October 25, 2003

Tokyo is a city that can be considered a country of its own. Bright lights, packed subways, uber-fashion conscious. It takes easily over two hours on the subway to get from one end to the other. Even being near the city in Musashi Koganei makes me yearn for greener places. I am no city girl at heart.

I am staying in Koganei City, an hour commute from downtown Tokyo, with a friend of mine named Roxanne who is on exchange from UMass Amherst for one year. She is studying Japanese at the International Christian University which is a fifteen minute bike ride from her host family's house. The home itself is on a set of narrow streets that my taxi driver from the train stop 10 minutes away couldn't find. In fact, he was so embarrassed that he wasn't able to locate the house that he stopped the clock, charged me for about half of the ride, and ran outside the car in the rain asking people to help him with directions. We don't get that kind of service in the States.

On Thursday, Roxanne and I met up with my old high school wrestling teammate Cliff who is also on exchange this year from USC. After nearly 4 years, Cliff hasn't changed all that much. He is still decidedly the Cliff I remember, which is a compliment really. Together we went to Kamakura, a beachside town known for its temples and shrines. At the end of the main boulevard is a large temple flocked with pigeons. Groups of small children in identical uniforms bought corn at a temple vendor and fed these feathered beasties. Three or four of these things on a tiny kid makes for quite a sight. Along the same boulevard on which this temple sits are small pickle and rice cracker shops. We perused a few of these, munching on all sorts of preserved vegetables- florescent yellow daikon radishes, salty crunchy cucumbers, sweet shiitake mushrooms, tiny little anchovies, mushy natto which is fermented soybean paste, and so on. I must have tasted twenty different kinds and we left without buying any of them, our desire for pickles satiated by this nibbling. After a fabulous lunch of Japanese curry, which lacks the depth of flavor of Indian curry but makes up for it in texture- gravy, sticky rice, and crunchy pickle, we headed to the beach. Approaching the beach was strangely reminiscent of where I grew up in California. Cliff and I both could have sworn that it looked like Redondo Beach back home. Well, apart from the vastly different landscape and ethnic composition. There is, however, a surf culture here. Tons of surfers in matching black wetsuits riding the rather small waves. That in contrast to the hoards of uniformed schoolchildren lining up on the beach (where else on earth would kids LINE UP on the beach?) and the businessmen in uniforms of their own strolling on the strand playing hookey from work. The waves, however, must get much bigger because a few hundred years ago, a tsunami wiped out the Daibutsu, the giant bronze Buddha statue that sits much higher up away fromthe shore. We walked up the hill to visit this temple, but not before sampling some rice cracker snacks along the way- adding to our already bulging stomachs. I managed to score a picture with one of the rice cracker vendors. They make these rice crackers by toasting them over an open flamed grill, then dipping them into a glaze made of soy and sugar and letting them dry on racks. You can buy one for about 60 cents and the carts are surrounded by people munching on these encased in a piece of seaweed.

Exhausted from a long day of walking around and some serious jet lag, I let myself be persuaded by Roxanne to join her at her jiu jitsu club in Kichijoji, a few trains stops away from Koganei City. We did some Brazilian jiujitsu techniques and then stayed for the shooto class afterwards, taught by a very well known fighter. Roxanne is training for Smackgirl, a no holds barred women's fight on November 10. She is fighting the daughter of a famous yakuza member who reached notoriety by stabbing a professional wrestler to death. Roxanne better win her fight and get the hell out of there before she pisses of the girl's father.

On Friday I went to school with Roxanne. We biked past a beautiful park and through the wooded campus to get to class. Though I was a physical presence in class, I tuned out completely when her linguistic professor began to drone about the difference in endings in Sanskrit. Relieved that I am not in classes myself at the moment, I skipped out before the next lesson and went for a bike ride on campus and in the surrounding vicinity. The lanscape of the ICU campus is impressive. Winding paths crisscross all over campus, accessible only by foot and bike. There are groves of pine trees and kids playing everywhere in matching neon colored hats.

We joined Roxanne's friend for dinner in Tsukijishijo, a few stops over on the Oedo line from Shinjuku Station. The whole street where we went was lined with little restaurants with built in tabletop grills where you can make thick vegetable filled pancakes and stir fries. We sampled a few different kinds of pancakes- all with lots of onions, dried shrimp, egg, and probably a combination of rice and wheat flour, since it had an almost chewy texture. We also ate a stir fry of sorts that had a cornstarch rich gravy that made the whole composition goey and edible only with small shovel-like spoons right off the grill. The food was inexpensive (about 10 dollars per person) and tasty and I need to find out the name of the street we were on- it is only around the corner and down the road a bit from the number 5 exit at the Tsukijishijo metro stop. You get out at this exit, make the first left around the corner with the gas station on your left and the main road on your right, walk down this street a bit and hang a left on a well lit street lined with buildings all with the same triangular shaped roofs. We didn't eat until late and by the time we headed home, we hit rush hour- at 11:30 PM! All the businessmen were coming home from late nights drinking and I had to stand on the train for an hour and a half squeezed in among business suits reeking of smoke and alchohol.

It makes me sad to see Japanese businessmen in their fine suits that always fit just so and their shiny black wingtips stumbling out of the trains only to pass out in a drunken stupor not too far away. Instead of returning to their families after a long hard day of work at the office, these men go out drinking with their officemates, with whom they've spent the last 12 hours already. How did a custom of an after work drink with the buddies turn into a venue for business deals where hard working heads of households are pulled away from their families and toward the bottle of Scotch? It's funny how this tradition perpetuates- I see, or rather smell, young people, now men and woman, coming home too late after a few too many drinks. If I had a parent that was always absent because of business at work that took him or her to bars, I would decide that I didn't want that for my own life. It seems in Japan that there is a supreme sense of tradition and decorum that even the young rebels in their piercings, wild hats, and pointy boots cannot deny.