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.

I put on brownface and got an Indian immigrant to take the test for me. I should have paid him less.

Maybe this is an “I’m sorry we don’t share our interesting statistics, sorry” present, but I can’t be sure since it didn’t say that on the envelope. Nevertheless, I have now reached a level that very few whiteys and zero weeaboos will ever reach. I will now pretend for the next 10 minutes or so that I am important.

I’ll try in the future to be interviewed by other groups of people so that I can show you me, for the benefit of all.

So as you might maybe possibly know, I now have my dogguns in Japan. The process is long, difficult and, if you don’t do it right, could lead to pent up frustration with little chance of release. I got the shots that she needed as well as the requisite shots, I waited the necessary 180 days, and I informed the airport of the coming meatfluff. After finishing my vacation in freedomville (it was wonderful), I boarded the plane with one dog sized set of organs (rest of the dog included for free!).

In Chicago I needed to change planes so I could switch (from United) to a non-shitty airline (JAL). While waiting for my ticket at the check-in counter I find out that they aren’t expecting my new bundle of whines and fur. You see, I had called both United and JAL and informed them that I will be carrying a very very hairy baby when I come back to Japan. United gave me no problem, but the girl working at JAL said that, even though I called, I didn’t have to since I had already contacted United. Well, there I was in Chicago with proof that she was quite mistaken. It’s a shame I had no way to tell her and then call her a n00b.

This check-in server’s ping sucks, the host is a fagg0t.

However, right after that I found out that I had non-sensually donkey punched myself (it’s possible!), I missed a stamp on one of the pages I had to give to the people in quarantine. Great. So since I now had a day layover I tried to get in touch with the local USDA and set up a time to get the stamps. They were full for the day so I had to wait until the next morning at 8:30 (and my plane left at 10:20). Not much time, but definitely possible. I wasn’t freaking out too much, but it definitely wasn’t as early as I would have liked.

The next morning I decide that I might as well go there as early as possible since I had nothing else to do. I thought that if I arrive when they just open they might be able to fit me in an earlier time slot and I could rest easier; at 10 minutes to 8:00, this happened. And it’s quite fortunate that it happened because I found out that my vet missed a signature and they wouldn’t stamp without a signature. I now had 90 minutes to find a vet open before 9:00am, go get a form signed, come back and get the forms stamped before making it to the airport. After some frantic calling, I found a place about a mile away that was open. I called a cab and made my way there.

An artists rendition of my taxi

My cab driver, Gunther, a naturalized citizen from Palestine, was a very nice guy that understood my predicament and helped me get to the vet (and to all my other destinations as well). The vet, while being cautious and methodical, filled out the vital areas as quickly as he could grasp what was needed of him.

At the USDA, I finally received the seals that I so desperately needed. At a price of $110, they were pointlessly expensive (it took them 5 minutes to do it) but I wasn’t in a mood to care at that point; I was running out of time and I preferred to not spend money on a new ticket to happy land. I arrived at the airport with little time to spare. It looked as though everything would be fine.

Or maybe this was just a ruse to pull me in to a bigger trap.

Fools, don’t you realize that your searching for dark matter is futile, master chew-chew has spoken.

There are two models of hot carpet: hot pad only or included with a carpet. You could decide to get the “hot carpet only” model and proceed to sit/lay directly on it while it is in operation, but since they didn’t make hot carpets for comfort it will definitely not feel good. When combined with a rug, it makes you want to burn your furniture – not for warmth – just to watch it burn. It seems as though hot carpets also transfer a feeling that chairs and couches are unnecessary; I don’t know if this is a defect or if it’s a plot by Japanese manufacturers to start an anti-commercialism revolution, I’ll get back to you on that.

Crazy conspiracy or not, these things are great; it saves a ton on heating (most places just have electric heaters or small kerosene heaters) and it still manages to keep you warm and toasty, as long as you like/don’t mind sitting on the floor. Given that it’s quite common to sit on the floor here (even when they might have a sofa), there’s a hot carpet in almost every domicile. Even though they’re so ubiquitous I managed to have no clue as to their existence until just a little while ago (FU everyone else). Yet, because they aren’t too expensive (1.5 m2 pad is just ~$35 or so) it was easy to try one out, even if it would have ended up as a wash. However, with the west’s obsession with central heating and resting your ass on something besides straw mats I doubt that there would be many people in North America or Europe that would be interested in this.

What’s interesting is when you go take the test in Japan. The test is almost always at a university of some kind and since there will be people coming from all around to take the test there is definitely not enough room to fit everyone in one classroom, especially since they put a one seat gap between all students. This leads to you only being surrounded by a small cross-section of other applicants which you can only check against the body at large during intermissions. As you progress from level 4, you might notice the makeup (no, not this either) of the group changes slightly; there’s a significant lack of caucasians that take levels 1 and 2.

This isn’t to say that there were a lot of non-asians taking the test in Japan to begin with, there aren’t. The number taking the test at lower levels, like all the other groups, seems to mirror the population of the group in Japan (i.e. the percentages of applicants and the percentages of that group living in the country is roughly the same). However, the number of applicants from English speaking countries who take the test at each level seems to fall precipitously as you move towards the higher levels. Now there aren’t any published statistics on the number of applicants and test takers for each mother tongue (nor any other metric besides passing/failing and where they took the test), but since you must write all the important information needed to create the charts I wouldn’t be surprised if we found out that the organization has made, but does not share, graphs based on this information.

I was going to do all kinds of crazy new stuff to you but I can only do it if you pass 2級! Otherwise, no more WoW buffs.

Because of the lack of useful information, what I am about to say is, unfortunately, little more than conjecture and anecdotes. From my experience, people whose original language is English (or who can use English reasonably well even though it’s not their original language) that are living in Japan have an advantage that Indians, Koreans, and Chinese people don’t; many people here have learned some English and will try to use it. This does lead to a lower number of people who feel they need to know the language, even if they plan on staying here for a while. Related to this is that, most of the time, when they get a boyfriend/girlfriend that person seems to speak pretty good English; even if the native English speaker is trying to learn Japanese they now have a disincentive to learn. A third reason is that there is a large industry that uses only English and requires little to no Japanese, English teaching.

What ends up happening is that, even if they would decide to learn/study Japanese they have trouble since it’s easier to use English at their workplace and, possibly, with their significant other. After so much time passes they just decide to give up studying; by this point they know enough to be useful without knowing enough to engage in everything that a normal Japanese person would be able to do. Asians can’t usually work as English teachers so they are left to work at a place where Japanese is predominantly spoken. This lack of choice makes sure that they continue to study Japanese much longer than, what seems to be, the average native English speaker.

By the way, when I get my results (sometime around February) I’ll make sure to tell you what I got.

So I believe I’ve noted in the past that at one point I was living (short term) in Osaka and then Kyoto. During that time I was, at first, looking for a job and then (mostly in Kyoto) waiting for the job to start. At the end of July I left there for my current location, which I have alluded to when I arrived here, and I started working.

So what am I doing? You can probably take a good guess and be fairly close; I’m teaching English at small school in the “Three-ply” area of Japan. Most of my students are elementary school age, but there are a few older kids and adults. And as long as you have no problem working with children it’s not particularly difficult work, but you do have to be more lively than you would be at a normal desk job. On Wednesdays I also teach at a kindergarten in the local area, which is tiring, but lots of fun.

Besides that there isn’t much to say about the job, the classes are small, it’s not a monolithic corporation and I have good hours. Don’t know if there’s anything else to say about it.

So now you know how I act (I don’t wear a mankini when I teach 5 year olds). Scary isn’t it?