JapaneseRuleOf7

Somehow, things never work out like you think they’re gonna.  Take for example, my plan, if you could call it that.  I was working an office job in the U.S., and I concocted this great escape by which I’d run off to Japan and teach English to pretty girls for a year before settling into another “real job.”   Tangentially, the dream also included laying on the beach, drinking Asahi beer, eating cotton candy, and improving my tan.  So why I chose Tokyo, God only knows.  Hindsight, as they say, is a bitch.  Or at least I say that.  Well, whatever, after a horrible year of teaching English, I somehow managed to interview and get a high-paying office job in Tokyo, twice.  I’ve got good credentials, so people often mistake me for being responsible and able to get stuff done.  Hey, just because it says that on my resume doesn’t make it true.  And you know I was also pretty naive at that time, because I thought there was nothing worse than teaching.  So color me shocked when I learned that working in a Japanese office is like that musical with all the singing, fake French people–miserable.

Now, I know what you’re thinking:  “That’s only two jobs,” is what you think.  That and, “Ken Seeroi, though brilliant and ruggedly handsome you may be, even you know that’s not much of a sample size.”  Okay, good point, but hear me out.  See, there are some things that are part and parcel of working for a Japanese firm, and if you plan on working here, you’re gonna want to know them. Read more »

So I was laying on the floor last night, actually trying to study Japanese, which is increasingly rare, since eating sashimi and drinking shochu with Japanese geezers at the local bar has replaced more formal study as of late.  But, seeing as it’s the new year and all, I thought I’d get off to a healthy start by cooking up an enormous cauldron of vegetable soup and doing something other than boozing.  Yes, this is the year Ken Seeroi finally gets his life together in Japan.  Plus it was raining, and anyway I blew all my yen drinking the night before.

Now, perhaps you’re the kind of person who hears a lot of explosions, but I’m not.  Like maybe a car crash or a big earthquake once in a while, but that’s about it.  So when this enormous, earth-shattering ka-boom shook the building, I thought, well, that’s a bit odd.  I’m calm like that.  And then the fire alarm went off and I smelled smoke.  I opened my window.  It was still raining cats and dogs.  The smoke smell got worse.

Read more »

Wow, is it 2013 already?  When did that happen?  I’m still getting prepared for the world to end on New Year’s 2000 by backing up all my WordStar docs onto 5-1/4″ floppies and stockpiling canned yakitori.  You know, I kind of have this thing about time in Japan, where it always seems to pass faster than in the real world.  Like already it’s been a rough start to the new year, since I showed up at work thinking it was Tuesday, when actually it was Monday.  It doesn’t help that Japanese days all have screwy names.  Moon day, Fire day, Water day—jeez, how’s a brother supposed to keep all that straight?  I blame Google Calendar.

Japanese New Year

So I went to Hokkaido for New Year’s again, and spent it with this friend of mine and her mom, real homey style, doing customary things like eating the giant box of osechi mystery foods and falling asleep on the floor.  Actually, the falling asleep part is more my custom than a Japanese one, but after all that food and a couple big glasses of sake, hey, is it my fault I missed the countdown at midnight?  Apparently, it is.   Anyway, there are only two places in Japan that are warm in the winter—Okinawa and Hokkaido.  Read more »

It was just a matter of time before I got arrested in Japan.

Well, I mean “arrested” is a pretty vague term, don’t you think?  I think so.  You know, like if you’re stopped for, let’s just say, stealing a bicycle, that’s not really arrested.  That’s more like “detained.”  Anyway, that’s my story.  So maybe I was simply detained.  Okay, let’s just agree there are some gray areas.

And my Sunday started so well, too.  As always, I was at Starbucks.  My days are bookends of mornings in Starbucks and evenings in boozy izakaya.  Read more »

I’d been in Japan for almost a year before somebody finally gave me an honest answer.

Now going back in time, funny story, I started using chopsticks when I was just a kid.  I don’t know why.  It’s not like my parents are secret ninjas or something.  I guess I just like challenges, or maybe I’m retarded or whatever, but anyway I started using them at a super young age.

My recollection is mostly that I couldn’t pick up a darn thing and my hand hurt like crazy.  But—and you know this is so me—once I made up my mind, I wasn’t going to quit.  Kind of like how I decided I would never speak English once I moved to Japan.  And that’s worked out just . . . uh, what’s the opposite of “great”?  Well, whatever, that’s another story.  Anyway, pretty soon I was this kid who was eating Cheerios with chopsticks, and Shake ‘n Bake chicken, and meatloaf.  (Culinarily speaking, I had the whitest upbringing ever.)  Read more »

Well the excellent folks at The Language Dojo were kind enough to ask me to write an article for their site, on one condition.

“Anything you want to write about is fine,” they said, “but could you not mention Mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk?”

“But that’s all I write about,” I protested.  “Plus those are several conditions, not one, by the way.”

“How about maybe just something on language learning?

“Language learning in prison?” I asked.

“How about the classroom?” they said.

“What about some trucks?

“How about some pedagogy?

Fine.  So I wrote some stuff down and it seemed pretty okay.  Then I sent it to a friend of mine for her opinion, with my typically self-effacing preface that I’d written the perfect article on language learning.  She wrote back and told me it was not the perfect article on language learning, because I’d failed to mention anything about Mama, or trains, or trucks, or prison, or getting drunk.

Jeez, you just can’t please people.  Fine.  So I put in a little bit about getting drunk.  But just a little, and no trains, then sent it to The Language Dojo.  Perfect?  Possibly not, but check it out and decide for yourself:  Why do Classes Suck?

When I first came to Japan, things were so much simpler.  Men were men, Japanese were Japanese, and foreigners were gaijin.  Now everything’s gone to pieces, nuanced to the point that when somebody talks about “the Japanese,” I don’t even know who they mean.  That it’s not me is the only thing that’s clear.  Things are complicated in modern Japan, is what I’m saying.  Three things, actually, or maybe four.

Thing 1:  A lot of Japanese Aren’t Japanese

I mean literally, they’re not.  You know those polite Japanese folks who’re always welcoming you into shops and restaurants and bowing like crazy when you leave?  And when you get home from vacation you tell people how wonderfully polite Japanese people are?  Well, a lot of them aren’t from Japan.  As with service-sector positions the world over, they’re frequently staffed by immigrants, meaning folks from China, Korea, the Philippines, even the Middle East.  I’ve even met one Asian-looking Australian gal who wore a kimono and worked as a waitress.  She let tourists think she was Japanese, and got a real kick when they took her picture.  So polite, those Australians. Read more »

They say that no one goes through life unscathed.  But you know Ken Seeroi ain’t trying to hear that.  I figured hey, move to a nice safe country with pretty girls and amazing food and just avoid that whole scathing thing altogether.

Well, you can’t say I didn’t try.  But instead, I found myself smack in the middle of something I was totally unprepared to deal with.

I met Shun and Makiko one morning as I was standing in front of my apartment drinking coffee and wondering what the hell I was doing with my life, teaching English in Japan.  I do that a lot.  I mean, drink coffee and teach English, that is.  It’s a really bad habit.  But somebody’s got to educate all those kids.  Anyway, when they came out of the apartment two doors down from me, they introduced themselves and we small-talked for a bit.  Then they went off to go clam digging, but not before inviting me to dinner that Friday night.

Read more »

I have Japan to thank for making me gay.  I’m pretty sure it did anyway, since it’s fairly dessicated my mojo.  I keep checking the mirror to make sure, but while I don’t look a whole lot gayer than before, the evidence is certainly mounting.  Like I woke up this morning and instead of my usual manly breakfast of cold pizza, eggs, and coffee, I had yogurt.  Fruit yogurt.  Now, to be fair, Japan does have some really amazing flavors, like aloe yogurt, fig yogurt, mango yogurt . . . seriously freaking yummy!

Ah jeez, I knew it.  I done gone gay.

The Three Warning Signs of Gay

Read more »

I had a dream . . . that one day I would rise up from my nori-thin futon and speak fluent Japanese.  I had a dream . . . that I would one day live in a nation where little children would judge me not by the color of my skin, but by the breadth of my vocabulary and fearsome accuracy of my grammar.  Yeah okay, so maybe that was asking a bit much.  But anyway, I had a dream.

Fluency is the dream of many people studying Japanese, on par with winning a gold-medal or climbing the rope ladder at the carnival.  That is, by the way, really freaking hard, at least after two fun-sized beers and a large, buttery corn on a stick.  I mean winning a gold medal; the rope ladder’s a piece of cake.  But where were we?  Oh yeah, fluency.  Well, it seems that Japanese fluency has become such a coveted commodity that an entire industry has sprung up to deliver it fast and hot to your door, like pizza.  Mmmm, mouth-watering fluency.  So crispy and delicious.

But What if Fluency isn’t all That Great?

Read more »