Overdue preparations

Today I made two critical but long, long overdue purchases: A cell phone and health insurance. One could potentially save my life; the other is health insurance. Since the newbies issued from the dorm en masse in pursuit of said items, I fell in with them, or rather, fell in with the Japanese assistants and spent most of the day translating and coordinating, which is where I feel most comfortable anyway, while also incidentally checking a few boxes myself.

Honestly, I have absolutely absurd amounts of insurance. I have MSP, a policy under my mother as a government employee, traveller's insurance, and probably some form of liability insurance from both my universities. It's only the traveller's insurance that sticks in my craw, though, because I specifically explained to my parents that I didn't need it because with everything else put together, I am covered up if I need a hip replacement or cybernetic implants.

To which they said, we'll just look into it for you, by which they meant take out a policy in my name. My first instinct was to phone and cancel the living shit out of it as soon as I got the confirmation e-mail, but I decided to at least hear what happened first. Why am I getting nailed for $900 of insurance I never wanted or asked for? Because I don't have $900. Don't worry, they assured me, we've got you covered. Well, fine. If that's what you're willing to pay for your own peace of mind, rock on.

I only later found out that by “got me covered” they meant that I could just pay them back as soon as I got my loan money. The loan money that would just barely cover my first semester. In fact, I was now stretched so thin I didn't have enough money to buy the mandatory government insurance! What irony. Wait, you have to buy into the national plan? Yes, you guys. I explained this.

“Then why did you get all that traveller's insurance?”

But really, Rude Boy, is it possible to have too much insurance? Yes. Of course it is. More than $1 million is too much insurance. Having to make such a large payment that it momentarily looks like you might run out of money and have to leave Japan is too much insurance. Look, I get it, this is basically an investment that, at some point in my life, I will probably have to make use of, but I can't get over the idea that you are paying huge amounts of money for literally nothing.

I only made it this far through frugality and ingenuity, part of which included not actually ever buying into the national plan as I am technically required to. But I always planned to once I had the money. Not because I feel I need it – I don't, in case that needs clearing up – but because I don't want to get a little note in my file for being an anarchic lawbreaker, a roving rebel who stops jaywalking just long enough to put burnable garbage into the recycling. I doubt it would actually cause a problem on my next visa application, but for 15,000 yen – they charged me retroactively starting in September, which I guess is just the price you pay, literally – it's worth it for the piece of mind. Hey, see what I did there?

Following the snake oil store was Yodobashi Camera. As I will be doing prepaid, I had only one phone to choose from, available in either black or Softbank white. I went with the black, because aesthetics, and because dirt. It's a fine piece of machinery, representing the absolute pinnacle of cell phone technology circa 2006. After falling so deeply in love with the Samsung Galaxy line, I feel silly and awkward clunking away at physical buttons. Writing a single mail is as painful and time-consuming as childbirth. The graphics are simplistic and lifeless. I have to open it to check my alerts. Looking back over a conversation entails manually scrolling through and opening dozens of previous individual mails, sometimes interrupted by messages from other people entirely. It'll do the job, though, and my Canadian phone can handle anything more intensive via Wi-Fi.

As soon as I got it in my hands, my new phone presented a problem, namely where to store it. My back-right pocket is occupied entirely by my wallet, so that's out; the normally empty back-left would seem to be the logical choice, but I knew from experience that alighting on even the softest seat would cause it to jab painfully into my ass. I gave the front-left a shot, sliding it in alongside my Galaxy and steadily shrinking pocket dictionary. Can I get at the new phone? In and out, no problem. Galaxy? Likewise. Dictionary? Um, not without removing everything else first. I finally settled on the front-right, which has heretofore borne only my camera. I was hoping to avoid this because having a phone in each pocket seems a little too symmetrical and lame, and also because I'm worried that positioning two cell phones in that particular arrangement might create a sort of electromagnetic gravity well and irradiate my testicles, rendering me sterile. Which I guess would actually be fine.

My ability to survive without a cellular telephone of any kind made me seriously question my need for one, but really, to have anywhere near the kind of social life I aspire to it's probably a necessity. It'll also save me that fun game that nobody else in the entire world has played since the late 1990s, where you wonder if the other person is early, or you're late, or you got the location wrong, or you missed each other and they already went to the venue already and you should go check it out, and maybe you should go stand over there instead to make yourself more visible, and goddamn it you'll wait five more minutes and after that you're cutting your losses and finding something else to do.

One drawback to my new communicative capabilities is that I can no longer avoid people by using the excuse that I don't have my phone. “Oh, yeah, everybody would have loved for you to be there! That's really too bad! Next time!” I really was using that as an excuse for never socializing with anybody in the dorm, and disappearing for hours (days) at a time. I guess now I'll just have to get really bad at answering text messages, and maybe sometimes forget my phone at home.

As soon as I finally got it set up, I fired off a Facebook status announcing my new wired status and calling for people to send me a message with their own contact details. Predictably, I received a bunch of timely responses, but all from people I hate.  

New batch

I had an enjoyable, if mostly unexciting, spring vacation, but soon the new semester will be upon us, and the winds of change have brought the next generation of adventurers to our doorstep. With the memories of my own arrival still so fresh in my mind, it was funny sitting on the far side of the fence, watching everybody timidly venture into the common room and begin trying to carve out their niche. The five all-new Japanese students, who will be here for the next year, arrived a week in advance, so as to be acclimated themselves before being hit with the responsibility of helping out the others. The relief force of foreigners drifted in over a period of three days leading up to the weekend. And after all, when we have a perfectly good tatami room that's longing for love, what's a weekend with a slew of new housemates without a party?

The old guard had one for us when we first arrived, and this one was predictably similar. It began with a paralyzingly awkward battery of self-introductions, as entire civilizations rose and fell in the outside world, and then gradually progressed from everybody being too shy to talk or eat the food to crawling all over each other and dancing spontaneously. For reasons that he never made clear, Overly Lengthy and Dramatic Appellation from Spain spent about twenty minutes making everybody write down some phrase in their home language, which just turned into fifteen variations of “I have a parrot on my shoulder” after I started and everybody copied me.

On the whole, I'm very pleased with the new batch, because they're all friendly and good-natured, they all seem to have basically the right attitude towards Japan, and not one of them is fucking stupid. Well, Jason Biggs is a bit of a stereotypically oversexed handsome Italian dickweed, but he also knows better than to question anyone who's already been in this house for six months. There's been a change in the language dynamic that's a little strange, though; to the surprise of exactly no one, the Europeans have very limited Japanese skills, while the two Koreans and countless Chinese are much more advanced, except this group is much more outgoing than their forebears, resulting in a net increase of Japanese being spoken within these walls.

What's different this time is that while previously the spread was fairly even from bottom to top, now we're seeing a fairly even split in ability between “basically fluent in everyday situations” and “aware that Japanese is a thing.” The non-Asians in the last feed could at least order at a restaurant and talk about themselves; some of these guys have literally never studied it in their lives. I'm never quite sure what to think of that. On the one hand, I applaud the guts it must take to dive into a new environment you know nothing about. On the other hand, how the hell do you develop enough of an interest in a country to make the considerable financial and chronological investment of studying there for a year, without ever feeling some compulsion to maybe add “What time is it now” or “Where can you get good blow around here” to your repertoire? So my faint hopes of finally getting a halfway decent dorm for language-learning have flickered out, but things are still better than they were.

Oh, and I'm not the only Canadian anymore, either. What treachery is this?

After the better part of the group had retired to the upstairs and the atmosphere taken on a bit of a different tone, I sat down with Cough Medicine and both Finns for some serious talks of power brokering. As I've mentioned, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what obligations, if any, I hold in respect to my dorm kouhai. I've spoken with the two new (Japanese) student leaders who will be nominally in charge of day-to-day business, neither of whom is confident in their ability to run a bath, never mind a dorm, and assured them that I will share of my substantial experience and decision-making acumen should they desire to draw upon it. I've decided that if nothing else I'm going to start taking a more hands-on approach with affairs around here. No more “not my responsibility, doesn't affect me” business, even when it isn't, and it doesn't. Basically I'm trying to say that we're all going to be a lot happier if I'm calling the shots, and the only problem with that is that Anarchy in the UK is a power-hungry fiend just like myself.

Cough Medicine: Well I was thinking about that, and in my mind it was always either you or him who was going to take over. Except that you actually speak Japanese.

Big Finn: And you don't have your head up your asshole.

Cough Medicine: My advice is, Facebook politics. Look at what he did, he organized this entire party and he wasn't even here.

He's built a more robust powerbase than I have by virtue of actually trying to build one, but I've garnered support on an individual level. The Chinese are swing voters, so to speak, as are a couple of others on the fringe, but unless I managed to mess up that grab pretty badly there's no way he could pose a significant threat to my base. He has: the Taiwanese girls and a couple of his personal friends. I have: Basically everybody else. Just as importantly, I'm more experienced in these kinds of politics, I have access to crucially useful skills and knowledge that he doesn't, and he's playing on my turf. If I decide to play, I'll own this dorm, and I just have to decide whether or not it's worth the effort.

Numbers slowly dwindled until only Mother Russia and I remained, at which point we decided that a 7-11 run was of the utmost necessity. Just as we left the dormitory we discovered a small unattended box on top of the shoe lockers, which I investigated by ripping in two. It transpired to contain a couple small pieces of cake, which we ate half of before putting it back where we found it, good as new. On the way, we came across a shopping bag containing an ancient and battered industrial-strength surveyor's tape, which I promptly began unreeling. It slapped onto the ground behind us for a good sprint until the mechanism caught, wrenching it from my alcohol-addled fingers. We left it where it fell. Ultimately we passed out on my couch, setting the rumour mill ablaze the following morning.

Rude Boy: Have a whitw girl sleeping on my schulter rught nao, teying to decide on an appropriate reaction.

President: Lol ur drunk again

I have a good feeling about this semester.

TWEWY and AKBT: Sister games

Owing to my recent excursion, I'm left in a Toukyou state of mind. And you know what two games take place in Toukyou, and kept appearing in my mind while I was there? You do, if you read the posts. The answer is The World Ends with You (素晴らしきこの世界、 “What a Wonderful World,” in Japanese) and AKIBA'S TRIP. The former takes place in the fashion mecca of Shibuya, the latter in the geek paradise of Akihabara.

These games are hardly the only ones to take place in contemporary Toukyou (Jet Set Radio, Ryuu ga Gotoku, and Megami Tensei come to mind), but I have a few reasons for singling out this particular pair. Both are action-RPGs. Both feature fantastic stories taking place amongst their interesting, but comparatively mundane settings. Both were highly experimental titles with a lot of intriguing ideas. Both are single-installment games that debuted within the same console generation, on directly competing portable platforms, no less (the DS and PSP, respectively), with each taking advantage of that system's particular strengths. And finally, rather than taking the entire megacity as a basis, both games focus in on one specific area, lavishing it with an affection and attention to detail I haven't ever really seen anywhere else.

In TWEWY, you control two characters at once – one on each screen. The bottom screen is reserved for protagonist Neku, who attacks with a wide variety of touch-screen-driven psychic abilities, while his partner does the same on the top screen per commands from the D-pad. All enemies appear in both iterations of the battlefield; they share a lifebar with their alt-world counterpart, as does Neku with his partner, thus requiring cooperation (ie coordinated multi-tasking from you) to bring your enemies down. This aspect is further emphasized through the Puck, a green aura that gets passed between screens if you keep up a good offensive rhythm. The Puck confers an attack bonus on the character holding it, and it grows in power with each pass, but dissipates if you mess up. This means you have to be able to keep up a continuous assault with one character while not neglecting the other, lest they be overwhelmed. Moreover, if you fill up a special metre, you can unleash a Fusion attack, in which the pair combine forces to mete out heavy damage to all enemies at once. Neku's available attacks are governed by a slate of Pins – as in, like, the metal things that you attach to your shirt to show your political allegiance or whatever. Depending on what you have equipped, you might find yourself pressing an enemy to fire a blast of energy at it, slashing empty space to summon spiked chains, tapping a Pin itself for a quick round of healing, or blowing into the DS mic to have Neku breathe fire. Each Pin has an associated cooldown time, preventing you from merely spamming your strongest attacks, and each one also levels up individually, becoming more powerful or even gaining new properties.

The battle system in Akiba's Trip is less innovative, but based on just as good a concept. Your enemies, the Kageyashi, are basically a clan of hidden vampires, and thus extremely vulnerable to sunlight. Accordingly, in order to defeat them you must rob them of their clothes. The initial stages of any given encounter start out in fairly standard beat-em-up territory, but rather than injure your enemies themselves, it's their clothing you target. Each article – pants/skirt, shirt, and sometimes also some type of headgear – has its own health bar, and once that's been depleted, you'll get a Strip Chance. If your opponent doesn't manage to repel you, you'll rip their clothes clean off their bodies. Once they've been reduced to just their socks and underwear, their exposed bodies can no longer handle the exertion and they slowly burn to death. If you've sufficiently damaged a number of nearby enemies, you can chain together Strip Chances, moving smoothly from target to target like a whirling dervish amongst a storm of steadily increasing nudity. But beware: As a Kageyashi yourself, you too may find yourself on the receiving end of a lascivious onslaught. You'll need to equip yourself with the right combination of clothing, some of which confer situational bonuses, and arm yourself with the weapons at your disposal, which range from everyday items, like a student's bag or a rolled-up poster, right on up to a mythical sword.

Both games have surprisingly strong plots. TWEWY can be pretty overwrought at times, while AKBT is intentionally silly-serious. The former puts you in the shoes of a grimly cocky loner forced to participate in the Shinigami Game. This a strictly partner-oriented affair, predictably setting him down the gradual path of friendship and mutual respect. He and his new partner, Shiki, quickly realise that all the participants in the Shinigami Game are dead, competing to see which team will win a second shot at life. Each day presents a set of goals to achieve and challenges to overcome, but the teams are also harried by the Noise – the psychic manifestations of peoples' negative emotions, normally incorporeal but nightmarishly immediate in the realm the players now inhabit – as well as the meddling of the Shinigami charged with running the game.

AKBT is no more rooted in reality. As the Kageyashi require human blood as sustenance, often killing their prey in the process, the anti-Kageyashi organization NIRO has been formed to deal with the threat. The nameless protagonist nearly meets his end to a Kageyashi attack in a back alley, but his attacker's sister, who disagrees with the general Kageyashi ethos, saves him with a kiss, transferring some of her own blood to him and beginning his transformation into a Kageyashi himself. NIRO picks him up and recruits him into their investigative group, formed largely of locals with deep resources inside the area and strong knowledge of its culture. You set out to begin the long process of putting down a burgeoning Kageyashi rebellion, but as you encounter less militant members you learn that NIRO's perspective may not be the whole truth. In the end, you will have to choose whether to support NIRO and wipe out the Kageyashi, turn over to the rebellion and help them dismantle NIRO, or take a third option and try to pursue peaceful coexistence between humans and Kageyashi.

And all of that is awesome, but those things alone are not what make these two games special. It's that the interplay of plot and mechanics with ambient setting is so masterful and compelling in both cases. They don't merely take place in their respective districts, but are fixated on them. They outright state that there's something special about them, not only in being supernatural nexii, but also in the sense that they're epicentres of humanity and subculture. They go pretty far to have us agree with them, too, drawing out their essences and painting the whole experience with them.

Y'all know I'm a Kansai guy, so this is hardly my area of expertise. But as far as I can tell, the geographical accuracy is admirable, especially in AKBT, for which people have compared screenshots from gameplay to their Akihabara counterparts, with stunning results. Locations like the Sega Building and back alleys are artfully recreated. TWEWY is no slouch either, recreating basically all of Shibuya's landmarks – no small feat for an area of that size – with incredible fidelity, giving us such sights as HMV, 109, Hachiko, and Scramble Crossing. The director said in an interview that you could probably use the game as a guidebook for the area; I don't doubt it. Same goes for AKBT. Much as GTA IV taught me the basic geography of New York (minus Staten Island), these two games showed me how their areas were laid out. All three make their subjects seem like the most exciting place in the world.

That's not even the coolest part. What really keeps me thinking about these two titles, even years after playing them, is the way that they nailed the atmosphere. Everything just feels right. There's thorough research, and then there's stuff you can only transmit through a love of the subject. The game worlds feel inhabited and active; when you meet new people, you believe that they really do live in the area. They dress, speak, and think believably, insofar as they are still fictional. And finally, both TWEWY and AKBT make the best possible use of local culture. AKBT has it easy, of course, with its focus on otakuland, but it doesn't rest on its laurels. In-game anime starring a schoolgirl who transforms into a defender of justice when she removes her glasses; supermarketed, oversexed, ravenously popular teen idols; maid cafes where you can play stupid games to win prizes; the only thing it's missing is video games, but then, it is one. TWEWY is a little less obvious, but the fashion and musical influences are clear, especially the latter. How many other games can you name with battle music like this?

Interestingly, both contain elements of eating and shopping, each of which makes perfect sense, and yet they both focus on one more than the other. AKBT treats food items as mere powerups and healing items, which is fine, but TWEWY tries something new by limiting the amount of stat-increasing ramen and burgers that characters are allowed to eat within one real-world day. TWEWY also uses regular clothing where a mediaevel world would armour, while AKBT can be basically one long cosplay sim if you want it to be, complete with a little sister to wear any clothes you want in exchange for money. Uh, that basically speaks for itself, so I will append no further commentary.

With all of this in mind, is it really possible to say which game is “better?” Well, yes, actually. TWEWY is better. It has cleaner controls, a more engaging battle system, a more compelling narrative, and, although the PSP obviously has far greater processing power, AKBT's 3D graphics are blocky and saturated, making TWEWY's atypical style the aesthetic winner as well. And let's not even get started on the music, because I could do a whole series of posts on just that. Basically, TWEWY is superior in absolutely every way. Just wanted to get that out there. But AKBT still left a good taste in my mouth when I was done with it, especially as the best parts of the game are towards the middle and end. They're both great games.

So please, Square Enix and Acquire. No sequels. Some things are better left as once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Also, know what's fun? Imagining that TWEWY and AKBT take place within the same universe.

Everything I did this weekend

Saturday is my last day of ESL pseudo-work, and I'm sad to see it go. Not just because of the money, but because I've grown attached to the kids. They were all so cool; I've even developed favourites. The fact that I did it for such a short period makes me feel like I've somehow left a job unfinished. I hate to admit it, but I may never see any of them ever again. I barely know them, and yet I'll miss them.

Heh. This blog is pretty sappy lately, eh? And here you all thought I didn't have a heart.

Oh my God, this is how it starts, isn't it? This is how they get you. One minute you're cooing over cute kids. Then suddenly you're waking up in a house that you own, and there's a stationwagon parked outside, and you have a real job, and screaming brats, and you've been with the same person for the last 30 years.

Since I'm already halfway there anyway, I head over to Pokemon Centre Oosaka so I can buy a bunch more useless crap I don't need. Apparently a new Pokemon game has been released this very day, and the place is packed with people here for the associated merchandise. Afterwards, I take a long stroll through Umeda. Kyouto's grown on me, but I can't wait until I someday move to Oosaka.

As it turns out, Gundam capsules are actually in every major arcade, including Kawaramachi Round1. To make full use of the game, though, you need a BaNa Passport, which allows you to save your profile data to Bandai Namco's servers and access it from any cabinet, anywhere. Unfortunately I'm too shy to ask where I can buy one. I get glum. No wonder I have so few friends – I'm too shy to even talk to a store clerk! And if this is what my social life looks like when I'm in fucking university, how the hell do I ever expect to meet anybody if I start working as a teacher? The longer I think, the more upset and pissed off I become. I decide to take a walk through Gion to clear my head.

As my legs grow sore, it suddenly hits me. Dumbass. I'm not upset, I'm tired. I have sleep issues in the best of times, but they've been particularly severe in the last couple of weeks, and sleep fatigue aggravates my depression. At least I'm getting better at recognizing when my mood is being caused by chemicals rather than my situation. If I know what's causing it, I can talk myself out of it...or at least avoid talking myself farther into it.

Seven, always looking for ways to include me, has invited me to her graduation. My suit is cobbled together from my own shoes, a shirt and pair of pants that I received from an old roommate, a tie borrowed from my father and a jacket borrowed from Cologne. The results should logically be offensive at best, and yet, against all odds, this completely stupid combination somehow comes together to form a cohesive and very nice-looking outfit.

Unfortunately, Insufferable Dumbass has somehow heard about the ceremony and decided to go as well. Worse, he somehow zeroes in on me as his would-be comrade, making him all but impossible to duck. Fortunately Cologne tags along as well, reducing the chance that sheer frustration will drive me to stab Insufferable Dumbass in the face, but he spends literally the entire ceremony squirming around, playing with his phone, and fidgeting with anything in reach. He's such a child he literally can't even sit still for five seconds at a time, never mind two hours. I have no idea why he came.

The ceremony is basically indistinguishable from a Western one, with two major differences: There is a great deal more bowing, and the girls all wear hakama instead of suits. Why only the girls I have no idea, but I heartily approve.

On the pretense of looking for people we know, Cologne and I manage to lose Insufferable Dumbass in the crowd, after which he decides he will return to the dorm and come back to catch the next faculty. In the intervening time, I attend an English Club meeting congratulating the graduating members. Very nearly everybody is there – including those entering fourth year (who have thus left the club) and even a couple who have already entered the workforce – so I'm able to catch up with some old favourites. Seven, dressed in her purple hakama, is even more adorable than usual.

I kill a few hours with Shiga, and when we board the bus to the evening's nomikai we're met with a glut of English Clubbers already en route. Super Junior and I engage in animated chatter for a good twenty minutes or so, at which point one of two middle-aged women who weren't adventurous enough in their youth and have been left nothing but dry husks with nothing but bitterness for the world, who have not said or done anything up to this point, grabs my arm out of nowhere.

“The way you're leaning over and talking is really fucking annoying,” she tells me, without preamble.

“Um,” I say. But I bite my tongue. “My apologies.”

“So could you shut the fuck up?”

“That's right!” says the other one, and I turn to her.

For a long moment, I give her a hard stare, trying to decide whether or not to tell her to eat a dick. After a few seconds of this, she squirms in her seat and breaks my gaze. I turn on my heel and go farther up the bus to talk to Shiga, angling my body towards the two old maids and laughing as joyfully as possible at every opportunity. I've had entire nights ruined by one asshole comment before; I'm not letting that happen tonight. But something must have betrayed my emotions, because later Super Junior tells me not to care about it.

As befits the mood of her final English Club event ever, Seven gets incredibly drunk and starts kissing every girl within striking distance. Izakaya is followed by all-night karaoke, specifically one of those hilarious ones where the background of each song is spliced together from a limited amount of stock footage that ends up becoming very familiar by the time you leave, and which all appears to have been shot in the early 1990's.

All in all, a pretty awesome weekend.

My sister

I've got a bad case of the shakes before I even open my eyes. My stomach is overflowing, urging evacuation through the front entrance. It's like I've got some combination of a hangover and the flu. I don't, though; I'm just nervous. Today I'm going to see my sister.

My Japanese sister, I mean. We're not related by blood. It's only that her family hosted me once, in the ancient past, and we've thought of each other as brother and sister ever since. It only took me three days to realise the depths of my affections, too. A lot of people just don't get how somebody can be your family without actually being your family, and I guess I can understand – if you haven't experienced it, it's probably hard to wrap your head around. It still irks me when people try to argue the point - and I won't suffer anybody who tries to deny the legitimacy of our bond - but I understand it.

She was, I think, not only the first person whose love for me I ever really felt, but also the first I never had to question, ever. Likewise, I love her with everything I have, wholly and unconditionally. In fact I feel more strongly for her than I do for any of my “real” relatives. She's vibrant, beautiful inside and out, and more full of life than anyone else I know. To me, she is perfect, and if anyone disagrees, I don't want to hear it.

Of course as soon as I arrived in Kyouto the first thing I wanted to do was to meet with her. And she told me that, yes of course, we should meet, but she was very busy right now and so sorry but could we put it off for a while? Well yes, of course we could, because she is not beholden to my whims and it's my dearest wish to support her from the sidelines, and sometimes that means stepping out of the way. It hurt a little, though. If it were me, I would move heaven and earth for the chance to see her, but that's ok, I thought. All it means is that she doesn't want to see me as badly as I want to see her. Of course she doesn't, that's obvious.

Months passed with nothing, and I seriously fear, but refuse to believe, that she's just given up on me. But a particularly heartfelt drunken message from me is the impetus for a reunion. I spend the intervening time battling occasional bouts of tachycardia and hyperventilation, and now that it's day of, I'm basically useless. It's an effort just to dither around on the Internet. I feel as though at any moment I may pass out and then die. What if I can't make interesting conversation? What if it turns out that, even after four years, we have nothing to talk about? What if we've drifted apart?

What if she's not proud of me?

I'm not entirely sure why her approval means so much to me. I've basically lived my entire life by my own standards, laughing in the face of anybody who's judged me by theirs. With her it's different. In a lot of ways she's been a moral guidepost for me, a silent hip-check. More than once, I've traversed a difficult ethical decision by stopping and imagining which choice would make her more proud of me, if she were to ever find out. I've come incredibly far since the last time she saw me. I'm very truly almost a different person. I'm more capable, more understanding, more attuned...if she doesn't recognize the strides I've made, I'll be irreparably crushed.

We're supposed to rendezvous for dinner at Kyouto Eki Daikaidan. I locate it with difficulty, but by now I'm already running late. I can't remember if we're supposed to meet at the bottom or the top of this gigantic eleven-storey staircase. A hurried search doesn't turn her up. Where is she? Am I getting this place confused with some other eleven-storey staircase? How long do you suppose she'll wait for me before she leaves in disgust? If I can't find her, if I don't get to see her before she moves back to Toukyou and have to wait another year or more, my heart just might break.

Then I hear her call my name and I know I'm home. The conversation flows like sake from Suika's gourd. She asks me everything about my life from the last four years, and I open up to her about all the stuff I can't share with most people. She tells me I've matured, that I'm becoming a better person, and it's the most validating thing I've ever heard. She's working at one of the most prestigious ad shops in Japan. And she's getting married.

Japanese in the English classroom

After three ESL sessions, I'm pretty sure I've learned more than I've taught. I've learned how to jive and flow with the Master's idiosyncratic teaching style. I've learned what he means when he writes “4 Q's (each/all)” on the lesson plan. I've learned that I need to work on classroom management, and that little kids can be a tough crowd. And I've learned that teaching them, much of the time, is like using a Mac: You don't so much command them as try to trick them into doing what you want. They aren't sock puppets, they're marionettes.

In my first attempt, I decided that English and English only was the way to go. That's how I learned, after all! My most effective Japanese learning experience by far came when I was in high school, attending native-level lectures all day, every day, for five months. No translation, no explanation. Didn't matter that I couldn't actually do the work, the progress you'll see in yourself in a situation like that will floor you. So comprehension wasn't exactly the point. I'd be osmotically familiarizing them with the phonemes and rhythm of the language. Besides, if so many bloggers confirm that you can teach an English class entirely in English, surely I could refrain from Japanese with an actual Japanese teacher sitting right across from me.

Yeah, about that. As I learned almost immediately, keeping silent during the class's Japanese discourse meant keeping silent for almost the entire lesson. Whether the Master is demonstrating subtlety or really is just a terrible teacher, I haven't yet figured out, but it seems to me that very little of English class is spent on English. And it makes sense in a way; for the most part, these kids aren't the rich elite whose future depends on their TOEFL scores, they're the ones who struggle with their English classes in school and and need the extra help. So, just once, I tried it out.

Just a few words, and the transformation that came over them was startling. Suddenly I had everybody's eyes; a few sat up straighter. And, like always, the room was swept by a wave of murmurs about how zomfg, this foreigner seems to be speaking Japanese, what fell sorcery could have conferred such power? In that moment, they found me standing on the same shore. Responses quickened, and they even started screwing together the courage to ask me questions. It seemed to have humanized myself. Plus, at least now I was doing something, even if our mutual tangents almost never have anything to do with the material. And I was actually finding this system concretely better for teaching.

It turns out that attempting all-English English teaching is like adopting an existentialist lifestyle: It works only as well as your commitment is full. The invisible hand may not solve all of society's ills, but it barely works at all when there are visible hands trying to direct it. In other words, I could try full-bore English all I wanted, but as long as the Master carried on and on in Japanese, I wasn't getting anywhere. Just as they responded positively to my Japanese, I got only thinly concealed scorn when I tried speaking English at literally any time that it was not an absolutely necessity. Maybe because, you know, they're elementary school students forced to leave their homes and go study a subject they hate on a Saturday morning.

The key, I've discovered, is to use English at just the right times, in just the right way, filling all other gaps with a hearty Japanese mortar. I have to lay down just enough pressure to find their engagement point in order to drive off without popping the clutch; too little and we'll stall, but too much and I'm just running my engine. What's my purpose here – to teach English, right? So if they'll learn English better when it's backed by Japanese, well, I best be busting out a little Japanese then.  

Toukyou wrap-up

To get to Pokemon Centre Yokohama, go out the west exit of Minato-Mirai Eki, turn left, and then head left again on Sakuragichou. Eventually you'll come to a pretentious statue.

To your right is Landmark Tower, and your target is inside. I have to say that Pokemon Centres, as a concept, are somewhat losing their impact with each successive visit, since they're kind of samey. Doesn't detract from the sweetness of acquiring my Yokohama Original charm, though. Too bad I can't sell Soymilk on a daytrip to Sendai. I fantasize about working at the Oosaka location. That would be awesome.

Know what else? They've got Showers dolls, so my Eeveelution set is complete. Soymilk grabs a few for himself, because apparently profiteering is a lucrative industry among Pokemon-loving expats, who speculate on limited-sale dolls that are likely to become hot items in a few months and then sell them on eBay at a 1000% markup. Have I mentioned that Soymilk is morally against both advertising and having to pay money for entertainment?

One floor up, there's a store that sells nothing but merchandise from Shounen Jump serials. Eh, meh.

Rude Boy: This would have been the coolest thing ever if I'd come here in high school.

Soymilk: Me too.

Rude Boy: Oh my god, is this what it's like getting older?

Soymilk: Yes. It's terrible.

Soymilk only agreed to my Pokemon errand on the condition that we at least check out the Yokohama DDR scene, and we're quite pleased to find that the group is made up of some pretty rad people. The culture here is pretty different from what we're used to. Japan has a higher density of players, a dickload more tournaments, and skews towards timing whereas the West has a stamina bias. Plus, when you want to play, you have to write your name down on a sign-up sheet.

Rude Boy: Hey, never seen it done like this before. In my arcade in Canada people just kind of do whatever.

Yokohama player: Yeah, we do things differently in Japan.

Rude Boy: Well, I think it's because it's a much smaller arcade.

Yokohama player: Japanese people need rules. If we don't have this, nobody will know who gets to play next.

Rude Boy: Are y...yeah, sure. That's gotta be it.

Also, there's two girls there, and they're both genuinely hot. Any idea how rare that actually is? Like, really rare. I mean, I know that all readers of this blog are stunningly attractive and intelligent, but outside of you guys, there's a dearth of hot rhythm-gaming girls. I'm just saying.

So, uh, we really didn't end up seeing too much of Yokohama. Um. The area around the station seemed nice.

Does it seem like we started strong on the sightseeing and then lost steam? That's not quite it. We still did stuff, it's just that most of it wasn't especially bloggable. For example, there's a ton of stuff I wouldn't mind getting to on my final day in Toukyou, but Soymilk vetoes all my ideas and takes me clothes shopping instead. God only knows why, but he's determined to transform me into some kind of fashionable ladykiller. I think it's a little side-project he's taken up. Not that I can complain, since he's got a damn good eye for this stuff, but it does mean that we're left with a very narrow window before I need to be getting on my way.

Soymilk: So basically you have your choice between Shinjuku and Ikebukuro. Neither one is better.

Right outside the station is Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Kouen, which features prominently in the drama “Ikebukuro Nishiguchi Kouen.” I'm disappointed to see a distinct lack of yankii, but maybe times have changed. Might be for the best, considering the stupidity I got caught up in last time I shot a group of yankii.

That said, I do see slews of uniformed schoolgirls huddling in groups of ten and fifteen, with nary a guy in sight. If the back alleys were arteries, these girls would have given Ikebukuro an aneurism long ago. I contemplate taking a picture of some of them in light of the yankiiless park, but decide that would probably get me in real trouble.

My very last Toukyou sight is Animate, or “Akihabara for Girls,” as it is apparently sometimes called. Which pretty much sums it up. Ever the niche fan, Soymilk makes a beeline for the doujins.

Soymilk: We're the only two guys on this entire floor. (beat) Yeah let's leave.

The highway bus company I'm riding back with has a number of classifications for their buses, and I'm a little concerned that I'll be riding Standard on the way back, given the experience I had with the level above it, which was called Relax. If you have to upgrade just to be able to relax, I can't even imagine what the hell kind of emotions the Standard ride is supposed to invoke. By the way, if you go yet one more level above Relax, only then do we finally arrive at “Comfort,” which speaks volumes.

Back in Kyouto, I feel like I've returned to my domain. My time away has only made me appreciate it more. Toukyou was great, but after all, Kansai is home.