Archive for November, 2008

Currency of Kochi

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 27, 2008 in Misc. 2 Comments

Kochi has finally caught up with the rest of the country, and we now go about all bundled up during the day. Being cold is not something I like doing, but there is one very good consolation - the autumn fruits and vegetables!

Shopping for food in Japan is a far cry from shopping in California as I recall it. Save a few obviously seasonal fruits like strawberries and watermelon, I seemed to be able to buy whatever I wanted to eat, pay the same price, and expect the same level of taste throughout the year.

Sure, a lot of it was imported, but that made things cheaper! The point is that I don’t remember ever having to plan my menu around the seasons or wanting to eat something but being on the wrong side of June and out of luck.

Unfortunately, eating seasonally is part of life in this country, and it has created a notable disturbance in the way that I cook and consume.

I’m an apple-a-day guy. I love to buy a big one and make the teachers at school squirm when I chomp into it, skin and all (most of them like to peel and slice apples). They are expensive, hovering around a dollar a unit, but they are dependable and delicious.

Until around May. I noticed the prices climbing up, the number in stock going down, and the taste getting worse. In mid-summer, I finally had to stop buying apples.

Years ago, I began eating apples and oranges daily to take better care of my health, but hardly a day went by that I didn’t enjoy tearing into a juicy one, regardless of the season. The apple shortage was a big blow to my comfortable existence.

Luckily, it was watermelon season, and shoot, watermelon is watermelon wherever you are. Like apples, they weren’t cheap (three or four bucks a serving), but they were delicious and hit the spot on a humid summer day.

It began to dawn on me that I was on the clock for watermelon, so I scoured the shelves for better deals and scarfed as much as I could before it went out of style. The result was that I got tired of watermelon, and seasonal depreciation and my overspeculation sucked all the fun out of it. I didn’t even enjoy the last one I ate.

The same thing happened with persimmons and with Giant Kochi Pears, which are quite tasty at their height and quite bland on the down slope.

There was a dry period throughout September. Nothing tasted good. Potatoes, greens, and even bananas weren’t any good at all. The lack of bananas shocked me; surely it’s always banana time somewhere.

I walked into several supermarkets and there were ZERO bananas on the shelves. I had never seen anything like it. Handwritten signs in each store begged, “Please, one bunch per customer at [the wholesale] price.” I guessed that perhaps there was a problem with importing them and nearly resorted to dried-up imported California oranges or my fruit fix.

Later, I discovered that some starlet had championed a “Morning Banana Diet” on TV and that people had rushed to do the same. This happens often in Japan; some scientist has enough to say about the dietary benefits of onions that he gets on TV, and all of a sudden you can’t get onions at the store.

“Japanese people are very weak when up against the media,” said Ms. Inept in a rare moment of clarity.

These booms last a month or so, and then it’s on to yogurt or mushrooms or cat food or whatever’s next. Mix these asinine ambushes in with seasonal patterns and they make for brutal shopping conditions rife with disappointment for a California boy.

Anyhow, the good apples finally showed up in stores in mid-October, and along with them mikan (tangerines, Mandarin oranges) and yuzu (citrons (?)). Yuzu are like bitter lemons, and they are useful for salad dressing, curing meat, or putting in the house entryway for their scent.

Mikan are abundant in Kochi, which has the perfect climate for several varieties of the fruit. Ponkan are my favorite by far because of their taste and because each one is a pretty good size. I usually have to have a couple mikan to feel like I’ve eaten something.

Farmers in the area allow people to harvest their own mikan for nominal fees, and almost everyone has a stock of mikan at home. I’ve got a ten-pound box sitting in my kitchen, and a buddy of mine walked off a farm last week with 40 pounds of mikan for ten bones.

Most people eat two or three a day, and they have to, because there are so many and they’re difficult to give away. It’s not hard to get a houseguest to take a bag home with him, and it’s always fun to sneak into work early and dump a box on the table in the break room, but they make their way around town and usually find their way back to where they started.

I’m lucky in that I don’t get tired of mikan and it only gets more fun when ponkan show up in January, but I am hit especially hard when they VANISH from the landscape around April. They are simply gone. Then it’s back to dried-up imported oranges.

For the next several months, though, I’m rich in the autumn currency of Kochi. I shove a few in my pockets when I go on long bike rides, and not much beats ripping one open at the top of a frigid pass, enjoying the contents, and tossing the peel on the side of the road. Natural littering is fun, right up there with putting out a campfire with your buddies.

I am, however, on the watch for an apple or mikan boom, and if I get wind of one ahead of the broadcast, I might resort to desperate measures to protect my winter wonderland.

The Head Hancho

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 17, 2008 in Baseball, Funnies and Lessons. 5 Comments

Yo, did you know that “hancho” is a Japanese word? I didn’t until I got on the horn a few weeks ago with a man from one of the Nippon Pro Baseball teams.

He’s an older Japanese gentleman who spent some time working and studying on the East Coast, losing his job after a company named Federal Express bought out the smaller shipping company for which he worked.

Mr. Shipping returned to Japan and began working for a famous Japanese shipping and transportation company that happened to own a baseball team. Now he does more work for them on the baseball side of operations. His is an interesting but not uncommon route to becoming a Japanese baseball team’s manager of international affairs.

Unlike some other “international” guys, Mr. Shipping speaks English very well and is an extremely learned man to boot. I imagine that he would be an excellent JEOPARDY! contestant, as he never fails to sprinkle a few of the latest headlines and add a dash of old-fashioned wit to each of our conversations.

Once, I was asking him about a player in whom my club was interested, and found that his Port City . . . Longshoremen . . . held an option on his contract for 2009. The option gave the Longshoremen rights to the player within Japan, but he was free to sign with an American club in the event that there was interest.

I pressed on with more questions and found that the player’s wife had a lot of weight in the final decision, and my one-yen cell phone was burning up with all of the great information I was getting.

However, I asked one question too many, and Mr. Shipping responded in a delicate, smooth tone:

“Well, Mr. Mac, I do believe that what you’re asking me could be considered what you call ‘tampering,’ if I’m not mistaken.”

Though delivered in nearly accent-free English, he couched the comment in the typical Japanese layers of politeness and indirectness. The above phrase is very close to what spoken Japanese sounds like, especially when you’re accusing somebody of something.

I was as surprised to hear the word come out of his mouth as I was that I had crossed the line. So many times on this baseball journey, I have learned that I don’t know as much as I think I do about business and the way things work in the game.

We get words like “tampering” and “option clauses” on the television sports reports, but I would surmise that most people don’t know what they really mean. I know that I have thrown words around the concepts of which I was sure that I knew.

I was standing on a land mine in front of Mr. Shipping because I didn’t stop to think about what I was doing; I never thought that I would come close to committing an unethical business practice.

His tone was calm and he gently coaxed me out of the mess into which I had greedily stumbled. Our relative ages and experience left no doubt as to who held a higher position, but he assumed the upper hand so gracefully that he was easy to listen to and learn from.

I apologized tensely and took the lesson to heart, and he followed up with what could be described as a verbal muscle relaxer:

“So, I got it right, didn’t I? ‘Tampering?’”

Instant relief shot through my body and I almost dropped the phone. I chuckled and confirmed that he had indeed knocked that one right out of the park.

On another occasion, I called him to ask about an impending rule change for foreign scouts in Japan. An industrial league player named Junichi Tazawa is making huge waves right now by attempting to become the first scandal- and hardship-free Japanese player to play in the Major Leagues without first playing professionally in Japan.

There are plenty of young Japanese players ahead of him in the minor leagues who may get there more quickly, but Tazawa is a highly sought-after pitcher and officially asked not to be drafted in Japan for the second straight year. He is the banner case, the poster child, the final unwelcome wake-up call to those who want to protect Japanese baseball from evil, foreign predators.

NPB and the amateur leagues freaked out and slapped a multi-year penalty on any player, including Tazawa, who refuses to play in Japan first and goes abroad instead. Should they try to return, they will have to sit out two or three seasons, depending on the circumstances upon their departure.

Among other suggested measures was a registration system for MLB scouts, and I assumed that other, more stringent regulations would accompany such a system. In short, I was worried about my status in the country and with my club in the event of a rule change.

The day of the draft passed, Tazawa went untouched, and the penalty will be enforced for the first time. But there was no news on the MLB scouting registration. I wanted to know what was up, so I gave Mr. Shipping a ring.

He let me know the particulars from the NPB meetings and it sounded like there was nothing to worry about. My club does things on the up and up and we already have all of the pieces of proof and approval that we would need should the rule go through.

Mr. Shipping continued with the minutes of the meetings:

“You know, there were some problems a few years ago with some people posing as scouts or agents in order to get contact with our amateur players,” he explained.

“One man made false business cards and distributed them to high school coaches in order to gain access to the players and their families. Another disguised his voice on the telephone and tricked team officials into giving him free tickets.”

The whole while, I was giggling inside because Mr. Shipping is very meticulous with his pronunciation and his diction is a little stiff, but never incorrect as far as I’ve heard.

He uses so many official-sounding words, yet with his warm tone makes you feel like you’re sitting on the opposite side of a campfire from him, with a marshmallow on a stick in one hand and a mug of hot chocolate in the other.

“You know, I think that NPB simply wants to make sure that scouts are actually doing work at these games. So many of our [Japanese] scouts have been caught at the games with their friends, their families, their concubines - ”

I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I didn’t wake up that morning in Kochi, Japan expecting to hear the word “concubines.” Come to think of it, “mistress” is probably the only word (of the many we have for that . . . position . . .) he could have used there that wouldn’t have made me laugh.

All in all, I like calling Mr. Shipping because I get good baseball information from him, but he usually manages to enrich my day with some polite conversation or an eclectic bit of knowledge.

A few Japanese teams have shut down toward MLB guys thanks to the “Tazawa Problem,” and it’s refreshing to still have at least one official on your side. I’ve been hung up on, snarled at, ignored, and banished to the left field corner for scouting in the last two months. All of it makes me sad that my team isn’t interested in Tazawa, that might make some of the shoddy treatment worth it.

But Mr. Shipping and the other representatives of the Port City Longshoremen have been gentlemen since Day One.

Back to “hancho.” I think he made the comment in reference to that player’s wife, something along the lines of “she’s the head hancho in their home.”

He paused after he said it, and asked, “Do you know ‘hancho?’ It is an old Japanese word.”

He asked me to guess the origin and the characters used to write it, and I was searching through the Rolodex for matches to “honcho” because I had always seen it spelled that way in English. “Honcho” would have the long “o” sound in Japanese, and I came up with a pair of characters.

“Wrong,” he said gleefully. He then explained that a “han” is a squad or a patrol, and “cho” means “long” but is often used to refer to the head of a group or department (the words for “manager,” “department head,” and “principal” all contain the same “cho”). The word came from way back in ancient wartime Japan.

I instantly recognized “han” from the CSI episodes that make it over here. They’re called the “Chemistry Investigation Squad” in a literal translation, or “Kagaku So-sa Han” for those of you keeping score at home.

So there you have it. The origin of “hancho.” And the story of Mr. Shipping, the best ambassador of Japanese baseball and the head hancho of international relations in my book.

Dann7’s Revenge

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 15, 2008 in Comforts of Home. 7 Comments

By popular demand (one person), here is the story behind the world’s most comfortable throne and how I came to have one in my very own home.

It starts in a typical Isla Vista, California scene with four guys crammed into a two-bedroom apartment. One of them was a clean freak and got a little too into the homemaker/nagging mother role.

He’d do little things like tape a note to the wall reminding everyone not to turn the heater up past 68 degrees, hide the vacuum cleaner to avoid neighbors getting their hands on it, or complain about a bathroom habit the name of which is synonymous with winning often and running naked.

Yes, he loved all things clean and the apartment was his palace. His roommates thought his behavior odd and often annoying, but gladly stepped in and accepted some of the frequent positive comments from visitors regarding the immaculate shape of a guys’ apartment.

One day, this young man returned to the apartment after a very long day at school and work. Several hours in class, one on live radio, and a few on the phone in the office had drained him, and he shuffled home slowly, anticipating but not quite yearning for the frozen pot pies and Albertson’s tub-o’-ice-cream that awaited him.

He switched on his room light and squeezed through the space between the dresser and the bed, which he had placed carefully to maximize space for his roommate and himself. He had measured each piece of furniture and drawn plans to exhaustion to find the perfect layout; this was just the type of meticulous activity on which he deemed worthy of spending time.

What ho! A brown package the size of a textbook lay upon his Los Angeles Dodgers pillow. He picked it up and studied the label, which had the correct address but a rather strange addressee.

He whirled around to find his three roommates peering into the room from around the corner in the living room, each one on tiptoe and about to burst into laughter. They had obviously been waiting all night for this moment.

“Who’s Dann7 McQueef?” the neat freak wondered aloud. That was indeed the name printed on the label.

Peals of laughter bounced off the walls in the cramped hall space as the three men urged Dann7 to open the package.

Their eyes shone into the dimly-lit room as Dann7 tore open the package to reveal a blue video sleeve containing a white video cartridge. Not a one of them noticed a brochure for the Toto Toilet Company of Japan that fell to the floor.

Puzzled, Dann7 allowed the tape to be ripped from his hands and shoved into the VCR in the living room. The four guys gathered around the small TV set and anxiously waited to see the contents of the mysterious white tape.

They were like zombies with eyes glued to the flickering screen as the 12-minute video played, describing the latest and greatest in Toto Toilet technology - the Washlet.

The Washlet. Such a simple concept, yet so brilliant and modern. An accessory to any regular toilet, just take off the old seat and lid and install the Washlet.

Tired of single-ply toilet paper and fighting off those first few seconds of cold-on-bare-ass in the morning?

My friend, the Washlet is just for you, the video seemed to say.

Five different settings for strength of spray at two convenient angles. Self-cleaning nozzle. An all-new blow-dry function complete with air temperature control. Lifetime guarantee. Four easy payments.

Everything but an obnoxious bearded man screaming, “I’ll give you TWO more bottles of KABOOM if you call right now!”

They watched until the TV screen went blue, and then the three men turned slowly toward Dann7 with expectant looks on their faces. They rushed forth with pro-Washlet arguments:

“Think of the money we’ll save on toilet paper!”

“One less thing for you to nag about!”

“Between the Washlet and Mario Golf, I might never leave the bathroom!”

“Self . . . cleaning . . . that is so you, girlfriend!”

The idea was enticing, but Dann7 quickly calculated that they would have needed to pool together one dollar for every home run that Barry Bonds had hit up until that point. Or about a dollar for each point in Rob Deer’s 1991 batting average, four times over.

He nixed the plan, but the other three could tell that he had at least entertained it. In all, they had gotten a lot more than expected out of the practical joke stemming from a late-night infomercial.

Dann7 was struck by everyone’s willingess to share the same crack-cleaning nozzle, but he would never forget the fifteen minutes that he and his friends spent imagining Isla Vista’s first toilet paper-free apartment.

————————————————

Somehow, I was aware of the tale of the Toto tape and revisited the story by surprise one brisk February day.

I chose the cheapest apartment closest to school that I could find when I first moved to Kochi, and that proved to be a huge mistake for many reasons. I put up with it until the contract ended in April, but I wasted no time in finding a better place well beforehand.

Several places fit my desires, and I was having a little trouble deciding between them. The apartment agent showed me into my current place, “Neo Clement,” and one of the first things he did was to open the bathroom door and unveil the Washlet that came as part of the deal.

My eyes bugged out of my head at the prospect of actually owning and using one of these delightful devices every day without having to share it or pony up the dough neceesary to purchase it.

Forget the fantastic view of the rivers and sacred mountains of Kochi, forget the airy breeze that passed freely through the place and the perfectly situated sun-soaking layout, I was gettin’ me a Washlet!

In addition to the Isla Vista folklore, consider that I was using something like this at school and avoiding using my toilet at home due to poor ventilation.

This was truly a sales point, and I chided the agent for leaving it out of the brochure as it would have made my choice so much easier. He cocked his head and raised a finger.

“Ah, but this is the only apartment in the building that comes with a Washlet.”

“SOLD. Where do I sign?”

I was giddy waiting for my first chance to use the throne, and I dutifully refrained from sitting on it until the last box was unpacked and everything was in its place.

I plugged it in and studied the buttons on the panel that jutted out from the right side of the pot. One resembled the stop button on a DVD player, another showed an upside-down heart being showered with water, and the third looked like the restroom woman sitting on a water fountain.

Upon first contact, it was pre-warmed bliss. Oh, yeah, it’s going to be an easy winter, I thought.

My seat doesn’t come with temperature control, but I am able to control the strength of the stream and the seat is pretty smart - it won’t spray unless there is a weight applied on it. Consider what I had to do to find that out.

Two weeks ago, I was cleaning up when I accidentally pressed the spray button a second time - lo and behold! The wand moved back and forth, covering three, no, four times the area it hit when stationary. Don’t you love discovering a new function of an old toy?

My family came to visit in May, and one of the many fun surprises was the Washlet in each of their hotel rooms. My brothers got the most exciting one of all, a Washlet that included a gigantic remote control.

Many of the newer models come with a wall mounted remote control, but this one was about twice the size of a universal remote and worked from outside the bathroom. Unfortunately, we tested out just how fun it could be before anyone actually had to use the facilities and had the joke pulled on them by surprise.

—————————

I never thought that I would be a bidet guy, but one man is responsible for getting me started thinking in that direction. One night, in one of the all-time best examples of reasoning by analogy, he said:

If you got some on your arm, would you use a piece of paper to wipe it off and call that clean?

Well, no. Thanks to the Washlet, not any more.

Fastest Biker in Kochi, Part III

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 10, 2008 in Bike and Lessons. 3 Comments

So, at this point, I’m still the fastest biker in Kochi.

I was wondering where the challenges lay.

I didn’t have to wonder much longer. We stopped to regroup and prepare for the most difficult stretch of the day - a six-mile climb of 2,400 feet to the top of Tengu’s Plateau. We could see our goal, which was an incredibly steep, skyscraping plain off in the distance with a road etched into the side of the jagged cliff underneath it.

The sight was phenomenal and other-worldly. I should have taken a picture and will next time. I watched a microscopic, white car disappear over the plain in the distance and geared up for the ascent of my life.

I had never attempted a climb of this magnitude even on the old bike with easier climbing gears. The closest would be a sudden, thousand-foot rise over a three-mile road just north of Kochi City that I had done several times.

Recalling all of the advice I had received about climbing on a road bike, I set out to keep momentum going and pedal hard. It didn’t work, and I failed fantastically. I was pooped after getting through the first 12% grade incline within the second mile.

On the old bike, I could always make one last pedal before simply letting my feet fall off the pedals and to the ground. This time, however, I forgot to clip out again and collapsed in a heap, wheezing, spitting, and cursing the Tengu, wondering what I had done to deserve such punishment.

Aside: A tengu is some kind of mountain demon with a red face and an extremely long nose. It has several meanings in ancient history and religion, but many people I’ve asked agree that it’s an evil spirit that only does bad stuff to bad people.

I waited for the familiar purple and yellow rings in front of my eyes to go away and attempted to hop back on for more pain, but clipping in uphill proved to be a frustrating endeavor. I finally got it done, but was off the bike again in two or three minutes, defeated by yet another steep slope.

There was no way I could get back on at that point, so I began to walk the bike up to the next flat point, the existence of which I doubted.

Walking in cleated shoes that are not designed for walking is not fun, and I was extremely flustered by the slow place and the slipping around as I dragged my body uphill. It was more difficult than walking on cement in metal baseball cleats, and my old baseball buddies and the scars on the insides of my ankles will tell you that I was horrible at doing that.

I tried twice more to get moving on the bicycle but did not have the aerobic capacity to keep anything going. A few riders passed me, pedaling painstakingly slowly but, alas, still moving toward the goal.

What they were doing looked masochistic, a way to draw out the awful pain and make it last as long as possible. I thought then that if someone had come by and given me a choice between pedaling all the way up that thing without stopping or dying, I would have gotten on my knees and said, “Make it quick.”

However, the other bikers were experienced and I thought it wiser to imitate them than to sit and wait for the support van, so I got back on the horse and did as the Romans were doing.

It worked! It was much harder on my legs, but my lungs no longer felt like blazing hot bricks and I could actually look around and enjoy the scenes of an early fall in the Shikoku Mountains.

Not until I reached the 4,500-foot summit did the Bike Shops take me aside and tell me that biking was an aerobic activity. I really didn’t think of it that way, because on the old bike I had always been out of breath with muscles aflame trying to keep up with the group.

I see the merits on both sides, keeping momentum versus consistent respiration. If you’re intimate with a certain mountain or hill, you know where it makes sense to push it and blow through a rise and where it’s smarter to hold back and trudge up slowly.

Tengu’s Plateau had no such variation as far as I saw, it was just damn hard the whole way through. I took note of how well the aerobic approach worked and will try it again in the future.

I sat on the ground at the peak, looking around at the white clouds and barren, sloping plain before me. The karsts I had seen in pictures were all covered with beautiful, wild green grass that made the white and gray boulders stand out and shine in the sun, but it seemed that we had missed that time of year. The ground was brown and the rocks dull.

Still, the highest point on Shikoku is 6,000 feet and we couldn’t see that mountain for all of the clouds, so it felt like we were on the top of the world. It was deathly quiet, and a lonely wind crawled past our ears as we zipped up our windbreakers and changed into winter gloves.

We still had 15 miles to go to get to the riverside lodge where we would spend the night. My butt had frozen up and it hurt just to sit on the saddle, let alone pedal. Fortunately it was all downhill from the plateau, but the pain was excruciating and deep. Now I know exactly where the muscles connect to the hip bone, they were screaming at me the whole way down the mountain.

In the middle, there was an unlit, curved tunnel 350 yards long. We went through one by one and stopped in the middle, experiencing total darkness. My turn came, and I felt very small and alone in the absence of light. I remembered to clip out, though, that was good.

In that short time, I let my mind wander to an assortment of topics and forgot which way was out. My body hadn’t moved, so I was pointing in the right direction, but I couldn’t remember how much I had already turned to the right or how far away from the walls I was. There may not have been any walls for all I knew, perhaps that tunnel was where holes to China, missing socks, and Alex Winter ended up.

Complete darkness is fun when you’re in a cave and the guide has just turned off the flashlight, or when you’re groping your way around inside the base of a Buddha statue, enclosed in a space barely large enough to stand up straight, let alone kick your toe around looking for the next stairstep.

Not as fun when you have to guess which way is forward and gyrate some wheels to establish balance. The proverbial light at the end of the tunnel appeared, but it had a very definite end to it and I was still bathed in darkness. It was such an odd, nightmarish feeling to see the light source and where the light rays stopped but to be outside of that area.

The national highway inexplicably ceased to be paved and we tumbled and bounced over rocks and gravel for about half a mile before reaching the lodge, where we enjoyed Korean food, cheap Korean beer and Kochi sake, and stories from long ago until we fell asleep, completely exhausted.

We awoke early the following morning to a misty rain that would stay with us all the way back into the city. I was anxious to get home and jump in the tub, and I shot out in front of the group before being told again to slow down.

I didn’t quite get it until a few miles later when we faced a long, but gradual uphill slope. The biker behind me whispered in my ear, “Mac, take it a little slower on the hills, eh?”

The oldest member of the group that day, a 58-year-old retired veterinarian with a huge face, shouted out a phrase in Japanese that has multiple uses, one of which is “please take care of this for me.”

I’ve stopped translating the phrase and don’t ever have to think about it to know what it means in each situation, so I understood what the vet meant as soon as he said it.

I also finally understood the team aspect of cycling and our trip. We stuck together to share the wind, the grind, and the experience. It was important for everyone to stay together, and all I had been thinking about the whole time was myself.

I then thought back on all the times someone had stayed behind to tell me where to turn, or turned and gone back early with me when I simply could not keep up or make it one more leg at the breakneck speed of the racers. Scarce were times that I returned to Kochi City alone.

I owe the riders in KCTC a lot. I feel a great sense of accomplishment having toughed it out for a year with inferior equipment and less experience, but I didn’t beat those obstacles alone. I got encouragement and guidance from every single member and I will pay it forward.

So, while I really wanted to stretch my wings (and hop in the tub as soon as possible), I joined the group and rode merrily with them back to Kochi. It was fantastic and I am looking forward to riding with them again and again. There will be plenty of other times to sprint and max out.

————————–

Where had I gotten off thinking that the challenge in cycling was gone? I’m glad that I was brought down to Earth quickly on that one. I still feel like I can go until the pavement stops, and I’m anxious to expand my radius over the winter, but I know there is still so much to learn and I’m wide open to it.

On top of the lessons in humility, I had seen several guys in their fifties ace the hellish trek up Tengu Plateau. Talk about inspiration. I hope that I’m still able to do that in thirty years.

I thought I was the fastest biker in Kochi.

Fastest Biker in Kochi, Part II

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 8, 2008 in Bike and Lessons. 1 Comment

I am the fastest biker in Kochi.

The time finally came to officially try out my new horse with KCTC. I came out with the bicycle a couple of Sundays ago, still not fully committed to buying it and fixing it up. Rain and an out-of-town bike race left me standing at the Bike Shop alone.

I visited the Bike Shop three or four times during the week to buy parts and ask advice on the used bike that I decided to buy. Rice Man helped me put it together and fixed the mistakes I had made trying to do things on my own.

Mrs. Bike Shop put in a special order for clip-in shoes for me (”Mac, your feet are impossibly huge . . .”), and they arrived at the Bike Shop Saturday morning. I had but one day to break them in before the big two-day trip to the Shikoku Karst on the Kochi-Ehime border.

Aside: I’m still not sure exactly what a karst is. Seems to be strangely-formed land with lots of rocks strewn about, and apparently the campus of UC Santa Cruz is a mini-karst.

The Bike Shops still hadn’t touched the bike other than the diagnostic exam that Mr. Bike Shop had done earlier, but they did hand me a screwdriver and a giant Allen wrench to install the new pedals and clips.

I tried the bike out with one shoe on and instantly noticed the difference of having my feet attached to the pedals. When I hopped on the old bike and pedaled, I was only applying force forward and down on the pedals, but with clip-ins, my legs were working throughout the entire circle. I put on both shoes and tried them out, and the bike nearly took off from underneath me!

I took on a couple of familiar hills and passes on the way to a favorite beach an hour away by the old bike. It took 45 minutes on the new one with about the same amount of effort. I loved how easy it was to maintain momentum, how fast I flew when I pedaled harder, and the more aerodynamic position of my body on the frame.

The members of KCTC broke into applause when I wheeled up the next morning, and exploded with laughter as I fell to the ground, forgetting to clip out and separate my feet from the pedals. I had a huge smile on my face and was waving at them like a dope, effectively erasing the WARNING: YOU ARE STILL CONNECTED TO THE VEHICLE message in my brain.

Imagine trying in earnest to get out of the car with your seat belt fastened. Or trying to stand up and walk after someone has tied your shoelaces together. It looks kind of like that.

About 25 of us departed for the Karst, taking the same national highway that we used to get to the Festival of Fools in February. We passed over into Ehime Prefecture and stopped at a riverside rest area about 45 miles out of Kochi City.

I had yet to break a sweat. We had climbed to about 2,000 feet at the highest point, but the slope seemed amazingly gentle on my new bike, which is about a third the weight of the old one. I spent most of the time toward the very front of the group and got to lead on most of the uphill sections.

It had become so easy to move; I felt loose and free, my body working so much efficiently than before. It was simply awesome, and it stunned me into silence that everyone else noticed.

“Mac, you’re so quiet today! Where’s the energy?”

“Yeah, what’d you do with all of that horsepower?”

“Look at him, it’s like he’s all grown up!”

In truth, I did feel like I had graduated, like I had moved onto something bigger, better, and more important. It just didn’t seem like the time to joke around or speak lightly because the experience was so striking and profound for me. I had never been farther away from base and I wasn’t even out of breath!

As we began the real climb on the next part of our trip, I wondered about my new limits. I thought that I could ride until the road ended somewhere, that I must be so fast that soon enough I’d have to join a racing team and turn pro.

I had considered the old challenges of Kochi to be the hardest of the hard and wondered what could possibly challenge me going forward.

I am the fastest biker in Kochi . . .

Took the Plunge

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 6, 2008 in Bike. 4 Comments

After a year of toiling on The Club of bicycles and months of fretting over what step to take next, I finally purchased a used road bicycle that is as good as new to me!

Despite how much I enjoyed my role as the clown and caboose of KCTC, I wanted to feel what it was like to fly with the big boys. I needed a road bike. No amount of upgrades was going to get it done on my trusty, but bulky, pedaling machine.

The Bike Shops suggested buying a brand new bicycle from them, which would have run me about a month’s pay all told. That’s a huge leap into an unknown world, and I didn’t and still don’t even know if I want to be a part of it enough to warrant spending that much money.

I couldn’t get a trial ride from them as they insisted they didn’t have any bikes in my size in stock. One person in KCTC is taller than me and has longer legs, and he got to test out a few bikes. I pointed that out to the Bike Shops, but I think my foreignness held too strong in their perception of my size.

This happens a lot in Japan. I am by no means the biggest person in town, nor am I the biggest person that anyone has ever seen. I will say that it is very uncommon to see a Japanese person who has my combination of height and girth, but many men eclipse me in one area or the other. I am not the tallest or heaviest person on staff at my school, nor would I be if I put on a school uniform and ran with the students.

However, on first meeting people and almost every time the topic of sizing comes up, the words “Mac, you’re huge” are not far behind. There is a tone of bewilderment and exasperation in their voices, such that it becomes, “Mac, you’re impossibly huge and I’m sure I’ve never seen anything in your size.”

“White foreigner” almost certainly equals “big, huge ape” in Japanese common sense. This perception is convenient sometimes and often works in my favor, but annoys me just as often. If I had to quantify it, I’d say it adds a couple inches, ten to fifteen pounds, and a handful of decibels to what is actually there when I interact with a Japanese person that I don’t know well. It would probably make an olfactometer go crazy, too.

Long story short, I couldn’t test ride something on which I was being asked to spend hundreds of thousands of yen. That didn’t sit well with me and added loads of time to the decision-making process. I was in the Bike Shop at least once a week asking about this and that as well as emailing biker friends and scouring the Internet for deals.

I knew that the Bike Shops wouldn’t be happy if I didn’t buy from them, and on top of that that they would not work on whatever bike I bought from somewhere else. I had seen them shun a girl who used to enjoy riding with KCTC over buying a bike online, and other riders have whispered about getting substandard effort from Mr. Bike Shop on non-Bike Shop bicycles.

They did their best to describe the experience of riding a road bike to me, and that was all I had to go on from everyone else I asked as well.

At the end of September, I decided that remaining loyal to the Bike Shops was worth the money and hassle that I would have saved acquiring the bike some other way. I called Mrs. Bike Shop and asked her to put in an order for one of the new line of Trek 2.1 bicycles.

She was away from the Shop and couldn’t remember the exact colors in the catalog, nor could I. She wanted to make certain that I got the right one, so she told me to call again a few days later when she had the magazine in front of her.

Forgetting the colors turned out to be an extremely lucky oversight for me and an equally unfortunate development for the Bike Shops.

The very next day after the phone call, a fellow from Kochi Technical College came to my high school and gave a short introductory course for the IT majors who were thinking about going to Kochi Tech. He was the Technological English lecturer, a tall, skinny American from Connecticut who had lived in Kochi for the past five years.

I had heard his name from a few Chinese students that I know at Kochi Tech, and I remembered that one of them said that he was a crazy biker. Sure enough, the first slide in his presentation showed him on a mountain bike with mud all over his body and face. He seemed nice enough, so I asked him about cycling after the presentation.

It just so happened that he was an inch shorter than me with legs about the same length, and that his wife had been telling him to get rid of an old road bike that he kept in their shed. He had bought a sleek, new racer the previous year and was hanging onto the old one for its sentimental value.

He invited me to come out for a ride with him, so I finally got to take the test ride that I had so craved while agonizing over the decision.

He took me up into mountains that were new territory for me, all the way up to a road and a peak that I didn’t know existed. I had considered exploring that area before, but the map made it look like there were no roads there. There was good reason for that.

Gradients of 15% and 16% on both the uphill and downhill runs were one reason. On a road (as opposed to a dirt trail), that means either pedaling so hard that you can’t see or think straight, or hurtling downhill so fast that you’d better be wearing brown bike shorts to save yourself some embarrassment at the bottom.

We polished off the mountain in a couple hours and some change, although I was sure at least three times during the downhill stretch that my final words would be either “Holy mackerel!” or “Oh shit!” I’ve got to work on making something more meaningful come out when faced with a chance of death, something like the secret to my delicious French toast or the cure for the common cold.

In all seriousness, I didn’t know that it was possible to go that fast on a bicycle. Lecturer said that he had reached 50 MPH on that mountain in the past. I was spooked because of the sheer speed and also because I didn’t have a very good grip on the brakes as Lecturer’s hands belonged in a different position on the handlebars than did mine.

I logged the harrowing experience and decided that I wanted some more. Lecturer graciously lent me the bike for a few more test rides and I determined which parts I would need to replace. Eventually, I bought the bike for substantially less than the brand new one.

True to the rumors, Mr. Bike Shop would hardly touch the used bike. I brought it by the Shop for a diagnostic, and he looked at it over the glasses perched on his nose with the Japanese equivalent of a “harrumph!” He detailed parts that needed to be replaced, and I dutifully bought each and every one from the Shop.

However, I was left on my own to make the repairs. I consider myself a pretty clever guy with good small motor skills, but I lack common sense when it comes to putting things together and understanding what makes them work. I am a lock to break something that only an idiot would break, cut or glue something in the incorrect place, or put something on backwards.

My luck continued. A middle-aged guy in my neighborhood passes by every now and then on a variety of bicycles and electric scooters, and he always heaves a hearty hello in my direction. I thought he was just a cheerful gentleman, but it turns out that he knew who I was and used to ride with KCTC.

I was embarrassed to find that it was he who phoned ahead and told Mrs. Bike Shop about the Jari and Doro incident, and that he had even been one of the six dudes in the tub at the mountain hot spring in the winter.

He runs a wholesale rice shop down the street from my apartment and is a certified bicycle nut. If it has two wheels, he’s on it. I’d wager that he has more bikes than anyone in town outside the Bike Shops. They hang from the ceiling and peek out from behind 40-pound bushels of rice in his crowded little warehouse, and I think he spends more time playing with bike parts and riding around the neighborhood than he does selling rice.

I took the used bike by Rice Man’s place before I bought it, and his eyes lit up like birthday candles when I told him about it. He stopped me mid-sentence and said, “Mac, if you don’t buy this thing, then I will! Just think of what I could do with this part, with that part . . .” He was all but drooling over it!

He graciously supervised my installation of new handlebars, shifter and brake cables, tires, and pedals, even jumping in and lending a hand when I was about to mess something up. He moved so quickly and with so much energy and urgency, and he grunted and exhaled noisily along with twists of the Allen wrench and screwdriver.

And so it is done. I have joined the rest of the pack and taken another step in the biking world. I am so thankful for the experience and that I was able to meet two amazing men, find a bike within my budget, and still demonstrate some loyalty to the Bike Shops at the same time.

Here she is.

Keys

Published by Bob Sanchez on November 6, 2008 in Observations. 4 Comments

I went to a Halloween party last Friday night dressed as a baseball player. I had authentic gear from the team I work for, so the other guests were impressed and thought it was cute that I was such a rabid fan.

However, I couldn’t help but think that one disadvantage to moving abroad is that you don’t have ready access to an attic or a place to store everything that you grew up with.

I mean, if I was living on the West Coast, I’m sure that I would have some wigs, a false beard, an Austin Powers mask, and that rubber cast that I wore on my arm one day and got everyone to sign and worry over in high school.

Yes, I’m sure that some of those things would be tucked away somewhere convenient.

Anyhow, I went to the party as a ballplayer and hosted two friends for the night at home. I woke up the next day, saw them off, and suited up for a bike ride, but I couldn’t find my keys anywhere. Since I hadn’t locked up my bike, I was still able to go for a ride, so I left the apartment unlocked and took off, thinking that I would find them later.

Funny how missing keys would be a huge, drop-everything-and-fix-it-now problem in the States but not at all here. I wasn’t worried at all. I have stuff that I would not like stolen, but I never worry about it. I don’t lock my door half the time, which is why I can’t be 100% certain that I even had my keys with me Friday night.

The more eyes are around, the more people will act like they are “supposed” to in countryside Japan. That means leaving things as you found them, properly disposing of trash, and not stealing people’s stuff, among other things.

There are a lot of discarded household electronics, vehicles, and other trash in the mountains, but there aren’t any eyes there. In other words, I’d feel more anxious about leaving my bike, say, in the mountains with a flat tire or broken wheel, than I would leaving it in front of my apartment building in the city.

I started to worry when I couldn’t locate the keys after tearing up the apartment. I looked everywhere, including the trash, the toilet bowl, the laundry machine - no keys. I went back to the restaurants from Friday night with the same results.

I was all ready to try out lock-changing Japanese style, but then my keys fell out of a stack of baseball programs that I had lifted up and moved around at least three times in the search. It was very strange. I hadn’t touched the stack of programs or brushed them with my arm, gravity had just taken about 72 hours to do its work.

The situation reminded me of a story from not so long ago. What do you know? Another tale from Fukushima . . .

I was riding home from work a few Fridays ago when my keys fell out of the cell phone pocket on my backpack and onto the road. I was on a big hill, so I had to trudge back up to get them. Before I could reach them, however, a car ran them over and bent ‘em all up.

It figured that they wouldn’t work in the lock on my apartment door, but I had to try. My last class on Fridays is located across town, but it’s only one class in that location, so I usually leave whatever I don’t need at home. After trying to jam my keys into the lock to no avail, it slowly came to me that I was totally screwed.

My cell phone, wallet, and money were all inside the apartment.

Amazingly, I didn’t feel the need to hurl the useless keys to the ground as would be my expected reaction to such misfortune. I thought about calling the boss, but they don’t like me very much because they know I’m quitting, and I don’t want to owe them anything more than I have to, so I put that option next to sleeping in the park all weekend.

I thought about calling a friend, but all of my phone numbers are in my phone and I don’t have any of them memorized, so that wasn’t an option. Amazing, huh? I used to be super phone-number guy, but then I joined the human race and got a cell phone.

It was Friday night and almost 9 p.m., and they roll up the sidewalks very early here, so I had to get moving if I didn’t want to sleep at the foot of a Japanese shrine all weekend. I went to Yama-chan, and I hadn’t been there since July because of how expensive it is. The Mama-san told me that there was a key-fixing place a few towns away and that they were open until 11.

I wasn’t sure if it was going to work, but it was worth a shot. First of all, I had no money and no way to get any (bank card was in my wallet). I had no identification, so if they had any doubts as to how I got my hands on those keys, I wouldn’t get them copied. And, I couldn’t call anyone to vouch for me if the above situation happened.

I was literally nobody from nowhere. And that’s a scary thing when you add to it a foreign language and culture.

Thankfully, the lady at the key place took my mangled key and ground it up, and did it for no charge! I asked how much it cost, and she said “It’s a service” in Japanese. That was a relief, because I was prepared to leave everything I had, including my clothes, as collateral if I was required to pay.

This was a great experience because I got something done quickly and exactly the way I wanted it done. The way it happened even exceeded my expectations. And it was simple, when I needed it most. For all the harping I do about how difficult it is to get things done here, I’m glad that this one time it was easy.

I swelled up with pride after triumphing in the key fiasco, because they don’t teach you how to say “A car ran over my keys” in Japanese class, yet I managed to communicate that calmly and efficiently to everyone who needed to know.

I immediately started downplaying the significance of it, because what would you infer from someone waving a gnarled key in front of you and speaking in broken English? I probably could’ve done it all without saying a word.

Finally, I decided that it was indeed a great accomplishment and that I handled it well. Communication happened, there were no breakdowns, and there was a relative minimum of hand-waving.

I made the key lady and the Yama-chans American-style French Toast to thank them for their help, and presented it to them the Japanese way - apologizing profusely for inconveniencing them and saying that my paltry little gift was in no way equal to their wonderful deeds of kindness. Something like that.