On Mondays, Nori went to Kansai Gaidai University to take his final teaching classes. It was considerably far from his apartment, so I soon bought a bike to accompany him on the journey there. Considering how tiny buildings tend to be in Japan, the campus grounds were large.
There were a plethora of young people with whom I could converse. Unfortunately, I was too shy to do so, and missed many opportunities. Some people did come up to me, though, and I befriended most of them. Usually, Nori and I ate breakfast, lunch and dinner at Gaidai, because the meals were cheap but filling.
Nori (left) and I (off-screen) eating at Kansai Gaidai's cafeteria.To the staff and students, I was just an international student there, so I blended in perfectly. While Nori went to class, I lounged around the student common area, biked around the city, or worked out at the gym feeling very scrawny and weak with all the muscle around me.
It would be in Hirakata where I spent the bulk of my stay, boarding (for free) at my friend's tiny apartment for one person.
/s320/IMG_0204.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581454271694364098" />Shots of the apartment.
I slept on two layers of blankets, used two folded towels for a pillow. If I stood on my toes whilst showering, my head would touch the bathroom ceiling. We had to conserve water and AC – the landlord charged Nori for every cent of it. Because showering in his own home could be expensive, then, we often showered at the public bathrooms at Gaidai. This kind of cheap living was about as close to backpacking as I would get – and I often had my red and black Dakine bag strapped to my back as I traveled.
Now, had I commanded more confidence, and thus, a better command of Japanese, I would've gone all types of places by myself. At the top of this list of places was Tokyo – the most expensive city to live in on earth. Tokyo’s true allure, however, was a friend of mine I’d met while still in the States. She’d been my first conversation partner and Japanese friend, and had helped me greatly improve my Japanese. For the moment, though, I couldn’t speak the native tongue well enough to travel solo. Therefore, I stuck with Nori, who never had the money to get to Tokyo. In effect, I failed to reach that faraway city. Because Nori could not always spare time and money for trips around Japan, we had to entertain ourselves locally. Specifically, we frequented pachinko (I’ll explain this game soon)/slot parlors and spent hours at an internet café where a swarthy, beautiful clerk with lightly-blushed cheeks welcomed us with her demure smile. Nori seemed to have developed a half-joking crush for her. He urged me several times to ask her if she had a boyfriend, but I knew I’d end up tripping over my own tongue. In retrospect, I want to kick myself for that.
As I promised earlier, I’ll explain what pachinko is. Pachinko is a type of Japanese gambling game, in which the player turns a crank which shoots up small metal balls. The object is to get these balls in specific slots for points. In the background of the machine is a video of a game or anime. The more points you accrue, the more the video progresses, presenting intense action scenes, some of which you can interact with. Pachinko machines blast out loud music and noise, blare with lights. Imagine rows upon rows of these things, people glued to the screen while cigarettes burn idly between their lips, cigarette smoke burning your eyes and clinging stubbornly to every article of clothing on your body – this is pachinko. It’s really something else. Truthfully, Nori and I were awful at pachinko, so we stuck to the easier game of slots; matching images together is considerably easier. Out of the six times I played slots, I only lost twice. I raked in at least a 4,000 yen net gain each game. Nori and I joked my ‘luck’ stemmed from the fact that the games were controlled; they wanted foreigners to win. In addition to extra cash, winners would receive prizes based on the amount of yen they won. For small timers like myself, most of the rewards were small snacks. Small-timers – small rewards. Fair enough, right?
PachinkoThe internet café we went to, Game Buster, deserves more mention. I’ve been to an American internet café once or twice, and rest assured, they pale in comparison to the ones in Japan. It feels more like a small, quaint bookstore than a seedy haven for the socially inept and game addicts. After walking past the aisles of Japanese comics and magazines, you would find a vending machine to your right, where one could dispense cold water, hot water to make his own tea, or readily-made Japanese green tea. The cigarette vending machines stood by the restroom. Teenagers, young adults, and older men were the usual clientele. Continue forward, and you would see the booths, where, bordered by walls for the sake of privacy, awaited for you a computer and monitor that doubled as a television, slippers to hug your tired feet, a plush leather recliner that welcomed your form, a footrest of the same material, and a small piece of fruit-flavored candy as compliment for your patronage. In Japan, the customer is a god. One night, Nori and I took advantage of a special package Game Buster offered, and stayed there for a whopping 12 hours straight. It’s an embarrassing admission, but as humorous as it is pathetic. We ended up falling asleep in our chairs, and upon waking up, found that daylight had broke.
