more grown up than I was. Smoking pot in forests the last two years of my life wasn’t the best for my social skills. I think I made an impression of a bit of a weirdo, or perhaps someone who was very young. The two people who came from Vancouver were around 25. That seemed ancient to me. I looked down on them for throwing away their life at such an age to come to Japan I think. I was young and allowed to do such things.

I told the guy driving us that I had already started studying some grammar because that kind of thing is important. The guy said that I must be quite advanced then already. I was speaking as someone who had never understood what it meant to speak a language besides English. He picked up people at the airport all year long who had very naïve outlooks on Japan and the Japanese language.

The van we were in had that ETC thing all hooked up, so we were automatically going through ETC toll gates on the highway. I asked what ETC stood for and he didn’t know. I looked down on him for that. (I don’t know what it stands for after 10 years of living in Japan. Electronic something?)

We eventually arrived at the Kenshu Center, where we would be staying, around 9pm. My roommate had yet to arrive, so I was left to my own. I had carried a bunch of Gameboy Advance games with me, as well as a bunch of mp3 CDs for my mp3 CD player. (This is a discman that plays CDs with mp3s burnt onto them, as opposed to requiring WAV files.)

I listened to the Weakerthans and played Wario Ware I’m sure. I probably listened to that Against Me! song too: we’re going to force ourselves to live.

The next day in Japan was a Sunday. We were still free this day. I think I met a few more of the people that would be a part of our training group. We would watch movies together, go to the 100 yen store together to buy food, and basically become very close over this period. As we lived in constant contact with each other, we became very close very quickly.

I think it was on this Sunday that I went out to look for a video game store. I had my Lonely Planet guidebook, but I had not really learned any Japanese. I remembered that 行く(iku) meant “to go”. A family friend had taught me that before I came. “Grammar”.

I should mention that I had all my money in Japanese traveller’s cheques, and that no place conveniently located took Japanese traveller’s cheques. Canadian ones would have been no problem, but not Japanese ones. I remember going to a local bank and asking if they would accept them and they couldn’t speak English. Eventually one of them just said “no” strongly half laughing as they were doing it. At the time I was hurt by this and thought it was quite rude. I persevered though.

Anyways, at the video game store, I was looking for Mother1+2. I found it, and it was 2000 yen. I bought it right away. I was then getting a bit hungry and I went to the convenience store and saw they had a pasta or noodle dish. I bought this, and ate it as I walked down the street. I think people gave me dirty looks.

I later went to the same convenience store to buy a phone card. I called my parents fairly regularly I think. I didn’t have a computer at this time. We were told that we shouldn’t bring computers. In hindsight, that seems quite dumb, but perhaps it was when the times were changing.

There was an Internet café at the next station as well. I didn’t go there yet though. Nothing interesting happened there though, so it is inconsequential.

We met two people from the training group from the month before us. They mentioned going to bars and that they could even sleep with married women. The women just didn’t care they said. I thought this was disgusting, and even thinking about having sex was disgusting. Weren’t people supposed to pine and yearn for months before finally having the courage to ask someone out, then awkwardly make out with them in their bedroom (with the mother walking in a few times) before awkwardly having sex? Wasn’t that standard protocol? Wasn’t having sex with married Japanese women at the bar by the next station not standard protocol? Wasn’t that what bad people did?

Around this time, four of us in my training group wanted to find this amazing Japanese restaurant called Saizeriya. We had heard that it was amazing. We were armed with our Lonely Planet phrase books and we went out.

We couldn’t find it.

We eventually saw a man in his car at a stop sign, and we tried to ask him for directions using our Lonely Planet phrase book. He understood what we were saying, but we didn’t understand his answer. He eventually gave up and let the four of us get in his car. He drove us to Saizeriya.

Saizeriya is a “family restaurant” which was modeled after the American family diner I think. I’ve never been to an American family diner, so I can’t really critique anything regarding that. They had a “drink bar” (like KFC has/had in Canada) were you can get your own drinks, and they had Italian food. It wasn’t real Italian food. I forget what I got, and I’m sure I said some stupid thing to the other people. Al (one of the Vancouverites who I met my first day) had wanted to tip (he knew it wasn’t custom, but he couldn’t really believe it I think), and they got angry or ran after him or something.

On the second day (third day?), my roommate Jay came. I have very fond memories of Jay, and really really looked up to him. He also annoyed me sometimes for liking to tell lots of stories. Since I was always with him, I heard his stories more than once. I think I was half jealous that he had stories, and half annoyed that he wanted to show off so much. We eventually had a falling out. I regret that to this day. I think it was my fault.

I think I first met him when I came home from somewhere. I was still on a high from being in Japan (JAPAN!), and when I opened the door to my room (our room) at the Kenshu Center, I think he was brushing his teeth with a big smile. I think he enjoyed being a mentoring type, and I enjoyed having someone mentor me.

We first went to the 100-yen shop, and he showed me the pre-cooked rice that was a good deal (three meal portions for 100 yen). He also showed me natto, which he said was amazing, and that other foreigners can’t eat, but he can. I thought this was cool, so I decided that I could eat it too. Three packs of natto were also 100 yen. This means that one meal was about 66 yen for us. Cool!

He also loved melon bread, and therefore I thought I loved it too. I think it wasn’t until 6-10 months later that I realized that I actually thought it tasted horrible. It is way too sweet.

Our first day at work (on the Monday?) was this entrance ceremony. We were taught to say the words otsukaresamadesu to fellow (Japanese) colleagues. This sounded ridiculous, as the only Japanese that I knew was sayonara from the Ninja Turtles (Shredder used to say it), konnichiwa from somewhere, and food names (sushi, tempura, etc.).

I definitely did not have the balls to say the word to anyone. At the entrance ceremony, I think we all had to introduce ourselves in front of everyone to the company president. He understood English, but some people stuck an yoroshikuonegaishimasu at the end of what they said.

I did no such thing. I probably spoke with that dumb smile I have when I’m feeling nervous and ballsy for doing something completely normal.

(There’s no need to translate the above Japanese phrases.)

An important part of training was understanding the bus and train system. Each day of training after the first entrance ceremony was at a different classroom located somewhere in the suburbs of Nagoya or further (usually into Gifu, which I suppose could be considered the suburbs of Nagoya. I’m not well enough in the know to say anything authoritatively on the matter). We were led by our trainer- who was 24 (ancient)- who could ask in Japanese to strangers and train people if we were getting on the right train (fluent). Nagoya had a very confusing system of many different train companies where the same train line could have a different final destination, and depending on how fast the train was, it would only stop at certain stations).

There was one guy in our training group who came to look for a wife. I looked down on him. I think we all did. He was very nervous, and wanted to confirm the simplest most obvious things. However, he was very earnest. At one classroom we went to for training, he spilled his coffee on the carpet. This was the one classroom where the (Japanese) teacher in charge of the classroom hated allowing foreigner folks use it for training. The trainer was freaking out. The awkward guy’s cleaning method just made it worse. He was very apologetic. He didn’t get along with his family back home, and did not want to go back to them. He was Australian, and I imagined his family to bench-press wild boar in their free time. He brought a lot of medicine with him. I hope he found a wife and that they are happy.

There was another Australian guy who had decent taste in music. He liked Fugazi, but said their politics were a bit much. I wanted to make sure everyone knew I was political. They needed to know my Marxist beliefs and whatever else I believed. I made sure to strongly say I loved Fugazi for their politics, and that was their best part. I must have been fun.

Another guy was of Egyptian ancestry, but I forget where he came from. It may have actually been Vancouver. He left after the first day. He couldn’t take it. He missed his family. We took it as a person that needed to be evacuated. I imagine it was similar to the reality TV show Survivor when someone gets evacuated. This guy had cool long hair, and was quite hairy, but in a “I groom” sort of way, and not in a “I rock” sort of way.

I really enjoyed the training and basically acting like a kid. I loved to sing and dance, and to play all the games. There was the “train game” where we could run in a circle, and do different actions. I miss the train game.

Day 4 or 5 into training was our first time on our own. We were given a map and had to find the school and watch a real teacher teach real lessons. These schools were in the boonies, and required not only train taking, but also bus riding. I was impressed that all Japanese bus stops had their stop name listed at the front of the bus. However, they were usually four or five Chinese characters long. Let’s say something like 南船橋坂上. It wasn’t that, but it doesn’t matter. If it was that, I would look at the cross on the top of the first character, or only look out for the simple last letter. When getting off the bus, I would also show the paper I had to guide me to the bus driver (the paper was in English, but had the bus stop name in Chinese characters), and they said something like “okay okay”.

I remember after one of the practice lessons I did, the guy I was with got on his little scooter and sped off, and I was left to my own devices to find the station. I was completely lost, and I don’t think I had a map. I didn’t know the word for station or train, but only the name of the train station. I kept on asking people where it was (by saying the name with a raised intonation), and they would all tell me we were where I was asking about, as it was not only the name of the train station, but the name of the area. Eventually I remembered that train was densha, and some guy (at a gas station?) pointed me in the right direction. Later, two junior high school girls guided me all the way to the station. I had thought it was cool that I was seeing real junior high school girls in real junior high school girl uniforms and they were talking to me and talking me to the station. At this time I didn’t realize that this could be taken in an incredibly creepy way. When they left me on the correct platform (they were also taking a train), they said “bye bye” to me, and I was so touched that they would speak English to me. My mentor would later tell me that people say bye bye in Japanese too. I was still touched.

One night we all went to the local bar/restaurant (izakaya) place. One person was half-Japanese, or fully Japanese but from another country, and was being nice enough to order for people. I had asked him to order for me too, and he got annoyed and said I would have to do it myself. He was tired of ordering for all us shy folks perhaps. I ordered meekly, and somehow survived the ordeal.

Walking back to the Kenshu Center, I remember thinking later that I must’ve been an annoying drunk on that walk, but I forget exactly why. I think I was trying to sound cool, but it came across annoying. I never talked to anyone to confirm those suspicions, but I had them. Thinking back, I still have them.

I remember once feeling very overwhelmed with everything. This may have been after my roommate had stopped being my roommate. After our training, some of us stayed behind in the Kenshu Center because our placements were not ready yet. My roommate and I were both supposed to go to Toyama, about 15 minutes apart from each other.

Anyways, I was overwhelmed, I didn’t feel like having a beer in the bathtub, or try to learn the phonetic writing systems with Mother 2, and so I took out my mp3 CD player, and put on the Weakerthans’ Left and Leaving. With that I had felt myself coming back together. Nothing really deep, just simple songs like Aside or Watermark. “We’re talented and bright, we’re lonely and uptight”, not “true meaning would be dying with you” at this time.

I previously mentioned a beer in the bathtub because that is exactly what I did one night. I think my mentor had said that it would be a good idea to do so. I took a picture of this as well. Actually, thinking about it, I am not sure if I did this before he came or not. The beer I chose to drink was the cheapest one they had at the store. I believe it was called Draft One, but it probably wasn’t. It was a “type 3” non-beer for women who were watching their figure (or at least that was what the commercials said). As a man (boy?) against gender stereotyping, I embraced the non-beer and drank it all the time. I didn’t realize that it also tasted like shit because I really didn’t have a taste for beer, nor did I really ever drink that much beforehand.

I had earlier mentioned buying Mother 1+2, but I didn’t mention anything about it. The games were completely in Japanese phonetic scripts. I had asked a trainer (not my trainer though) whether all Gameboy games were, and he said he didn’t think so. I think I asked in an aggressive (why don’t you know?) sort of way. In Vancouver, I once asked a girl in order to be a dick what her favorite Pixies song was, knowing that she didn’t know the Pixies that well. This is something I won’t forgive myself for. Anyways, one day at night I decided I would study Japanese with Mother 2. My mentor thought that was impressive, and I liked his acceptance of what I was doing. It was completely hopeless though. I got to figuring out that my name would be クリス, and then just skipped ahead.

I had started studying Japanese in my second or third week at the kenshu center. My mentor said everyone studies katakana first, but that one should really study hiragana first. I studied hiragana first. I would write rows and rows of them. They’re separated into groups of five, and so I would do five at a time. It was really fun. I had planned to be fluent by the end of my year in Japan, and to be able to play video games no problem.

Mother1+2 was not the only video game I bought. I had bought a Super Famicom with Final Fantasy V. Final Fantasy V was a video game that was released in Japan in 1992 and never came out in English (well, it eventually did, but on the Playstation, and there were… loading times!). As I was an RPG dork as a child, it was something I had always wanted to play. In 1998 or 1999 there was the Internet, ROMs and all that stuff, but it was not the same, and I wanted to play it like it was meant to be played. I didn’t play it in Nagoya because it was all in Japanese and that got really boring really quick.

I mentioned at the very beginning that I was stationed in Kimitsu in Chiba near Tokyo. I mentioned later on that I was supposed to teach in Toyama in Toyama on the Sea of Japan in the Hokuriku region. Toyama had snow and mountains. I imagined sipping sake on a mountain while studying Japanese. Kimitsu is a factory town and suburbia and nothing interesting. However, as I’ll mention when talking about life in Kimitsu, it was in many ways the perfect place to live.

I was called into someone’s office, and they told me that I would be going to Kimitsu and not Toyama. I said that I wasn’t happy about this. I think this got me labeled a problem person, and my boss in Chiba was told about my attitude problem. She told me that one drunken night in Tokyo months later.

In training we visited actual classrooms five times. The first time we would just watch all the lessons of a veteran teacher (we would be visited veteran teacher classrooms), the second time we would teach one lesson, and by the fifth we would be teaching all the lessons. This would be an experience we interact with a foreign person who has lived in Japan long term, and get some sort of insight from them. This would also be the first time to be an actual “authority figure” to young children. Leading, commanding, and all that other stuff that English conversation teachers must do.

I don’t have a clear memory of each five places I visited. I remember my first time teaching (my second visit) I really had no idea what I was doing, and did the thing that horrible English conversation teachers do where they mumble things only for themselves, do not say anything to the children decisively and sort of just get through the lesson. I remember this teacher was a very casual “just do whatever man” type, until he saw how shit my lesson was, and he jumped in quite a bit. I don’t think that’s a good way to be. Another teacher whose classroom I visited didn’t really have time for me. I was new and wide-eyed, and he had been in Japan a full year and had his life all in order. He had an electric scooter and just rode away! I think this was the time when I got lost and the schoolgirls led me to the station. Another teacher had been teaching at Peppy for 13 years (which would be since 1992). He showed me a picture of the house he built (well, had built) and he was especially proud of the roof. He had an interesting relationship with the Junior class, and he said he knew the students since they were about six. I found it hard to fathom doing the job for 13 years back then, and honestly, I still do. He seemed happy though, which is great. Another teacher I visited (I believe this is the fourth I am remembering, which is amazing) was a woman, and a cool woman at that. She also liked live music, and enjoyed her life in Nagoya seeing bands and partying with her Japanese friends. I thought she was cool. I may have thought I had finally met a person who “got it”.

In hindsight, while everything was a whirlwind adventure of fun, I did definitely feel lonely, and part of my awkwardness was due to not having anyone that was like what a friend of mine back home would be like. People were more “normal”. No one danced in parks at night, had friends who wrote in a book to remember stoned conversations, or danced up storms at local ska shows. In that homesickness that I did not realize was homesickness, I may have latched onto that one teacher a little too much the night I went to her school, exposing (or expressing) a weakness in myself.

The month that I came to Japan, Propagandhi’s fourth album, “Potempkin City Limits” was released. I remember buying that in Sakae, and going back to my room in the Kenshu Center and listening to it. Nothing anyone gave a shit about, but it was something I was very excited about. However, the album actually took me years to get into.

Training had ended. We had to take a test. The test was very easy, and I believe everyone passed it. After training, I believe we had to stay in the office for 5 hours a day, or go and team teach. Team teaching was like training where we went to a classroom, but this time we went as equals, and not as lowly shits. In reality though, we were still lowly shits.

After training had ended, people had started going to their placements. We had all exchanged email addresses, and had all kept in touch. Eventually when we got to our location, we all got cell phones, and then would text each other back and forth. I had found this very fun.

Suddenly, I was supposed to start in Kimitsu, Chiba a week earlier than was originally planned. I had said good bye to my mentor, packed all my things in my backpack and my suitcase, and was once again on my way, feeling like I was going on an unknown adventure into a new world.

Going to Chiba was my first time using the JR Line. For whatever reason, each line had some distinct impression in my head. The metro was like a big SkyTrain system (the SkyTrain is Vancouver’s train system). It was familiar-ish. There was another train company called Kei-something. They were like a high-tech amazing SkyTrain system. I remember going to Gifu with them, and being surprised when the SkyTrain-esque scenery became the countryside. My view of the train had to be changed, because it was no longer really a big SkyTrain, but I think my head couldn’t deal with changing the neural connection or whatever at this time.

Anyways, this was my first time using JR. I took the metro from Hongo to Nagoya station. I got on the Shinkansen (bullet train). This would be my first time on a bullet train. I was very excited to ride it, but honestly after about 5-10 minutes of seeing everything go by very fast, it just became a normal train. It is interesting because I probably enjoy looking out the window on Shinkansen more now than I did then. I don’t ride them very often (once a year?), but when I do, I make sure that I’m on the side where Fuji is, and go along with Google Maps to ensure that I truly “feel” where I am.

The Shinkansen took me to Tokyo station, which was an experience I don’t remember. All I remember is that I had no idea how to get to Chiba from Tokyo. I went to various official looking people, and said “Chiba?” and they pointed me in the right direction. In hindsight, it may’ve made more sense to ask in English politely, but I was not smart enough to know that at this time. Such actions should make me more forgivable to how people sometimes act to me. We don’t always know what we should be doing, and something that makes us look dumb.

People kept on leading me further and further underground, and finally I found the train for Chiba. I got on the Sobu Rapid, and as I went from Tokyo to Chiba, I noted that there wasn’t really any change in the scenery. Perhaps the buildings got a little less tall, but they were not any less dense.

I eventually (in 45 minutes or so I’m sure) got to Chiba station, and went to the ticket gate. This is where I met my new boss, and the next part of the adventure began.