Category: Personal

Went to have some great Miso ramen noodles after an afternoon of studying in a coffee shop. There was yet another 人身事故 which, while it means “an accident involving a human” is often a euphemism for a “suicide” when someone throws themselves in front of a train. The trains were delayed about ten minutes on all four central lines, leading to some chaos and constant updates over the loudspeakers (“the ambulance has arrived” etc.) It must be tough to work at the stations where this happens…

While I’m venting my frustrations, I want to explain to everyone why I don’t really enjoy going to “izakaya” or many restaurants as a form of multi-hour social activity:

1) Many of them are smoky or have smoke filled “non-smoking” areas. Today I was dragged out to a dinner party with the students I teach English to once a week and I couldn’t believe it when a waitress came in the middle of our meal with a “cigarette” menu offering group discounts! Half a dozen students immediately bought packs from her flashy menu and started smoking in the middle of the meal, then complaining that the taste of the cigarettes interfered with the taste of their curry. I almost got up and left in disbelief and certainly didn’t enjoy the rest of my smoke filled meal. In other places I can’t help but laugh to see the non-smoking section in a glass box at the back of the restaurant (are we the ones poisoning the air?), or a mere handful of tables surrounded by a large smoking section.

2) Many of these places are really noisy, and thus, like many bars, you can’t have a decent conversation, I can’t relax, and often leave more exhausted than when I went in.

3) Much of the social activity revolves around drinking lots of alcohol. I have nothing against drinking, as people apparently get some kind of pleasant feeling from the consumption of it. Since I never drink myself I can’t attest to this. Surfeit of it, however, kills discussion with content of any complexity. I was told on several occasions this evening in the middle of an interesting talk that my friends in conversation couldn’t articulate their points due to their excess intake of alcohol. This happens so often at events like this that I tend to automatically go into my special reactive mode: “Stop all attempts at conversation and spend the rest of the time watching people say stupid things. Think of a good excuse to leave and use it whenever you think people are focused enough to understand what you are saying.”

4) In the case of Izakayas, the alcohol to food ratio is horribly tilted to alcohol. I have no motivation to go spend the equivalent of $30 on $3 of mediocre finger food and two glasses of orange juice. Note to all friends: Never invite me to an “izakaya” or a “nomiya”, I am not interested and will only go if I’m pressured into it.

Like most people I love to join friends for good food and good conversation. However, I find these to be incompatible with smoke, noise, and in “izakaya” culture, with my wallet.

I’m really happy to see some real attempts at change here in Tokyo when it comes to the horrible pollution from the cigarette smoke. Most of my friends know that I’m really sensitive to smoke. First I noticed all the “No Smoking On the Streets” or “No Smoking While Walking” signs painted on the pavement or around the streets or on the walls in Ogikubo. Now I see the same thing near Waseda. I always dread the 10 minute walk from Waseda subway station to the university during which I have to navigate my way through dozens of smoking students and desperately find a chunk of pavement where I can breathe non-smoky but already exhaust filled air. The experience almost always leaves me nauseated by the time I reach Takada library on campus.

Today I saw huge signs around the Hachiko dog statue in Shibuya, asking people not to smoke around the popular meeting place. I never meet friends there for two reasons: 1) the rest of Tokyo meets there, which defeats the purpose of having a place to meet where you can easily find friends, 2) the entire area is a cloud of foul smelling tobacco smoke that makes me want to puke.

So is anyone following these rules in Ogikubo, near Waseda, on Waseda’s campus where smoking outdoors is only to be done in designated areas, or around Hachiko in Shibuya? Umm….nope. I don’t think any of them are enforceable or are enforced as any kind of punishable offense. Hachiko was still a cloud of smoke today and the walk to Waseda and around campus last time was still a nauseating experience. However, these are the first steps in the right direction. It is time for the absolutely ridiculous and moronic argument that “You are taking away our freedom to smoke even outside now, what about our rights?” to be revealed for the stupidity and selfishness that it is a glowing example of. It is time for smokers to realize that the air we breathe is a common good that unfortunately all of us share. When you fill the air with smoke and enjoy the rush of a narcotic flowing through your blood, you think you are exercising a freedom or a right. That is complete bullshit. You are filling OUR air with smoke that WE have to breathe as we walk together on the pavement. On the streets of Tokyo, packed as it is with people, unless I stay in my cottage every day, I must breathe the air that everyone else does and spend almost all outdoor moments in great discomfort because of your selfishness.

I went to visit my friend Michael Zock down at 東工大. As I left Shibuya on the 東横 train line I saw over a dozen people taking pictures of the trains and most of all, the electric board showing train departures. I thought, “How cute, some Asian tourists visiting Japan are taking pictures of the trains and electric board. I guess they must think there is something novel about it. After all, I have taken lots of pictures of various bullet trains in Japan.” Hmm, how strange that some of them were using cellphone cameras to take the pictures, not something you would expect foreigners to use in Japan for their pictures. Why would Japanese be taking these pictures though?
Continue reading Sakuragi-cho

A new year has arrived, along with my plane back from two weeks in the US spent with family. I now back in my cottage on the outskirts of Tokyo. I wish everyone the best. There is lots of exciting uncertainty in this year and I can’t honestly say I know where in the world I’ll be a few months from now, and more importantly, from next fall.

Just went to the hospital. No no, nothing life threatening, but that’s where you go when you get sick here. I have had a breathing problem of late and went to have it looked at. I went once before to the Adventist hospital in Ogikubo, which is the biggest hospital in my area, but the sign on the entrance said they only accepted walk-ins from 8:30 to 10:30 in the morning, which is a pretty bad window for me.

I went back today just before 8:30 and was really impressed with the whole experience. I was told to sit down along with three rows of other patients in a little TV salon. A hospital employee came to welcome us promptly at 8:30, announced the opening of services and explained the procedures like we were about to start a ride on a roller coaster. Well, we were…sort of. By 10:10 they had supplied me with my own new patient card; sent me to a nurse for the measurement of height, weight, and blood pressure; sent me to a doctor who discussed my problem with me; sent me to their X-ray division for a chest X-ray; sent me to their “heart” section for an EKG, and their “general inspection” area for a blood test. Everyone was incredibly friendly and simply took my patient card, and one of the pieces of paper that the doctor had handed to me, performed their section’s task and sent me packing to the next stop. Most of my time was not spent waiting for anything, but in getting from one section of the hospital to another. From the time the doctors started working at 9, it took just over a single hour to go through everything, including the half hour that the doctor spent with me. Since I am on the $25 per month national Japanese insurance plan my hospital visit and all of these tests cost about $110.

I found a great ramen noodle place in the middle of Kichijoji today as I was hunting for dinner in my neighborhood. It is called Tenbunkan (天文館) and both their Kyûshû-style tonkotsu miso ramen and gyôza dumplings were fantastic.

I love Japanese ramen. I’m not talking about the kind we survived on as poor college students. I’m talkin’ about the real thing. Noodle soups with carefully kept secret recipes, a variety of vegetables, and sometimes an egg or thin round cuts of meat. Unfortunately, I never found any noodles in Beijing that I liked, and I tried many of their huge variety of noodles when I was there.

In Japan, ramen noodles are a highly developed food industry, with a cult following. See the movie Tampopo for an excellent and humorous peek into the ramen world of Japan. In addition to being delicious, even the best noodle stops are quick, relatively cheap, and totally fill you up. There are of course a lot of bad noodles in Japan with a kind of standard drab taste, but there are also thousands of branded and often highly unique ramen shops all over Japan. You can buy any number of ramen guidebooks to help you explore the variety available in your city and there is always the Ramen Museum where you can taste some of the best that Japan has to offer. Tonkotsu miso, spicy miso, and regular miso styles are my favorites. I think I might have to eventually add a page here listing my favorite Tokyo ramen places.

Chia-ying says I have too many friends. My taiwanese friend from graduate school in New York complained that she never felt like she could get to know me because my social circle was too wide. She said this to me some weeks ago in Taiwan but her words have stuck with me.

Chia-ying might be surprised to hear another story from my time at a summer language program in Beijing some five years ago. I used to spend everyday with my roommate Stuart and almost every meal at Korean restaurant on the northern side of the Beijing Normal University campus where I first discovered Bibimbap. I spent hours a day making and studying little paper vocabulary flashcards and when I needed a break I would ride my bicycle around the back streets of Beijing. A Chinese-American classmate, who I called Da-lin and had a crush on at the time joined me for lunch at my favorite little restaurant one day. While I was loudly slurping some noodles she suddenly put her chopsticks down and broke (for the first time that I had seen) the vow that we all signed that summer promising to speak nothing but Chinese for ten weeks. She said, “Lin Shudao, you are asocial, aren’t you?” Without waiting for my answer, she continued eating and our discussion resumed in Chinese…

I think she was right, by any definition of the word. I spent little or no time with other students in the program. Here in Japan, my friend Lars has essentially accused me of the same, claiming that I rarely emerge from my cottage to “go out” with friends, resembling a hermit if anything else.

Yet if you ask my Danish friend Jens here what I’m doing and he’ll claim that I’m always off meeting yet another friend in Ginza, or Shinjuku or Shibuya, as if I was some high-spending social butterfly.

In New York, I spent almost all my time with Sayaka and Jai (Sayaka was worried the amount of time I spent with Jai was revealing some kind of bisexual tendencies, which I have ever since tried to convince her is unfounded). And yet Chia-ying and other friends believed that I was all over the place.

In thinking about Chia-ying’s memorable words, and Da-lin’s before that, I tried to explain the seeming contradiction by saying, “I just don’t settle well into groups of friends, but prefer to develop strong friendships with people one-on-one, without ‘inheriting’ their whole social network.” Yes, I liked that one. It gives me that individualist, rugged traveler and leader type of image.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work….
Continue reading Social Butterfly or Asocial?