Dreams

[This is quite the digression from my recent string of posts]

I had weird dreams last night and thought I'd put them here to preserve them in case memory decides not to. Already, the images and tactility of them are slipping through the cracks that run through human memory and populate the brain more and more as age comes in.

I remember eggs - weird and unnapetizing. I want to throw up right now. A scientist had shell-less yolks in a translucent vat of sorts. They were shaped like eggs, only they existed as mere yolks. And they looked gelatinous, like the white parts usually are. Anyway, all of a sudden, I saw one yolk 'multiply' like an amoeba, and that part multiplied, and so on, until the vat was full of egg yolks. Upon tables in front of other vats, the multiplying eggs seemed to have been reduced to yellow crystals. The scientists said they were safe to eat, and we fried the little bastards up to make scrambled eggs. They were good.

Then, in a retro-futuristic world that was first black and white, a group brought (or they could've made, I can't remember) a young man. He was very frightened and weird. They took him to 'the room', which is a variant of the Infinity Room from my imagination. The IR is a closed structure built around a space-time anomaly found in the desert. Around the IR is a secret but large lab. Scientists somehow found a way to control the anomaly, and by using the IR's computer, can create anything they wish, including alternate planes of existence, or go back in time.

The young man created what I guess was some sort of creature, reminiscent of the Gekko's from metal gear solid 4:

^Gekko.

Anyway, they kept making the young man - who reminded me of Edward Scissorhands - do things in The Room. As time went by, he started breathing some sort of gas from a hose by putting it into the apparatus over his mouth. He started loving or caring about another guy in the room and gave him some gas, too. As the two started breathing the gas, colour came into the world. Then, doors opened at the back of the place they were in, revealing a cold-looking night in a very large and imposing city. Neon green gas was freaking everywhere.

Japan Trip Part Four: Mother and Son(s)

We touched down in Fukuoka city with thankfully another smooth landing. Once again, I followed the stream of people, this time to baggage claim. I grabbed my bright orange and back duffle, walked through sliding doors, and for the first time, took in the outside air of Japan. It was a humid day, and rain continued its light aerial assault on the surface world. Taking shelter under a canopy, I waited for Nori’s mother Mika to come retrieve me. For the most part, the Japanese people seemed keep to themselves; they did not seem to mind the gaijin in their midst. I would sooner have been a part of the environment, like one of the pillars holding up the canopy. Every once in a while, though, I would catch a prolonged stare in the distance. I didn’t really mind it because it is human nature to be curious.

Mika spotted me instantly, of course. She remains in my memory a very kind woman, small in stature, with a simple hairstyle and motherly face. We introduced ourselves, then she urged me to follow her to the nearby subway terminal. Mika and I toured Fukuoka that night, mostly just walking while I took photos.


It says 'Yakitori', skewered grilled chicken.


Ghostly image of a telephone booth. They haven't gone extinct in Japan like they have in the States




My brightest memory of that night shines like the lights of “Taito Station”,


a game center whose light spilled out into the streets like heavenly nectar. It beckoned me with music, pounding louder as Mika and I stepped inside. I won a tiny bath towel with a cartoon character on it and played a shooter game upstairs. It was just like the game centers I’d seen on Japanese anime. Later that night, Mika and I went to a bar, where she graciously paid for my meal of that evening: one and a half slim, small bottles of sake, sashimi, and some grilled meat. It is Japanese custom to pay for their company’s meal. Communication between us was difficult; my Japanese wasn’t as good as it should’ve been, and her English knowledge was slim. However, words are not always needed to enjoy another person’s companionship.

Right before my small reunion with Nori, Mika and I had stopped to eat at a restaurant. This was my first encounter with what I call the ‘vending machine system.'



There were two vending machines by the door – which, by the way, opened only if you put your hand on a sensor – with rows of food selection. One merely had to select his or her choice, then insert the coins or bills to print the ticket. This ticket would be handed to the chef, who cooked the selection, then called out your number. This system eliminated the concept of ‘waiting in line’ that you find in many American eateries. I ordered the spiciest noodle soup they had,



something my mouth would hate me for after becoming acquainting with it. While I tried to keep from blowing fire, Nori came to meet us at our table. There is quite nothing like meeting a friend you haven’t seen in a long time. Japanese people rarely hug in public, but because it’d been long since we’d last met, he didn’t mind breaking taboo, and pulled me in for an embrace. The rest of my first night in Japan was delightful – we caught up on old times – but uneventful. Upon returning to the hotel we all stayed in that night, I closed my eyes and wondered what the next thirteen days would hold. But not before snapping these photos of the famous Japanese commodes:


Console on the left. Heated seats.



Then...daybreak. Outside the hotel:






we woke up and, after breakfast...



the three of us took the train. Hard to take pictures with the camera whilst moving.



and, afterwards, taxi, to 'Saru-yama' (monkey mountain).



Aptly named, it was a small mountain in which three communities of monkeys lived. You could observe them live their daily lives.





Then, we went to the city of Beppu, and saw three famous boiling springs. One was a beautiful azure,



the other a hellish-red,




and the other an earthy brown. The day was mercilessly hot; our ice cream melted at an alarming rate.







We got to Kumamoto city near the evening. It was a small but nice city, where there was an ‘open-ended’ mall covered by a canopy. One of many in Japan, it had no doors, but alleys where one could simply enter from the surrounding streets. It was currently night in Kumamoto and there were many young people there. I began to wonder what it would be like living there, or if I had been born there, how life would be different. I wondered about the lives of the youth around me, what kind of people they befriended, what they did everyday afterschool. I wished at times to tear away from my 'guides' (my friend and his mother), and just do whatever whimsy led me to.







After milling about trying to figure out what to do (and for the least amount of money) we sang Karaoke at one place for about two hours. In between tracks from the Backstreet Boys and the Beatles (Nori loves both of them), I went to the bathroom. Before I could finish, someone knocked on the door and said something that escaped translation entirely. I kept saying ‘chotto matte kudasai!’ (please wait a moment), but the guy just kept talking. I sighed, annoyed, and opened the door after washing my hands. I came face to face with a boy who looked to be a junior or senior in high school. A long-sleeve black shirt outlined his thin torso. I cannot remember the words we exchanged after we introduced ourselves (his name was Yoji, I believe), but this memory sticks out to me like a beacon. This was my first personal, non-business encounter with someone in Japan other than Nori and Mika. We didn’t talk long, but for the time we did, I felt more welcome in this foreign land.

We went to Kumamoto Castle next day, the first of three castles I would see in my three weeks in Japan.





It was raining that day, and the ground was quickly becoming muddy. It was a beautiful castle – right out of a samurai movie. That old Japanese custom of taking off one’s shoes to enter a residence held true even at the castle. An old man at the entrance instructed customers to take off their shoes and put them in a bag. Only slippers could grace the aged wooden floors of this castle. The dark, wooden walls trapped humidity in every chamber of almost every floor; the floor squeaked with each movement, their age protesting against the weight. The rooms were devoid of furniture, but several had information about the castle and its history, models of it and the town in ancient times, and parts of its structure on display. I took photos with a woman dressed as a ninja, and two men dressed up as castle guards.




Later, we went to a famous park (whose name, sadly, escapes me). The trees and plants were finely manicured in Japanese style – beautiful in their simplicity. There was a temple there which we visited, where we tossed a coin into the altar, clapped our hands, and prayed.






At a shop beside the temple, we bought omikuji (fortunes). Thankfully, mine was in English. I kept mine instead of tying it to the tree, as tradition would call for. In the evening, we parted with Mika the 'okaasan' (‘mother’. She even insisted that I call her that). Nori and I boarded the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hirakata city, near Osaka. Hirakata is a suburban kind of town, with not too much to do (where we lived at least) ,but it was bigger than small towns in America.

Japan Trip Part Three: Airports [let's pretend the other entries had titles, too]

At my layover in San Francisco, the reality and gravity of my trip had finally dawned on me: as I waited for the plane to Osaka, I was surrounded by Japanese people. Memory is not a perfect thing, but I recall being the only black person there. I walked by them and sat down without attracting a multitude of stares. During the flight, I chatted with a friendly elderly Japanese American, who, despite his age, had the wry, dry, and witty humor of a much younger man. Ten hours or so passed, with the pacific beneath us and the sky around us: I’d never spent this much time off the ground before.

Daylight still reined when we Japan, though it came out flat and gray, strained by heavy overcast. There is something very different about the architecture and infrastructure there, which I can’t precisely explain. Perhaps it is the size: things seemed smaller, more compact. Or, it may be the meticulous planning that echoes from the neatness of its ordering. Suffice to say, I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. I parted from my flight-mate, wished him luck on his journey, and set melded into line of people entering the airport. Even this was different than what would typically happen in the States: it was silent. And so heavy was this silence that it was almost tangible: a hard silence. It seemed almost as if we were a group of weary refugees than normal travelers, with the quietness that hung in the air like an entity all on its own.

I knew I had to get to customs, but the getting there was beyond me. Completely lost, I moved with the stream of people to what I hoped was my destination. Fortunately, this hope was not in vain, and we arrived at a large room where finely-dressed women gave us instructions in both fluent Japanese and broken English. We formed lines; Japanese speakers listened to the instructions, and even those who didn’t understand Japanese could follow by instinct. As for myself, I was somewhere in between. I followed my line to a table in the middle of the room, whereupon I had to fill out my contact information. One of the women said to me, “Juusho wo kaite kudasai” (Please write your address). I paused, a nervous lump forming a fist in my throat. Where was I staying? I had no idea about my friend’s address. I resorted to writing my friend’s name and other sparse information, which, fortunately, sufficed. After the man at customs stamped my passport, I was officially welcomed to Japan.
But unlike the landing of the plane that brought me there, the welcome would not be smooth. After surviving customs without being lost in translation, I had another plane to catch. Ok, I knew this much. I did not know how much time I had left, or where to buy the ticket. The searching game began. There was no time to tour the airport, so I just looked around and enjoyed the views while I tried to find the counter. An elevator took me there, three stories later. I went up to the counter, greeted by a smiling woman in a neat red vest and white shirt. I posed my query in Japanese, right after saying sumimasen (excuse me), “I want to go Fukuoka airport. When and how much is the next ticket?” The answer wasn’t pretty. At the end of the transaction, I had a couple of yen bills left and about three to four minutes to get through security and catch the plane. Suddenly, the lady at the desk broke her calm composure, exited via a side door, and took off running – quite adeptly in high heels. She speedily click-clacked her way to the security gates, me running with her, and explained to the guard that I had little time to spare. The woman waited while I went through a ‘speed checkout’ with the man: empty pockets, take off belt, separate computer and laptop and place them in a bin, walk through, pass – go! I thanked the man and broke off into another run with the woman. At the departure gate, she bade me goodbye; I gave her my thanks and farewell, then sped-walked into the third plane of the day.

I could now relax. The seat took me in like a lover: soft contours pulling me into its form; the rush evaporated from sore leg muscles. Outside, rain murmured quietly as it peppered the slaked, brown concrete of the runway. Inside, the small population of travelers – mostly businessmen by the looks of it – read papers in silence or closed their eyes to rest. The pilot’s nasally voice bled from the intercom, filling the air like paint spreading tranquilly in water. We took off from the runway shortly afterward. I once thought it was a myth that all (or at least most) Japanese flight attendants were attractive, but if what I saw that day was standard, then it is far from myth. There was not a single male attendant on the flight, only neat navy skirts and classy uniforms, high heels, and pretty smiling faces. I was quite enamored with it all. One of them said something to me in Japanese; I stupidly nodded as if I understood every word she spoke. After seeing that I didn’t respond correctly she said “lift” (in English), and pointed to the table that I had pulled from the seat in front of me. Ah…oops. I bashfully lifted the table back up. Sometime later, another stewardess came and, after offering me a refreshment, and hearing the ‘no thanks’ said in Japanese, gasped in pleasant surprise, sat down near me, and struck up conversation. After this flight, I would never want to fly American airlines again.

Japan Trip Part Two

This is a story of the past, but allow me to rewind even further back, all the way to spring semester of ’09. Have you ever had one seemingly-chance meeting with someone, only to find – sooner or later – that its effects were profound? I’ve had several, myself. This one in particular transpired at the UNCC International Coffee hour. I ran into Bo-Young Kim, a beautiful friend of mine, and told her that I was learning Japanese. She asked if I needed a conversation partner. I said I did. Then, she introduced me to her friend (and soon to be mine, too) Noriyuki Kanemitsu. “Nori!” she called, her words thrown at the sparse crowd of remaining people. My eyes searched for the owner of the name, waiting for one of them to turn his back. It was the one wearing the denim jacket and 49ers cap. Nori turned around, his bespectacled and friendly face looking toward Bo-Young. She introduced us, and we became instant friends. From that night forward, our friendship grew; we even had our own inside jokes. Along with two other friends of mine, Noriyki and I went to New York City. Truly, he had become one of my best friends.

Now, bear with me, because I’m going to fast-forward a bit, bringing us back to spring semester of 2010, when I was still racking my brain as to how I would stay in Japan without soon becoming broke. One night, via Skype, I was telling Nori about my trip to Japan. He offered I could stay with him, but warned me about the tiny, one-person apartment he lived in. ‘Would that really be okay? I thought you were busy with school and teaching,’ I brought up. He informed me that school was over, and that his practice teaching job (he wants to become an English teacher) was nearly finished. In other words, I had a place to stay, and at an affordable, attractive price: free.

The weeks after that were spent preparing for the trip. Throughout these days, excitement burned and grew more and more within my chest.

The morning I set off for the Land of the Rising Sun seemed to begin like any other day. Surprisingly, I didn’t have all the symptoms of one going to Disney Land for the first time: my hands weren’t shaking with excitement, my heartbeat didn’t sound like the slaps of an angry percussionist on his drums, and I didn’t have to revisit the bathroom five times in five minutes. Rather, I felt as if all were right, as if all the stars and planets in this universe aligned, and that a delightful inevitability had finally come: I was going to Japan because I was meant to go.
With early morning still smothering the airport windows black, I bid my final goodbyes to my family and walked down the security line feeling much like pioneers must have years ago – wonderfully independent and frighteningly alone.

Japan Trip Part One

A very good friend of mine has recently begun posting his trip overseas. I made my first overseas trip last summer and it was one of the most interesting and lovely and humbling and introspective (the list goes on) journeys of my life. I love travelling. I'm 'a plane on the sunset with nowhere to land'. I wish I was one of those cool, lone wolf-types who have the resources and carelessness to travel constantly, unmoored to anything, on burning trails on tarmac or in the sky.

But I'm not that cool. My trip was cool, though it could've been cooler. I told my friend my trip was a trial run. So, without further ado:
****
To what can we owe a child’s fascination with something? We can say that the events that sparked these longings, these affections, were traumatic, majestic, or divine, but this is not always the case. A child can take a passing glance at something, feel it in his or her hands for the first time, or acquaint the tongue to a savory delight for only one moment. It is often these modest happenings that make children fall in love with something. For me, it was watching anime (Japanese for ‘animation’, ‘cartoons’) that would lead to my eventual captivation of Japan, its culture, and its language. Karate, dojos, and samurai filled my head in elementary school, and the interest in this country would grow with my age and stature. Initially, there was only a dull and unrealized fantasy existing only in the hypothetical: ‘What if I went to Japan?’ Years passed, and finally, in high school, the dull fantasy had become a burning longing, a concrete statement of ‘I want and will see Japan one day.’ This is the telling of a dream come true.

I had long desired to study abroad to Japan, but circumstance and money made it difficult. I grew impatient. During last semester, I firmly resolved to travel there, using surplus funds to pay for the plane ticket and any other living expenses. Initially, the idea of ‘backpacking’ – low cost, independent, international travelling – tugged at my adventurous side, and the possibility of danger, being lost in translation, and just plain lost only made it more exciting. I consulted several websites for anything in the way of homestays and gaijin houses (low cost housing in Japan specifically for gaijin or ‘foreigners). After much searching, I found an advertisement from a woman who was offering lodging at her house. The sensible man has to pause and reflect on such a thought: ‘Hm. I’m going to eat, sleep, shower, and live in the house of a woman I’ve never met before in my entire life, which means I will have to trust a total stranger, with whom I probably cannot fully communicate with.’

…I was all for it.

But I would be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous.

I calculated my travel expenses – plane ticket, lodging price, commuting costs, etc – and came up with a rather daunting number. Things were looking soggy and dark.
But a new sunrise was coming, and it came in the form of a friend.

Welcome Back

It's best not to write honestly sometimes. It just makes things worse. I will write, but I will not tell all the truth.

No one wants to see their own blood on the cement when they've just been wounded. It only reminds them of the wound in their body. Unless they are a masochist. I am not.

I decided to ressurect the blog because, ah, I don't know. I just did. I can't write everything, 'cause that would be foolish. Then, though, what's the point of this? Why does anybody write a blog to begin with?

I've been watching movies all day, pretty much. Made a post on 'Along Came A Spider'. My friend, the creator of the RP, isn't answering my texts or skype messages. Friends. Funny things lately. Funny me. Hahaha. Hah. Ha.

Mel Gibson starred in Payback - a funny, hardboiled crime movie about a pissed off criminal who wanted his money paid back. Get it? Ha.Ha.Ha. Anyway, the entire movie was shot with a blue filter. I enjoyed it. Fight Club came on at 9PM. Just finished it a couple minutes ago, actually. Father did not watch it. My parents are great, but kind of boring.

Everyone has something boring about them, I bet. Even Hitomi (the 16 year old, not the real one).

The power went out earlier.

Baked fish and homemade tartar sauce. Red Zinger tea, with the bag soaked in tap water, mixed with brown sugar. Left a weird taste in my stomach; the taste bubbles up to my mouth often. Annoying:

This was saturday, which just passed 7 minutes ago.

I don't drink much anymore. For the birds. The whooziness, the laughing and acting normal to lie to everyone that you've got yourself under control and walk a damn straight line and drive a car and path a breathilyzer test, and not throw up a milimitre from the bloody bathroom after taking shots of shit you don't know why you drank after some guy you didn't know egged you on with encouraging and friendly laughs.

It's all so very funny. Hahahahahahahahahahahha. You could laugh your ass off at this stuff. You could die laughing. Hah.

If you ever read this, Carl, I'm going to try to read your entries now that you've ressurected your blog, as well. Hope you're having fun, buddy.