Through fresh eyes

After you've been living in a place for a while, you tend to forget the things that shocked or amused you so much when you first arrived. You take for granted the fact that, in Japan anyway, there are cigarette vending machines on every corner. You understand that you don't have to tip at restaurants, and the displayed price for the convenience store candy bar is exactly what you pay at the register - you don't give it a second thought. You think nothing of the teenage kid decked out in his punk-rock finest, hair dyed red, a skull-n-crossbones patch safety pinned to his black bowler hat, strolling arm in arm with a girl in full kimono, a Louis Vuitton clutch dangling at her side. So nothing amuses me more than going to all my favorite locations accompanied by people who are seeing Japan for the first time in their lives through fresh eyes, wide and bright from the adrenaline rush that comes from actually being in a place to which you never thought you'd have the opportunity to travel.

So it was that Katie and I were called upon by our Japanese surrogate parents, the Masaokas (to whom we are indebted forever for all the help they've given us over the past year, not the least of which involved guiding us through the labyrinthine entrails of Japanese hospitals and American insurance companies when Katie had her emergency appendectomy last August), to come to Kyoto Station to meet our predecessors - the people who had my same job and lived in my very house two years ago. We knew precious little about Ned and Megan: they were from Washington State and had translated the menu at the Chinese restaurant next door which we frequent into English. That's about it. So we were excited to meet them and, selfishly, were excited to have any excuse at all to go to Kyoto.

When we got to Kyoto Station (Ned refers to it as the Death Star because it is the largest and most futuristic-looking building you'll ever set foot in), we saw Mr. and Mrs. Masaoka surrounded by a group of foreign kids; they looked like high school students. "Oh no," Katie said, "Mrs. Masaoka found a group of high school kids on a school trip and has probably taken it upon herself to personally show them around for the day." Such behavior would be totally normal for Mrs. Masaoka, which goes to show you the kind of person she is. She was dressed in summer kimono, which we suspect she does for the benefit of the foreigners she meets (when Katie's family came in March she showed up to our house dressed like that, for example). As it turned out though, Megan and Ned are both teachers back in Spokane and Ned had brought along some of the students from his Japanese class - apparently he teaches mainly social studies but also beginning Japanese on the side. So Katie and I go down to meet 12 more people than we had originally expected to, and we didn't quite know what to make of the situation. As it turned out, the kids were all really nice and subdued from the jet lag, so we were mercifully spared the horrific fate of keeping tabs on a bunch of teenagers running amok around the Old Capital.

Ned and Megan were incredibly nice people and a lot of fun to talk to; they knew the area around our house quite well as they had lived there, of course, so we talked about that quite a bit. Ned's students seemed to be quite mature and responsible as it turned out, so Katie and I were able to talk to them and answer their questions about living in Japan. The best part, of course, was just watching their reactions to things we simply take for granted living here: the ubiquitous vending machines, the lack of public trash cans, the fashion, just to name a few. To watch them taking pictures of the most mundane objects and shouting excitedly about stuff you see on your way to work every day energizes you and makes you feel privileged to live here. I often felt the same way when I was working downtown in DC and would walk down Pennsylvania Avenue on my lunch break past the White House, passing groups of tourists pointing and taking pictures. I was so fortunate, I thought, to live in such a place. I've no doubt my friends currently scattered across the globe experience the same when they spy a group of out-of-towners talking excitedly to each other, bedecked in backpacks and walking shoes, cameras at the ready, able to see things they'd long since forgotten through fresh eyes.

Update 6/9

Well, yet another week begins, with Monday and Tuesday leaving me very little to do aside from my Japanese lessons. This past weekend was a lot of fun: on Saturday we had some of our new Japanese friends over for Korean food. One of them brought her 5 year-old daughter who's enrolled at a local international school and thus speaks English relatively well. We taught her how to play Life (the board game), the Japanese version of which Katie found at the local recycle shop for a measly 300 yen. For dinner we made sam gyeop sal, or barbecued pork grilled alongside various toppings which you then roll into a sesame leaf and eat with your hands. It tasted exactly the same as what we ate in Busan, which pleased us - and our tummies - greatly.

Sunday I really wanted to get out of the house, having spent Saturday cleaning up, going grocery shopping, and helping to prepare dinner. Katie and I decided to go to the Osaka aquarium, which we had heard was a great way to spend an afternoon. After the obligatory Sunday breakfast of blueberry pancakes (the packet of frozen blueberries we bought at Costco several months ago are still going strong), Katie tended the garden for a bit, then we headed downtown. Admission to the aquarium was outrageously expensive, so we decided to buy a day pass which, in addition to covering the aquarium's entrance fee, would allow us to ride the subway as much as we wanted for free. The aquarium itself looks like a giant modern art installation, sitting on Osaka Bay. Inside we saw all kinds of fish in an incredible array of sizes, shapes, and terrifying-ness. The main attraction is the whale shark which easily dwarfs the next biggest fish in the entire aquarium several times over. The best part of the whole thing, though, wasn't what lives in the water, but what spends most of its time above it. Katie and I spent a lot of time at the otter, penguin, seal, and sealion tanks. It helps that those animals are the cutest ones, but there you are.

After the aquarium we rode the subway to Shinsaibashi in South Osaka to eat at an Ethiopian restaurant we had heard about. It was expensive (and we were the only ones eating there, which worried me a little), but the food was so damn good. It made me miss Mesob in Charlottesville so much, and filled me with regret for all of the great Ethiopian restaurants in DC I neglected to try when I lived so nearby. At the bar sat two barrel-chested and bearded Ethopian fellows - I could tell they were authentically Ethiopian because of their narrow-bridged noses. Otherwise, it would be safe to assume they were Nigerian, since those are really the only black people you see in Japan on a regular basis. They spoke a bizarre pidgin of English and Japanese, and chatted away over their beers unperturbed by the conspicuous lack of customers on a Sunday evening. Sometimes Katie and I wonder how it is that these places we love - a Vietnamese hole-in-the-wall in Nishinomiya, a pizzeria in Osaka that serves up pizzas blessedly unadorned with creative Japanese topping like corn and mayonnaise, any number of Turkish restaurants in Kobe, etc. - manage to stay in business when we seem to be the only ones patronizing them. I like to think they're all fronts for the Yakuza.