Mythbusters Machel Style

Well I have less than one week here and I am ready to be out. It’s been an up and down time but the last few weeks have been pretty good and enjoyable and all that. But I’m ready to get back for a few reasons that you can pretty much figure out if you have been following. Since this will be my second to last post before I leave here I figured I would do a little mythbusting, sort of organizing what I thought I would see coming to Japan and what actually happened. I can honestly say I had little to know expectations coming, I just knew it was something way different and new and I looked forward to it because of that. That being said, I did have a few thoughts of what I was going to see and most of the thoughts I had were wrong to some degree. So let’s begin.

First off, I wasn't worried about not knowing any Japanese coming here because I figured all the people would have at least a basic understanding of English, seeing as Japanese is only useful in Japan and English is the most spoken language in the world. But it is really rare to find a person who understands even basic English here. And what makes it worse is that they take at least 6 years of English through Junior High and High School in order to take a college entrance exam that is in English (why it is in English, I have no idea). That's not even the worst of it. There are senior English majors who I have met at school who can't put a sentence together in English and I really have to wonder what they actually learn in class since they have been taking 10 years of English. That was a big shocker, so if you come to Japan, don't expect most people to be able to understand what you say. It's basically that the children for the most part have no interest in actually learning English and neither their parents. There is a program called JET where you can come to Japan and teach English (most likely in the backwoods somewhere), but Jason says that if you actually plan to teach then don't do it because most of the kids don't want to learn. Island mentality to the max here I think.

Another important thought I had, and I’m pretty sure everybody else had, was that I was coming to the cradle of technology as we know it. I mean, this place was supposed to have robots in every house doing the dishes and flying cars like the Jetsons and cell phones that transform into all kinds of things (went a little overboard there but you get the picture). Well I was thoroughly disappointed. I was planning to get my hustle on and buy a couple of these transforming cell phones send them to some people in JA or carry them to the U.S., sell them and make a little profit. But it was not to be. Turns out their phones are pretty regular like the ones we are used to, also they have some kind of thing where the phone only works in Japan unless it’s an international phone or something. Not sure of all the details on that but it is pretty much impossible for these NORMAL phones to work elsewhere. And there are no robots everywhere, we know they have the technology but it hasn’t gone mass production yet. So I was not a happy man in this regard.

Speaking of flying cars, growing up back in Cayman through the teenage years, cars became a big deal. There were a ton of modified Japanese imports from your Toyota Starlets to my personal favourite the Mitsubishi Evolution and all those in between. A few weeks before coming here I was talking to a friend from Cayman on Facebook Chat and he said if he was going to Japan he would be like a kid in a candy store with all those cars and car parts around. I was expecting similar. I thought I’d being seeing countless modified Supras, RX8s and all that and it would be a visual feast everytime I walked or rode my bike anywhere. But again, it was not to be. I can count on one hand the number of times I have caught a glimpse of these beautiful beasts, like the other day when I saw the brand new Nissan Skyline on the showroom floor and I wanted to run inside and lay all over it because it was so beautiful. And I have seen a few Ferraris and Lambourghinis which always makes a good day, but the point is I haven’t had the experience where I see a few cars of Japanese muscle driving along and had the thought that maybe they were about to go engage in some drag racing or drifting somewhere out here. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m in Sapporo, which I technically don’t consider a real part of Japan since it is pretty separate from the main area, but whatever it is I don’t like it.

It really doesn’t help that the normal cars in Japan are pretty ugly. They are boxy and square. We have been seeing a few of these types come over to the West but thank God they haven’t been coming at the rate that they exist here because these things are horrible. Cars are supposed to be curvy like women- that’s what makes them look good (and is the reason why men sometimes give their cars female names [I wonder how many people reading this can get my correct feeling on this, I’m guessing maybe 2 or 3]). If these cars start making their way into the West, especially Jamaica, at a greater rate, it is not going to be pretty. But that’s just me and my superficial take on the whole thing- what does it matter if the car is boxy if it gets good mileage?

Next up is women, (my segueing is pretty good today right?). Asian women were never really high up on my list. Nothing wrong with them, I just never found the majority of them attractive in any way like I do pretty much every other race of female. But I’ve come around. I’m not going to come home with an Asian girlfriend or anything or stick to dating just Asians or anything, but I am acknowledging the fact that there are beautiful Asian women out there. But, as with all other women, I do have a few problems with them. I know people complain about how the young girls dress nowadays but really, there is nothing to complain about I don’t think (or maybe in four months I forget how the majority of girls back home dress). I would say around 70% of the girls here are short skirts and high heels (but then some also have this baggy jeans and sneakers style and some rock both styles). Its sort of streetside vendorish (get it?) but not (if it makes sense, a little more classy). But I must comment that they are some stylish people these Japanese, kind of like the European dress style. I thought America was a fashion driven society but this place is ridiculous. There are Prada, Gucci, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, etc stores everywhere. Even in my times around NYC I haven’t seen this many of those high end stores but they are all over the place here. Pretty much every girl’s handbag has the C or the LV or the G on it and I know that being in Japan, that stuff must be expensive with a capital E.

But there is less of a range in style here than there is in the West and I think that that pretty much goes along with the whole everybody being the same thing that they have going on here. I was talking to these Russian girls at the club a week ago and one of them didn’t want to hide that she didn’t like Japan so I asked her why she didn’t and she replied “Robots” (maybe “Roboto”, imagine a girl with a thick Russian accent saying that to you in English and you’d get it mixed up too, you might also smile/laugh when you think back on it and try to say it yourself with the accent). I once asked a girl why she dressed up every single day (a topic that John and I broach every single day) and she said something along the lines of she does it because everybody does it. There are also girls who take out their huge mirrors from their bags at the lunch table and proceed to touch themselves up (not cool). Show me how you look in sweatpants and a sweatshirt with no makeup on and I'll tell you how beautiful you are.

I was always under the impression that the Far Eastern countries were pretty much sexless societies. And in some regard I am right, harkening back to my sharing of the fact that married couples don’t even sleep in the same room and all that and then the addition of this whole phenomenon of the driveless young males. But in some respects I was also wrong. It’s around, but it’s just less subtle than we’re used to. Yeah, there’s a bunch of different places where salary men go to hang out with women like these places called Hostess Bars (and other places). I’m not sure exactly what goes on but putting what I’ve heard together it’s basically like a bar they pay to just to go talk to women…I think. Not really sexual but I put it in there because it has to do with the whole male/female thing.

Another thing is food. I said this in the food post but I thought I would lose weight being here because I thought the servings would be small given the size of the Japanese person and all the food would be all health nutty. Well the food wasn’t all that healthy and the servings weren’t all that small. Mind you it was more healthy than what we are used to in the West (and I think the thing is they snack less), but still not enough to make that much of a difference. And people don’t get a crazy amount of exercise that makes them keep the weight off (in fact I’ve seen less people exercise here than I’ve seen anywhere at any point), they just have good metabolisms I guess. However there are some bigger people, here. Definitely nowhere near the proportion we are used to but it was surprising to see. And there is actually a lot of smoking done here. I mean these people are chimneys. Even in the club house at school there will be rooms where everybody is smoking. That was one of the biggest surprises for me when I got here and still is. While they are banning smoking in public places in New York, there is no sign of that coming this way anytime soon, especially at the rate the college age students smoke. I think it would be safe for me to say that, proportionally, way more smoking goes on here than in the U.S.

I think the last thing I’m going to address is the stereotype of the small Japanese. In this regard I was both right and wrong (as are the people who have perpetrated this stereotype in the West). There are some tall Japanese people, but the majority of them are still short. I was in the elevator the other day and I basked in the glory of being the tallest person in the elevator, a feat that will happen maybe once a year for the rest of my life living in the West. But yes, there are tall Japanese people and from this I will extrapolate that there are more tall Asians than the media feeds us. But again, every stereotype is based in truth (at least that’s what I think). It is funny though that the Chinese and Koreans tease the Japanese for being the smallest out of their group. Another thing here is that people refer to all these three groups as Chinese. When I hear this I usually make sure to correct this and tell the person to just say Asian because you never know which country they come from. I know I wouldn’t want to be called a Bajan even though we might be from the same region and look somewhat alike. But anyways, the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans themselves, cannot look at another person and tell which country they are from. They usually have to wait till they speak to figure out the difference. So they all do have the same features, etc. but they are not all Chinese. So please help make the world a little more enlightened next time they say something in regards to this.

Methinks that’s it. If I didn’t mention it they I probably didn’t think about it before I came or I thought about it but I was correct, although I can’t think of any of these instances. Anyway, next week Sunday I leave so I’ll drop the last post before that and then possibly one after that to update on my reintroduction to the West although by that time I will have probably spoken to most of the people who are reading this. In the one next week I’ll probably be going through what I learnt, mostly about myself, through this experience, and bust some more myths if I remember anything.

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