Television: The Americans Have Nothing on These Guys

The reason I have decided to write this post about television is because it is something near and dear to me, as well as the fact that it was all Colleen and I had to do in our first few days here before we started teaching. They gave us four days off before we had to start training and while we wandered on our various errands during the day, the nights were filled with the endless miasma of Japanese television. Every once in a while we will catch an American movie, which is subtitled in Japanese and not dubbed, as they prefer to read their movies here. (I can only glean this from the fact that even some of their own shows are subtitled, or that we were watching Korean soap operas and just can't tell the difference yet). However they are rarely good movies (ie. Moon 44, The One, The Watcher, Under siege).

Perhaps it is because I don't understand Japanese or the fact that we just have the basic twelve channels here, but there seems to very little predictability at all as far as what to expect on each channel, except that channel one is all Shopping Network all the time, and there is nothing that they don't sell. The other channels play a variety of shows, some of which I understand the concept (like "group of random local comics making random audience members laugh", or "giant celebrity/celebrity sound-alike karaoke/gameshow contest where losers are doused with water or flour"), however these shows appear to be one time specials and then are never seen again. The one show we now know is Monkey Host Quiz Show. I'm sure that's not what the actual title is, but every Monday night at midnight there is this wordplay quizshow with Japanese celebrities (we can only assume their celebrity status as these people seem to appear on every show and on every channel). The strange thing about this show is not the clever wordplay combining Japanese symbols and the uses of their sounds and sometimes different meanings as English words, but the fact that the two hosts of the show are dressed in full costume and make-up to look like Planet of the Apes monkeys ( the blonde ones). WHY?!? There are also a huge amount of panel shows, where there will be one or two hosts and about ten people (see local celebrities) who's only job is to throw in humorous bits of dialogue between video, guest, or insane stunt segments. The following is a list of things I have seen on such shows:

-hosts in all too revealing spandex sitting in chairs with huge steel pans suspended over their heads and a couple dozen ropes in front of them while they take turns passing a pair of hedgeclippers to each other and cutting random ropes until one of them is left unbraindamaged.

-hosts watching as one of their apartments is invaded by a sumo sized man who proceeds to order a couple of pizzas, squeeze his enormous naked frame (too much ass!) into said hosts tiny little bath tub, eat said pizzas on the hosts bed and then ride around town (with clothes on) on the hosts tiny little motor scooter.

-contestants doing some kind of humiliating game/stunt at a swimming pool and then the losers being subjected to the shows "mascot?" (an overweight Japanese man with a mullet who is only ever seen wearing a black belly shirt and speedos) putting them on their hands and knees in the shower room, dumping soapy water all over them and then spinning his speedo clad body across them.(too much ass!)

-a doubles ping-pong match in which each teams inflatable outfits are filled with air each time they lose a point, until at the end both teams are still trying to play, looking like giant paddle wielding balloons. This however ended when ones teams outfits exploded on their bodies.

and the one that had me screaming for so many reasons (laughter, disgust, laughing disgust)

-two hosts in a pre-filmed wrestling segment. Camera cuts to gym where they are squared off against each other. Camera pans out to reveal both hosts are completely naked. Their junk being covered by a digitally added picture of their own faces. The bell rings and they go to it, grappling, pinning, holds, throws, man parts being jammed against ears, until they finally collapse on the floor exhausted and wretching as they realize what had so recently had been resting on their foreheads. (have I mentioned too much ass!)

I'm just glad they don't do segments like that on The View. There are many more things I could mention about the myriad of programs and American celebrities doing commercials here, but really I think I've said enough for now. Occasionally I will throw in more TV tidbits in future posts.

Anyhow, as well as posting this new story I will also leave you with another written after our second day here.

Thursday March 17

Today we tried to find the Joutou Ward office so we could be registered as aliens. I've been treated as an alien back home before, but I've never actually been one until now. We looked at the map and decided it looked close enough that we could walk it. It would have been too if it hadn't been raining (first purchase: umbrellas), and if I hadn't decided to follow the city map to the Ward Office which was about eight blocks from where the Nova map said it was, but when you have three different maps, only one has north at the top and they are all different scale, you kind of have to improvise. Here's something else that's fun, have you ever went into a store or gas station to ask for directions? Awesome. Have you ever done it when you didn't understand the language they gave the directions in? Fun. I learned very quickly "joutou kuyakusha wa dokodesuka?" ("where is the Joutou Ward Office?"). However the instructions I got always ended up being a hastily scrawled map with landmarks I didn't know, or a game of charades in which the only clue I had was direction. Once we eventually found it we realized that, had we taken just one road instead of 27 we would have shaved an hour off of our time.

It was after that we decided to try grocery shopping, which we also hadn't thought we be as difficult. Not as many pictures on the bottles a jars as we had hoped, however we nailed the fresh meat and produce. Some of it is a lot pricier than back home, but by no means all of it. After getting food and a few basic household items we decided it was time once again to retreat for the confines of home. The highlight of the day was definitely the phone cards Nova had supplied us with to phone home.



Until later, make mine Marvel. Carl

P.S. The crows in Japan don't sound the same as back home. They sound like old men being strangled and punched in the stomach, while they laugh at you.

We got Internet!

Hello hello, we are now up and running, and have many things to share. Colleen and I decided to each do our own on-line journals about our adventures, as from time to time we discover that our perspective on things differs a little. Or in Colleen's words "You're insane!" If you also read Colleen's journal you will no doubt see and read some of the same info but her site is very funny and I hate funny things, therefore I will try to treat my journal with the utmost seriousness.

On that note, we went to our first Japanese drag show last night. Some of the teachers from my school were going, so Colleen met me after she got off work and we went to check it out. What we didn't realize was that the reason they were going was because one of my fellow teachers was in the show, lipsynching to songs and appearing in three different outfits.. Yikes! But we got a few good pictures. The guy next to Colleen is my co-worker. Yikes again!

We have done many other cool things since we have been here, including cherry blossom watching, Sumo watching, sunset watching, drunken businessman watching. Come to think of it we have done a lot of watching, but that is mostly because we don't speak the language. Anyhow, my first post really is just about our first night here. I typed it up that night, but since we didn't get internet for a month (it takes about 3 weeks to set up here) I couldn't E-mail it to anyone. So here it is in all it's glory. With a few editors notes of course. I have logged a few other journals as we have been here, and will post them at a later date, and soon my posts will be a little more current, rather than stuff that happened a few weeks ago.



March 16

Well one of my wishes has come true. Riding on an airplane full of Japanese school girls. Now if I could just get on a airplane full of Swedish bikini models I'd be set. Seriously though, I don't know if any of you have ever spent 11 hours in the air all in one go but it was butt numbingly fun. Also never gave it a thought before but when you fly international to another country and most of the people on that plane are from that country they kind of cater the meals that way. For the first time ever I had raw fish on an airplane. Very cool...if you are into raw fish that is. Also coming into Japan a very excellent view of Mt. Fuji. It is much larger in real life than it is in pictures, cause in pictures you can fit it into a photo album, but in real life, no way.
After getting off the plane and 45 minutes in line at immigration we got our bags, met our rep, gave our suitcases to the delivery service and were then informed that while all of the other teachers were going to a hotel, Colleen and I were going to be directed to the train station where we would be on a 45 minute train ride on our own, until we met our next rep who would transfer us to another train and take us to our apartment. Very strange. We had to walk through this alley to get there. Even the alleys have vending machines in Japan. Our apartment is right next to a cemetery, all the apartments are outside access and the elevators to get us to our floor have windows in them. I don't know if any of you have seen "The Grudge", but it's pretty dang close. Inside the apartment we've got two small rooms, little futon mattresses, an air conditioning unit with digital controls in Japanese (which I am learning to use pretty dang quickly), a two burner gas stove with a fish grill in it, a washing machine (no dryer), a love seat (blue leather), TV (no cable yet), oh yeah and a toaster oven with pictures of the different foods beside the cooking times (so far I can only identify three of them, but you guys might have better luck).
After our intro to the apartment, our liaison left us on our own. We immediately left to roam the streets at night in a foreign country. Wow. We saw city workers gathered in a courtyard, stretching and chanting, then we walked by the site where they were doing roadwork and it was lit up like Vegas with flashing lights and whatnot. There are vending machines on almost every corner, and hundreds of stores with signs advertising things I cannot read. We then ventured into a restaurant for food. It is a very different experience sitting down and ordering food in a place where you just point and hope for the best. We got some kind of fruity carbonated drink, an appetizer that was to my best description, a open topped dumplingy kind of thing filled with chunky mushroom, green stuff and mayonnaise, topped with onion skin that moved like it was alive cause of the steam from the food. (editors note: we later discovered that was not mushrooms, it was squid and the dish is called Takoyaki and is a special dish in Osaka, and can be found absolutely everywhere, and they use a lot of mayonnaise here in almost everything) After that came a crunchy noodle dish with shrimp and squid, which was much more like something you could get in Canada. Paying the bill was a learning experience, we sat and waited a long time and then got up to leave, at which point they rushed over to give us our bill, which is good because asking for our bill would have been a sign language feat neither of us were capable of.

That's all for now, Carl.