UCL Lost Boys

You have no idea how much I hate the vast majority of japanese tv.  With a fiery pits-of-the-bottom-of-hell passion. Japanese tv should be illegal, because I thought the UN had outlawed cruel and unusual punishment. If you want someone to know just how pissed you are at them with they make you angry, sit them in front of some japanese TV, and they will be clawing their eyes out in apology in a few minutes, leaving you a suitable happy and revnged individual. I think all japanese people develop the ability to work until 3am everyday as a side effect of japanese tv being shit.

Any programme that is not a drama or comedy and is filmed with a live audience and presenters has one over riding theme: making you hungry. “Eh?”  hear you ask? Weeeeeeell, its very simple. Every 10 minutes you will see celebrities eating food and contorting their face into fake I’m-being-paid-for-this plaesure whilst delghtfully squeeling “oishii” (tasty) at a level appropriate to how much they are being paid to eat food on telly. I can’t honeslty find suitable words to describe just how irritating this is. OOOOIIIIIISSSSSHHIIIIIIIIII!!! There they go again! Just eaten some fried rice? Tell us how bloody tasty it is! Even as I write this I’ve got the telly on in the back ground and they are eating and jiggling with oishii-ness, and screwing up their faces. Their is even a minor game show that has run for years featuring (unfortunately) two guys who I really like, and yes, you guessed it, its an hour of them plus two other famour guys eating food and finding tired new ways to say the same f&%king word twenty times in one hour.  Thankfully I am at keiko when its on, so I don’t need to ruin my eyes by watching celebs I actually like pimping themselves to the oishii-god. I can’t bear it.

Yep, thats right, quiz shows with food, the be eaten in front of everybody else. Which leads on to the question:

WHY THE F%&K IS IT CELEBRITIES ON GAME SHOWS??????

Thats right, Joe Public doesn’t get a look in. The cult of celebrity as gone far past the UK here, to the point that the buggars are the guests on gameshows too. And thats right, celebs win prizes. I watched one guy win a new Mitsubishi Pajero (shogun to you, white guy!) and then look delighted with it. And he kept it. One game show I watch with the missus (honest!) has celebs competing in a group for a holiday to europe. FOR THEMSELVES!!!! These gits are rolling in cash because they are celebs in the first place, and they win cars, holidays and cash (yes, cash…..) whilst the general public cheers them on from the audience. I really don’t get it. People with loads cash and stuff, competing for more, while the sods with none cheer them on. I watched a quiz show yesterday with the winner walking away with 250 notes worth of prime fillet beef. He was pleased as punch, the rich git. Curiouser and curiouser….

And don’t get me started on the audience. They seem to be amazed and impressed by ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING that these guys do and say. You shold hear them “oooooooooh”, “aaaaaaaaaaah”, “heeeeeeeeeeeee”. All the bleeding time. Some programmes have even taken to dubbing this meaningless white noise that audiences produce onto stuff where it wouldn’t normally be. Thus extending my pain. Its enough to make me want to watch Eastenders or Time Team.

My wife and I spent a dirty pile of cash on a flash telly. Until we buy a DVD player to match then the bloody thing is wasted at the moment because there would appear to be sod all on terestrial telly here worth having the dam thing.

And discovered and learned a few things about my kendo, kendo in japan, and kendo in general.

 First, I’m a little better than I thought, but not much. I can at least hold my own against what I would call B level uni students, ie not the likes of Kokushikan or Osaka Taiiku Dai, but also better than not being able to compete at all Japan level. I’ve practised with many students, and also in the kendo-bu of a couple of universities here. The practise is quite similar in principle to what I originally wanted from UCL, ie a keiko that focusses on moving the body a lot. I do lots of kirikaeshi and kakarigeiko at these places, which kills me, but I also know its good for me. Kakarigeiko is kendo’s soul food.

I also get reams of advice. Some of this is very useful, some of it is quite mysterious and I have no clue what its supposed to mean, and some of it is stuff I know already and I’m trying to sort out. So mostly its useful…….but I still don’t know what people mean when they say “cut your opponents soul”! I’ve been told this twice, funnily enough both times by quite old men (both in their 60’s) and both times I nodded and said yes without having a clue what they meant.

As you may guess, there is also a great deal of people doing kendo in Japan. At least 5 million I think, maybe more (which given its general population of somewhere near 120 million still probably makes it less popular than rubbish like cricket.). Now, with 5 million people, you are bound to come across a few lunatics, and I’ve had my share. From people who are rude to you from the start and try to larrup the hell out of your ears and elbows, to people who I love to practise with all the time, to people who I love to drink with, and everything in between. At the current dojo I’ve registered with, the teacher there is the kind of teacher that I was hoping to find. He understands what I want from kendo, and also understands how to help me achieve this. He takes me everywhere too.

 Its also a minor un-truth that everyone here is great, or strong or any other image you may have. Because there are more people and better teachers and practitioners the general level is of course much higher than most other places, but there is also a fair share of people who aren’t exactly great, or don’t take kendo as seriously as some foreigners would (mistakenly) expect them to.  Believe it or not, to the japanese as well, for the most part kendo is a hobby or past time as much as it is to us. In some respects its a little like sunday league football! 

As you may know from reading below I also get to see many high quality competitions. I’m lucky because I arrived in the middle of the big season, so I go to see the police taikai, and the uni taikai too, and this weekend I get to watch the All Japan Taikai too. Spoilt for choice!!!

 But I do also have to work hard with everything I do. If I go to a uni keiko I can’t just sink into the background and wave some bamboo. People watch so I have expectations to live up to, plus these guys all seem to expect me to be able to do stuff I can’t at times, so its quite hard.  But its also good for me to have this stuff as a target I suppose….I have much that I need to sort out in my kendo though, and its an uphill struggle at times, but one I am thankful to have. I love being able to just line up and get on with it again.

Have a look around www.outpostnine.com .You’ll see many references to a phenomenon called Gaijin Smash. The writer of the site claims no credit for it, neither do I, but its a set of powers that every single obviously non-japanese foreigner (Not you, Tsoi, everyone knows you’re really japanese, thats why people keep giving you shinai!) possess, like a latent X-gene that lets you manipulate metal, have laser eyes, or make girls clothes disappear.

Every single gaijin comes with 3 powers, the Gaijin Perimiter, the Gaijin Optic Blast, and the fabled Gaijin Smash.

 The Gaijin Perimeter

 This is the invisible barrier that every Jonny Gaijin in japan automatically throws up the minute they step onto japanese soil at Narita International Airport. You can’t stop it, even if you wanted to, though in reality once you get used to it, you won’t want to stop it. Its a minor blessing in disguise at times.

It is basically thus: You give of an aura of pure foreign so strong that people will not sit next to you on buses and trains unless its the last seat available to them, and even then they may well stand up (if only this were also true on planes). Some people get annoyed by this:

“Why aren’t I accepted enough in this place for people to sit next to me?!” They will cry. I will admit it frustrated me a little to start with, until I realised:

“I now have leg room!” Joy upon joys! In a country where legroom only exists in my bed, I actually get enough space to sit vaguely comfortably when my gaijin perimiter is extended! Hooray!

Its still strange though. When I first came here, for a holiday 3 years ago, I tried to offer my seat to an old man who was obviously knackered and struggling, but he refused to take it, and stood for all 20 minutes of his journey. Like I put some fatal gaijin virus on my chair that I had hidden in my big red suitcase. Go figure!

The Gaijin Optic Blast

I will admit I haven’t had the balls to try this one yet….Sometimes, admitedly not much in Tokyo (though it still does happen) people are so genuinely shocked to see someone NOT japanese that they will actually stare at you (I have exempted kids from this because kids stare at anything that is not them) at make no attempt to hide it. So you stare straight back. Until they back down. And then keep on staring, because they will look again to make sure you have stopped. Which you haven’t. At this point you could widen your eyes for effect. The subject of the optic blast will suddenly develop an intense interest in their shoes, bag, hand or something close at hand that isn’t you staring at them.  I’m sure this would work well on packed trains.

I get stared at alot. And I really mean alot. The average male height in Japan is 170cm. I am a full 20cm taller than this, so to say I stick out a little is a vast understatement. I stick out so much that if I were a nail, and you smote me with a hammer,  I would still need a good deal of fury and smiting, akin to Thor and his hammer of the gods, to stop sticking out.

The Gaijin Smash

This happens at any time, any place, sometimes if you want it to, or not. I’ve only used it once, I didn’t even realise I had until well after the fact and I kinda felt a little guilty (though I was on my way to an interview so I didn’t then take the smash back). I’ll explain the intricacies of the smash first.

Many japanese service workers seem petrified of foreigners that rather than kick up a stink when we do something obviously wrong, they will wave us through and then pretend it never happened. For many examples of the smash you can see the Outpostnine website, but I’ve seen a few, heard of a few, and accidentaly smashed once my self.

Seen a few.

A couple of days ago on my way to keiko, I saw a group of americans (could tell by the accent and volume) on the same platform as me waiting in the same line to get on the train (note to the uninitiated-the japanes que in lines on train platforms for trains), at the back of the line. Train arrives, and said americans, without waiting for half the people to get of, barge to the front of the line, and then crowbar themselves onto the train past the people still trying to get off.

Now, although this is the perfect example of the gaijin smash (nobody batted an eyelid or said anything to them) I was so embarresed even just watching this that I went to a different carriage to try and squeeze on. I didn’t even want to be associated by skin colour with these nob ends. Its one thing being a foreigner in Japan and all the attached stupidity and injustice, its another to be a total prick about it. At this point, although I haven’t yet done so, I vowed never to use my smash on purpose.

Heard about it.

A guy I practise with (who shall remain nameless to protect him!) told me he used to regularly smash himself cheap or free train travel, either by buying childrens tickets and then ignoring the ping pong when he put them in the barrier, or by simply not buying a ticket and plowing through the barrier.

My smash.

So, there is a free shuttle bus that runs from the Kanagawa Science Park, 2 minutes from my flat, to Mizo no kuchi station. Between 7am and 10am its for employees of the Park only, and you have to show a KSP pass as you get on. Fair enough, because at all other times (unitl it stops at 10.30pm) its free! I love this bus.

 One day, on my way to an interview I saw the bus and legged it. I didn’t want to wait another 15 minutes for the next one, so I ran up to it, bounded up the bus steps and trundled to a seat at the back, and sat down. Good stuff! No interview lateness, always a good thing.

Then a woman tried to get on not 20 seconds later. All japanese bus drivers seem to have microphones and ear pieces, so this next conversation came over the bus loud speakers:

Bus Driver “Can I see your pass please?”

Woman “Aaahh! I left it at my desk, I’m coming back on the next bus though.”

Bus Driver “Before ten o’clock you must show a pass to board this bus”

Woman “But….”

Bus Driver “Please show me your pass”

Woman “Its on my desk….”

Bus Driver “Please get off the bus”

At this point I shrank into my seat, looked at my watch, and sure enough 9.43am…he didn’t even look at me when I got on, but didn’t hesitate to stop the poor woman from getting on. I felt bad, but there was no way I was going to be late….

 Gaijin powers. Like unloved super heroes, trying to lead everyday lives.