2:38 PM GMT+9:00, September 26, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Last night I drank again, shockingly. It seems that drinking is pretty much all I do here, besides pretending to study.
1:38 AM GMT+9:00, September 29, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
I never did finish that last post due to a number of reasons that I can't really recall, but I've learned something over the past few days. First, I should elaborate a little on what has transpired over these last few days. I drank four nights in a row, from Wednesday to Saturday, and I ended this alcohol spree with the worst hangover I've ever had. One of those nights was at some apartment where the majority of the people living there were quite homosexual, so I left early. One of those nights a friend of mine drank so much that he ended up filling a pitcher with the contents of his stomach. Let's just say that it was an eventful few days. As expensive as drinking is, it is a nearly invaluable bonding opportunity. There is almost no quicker way to become friends (or more, whatever you are aiming for) than to be drinking with someone.
The only thing better for bonding besides drinking is some kind of traumatic experience, i.e., almost dying on Mount fucking Fuji. But I digress. The last night, I didn't have much to eat, and so I knew I was going to be weak. I apparently forgot that the last time I drank on a nearly empty stomach, I paid for it pretty good the next day. Since I forgot, however, I decided, in my infinite wisdom, to take two shots of the strongest shit I've ever had the displeasure of tasting. I believe it is called spiritus, and it comes out to being 96% alcohol. That is not a typo. This stuff smells and tastes and is practically the same as rubbing alcohol, only it won't make you go blind.
Let me tell you, that wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done. I do have a sort of a reasoning behind it, though. My goal was pretty much to get hammered, and let me tell you, that's the fastest way to do so. On a nearly empty stomach, with two shots of that, and one Cassis Orange as a chaser, I had a really good buzz going. One more, and I probably wouldn't have been able to walk. I was just barely coordinated enough as it was.
Anyway, I'm going to have to talk about power yet again to explain my actions that night. The girl I am kind of seeing here in Japan wanted to see me this weekend, but Saturday night was a gathering of friends, some of who I probably won't see again for a while. In a bout of stupidity (likely brought about by excessive drinking), I asked her if she wanted me to go there instead of drinking with my friends. Why is this so bad? Simply put, it is sort of presenting a false question. By asking it, it is inferred that you are only asking a rhetorical question of sorts. You don't really want to go, and you want reassurance that it is ok. It is also handing the power to the other person, and if you're the one with the power in the first place, this creates all sorts of confusion that you could easily avoid by simply saying that you can't make it.
There is nothing many people hate more than indecision. Being indecisive is a sign of weakness, and people don't like weakness. Long story short, I felt kind of bad for not seeing her that night, seeing as she finished her work Saturday at 10 in the morning, and wanted to salve my guilty conscience with the poison we call alcohol. So in other words, I took one mistake, and compounded it by fucking it up even more. I told her I'd see her Sunday, but I didn't prevent my horrendously bad hangover, and so couldn't even do that.
If I drink on an empty stomach, and take mainly hard liquor, I feel perfectly fine while I'm drinking, all the way up until I go to sleep. As soon as I wake up, though, I feel horrible. I don't get the headache much, but nausea definitely rears its head in my hangovers. I puked a total of four times this morning, or I suppose yesterday morning if you look at the time. The first had some food. The last two were just water I was drinking to try to clean out my system. The last one had some fun dry heaving in it, which is my absolute favorite. And by favorite, I mean least favorite.
Never again will I drink that shit. It gets me hammered right quick, but it tastes like shit, and if I don't really watch it, it'll kill me the next day. Christ. I should've known better. Anything that is 96% alcohol can't possibly be good for you. You can barely get the percentage higher than that because at that point the water vapor in the air will dissolve into the alcohol, lowering the percentage measurably. Just thinking about it makes me feel queasy, so we're going to stop this line of discussion and move on.
It has occurred to me just now that for me, being the one with the power presents far more of a problem than being the one without. Again, power confers responsibility, that mainly being the responsibility for the other person's emotional well-being. If you have the power, you have the ability to raise or lower their spirits so easily it scares me. If you so desired, you could crush their spirit so utterly it will take them months to recover. If you have enough power, you can depress a person enough to get them to end their time on the mortal coil. That level of responsibility is a bit scary, and while some people revel in it, I am always conscious of the responsibility I am carrying along with the power.
The power balance in my current (pseudo) relationship is greatly skewed in my favor. The girl needed to see me badly enough that she waited around for me for probably 45 minutes just to see me for an hour or two. I didn't make her wait intentionally, but she was going to (sort of) be in the area, and I gave myself a generous padding of time since I had other stuff I needed to do. I am actually a little scared of this situation. I can destroy her mood with the wrong word, and given my limited understanding of the subtlties of Japanese, I'm in a very touchy situation. I can't even go into all the things she'll say that tell me this, but suffice to say that it is true, and since I know I'm not going to stay in this relationship forever, I need to figure out how to let her down without being an asshole.
One of my friends who is an eternal nice guy said that he wished he had my problems, but I'm not so sure which would be better. Having the lion's share of power in an interpersonal relationship is not something I have a great amount of experience at, and I don't want to fuck it up. If I can't handle that responsibility, I think I'd better just give up now, and go back to being a social weakling, stepped on and ignored by all.
11:55 AM GMT+9:00, September 21, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Being in between schools right now, and having nothing to do, I find myself with lots of time to kill. In spite of this, I am feeling very lazy, and I don't really want to type this right now, but I also don't want to forget anything that happens. It strikes me at some point that the parts of our brains that work on language and music must be different. I came to this stunning (note the sarcasm) conclusion by nothing that while I can pick up languages pretty quickly, I couldn't sing well to save my life. I can appreciate music, but even after years of practice, I just wasn't that good at piano.
My host family's older daughter is a pianist, and quite a good one at that. I went to see her play at a little recital that people actually paid to listen to. This alone should tell you how good she is. There were a few others there, playing a viola, violin, cello, something in between a cello and a violin, and even someone singing. They were, of course, all very good. As I get older, I can appreciate things like classical music more. I still won't seek it out, but I don't mind listening to it.
On a related note, I wonder what part of the brain deals with the tones in Chinese, since I don't really have problems with those. Well, perhaps a little trouble, but nothing a little practice wouldn't fix, I think. I know for a fact that many native speakers of English have horrendous problems dealing with the tones in Chinese. They simply cannot distinguish between them, no matter how hard they try. Actually, most people can't. I wonder sometimes how such a language system developed, since most languages in the world are atonal.
I've sometimes thought I wasn't really lactose intolerant and I was just imagining things, but I'm absolutely sure now. I had the worst stomachache I've had in a while after having this really good cake and some milk tea. I'll bet anything that there was a ton of dairy of some kind in the cake. It was damn good, but christ, I paid for it. It took about three hours for me to pay for it, but I paid for it, with interest. So if you're lactose intolerant, be prepared to pay the price for anything that tastes good.
Your mind does interesting things when you're deprived of sleep. I think I'm finally starting to recover from playing pool all night, but it's interesting to see how much worse you get at doing just about everything when you're tired. Even if you get your second wind, and think you're good to go, everything's worse. Your reflexes and judgement are shot to hell, and if you stop moving, you'll get very sleepy again. If you go without sleep for a few days, you'll start to get auditory hallucinations, then visual ones, then if you don't sleep at all for something like two weeks, your organs will start to shut down and you'll die.
Unfortunately, we still don't know why we need sleep, we only know that we need it. Like many things in this world, we know a lot less than people may think we do. In fact, the more I learn, the more I realize that we don't really know much of anything at all, which I suppose is why things like religion exist.
1:07 AM GMT+9:00, September 24, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Just about everyone in Japan has a cell phone. Not only do they have a cell phone, but they all are the folding kind. The clicking sound as they open and the snap of the closing are sounds that will stay with me for a long time to come. I may even come to miss it when I finally return to the US. There are a few things I've seen that epitomize Japan, and one of them is half the people in one train car all intently reading or writing email on their cell phones. Simply put, that is Japan.
In the US, travel is usually done by car, or for long distances, plane. On a plane you usually try to sleep so you don't have to talk to that freak next to you, and in a car you're obviously either alone or with people you know well. On a train, on the other hand, you aren't going for long enough to sleep, nor are you usually traveling with acquaintances. In Tokyo, and much of Japan, due to the lack of space and narrow roads, everyone takes the train. And by everyone, I really do mean everyone. In general, people in Japan keep their eyes down to avoid making eye contact, much like everywhere else, so there isn't much to do besides read everything from comics that could get you slapped in the US to serious literature or use your cell phone.
If I could organize my thoughts more, I would write a short article about what Japan is, after one month. There are all sorts of bits and pieces of advice people have given me that don't really apply to me. Much of it centers around the idea that you start out loving the place because it is so novel, hating it later because it is different, and maybe, just maybe, understanding it much later. They talk about culture shock, about communication difficulties, and all that. Maybe it was my upbringing or my apparent grasp on language, but I have adjusted quite quickly. I already feel like I've always lived here, and while I am by no means fluent, I can get around on the Japanese that I have. I neither hate nor love this country, for it is, in the end, not really that different. The culture here is not much different from traditional Chinese culture, which I know fairly well, and even then, the younger generation doesn't really pay attention to it, much like how it is in Taiwan.
While I don't particularly want to, as there are aspects of this culture that I don't particularly agree with, I could live here for the rest of my life without any particular problems. Seeing as how I could pass for Japanese and how I have nearly no accent at all, given a few years, I could pass for full Japanese, and no one would be the wiser. I suppose it will always be different for those that look different, but I have not really experienced that, growing up as I did in California. I know I would be stared at in the Midwest or the South, but having never been there, nor having any desire to do so, I don't know exactly what that would be like.
In fact, I already feel like I am, in part, absorbing the Japanese culture. When I see a white or black person (I use that terminology in the interests of laziness only) wandering around, I am a bit surprised. I always will think of myself as an American, but in some ways I feel I fit better into an Asian society. Not only in physical appearance, but also in how I think. Perhaps it is the stress on education or the value of learning, but some "Asian" values just work more for me than their concordant "American" values. I don't agree with the nearly absolute adherence to authority ingrained into many Asian societies, but you can't win them all.
Given the progress I have made so far, I am nearly absolutely sure that I can reach near fluency by the end of the year. With that in mind, I hope to study Korean or Chinese next, and attain fluency in both of those languages as well in the space of a few years. I suppose I can't hope for too much, as it will have taken me three years to attain fluency in Japanese (assuming I do so), but I don't think it is too much to ask to reach fluency in Chinese, which apparently was my first spoken language. Korean will be a very large challenge for me, as I have already taken six weeks, after which I gave up. I know that the pronounciation will drive me insane until I can do it correctly, as I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to my own life. I should qualify that statement. I'm only a perfectionist in certain areas. I'm a bit messy, very lazy, and pretty apathetic, but when it comes to certain things, I am very strict with myself. Language is one of those. I continue to write mainly in the interests of keeping my skill in writing intact over this year. Practice makes perfect, as they say, and if I do not practice the finer points of the English langauge, I'll be functionally illiterate by the end of this year, in my eyes. If I cannot instantaneously come up with words like esoteric, eclectic, nefarious, incommodius, or squalor, I may as well give up and go back to school and learn how to read the fucking alphabet. What good is higher education if I don't retain the information that was so graciously given to me?
If I cannot maintain the same level of eloquence that I currently hold, I should be better off refraining from attempting to undergo bouts of self-aggrandizement and stick to accosting my peers with words like alcohol dehydrogenase in order to appear more intelligent than I really am.
12:59 PM GMT+9:00, September 16, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Well, I didn't sleep much this weekend, and of course, I'm up far too late even though I have school tomorrow, or perhaps I should say today. I got absolutely nothing done over the weekend, but I've learned a few things about myself. The first, and possibly the most important, is that I am uncomfortable with power. Power is not the ability to get people to do things, nor is it connected to anything tangible. No, power is the ability to directly affect a person's emotional state with nothing but words. Power is having control over a person's moods and thoughts.
I don't like that kind of power. For with that power comes great responsibility, responsibility I do not want. Frankly, I have a hard enough time taking responsibility for myself, much less anyone else. Power is not needing the other person when they need you. I'm about to fall asleep, literally, in this chair, so I'll just finish this later. Hold that thought.
4:45 PM GMT+9:00, September 16, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Instead of studying for my final, I'm going to write another part of my post. Speaking of power, people can only have power over you if you allow them to. Any feeling of wanting to be around someone is their power being exerted over you. For the most part, attraction is not a choice, but what you choose to do about it is. You can rely on your what evolution has given you and let biology take its course, or you can use that thing that is the only thing we have that allows us to transcend our normal place on this rock we call home: our brain.
People can't run as fast, jump as far, swim as long, handle extreme temperatures as well, and can't fly at all. We have puny teeth, no claws, no fur, no scales, weak musculature, poor eyesight, poor reflexes, bad hearing, and nearly no sense of smell to speak of. We take a year to learn to walk, a little less than that to learn to communicate, and nearly two decades to reach full maturity. We stumble about precariously on two legs instead of four, and probably one of the only advantages we have over some animals is that we can see in three dimensions due to the way our face is structured. However, our eyes cannot move independently, we have almost no night vision to speak of, and our spines are ill-suited to much of anything besides standing and lying down. Our brain takes over a third of the energy of your body at rest, probably more if you're thinking hard.
It is this convulted mass of wrinkly flesh that puts us where we are now, where I can type this, and you can read it. It is our brain that allows us to learn such silly pursuits as painting and blowing glass, typing and programming, and the ability to shape our environment around us to our liking. It is this that allows us to fly down strips of asphalt at over a hundred miles per hour and hurtle through the air in metal tubes 6 miles in the air at over 500 miles per hour.
It is also this brain that determines everything you do. It is this that allows us not to be slaves to our biology. Of course, knowing this and actually doing something about it are two very different things.
I've determined that for me, the chase is nearly all I enjoy about dating. I suppose it goes back to why people play hard to get, as it keeps people like me interested. Someone that will give in easily doesn't provide a challenge, and so becomes uninteresting. I think it also is connected to my short attention span. If I don't see something new all the time, I become very restless. The only thing stopping me from becoming the guy that picks up girls and then dumps them quick is the fact that I'm just not good-looking enough to do so. Well, my conscience may also stop me, but it's an interesting mental exercise to think about how my personality would have developed if I had been born just a bit luckier.
Time for a nap.
11:31 AM GMT+9:00, September 18, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
This is going to be cross-posted, but it bears mentioning.
Last night I played pool all night, and got kicked around pretty good, but that's not entirely important. Due to circumstances beyond our control, me and a friend who were going to get our hair cut and dyed (or I guess bleached) had an appointment scheduled for nine in the morning. We could play pool from midnight until 7 in the morning for a fixed price, so we left at seven. We then sat around for a while, eating bad breakfast at what amounts to a fake coffee shop, and tried not to fall asleep.
First important thing of note is that haircuts are quite expensive in Japan. A normal haircut can run up to what comes out to roughly $30, give or take, depending on where you go. If you are willing to pay much more, anywhere from $70 to $100 or more, you can get the full treatment. What does that mean? Well, I'll tell you.
My friend and I decided that since we had never gotten our hair cut here, we should try the full thing at least once. So we went to this place close to where we live, and made an appointment. In Japan, you should always be greeted by the staff when you enter, and thanked when you leave. It is interesting to hear the chorus of greeting and parting phrases every time a person enters or exits. This particular place was run by all females, which I suppose played a part in our selection process. There is a logical explanation for this, and that is that it can only help us to have people cutting our hair that would know what they like to see. I don't care if a guy cares what my hair looks like; it's not for him anyway.
First, you take off your shoes and put your feet on a nice little footrest/mat thing. They cut your hair, taking very good care, and then proceed with the color. So far, pretty normal. Now, while they color your hair, they put some kind of cream on your skin that will probably be in contact with the dye/bleach. After the color has had time to work, they shampoo your hair twice, condition it once, and dry it out. They then give you a head massage, a neck massage, and a shoulder massage. After that, they give you a shave by laying you out on your back and putting shaving cream and these nice warm towels on your face to soften up your hair. I can't really describe how comfortable that was, but I almost fell asleep at many points during the shave. It was just far too comfortable. The whole thing turned out to be 7000 yen, which is definitely not cheap, but I think it was worth it. I know I didn't do the greatest job of explaining how great it was, but they took really good care of you, and the whole thing probably took about an hour and a half.
If you ever are in Japan for an extended period of time, I highly recommend going to a hair salon - not a barbershop - at least once. You'll pay through the nose for it, but it'll be worth it.
8:14 PM GMT+9:00, September 7, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
It is probably important that I continue to write in order to keep my writing skills at a decent level. The only reason I've been able to speak and write English at a high level is because I practice every day. However, yesterday I spoke almost exclusively Japanese, which helped my Japanese, but not my English. I can still switch back to English very easily, but I can forsee a time where, if I don't practice, English will come more slowly than it should. I think it should be possible to be fluent in both languages at the same time, but it will require constant practice to not lose one or the other.
Furthermore, I want to finish learning my Chinese, which means I will need to practice three languages constantly in order to not lose one of them. Even if I can pull that off, that'll just make me want to go after Korean, which will complicate things further, since it shares sounds with both Japanese and Chinese, and shares all its grammar with Japanese. I suppose it is a measure of my confidence in my abilities that I think I'll gain fluency in at least three languages, no short order. Hard to say whether that's a good or bad thing, but I figure too much confidence is better than too little.
I'll try to keep everyone updated in order to satisfy my own goals of becoming fluent in Japanese while not losing any English at all. I've only been here a month, and spoken far too much English, so it hasn't become a problem yet, but perhaps it will later. I need to find more people here that can barely speak any English at all, as it forces me to explain absolutely everything in Japanese. This kind of practice is invaluable. As it stands, I speak English all the time, and have a hard time speaking it in class, since I'm not used to speaking in polite form. This can't continue, or I'll never be fluent by the time I leave here, and I'll have just wasted my time.
Well, that's not entirely true, as just from everything I've experienced in this first month makes the trip worth it, but my ultimate reason for coming here was to learn Japanese. This is just the first step to me becoming truly tri- or even quadralingual. This may not seem to have much application now, but it can only help me in the future.
7:43 PM GMT+9:00, September 8, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
That last post was nearly devoid of any attempt at good writing, and I fear that it will only get worse as time goes on. I enjoyed writing the previous post with my talk about life being a game, but inspiration has now left me, and I'm not sure where it went.
Langauge is a funny thing, and it is intimately connected with the respective culture, however much people want to deny that. It shapes every interpersonal interaction we have, and how else can we define culture? The only way to truly understand a culture is to understand the langauge, with all its nuances and quirks. This is why translation is such hard work, as some concepts simply do not exist in a different culture. Not only do the concepts not exist, certain phrases can communicate much more than their literal meaning. How do you translate something like that? Metaphors and similies are of course especially problematic. Any kind of figurative language causes problems, since literal translation doesn't do much to help you there.
Everything was new and strange to me when I first came to this country, but I am starting to figure it out. In many respects, the people are very much the same as anywhere else in the world, concerned about their own lives, rushing about postponing or hastening their inevitable deaths. Society, or culture, or whatever you want to call it, is where the differences lie. This influences how we treat outsiders, and how easy it is to assimilate. The world over, physical appearance is very important, and anyone that says otherwise is deluded, or just plain wrong. I have been mistaken for Japanese, so if I can become fluent, I can pass for Japanese. One of my friends, on the other hand, is very much white, and always attracts stares and surprised glances when he walks around. It doesn't help that he's quite tall.
Is there a point to this? Not really, as I'm just throwing out random thoughts that have been running through my head. I wish I could organize them better before spewing them out here, but that's far more work than I'm willing to do.
Looked at from a sociological perspective, one could start talking about how language relates to culture, and how that is also related to average physical characteristics, which influences patterns of thought. I won't, because I'm lazy, and one could easily write a massive thesis paper on such a subject.
I'll just end this by saying that you absolutely need to understand the language to understand the culture, and furthermore, you form an instant connection with someone from that country if you prove to them that you took the time to learn their language, even if it is just something simple. Oh, and alcohol is popular the world over, and provides ample opportunity to bond with newfound friends. It's also a poison that some people can't really process, but we won't go into that.
11:47 PM GMT+9:00, September 9, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
I approach a strange issue I haven't had to face before, and I'm not sure what to do with it. I'm likely to come across as an insensitive asshole, but I'm writing this for my benefit, not yours. This is a way for me to think this through in some sort of an organized fashion. If you have read the previous link about the ladder theory, I would have to say that for nearly everyone, it is true. The part I'm going to focus on here is the tendency for people to only want to move up the ladder. The trick is to then know when you've topped out, and focus all your energy on keeping that one.
No one likes to hear it described that way, because it sounds so bad. But it's the truth, pretty much. Downgrading is much worse than upgrading, obviously. My problem is only tangentially related to that issue, however.
The main problem is that I am starting to feel that I'm getting a lot of the power in this particular interpersonal relationship, and as such, I am responsible, so to speak, for the other person's emotional state. Why? Simply because I have influence over it. It is not very unbalanced now, but I feel that it may become that way, and I fear the consequences if I want to, to extend the metaphor, upgrade.
Is it wrong to be with someone knowing absolutely that they are merely temporary? I could be misinterpreting the girl's mental state, as she's fairly mature and seems intelligent, but I never claimed to understand girls in the first place. Is there something inherently wrong with a casual relationship? Am I truly responsible for someone else's emotional well-being? Some people bitch about those they have power over, but perhaps they don't realize the consequences of having such power. If one is possession of such power, they should realize that it can abused, just like any other kind of power. They have a responsibility to take action very carefully.
On the other hand, one could easily make the argument that those without power bring it upon themselves. Do we have a responsibility to protect people from themselves? Where can we draw the line? This is a very hard question, and I certainly have no answer for it. I think about it, but I can't come up with a good solution. I've never been in a position before where
I am the one with surplus of power, and I can actually do something to abuse it. I've proved to myself that I can pick up a random person in a club who I've never met, with no connection at all, and I am compelled to do something similar again. Why? To prove to myself that it wasn't a fluke, that I really have developed the confidence necessary, that I'm not scared to do it again. There are many reasons for doing so, but at the heart of them all lies my previous insecurity developed over years of virtual social isolation.
There are those with many not-so-close friends, and those with a few close friends, and I hovered somewhere else for many years. It is said that you need to be satisfied being alone before people will want to be with you, and it is not entirely untrue. To get past the idea that you need friends to be socially "successful," whatever that means, is not something I think that come easy for many people, although this may be hard to understand for some. A person's sense of self-worth and its roots vary greatly from person to person, but many times it is connected to friends. Whether a significant other, or just normal friends, many people have issues with how they see themselves. But I digress.
Should I feel bad because I know I'm not going to stay with this girl? I thought I was in the clear until she asked me if I liked her. This question is dangerous, because it carries with it connotations of something more than a casual relationship. If you define "like" as normal liking, then yeah, I like her. I enjoy her company, but I certainly wouldn't say love, or anything approaching that. In all actuality, I wonder how many people are truly mature enough to handle most interpersonal relationships. I'm hoping I'm just reading too much into her words, and it is entirely possible, because translation issues muddle everything up, but I suppose it will have to wait until the next meeting.
9:58 PM GMT+9:00, September 10, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
I didn't really finish my train of thought last time, but that's because I was falling asleep, and figured it was better to stop than to write truly incoherent sentences. I think I got my main points across in the previous post, and my brain is still working on too little sleep, so I don't think I can analyze it very well at the moment.
I think I'll switch focus here for a second and just for a second try to express how good this experience has been. I've experienced so much here it'll take months to process just the first month. I can't begin to express how great it has been to be immersed in an entirely new culture and country, seeing new things everyday. I think once I get away from all the people speaking English in my classes and such, I'll learn Japanese even more quickly. On one hand, everyone always wants to be accepted, but what good will it do me to become good friends with all these people who I don't tend to like anyway? Connections are always good, but I've found I'm much better and dealing with just a few people at a time rather than many. I'm here to socialize and learn the language, but I'm not here to socialize with people that speak English, as I can do that anytime I want.
I've made a few Japanese friends, depending on how you define it, and time spent with them helps my Japanese greatly. I hope to meet many more in the course of the year, as I can feel my Japanese improving the more time I spend with any of them. I believe that just this first month has helped me grow and mature, and come to understand how I interact with my surroundings better. I have picked up a ton of new vocabulary, and review has helped me get more kanji in my head.
I wouldn't trade this experience for anything, and I just wish that everyone would get a chance to do something like this, and truly understand what the world is like outside the borders of their hometown. When people talk about those that are "worldly," it's not just a term that someone made up. If you travel, you get a whole new perspective on the world that you could not get otherwise, and that isn't something money can buy.
Ah, the internet. I present to you, the
Ladder Theory, which you may or may not have read before. It's quite true, as much as you may or may not like the idea. And never ask where you are on the ladder.
11:52 AM GMT+9:00, September 6, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Well, I've physically almost completely recovered from my Mount Fuji ordeal, and my short memory and dare I say, cavalier attitude, are allowing me to nearly forget it, but anytime people bring up cold, I can't help but berate them for exaggerating. I say a lot of things, most of them not very seriously, and I'm not exactly traumatized by that experience, but I really did come far too close to dying. This is not something I'd like to repeat, no matter what anyone says.
People hear my story, and the only thing people can say is that it was a good experience, at least. I call bullshit to that. Experience? Yes. Good? No. Did I learn from it? Yeah, but let's just say that it was a lesson I could've done without. Now I know what it is like to almost go into the final stages of hypothermia leading to death. I could've lived the rest of my life very happily not knowing that.
It's amazing to me how much has happened in just one month here. I've drank more alcohol than I ever thought possible, I've tried raw shrimp, had the best Japanese food I've ever had, picked up a girl in a club, met many new people, gone to countless new places, and almost died. When I'm a little more coherent, I'll make up a better list. However, I'd better get ready, as I'm meeting with that girl today. Who knows what could happen? That's why I love this place, I never know what's going to happen next.
5:18 PM GMT+9:00, September 7, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
I'm going to do it again, and talk about power. I'm going to kind of date myself here, not that I haven't put up pictures with me in them anyway, but it just reminds me of that line from Spiderman; with great power comes great responsibility. That is the problem with having power. You have to take care of more than just yourself, and some people can't even do that. The more power you have, the more responsibility you have. It may not sound so bad until you realize what it is like to have to take care of so many people all at once. Some of these people can barely tie their own shoes, much less figure out where to go.
Why am I talking about power, for the fiftieth time? As you know, or as I told you, I met with that girl again. I'm going to sound really mean saying this, but she's a kind of experiment for me. I don't
dislike her company, but I don't
need it. What does that mean, exactly? If you've been paying attention, it means I have the power. This point was driven home to me last night. I'll spare you the details, but she turns to me, and somehow stringing a complete sentence together in English, asks, in English, "Do you like me?"
I feel a little bad because many of my actions when I'm around her are very calculated, testing to see what I can and cannot do. I am still myself, because I'm a horrible liar, but I am making it so it is very clear that we are at the very least equals, in spite of my status as a student and her status as a working professional. This is not communicated verbally,
per se, so much as in my actions.
As an illustration of these principles, I'll give you a example. One easy way to tell if a girl likes you is if she takes your hand. This communicates very clearly her level of comfort with you, and so is a good milestone, if you will. As a qualifier, you must watch for the girls that are just very touchy-feely to begin with, and of course, you have to evaluate everything on a case by case basis, but we'll just go with a bunch of assumptions here. Besides that first night, where not much was left to the imagination, my first initiated physical contact was an arm around the shoulder. This communicates many things non-verbally, and I won't really go far into it, because I think they should be self-evident. It tells first of all that you are comfortable with physical contact, indicating confidence. Second of all, it shows that you don't need their approval to touch them. Let's stop here a second, because that may have sounded strange. But, in fact, it is very important. It is fine for the girl to initiate physical contact, but it has to be because you were fine without it, not because you were too timid to actually do anything. They are two very different things, in spite of the physical effect being the same.
Touching communicates a ton of things to people, and location is as important as the actual act itself. Shyly taking someone's hand is world's different from casually putting an arm around someone. Timidity shows weakness, and weakness shows a lack of power. No one really wants to be around someone who doesn't have power, for the most part. Well, I should qualify that statement. Those with lots of power don't exactly have that much of a choice, as people flock to them, and they probably don't dislike the attention, so to speak, but it may get tiresome after a while. In any case, suffice to say that power balancing is very important, and you shouldn't give it up without thinking through it very carefully.
Getting back to the example, the last of my points, and by no means the only ones out there, is that an arm around the shoulder communicates, and I'm walking on eggshells by saying this, possession. Wait, wait, before you crucify me, just hear me out. It physically sets limits on where a person can walk, and when you release your hold, they are moving freely
because you let them. Ah, that's archaic and chauvanistic, you say. No one's that stupid, you say. It has nothing to do with that, because unconsciously, if they allow you to put your arm around them for any extended period of time, they are giving that power to you. That's why ridiculously powerful people like mob bosses and the like can put their arm around anyone, and they won't shrug it off. Think about it, it makes sense.
I've said it before, but I'll try to make my point more succint this time. Lots of people say life isn't a game, but that's not true. It
is a game, the stakes are
very high, and if you don't play the game, you're going to lose.
1:08 AM GMT+9:00, September 4, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
As I become accustomed to life here, I find myself caring less about posting. Things aren't so new here anymore, and obviously then not nearly as interesting. Things still are interesting, but not quite enough to write about. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I don't really want to forget anything that happens this year. Time goes by so quickly, though. Six weeks seems like a long time, but I've already gone through more than a month here, and it feels like no time at all.
I met with my host sister and her friend today, just to hang out, and to watch Hero. I realized a few things today. One, is that I don't understand nearly enough Chinese. Two, I can't read Japanese fast enough. Three, and I may be just stroking my own ego here, I could swear that if I was older, my host sister would be coming after me. Perhaps her friend too. I'm not just making this shit up. I couldn't top my Mount Fuji story anyway, short of having to beat girls off with a stick.
It was good Japanese practice for me, but they understand a lot of English, so I could switch easily. I don't think that's good, though, because I can't practice my more complicated sentences, since I just give up and switch into English. It's still pretty good practice, though. I'm never satisfied with my Japanese, no matter what anyone says, which people may mistake for modesty. I don't believe that is truly the case, though, since it really is me saying that I can definitely do better, and I will. That's borderline arrogance, or at least confidence. I can't really explain that in Japanese, so I just let it drop.
I started to break out again, and I was wondering why, until I realized that stress can cause it to happen, and it doesn't get much more stressful than almost dying. God, I can't believe I'm not even exaggerating when I say that. When I tell people, I know they think I'm exaggerating. After all, it's not every day someone
really almost dies. I have a hard time explaining how bad it was in English, much less Japanese. I can get my point across in Japanese, but not very well. I know I can't expect too much progress in just a month, but I want my Japanese to be much better than it is.
To that end, I suppose I should do my homework, and also sleep. Until next time.
1:57 AM GMT+9:00, September 1, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
Ah, the irony. I may have mentioned a while ago that you need interesting stories, and while they generally are a good thing, I'm not so sure this story needed to have happened. Before I begin, some background information.
- Mount (Mt.) Fuji is a very famous mountain in Japan, and people come from all over the world to hike up to the summit. It measures over 10,000 feet in height, and obviously is very cold at the top.
- I am not in shape.
- Mt. Fuji has 10 "stages," for lack of a better term, and many people who want to climb it without wasting too much time will start at the fifth stage.
- It is currently roughly 120 yen to a dollar, but I always do a quick conversion by simply dividing by 100, to overestimate the price.
- None of what I am about to tell you is exaggeration.
Also, further background information:
The air at 10,000 feet is much thinner than at sea level, hence, lower oxygen content.
Wind chill refers to the difference between ambient temperature and the percieved temperature due to the movement of air. I do not know if evaporation contributes to the wind chill calculation, and for simplicity's (and prudence's) sake, I will keep them separate.
Hypothermia is a condition wherein the body's core temperature drops below normal. Normal is generally defined at 98.6 degrees F, or 37 degrees C, but it does vary from person to person. Hypothermia can be categorized by stages; the first few being increasing degrees of uncontrollable shivering. One of the last stages, preceding death, is a perception of warmth where there is none, and becoming very sleepy.
Now, on with the show.
It all started so innocently.
"Hey, we're getting some people to climb
Fujisan (Mt. Fuji, in Japanese), you down?"
Of course I was. I'm not about to go there alone, and it's something I should do at least once while I'm here. Things were a little shaky for a while, but the day finally came, and everything was in the clear. Our ticket was 600 - no, 3000 - no, 2600. Some of us apparently have problems with numbers. Round trip? Sure, ok. So why did we just give the ticket to the bus driver? 4 hour bus trip, huh? More like 2 and a half, smart one.
Well, let's see, we arrived at 7:30 or so PM, leaving us a good 10 or so hours until sunrise. At the fifth level, it is supposed to only take about 6 hours to make it to the summit. Ah, let's sit around and eat bad food for a while, then finally go, at about 8:30 PM. One of my friends is a runner, and probably a bit of a masochist. He set a ridiculous pace that I and two other guys could sort of keep, and everyone fell far behind. We rested at the sixth level and waited for a good fifteen minutes for the others to all show up. As soon as everyone made it, we took off again, and left them far behind. A short rest at level 7, and onward we pushed. I was struggling, but I was determined to at least sort of keep up with this guy. I used to be in pretty good shape, but I haven't trained in a good three years. Can't let that stop me, of course.
The going began to get tough from level 7 to 8, and there was some veritable rock climbing being done, all in pitch blackness, only broken by my ever-handy photon light. The moon decided to not show its face that night, but also probably because of the clouds that rolled in while we weren't looking. I soldiered on, determined not to give up. I had to stop a few times to catch my breath, and fight the mild feeling of altitude sickness I was also getting.
Pretty tired, better sleep.
7:31 PM GMT+9:00, September 1, 2003, Tokyo, Japan
8 to 9, and the going got quite rough. I was struggling to take steps, as the air got even thinner. At this point, we are roughly 10,000 feet in the air, and still climbing. A light drizzle began to hit us, an ignored harbringer of things to come. At the ninth level, there is a "hotel" of sorts, where you can stay the night for 3000 yen. Should we stay? Oh, but the next leg (the last one) is the shortest, let's go! I don't see any lights up there. Ah, let's go anyway, what are you, some kind of pansy? Going to wimp out? Of course not, just don't get left behind.
I lost my flashlight to the runner guy who went on ahead, and at some point lost the guy behind me too, since his flashlight burned out, and I was stuck in the middle of a pack of people who I didn't know, and desperately needed to stay with them so as to not be stranded out on the mountain with only a long-sleeved shirt and a sweatshirt, in complete darkness. It had begun to rain in earnest by this point, and I was soaked through, allowing the ever-present wind to suck the heat straight out of my body. I began to breathe heavily, and started shivering uncontrollably.
It is going to sound like an exaggeration, but I could have very easily died out there on that godforsaken mountain. I'll say it again for emphasis: I almost died. Literally. No exaggeration at all. When we take into the account the altitude, the rain, and the wind chill, it was definitely below freezing. On the way up, I was concentrating on not dying, putting one foot in front of the other, trying desperately to keep the flashlights in sight so I didn't die.
Picture this, if you will. It is raining, the wind is gusting along at a good 15 or 20 miles an hour, it is totally dark, as the clouds cover the sliver of moon that night, you are over 10,000 feet in the air, and you've been hiking for 4 hours already, on very little food. You're tired, cold, wet, your knees hurt, you have to suck in air like you haven't had it in years, your muscles are screaming for relief, the lactic acid is burning your calves, you can't see anything besides the dim light in front of you, and it's going too fucking fast. The only thing you want to do is lie down and sleep. Your head hangs heavy, and the only thing that keeps you going is the knowledge that you're this close to going into the later stages of hypothermia and dying. You can't stop shivering, and have never been that cold before in your entire life. There is no help anywhere. No trees, no bushes, nothing but rain, dirt, rocks, and wind. Half the people can't speak Japanese, much less English, and you can't find any of your friends.
I thought at many points during the night that I was really going to die on that mountain. I didn't have anyone with me, I was dead tired, having pushed far past the limits I thought I had, my knees were killing me, my muscles felt like they had no energy left in them at all, and I was tired as all hell.
I somehow made it to the top, only to be informed by my friend there that there were no bulidings open at 2:30 in the morning. I nearly gave up and keeled over and died right there. We were informed by a nice Japanese man that one would open at 4:30, and he literally, no fucking exaggeration, saved our lives. He found places for us to stand where the wind wasn't as bad, and helped make sure we didn't fall asleep. For if we had, we would never have woken up.
I can't even begin to describe how close we came to death that night, and how glad I am to still be alive. I was shivering uncontrollably for probably 4 hours straight. I can't even exaggerate about dying anymore, as I truly did almost die. And if anyone complains to me that it is freezing, and it really isn't, I'm going to stab them in the eyes with an ice pick.
