If you’ve come to Hungary as a traveler or as an expatriate, you could probably chalk up some of your impetus to “wanting to see the world.” Meeting the local peoples, sampling local cuisine – these are the things that we revel in. The jet-set hops from place to place by plane, students take the slow route by train, poets hop freights or hitchhike, and those on a mission might ride in a plastic car.

Keiichi Iwasaki, however, is doing something else entirely. He’s going around the world – by bicycle. Currently 6 years and more than 30,000km into an estimated 10-year trek, this air conditioning repairman left his native Gunma-ken, Japanin 2001 with 160 yen (USD 1.25 / HUF 235) in his pocket and a vague notion to yes, see the world. Since then he’s traveled through more than 25 countries and reached unimaginable highs and lows.

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*Title (and video) stolen from JapanProbe.

Ever wanted to know what it’s like to be the main attraction in one of those conveyor-belt sushi joints in Japan? Well this is it:

Another video link, equally worth your pleasurably-wasted time. It’s a 13 minute series of videos of AMAZING Rube Goldberg-type contraptions dreamed up by those wily Japanese.

I originally saw a shorter version at TokyoMango, and from there was lead to the video below, which contains additional footage. At the start and end of each segment they say “Pitagora suitchi”, which is the Japanese pronunciation of Pythagora Switch, apparently the name of a preschool-aged children’s show on Japanese National Television station, NHK. At one point there is a bit of singing, and the “words” are enunciations of either the sounds the ball is making, or the motions it is making.

お久しぶりです！お元気ですか。長い間手紙を書かなくてほんとにごめんなさい。生活が忙しく、練習時間がないのに日本語がとても下手になってしまいました。ハンガリーで一年と六ヶ月を過ごしました。秋の涼しいお天気は長かったけど、今のお天気はとても寒くて空がグレーばっかりです。雪はまだ降っていません。

今までの生活は浮き沈みでした。九ヶ月ぐらい仕事が見つけにくかったんです。でも、たくさんのアルバイトをして、とても面白かったです。最初から英語を教えることはしないと決めました。なぜなら、新しい経験がほしかったからです。最初の仕事はビジネスの雑誌で写真家でした。ビジネスのセミナーや高いビルの写真をとって、けっこうつまらなかったです。次は日本人の幼稚園で先生になりました。その幼稚園のウェブサイトも作りました：http://www.nakayoshi.hu/.　一回、日本の靴の会社がハンガリーでCMを作ったことがあって、私は日本語·英語の翻訳者でした。すごく寒い夜に２０時間ぐらい性格が強い二人の監督の真中で働きました！その後、他のビジネス新聞で、コピーエディターをしたり、個人英会話したり、インターネットのCMを作ったりしました。

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It’s finally here - a never-before-seen photographic documentation of the strange world of the Japanese sex industry: The Pink Box.

This would be an awesome Christmas present, if I didn’t have to show it to my grandmother . . .

２月２４日２００５年

お正月になった秒に、日本語で話していました。しかし、日本にいるんではありませんでした。ニューヨーク市のパーティによっぱらっている日本人の女性としゃべていました。その日は始めから面白かったです。何１０００人と一緒に新しいMOMAと言う博物館を見に行ったり、３年間話をしていない友だちに会ったり、夕食でタイ料理を食べたり、アッパーウェストサイドの金持ちっぽいパーティで酒を飲んだりしました。

その彼女は実は名古屋の留学時代から友だちになって、今はニューヨークしに住んでいます。お酒のドリンクを三つ飲んだ後に、タクシーに乗りながら寝てしまったときに、彼女が酒に弱いものがわかりました。ですから、２００５年になった秒に、「知らない人のアパートでたくさん吐くことは大丈夫だよ、この町で誰もしっていないからだ」という話がありました。

日本にいる日本人の友だちはお正月の時に家族と訪ねたり、神社に行ったり、よっぱらったりしたと教えてくれまして、そういう順序わけではないかもしれません。神社では新年のために健康や幸運と祈ります。アメリカのクリスマスに似ていることがわかりました。私がしたかった面白くて楽しい経験が結局できました。今の所より面白いはずです。あなたは、お祈りしたとうりになりましたか。

So, it’s been a week and no word from BBJ. I’m not too surprised, but I’ve been too busy to notice.  It turns out that the interpreting gig that I blogged about NOT getting here fell into my lap.  Here’s the story from start to finish:

So Andi, of E’s Kellner Scholarship bretheren, works for a Hungarian film production company called Pioneer.  They landed a deal with giant Japanese advertising conglomerate Dentsu to shoot a commercial for a shoe called the Midori HiGRIP.  Being their first experience with a Japanese firm, they tried to play it safe by hiring a “professional” interpreter from an agency here in Budapest.  Andi contacted me as well as a backup, and that was the source of the previous disappointment.  Luck changed places, however, as the Hungarian director of the shoot took a dislike to the original interpreter, and pretty soon she got the boot, and I got the shoehorn.

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Oy, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test is finally over and done with.  It (among others) has been the main reason for the lack of recent updates or interesting commentary on things such as this.  I won’t know the results until March and to tell the truth I really won’t know if I passed until then.  Thankfully, the kanji and listening sections went better than I thought they would, but the grammar could have gone either way and the reading comprehension went terrible.  I didn’t even have enough time to finish, and had to fill in the last four bubbles at random.  I really hope I pass, but to tell the truth the test isn’t an even remotely accurate depiction of what I know.  After all, there’s no speaking section and certainly not a Kansai slang one either!

Check out a couple new galleries and additions to old ones here.  The links area has also been updated with lots of time wasting web content!  Enjoy.

12 hours left in my life in this place
I’ve said many good byes and still have some left
Packing in an illogical flurry
So excited and yet so worried
I wish I could say I was thinking
Farther ahead than the next 5 minutes
But I guess it’s my slogan
That I’ll sleep when I’m dead
And before it’s all over
I’ll see your face again
Under the Balinese sun

In three days this whole JET adventure will be over.  I’ve spent the last week at work doing basically what I did a year ago - absolutely nothing school related.  Well, I have been e-mailing my successor about the circumstances into which he’ll be entering in another 10 days.  And I guess I’ve been doing as the other teachers do (”when in Rome . . .”) and taking cat naps at my desk twice daily.  Today the climbing club had it’s first and last official outdoor climb of my tenure.  No gruesome deaths, I’m happy to say, even though we’re supposedly in the middle of a typhoon.

The visit of my friends (James and Mike) from back home went well, although they spent far more money than they imagined (mostly on beer).  Some of their adventures included all-nighters in Osaka and Tokyo, two incredible days in Kyoto, a bitter Australian ex-pat and passing out on busy train platforms in Nara, climbing all the way to the top of Fushimi Inari to find the secret “lit-up” gate (a first for me too), meeting a bunch of my Japanese friends and eating lots of convenience store food and McDonalds.  I think they had an amazing time and really got to see what Japan and my life here is like.  As so few people from back home have been here, it really meant a lot to me and will help in my transition back to American culture.  And in this time of uncertainty and change, it was nice to not be so alone.  James, I’m glad you came ya knucklehead, and Mike, we are blood.  Y’all make me miss the Bean.  See you in two weeks.

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Today was the last day I will see the students at Toban High School, probably for the rest of my life. The atmosphere resembles that of when I arrived almost exactly one year ago - the rice fields are emerald, the heat is cloying, the house is smelly and the drivers are still bad. I’ve spent the last month in a flurry of activity and will spend the next ten days before leaving for Bali in an even greater rush. After one year I have an array of feelings, but the one that’s most different from when I arrived is that I am tired. I think a combination of the pace of life in Japan and yet being so static here in Kakogawa has drained my sense of adventure and excitement. As hard as it is to do so, it’s time to move on.

Both Japanese people and my friends in other countries often comment that “you love Japan”. At this point it’s not possible for me to either refute or comply with this assessment, and perhaps it never will be. Let me just impart the polar opposites of my experience, what I love and what I hate about Japan. Like a giant iceberg that spans the seas, only arising at one home and another, this is only the tip, and the majority of how I feel lies somewhere beneath the surface. If global warming continues as planned, they’ll be visible soon enough. The following diatribe is intended to be both serious and not, as this represents my experience, so please do not be offended. Let me start with what I hate.

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Not much to report, other than that I saw a couple good movies this weekend, Adaptation and 25th Hour, both directed by Spikes.  Also saw Episode III which predictably sucked, although not as much as the previous two disasters.  This week a good friend from home, Mike, is coming to Japan.  Should be pretty crazy.  Stay tuned for more info.

Well I nearly forgot that today is Independence Day in the US.  It’s been raining cats and dogs the past three days, and Mondays are just so crappy that it was pretty easy to forget.  This year was particularly laden with things not red, white and blue related, but then again my body is in Japan and my heart has floated off somewhere unknowable as well.

When I was a child July 4th meant sailing and fireworks on the Cape, Grandma asking innumerable times whether I’d like some fruit, seeing my cousins and feeling happy.  The simplicity of childhood is an addicting attraction - we have no responsibilities, we know no injustice or prejudice, we know no heartbreak.  Like many things in life, we only appreciate it when it’s gone.  When I was in high school July 4th meant lighting fire crackers and bottle rockets and driving out to Walden pond after midnight for skinny dipping.  It was the end of school and the freedom of summer had begun.  When I came home from Japan as a student I watched the NYC fireworks display with my family from the 29th floor of the Empire State Building - truly a bizarre transition after three months in the maze of Tokyo.

As I’ve gotten older July 4 has become a bit more serious.  We take time on this day to reflect on the history of the United States and it’s vastly varying history, from prosecuted Europeans just trying to escape tyranny, to the conquering and mass murder of the native Americans, to the throwing off of colonial shackles in 1776 and unification after the Civil War.  We look at this history and realize how young the US still is, how many freedoms have only been achieved within the last 50 years, even ten years.  And hopefully, we realize that we are still in fits and starts, we are still many years away from actual achievement, and that the rest of the world needs our help as a leader and a model, which we are still far from being.  Today I read articles about the “Democratic Republic of Congo” and its many, many woes, the G-8 meetings and Bush’s War of the Worlds, the border problems in Southern California and the US epidemic of obesity.  It’s not a pretty picture, any of it.  So don’t flip a burger without realizing what you’re eating, don’t shoot off any roman candles without remembering that people are dying in war every second, don’t slug that Cuervo without knowing that injustices are being done in your name and with your money and without your consent.  Think about where we are now, two-hundred and twenty-nine years later, and if things are really worth celebrating.  I propose a moment of silence instead.

In other news, I am working on editing probably my final series of photographs from this year.  After much sweat, blood, headaches and lack of sleep I was able to produce 10 matted black and white prints for a display of JET art in Kobe.  While the show turned out to be more of a glorified “show and tell” than any kind of serious exhibit, I was happy that I got something artistically related done. Three people have been visiting from the US and have promptly gotten themselves in lots of trouble - one got arrested on a shoplifting charge (hair gel from a convenience store) and will probably spend the rest of his life in a Japanese jail (”it is very bad thing he did”) and the other two lost their rented bicycles and have been living on ramen for two weeks.

I still do not know what the next six months hold but some things have become clearer of late.  I’ll be returning to the US on August 14th, after a week or so of traveling somewhere- right now it’s looking like Bali.  Nothing like a sunny solo adventure to clear the cobwebs of your soul.  If you want any amazing or cute Japanese things, now would be the time to start asking. 

Recently, exactly the right song at the wrong time, that is to say, the wrong song at the right time has been produced by the supposedly random selections Winamp-ing their way through the silent evenings in Kanki-cho.   The thing is, it’s one of those songs that could be for real or a complete joke.  I can’t tell if I’m just overly cynical right now.  And I can’t tell if it’s nerdy to link to song lyrics in your blog.

It’s here

There are some new things up in the photogalleries and links sections.  Lots more photos coming soon but incredibly black and white photography is all but a lost art in Japan and finding a place to process the negatives was difficult.  I stopped using the school darkroom back in the fall when I realized the chemicals expired in 2002.

Oddest event of the week was getting initiated into a religious cult (mostly unknowingly - that’s my Japanese level right now) by a “friend” from my student days in Tokyo.  And it wasn’t the Japan Vegetarian Society.  Bounce over here to get the idea.  Give me your impressions of these and anything else in the forums.

Last week of classes as a JET.

I wish I was a hip-hopper,
so my girl would love me again.
If I was a breaker, locker or popper,
I could dance back into her heart then.
With head spins and windmills,
I’d perform athletic feats.
While she shakes her Mano booty,
to the boom-boom-click beats.
 
I wish I was a rapper,
that could spit ten million rhymes.
I’d rap out that I love her,
ten million and one more times.
Her favorite flows are lovers rock,
such as the mighty mighty Mos Def.
If in good timing my ill punch line drops,
she might forgive me yet.
 
I wish I wrote graffiti,
or rather wrote it well.
I’d write E-Star on every wall I see,
from Japan to the P-Town swell.
For the letters I’d use platinum ink,
to make a big impression.
A crazy fresh design to make her think,
of others things than my transgression.
 
And if I was a DJ,
the backbone of it all.
I’d scratch and cut myself a way,
out of this perilous fall.
My name would be the Def Selector,
my choice of tunes quite dope.
On the ones and twos I’d balance her love,
on this rapidly untwining tight rope.
 
But I promise for now I’m still not a playa,
despite what she may think.
Got to listen to all she may say - a,
chance to step back from the brink.
But if only I was a DJ or MC,
With not hearts but samples to rob.
A b-boy that wrote tight graffiti,
I could prove I’ve got the skills for the job.
 
All these dreams and I’m just a white boy,
raised in suburban bliss.
Oh! to be down with the hood and not a toy,
not a grounded flapping fish.
Why is her soul in the light of hip-hop?
In the end she’s just as pale as me.
But maybe somewhere we can find a spot,
After all we met at Talib Qweli.

You ever have one of those periods in your life when it seems like everything is just going smoothly, you enjoy your lifestyle and are content with your level of consumption, you have meaningful things and people nearby, you have plans and dreams, maybe you’ve even found love?  How about having all that whisked from under your feet like the proverbial rug, sending you into a tailspin as distorted and dramatic as a cartoon character stepping on banana peel?  Faster than you can type “WTF”, the switch in emotional polarity is so powerful it almost makes a sound, like a massive “WHOMP!”, silencing a noisy room and sucking the air from your lungs.  Your reaction is so undefinable and inconcise; like dishes being dropped in a restaurant, we all wonder who did it but don’t rush to assign the obvious blame, and instead feel somewhat embarrassed that our mealtime reverie was interrupted.

Sometimes life just sucks like that.

Maybe we could even see it coming, see that dark oil slick on the road ready to help you lay that bike down hard, and we choose to disregard it, deny it’s existence for the chance to bask in sunny bliss just a little bit longer.  Maybe of all the valid and invalid emotions you feel at these times, from anger and sadness to anxiety and regret, the most overreaching one is a feeling of naiveté or inadequacy about your self-imposed inability to foresee this consequence.  I mean, if things are going so well, of course there’s going to be a repercussion.  Things change, people change, things are too good to be true, and shouldn’t you know by now that karma works both ways?  You were never perfect (who’d want to be?), but now some of those screw-ups are coming around to bite you in the ass.  It’s inevitable and it’s only ourselves we should truly blame for forgetting that fruit can be bitter, dogs can bite, roses can prick.  For those who’ve forgotten there’ll be a whole section of Hallmark Cards at the local pharmacy to sum up our emotions into convenient limericks and pithy adages to remind us that we’re not alone in our loneliness.

This one goes out to Jaime who said I shouldn’t write a depressed emo blog.