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All right: it’s late and I’m more than a bit drunk. I have very little to say, and a computer to help me do it.
I’m told this is exactly what blogging is about, so here goes.

The language

You know, for a guy who prides himself in being quite the world-traveler sort, I must admit I arrived here shamefully unprepared. As it turns out, it seems the whole extent of my Cantonese vocabulary is approximately two words, which is even less than what I knew of Japanese before arriving there, and basically not even enough to say thank you at the store without resorting to imperialistic idioms. Furthermore, whatever small remnants of my stays in mainland China I may have (essentially: numbers from one to twelve and ways to order drinks, thanks to endless nights spent playing dice at Xiandu’s one and only world-class nightclub) may as well be Russian for all they care: Cantonese and Mandarin have indeed nothing in common.

The cool part of it all, is the writing… and the realization that my kanji skills are not as bad as I thought they were. Even a very puny reader of Japanese like myself is able to decipher a rough 30% of all public writings (signs, menus etc.) and, when times really call for it, push across to the local a few semantics of my own. You should have seen me and how incredibly proud of myself I was, when I managed to get shown the direction of the bay (wherein my hotel lies), after scribbling the kanjis for “sea” and “coast” to some incredulous local merchants…

My brightest idea of the week undeniably came yesterday, when I opted to pack my old Japanese keitai with me (usually serves as a back-up camera and optional Japanese vocabulary helper for my daily manga reading): made the writing (i.e. “speaking”) part that much easier, especially for somebody like me with more than approximative kanji handwriting skills… Definitely a weird feeling (and not only for me), but utterly rewarding nonetheless.

The sights

Following Jonathan‘s great advice (he should be a freelance guide in Hong Kong: he definitely has the skills for it), I went and did a quick roundup of the typical touristy stuff there is to do in Hong Kong. Still, either because of the season or the day, most of the places I went to weren’t that crowded. Fairly quiet, even, in the case of the Big Buddha in Po Lin… Which made it all the more enjoyable.

Must be the Tokyoite in me talking, but I was amazed at how much real natural landscape there is in HK. As soon as you leave the city itself, it seems quite common to spot entire hills devoid of any construction or pristine beaches on the side of the road… Definitely not something you’d see in Tokyo and its surrounding. Of course, Tokyo’s got its parks, but being able to go to a real beach in HK, in less than it would take you to go to Yokohama from Shinjuku, makes it an incredibly cool place in my book.

On the other hand, the fact that the whole place seems perpetually shrouded in a veil of smog that makes Tokyo look like a febreeze commercial in comparison, is a serious downside… How is it possible to keep that much dioxydes when you are surrounded by water on all sides?…

OK. The rest tomorrow, as I am starting to fall asleep on my keyboard, usually the time where I start repeating myself to no end… Did I tell you about kanjis and Cantonese?

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A few words before I go lay down with a cold towel over my head…

I’m well and safe in Hong-Kong.

On the other hand, topping a long series of inauspicious events, Justine missed her plane and probably won’t be able to meet me here at all, which implies a heavy rewriting of my next two days’ schedule. I guess there will be much less drinking and much more touristy crap.

Other than that, I can’t say I missed being in a city where every single word of the local language sounds like complete gibberish to me. Of course, I seem to be able to decipher most street signs and other familiar kanjis, but that’s very little help when dealing with a cab driver who doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea where my hotel’s street is and insists on addressing me in his local idiom (ostensibly because his english skills themselves are limited to “English… no…”). Anyway, I finally made it to the somewhat mediocre hotel we had managed to book before leaving (the previous episode in The Hong-Kong Curse series, being Jus’ friend rescinding her lodging offer, two days before arrival).

I guess the next step is to figure where exactly I am on a map and try to make use of my solo time here. But first I got to sleep off that headache before the gerbil digging through my brain finally makes his way out.

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Do you know how hard it is to get rid of a fridge in Tokyo without either parting with half your bank account or breaking a dozen local laws? Hard. Very hard.

But it’s all behind now, the move is over, all that’s left is a few days to enjoy Tokyo and say bye to all friends before heading for Europe, by way of Hong-Kong (Thursday to Saturday, if anybody’s around and wants to meet for a beer).

So anyway, tonight, I, with a few friends, will be busy getting drunk on cheap sangria and reminiscing the wacky hijinx of the gaijin life in Japan, all the while spinning a few records and, who knows, shaking some nails to it…
It’s all taking place between 8 and 12, at Cozmo’s Café in Shibuya. About 2 minutes from the station, near the Post Office. Here is the map…

So whether we’ve met in the past or even if you’ve never got a chance to spot me in the flesh during my stay in Tokyo, do come and say hi! I’ll be the one either drinking my 20th Gin&Tonic under a table or haphazardly spinning a few records at the turntables…

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Picture mamachari_bike.jpg Recent dearth of posts had more to do with lack of time than lack of inspiration. Nonetheless, I figured I would end the Tokyo-based era of this blog with a special series dedicated to the many differences between the place I’m leaving and the place I’m moving to.

For one: angry people in Japan do not burn cars or people.

Oops, I did it again.

Alright, let me backtrack on that and establish the outline of that new series…

Of course, it would be all too easy to spend the next four-something-weeks ranting about all the crappy aspects of Japanese life I am happy to leave behind. Then switch over to my numerous objects of dislikes with the Parisians and Parisian life.

But I won’t.

Instead, we are gonna focus on the positive: things I will be dearly missing once departed and until a possible return in some distant future. Some you may identify with if you live in Japan, others probably more personal or mundane but still relevant to what makes life in a foreign country enjoyable. All presented in no particular order, time and mood permitting.

For our first installment, let me tell you about:

My Bike

Absolute ignoramus of Japanese culture that I was until the day I landed in Narita, I had always thought of those crazy bike-infested cities as being a staple of China and perhaps a few other South-East Asian countries. Japan sounded way too modern and busy riding magnetic levitation trains, to bother with such lo-tech means of transportation.

As it turns out, Japan loves bikes.

Of course, Japan also loves trains and subways, and for the most part: I do too (outside of peak hours).

To own a car in Tokyo, you not only have to be seriously wealthy and dedicated, you also have to be quite stupid: free street parking is practically unheard of, private monthly parking will set you back roughly the price of a second apartment (not counting daily parking, wherever you go) and apart from the many expensive toll-highways that circle major neighbourhoods, driving around Tokyo is as frustrating and pointless as any other metropolis. With the added bonus of a labyrinthine layout of streets that commonly narrows down to the point where a single pedestrian couldn’t walk arms outstretched. Trains are a far better choice for long distances, bicycles for short ones.

Bikes (the motorized kind, including scooters, as will always be implied when you use the word in Japan) are also a very cool way to go around easily without most of the downsides of cars: during my years here, Atsushi’s faithful scooter has taken us everywhere and back… But they are also not a great idea when most of your outings end up at 4 in the morning somewhere far from home with more alcohol than blood running through your veins…

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Sorry for the sparse blogging as of late (I know: piccies don’t count). I’ll just leave it up to you to pull the appropriate form RFC-3563 (a.k.a. “I’m sorry I did’t blog for so long. Here are the reasons why…”) and fill it with whatever you fancy.

In order to break the silence, I am not gonna rant about spitefully incompetent French university personnel, nor am I gonna express any sort of opinion about the current bouts of suburban pyromania taking place one hour north of the city I’m moving to next month (oh no, we aren’t talking about that. keep walking. keep walking. just a bit more… yep, good).

Instead, I’m gonna give you the detailed recipe for the most amazing Japanese dish you’ve ever had. And not only is it yumtastic, but it’s also dirt-easy to make and vegetarian. If you’ve lived in Japan any, you probably know about the difficulties of following a vegetarian diet in this beautiful country. In fact, if you meet somebody here who tells you he is a die-hard vegetarian, he is most likely either a liar, an imbecile or eating the vast majority of his meals at home (I know a couple of the latter). Oddly enough for a somewhat buddhist country, the concept of vegetarianism is about as foreign to Japan as it is to your average midwest eatery (where asking for a vegetarian meal means you want a side order of fries with your 3-pound rib-eye steak). No matter how hard you try, and even after you’d eventually manage to convey the idea that neither chicken skin nor seafood could reasonably be considered “vegetables”, the ubiquitous fish-sauce that’s added to about any edible dish in Japan will get you in the end.

Luckily, I was never the religious veggie type: I did not eat meat or fish during my last few years living in SF, but it was mostly by choice of a health-conscious diet, not the deep-seated conviction that I would be snacking on the reincarnation of my grandpa. While not a deciding factor, the fact that my dearly beloved was a veggie herself helped a lot… Not that she would impose it on me or anything, but it just makes things infinitely easier when you don’t have to cook two of each meals you take together…
And overall, SF might be one of, if not the, most herbivore friendly cities in the world, where opening a restaurant without at least a few decent vegetarian dishes on the menu is akin to commercial suicide.

Yet, I was never hardcore and had no qualms about ever so occasionally partaking in some delicious late-night cheeseburger goodness. What can I say: In-N-Out burgers are like the choir boys of vegetarian priesthood… It’s just impossible to resist.

So upon moving to Tokyo, I quickly decided to spare many an awkward encounters with flustered Japanese restaurant employees by accommodating whatever was on the menu and keeping my vegetarian tendencies for home-cooking. Though even this isn’t quite as easy here as in sunny California, considering the substantial difference in availability and pricing for fresh groceries that do not contain tentacles or miscellaneous animal parts.

A man needs his calories, especially in Japan, and there are only so many ways you can cook tofu before getting seriously tired of it. Let’s face it, tofu is quite bland, edible at best (granted there is a world of difference between what you’ll get in a supermarket and what I can buy at the Tofu-ya just down the road), hardly anywhere as exciting as, say, a crispy strip of bacon. Unless… Unless…

Unless you make:

Agedashi Tofu (揚げ出し豆腐)

This amazing recipe will single-handedly revert any misguided aversion you may have toward eating coagulated rotten soy beans, or as we like to call it around here: tofu. It draws its powers from an ancient and revered cooking technique, one that holds the magical property of turning any semi-edible piece of junk into sin-inducing candy goodness: deep frying.

Some of our readers are no doubt familiar with this staple of fair food in the UK: deep-fried Snickers chocolate bars (or its Kentucky’s US equivalent: deep-fried squirrel balls) and its much improved yummy-factor as a result. Well, tofu works the same: the technique will turn an overall unappetizing lump of healthy proteins into a much-less-healthy, but infinitely more sexy, golden tofu beignet, whose creamy inside will melt on your tongue. Add to it our patented Magical All-purpose Japanese Sauce™ (sold separately, see details on top), and you have yourself a strong contender for best Japanese food, on a tight spot with Shoyū Ramen.

Convinced now?

On to cooking then:

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Picture conan_lupin_sansei.jpg When I last wrote that entry on the many shortcomings of Japanese mangas, my original intent truly was to follow it up shortly with my own recommendations, or at least observations, as a skeptical, yet sincere newcomer to the genre…

The fact that it took me three months to get to it, is a testament to the sad state of affairs of this industry (and my own sorry ass’ inability to get anything done when not threatened at gunpoint). Actually, the decision to start reading mangas is an old one, one that arose around the time I woke up one day and realized I could suddenly understand Japanese (すっげぇ〜！日本語を喋れるよ！さああ、僕は貝が好きなの・・・). Well, alright: understand might be pushing it a bit, but I’ve been known to conduct reasonably flawless weather-related conversations with my neighbours: a major improvement from my arrival on Japanese soil, where my vocabulary was essentially limited to three Japanese words, one of which I cannot repeat on this site unless you can testify you are over 18 and click here.

Thing is: drunken conversation with Samurai friends did and still does wonders to my verbal skills, I can pull off a semi-decent everyday-Japanese provided it stays on the topic of whose turn it is to pay the next round, or monosyllabic expressions of my appreciation for miscellaneous types of music or other artistic works. Anything slightly off the beaten path usually gets me nodding complacently until I somehow manage to catch a few words that could clue me in on whatever it is we are talking about. Similarly, that whole level-of-speech issue has not been getting any better: you know things are bad when your friend – who has just chugged half a gallon of rum directly off the bottle – kindly worries about your use of excessively colloquial expressions.

Horizons have to be widened and grammar needs improving dramatically.

Hence: Mangas

First, because books are convenient: you can study them anytime, anywhere and by yourself; they do not require a language exchange partner who will be either convinced you are hitting on her, or actually hitting on you (and yea, the feminine form here has a purpose: just check the number of candidates for language exchange in English or French out there and their repartition by gender).

Also because, taking my cue on the local upcoming generations, I cannot read kanjis for shit. Which rules out most magazines and daily newspapers. Some magazines are not that hard – possibly even below my level – but there are only so many times you can read about the latest news on panty thieving activities, detailed voyeuristic recounts of schoolgirl groping-related arrests or nampa tips, straight from the pros (the gist of which can usually be found in all its quaint alliteration-riddled English translation glory on the Mainichi’s website).

As for regular books, real literature, eternal classics of the Japanese masters: try opening an original Mishima volume for laughs, just once. I swear, that guy uses kanjis even my dictionary has never heard of.

Mangas, on the other hand, rarely make use of overly elaborate kanjis, yet can cover a wide array of situations and lexical fields, all along offering saucerplate-eyed visual clues of the ongoing story. Additionally, most have furiganas for part or all of the kanjis used (depending on the target age for the series).

Let’s stop here for a slightly tedious digression that you may want to skip if you know anything about the Japanese language and the black magic art known as reading it:

As you may know, Japanese is written using both kanjis (roughly 1000 to 2000 different ones for basic books and newspapers) and two syllabaries known as kanas. A syllabary is similar to an alphabet, in that each character represents a sound, but unlike, say, the latin alphabet, Japanese kanas each match a full sound (“ma”, “mi”, “mu”, “mo”, “ra”, “ri”, “ro” etc). Each syllabary contains 80-some characters and is usually the first thing anybody will learn when studying Japanese.

In theory, every Japanese word could be spelled using only kanas (and thus easily readable by anybody with reading abilities above kindergarten level). This is quite convenient in cases like computer interfaces, where words are typed using kanas, before being turned into kanjis through some menu selection or such. In practice, though, most people (yours truly, included) will find it incredibly tedious to read a text written entirely using phonetic kanas (remember that Japanese doesn’t separate words either). For texts meant to be readable by kids or sufficiently important not to take a chance with the odd illiterate countryman, a compromise is found by writing both the kanji and its kana spelling alongside. These kanas are usually written in a smaller font above (when writing horizontally) or to the right (when writing vertically) of the kanjis they explain. They are called furiganas and will make the most arcane reading accessible to the casual reader.

One important reason to love furiganas, especially for foreigners, is that if you encounter a kanji you are unfamiliar with, you will probably want to look it up in a dictionary… Which is infinitely easier to do if you actually know how to pronounce it.

It is still possible to look up both meaning and reading of an unknown kanji by using a method known as “multiradical lookup”, relying on the number of strokes and a few recognizable components of the whole ideogram. Even if with a bit of habit and the right tools, multiradical searches can be done fairly fast, they are considerably more annoying to conduct than regular phonetic lookups.

End of digression

Finding readable materials…

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This one dedicated to Jeff:

I was enjoying a peaceful late lunch and tea break at the small eatery next-door with E., somewhere between lovemaking session #5 and arguing session #253, when a noisy discussion, one table over, draw our attention:

Three obatarians were seated, twice as many teapots in front of them, loudly and excitingly commenting over what looked like exercise sheets scattered on the table. From the style of the exercises and the tone of their comments, it seemed like at least one of them was learning how to write kanjis: a peculiar explanation, seeing how they all sounded positively natives, with little chance of belonging to the 1% illiterate people in Japan.

But then, listening more carefully to their attempt at pronouncing strange guttural tchaw‘s and yow‘s and taking a closer look at their papers, we realized they weren’t working their Japanese kanjis: these little old women were indeed feverishly teaching each other Korean. At that point, I could clearly see the ghost of Bae Yong Joon hovering above the table and reflecting into their glistening pupils.

I suppose until that moment, I had woefully underestimated the spread of Yong-sama-mania among the greying Japanese masses, but E. confirmed that even her aging slightly xenophobic grandma had all but started to learn Korean, secondary to that mop-head single-handedly bringing Korea to the forefront of sappy insipid drama production for the Asian market.

And I naively thought that peace and understanding between countries would have to be slowly built over mutual respect and appreciation for millennia-old cultures.

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Dr Dave, 3 days after Landing, attempting to convey to a befuddled bank clerk that the damn ATM outside refuses to take his US card (conversation transcribed to English for clarity purposes):

“Me… money… want… money… please…”

Ten months and twenty full pages of Japanese phrasebook later: trying to open a bank account in order to cash my first paycheck. After literally half-a-dozen fruitless attempts, I find one bank (みずほ, if you must know) that doesn’t mind the fact that I have: 1) no relatives born within 50 miles of the branch, 2) not been living a few decades on the island, 3) no inkan emblazoned with my kanji name and 4) a suspiciously pale skin color, compared to the local shade in fashion. I am not about to ask if they have multilingual staff on the premises.

In Japan, whenever a foreigner steps into a business asking for service, it is customary for staff to hastily draw straws. Failing that, they seek the one employee who has foreign country’s experience (usually a one-week honeymoon in Thailand). Failing that, they send the youngest trainee with instructions to commit seppuku if things get out of hand.

Two hours, many outdated Japanese-English dictionaries and one slightly rattled employee later, I have a Japanese bank account. It only took us 40 minutes to figure how to spell my name in katakana. It will only take me a few more months to figure out how to withdraw money from it.

Three years later: “Hi, I just lost my cash card in Paris, need to change my two-year out-of-date address, make a bank transfer (without my card) and, oh yea, gimme 50,000 yens in cash, by the way that’s a lovely necklace you got here. kthanx.”

Somehow even ended up with her personal phone number on the back of my checkbook.

This language thing is becoming way too easy, high time to leave the country.