December 12, 2002 - 11:03 PM
Wes Ehrlichman

Just so that you know, I wrote this before adding pictures and I realized that I didn't even write about any of the items depicted in the pictures. Just look at the pictures and rest assured that the events in said pictures occurred on the same few days.

Nov. 25th to the 26th was the midyear conference for JETs. I saw it as a meeting where they remind JETs that they're actually here to teach and not to mess around. My JET friends Doug and Cindy drove into the city with me on Sunday to see the new Harry Potter movie.

In the car we had a conversation about whether or not Japan is essentially different from America (or Canada, where Doug's from). This is a very open ended question and there's not really an answer, but it's a fun topic to discuss. We are in Japan after all. My argument was that Japan and the US are closer to being similar than they are to being different. I think I've discussed this on the site before. Japan's culture is what separates it from America, but the people are pretty much the same.

Cindy completely disagreed with me, and Doug wavered back and forth. Cindy's thought was that Japan is too conservative. Cindy is from San Francisco though, where conservative means not being bisexual. Most of the things we came up with had to do with living in the city or living in the country and weren't necessarily specific differences between the countries. So we basically decided on nothing.

  
KFC. Your home for Christmas Dinner in Japan. 100% true story

We met up with Maria, Brad, and a bunch of Doug's friends when we got to the city and went and went to see the movie. It was really good, I liked it pretty much the same as the first one but the ending dragged on a bit.

That night we went to eat at a 24 hour restaurant. We went in, got a table for 8, and sat in the nonsmoking section. Japanese 24 hour restaurants are spot on recreations of American ones, only with Japanese food instead of American food, a buzzer to call the waitress to your table, and a drink bar where you get your own drinks. The food is the same low quality you can expect to get at an American 24 hour restaurant, and the waitresses are just as upset to be working there. At any rate, at one point during the dinner I got up to get a drink from the drink bar.

The drink bar was located in between the smoking and nonsmoking sections of the restaurant. When I got up I peered into the smoking section. Imagine my surprise when it had the same type of people as an American 24 hour restaurant! The telling sign was the two punk rock guys in front that looked like they'd been there all night. It was a great reminder of something I miss a lot from home, that being the late night Dennys crowd. Sigh. Again, another sign that Japan and America are essentially the same.

No tips in Japan = this job SUCKS!

That first thing I noticed when I got into the hotel was the scantily clad woman peering from behind the hotel brochures. My TV had an adult station, as all hotels do. When I turned on the TV though, the adult station was right there. A minute later it flipped to another show. Apparently they give you a minute or so of free adult movie time. There's no way they would do this in America, just in case a kid would happen to hit the wrong button on the remote. Strike one against me for differences between America and Japan.

Morning view from my $50 a night hotel

The next day we had orientation all day. It was interesting to hear about other people's teaching styles and stories and to meet some of the other JET's English teachers. I probably would have had mine with me, but Monday was my real English teacher's first day back, so it's probably better that he didn't come.

That night Cindy and I tried to decide what to do all night, and in the process we ended up doing a whole lot. The official activity was a reception dinner and drinking party. We kinda wanted to go, but we also really wanted to get some shopping done so we went shopping for a little while instead. We ended up spending more than an hour in a bookstore. I bought some flashcards to study English, a small book of Animal Crossing Stickers, a magazine, and a small essay book about Japan and America called American Pie.

Don't expect continuity like this in many more pictures

In this book there is an essay about the basic difference between America and Japan. The essay claims that the basic difference between America and Japan can be summed up using the poem, "The Road Less Traveled" by Just in case you're not familiar with the poem it goes something like this:

I came to a road with two paths,
one path was worn with walking,
and one wasn't.
I took the road less traveled,
and that made all the difference.

I should have rewritten that as a limerick. Hold on, let me retry.

I came to a road with two ways.
One side had been walked on for days.
The other side was bare,
So I took the path there
and a difference is what this path made.

I am such a poet. Faulkner eat your heart out!

Now I'll take a break from mocking the great poets of our time and explain the rest of the essay. It claims that the basic difference between American people and Japanese people is that American people will usually take the road less traveled and Japanese people will usually take the road more traveled If taking the road less traveled makes a difference than Japanese people definitely wouldn't want to take that road because they think being different is bad. I would agree with this assertion. Being different is seen as a bad thing in Japan, but a good thing in America.

Is this assertion true though, or is it just a false impression that our cultures try to make us believe? To use an example that hits closer to home if I tell someone who's an adult that I'm really into video games and that I want to make games some day what do they think? They think I should grow up. There's a teacher at my middle school that constantly is getting on my case about being into video games. He thinks it's childish. This is a big similarity between the countries. People are picked on for being different no matter where you go.

Why do old guys wear such big glasses?

When we finally left the bookstore it was too late to go to the reception so we decided to eat. We headed to the Indian Restaurant, trying to find people to eat with on my cell phone as we walked. We had no luck in picking up more people to eat with, but when we got there we sat next to a table with two Jets and two Japanese woman. Just to try it out I ordered an Indian beer. There is a cultural rule in Japan that you must always have people pour alcohol for you. I kept nudging Cindy to pour me some more beer whenever I was done with what was in the tiny cup they gave me. Shortly before our dinner was brought to us another Japanese woman showed up. She was friends with the other two but there wasn't any room at their table so she sat with us. Cindy and I took this as the chance to ask about the beer. We asked her if she pours drinks for her boyfriend if they're just hanging out at home. She said that most of the time he makes her. I told her that next time she should tell him to do it himself and that it was really sexy. Hey, it sort of is. I think I would be very impressed with an independent Japanese woman. This is another strike against me though. Is there such a thing as the independent Japanese woman? Everyone in Japan just does what they're supposed to do and doesn't question it whereas in America they question most everything. Especially if it sounds stupid, like being forced into pouring someone else's liquor for them. By the way after she poured my beer two or three times Cindy told me to do it myself. She's never going to be a good Japanese wife.

The next thing on the agenda was a party at the doggy bar. We headed over there and talked to the doorman. No one was there yet so we went to the arcade and played some a typing game based on a 1970s Anime called Lupin the 3rd. It's a fun game. I also spent about $5 trying to win a keychain of a hello kitty character in a light up house. If this thing was in a store I wouldn't spend $1 on it but put it in a machine where getting it depends on whether or not I can aim a fork at a piece of string and I'll spend whatever it takes.

You probably can't see it, but trust me when I say there's a cockroach in this food. I yelled it out inside of the restaurant and the guy working came over, smiled, and picked it out with a big scooper

When we left the arcade we decided that the Doggy Bar was for fools and decided to find our own bar instead. We walked around the shopping district and eventually made our way to the third floor of some building. The door had an old withered look to it and when we went inside the bar looked like the inside of a cave, but with the Goonies DVD being projected onto the wall and a sort of new-age technoish music playing in the background. I guess the place is normally a coffee shop, but late night it turns into a bar. It had to have been the coolest drinking place I've ever been in. There were three people inside when we got there. Two bartenders and a young woman that looked about my age. Keep in mind, it was Monday night and most people had work the next day. Cindy wanted to sit around this table where you're actually sitting inside of a small cave, but I wanted to talk to Japanese people so we sat at the bar. We asked for the menu and stumbled through trying to figure out what we wanted. The girl next to us said "Do you guys need help?" in English and I was surprised. She could speak English!

What's this? Continuity? Yes, this is the bar and the bartenders.

We talked to her for a while, at least a few hours. It turns out that she is into Anime, which makes on of the few older Japanese people that I've met who actually watch it. We talked about the movie Princess Mononoke at one point and when Goonies was over he put that DVD on instead! During the really cool part at the beginning the bartender turned the techno music off and flipped on the sound for the movie. It was really cool. It like we were in our own personal bar! At any rate. I found out that this girl was 23 and had studied English when she went in college in Scotland to become a clothing designer. She failed out of college because all she did was drink, and now she was working at a nearby department store and saving up to go overseas again to finish her degree.

While we were talking my cell phone went off. It was Sue:

"Come by the Doggy Bar! I'm really drunk!"

"But we're in a really cool bar somewhere else, and it's too expensive," I responded.

"It's so fun though, just come on. There's no one at the door, you can just sneak in."

We hung up and I asked the girl at the bar if she'd be interested in meeting a ton more foreigners at the doggy bar. She accepted, but said that she didn't have any money for drinks. I told her that we were going to try to get in for free, but that we'd hook her up if she couldn't afford it, and off we went.

The Doggy Bar was not quite as hoppin' as Sue made it out to be. She was right though, there was no one at the door. We headed in and sat down at the nearest table. Sue was dancing uncomfortably close to some dude in the middle of the bar. It was pretty funny. This bar was a lot like the other one in that we just sat there and talked, but the atmosphere wasn't anywhere near as good. It was just a bar and a DJ table with a white girl JET playing pop hits from the last few years. We could easily have been in America.

After talking for about five minutes the door man saw us and told us that he had to take our money. If we hadn't talked to him about going in or not twice before he probably wouldn't have noticed us. The good part is that we played the Japanese girl off as someone who was there the whole time and she didn't have to pay. Included in the price of admission were two drink tickets. This girl drinks like mad so we gave her a few of our drink tickets. I asked her if she was married and she said that she wasn't, but wanted to marry a gay Scotsman so that she could become a resident of Scotland I asked her about sex and she said that she didn't ever want it.

This is the restaurant that had the cockroach in the food. Unfortunately we ate before we noticed it

My immediate conclusion was that she was the average Japanese woman. Turned off by the society where marriage means you become your husband's surrogate mother. I later thought about it and decided that while the girl from earlier who pours all of her boyfriend's drinks was on one side of the spectrum this girl was on the other. The pouring drinks girl takes the common road and the drinking girl takes the road less traveled

At any rate, my theory was later confirmed when she told us that she had done drugs in Scotland. The fact that I was with Cindy was ironic because I have talked to Cindy about drugs before and I had been trying to convince her that no Japanese people do drugs. We asked more about this to get the scoop. She told us that many people she knows do drugs, but that none of them know that she had done them. She's got to save face in front of her Japanese friends because if they knew their impression of her would change. I told her that I'd never done drugs and she was like it's OK if you have, but the truth was that I hadn't. I think she just wanted to get some drugs from us because with foreigners there's no risk of it getting back around to someone...

Well it's on the Internet now girl! The whole world knows! Hahahahaha! Just kidding, I'm not putting her picture up or mentioning her name because I don't want to point any fingers.

We continued to talk until we were the last people in the bar and they kicked us out. It was a really fun night! I hope I run into this girl again because it was really interesting to find out about "generation-x" Japanese culture, not to mention the fact that she spoke really good English and has lived a really interesting life.

The next day was the last day of the conference and we had a few small meetings and then met in the big meeting hall to hear a few speeches, say a few good-byes, and fill out a sheet about what we'd learned. My conclusion was that I needed to put more effort into preparation for Junior High. I haven't really done any more since the conference though, so I guess it was pretty pointless. On the plus side me and Mr. Eto have gotten along really well so far.

Here are some pictures of people at the conference.

  
You may notice a majority of girls in these pictures
  
That's because most of the English teachers that showed up were girls
  
Honestly while that is true, I probably would have taken pictures of mostly girls regardless.
  
Who else am I supposed to take pictures of?
  
These guys?

Back to the main theme though. Are Japan and America essentially different or essentially the same? I still say everywhere's basically the same. I guess the reason that I say everywhere is essentially the same is because human nature, good and bad, is the same everywhere, and it shines through any cultural wrapping. It's funny because it seems like culture is society's way of trying to prevent human nature. In Japanese culture you have to give a gift whenever you go to someone's house. OK, culture says that you're going to be giving a lot of gifts if you go anywhere, human nature says that it sucks to have to spend all that money on gifts, and the end result is that in Japan no one ever goes to anyone else's house. This is just one example.