Small in Japan

First door on the right.

It has almost been a week now since I got off of that dreaded plane ride which took forever and half. After a week of soaking up the good life of an American tourist, the past week has been nothing short of a slap-in-the-face of reality. For whatever reason it just didn't click that I was in another country where people communicate on an entirely different message. It seems like everywhere I turn I am forced to realize what an outsider I am. Registering for my Gaijin Ka-do was a feat on its own. The other day I had my mug taken by some Japanese schoolgirl at a crosswalk and where ever I go all of the grandmas take a break from their hunched over toils to get a second look.

Besides having no real social camouflage, things are moving along well enough. I've used my skateboard to connect with a few of the kids at my school. From what I can decipher, they skateboard as well. It looked something like this in my mind:

[japanese substitute for blah, blah] SU-KA-TO-BO-DO[japanese substitute for blah, blah].

The people at school all seem pretty receptive, but the language barrier is harder than I thought to get by. I can usually manage to break things down into a few strange gestures and the limited vocabulary I have.

From what I have gathered Japanese college students could care less about what goes on in lectures, and or class. While the professor is talking they are all having their own normal voiced conversations which adds to my general confusion in trying to get a hold on what's going on. You can usually spot me at a desk rapidly leafing through a Japanese dictionary and bothering Melissa to cue me in on what's going on.

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lost in translation:
September 22, 2006

It is common knowledge that Japanese toilets can get pretty interesting. At the school the men's room has both urinals and what I have come to identify as squatters. Today when I went towards the restroom I was met with a particular interesting problem. As I walked passed the little security station, both doors to the men's and woman's bathroom were open. Now normally I would have no problem figuring out which door I belonged to because I could simply do the urinal check. But having limited experience on which bathrooms have urinals that solution was not going to fly. Adding to my confusion was both of the open doors which perfectly put the men's bathroom sign in the middle of the wall while blocking out the women's.

Now, if you can still follow me, I am standing in front of two open bathrooms with a men's room sign directly in the middle of both doors, and I have no idea which one is which. Also, to add to the frantic confusion the security dudes are right behind me waiting for me to embarrass myself.

After taking the best possible peek into both bathrooms I closed my eyes and stepped in. As I traversed deeper into my unknown surroundings, I quickly realized that there were no unirnals. But I thought to myself, maybe that's just how they rock it.

Just as I was about to take my first shot at an authentic Japanese squatter a security guard came in and told me I was in the wrong place.