頑張って、R君とアちゃん。

It’s sleeping men, hallelujah.

Capsule hotels started out as a cheap way for businessmen to stay the night downtown if, for one of many reasons (working late, lots of drinking), they couldn’t make it home. This, combined with the lack of privacy and low number of possible female customers led most of the capsule hotels in Japan to become exclusively for men. Some people probably found this to be sexist, but things have changed since the wominz clientele has increased enough to allow a female only floor to be viable. Like many other types of establishments in Japan where skin is shown (for one reason or another) people who have tattoos aren’t allowed to stay; it’s not the discrimination that many Westerner’s think it is, without this blanket law they would have trouble with Yakuza. Yes, it’s shitty that they have to do such a thing, but if you take care of the gangster problem I feel like they’d be willing to change policy. With the quick, capsule sized, history lesson over with we can now go on to the story.

Much like any regular hotel, a capsule hotel starts with the lobby; unlike other hotels in Japan (probably), this one started on the 7th floor. After getting off the elevator and walking up to the front desk I’m told that I should have taken off my shoes 5 meters earlier which I would’ve realized if I looked down at the gigantic sign on the ground stating that request in two languages. After fixing my mistake and filling out the registration card I was on my way to the wedding reception.

Can you believe how much I’ve changed?

After getting fully soused and a short ride back I make it back to the hotel. When you decide it’s time to crawl into your hole someone at the front desk will give you a key on a plastic bracelet which also has the job of telling you which rectangular prism you’ll be sleeping in. I go towards the staircase that will lead me to my personal 2.5 cu. m. and it’s here, not the actual capsule, where I am surprised; literally everyone else (all men) are wearing white robes and the vast majority of them seem to be transfixed by the TV hanging on the wall. I would have loved to get a picture of this for all of you, but I think they would have noticed and I doubt they would have been happy. As to why they’re wearing robes? It’s probably because they didn’t want to sleep in their suit, but given the fact that there was a sauna and massage parlor (not masquerading as anything else) a couple floors down they could have been wearing them for that reason. I was drunk and tired so I didn’t really care that much to go back downstairs and research.

I love a good back vacuuming.

The sleeping in a capsule part of the experience wasn’t really that bad at all, if I would have to do it again I wouldn’t mind at all. You have enough space to sit up, a small TV, a clock/radio, and a small shelf. Everything worked as expected, though it was obvious who they were catering to when I found the “special” channel (NSFW). The one complaint that I have is that, stupidly, they left out a power outlet. If they would have included one in every capsule I would have been much happier with my experience. (Who wants to have to charge their phone in the middle of the day when they’re away from home?) Overall, not nearly as bad as I was expecting, then again just the fact that I fit in the capsule was a huge plus.

As much as many people have bleated about sleeping in such a small space I’m not really sure why it’s not popular in any other country, especially if you could make a new model with a lockable door; there are many times when all you really want is a shared space that you can share with others and a bed. Does it really matter if you can’t stand on your bed? You don’t have anymore privacy than a hostel and those seem to be quite popular throughout the world. Whatever the reason is for their lack of existence in other countries I feel like it’s the dislike of the image that capsule hotels give off, if people would look at the situation soberly they might change their minds.

Here’s some more pictures and words by someone else if you want more.

There is a syndrome that goes around and affects many foreigners that live in Japan for at least a year. Symptoms include, negativity, crankiness, irrational hatred towards most/all things Japanese, and whininess. Why does this happen? Is this a sign that Japan sucks? What’s the cure? Let’s try and find out.

While I don’t want to come off as fanboy-ish it’s slightly hard to not sound that way when you talk differently or argue with someone who does something like what Tim did; while there are some good points somewhere in the muck and mire they’re almost lost because of all of the nitpicking and cherry picking. He starts off his complaint list with Anime. He only wrote one paragraph about why it sucks, but it’s hard to take it seriously since he gives one (and a half) example(s) in his favor and then mentions Dragon Ball Z as a show that was “graphically iconic, with a story more coherent than it probably needed to be”. Akira Toriyama has his own iconic style, but I would not pick DBZ as an example of good anime (the updated DBZ Kai is much better though).

He goes on to complain about people smoking and the lack of vegetarian dishes. These things are true, many people smoke and it’s not always possible to get a vegetarian meal in a restaurant. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t non-smoking train cars on the express trains (can’t smoke at all on regular trains), non-smoking areas (usually bigger than smoking), smoking rooms that stop others from having to deal with the smoke, and supermarkets. However, besides asking at restaurants for them to take out meat you’ll have to make your own dishes or go be a monk. It’s unfortunate for those that have made a decision to not eat meat, but should you really be pissy about it when other people don’t cater to your personal decision? Yes, they’re not making it easier for you but you have no right to force them to have to serve dishes you like; this also doesn’t take into consideration those restaurants that actually do have vegetarian food (few, but they’re there).

PETA, annoying everywhere

After some things that I can’t comment on he spends most of the rest of the post talking about small things. As with relationships, sometimes it’s all the little things that cause the breakup to occur. For Tim his are yelling to get customers, language quirks, hostess clubs, niches, Japanese comedy, Japanese music, Japanese movies (and how they copy manga), cost, drink tickets at bars/clubs/concerts, putting tape on purchases at convenience stores, stereotyping, pachinko, and some other things that I didn’t mention. Some of these things are definitely things that he just doesn’t like but aren’t/shouldn’t be deal-breakers by themselves. However some of them (comedy, music, movies) are, while true on the surface, not what he makes them up to be. For these few I guess that he’s exaggerating to make a point, but I really can’t be sure since I don’t know him.

One thing I found that was hugely exaggerated was the cost argument. While he makes many true points about things that are actually more expensive he then goes and brings up game prices. He says

“games tend to pretty much always cost $100 on their release dates here. It’s getting fairly ridiculous. Game rental generally doesn’t happen. So most people who buy new games race through them lovelessly so they can sell them back to the local used shop before the buyback price drops. I’m sure the publishers have crunched the numbers a thousand times, and come up with some reason to justify not lowering the initial price of a typical game.”

Although some games are more expensive than others when they come out (e.g. FF13) the usual price is around 7,000円. Is this more expensive than a normal game at time of launch? Yes, but this doesn’t even take into consideration other factors in the game market that exist here but are either stifled or missing in some other countries, supply and demand; I recently picked up a used copy of FF13 for 2800円 and a new copy of Halo 3: ODST for 2000円, it’s still at least $40 new in the US. Also, when a game is extremely popular, Persona 3/4 or Smash Brothers (Both old and still 5000円), the price stays high until interest wanes. I could go on about each of his points, but I’ve already gone on longer than I expected.

Doesn’t it suck to wait a month or two for games to drop in price? Why can’t I buy all my games at Gamestop?!?

Mr. Tim has spent at least five years in Japan. He obviously didn’t feel the way he does now for all five of those years, what happened?

Japanese society, being the way it is in its current form, can be grating. There are many, many people in other countries who spend some of their time listening and watching exported Japanese culture (i.e. Jpop and anime). A lot of these people say that they want to live in Japan and some of them actually get off their ass and go do it. They definitely have an incorrect assumption of what Japan is like, but they still like many Japanese things. Nonetheless, it can be a tough experience that ends up with them going back to where they came from and settling on enjoying what they like about Japan without having to deal with Japanese society. I’m not saying that Tim is an otaku, I’m just saying that many people would think that someone who seemingly loves Japan (or what little they know from anime) would acclimate themselves to the society quicker than someone with less knowledge of Japan.

For everyone, (again, like a relationship) when they get to Japan they have their rose-tinted glasses. These glasses seem to stay on longer than they would if Japan was your boy/girlfriend but they wear off nonetheless; what you (probably didn’t) read was not that. Many foreigners in Japan seem to go straight from rose-tinted glasses to shit-tinted glasses (or maybe concrete-tinted?). It could be because expectations were too high, they can’t take all the concrete, have trouble with the language and/or the way people act with complaints and problems, or even the little annoyances that have finally got to them. Whatever it’s caused from it affects not only the infected individual but also those he associates with. Given the side-effects, this syndrome can be quite annoying.

Luckily there are remedies, even if they don’t work permanently on everyone. Some of the most prominent cures are fun, going to the countryside, changing locales within Japan, and leaving. Each works in their own way, but they generally get the job done, even if some are much more expensive than others. For an unlucky few, the syndrome comes in monthly or yearly cycles; a cure is not known for these individuals. What is known is that the best way to protect yourself from (re)catching this sickness is to stay away from message boards that expats seem to spent time on. If you know an individual who is going on one of these message boards, take them away from their computer and make them go have fun, there are a bunch of places where this can be accomplished, even if the affected might be a pain in the ass for a while.

So there I was, just off the plane from Tokyo to Osaka and I’m looking for the person I’m meeting. I didn’t have a cell phone at the time so I get tired of waiting for them at the international gates – they’re not there – so I go searching for them. I look everywhere and, since I can’t find them at all, in the end decide to use a pay phone. In the process I run into some African guy at the train station (there’s always phones at the train station). After getting in touch with them I ask the guy if he needs any help since he keeps trying to call someone and looks lost and very confused.

So what happened with him is that he has some friends in Japan and he came to visit(?). He arrives in Osaka, at night, and he doesn’t know where to go. He tried to call his friends, but ended up doing something incorrect and lost all the minutes on his phone card (it wasn’t a lot of minutes). We got him straightened out only to find that his friends live in Tokyo. WTF. So we write some stuff on a piece of paper for him so that he can find a cheap hotel and then take the train to Tokyo the next day.

Nice kid, but what kind of friend doesn’t tell their friend which airport is closest to them and/or doesn’t meet them at the airport?

I’d never work with monkeys if it wasn’t for the fact that I’m surrounded by them.

Ruling out New York City, Chicago, Boston, Seattle, Portland, DC (to some degree) and maybe San Francisco, you immediately realize that to do anything that requires you to leave your residence will likely require you to use a vehicle, if you have one. Grocery store? Drive. Visit a friend? Drive. Go shopping? Drive. Work? There’s that car thing again. Yes, there are circumstances where one of these things might be possible for someone, but, just as the level 3 Wizard of Anecdotes always loses to the level 47 Demon of Obvious Truth, if you’re outside of the handful of exceptions you have little choice.

However, it’s not just the fact that you will most likely need to ride in a car, but that everything is so far away from everything else. It might seem like I’m repeating myself here, but there is a slight difference in the two points; the former relates to the lack of available or decent mass transportation and the latter is that the distance between building/places makes walking untenable in most places. Those living across one of the ponds that flank us on either side, even if they have one, probably don’t have to use a car if they feel like they want to leave their house.

There are a few of reasons why things are like this over here, cheap dinosaur juice, Mamie‘s baby’s daddy, and the American wet dream. I think the first one is self explanatory enough and in and of itself doesn’t produce a transportation system like the one found in the US. Eisenhower’s plan did have a huge effect on the development of not only the transportation system of “the city on the hill” but also led to an increase of the development of suburbs, which is also related to the third point. Lots of people in the US need to have lots of land, but I don’t know why they want it. I think that a lot of people must get some kind of orgasmic feeling from cutting the grass since you hardly see anyone do anything else with their yards. I’m not so sure about the orgasmic feeling though, I’ve never felt it and I think it’s because of some defect on my part. Nonetheless, we’ve had this hunger to have lots of land and be far away from each other for a long time. Maybe we’re land zombies?

Drink it up, that’s real dino tendon.

And seeing that this is the land of the comb over eagle, we can’t really have a good mass transportation system as that’s socialist (but the government using taxes to makes roads somehow isn’t) and anti-American so we all must drive 30 minutes to go to the mall and over an hour to get to work, for freedom.

The reason America puts HCFS in everything is to make a new type of soldier that will help cement their plans for world domination.

So with America properly purged from my system I went home. There is some shock at the airport, but when you’re getting a connecting flight to somewhere you’re stuck in your own little cordoned off environment which protects you for a couple more hours. But, for me, the first bit of reverse culture shock came with a sip. Food choice in airports varies little and in the US you’re usually given the choice of pastries, food court, or somewhere like Applebees. Being cheap, I went with McDonalds, which was fine, but I made the horrible mistake of choosing to drink a Coke.

If you go overseas for a while and are able to drink a soft drink from somewhere that is the US, you will realize that there is major difference between the two, the sweetener. Because of subsidies for corn, they put HCFS in Coke instead of sugar. When you aren’t used to drinking/eating the American version of something, the HCFS version tastes slightly off and leaves a coating of freedom in your mouth that you can’t get rid of since all you have to drink is this crap they call soda/pop. Luckily I had $1.05 on me.

The coat of freedom gives +2 to bust size.

The other thing that you immediately are aware of is that everyone around you is speaking the same language you are and, therefore, can understand what you say. When you live somewhere where you essentially have your own little secret language that you share with a small minority of the population you become quite acclimated to it and, maybe eventually, prefer it over having everyone around you speak your mother tongue. I was speaking to a Swedish guy in a train about this and he agreed with me. His justification of it was that when he was on the trains in Amsterdam, where he was going to art school, and he saw a cute guy he liked he didn’t have to whisper to his friend, they could just talk in Swedish.

Unfortunately the coat of freedom is also cursed and adds +5 to weight per turn.

Well, when your secret language is abruptly taken from you it’s very disquieting. To give an analogy, it’s similar to an episode of Oprah I watched a long time ago. A woman hadn’t cut her hair in over a decade and her family, in their deep and never-ending love, made her get her hair cut on the show. After the hair cut she was standing in front of the audience with a took of fear, like the audience weren’t really women with overflowing levels of estrogen, but they were actually ravenous lizard people that were going to devour her alive after the cameras stopped rolling. Since I don’t think she played football or received a flurry of blows to the head she probably didn’t think they were lizard people, but you get a similar sort of reaction when you realize that you have just been transported to a place where everyone can understand what you say, maybe, and you might have to start using your brain-mouth filter a little more often.

While I was riding the wave I got the 17 kids I managed to steal to add words to some Penny Arcade comics. This isn’t the first time this has been done so I’m not going to take credit for the idea, but I really wanted to see what they’d come up with and using Hi & Lois as a jumping point just seemed a little unnatural.

So below is 17 comics, one from each student. I hope you like them. If you don’t, then I’ll punch you very very hard, in my imagination.

The fashion here has it’s hits and misses, but the point that I think requires stressing is not that, but that of the average person. People here, on average, are much more fashionable that what people dress like in the wilds of North America. Every fashion trend that winds its way through Japan isn’t always the best (purple or yellow nylons are interesting), but even including that, it still easy beats Jesusland. Going one or two deviations from the norm can be met with disastrous results, true, but it’s such a train wreck that you don’t actually mind that much since it gives you the opportunity to see such a thing.

Speaking of Jesusland (or lack thereof), it’s quite the breath of fresh air to not have to deal with religion in the least. I don’t have to worry about a politician saying that atheists aren’t citizens or patriots, someone trying to get intelligent design into a classroom, or retards attempting to save the life of a vegetable. A lack of religion does not make Japan a place filled with people who care/understand science, but that won’t happen until the apocalypse, which I am patiently waiting for.

On a related note, boobs boobs penis. It’s nice to be in a place that doesn’t go absolutely apeshit over a something related to sex. Not only that, they have buildings whose entire purpose is the pursuit of climax and tons of magazines prominently displayed in convenience stores that seem to be about nothing other than sex. A place where little to no people actually think that if a child witnesses something sex related that they’ll be scarred because of it. Of course this isn’t true even though so many people believe it despite zero proof. Although, there are tertiary effects of being young and happening to catch a steamy scene in a movie; your parents could argue about it and do more damage than the love scene could have ever done.

There could be something I’ve missed, but I think you get the point, there’s a lot of good things to be found here. When you point out smaller things that you don’t prefer but never talk about the big picture it can make those minutiae look much more substantial than they actually are.

The diet in Japan (Japan not being a part of America, like everywhere else that isn’t America), although scary at times, is quite good at what it does. Now, I’m not talking about the older diet that they had before recent times, but the current diet. Yes, there is a rising worry about overweight children because of McDonalds and their brethren, but people here are more fit than what I’m used to. This is what things should be like and you don’t really know there’s an issue unless you live in/move to somewhere sans America.

An anecdote: I’ve lost some weight when I first arrived in Japan and I was expecting that. When multiple variables move from a less healthier diet to a healthier one you reasonably expect some weight loss. However, I haven’t weighed myself for around a year, if not more. Recently I was wondering my weight for no reason than the last time I weighed myself was such a long time ago. My expectation was to be around what I was before, which I only had a faint memory of – this wasn’t close. After getting the scale to work, I found out that I had inadvertently lost a lot of weight (I’m now 71.3kg), even including my winter hibernation (less activity and more eating). Now, my current eating habits are not very good, so if one were to actually try to lose weight in this country (or any number of other countries) it might seem like a crash diet to someone back home. Yes, it’s true that some women here do go overboard and strive to be way too thin like people in many other places do, but this really has nothing to do with the effectiveness of the diet.

The food scene is Japan is nothing short of amazing. I was happy when I had some cuisines from other countries in DC, but the sheer number of great places to choose from is astounding. Immigrants (forced or not) from Korea, China, India, and other places have helped the establishment of restaurants of those countries cuisines. Include the Japanese obsession with food (you can start to understand it if you have watched Iron Chef) and you get a great combination. I’ve gone to a bunch of restaurants in Osaka and many of them were quite amazing. They don’t have everything, Mexican is available but sorely lacking, but what they do have is great.

The police here are nice, if you don’t want to say neutered. Most of the time their job involves something bicycle related, but sometimes they actually do something a little more important. But this really isn’t the reason I like them, it’s because they are nothing at all like America. Now, it’s not like Japan is a bed of fucking rose petals, it’s not; but having been around officers, their actions and attitude are startlingly different than one might see on COPS. Even their definition of crackdown is different. Weed? No swat team, no MP5′s, no silent raid. They knock on your door and ask you to come to the station to talk, that’s all (most of the time). What happens next could be severely bad for your future – signing a confession equals time – but you’re not worried that they’re going to shoot or taze you.

The transportation system in Japan gets props from just about everywhere else. As opposed to a country where it’s possible to do without a car in only a few locations due to suburbs and a lack of any decent mass transit (guess the country?), Japan is heaven. Not only have I spent my time here carless (though I did ride in a car two times) there was never a time where I wished I had a car, it really is that unnecessary. From where I am, I can go pretty much anywhere I want to in this country without needing a car; and this time isn’t wasted waiting endlessly for busses or trains (which are extremely punctual compared to some places).

If you live more in the country it does become an important item to own, but it’s not required until you go very far out. There are many suburbs here that are still quite walkable (and definitely bikeable) given their layout. That the areas that have been built recently are not so suburban as America/Canada/UK is something to be thankful for.

So yes, there are some reasons, but maybe there are some more as well?

I’ll think you’re a better country if you give me lots of money and comfort women.

Part of the reason why I may sound like such an old coot is because I am quite particular, while at the same time allowing for ranges to exist. This may seem quite nonsensical, and it probably is, but it’s what I do. Example, I might not like the 80′s rocker look that been happening while I’ve been here, a girl with big teased hair, huge sunglasses and similar things associated with that look (no hot tub limousines), and I may mention my dislike of this type of fashion, but I don’t mind it so much that I increase pressure on my eyeballs until they cave in. And besides, this isn’t really much of a complaint anyways.

There are some bigger complaints that I do have, such as the conformity and political apathy, but these are still understandable to me. The thing is, one cannot say that just by talking about these and expressing a want of change that I am indicating a dislike towards Japan, that would be manifestly untrue. The desire for change demonstrates the wish for that thing to become better. I recently heard a quote that talks well about this, but I have forgotten the quote and it’s location on the mass of tubes. Luckily, I still know what is essentially said: those who criticize do so not because they loathe that object, but because they like it and long for it to transcend these criticisms.

Furthermore, I stayed longer than a year, tried to get a different job (sooner than is realistically possible for someone in my position), and stayed even though I’m not really working and have no recourse for working in Japan unless if I pack up and move to another prefecture. So Japan is not a perfect country, but then nowhere is.

I’m leaving here in a week and it’s a much harder thing to do than I originally expected. How about that.