The Idiot Box

Right now, I'm sitting in my apartment trying to watch Japanese TV. I attempt this feat about once every two or three months, mainly because I know it'll help improve my Japanese. One time I lasted nearly 2 hours. But rememeber that numbers can deceive: Most of that time I wasn't paying any real attention to the TV; it was merely back-ground noise. But even that is an accomplishment in its own right. Japanese television is, in my humble opinion, the worst programming in the history of the universe. Even as background noise, it's just downright painful. Overall, it's at least twice as bad as American programming--and that's saying something.

Currently, I'm watching an Oprah-style show, with the exception that the host is a fortune-teller of sorts. She's an old Japanese woman with too much make-up, a rough voice, stern features, a penchant for delivering up terrible predictions for all but the most handsome of her (young, male) guests, and the most melodramatic background music I've ever heard. Several Japanese people have told me that she is incredibly mean--which is surprising given her populariy. As far as I can tell, however, she is in rare form today. Today's audience consists of 100 high school girls, to whom she is doling out advice on men. She has succeeded in making one girl cry hysterically but is now, shockingly, attempting to console the girl. Ah, there you are. She's just re-read the girl's palm, and apparently things are not as dire as previously thought. Whew, close one. Glad that's been taken care of.

Who watches this stuff anyway? What possible audience can they have in mind?

Now did I start this post just to gripe about Japanese programming, or do I have a point?... Hmm, you may be expecting a certain answer, but I'm not sure. Give me a minute to think about it, ne?...

Okay, I've thought about it, and I think I've made a horrible mistake. This old Japanese lady isn't a fortune-teller at all. She's Ann Landers, Japanese-style! I've had her all wrong: She's merely giving advice, not prognosticating. So I apologize for unwittingly deceiving you. Her new audience is a horde of public school teachers, all eager and nicely dressed. That's my peer group! Wow, someone just asked a question about dealing with "gaijin no sensei" (i.e. foreign teachers--e.g. me!). Wonder what she'll say...? Maybe I'd better turn up this background noise a little after all... I'll keep you posted.

Regarding the Robert Frost on My Window

I consider Robert Frost to be one of my favorite poets, but in reality I don't know his poetry well at all. I've read less than half of his poems, I'm sure, and the only one I know by memory is there because I was forced to memorize it in the 10th grade and am just pedant enough to have refused its release for these many years since.

But I do feel pretty certain Robert Frost once wrote, "Spring is the folly in me." That particular sentiment doesn't ring true in my life: Though spring is many things to me, I generally reserve the best of my folly for the summer. But I digress. My topic tonight is not spring, but winter--cold, bleak, but bracing. It's always in the winter that I feel my strongest desire to write. Snow, specifically, inspires the muse in me. Last year on a beautiful snow day when I was trapped at school with no students and nothing to do, I wrote a rather lengthy (and ponderous, I'm afraid) poem about the blankets of snow falling outside my window. Please don't laugh--it's rude. I know any of the fellow males with whom I graduated high school would gladly attempt to pulverize me for admitting so much, but sitting here in my frosted-over, cozy apartment in Japan, I feel relatively safe from all that. And perhaps that's part of the magic of winter too--the snug safeness one feels when it's terribly cold outside.

Whatever it is, winter always makes me want to be a writer--not just the little show-off that writes to you periodically on this blog, but a real, recognized, remunerated show-off like Robert Frost. But it's more than the prospect of good hours, good income, and a perpetual ego-stroke--I want to say something! Really. I want to make people laugh and cry and curse me and sing my praises--all from the snugness of my little apartment surrounded by frost.

Alas, therein lies the hitch to my little scheme: It's only good as long as the frost lasts. As soon as beautiful, nymph-like spring jumps onto the scene, I'm out my door and out of verse--the wonderland of winter is gone, and I'm a light-hearted fool once more. Perhaps spring is the folly in me, after all.

Even so, let it come! I'm ready!

A Weekend-Trip, Japanese-Style

I just got back from my first ever Japanese-style weekend trip (i.e. mini-vacation). We went to Nikko, a little village and vacationing community built around a mostly inactive volcano and the beautiful lake that volcano created while having a little spat many years ago. There were 7 of us: 4 foreigners, and 3 natives. The foreigners were Adam, Rebecca, Janet, and me. The nihon-jin were an English teacher from my school and two Japanese women I'd never met before. Here's what we did.

Saturday
7:30--Depart
7:40--Stop at a souvenir shop
8:30--Stop at a rest stop
9:00--Pick up our final companion at a train station
10:45--Eat lunch
12:00--Arrive in Nikko, beautifully snow-covered but freezing; sight-see and check into our hotel
13:00--Slide down some kiddy slopes on little plastic sleds intended for children
14:00--While walking around, have a particularly vicious boys-against-girls snow ball fight (victor not determined), while our Japanese companion looked on in shock, perhaps horror
14:30--Go to an open-air "hot spa" with enough sulphur in it to give us what temporarily looked like pretty nasty sunburns (Note: Adam and I went with the teacher from my school. We met him down in the hotel lobby wearing our Japanese bathing robes, expecting the spa to be in the hotel--it wasn't. We had to walk 200 meters through the snow, in sub-zero weather, wearing bath robes, tiny slippers, and nothing else.)
15:30--Read, watch TV, and nap in our hotel rooms
18:00--Eat a very Japanese meal that includes lots of unidentified pickled vegetables, a variety of raw fish, 3 french fries (literally), the best carrots I've ever had, and raw deer meat--which Janet devoured.
20:00--Hang out in our rooms

Today:
8:00--Eat breakfast
9:00--Leave the hotel
9:05--Stop and explore some igloo-like structures made near our hotel
9:15--Stop for ice cream at a dairy farm (yes, we ate ice cream in the snow)
10:00--Rest stop
11:15--Eat lunch at a famous gyoza restaurant in Utsunomiya (a city near Nikko)
12:45--Drop off our friend at the station
1:30--Stop at the same rest-stop as before
2:20--Arrive back home

Total Time: Less than 30 hours. It wasn't exactly relaxing, but I think we all had a great time. And it felt like we saw a lot more than could normally be crammed into a 29-hour trip. So we seemed to get a good taste of the dual nature of Japanese trips: Short, bustling, tiring (and expensive)--but fun, well-executed, memorable, and accomplished without even having to think of taking a single day off from work.