May 16, 2003 - 2:41 PM
Wes Ehrlichman

It's been over a month since I last updated and the best reason that I can give is that I've been really busy. For those of you that I haven't told yet, I've decided not to stay beyond my first year. This means I've only got until the end of July. Less than three months! I think I've accomplished most of what I wanted to while I was here, and I definitely learned a lot so I'll be glad to come home. If anyone out there is looking for someone to design or program games, work as an assistant director of a game, or work for a gaming magazine or site I'll be on the job market again starting in July. Check out the updated resume above. Beat the rush and e-mail me now!
(If you've got any suggestions on how I can improve my resume, e-mail about that as well)

In other site-related news, the winner of last month's contest is none other than George Rush! Congratulations George. If I can get your address you will be receiving an unopened pack of Nintendo scratch off cards and stickers from the mid 1980s. Apparently when they stopped selling in America they shipped them all to Japan to be sold here. Well I'm shipping them back!

If you'll allow me to get emotional for a moment, right now is normally a very good time for me. The E3 expo is currently going on in Los Angeles California, and I usually make the trip out there with a few of my friends to check out all the new games. This year I'm in Japan though, and for the first time since 2000, I have to read about all of the games on the Internet instead of being right there playing them. More upsetting than that though, is that I won't be able to hang out all of my friends that go to E3. Alon, Andrew, Prashant, Paul, Yadi, Kurt and Jon, Ed and the gang, the guys at BradyGames, the Videowrestling crew, and anyone else I'm forgetting. Oh well, there's always next year!

Now on to the regularly scheduled journal:

The winter freeze is over, and the bugs have all begun to come out in force. Until a few months from now when it becomes insanely hot the temperature will be fairly nice. This short period between freezing cold and unbearably hot is referred to as "the rainy season" because it rains at least once a day, often for the entire day, every day, for an entire month or two.

As per usual, a lot has happened since I last wrote. I went to Osaka and Kyoto, I went to Kumamoto castle and park, I began hanging out with several new Japanese people, I rekindled my friendship with the mayor only to have it squashed again, and I went to the Zoo with the 7th graders for a school trip. I'm not going to talk about any of these things though. I'm going to talk about bicycle safety day instead.

Every week at school a schedule is handed out that tells what classes are going to be different from the normal schedule. Each week the classes are moved around so much that they might as well not have a set schedule. In fact, I didn't even know that a normal schedule existed until just yesterday when they handed out a revised version of it. I had just assumed that they made the schedule up as they went along. My classes are never at the same time every week and on seemingly random days we will have short class periods and they'll send the kids home about an hour early simply because there's a PTA meeting that the teachers have to prepare for that afternoon. It's a strange system, and whenever I tell my teacher that in America the students follow the same schedule every day with very little variation I don't even think he fathoms that as a possibility.

At any rate, a few weeks ago I noticed that all of the classes had the word "go" in Japanese written on the schedule. I asked my teacher what that meant and he said, "That day the students learn about riding bicycles. Will you please come?"

"Of course," I replied. What else was I going to do during that time. I can't go home.

"And bring your bicycle," he said.

I knew I would be the only teacher that was on a bicycle and I also knew that they were only doing it because they wanted to make fun of the foreigner, but I went ahead and did it because if I'm given a choice to hang out with the teachers or the kids I'll always choose the kids.

By the way, I'm going to use the word bicycle throughout this journal instead of bike to avoid confusion for any Japanese person reading it. Bicycle is one of the words that all Japanese people know. It was probably in some sort of advertisement some time (that's how they know a lot of their English). This avoids confusion because the word "bike" in Japanese means motorbike, rather than simply being an abbreviation of bicycle. Because of this, they have no idea what I'm talking about when I say I rode my bike to school.

When the day of the bicycle safety presentation came it was one of those days when I don't have many classes and I sit around the teacher's room all day. On these days I tend to space out a bit, so I hardly noticed when everyone had gone outside and I was the only one left in the teachers room. As soon as I noticed though, I quickly grabbed my bicycle and headed to the grounds behind the school.

The track had been converted into an obstacle course of the streets of Japan. They had created roads using white powdered lines, and these roads began by going around the track as usual but halfway through, broke off and curved back and forth somewhat sharply before coming to a stop at an intersection compromised of white lines that were laid down in a square on the other side of the track. If this description isn't good enough to convince you that it looked like a street, that's because it didn't. It looked more like an obstacle course at a horse show.

All of the students' bicycles were lined up near the school and the students were sitting in the center of the track and field track in rows ranging from slightly organized to very chaotic. For some reason every bicycle was silver in color, and my blue bicycle only added to the humor of a 24 year old white man riding around with a crowd of over a hundred 15 year old Asian kids.

Apparently they take bicycle safety very seriously in Kedouin because all three town policemen were standing in front of the group of students in their uniforms. I looked a little closer at the shortest of the three and I noticed that I had actually met him the night before at a PTA party for one of the elementary schools. His English had been pretty good in his drunken state but when I tried to talk to him a little later on he acted like he couldn't understand me. Of course it may have been to avoid the harassment of his fellow officers (something that happens more often than you'd think).

After everyone had settled down a bit, one of the policemen started a speech about bicycle safety and the obstacle course they had set up. Less than 10 seconds after his first words I felt a drop of water on my arm. It had begun to lightly rain. The policeman started speaking quicker, rushing through his explanations (thank god). The policeman that I had met the night before took out a plastic hat protector and slipped it over his policeman hat. It was obvious that he was either slightly more or far less experienced than the other policemen because they were letting the rain fall onto their hats without any hesitation.

When the policeman finished his hurried speech, all of the students ran to their respective bikes and started strapping on their helmets and reflector bands. I followed behind and hopped onto my momma cherry. In Japan, if you have a crappy bicycle it's called a "momma cherry." These might not actually be the words, but that's what it sounds like. And for some reason in my mind this description conjures up pictures of a faded red bicycle with a basket. Although my bike is faded blue instead, it does have a basket, and most certainly fits the description.

After a few words that I didn't understand, the first kids started through the obstacle course. I hadn't understood a word of what the policeman was saying when he described the course, but I figured we just had to ride around the cones and white lanes that had been put down on the ground.

I watched the kids in an attempt to get a better idea of what to do. From what I could catch, the students were to make their way down the left side of the marked off road and curve around when the road began to swerve. When they reached the mock intersection that was made of a few white lines on the ground and a teacher or a policeman at either corner they were supposed to stop their bike and look around before continuing on. It looked easy enough, and was made even easier by the fact that we were riding so close to the person in front of us that if we forgot what to do we could just follow what they were doing.

They let a few groups of students go, and then myself and three or four students from the nearby pack made our way to the starting line. The closest teacher gave us the signal and we made our way along the left side of the mock road ahead of us, following each other one by one in a line. All of the students started yelling out, "No heru! No heru!" as soon as I got out there. At first I had no idea what they were saying, but then I realized that they were pointing out that I didn't have a helmet on. "No heru(met)." I'm sure one of the things that the police man said in his hurried speech was, "make sure to wear your helmet," but I didn't have a helmet so I guess it they made an exception for me.

Eventually the first person in my pack made it to the lined intersection. I watched as their head look right, then left, then right again and figured out what the next obstacle was. Even little things like checking to see if cars are coming before crossing the street weren't initially obvious from this layout.

I made my way ahead to the intersection and looked both ways, and when I got the go-ahead I went on ahead and parked my bicycle next to a group of kids.

After parking my bike I started to play around with a few of the kids. They let me try on one of the helmets and their reflector belt and we took a few pictures of the whole scene. The rain died down to almost nothing and a few minutes later all of the students reformed into the mixed up rows on the ground.

At this point the police man launched into a sort of lecture about all of the things they did wrong. From what I gathered it was more of an explanation of how bicycle safety isn't automatic, but actually something you have to pay close attention to. He then went on to point out specific problems with what the kids did. I didn't understand many of these, but the one part of his chat that I did understand was that when you get to the intersection you should stop your bicycle so that your right foot is down on the ground and your left foot is on the pedal, waiting to take off. This way you can let the car pass, and you'll be ready to take off when a car gets out of range. This much made a little bit of sense, but I thought it seemed a little extreme to point out something so insignificant.

After he finished his slightly longer speech the students and myself made our way back to our bikes for a second chance at safety.

The first group took off, followed by the second. The student next to me quickly passed me his reflector strap. I struggled to quickly put it around my torso and as I did this my group rode away leaving me behind. When I finally had the reflector firmly in place, I took off down the center of the obstacle course trying to catch up with my group. The kids were all screaming, "no heru, no heru," and a cop in front of me pulled out a flashing orange rod and waved me to the side of the road. I pulled over and stopped to let a few slow girls pass, making sure to have my right foot on the ground and my left foot poised for take off. I then realized that he had just wanted me to drive on the left side of the course instead of down the center. This makes sense, but it was just really hard for me to think of the course as an actual road with all of the action that was going on.

I took off again, this time down the left side of the course, and eventually I caught up with the girls in front of me and slowed down. This time, I got to the intersection at around the same time as everyone else so there were three or four people in front of me and I had to wait for my turn. With each progression through the queue I made sure to keep my right foot on the ground and my left foot ready to push the pedal, just to make sure that I didn't mess that up when I finally reached the front.

After the three girls made it through it was my turn. I lunged forward a bit and rolled a bit too far into the intersection, trying to make sure that my foot was in the correct position on the pedals. The teacher on the corner of the intersection who was acting as the stopsign said, "Put your left foot on the ground so that the cars won't run over your toes." Apparently I had been doing this backwards with every stop. I adjusted my position and looked back forward.

"Look right, then left, then left and behind you," he said.

I had totally forgotten to watch for cars at the intersection.

I quickly looked left, then right, then at the sky, then behind me, then at the sky again, then left again, then right again, and rolled on ahead through the intersection.

At this point I decided that all of the police in Kedouin, along with all of the teachers and most of the students thought I was a dumbass (and admittedly I was), so when I saw a few kids walking back to the group to sit down I decided to chase them down with my bike. They got the picture and started running, but the vice principal stopped me and said, "That's very dangerous." So I rode back to where the bikes were parked and got off of my bike.

I handed the reflector back to the kid and said, "you shouldn't be riding without a reflector." Then I went back to where the students were sitting and began a conversation with one of the teachers.

"I didn't have a helmet out there," I said.

"No, no you didn't," she replied.

"It's very dangerous isn't it?" I said.

"Yes, very dangerous," she said, without so much as a smile.

Japanese people just don't get sarcasm.

Next, the police man gave another short speech and the kids all walked their silver bicycles back inside.

"Why does everyone have the same color bike?" I asked one of the teachers on the way back.

He looked confused, so I asked it again in Japanese.

"Oh, you mean the same color bicycle?" he said.

"Right," I said.

"Maybe because they bought the bicycle at the same place. There might be some sort of special deal for students. Maybe."

This brings me to another aspect of Japanese culture. When a Japanese person says "maybe" they really mean "yes." It's important to phrase the sentence in the correct way too. "Maybe I'm coming home" means an entirely different thing than "Maybe I'm not coming home." In the first case you're going to come home and in the second case there's no way in hell you're coming home. After you've lived here for a while you pick up on these sorts of things. I've actually started to adopt the same thinking in my real life. It's just much easier not to let anyone down if you're never sure of anything.

As I walked back inside I couldn't help but think about how absurd bicycle safety day is in the first place. These kids all know to look left and right at the intersections. They all know that you need to stop at a light. They all know that you ride on the side of the road and not directly down the center. And trying to remember to stop with the correct foot on the ground is just stupid. I remember bicycle safety day in America where I learned how to do turn signals on your bicycle using your arm. Put your left up to turn right, out to turn left, and down to stop. I've never used them though. The only thing they're good for is making fun of people who actually do use them.

So who cares if I didn't take this bicycle safety day very seriously. Most likely neither did the kids, and no one's going to get hurt for it. My only hope is that I made some people laugh. And I think I did.