Archive for October, 2008

Game On, Clothes Off

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 28, 2008 in Funnies and Observations. 2 Comments

“Hello, my name is Mac. I teach across the street at that technical high school and I love baseball. I help out the baseball team on Thursdays and Fridays by hitting fungoes and-”

“Wait a minute, I know you,” said the sharply-dressed man sitting to my right. “Do you remember me? We met at Poka Poka Hot Springs!”

It was hard to place him at the spa, because he hadn’t been wearing that smart, pinstriped suit and tie, nor had his wrist been adorned by a silver watch as it was now. If I had indeed met him at Poka Poka, then we had probably been stark naked.

“You said the exact same thing to an old man there,” the young man continued. “Then I jumped into the conversation. I remember it perfectly.”

I still envision memories organized like a Rolodex in my mind, and I doubt that I will ever digitize no matter how much technology improves. I spun the wheel, sent the white cards and blue tabs flying through the defined circle, and searched for his face and voice and for that experience.

Aha!

“It was raining, wasn’t it? We were on the outside patio and that old man was laughing at how much I was enjoying the rain,” I offered to the young man, who nodded excitedly.

“Well, I’m sorry my self-introduction isn’t more varied or thrilling. Nice to meet you with clothes on!”

Laughter bubbled up from around the room where about fifteen young people had gathered to get briefed about our upcoming day with Mountain Man. We were in the midst of going around the circle and introducing ourselves when Banker, the young, alpha male-type in the suit, interrupted me, sure that he had seen my face (and so much more) before.

Interestingly, that night at the hot springs was significant not only for the rain and conversation, but because I had seen a former student of mine and had been unable to identify him for lack of clothing. Apparently, it works both ways.

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Japanese people most definitely have less shame about their naked bodies than do Americans. The same elements exist between the sexes, but the familiar rules dissipate when it’s all dudes or all gals (so I’ve heard . . . ).

One can observe the most obvious examples of this behavior in public baths and hot springs, where one enters, strips, enjoys the facilities, rinses, repeats, dresses, and returns to the rigid, clothed world.

Many a foreigner has entered the bath house for the first time and been squeamish and hesitant to remove each and every article of clothing. It would be interesting to take a poll and see which is more embarrassing to them - being seen naked by strangers or being seen naked by friends.

I had no such choice upon my first experience. I went with two women, one of whom I would eventually have a relationship with for two years. When we arrived at the mountainside resort and strode up to the spa area, they peeled off to the right, and I went to the left alone.

A note: mixed, public bathing is a possibility, although I have never been to a hot spring that allows it. I’m not sure that would be such a great thing, anyway.

Once in the men’s area, I realized that I knew very little about how to bathe in public the Japanese way and had no familiar faces to ask. To the Rolodex I went, going back to second-year Japanese in college where I’m sure we brushed upon the subject or watched a video about hot springs. Wait, that was a short scene from Mr. Baseball with Tom Selleck.

Get nude, shower, then bathe. Since you have cleaned yourself with a shower, there is nothing creepy or dirty about sitting in the same water as a bunch of other guys. Make sure the hand towel you carry with you doesn’t touch the hot water, and you’re golden.

Most men hold the small towel strategically so that it’s covering their bits and pieces when they are not submerged. I didn’t know this that first time, and I slung the towel over my shoulder and strutted around like a peacock. It didn’t matter much as I wasn’t that interesting to the few other old men enjoying the hot spring.

In general, the bathers are so relaxed that they hardly acknowledge each other’s presence. I have never encountered awkwardness or staring, and I now love these hot springs so much that I’m probably oblivious to any sideways glances or shielded whispers.

During the winter, I go at least once a week, usually on Friday nights to give myself a pat on the back for making it through another week of cold. On one such occasion, I ran into the members of a Korean professional baseball team on their way out of the hot spring. They trained in Kochi in February and I had gone to watch them practice and take notes. I cursed my luck for missing the chance to talk with them and get some information.

As luck would have it, a coach had lagged behind to take in the sauna one more time, and he came into the dressing room from the bath area as I was prepared to do the opposite. I asked him, in English, if he was affiliated with the ball club, and he introduced himself as the pitching coach.

We chatted a bit about Kochi and free agents, and then I asked him if he had a business card. I followed him to his locker and he presented me with a shiny SK Wyverns card while I passed mine over to him. I doubt that that will be the last time I exchange business cards with someone in the buff.

So, this convention exists in Japan and is a favorite topic for Japanese in “How do you like Japan?” conversations. It’s not so hard to understand - they believe that communal nakedness breaks down boundaries and fosters open communication. They also believe that about alcohol. It’s a pity that you have to get naked, drunk, or both to make connections with some people.

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The lax attitude toward showing skin appears at school quite often, and I am still taken aback when it occurs in more and more unexpected situations.

Last year’s seniors had a few extra classes after the final exam, and the few that showed up were hopelessly infected with senioritis. I couldn’t fathom why we would hold classes for them, but it was my job to come up with something for them to do. I had them write down three good memories and three bad memories from their three years in high school.

Of course, there were some very interesting responses (”One time I had to leave a midterm to go use the bathroom, and I used up all of my strength in there so I couldn’t stay awake for the last half of the test”).

More than a few IT students recounted the snowball fight they had had on their school trip to distant Matsuyama the previous winter. They went all out, building forts, stocking up ammunition, and planning attack formations. And they did all of that without the aid of winter wear; they attacked each other on a snowbank just outside of a hot spring. They had a snowball fight sans clothing.

Our school does not have locker rooms, but every student is required to change into PE gear when the time comes for their class to take to the gym or the communal ground. Boys simply change in class while girls head out to a shed that houses equipment for the volleyball and swimming clubs.

It’s slightly humorous when a class has PE right after English, because the chimes ring, the students do their Japanese class-ending ritual, and then whip their clothes off and start shouting about whatever sport it is they are playing next.

The few English classes that come right after PE are downright hilarious. The Japanese teacher (female) and I walk in as the chimes are ringing, and half of the students are in their underwear, applying deodorant and body spray, still dispensing the last bits of trash talk from the gym.

As they slowly put their clothes on and take out their English materials, the Japanese teacher takes roll and I stand there shaking my head. One or two boys will always sit there and complain about how hot and sweaty they are and basically refuse to get back into the school uniform.

Japanese teacher: Nakamura, put your pants on!

Nakamura: I don’t wanna. It’s so hot!

Japanese teacher: Everyone else has their pants on. You must put yours on, too. Let’s go, get ‘em on!

Nakamura: (nondescript grumbling)

Mac: (holding both hands over his mouth to stifle laughter)

Come on, when have you ever heard a middle-aged female teacher tell an 18-year-old man-child to put his pants on? I can’t even imagine what turn of events would lead to that verbal exchange in an American classroom.

Lots of boys roll their pants up like British knickers, and several loosen their belts while they sit down. It leads to some interesting situations if I call on a student to come to the front of the class and do something in English. While pants falling down and revealing Roger Rabbit underwear constitutes a nightmare for an American kid, it’s all a joke to these Japanese boys.

Speaking of underwear, Japanese people really seem to like situations where a man ends up in his skivvies or starts the scene or skit in revealing, skimpy clothing. A few comedians have that as part of their shtick, and of course life imitates art.

One of the events for Sports Day featured a few specially chosen teachers getting dressed down and then dressed up by students from each of the disciplines.

A couple groups had elaborate costumes and didn’t want the audience, which numbered in the hundreds of parents and friends, to see the process, so they brought curtains with them and shielded the teachers while they made them over.

Other groups, notably the civil engineers, delighted in stripping the teachers and leaving them out there half-naked while they slowly collected materials and re-dressed them. I honestly can’t recall whether I saw any of my favorite American teachers in a Speedo, but I’d think it would have taken some extraordinary circumstances to get to that point.

I’ve lost count of how many times that has happened in just over a year at this technical school.

The final example that pushed me into writing this piece happened last Friday, Home Day. Each homeroom planned a fieldtrip of some sort and executed it, and they do this twice a year. This is what I’m talking about when I say that this school takes any excuse not to hold regular classes.

I chose to hang out with the wildest of the wild, the not-so-civil engineers, in order to sit back and watch a teacher besides Ms. Inept run the show. They had planned a basketball tournament at the city gym across the street from the school followed by a barbecue down on the banks of Mirror River.

Students ride their bikes to any site within the Kochi City area for sports club practice or events like Home Day. After the basketball, the teachers gathered the unruly students and reminded them to wear their school uniforms and obey the laws of traffic on the way to the barbecue. Then, they turned the boys loose into the streets of Kochi.

Absolutely out of the question at mid-day on a Friday in California, isn’t it? Not here.

We met by the riverside and set up seven small barbecue grills underneath a bridge. The weather was perfect, about 80 degrees, and a cool breeze blew downstream and helped us light our coals.

Following the feast, a few boys brought out hard rubber baseballs and baseball gloves and played catch. I refrained, finally wiser for the experience.

Beneath the bridge and about 50 feet out into the river stood a large cement column supporting the bridge. A couple of boys thought it would be fun to see if they could throw the ball hard enough to make it bounce off the column and return to shore. They failed miserably and two of their balls started making their way toward the Pacific.

They pointed fingers and shoved each other toward the water until one kid finally had had enough. He shed his clothes and stood with his toes hanging over the cement bank, perhaps pondering the safety of what he was about to do.

The other 38 students crowded around, clad in their uniforms, snickering at the boy in his Mickey Mouse briefs about to jump into Mirror River. Old folks and mothers with toddlers passed by as they had been doing all afternoon, smiling and laughing at this harmless expression of youth.

Mickey Mouse Briefs left the ground and plopped into the river. He retrieved both balls and climbed out. Some students had stolen his clothes, but the prank had a fun feeling and I didn’t detect any malice at all.

The class leader thought that it was a fantastic time to take the class photo, so Mickey Mouse Briefs posed in front of the group, holding a ball and wearing nothing but a pair of Mickey Mouse briefs and a huge smile.

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I like wearing my birthday suit and dig the Japanese way of thinking about nudity.

I didn’t see that coming at all. I joined the marching band in my freshman year of high school because I thought I would have to take showers in front of everyone else if I took PE. I had a trumpet that I had gotten as a Christmas present and had taken two, maybe three lessons, but I would skirt the PE requirement if I marched in the band, so I took that way. True story.

I made it three days before realizing that I would have been just as naked goose-stepping around with a shiny trumpet in front of hundreds of spectators as I would have been in the showers changing out of sweaty, stinky gym clothes. I quit, and incidentally didn’t ever have to strip completely during those four years.

An episode involving wine, Munchies, an obnoxious drinking game, and a collapsing table changed my mind during college, but it took that first hot spring experience in Japan to fully realize the joy of removing social constraints and definitions along with my clothes and just chilling out.

I find the Japanese way in this area to be relaxing, refreshing, fun, and natural. Who’s on the next plane over here?

Skits and Giggles

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 22, 2008 in Funnies. 3 Comments

My school does just about anything to get out of holding academic classes. I don’t know how intentional it is, but our class schedule gets pounded and tossed around like pizza dough.

A look at the schedule for the first half of the fall quarter revealed a twisted mess with little consistency or balance. In a regular, Monday-to-Friday, nine-to-five type of week, we teach English to the eight major classes twice each.

We use a textbook selected by the Kochi Board of Education and are required to teach every unit within its cover. Each unit usually takes two days of class, so we’d move through a chapter a week in a perfect world.

Students returned on Monday, September 1, but there was no class. Every time we begin a new quarter or send an old one out, we have to have a ceremony.

Teachers make sure they’re wearing ties and jackets and students wash the dye out of their hair, hem their pants, lengthen their skirts, and generally try to fall within the dress code. Then we all sit in the gym on the floor and listen to the principal, the vice principal, the head of student affairs, the head of student discipline, and a few more heads of various departments give canned speeches about trying hard for the upcoming quarter.

It’s very boring and nobody likes it, and it’s the kind of message that my principals could take care of with a two-minute speech over the PA during fourth period. However, it’s Japanese tradition, and it just wouldn’t do to skip out on the standing, bowing, sitting, sweating, fretting, bowing, staring, snoozing, and bowing that goes on at these ceremonies.

Students exit the gym after the two-hour affair and immediately begin testing in various academic subjects. My understanding is that they are placement tests and progress checks, but I don’t understand the timing. The last thing they did in the previous quarter would be . . . that’s right, the final exam.

Anyhow, this testing takes a whole day’s worth of class time, but since that’s cut up by the opening ceremony on Day 1, we can’t hold class on Day 2, either.

So we finally began lessons on September 3 and actually had eight days of regularly-scheduled sessions.

Then we were met with a three-day weekend (Respect for the Aged Day). Followed by three days of shortened classes so that the major groups could practice their cheering and prepare their murals for Sports Day. Followed by a half-day Friday for career testing, though many individual students were missing throughout the week for the tests.

The Monday after was for practicing the Sports Day agenda, and it didn’t take all day but we didn’t have classes anyway. Tuesday, September 23rd was another national holiday to mark the beginning of fall. We opened up the school to visiting junior highers on Wednesday and Thursday, so the students went to their disciplines and the three Rs (and one E) went out the window. Friday was shortened classes again, but with Monday’s schedule.

The students and staff set up the entire school for Sports Day on Saturday the 28th, and the actual event took place the next day, Sunday. We spent the first half of Monday cleaning up and had very half-hearted fifth and sixth period classes.

Any time the teachers are required to show up on a weekend, they get substitute days off. Most teachers go to school on Saturday anyway for club action or extra study sessions with students, but that’s all off the clock. Events like Sports Day count as days of work, though, so we got a Tuesday and Wednesday off.

October 3 and 4 featured regular classes for the first time in weeks. We got a full week of 50-minute, normal classes before BAM another national holiday (Health-Sports Day) and midterms, which put the school on testing schedule for four days.

In my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that the administration honestly expected us to be able to teach the students anything in time to give them a serious midterm with all of that other stuff going on. I went two weeks between classes with some of the majors, and there was little I could do to preserve continuity between lessons.

The English Department teachers and I saw this coming, so we decided to teach the telephone lesson during the first week of calm and give the students the rest of the month to review the spring quarter and write skits that would be graded as their midterms.

The idea was to have students make a call on the telephone and get into a conversation about various things we had studied previously, such as making plans, giving directions, and talking about school and clubs.

I expected wildly creative, well-written masterpieces of theater, especially given the way that some of my students act out in class. I expected them to think about the skits outside of class time, maybe even take a break from practicing for Sports Day to write a line or two.

In reality, it was difficult to get them to work on the skits even during class time. Half the students were absent for testing or just “resting” (I will translate that as “ditching” if I ever write a book), and their partners used that as an excuse to do nothing in class.

Even the most diligent students allowed their minds and mouths to drift to Sports Day or the career tests, and many of them wrote their skits in Japanese and gave them to me to translate. I translated the scarce amount of extracurricular phrases and kindly wrote down reference page numbers for whole blocks of conversation that we had covered in class.

Sports Day blew over and brought a typhoon along with it. Typhoon #13 threatened to cancel the first day of classes that contained skit presentations, and when it didn’t, we got dozens of uninspired performances by an especially pouty cast.

There were some diamonds in the rough, some chocolate chips in the cookie batter, some crooked numbers amongst the goose eggs . . . ?

A few skits were quite good. One pair of future IT guys stood in as Yasuo Fukuda, the ex-Prime Minister of Japan who stepped down last month, and Taro Aso, his successor and the third Prime Minister in the last three years:

Fukuda: Hello, this is Yasuo Fukuda speaking, may I speak to Taro Aso?

Aso: Aso speaking, hi Fukuda. How are you?

Fukuda: I’m very tired. By the way, I want you to be the next Prime Minister

Aso: Sure, I was just thinking, ‘maybe I should become the Prime Minister.’

Fukuda: Really? Thank you.

Aso: No problem.

Fukuda: Well, I have a lot of things to talk with you about, so can I see you next Sunday?

Aso: What time?

Fukuda: How about two o’clock at Yoshinoya Beef Bowl?

If only it was that easy!

One pair featured a slovenly fat (non-sumo) kid asking his partner to go with him to a nude beach. Unfortunately, that part was lost on the class, but I certainly appreciated a student of his . . . stature . . . delivering a line like that. I nearly dropped my camcorder when he put on a wicked grin and reminded his partner to bring plenty of sunscreen and a camera.

A couple of guy-on-guy pairs opted to do date situations and took particular joy in practicing the art of rejection. Few students had the vocabulary or control over intonation to do it diplomatically, so they were all curt and unpleasant but made the class bust up laughing for that very reason.

I didn’t realize how funny a nasty “I don’t like you! Do you understand?” could be in the proper situation.

Two civil engineering boys wanted to talk about inviting a girl to a sleazy motel, which Japanese call rabu hoteru (love hotel). I tried to persuade them to talk about something else, but something told me that they would quit the skit and nap for the rest of September if I didn’t help them.

CE Boy 1: Mac! How do you say rabu hoteru in English?

Me: We say “motel.”

CE Boy 1: That’s it? Motel?

CE Boy 2: That doesn’t sound right. Too plain.

Me: Well, that’s it. Your granddaddies are the ones who attached the “love” to it.

CE Boy 1: Come on, there’s got to be something better.

Me: Cheap motel . . . ?

Aside: Granddaddies. Great word. What other word has four Ds in a span of five letters?

The skit that took the cake was an enactment of a phone scam that is on its way out in Japan due in part to increased media exposure.

Ore Ore Sagi (The “It’s Me!” Scam) occurs when a young man calls up some old folks pretending to be their long-lost son or a distant relative and demands money from them. The con-artists pose various scenarios (terrible car crash, loan default, gambling debt with threatening mobsters) and plead with the elderly people for money but usually don’t give a name, simply saying ore ore (it’s me, it’s me).

Then, via the phone, they direct the old people to an ATM and tell them the bank account number into which to deposit egregious amounts of money.

It is a serious problem, and a rash of these calls broke out earlier in the decade. More money was lost in 2004 than any other year ($250 million!) and it is estimated that Japanese people still give about $90,000 per day to these Ore Ore guys.

Why does this work? I’ve asked around and have gotten conflicting answers. Among them:

-Old people aren’t familiar with technology and are comforted by someone leading them through the process of wiring money through an ATM (doesn’t explain how they get to the machine with the hankering to give money to a voice on the phone)

-The old folks don’t want to shame their “sons” by asking for confirmation of identity

I thought that second one was about the most stupid thing I’d ever heard. It’s becoming fewer and farther between, but I don’t have much patience for people who say, “Hey, Mac? It’s me” on the phone. I know that this is the fantastic day and age of caller ID, but it’s just proper to identify yourself on the phone.

I couldn’t understand how someone starting out saying, “It’s me! It’s me!” without so much as a name could entice someone to walk over to an ATM and give them money.

Then I read a couple of editorials written by victims of the scam. One said that someone called as a policeman, saying that her son had been in a terrible accident and needed money to pay off the other party as the accident was his fault.

I don’t have kids, so I can’t very well say that I would have been in the state of mind to put the whole scene together and smell a rat. Someone called this woman and gave grisly details about an accident involving her son. I suppose it’s not a stretch to believe that she didn’t stop and consider why he would need cash right away if he was in traction in the hospital.

Think about it. I know that our legal system works differently and that there is not as much need for CASH NOW when bad stuff happens, but think of what someone could do if they get your mind in a panic about someone you love.

I won’t have nightmares or obsess about it, but I’ll definitely think twice about the way I ask or am asked for money in a pinch.

Let’s get back to my clever students and their “It’s Me!” Scam.

on the phone

Grandmother: Hello?

“Yohei”: Hello, Grandma, this is ore ore speaking.

Grandmother: (confused) Who is this?

“Yohei”: It’s me! It’s me!

Grandmother: Oh, that Yohei who likes cigarettes and gambling?

“Yohei”: Yes, it’s me! I’m Yohei! I got into an accident, therefore I need some money.

Grandmother: Oh no, how do I pay it to you?

“Yohei”: Pay $1700 by ATM at Lawson’s Convenience Store.

Grandmother: I’ll go right away!

hangs up

“Yohei”: Yes! I got the money for a new PC!

A few students took this assignment and ran with it, and they made it worth watching the other 130-odd skits that were lifted from the textbook. I recorded all of them, and I won’t post them here but will show some of the gems next time you are near my computer and me.

Naka

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 15, 2008 in Observations. 5 Comments

Naka. It’s one of those Japanese words that doesn’t have a good, single English translation.

“Relationship” would be closest for me, but it seems to be that with an element of exclusivity. It’s as though naka acts as a dividing line between those who are privy to the relationship and those who are not.

If you got naka, you’re in; if you don’t got naka, you’re out.

I’ve seen a few examples of naka at work lately and think that there is seriously something to it for Japanese people.

A pair of national holidays, school visits by prospective students, the opening ceremony and testing for the fall quarter, and the school’s Sports Day were all set to wreak havoc on our teaching schedule for September.

I suggested that we review the spring’s lessons and give the students the whole month to come up with skits to present to the class in lieu of a paper test for the midterm. With such an inconsistent schedule coming up, there wasn’t anything else to do short of showing them episodes of SpongeBob Squarepants every day.

The English teachers liked the idea and we went with it, but there were some problems.

Most of the classes have a good naka. That is, they work well together, treat the classroom as a safe space, accept and embrace their shortcomings in English and enjoy learning during our lessons.

A couple classes have a terrible naka, and I must say that it’s only the classes that have both boys and girls in them (most of my classes at this vocational school have no girls in them, a few others have one or two). The Interior Decorating class in particular is about half and half, and they shut things down for English.

In regular classes when it’s time to do a pair activity or make groups, the Interior students do not move from their seats. If they are not physically right next to someone with whom they have a good naka, they will lower their eyes and stare at their books.

It’s incredibly immature and lame behavior for high school seniors, but that’s what we’re faced with in some classes, so we elected to pair students up “at random” for the skit project. I truly left it up to chance for the classes with good naka, but for the awkward ones, I paired the loudest and best speakers of English with the scary-quiet ones, and fate took over for the students in the middle.

The classes with good naka howled with delight at some of the pairs that came out of the hat and got right to work creating their skits. Their effort and enthusiasm fell off as the events of September came and went, but they wrote their skits and performed them dutifully.

The Interior Decorators sighed and slumped into their chairs for the most part, but a few complained vociferously. One girl came right up to the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom and nastily said, “Mr. Mac, we need to work with people with good naka.”

The poor girl with whom I had paired her (”randomly” as far as she knew, recall) was sitting right there in front, eyes glued to the textbook but ears wide open. The dividing lines of naka were so obviously drawn that, to the students, there was nothing inappropriate about airing them out with words.

I refused and told the students that they would have to grow up and work with their classmates. Had I left them to their own devices, there would have been four or five pairs and thirty students sitting and staring at their books. This project needed to get done and arranging pairs was the only way to make sure that it happened.

They eventually settled down and got to work, and the Interiors presented the best skits of all by leaps and bounds. So much for naka. I wonder what it will look like for the rest of the quarter.

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The Civil Engineering class has a great naka, almost too good, because they are too excitable to do any kind of group learning. The teacher is hopelessly inept at keeping the class under control, and I am not allowed to do anything about it because I’m not a full-time teacher. Anyhow, the boys are very energetic and will emerge from our English class with a mouthful of handy phrases if not the ability to put a conversation together.

Something happened over the summer and one boy was cast out of the group. He routinely sat at his desk with his head down, and when I went by and asked what was wrong, he said he was merely tired. As he was the former captain of the basketball team (seniors “retire” from their sports clubs over the summer of their senior year), I thought he had just hit the floor a little too hard.

Ms. Inept informed me that his naka was not good with the rest of the boys, that they had banished him for some reason. She referred to the naka as something she could not and would not control or look into.

As American high school graduates, I’m sure that we all had classes where things weren’t so great between classmates. There always seemed to be one on the schedule, one where I was ripped away from the people with whom I felt most comfortable, one where I had to switch into survival mode in sixteen-year-old terms.

On the contrary, Japanese students are with the same group every single day and every single period for three years. They sit in the same classroom and the teachers rotate around, teaching a lesson at a time. There is no escape from the group, so being outside the naka is a much bigger deal to them than it would be to an American student.

This is where the famous collective thought is born and raised. The Japanese education system teaches students to do whatever it takes to be happy and harmonious in the group. Progress, actual education, and growth are all group projects, not the individual things that they are in the States.

Now, get a couple Japanese guys out for beers and they are just like anybody else on the planet. I’ve never been inside of a Japanese company in Japan, so I don’t know what happens in adulthood. I am not implying that Japanese people are incapable of thinking for themselves, just that the group dynamic is an extremely strong force for them.

Back to Civil Engineering - one student is going through hell for whatever it is he did over the summer, and the English teacher won’t step in and do anything about it. That bothered me, so I asked around and the boys’ homeroom teacher gave me the name of one student who didn’t mind talking to the basketball captain. They would be “random” partners for the English skit project.

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And so it seems that this naka is at best comfortable and at worst a vicious concept out to divide insiders and outsiders.

I had the opportunity to go on a group date, which is a very Japanese activity that falls between a blind date and speed dating. One guy and one girl conspire to arrange the group date, each one inviting the same number of friends, none of whom have met the others.

In the end, you have a number of guys who are all connected, and the same number of girls across the table who all know each other. There is only one link between the two groups, and the two who have already met are not out to date each other.

I’ve heard a lot about these group dates (called gokon) and have long wanted to participate in one. I met a college student who loves talking about girls and trying to date them and I have been trying to get him to invite me to a gokon.

He was concerned that I didn’t know any of his friends (there’s that naka again), and there wasn’t much I could do to speed things up and get invited. Finally, last weekend, he arranged a four-on-four gokon and invited me when one girl and two guys failed to show.

I rushed over to a Korean barbecue joint and walked in right after the introductions. Three attractive young women sat on the opposite side of the table from my buddy and one of his baseball teammates. I introduced myself and got right down to business, chatting it up and making the night lively.

We didn’t play any of the ice-breaking games that I’d heard about, and it’s unfortunate because most of them end up with the guy’s face in the girl’s chest or with variations on that theme. It was simply me starting up conversations and watching them fade as I took a sip of beer or a bite of meat.

My friend informed me that at a usual gokon, the participants eat quietly and look across the table from time to time. If they make eye contact with a cutie, they quickly look away and continue to eat. Make eye contact a couple times, and there’s a chance.

This sounded far too ridiculous to be true and I looked at him to make sure he wasn’t pulling my leg. It seemed like telepathy was necessary to make anything happen.

He was dead serious when he said, “We do the talking once the naka gets good.”

I asked when that happens, and he couldn’t give a concrete answer. It was some process that I was disrupting with my very presence.

However, when I talked to the girls, and even when I talked to the guys, for that matter, nobody was uncomfortable and they actually engaged in conversation. I learned that the fun and games usually happen when the group goes out to drink more or sing karaoke after eating at the restaurant.

We didn’t get to do that as we started eating at 11 p.m. and two of the girls had work the next day. Once they left, the guys marveled at how direct I was with them. They said it was like I swaggered in and said, “Hey, toots! Like me, right now!”

I don’t spit ill game (or whatever the kids call it), I just like to talk and meet women. I get the feeling that I experienced a gokon on the lukewarm side, and I was surprised to see naka make an appearance in what I thought was a casual situation.

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I will continue to observe the concept of naka. I’m sure that Americans have the same feelings about relationships with people, but I’ve never heard anyone verbalize it quite the way that Japanese people do.

In the Ribs!

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 15, 2008 in Baseball. 1 Comment

I’ve yet to use a phrase that is taboo for me, but lately I have been admitting to people that I’m tired of baseball. Japanese baseball, that is.

I went hard at it this summer and the season has lasted too long for me. Later, I’ll go more into what happened on my end, but for now I want to vent frustrations with the Japanese professional game.

The Central League, home of the Tokyo Giants and Hanshin Tigers, just finished up its regular season two days ago after starting on March 28. It will start the first round of playoffs on Saturday, when Americans will already know which teams will face off in the World Series. The Nippon Series is slated to begin on November 1.

Central Leaguers don’t play doubleheaders and they don’t play on Mondays. Won’t, rather. In a country where you can bet the plantation on each team losing multiple games to rain, I am disgusted at the lackadaisical scheduling.

The Yokohama Bay Stars (48-94), the worst pro team on the planet, “ended” the season with more than a dozen makeup games to play. Games between non-contenders are played no matter what, and there is no priority given to games with meaning regarding playoffs.

The last pitch of the Central League regular season was thrown over three hours after the Pacific League finished Stage 1 of the CLIMAX SERIES (playoffs, for those of you scoring at home).

I haven’t been watching these games lately for a variety of reasons. Since we’re deep into autumn, let me just reach into the cornucopia and pull some out:

Some of my favorite players have been crying hurt and hiding out on the farm club over the last month to protect themselves and make a better campaign for free agency. Since their teams were in contention when they disappeared from the front lines, I have to consider that in my evaluation of their character.

A few clubs in both leagues have continued to abuse players and cheat them of service time by shuffling them off to Buffalo when they’re not physically in the lineup or needed on the bench. A player does not get service time if his name is not on the lineup card or his rear end is not in contact with the pine. There are no options and no rules to protect players from these malicious maneuvers.

This hurts the players with respect to their future earning power and opportunities to play, but it also makes more work for me in the here and now. The Bay Stars cycled through 31 pitchers to spread the losses and pain around more evenly.

The free agency circus doesn’t begin until the Nippon Series ends. That’s a week and a half of potential bedlam for scouts, and we can’t wait until the Series is asnooze under the covers.

Culture shock? Probably. I just hate how disorderly and lawless professional baseball sometimes seems to be here.

With all that going on, the single biggest reason I am not tuning into Japanese baseball is that the MLB Playoffs are beaming into my apartment from space. My DVD recorder has been working overtime, and I have had to cover my eyes and ears and shout silly phrases a few times because of well-meaning people who want to tell me the latest and greatest news. Damn the Internet?

It is difficult to describe how good it felt to flick on the box one morning last week and hear that “Matt Kimp will git the start in cinter field, boy, he sees the ball bettur than inybody in the game” from Tony Gwynn and his impeccable pronunciation.

The twelve previous summers of following baseball flooded my memory and overtook my senses, swelling to what seemed like hundreds of years. I felt the vertigo from looking over the edge of the top deck in Los Angeles, heard the opera-singing hot dog vendor in Detroit, tasted the lemonade like Grandma made in Phoenix, and saw the historic home run ball scrape the edge of the left-center field wall on its way down in San Francisco.

And I missed Joe Buck and Tim McCarver.

I missed all American announcers.

I have dumped more than my share of criticism on them in my time watching the game, but I think that we need them in our living rooms. In my experience, they foster discussions and arguments between the viewers on the couch, and they do drop meaningful analysis and information on occasion. Their reflections on the game help me challenge, refine, and steel my own, making each contest a mental exercise as well as an entertaining event.

Japanese announcers don’t do that for me. They tend to have a narrow focus on what just happened and hardly ever go out on a limb to float a theory or make a prediction past the next pitch. I find their analysis lacking, and their language elementary and colorless. They simply sit there and talk about the game, complimenting players for their guts and outstanding talent, getting excited for nearly all fly balls, and agreeing with each other on just about every point.

It was refreshing at first, because they stay within the game at all times. They tend not to have agendas (Buck and McCarver, I’m looking at you and your campaign against Manny Ramirez) and freely admit when they didn’t recognize a pitch or when a manager’s decision is beyond their comprehension. They love to guess what the pitcher is going to throw next, what the runner is going to do next, or what look the manager will have on his face the next time the camera goes into the dugout.

It’s all missing something, though. There doesn’t seem to be any conviction behind what they say and none of it challenges the viewer. It became predictable for me in a matter of weeks, to the point where I could watch a game without the sound on and know what they were talking about.

So, it’s painful, but I miss those clowns on network television in the States.

That doesn’t mean they’re off the hook. I’ve noticed a smugness about them, and attempt to be so right so far ahead of the fact that it’s clouding what I assume should be their better judgment.

The Dodgers’ Russell Martin bristled at being brushed back early in Game 3 of the NLCS and McCarver correctly predicted retaliation by Dodger pitcher Hiroki Kuroda. Kuroda climbed the hill in the top half of the next inning, and McCarver and Buck did not get off the subject of the impending chin music until it happened three batters into the inning.

McCarver interjected ad nauseam about the utility of throwing at a player in this situation or that (behind in the count, ahead in the count, nobody on, no outs, one out). He echoed some of the perplexing “wisdom” that you never want to walk a hitter up five runs early in the game as a reason for not throwing at a guy in a 2-0 count.

The rules about throwing at a hitter are simple:

1) Do it with two outs and no baserunners.

2) Do it with a fastball in the ribs.

That’s it. McCarver knows that, he must. Phillie Shane Victorino walked up there with two outs and nobody on and knew what was going to happen. McCarver even said it after the fact. However, he was so concerned about staying ahead of the action and looking smart that he had to twist the whole situation into something much more than it was.

For the record, I was very pleased with the way it all went down. Kuroda showed the hardware that we saw in Japan, Victorino made a good point about where that ball should have been, and both sides came out even.

In Game 4, the dust had hardly settled on a new situation when Buck and McCarver began the self-satisfying commentary. With runners on second and third, one out, and Manny Ramirez still shaking the donut from his bat, the press box pair began talking about what an easy call it was to intentionally walk Ramirez and pitch to Martin with the bases loaded.

One comment about it would have sufficed, but Buck and McCarver sang a snide chorus, saying all but “What idiot would pitch to Ramirez in this situation?” I really wanted Charlie Manuel and the Phillies to be those idiots. I have never wanted so badly to see the announcers crossed up.

But again, this is why I miss American broadcasts. Though I probably would have walked Ramirez, the maddening dialogue between Buck and McCarver got the wheels turning in my head, got me searching for arguments to the contrary. Their Japanese counterparts fail to do so night in and night out.

I suppose the ideal would be an American announcer equipped with a bit of Japanese humility, or a Japanese announcer with a little more American whimsy and ego. But then, what would I have to write about?

The Legend of Mac: Return to Castle Mountain

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 9, 2008 in Misc. 2 Comments

While casually thumbing through a monthly community newsletter, I stumbled across an outdoor cooking event to be held at none other than mystical Castle Mountain.

I did eventually and successfully navigate the inner roads of Castle Mountain once, although like beating Super Mario Bros. the first time, I wasn’t sure if I could do it again.

This time, the Kochi Youth Association offered to drive twenty 15- to 30-year-olds up the mountain on a Sunday morning in October for a short hike and a lunch consisting of mountain cuisine.

The day arrived, and with it torrential rains. I called up the fellow at KYA and he said that there was a Plan B and to come on down.

I invited Noodles, an English teacher from Massachusetts who lives to the east of Kochi City and who once consumed 159 bowls of soba noodles in succession.

About 15 folks our age showed up, and we piled into two vans and headed up the crooked road that wraps around Castle Mountain. The rain was practically coming up from the ground, it was falling so hard.

We arrived at a small building on the main road of a tiny town perched on a hillside. Across the street was a post office, a fire station, and an elementary school, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they were all in the same building. Sheets of rain prevented me from taking a closer look.

It was at this community center that we met Mountain Main, a swarthy, wiry Japanese man in his fifties who had grown up deep in the Shikoku Mountain Range and knew everything there was to know about…well, the Shikoku Mountain Range.

Tough as a hunk of beef jerky yet gentle and grandfatherly, Mountain Man shook our hands and told us to get back into the vans - we couldn’t hike in the rain, but dammit, we could drive!

We hopped out at a familiar place to me, it was one of those devilish crossroads that had given me fits in Quest for Castle Mountain. Mountain Man scrambled up the glistening black cliff, and for the first time, I realized that it was a rather unique rock formation with sparse vegetation compared to the rest of the scene.

He told us that it was rock from deep within the Earth, jarred loose and thrust into the Kochi landscape by periodic earthquakes. It was of the right quality for a certain kind of concrete and was beneficial to a few specific types of plants, the names, functions, and even tastes of which he knew by heart.

There was a story for every plant, and I was overwhelmed by the breadth of his knowledge. I blurred my focus and looked at the cliff, and at the dirt hillsides surrounding it - just hills with plants, I thought. If I had had to guess, I would have said that all of the plants were the same.

Not so for Mountain Man. He knew which plants to eat, which not to even touch, and which to strip the bark off of and sell to Japanese paper makers. He was like Willy Wonka and Castle Mountain and the Shikoku Range were his chocolate factory.

His eyes danced and he spoke at a rapid pace, and it was evident that his mind was moving faster than his mouth allowed. I detected traces of a mountain accent and would have loved the chance to hear him and a farmer go at it, though I probably wouldn’t have understood a single word.

We squeezed back into the vans, all of us dripping wet by that time, and the vans strained to carry us up to the peak. We encountered a fallen tree blocking the road, and none of the guys in the group had to be told twice to jump out of the vans and push it away.

Finally, we reached the “parking lot” close to the top, which barely had room for the two vans and called for some creative parking. On the small summit, we looked down at nothing but bright, gray rainclouds.

It was a shame, because Mountain Man knew about the centuries-old castle ruins and abandoned prison visible from the peak. He also told us about fault lines and old city and town boundaries that he could have shown us on a better day.

The geography geek in me really wants to go back and scale Castle Mountain for a look at these things, but I’ve made it up there myself and didn’t see them before, so the budding cyclist in me is refusing.

Mountain Man found some mushrooms and began to explain the ways he could tell if they were tasty or even edible. I was taken with the way he handled them, the pale, white caps flailing about in his brown hands as he raved about the risks and rewards of mushroom hunting.

I’m not sure if I only imagined him taking a bite of one and continuing to educate with probably-poisonous-but-maybe-not-let’s-see mushroom spilling out of his mouth.

It was a great chance to hear a Japanese person speak about a subject other than baseball with real expertise. Rare is the opportunity to take on the challenge of deciphering alien words and concepts in addition to processing information that is new regardless of language or culture.

Since Mountain Man was schooling us all on rocks and plants and using terminology that none of us knew, the foreigner/Japanese lines melted away as much as they ever will. We were all students becoming enlightened and that was what mattered most. I enjoyed that situation very much and should seek out opportunities like it more often.

Noodles and I kept the ball rolling once we returned to the community center and set up the tarps and cooking equipment. Everyone was in a great mood despite the pouring rain, and we were determined to enjoy a cooking lesson from Mountain Man. That made it easy to maintain the flow of conversation and make sure that everyone was a part of it.

At a few times it became necessary for me to say something to Noodles or vice versa, and we surprised ourselves by keeping it in Japanese. That allowed us to be courteous to everyone else without disturbing the speed and momentum of the conversation.

We’ve talked with each other about how much we dislike hearing non-native Japanese speakers speak Japanese. I can’t stand it because very few people pronounce things correctly or attempt to make it sound Japanese. Noodles has an extensive vocabulary and impeccable command of grammar, and he doesn’t like wading in the kiddie pool.

Yet this is the second time that we’ve hit the override button on speaking to each other in Japanese, and each time it made sense as we were in front of other Japanese. If we’re willing to beat our swords into plowshares over this, we actually make a pretty good team - he always knows the word that I’m looking for, and when his textbook-perfect Japanese and quirky delivery is met with quizzical looks, I’m there to help him package it better.

Noodles seems to be the right guy with which to try and let go of another piece of Marco Polo Syndrome. I’m sure that non-Japanese Japanese will always grate on my ears (even my own does, on occasion), but I must admit that I am quick to judge and compare whenever I hear a fellow barbarian speaking in tongues. Life will be better the more I simply smile and move on.

In any event, it was fantastic to meet a whole bunch of young Japanese people. One point on the negative side for Kochi is that, due to its remote location and poor economic performance compared with the rest of the country, it lacks the job opportunities and the night life that attract young people.

Many of them flee to Osaka and Tokyo right out of college, if not high school, and stay there until they have a family to raise or elderly parents to care for. I am always a bit blown away by the seeming explosion of youth that I see when I step off a train in the big cities (even Nagoya). There just aren’t that many twenty-somethings in Kochi.

Most of the participants did not know each other prior to the outdoor event, and so we all spent time telling our stories and the dearth of youth in Kochi came up several times. Many of them said that upon returning they feared they wouldn’t be able to find jobs in Kochi and that all of their other friends were long gone.

I suppose that’s why they showed up on a Sunday morning to mess around in the mountains with a bunch of people they didn’t know. After we made baskets by hand out of kudzu vine, the day ended with us sending each other our cell phone information via amazing laser technology (okay, it’s just infrared rays).

All in all, it was a very fulfilling day. Geology and botany lecture for starters, a huge pot of deer meat stew for the main dish, and a sense of belonging and fellowship on the side.

Stupid, Stupid, Stupid

Published by Bob Sanchez on October 6, 2008 in Baseball and Lessons. 0 Comments

I want to travel back in time and visit a young man who didn’t know what he was quite literally throwing away.

I want to see him in 1999 and tell him that he doesn’t have to throw the ball as hard as he can to get guys out. Also that it wouldn’t hurt to let up a little bit when his teammates and he are doing rundown drills without gloves.

I want to see him in 2001 and make him promise never to set foot on a pitching mound again, no matter how tempting it may seem. Furthermore, I’d tell him that even though curve balls are standard fare in the Sunday beer league that he still isn’t quick enough or nasty enough to be effective at all.

I want to see him in 2002 and tell him that it’s just C-league intramural co-ed softball. Again, that he doesn’t have to throw the ball as hard as he can to get guys (and girls) out.

I want to see him in 2004 and convince him that it’s not worth it to wind up a cold, drunk arm to try and throw 82 MPH to beat some guy named Brett Hughes at the speed pitch booth. I’d also let him know that the girl with the gun was probably lying when she said, “The last two were 100 miles per hour, I think you need to throw again!”

I want to see him in 2006 and tell him not to try and tough out batting practice, not even for one more batter. I’d remind him that he hates batting practice and that he could do a better job helping players hit while giving them soft-toss.

In all of these situations, I would try and explain to him that it makes more sense to enjoy throwing for a long time rather than spending all of his bullets in relatively meaningless endeavors.

Let’s see, play catch with your son in twenty years, or attempt to throw your friend out from left field on a softball field when the first baseman isn’t even looking and everyone is just there to screw around and hit some balls? Obviously, he wasn’t smart enough to make those decisions on his own, time and time again.

Sadly, this young man is still making stupid decisions regarding his shriveled, rotten shadow of a throwing arm. The head baseball coach at his high school asked if he would be willing to throw BP, and for unfathomable reasons, the guy agreed to give it a shot.

Four batters and eighty pitches later, he descended the dirt mound, having bitten the inside of his cheeks to keep from screaming or otherwise showing his pain on his face for the last thirty or so. He cursed the stubbornness and idiocy that kept him from quitting in the middle of a hitter or simply and politely refusing to throw in the first place.

Sometimes I wish I didn’t know this young man as well as I do.