Gaijin Chronicles

Given some of the responses to a particular part of the last article I wrote, I felt compelled to write this one.  It feels kind of familiar, but I searched the archive and didn’t find it, so I think I haven’t written it before.  If I have…oh well.

Anyway, girls – yes, you too can have sex in Japan.

That sounds like a statement I shouldn’t even have to make.  Like it should just be so blatantly obvious, that actually verbalizing it could be considered an insult.  Kind of like walking up to a person and saying “So, you live on planet Earth, right?” or even walking up to Eddie Murphy and saying “Hey, so…you’re a black guy, right?”  But the fact that I even have to write about this just goes to show you how special Japan is.

First, I guess a general overview.  It should be common knowledge that women can get laid almost anytime they want.  I know that here, some of the female members of the audience are shaking their heads and saying out loud “that’s not true!”  If you happen to be a female who isn’t getting laid as much as you like, just know that its not because you can’t, but simply because of a lack of effort.

Yes ladies, you can get laid anytime you want.  Go to a bar or a club, or any sort of social setting like that.  Or hell, just go to Starbucks or a Barnes and Noble by yourself and loiter around for a bit.  If that method is unappealing to you, simply turn to one of your numerous male friends (I know you have them) and say “I need to have sex, could you help me out?”  Most of them will say yes.*  Even if that doesn’t work for you, the internet has given us a radical new option.  Just make a profile on any one of the adult-themed sites, and you will have hundreds of emails from guys offering it up.  You will have guys willing to drive in from out of state for the specific reason of boning you.  So really, all you need to do is let it be known that you want to have sex in the general presence of guys, and you will have men lining up to answer the call of booty.

*Here, I can hear some of the guys in the audience piping up “No, I wouldn’t hit any of my female friends!  It’d be too weird…”  To you, I say – stop lying.  That, or congratulations on getting enough sex in your life to the point where you can be fairly choosy about it.  If our female friends turned to us and said “I just want a night of sex – I promise it won’t get weird” and we actually believed that, most of us would take them up on that.  …That being said, there are a few female friends who I wouldn’t have sex with, but mostly because through all the sex talks we had, I know it wouldn’t be any good even if I did.  And ladies, if you turn to your male friends and ask “is this true?”, just know that he is probably not going to admit it, because if he did he knows you’re going to be looking at him with that “is he undressing me with his eyes right now?” look on your face, and he probably doesn’t get to hear about your sex life anymore.

For the most part, women don’t even have to make any effort.  Just go outside regularly, and you will have guys hitting on you at some point in time.  I know women who have made it their life’s creed to never ever ever approach a guy – this is the man’s job, and if he can’t do that then she isn’t interested.  So in these cases, its not even that the woman has no choices – she simply doesn’t like what’s available to her.  And here as well, I know there are going to be women who will say “I go outside and hit on guys all the time and get nowhere!  Guys have deemed me unattractive” – I will say that I can sympathize, because I’ve been turned down solely on looks before, it sucks.  I know your pain.  However, at the same time, go look up BBW porn, or any sort random fetish porn.  Realize that not only did these women get laid, but the guy doing it allowed himself to be caught on camera, and the fact that this is even a video means that there are guys out there who are going to jack off to this.  Almost every day in Japan I see couples where the girl is way below average but the guy is decent looking.  Ladies, unless you are actually the monster from Aliens, there is a guy out there somewhere willing to pork you.  And I would bet money that there are guys out there willing to pork the Aliens monster too.  You are not looking hard enough.

So hopefully, I have established that women, despite what they may say, can get laid anytime they want.  Again, this feels like saying “Hey everyone, the sky is blue!”, but sometimes a little review is nice.  Not all, but most women in America at least are accustomed to letting guys come to them.  So when they say they can’t get laid, its just a matter of not liking the selection.

And then we have Japan, which kind of turns the system on its head.

Foreign women don’t get approached so much in Japan.  Japanese guys don’t do it – they get scared and convince themselves of failure before they even start.  Other foreign guys don’t do it – a fair portion of the foreign male population has Japanese blinders on, and wouldn’t approach a Gaijin girl, even if she were, say, Jessica Alba, because she’s “not quite as attractive” as your average Japanese girl.  Yes, Yellow Fever is a frightening thing.  Then you have other foreign guys, who would be receptive to dating a fellow Gaijin, but we usually never get the chance because the J-girls have taken the initiative.

J-Girl:  Um, hello Mr. Gaijin.
Gaijin Guy:  Hello!  How are you?
J-Girl:  Fine, thank you.  And you?  Er…I was wondering if you could teach me English sometime.
Gaijin Guy:  Well, I don’t know, that is MORE English teaching on top of the English teaching I already get paid for…
J-Girl:  Well, perhaps we could just talk English while having dinner together.
Gaijin Guy:  That sounds a little bit more appealing.
J-Girl:  And I would also like to experience sex with a foreigner.
Gaijin Guy:  …Aaaaaaaand now we’re talking!

Literally not an exaggeration.

So while this goes on, Gaijin girls stick by their old system of…not doing anything.  And while this worked back home, here in Japan, it does not.  I knew foreign women here who were hornier than Hugh Hefner in his prime, who complained about never getting any YET never did anything about it!

Gaijin Girl:  Man, I’m so horny!  Why can’t I get laid here?
Me:  Well, what have you done to solve the problem?
Gaijin Girl:  I’ve been going to bars every weekend.
Me:  And?
Gaijin Girl:  I get dressed up real nice, put on the going-out makeup and everything.
Me:  And?
Gaijin Girl:  Nothing happens!  Nobody comes to talk to me!
Me:  Right.  And what happened when you tried to go talk to guys?
Gaijin Girl:  Oh no, I couldn’t do that.
Me:  But, can you really say that you tried to get laid if you just went out… and did nothing?
Gaijin Girl:  Back home when I went out guys would hit on me all the time.  But it doesn’t happen in Japan.  And now I don’t know what to do.
Me:  *facepalm*

The women who had these conversations with me, for the most part if they had just asked me I would have been willing to help out, but they never did.  Instead they just complained to me, a healthy and able-bodied male, about not getting laid, while I daydreamed about the things guys usually daydream about – sex, beer, drinking beer while having sex, nice cars, having sex in a nice car while driving somewhere where there is good beer, and Rice Krispie treats.

Even when I was still single, there were a few foreign women who caught my eye…but usually they got beat to the punch by a J-girl.

Gaijin Girl:  Hey Az!
Me:  Hey!  How’s it going?
Gaijin Girl:  Ah, not bad.  Just hanging out this weekend.
Me:  Yeah, me too.  If you are free, we should hang out sometime.
Gaijin Girl:  Yeah, that would be fun.  Well, let me know when.
Me:  Okay, will do!
Gaijin Girl:  *leaves*
Me:  She seems nice.  And she’s pretty hot.  I wonder how things will work out between us…
Random J-Girl:  Hello, large black man?  I would like to invite you on a date, which is really just killing time until we can go to a Love Hotel.  I wanna be struck by some chocolate thunder.  Are you free this weekend?
Me:  I…um…well…yes?

So yeah, the “do nothing” approach doesn’t work so well here.

If the Gaijin girl is willing to be more proactive – actively approach guys, talk to them, get their attention, then she can do well here.  Girls who do this get boyfriends and even get laid.  I’ve seen girls in bars pick out a guy, and within 10 minutes make it clear that she wanted to have sex with him.  And you know what she did that night?  It wasn’t crocheting, that’s for sure.  Although this is purely my personal observation, it seems as though American girls are the ones who have the most problems with this.  Non-Americans have no problems pulling guys, but the American ones are the ones who sit back and wonder why nothing happens when they do nothing.

So the message is clear: do something.  Be more proactive.  Go out and hit on guys.  Be downright aggressive.  And if that doesn’t sound appealing to you – what happens if I get rejected? – it’s embarrasing – too shy to do that – what will my friends think? – all I can really say to you is – Welcome to our world, ladies.  We men have had to do this ever since our hormones kicked in.  I have no sympathy for you.

Now, if you are looking for something more – a romance or real relationship, that’s harder.  It’s hard for guys as well, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.  But even for that, you still gotta be aggressive, and take the guy, Japanese, foreign or otherwise, away from the J-girls.

I didn’t write this to berate foreign girls.  On the contrary, I’m rooting for you.  I want to help you get laid (sounds kinda creepy doesn’t it…).  After all, if you are having more sex, then guys are having more sex – everyone is having more sex, and that’s a good thing, right?  Everybody is all satisfied and happy and Lucky Charms rainbows and shit.

Except for me.  I’m not having sex – pregnant wife.  But I want to help everyone else get laid, so I can live vicariously through you.  I want everyone in Japan to be properly knocking boots. Just think of me as the Santa Claus of sex.  In Japan.  Japanese sex Santa Claus.

…Yep, I think I have been here a wee bit too long.

I fucking hate summer in Japan.

Winter is, by far, the best season here.  By a landslide.  And yet, this is another thing that the Japanese just don’t understand about me (the fish allergy being #1 – “how can you not like fish?  It’s so delicious?  What?  Allergy?  You will die?  …Blasphemy!  Fish is made of nothing but rainbows and happiness.”).  Why do you like winter?  It’s so cold!  And…it’s so cold!  Did you forget about how cold it is?

Yes, winter is cold.  Suck it up, you panzies.  And its funny that I would say this, me being from California and all.  Because when it comes to weather, Californians are absolute 100% pussies.  We get all chilly and reach for our jackets when the weather drops to 70; meanwhile on the East Coast, people go outside wearing shorts and shit at -5, and laugh at those silly hippies.  ”Look at those guys, wearing coats in 70 degree weather and with their Terminator governor and shit.”  The tradeoff is that while Californians are pussies when it comes to the weather, should the Earth start moving beneath us, we don’t really care unless the Richter scale reaches at least 7.

Anyway, back to summer.  Summer in Japan sucks for a multitude of reasons.  …What are those reasons?  I’m glad you asked!  Sit down and grab a Snickers because…well…y’know.

1.  It’s hotter and muggier than a sweaty dog’s fur.

The heat itself isn’t really a problem.  Japan actually doesn’t even get that hot.  But maybe I have no perspective on this – I lived in the SoCal desert for a few years.  Do you know what they call that region – Death Valley.  Yeah, Death Valley.  115 degree days were nothing.

Despite this, Japan is worse because the humidity level is at like 2000%.  You sweat simply because you exist.  I think, overall, you would end up drier if you just jumped directly into a swimming pool, as compared to walking around outside in Japan for 5 mintues.  While Death Valley was hot, it was dry hot, so it was much more bearable.  Given the choice, I would gladly spend a summer in Death Valley over Japan.

…Y’hear that Japan?  Your country in the summer is even worse than Death.

The humidity also means that, even when the sun goes down, the heat and mugginess stick around.  And that shit is just not fair.

Perhaps this would be bearable if I were a single guy, and could run my air conditioner 24/7.  And when I was a single guy, I did run my AC 24/7.  That’s not even a joke, I just never turned it off.  Why would I?  Even when I wasn’t home, if I turned it off then, when I did come home I’d have to put up with my room feeling like Sticky Maple Syrup Death for however long it took for the AC to fix the problem.  Funk that.  Instant gratification – the second I crossed my doorway, I was greeted by a cool and dry temperature, and that shit was wonderful.

All of that goes flying out of the window however should the single guy start dating.  Because Japanese women have some sort of mind-blowing allergy to air-conditioning.  ”It’s cold!” she burrs as she goes to crank down the AC to 28 (82 in F).  Yes it’s cold, and that’s the point!  Eat more meat, get more body fat, and maybe you will learn to appreciate it!  God forbid you marry one, cause she won’t let you run it during the night, and you wake up at 4AM all hot and sweaty, and unfortunately not in the good way.

This is one area in which I sort of envy my female ex-patriot counterparts.  While they may complain about being perpetually single here in Japan, the trade-off is that at least they get to run the shit out of their air-conditioners.  Have an apartment as nice and frosty as the conditions between their legs.*

*Girls, don’t take too much offense to that…but if you ARE an expat female in Japan and you complain about having no sex life, yet you make no attempt to actually change this, despite the fact that unless you look like the bastard love child of Whoopi Goldberg and Danny DeVito you can pretty much go up to almost any guy and say “let’s have sex” and he will probably say yes….well, just know that I have no sympathy for you.  None.

2.  Japan’s “hidden” 5th season – biblical plague umbrellas.

Despite spring and summer supposedly being the best seasons of the year, rainy season happens to fall right between them.  And while it doesn’t rain everyday, it rains just enough to make you think that God hates this country and wants to drown it under a saucy river of steamy sky water.

Now, the rain itself isn’t that bad.  I actually like rain.  Yes, I like winter, and I like rain.  I’m special like that.  What bothers me most about this season is the umbrellas.  Maybe my memory isn’t that good, but as I recall, back in America the umbrellas only came out for substantial rain.  It had to be enough so that you would be actually wet, and continue to be wet unless you changed clothes.  Not for drizzling, or for the stuff that would get you moderately moist, but you’d be dry after 5 minutes indoors.

But Japan doesn’t play by these rules.  Even the slightest inkling of rain will produce umbrellas.  Even just the essence of rain is enough.  Never mind that they are only outside for maybe 5 minutes in between the train station and work/home.  No no, don’t want to melt in the nasty acid rain, gotta pop out that umbrella.    Why do I care?  Remember that Japanese people move in some sort of magical self-contained bubble, completely impervious to the outside world around them.  Now factor in that umbrellas only serve to make their radius wider, and given the height difference, most Japanese people hold them at about my eye-level.  …Yeah.

Maybe if it was just during rainy days, the umbrella hyper barrage would be tolerable.  But you should know by now that that’s not the case, now is it?  Japanese women also pop them out on sunny days.  Y’know, don’t want to get skin cancer and all.  No, wait, that reason would actually make sense, if this were Australia.  (Regardless of the status of the ozone layer over this country, I think the dense levels of smog alone will stop UV rays, and anything short of Galactus coming to eat the planet.  Even then, Galactus has a lot of smog to get through before he reaches Japan…)  No no, they just don’t want to ruin their beautiful white porcelain skin with an ugly dark tan.  As a member of a race who is permanently suntanned, I will refain from commenting too deeply on this.  I will only say this – sunburn – how does that work out for you guys?  Bwa ha ha ha ha!

Ahem.  I digress.  So the umbrellas come out on rainy days, sunny days…and overcast days!  Yes, overcast days!  I shit you not, it will be a cloudy day and there will still be women carrying umbrellas.  As a preemptive strike against either outcome?  What the hell I don’t even

So rainy season ends, and maybe one or two months later, we transistion nicely into…typhoon season!  Sweet!  And if you just thought “Well, surely Japanese people don’t carry umbrellas out in the typhoon!”, obviously you don’t live here.  My favorite part of typhoon season is watching the news, and them showing the one person crossing the bridge with the umbrella that’s getting thrashed by the raw natural elements.  This isn’t a recycled shot, they shoot this shot every year and show it I guess to shock and awe us over the power of the typhoon.  And while I guess I should be worried about the mini hurricane, I’m always rooting for the typhoons to mangle as many umbrellas as possible.

3.  Festivals suck ass.

So with the weather being so good (ha!), summer is prime festival season here in Japan.  And that’s a good thing, right?  An important part of Japanese culture?  A fun event the whole family can enjoy?  Wrong!

Festivals consist of little booths, where you can buy stuff like yakitori, yakisoba, takoyaki, whatever.  Nevermind that you can buy these things almost anywhere at anytime, and here at the festival they are especially overpriced.  Then they will have some summer-specific stuff like shaved ice, and maybe some games like the goldfish scooper thing.

And that’s about it.  No, really.

They may have one of those shrine things, that either people will carry around on their shoulders, or will be situated in the middle of the street.  But really, that’s about the extent of it.  Of course, there are like eleventy billion people there.  So you fight against hordes upon hordes of people to see a hand-held shrine and go buy some overpriced bar foods.  While I can understand the novelty of it at first, I’ve been here for 7 years and it has become beyond repetitive.  I would imagine that even the Penis Festival would get old at some point*.

*The funny thing about the Penis Festival, to me at least, is the hundreds of guys there with cameras to take pictures of girls eating penis-shaped candy and riding giant wooden phalluses (…Is Japan the only country where this sentence is even possible?  I think so!).  What exactly are you going to do with that picture?  Show it to friends?  ”And this is a picture of some girl I don’t know riding atop a 5-foot wooden penis.”  It just seems weird to me to grab your camera and head out to some country bumpkin town so you can take pictures of girls you don’t even know playing around with glorified dildoes in a non-sexual manner.  I mean, wouldn’t downloading porn be a whole lot easier/faster/more satisfying?  I mean…shit.

Summer is also prime time for fireworks festivals.  Admittedly, the Japanese do put on a pretty good fireworks show.  However, to get to said show, again you have to fight against a crowd that rivals the population of Bangladesh, kill two salarymen and an obasan to get a spot to sit on the ground, and then considering that everyone goes home at exactly the same time, take 2 hours just to get to the train station, and then watch as the trains move so slowly, it would be faster to just ride piggyback on an elementary schooler to go home.  Can’t I just buy a Fireworks of the World Blu-Ray or something and eliminate the unneeded stress?

4.  Show me the skin….oh, wait.

In most other countries, for us guys, summer means girls in tank tops and oh so short shorts.  We may be hot and sweating, but hey, at least the scenery is nice.  I suppose maybe the same is true for women?  Hot guys shirtless and sweaty and shit?  I don’t know, I won’t pretend to know how the female mind works.  My impression of it is that its a direct opposite of the male mind.  So if we men like seeing beautiful women scantily clothed, I imagine the female turn on being a guy in an apron offering to cook dinner, clean the house, and then sit down and have a talk about his feelings for the next three hours.  That, or vampires who sparkle in the sunlight.  It’s that kind of shit that makes the female mind so baffling.

Anyway, summer and skin.  This is yet another area where Japan fails.  Forget about tank tops, because Japanese women don’t show cleavage.  Most of them don’t even have it, but the few that do don’t show it.  In fact, its just the opposite – they’re so paranoid over getting tanned that they wear more layers of clothing than they do in the winter.  Go figure that one out.

The shorts are the same story.  They wear short skirts all year round, so summer isn’t anything special.  Actually, I think the skirts get shorter in the winter.  I have nothing other than my hunches to lay stake to this claim; but other guys I’ve talked to feel the same way.  I would love to present some hard data as evidence, but I don’t think most women will allow me to go around measuring their skirt length.  Maybe if I could find a way to involve giant wooden phalluses in the process?

If you are a guy and you want to see some summer skin, pretty much the beach is your last refuge.  It’s actually a pretty damn good last refuge though.  Hundreds upon hundreds of bikini-clad beach babes…yeah…

I’m sorry, I went away for a minute there.  I’m back now.

Either way, I’m married, and all that eye candy is off-limits to me now anyway.  For me, its kind of like overload.  Imagine you’re on a diet – you might see a picture of a delicious cheesecake in a magazine or on TV or something, and you think “Mmm that’d be nice” but its not too bad.  But then some friends take you to the Cheesecake Factory and they all order huge portions of cheesecake and they look like they’re having orgasms while eating it simply from the delicious taste of it, and you have to stick to your diet and not eat one single bite.  At all.  Or your wife will divorce you and you lose half of everything you own.  That is why I don’t want to go to the beach anymore.

That paragraph probably only made sense if you are a married man.

Anyway.  In conclusion.  Between the horrible heat, shitty weather overall, overcrowded festivals and lack of any real redeeming qualities, summer is officially the worst season in Japan.  Despite that, nearly every Japanese person will say “summer” if you ask them what their favorite season is.   The reasoning?  ”At least its not cold.”  And I thought Californians were bad when it came to weather.

***

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One of the first questions I get asked when I reveal that my wife is pregnant is “What sex is the baby?”  I guess back in the day, medical technology wasn’t that advanced, and we didn’t know if it was going to be junior or little princess until it actually came out.  However in the current day we can actually find this out while the kid is still kicking in the womb.  I thought that the gender determination process would be something more…I dunno…scientific?  Like maybe they would pull out one of those Star Trek tricorders and scan for the X chromosome (hey Apple, if you’re listening, this would be the perfect iPhone/Pod/Pad app…), or the presence of some hormone in mom’s body would tip them off.  But really, all it is is looking at the ultrasound for a penis.  No seriously, they just take a look and say “Well, there’s a penis, so it’s a boy!” or “Hey, I can’t see a penis, so its a girl!”

The pinnacle of modern medical science, I guess.

Despite this technology, I’ve heard that many couples choose to not know the sex of the baby, saving it as a surprise for birth.  While I can understand this sentiment to some degree, I felt that knowing the sex would be helpful for planning purposes and what not.  I also figured that childbirth, in itself, was surprising enough as is.

Doctor:  Congratulations Mr. Az, it’s a baby boy!
Me:  Oh wow…9 months ago I skeeted in my wife, and now out of that exact same hole a living breathing human being made from my DNA has emerged…and its a boy!  …But I already knew that from the ultrasound scan, so meh.  Say, who’s up for some Starbucks?

However, it takes a few months before your doctor can play Find a Penis, as I guess that particular part isn’t one of the first things to develop.  Even if the penis gestation period has passed, if the baby is situated in a way so that you can’t see between their legs this can still keep prospective parents in the dark.  I’ve found that in this interval of not knowing the sex of the baby, the next most common question is “Which would you prefer?”

Up until recently, I would have said female, easily.  I could be the doting dad, always looking out for my little princess and ready to protect her from harm.  And if any awkward body issues came up…then I could just defer to mom.

Her:  Daddy, some girls were being mean to me at school today…
Me:  Really?  I’ll go to school with you tomorrow; you point them out, and I’ll say very loudly in their direction how I don’t tolerate anyone messing with my little princess.
Her:  Thanks Daddy.  Oh, and I have some biology homework due tomorrow, can you help me out with that?
Me:  Sure honey, feel free to ask me anything.
Her:  Speaking of that, lately I’ve started bleeding from my crotch-
Me:  Take that one up with your mother.

Then of course, there’s my Get Rich Quick scheme of producing an adorable, marketable kid, becoming their manager, taking a modest 35% of their income and retiring at 45.  I consider Beyonce’s Dad to be the modern day Sun Tsu of strategical masterminds.  Sun Tsu himself probably would have given up war and just marketed out his daughters if his genes had somehow produced Beyonce.  Everyone knows girls work better for this than boys – not to say that it doesn’t work for boys at all (see: crazed rabid fangirls), but its just easier for girls.

But lately, I’ve begun to see the merits of having a son.  Y’know, the usual stuff of playing sports together with him…playing catch or shooting some hoops.  I also want to impart to him my awesome hobbies.  I want to teach him how to become a Street Fighter champion, and instill in him my undying love of The Transformers.  Both I would hope to get an early start on – joystick practice would start a few weeks after he learns how to walk, and instead of Sesame Street, classic Transformers G1 episodes would play in our home.  ”Hey son…you want to watch Dora the Explorer?  What the eff?  Sorry, daddy’s watching the TV now.  What am I watching?  Oh, just this little show called The Transformers.  The Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.  Here, why don’t you join me…”

This is all easier to do with a boy.  Not that I can’t do it with a girl mind you – sports, Street Fighter, Transformers, it’s all possible of course.  But then I run the risk of turning her into a butch lesbian.  Not that I have anything personal against butch lesbians.  I’m sure they’re a wonderful people.  Just, butch lesbians are like grapefruits – they exist, but they have little to offer me.  And vice versa!

Okay, let’s say she doesn’t become a butch lesbian.  She’s average, cute, hot even.  But now I’ve just created a hot nerd girl.  Well, what’s wrong with that, you ask?  In a few years, she could even go on to replace Olivia Munn or Jessica Chobot!  …And I think you just answered your own question.  Allow me to elaborate.

In college, I knew a girl who was into classic video games, and liked comic books and what not.  I went to her room once, and she had towers of old NES games piled up, X-Men posters on her wall, random comic books on the floor, and maybe even some GI Joes lying around.  Without telling you anything about what this woman looked like, I’m sure a good percentage of the male reading audience just popped boners.  The catch is that without all the game/comic geekyness, she was plenty hot on her own.  When I first enrolled in the class, as all men do I did a quick survey of the women in the room*, and she was by far and away the number one.  And then I found out about the geekiness.

Imagine you just won the Powerball Lottery, and as you go to pick up the check, you bump into Hugh Hefner who is like “Say, I’m kinda tired of the Playboy Mansion…I can’t keep having sex with hundreds of beautiful women day in and day out.  You want it?  Careful though, I just brought in a new batch of Playmates and this group is especially rowdy.”  Yeah, it was a little like that.

I would have killed a person just for a shot with her.**  Like, actually killed a man with my bare hands if that’s what it took.  And while this is perfectly okay for a single guy, I’m not a single guy anymore.  I’m a married man – no – I’m a father to be, and imagine my daughter is this hot nerd girl that men would gladly battle each other to the death for.  Like fathers don’t already have enough to worry about defending their daughters from the perverted thoughts of men…but a hot nerd girl?  I should just start buying guns now.

*Yes girls, we men do survey all the women in any new environment (school, work, etc) and rank them.  Of course we do.  And don’t bother asking your boyfriends/husbands if we do, because he will deny it.  Especially if you met him through school/work, and you weren’t numero uno.

**But Az, you may say – sounds like you were in this girl’s room.  Yes, I was.  She was even in my room a few times.  You didn’t hit that?  Sigh, no.  I don’t want to talk about it.  This was the fail that was my life up until the final year of college.  Even if I did run through the Playboy Mansion I wouldn’t be able to get this monkey off my back, ever.

So, if you happen to know a gun shop that sells heavy arterilly for cheap, recommend me, because the newest addition to the Az Family is gonna be a girl.  And I don’t think I can resist the urge to teach my offspring about All Things Awesome in the universe, like Transformers and Street Fighter.  The combination of black and Japanese genes will probably make her pretty hot.  A pretty hot mixed nerd girl.  And for all you guys who just thought about the potential of what she may become 18 years from now, just know that the first gun I buy will be a rocket launcher.

I know I said I didn’t want to write stuff focusing on pointing out the weird quirks of Japanese people…but this just happened today, so forgive me this sin.  Actually, if we’re talking about forgiving sins, I have a fairly long and extensive list of things that need to be forgiven, so can I just get a bye on this one then?  Great, thanks!

The Japanese and elevators.

When an elevator arrives, a Japanese person will go stand directly in front of the door, ready to pounce inside once the doors open.  This would be a perfectly fine thing to do, if they were the only person in the whole wide world.  A lot of Japanese behavior revolves around the idea that this person is the only person in the whole wide world.  Which is funny for a country of over 125 million, mostly crammed into tiny little spaces.  ”Oh hey, the top of this escalator would be a PERFECT place to chat with my friends!  What?  People behind me on the escalator?  Huh?”

Ahem.  I digress.  Elevators.  So, Japanese people stand directly in front of the doors when its time to get on or off.  And I don’t get the rush, especially for getting on a elevator.  But whatever, the real humor comes from when an elevator arrives on a floor, and you have someone wanting to get on and off at the same time.  They’re both standing right in front of the doors, ready to leap out like an African tiger the second the door opens.  And while you think this is a recipe for disaster, just as both are in mid-pounce, suddenly the insta-brakes get applied and they stop.  Disaster averted.   Both offending parties offer an insincere quick bow of apology, and they’re off to rush to whatever it is that demanded getting onto or off of the elevator at Warp Factor 9.

This is how it works for two Japanese people.  Now factor in us Gaijin.  We, who glitch the system because we’re not a part of it.  Like Neo in the Matrix, except with 1000 times more expression, and we can’t fly.  At least, not yet anyway.  I’m working on that.

Imagine you are a Japanese person.  You are in perhaps a department store, and as the floor you want to go to is fairly high, you decide to take the elevator.  Being Japanese, you feel compelled to get on that elevator as quickly as possible.  For if you don’t, 13 first born sons will die, and God will kill all of the fish in the ocean, meaning no more delicious sushi.  The elevator comes down to the first floor, and as it arrives, you stand directly in front of the doors, for you are the only person on Earth, and there can’t possibly be anyone trying to leave the elevator.  Perish the thought!

The doors open, and you take your first pounce-step inside, but your Japanese Proximity Radar goes off.  Whoops, there was someone there after all, heh heh.  Better give them the stock bow apology, as they will do to you.  But wait, something is wrong.  As you look down to avoid eye contact, you expect your line of sight to end up somewhere around your new friend’s chest region.  Instead, you find yourself looking at his crotch.  What in the world?  In your surprise, the only thing you can do is look up, as high as you can, to see what you almost plowed headfirst into.

Hello large black man!

I imagine having a large black man suddenly be in your life would be a startling thing for anyone.  Being one myself, I can only guess at the feeling.  Since I don’t make it a habit of lunging in front of people (only on the weekends), I shouldn’t have to worry about how people would react to me suddenly being in their face.  I shouldn’t, but I live in Japan.  Where, if I try to exit an elevator normally, I will have a Japanese person throwing themselves into me as if the elevator contained 30 naked and horny virgins and the space behind the elevator was filled with 30 naked and horny Barbara Walters clones.  Everybody reacts.  The most basic reaction is to just say “Whoa!”, throw out a confused/bewildered apology, and scurry into the elevator.  Some people actually express their surprise in words, like “bikkuri shita!” which liberally translated into Japanese means “Oh shit!”.*  People who are with friends will contain their shock until after boarding the elevator, and as the doors close I can hear the conversation starting – “That scared the crap out of me!  I think I just lost 5 years off my life…”

*To all you Japanese linguists in training, yes, I know “bikkuri shita!” is literally “I was surprised!” but we don’t really say “I was surprised!” when we are surprised.  Although I would like to try narrating my physical activities and reactions more often, just to see how everyone around me reacts to it.  ”I have to sneeze!”  ”I am moderately annoyed at the speed at which these two girls in front of me are walking!”  ”I just saw an attractive woman and now I feel blood rushing towards my penis!”

However, the reaction I got today was fairly unique.  It was a girl, maybe in her early twenties.  Upon seeing me, she fell down.  And then cried.

Now, you have to understand the timing and order of events here.  If her Japanese Insta-Brakes™ had failed, and she’d plowed nose-first into me, and then fell down and started crying from the pain – well that would actually make sense.  That would be somewhat understandable.  But that’s not what happened.  The Insta-Brakes™ kicked in.  She stopped, went to do the apology bow, and was confused when there was a crotch where there should have been a chest.   She looked up.  She saw me.  She fell down.  And then she cried.  It was…surreal.

She had been with a friend, so her friend helped her up.  I went on about my way.  While many of you may want to scold me for not being a chivalrous gentleman and helping out a damsel in distress, please consider the following -

1.  If she hadn’t been rushing to get on the elevator, ignoring the fact that, hey, people might be getting off, this never would have happened.
2.  While surprise is understandable, falling down?  Seriously?
3.  And then, crying?  Because she fell down?  Because there was suddenly a black man in her life?

Maybe I just have no perspective, but would this be acceptable in any other situation?

Me:  (entering elevator in a rush)
Me:  (looks up)  Oh my God, a Mexican woman!  *falls down, crying*
Woman:  There, there.  I understand your surprise.  Here, you can cry on my sombrero.

And of course the 4th and most important reason -

4.  I’m married.

While I’m sure there was potential for some romance or even just kinky sex in the situation (“Oh, you fell down.  Why don’t I give you my number, and we can talk about it in my apartment later…”), I’m married, so I don’t care.  I have a wife who didn’t fall down and cry the first time she saw me.  I think that’s all a man can really ask for in life.  That, and back rubs every couple of days.  Yeah, that’d be good.

Maybe this isn’t exclusive to the Japanese?  I don’t remember Americans blindly rushing into elevators.  But then again, I’m from San Francisco.  We don’t really rush for much of anything.  However, if a large black man suddenly appears in front of you in SF, falling down and crying would probably be an appropriate response.  So I guess its all situational?

***

I had a few readers asking about a Paypal button, so I added one on the sidebar.  I have nothing to offer really so I can’t do a donation drive, but with a baby on the way, and no home computer, anything donated would be greatly appreciated, as always.

I’m a bitter, crotchety old man.  This happened a lot sooner than I expected.

One of the earmarks of becoming a bitter, crotchety old man is the rejection of society around him.  In the old days, this meant living along in an old wooden house, occasionally coming out onto the porch to throw rocks and angrily wave your cane at teenagers.  But the times have changed.  Now everything is about super-connectivity.  There’s Facebook and Twitter and blogs and all sorts of wonderful cyberspace ways to know what everyone is doing at any given moment.  The grouch of old will go outside, and find that there are no teenagers to throw rocks at – they’re all inside recording themselves on YouTube.  Nowadays, the grouch will have to update his Facebook status to “Old Grouch says you kids all suck!  get off my internets!” for anyone to listen to his crazy ramblings.  But, by virtue of him being on the internet, he hasn’t truly rejected society.  He’s a part of the information superhighway, lovingly embracing it like a tender 17 year old.

To truly reject society these days, you gotta do it old school.  You have to go offline man.

While I’m not completely offline yet (or you wouldn’t be reading this…), I feel myself heading in that direction.  Why, you may ask?  Well, for one, the only Apple product I own I use almost exclusively for music.

(The audience gasps collectively in horror.)

That’s right, I don’t even have an iPhone.  3G, 4G, Kenny G, whatever, I don’t have one.  I really only use my cell phone for email, phone calls occasionally, and some very light net browsing.  The iPhone seemed like overkill to me.  Applications for Facebook, apps for checking your stocks, apps to remind you when your wife’s birthday is, apps to remind you when your mistress’s birthday is, apps to show you the fastest escape route out of your own apartment, apps to cook you a 3-egg scrambled breakfast within your recommended daily nutritional value…it’s all a bit dizzying.  Apparently though, I’m one of the few who has yet to sign up for the Steve Jobs Doctrine.  A friend of mine’s wife expressed surprised when she found out I didn’t have an iPhone.  ”All the foreign guys I know have one” she said, and sure enough, they did.  I work a job now with more foreign people, and the ratio of iPhone users to non-iPhone users is like 7:3 (one of the non-iPhone guys uses Google Android though).  Even among Japanese people, I’m seeing more and more of the iPhone – but that’s not really a surprise.

World:  Hey Japan, everybody’s doing this thing…wanna join us?
Japan:  A chance to conform?  Where do we line up to do that!

Smart phones are cool and all, considering that I use a computer at work, and have a computer at home (used to…more on that in a bit…), do I really need another little mini-computer for all the times in between?  While some people have compared them to the nifty little data pad thingies on Star Trek, I just see us inching closer and closer to The Matrix.  We’re going to be so connected that no one is going to know what’s going on in the real world anymore.  I could walk around naked on the street, and unless someone Tweets about it no one would know.

@OLGal:  Hey, I heard there’s this big black dude walking around naked in Shinsaibashi.
@Tetsu/Jin:  I’m in Shinsaibashi now…anyone got a jpeg or YT video of this?
@MrMissile:  I think I saw him in the reflection of my iPhone, but by the time I started up the camera he was gone.
@OLGal:  Vids or it didn’t happen.

More than my rejection of smart phones, what really makes me feel like the grumpy old miser is that I actually don’t have a home computer right now.

It wasn’t by choice.  My old laptop broke down.  Originally, I panicked.  I started looking into ways to repair or replace it.  Unfortunately, my wife brought me back to reality rather quickly.

Me:  So I was looking at this nice Dell…
Her:  Um, honey?
Me:  But Sony VAIO is also nice…
Her:  Um…before you start getting to deep into that…
Me:  What’s wrong?
Her:  A new computer isn’t exactly in our budget.
Me:  I wasn’t talking about state-of-the-art systems.  Just something decent.
Her:  Yeah, that’s not in the budget either.
Me:  Okay, well then, how about a value system?
Her:  Nope.
Me:  Okay then, what IS in the budget?
Her:  We could buy matches to make smoke signals.
Me:  Seriously?
Her:  No…the matches are kind of pushing it, actually.

So with a new computer completely and totally out of the picture, we were both forced to settle for a life unplugged, away from the warm glow of cyberspace and thrust into the cold, un-loving hands of IRL.

You know what though?  It’s actually not that bad.  When we absolutely positively have to use the internet, we can use our cell phones, my iPod Touch, or the PlayStation 3.  We can no longer surf random sites, keep up on message boards or random blogs or things like that, but I don’t really miss it.  I feel kind of bad for my wife – now being 6 months pregnant and not working, it leaves her with not much to do at home, but she’s found a way to occupy her time – making baby clothes.  We still don’t know the sex of the baby, but she’s avoiding that problem by making gender-neutral stuff.  With lots of lace and frills.  So I’m thinking either she’s expecting a girl, or baby Prince.  I would be okay with baby Prince, so long as he grows up to sing Purple Rain, and his basketball game is rivaled only by his delicious pancakes.

The one glaring problem with not having a computer though – you guessed it – is porn.  I was prepared for this – I have most of the good stuff backed up, and I have some stored on easily accessible devices for my viewing pleasure.  Of course I was prepared – I grew up in an age where porn wasn’t easily accessible.  We had to have backups just in case something happened.  Unfortunately, no computer means no way to get any new stuff, so that may be a problem in the future.  I’m good for the moment though.

Of course, having a computer would be good, and if I could turn enough tricks on the street…well first I guess I would pay all those past due bills first, and then I would look into buying a new computer.  That’s a lot of tricks though, so I’ll have to keep my weekends open I guess.  Ahem, anyway, yes having a computer would be nice, but I’ve found that not having one isn’t the life-crippling handicap I feared it to be.  So if I am this content with not being plugged into all the latest gadgetry, what happens 5 years from now?  10?  20?  Will my kids have to drag me kicking and screaming to the holodeck, while I complain about how in the old days if we wanted to play baseball we actually went to a field and did it instead of recreating it in a computer program?  You may laugh at the absurdity of what I just said, but how many of you have ever played Wii Sports?  See!  The techno apocalypse is closer than you imagine.

Now get offa my lawn unless you want me to Twitter a rock.jpg to your file server.  It’ll be a really big rock too.

I’m going to have to dust off my desk at the “Japan’s Weird, Did You Know That?” institute.

I believe I mentioned before, after living here for over 6 years I’ve gotten used to some of Japan’s quirkyness. Things like old women with purple hair, kids wearing T-shirts with English sexual innuendo, or men who dress up as women and roam the streets of Osaka no longer faze me. …I feel like these things SHOULD faze me, but they don’t anymore. Sentences such as “Oh hey, look, the old guy in the hippie dress with the green hair and pushing the baby stroller with the Cabbage Patch Kid is back…hmm, he has purple hair today, that’s a change”* now roll off my tongue as casually as “Hmm, so do you think the Dow will go up today?” or “whose the new Prime Minister this time around?”

*As much as this may sound like a made-up example…it’s really not.

That having been said, there are still a few things that continue to baffle me. One of these things is the Japanese approach to walking through doors.

Imagine you are standing in front of a department store here in Japan. Most if not all department stores have big double-doors, which makes sense – these places usually have a lot of foot traffic, and they want to have people go in and out smoothly. These doors aren’t automatic doors, and usually they stay closed, I imagine to help regulate the air conditioning, bug control, and to slow down any potential zombie outbreaks. Despite being a closed door, they have handles on it which allows any intelligent mammal – say a human for example – to use their controllable digits to open and close the doors at will.

Simple enough, right? Here’s how the Japanese take this simple concept and make it special.

Most Japanese people will only go through one of the double doors. If traffic going in and out of the building is sparse, that makes sense. But even when there are eleventy billion people trying to go in and out of the department store (think: clearance sale), the Japanese will still obey this mysterious one-door rule. People going out will patiently wait as people go in through the one door – when there is a slight lull in the inbound traffic, then the people going out will take over while the people going in resume the patient waiting duties.

And while this all sounds like the actions of a highly organized and civil culture, remember – there’s a second door there! You could have people going in and out at the same time!

Sometimes I get dragged to a department store, and I see the above taking place. People will be waiting patiently on the outside while the group inside exits the store single-file through the one door. Being the uncultured Gaijin beast that I am, I will go to the perfectly functioning second door and – GASP! – open it, which gives me free and uncontested entrance into the store. To the Japanese who were waiting on the outside, I imagine this is a lot like when fire was first introduced to cavemen. Or, when humanity discovered YouTube.

Having exposed the pot of gold that is the second door, my Japanese friends will join behind me, and for one brief moment of pure Valhalla, there will be uniform traffic going in and out of the store – at the same time – through the double doors! This magic doesn’t last for long though, for as soon as I turn back around to see what’s going on, one of the doors (usually the one I opened) has closed and people have gone back to the single door wait-and-go approach. I can only imagine what must go down…

Japanese Guy 1:  Uh-oh, that impossibly heavy second door that Gaijinzilla opened for us is going to close!
Japanese Guy2:  That would be bad. Someone should stop that from happening.
Guy 1:  Yes, someone should.
Guy 2:  Oh look – while we were talking about someone keeping the door open, the door went and closed itself.
Guy 1:  …Now what do we do?
Guy 2:  …Clearly, the only thing we can do. Quietly accept our miserable fate.
Guy 1:  Of course, for we are Japanese.
Guy 2:   We will wait here outside the store until the inbound traffic gains control of the One Door.
Guy 1:  My girlfriend’s birthday is 4 months from now – I hope I can make it inside before then.

Okay, so the door thing is weird. But maybe it isn’t? While utilizing both doors would let them enter and exit the store freely, only using the One Door gives them a chance to do something that, apparently, they love to do – stand in line.

Y’see, the Japanese LOVE lines. Like, if you could make the concept of lining up into a human being, otaku guys would marry the DS game which simulates lining up for things.

You may be thinking “Big deal, we line up in America too!” And sure, if we go down to the local movie theater or something, you can clearly see some painted lines and/or rope poles, etching out a clear queue up to the ticket window. But what you don’t realize is that those lines are necessary to retain law and order. Without them, people would just crowd around the ticket booth, waving money and screaming things at each other. A simple outing to the movies would turn into a twisted Survival of the Fittest challenge. Imagine the scene – children devastated as their meek fathers are unable to obtain Shrek tickets. Or even worse – hundreds of women brutally clawed to death as Sex and the City premiers worldwide.

…But not in Japan. Even without the clearly defined queue, Japanese people would just line up automatically, in one uniform single-file line.

Again, you may be thinking “Hey, isn’t this a good thing?!” and for the most part, you’re right. Order, in most cases, is usually better than chaos. The thing with the Japanese and lines though, is that they sometimes line up…for no good reason at all. If you walk through any major city, you are bound to see Japanese people lined up for something. In many cases, it’s some sort of restaurant with a reputation for being a hot spot. But despite there being hundreds of other restaurants offering the exact same type of food within the same 2-3km radius, none of which have any waiting time at all, people will get in line for The Restaurant, and patiently wait their turn. On my way home from work, I can see a large line in front of a sweets store in the basement of the department store. As far as I can tell, there’s nothing particularly special about this particular sweets store, and never mind that the entire basement floor is filled with sweets stores with little to no waiting time. They don’t have a Magical Line.

I swear to God, Buddha, Oprah Winfrey, or whatever deity you believe in, the following is a true story.

I was in downtown Kyoto once with my wife. We were in the shopping area, which can get quite crowded during tourist season. And by tourist, I don’t mean fellow Gaijin – I mean other Japanese people from various parts of the country.

There is a certain crepe shop in this area which almost always has a huge line of people for it. I don’t know what, if anything, makes this particular crepe shop special. And never mind that crepes can be found almost anywhere else in this area, with another crepe shop not even 50 meters away. Sometimes the line for the first crepe shop is so long, that people at the end will actually be standing in front of the second crepe shop. And that in itself is amazing, but not the point of this particular story.

My wife had gone off to go buy some cosmetics or something. The shop she went to was fairly small, so I offered to stay outside as to not take up space. I was standing near the line for this crepe shop, when two girls, I think from out of town walked by (I think they were out of town because of their dialect…). One of the girls pointed out the large line and asked what it was for. The other girl said she didn’t know. What makes this story notable is that at this point, both girls simply got in line. After seeing a couple walk by eating crepes, they realized that this was a line for crepes, and then determining that a nice crepe would indeed be delicious, decided to remain in line.

…Now, let’s think about this for a second.

Without even knowing what the line was for, these two girls lined up in it. It wasn’t even a conscious decision; their Japanese programming just naturally lead them to the line. For all they knew, it could have been “Get Slapped in the Face by a Black Man” line, but there they were in it. Only after lining up did they learn the purpose of the line. Then, deciding that the purpose was worth it, they remained in line. When viewed in a different light, we could say that these girls lined up solely for the sake of lining up – upon learning that the purpose of the line wasn’t something hideous like “Get Kicked in the Crotch, For Free!” or “Justin Bieber Music Sampling Station”, they determined they could continue being in the line without having a negative effect on their lives. The crepe was only a bonus for the true activity, which was to stand in line.

Again, I have to stress that I am not making this up. This actually happened.

Being the entrepreneur that I am, I’m always thinking of ways to make these discoveries into a profit. So far what I’ve come up with is – a single file line leading up to a building with only one door. Once inside, I will be sitting at a table that reads “Pay Me $5 – Mandatory.” If anyone objects, I will show them a contract that states that upon entering into the room, they explicitly agreed to the terms of the room. While this sounds like a horrible idea in theory, if I can get some friends of mine to just stand in line, I’m confident I can get Japanese people lining up around the block for it in no time.

So there you have it – a new case for the “Japan’s Weird, Did You Know That?” file. I hope you all enjoyed it. If you would like to leave a comment on this story, please form a single file line over there and write out your thoughts in an orderly, organized manner.

Welp, the wifey is pregnant.

I won’t make sweeping claims about Japanese women, but from my experiences, babies come fast after marriage. Like the Japanese guy says “I do” at the altar, and immediately after bringing his new wife down the aisle he whisks her away to their new home, and is so happy to be married that the first thing he does is stick it in her raw. And 3 or 4 minutes later, the magic of conception happens.

You may be thinking “Hey, that’s not accurate.” And you’re right! Actually, it seems that lately, the magic of conception happens BEFORE the wedding plans. They even have a word for this – “dekichatta kekkon”. The guy, happy for no particular reason, sticks it in her raw, and a few missed periods later they realize that the magic of conception has happened. So the only logical course of action here is for the couple to get married, right?

I’m really not making this up.

Lately, apparently, dekichattakon’s have been on the rise. You may remember my wife’s friend R-san, who was also a dekichattakon. As if getting married already wasn’t a huge life-altering decision.

Guy 1: So, you’re getting married, huh? What about this woman made you think that she was The One?
Guy 2: Well, I liked the way her legs looked in that skirt – I was drunk and she said yes, I jizzed inside of her, and she got pregnant. We will now spend the rest of our lives together in holy matrimony.

Our pregnancy is NOT a dekichatta. Far from it. As you may remember, the wife was wanting to get pregnant even before the wedding ceremony. I managed to hold her off until after the ceremony at least, and then for another year after that. But then, sometime around July of last year, I caved in and decided not to practice contraception anymore. I didn’t feel ready to become a father yet…but I figured no one ever does, and I might as well just let the fates fall as they may.

That, and as any man who has “tried” to conceive with his wife can tell you – unprotected non-withdrawal sex is better than friend Crispy Creme cheeseburgers. Actually “trying” to have a baby was a wonderful thing for my sex life. Yes.

Me: So honey, wanna fool around tonight?
Her: Not really, I’m not particularly in the mood…
5 Seconds Later
Me: Well then, would you like to try and make a baby?
Her: YEAH! BABIES! Let’s go.

If we were 100% dedicated to baby making, there are better ways to go about it than to just shag like rabbits. Y’see, there are certain periods when she is at her most fertile – so we would try to calculate that out, and then I would try to save up my supply for those times, and that would hopefully increase the odds of successful conception. We didn’t do that. It was more like “let’s just stop using the anti-baby strats and see what happens.”

But after a few months, with every period signaling no pregnancy my wife’s expression of disappointment would get that much deeper. There’s only so much of the sad puppy dog face that a guy can take, y’know. It wasn’t a diabolical ploy on her part, she was just genuinely disappointed not to be pregnant.

So sometime in mid-December of last year, I decided to take the baby making a little more seriously. I became more mindful of her fertile windows, and I didn’t waste as much of the baby batter supply as I used to. And sometime in January of this year, she conceived. …Hey, when I get serious about something, the job gets done!

So as of now, she’s about 6 months pregnant. And she couldn’t be happier. That’s something I don’t understand. “Wow, I have a small human being growing inside of me, that I’m going to be responsible for for the next 20 years! Sweet!” I guess its a female thing? I usually don’t get that happy unless its a new TV or computer or something. To me, the whole process is still a bit surreal. I don’t feel like a father, or that I’m even close to becoming one. I guess it won’t really feel real until the baby is actually born. That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.

Now I’m facing a world full of unknowns. What kind of person will the child grow up to be? What kind of father will I be? I’m full of questions and lacking answers. But I do know one thing –

My kid will never go to a junior high school here in Japan. …I know better.