A day like today reminds me of Jamaica, even though I am in Japan. I can see the soft pallor of an overcast sky with the air smelling like freshly fallen rain running into my nostrils. Outside the signs of life are non-existent, save the occasional drone of a passing car. Today I felt like I was back in my high school, staring out at the world, wishing I could be in it. I want to be in the trees as an elf, sliding down house-sized leaves, getting sucked into the raging torrent of a small puddle. I want to explore deep caverns with quiet life; slimy things and wet places. But I’m not there.

I’m an adult, older and different. A little weather beaten and jaded, far from the round-faced little boy I used to be. Now when I look out things feel different; muted. The world isn’t that same mystical place with its fairytale landscapes and beautiful vistas. It harbours memories of the past that follow you wherever you go. But what is a memory but an unchangeable event from the past, a fragment of our life’s mosaic?

On these rainy days in Jamaica, the quiet wetness of everything gave me a inner comfort. Drops of water from the sky touching things made them slow down, giving them pause and clarity. Here is Japan, the trees outside are different but the sky and the rain are the same. As unchanging as rain and sunshine is, our lives change. The uncertainty of tomorrow is eclipsed in each rain drop as it falls like a glistening ball from on high, before exploding into a million pieces on the ground.

Today, maybe I will walk by a window and pretend I’m a foot shorter, with the bright eyes of youth and happiness in my heart. I might look out at those gray skies and see the fairytale again; the one I want to believe.

 

  In Japan it is not uncommon for men to wear women’s handbags. The fashion sense here is different in presentation and style. As Japan is a largely cash-oriented country, more people walking with wads of bills and coin purses. Large Wallets, man-bags (or in this case a hangbag) are the norm. I will admit, I own a questionable looking wallet myself, but here’s the catch: I bought it in Egypt 🙂

If you’ve ever heard someone speak rapidly in another language, it is  an
 exercise in learning inflections. The rise and fall of their
 intonations, the dull tones and light breaks between emotional
 outbursts, the flat replies of sarcasm, and the half-grin sounds of
 witty replies. These are all distinguishable in one way or another,
even if you can’t understand what they are saying.

For me, life in Japan has been like this evolution of sound. Things came 
all at once several months ago, a stream of unintelligible sounds and data that rocked my mind. When people spoke, it was a stream of sound, 
roaring like an unchecked river, uncollected and untamed, brutal to my
unaware mind. As time passed this roaring became a light trickle, and
every now and then, standing on the banks, I would see the riverbed 
beneath the stream, moving so slowly I could even reach in to pick out
some rocks. These breaks, or trickles, represented the moments my mind
 learned a few cultural tricks, or a bit of language that allowed me to
breathe easy.

Then there would come a moment of pain. A moment of frustration wrought by
 the inability to express myself to communicate with another adult, like the feeling of
 helplessness in a doctor’s office as he explains things in a stream of
 sound. They crash, they rage.

Eventually, I could hear words. The stream was no longer unintelligible. When 
people spoke, even rapidly, I could hear what they were saying. The 
meaning of course, was lost. But that rush, the sense of despair with the
 coming of the flood, was gone. On television commercials, in the train or 
walking on the street, I could hear snippets of conversation…

ことばわ。。。

そですね。。。

何?

ほんとだよ。あのひとわ。。。

Even when people chat near me, I can hear what they are saying, though I am
 not at the point where I can understand everything. To previously escape this Japanese 
stream, I would wear headphones, hide in my apartment, and watch all 
the English media I could handle. My mind buckled under the pressure of my inability to understand what was around me. But 
now, it seems, I am starting to breathe. When the people around me
 talk, little lifebuoys pop up through the stream coming from their
 lips, little things I can hang on to as the days go by. I can use more
words and light expressions, and sometimes, in brief moments, there is
 no stream, and I am standing in an empty riverbed, with nothing but the 
smooth stones underneath to keep me company.

Maybe the day will come when I am in this riverbed all the time, when I will
need no lifebuoys to keep me up as I face the raging torrent that is 
the Japanese language. When that day comes, how will I breathe? how 
will I think? I do not know. But I can already see my feet, bare and
 damp, stepping on the smooth stones, feeling the slightest hint of dirt
 between my toes. I will smile.

Me Jumping off a camel's back in Egypt with the Giza Pyramids behind me.

I’m piggybacking this blog from my good friend Jabari’s site. We often interface about our lives and our careers, and lately I’ve been talking about the power of looking back. Really taking stock of some things you’ve achieved in a year so you can get a good sense of where you are and where you want to be. He had a VERY impressive list on his site, but here are some of my key achievements for 2009.

I made the serious decision to move to Japan and learn the environment to pursue my goal to be a designer in Tokyo. I traveled to five countries: America, Jamaica, Japan, Egypt and Dubai.

I finished most of the work on my latest novel, Sex, Drugs & —-I created my website chronicling my time in Japan, called www.jamaicaninjapan.com. I had the great opportunity to go on the 2009 Summer
Billboard Live Tour with the legendary Maxi Priest, his son Marvin Priest and up and coming reggae artiste (my cousin) Beniton the Menace as the photographer and videographer. Started a web series called “Marcus Bird: Jamaican in Japan”. Launched my clothing line, the first product called Rudi, in late 2009. I wrote or finished 15 short stories based on Japan, Jamaica and the U.S. I worked for a few companies doing design work in Japan, France and Jamaica. I look on this and think its okay… but let’s see what I can do in 2010 : D

Update: the VIDEO for this article is under JIJ TV “Tokyo Halloween” or if you prefer, you can watch the youtube video directly here . Enjoy! – Marcus

October 31, 2009.

A tall, leggy woman in pink lingerie outfit struts down the street. Behind her, gawkers with camera phones and Digital SLRs snap pictures, creating spots of blue flashes in the nighttime. Behind her, snapping video on a tiny handheld camera is another woman; covered artfully in tape so she appears to be wearing a skirt, leggings and a brassiere. They are impossible to ignore. Men nudge each other in the arms when they see them and ladies chuckle at the display. The two exhibitionists have a powerful mixture of sexual and extroverted body language. As people cheer them on as they walk to and fro, I come closer. I’ve been observing them from a distance of roughly fifty feet. I take a better look at the two, and laugh to myself. They are both men.

This is Halloween night in Roppongi, the “Gaijin Central” of Tokyo, Japan. Here, a lot of the foreigners who live here come to party, drink and meet cute Japanese girls. Each time I come to Roppongi I am surprised by the explosion of mixed couples I see.

It’s a little chilly, and I’m feeling a little stressed. Mainly because Japan is expensive, and sometimes in travelling I don’t really realize I overreach a little bit in my trips. A Viking walks past me and gives me the nod. I’m wearing a smooth silver mask which makes me appear to lack all emotion. I feel withdrawn and quiet, falling into character. People stare at me occasionally, and some Japanese girls say “Kowaii” (scary). I’m shooting video of the mayhem.

The stars of the strip are a set of power rangers who all seem to be basketball players in real life. A group consisting of Wolverine, Captain America and two Spidermen are doing the rounds, laughing it up with girls and guys as they snap pictures and flex fake muscles. There are men well over six feet in dresses and seven inch platform heels, girls in Rilakuma bear outfits and people wearing almost nothing at all. I like the noise around me, as I stand quietly in my mask. My outfit doesn’t attract attention, it wards it off. My calm, expressionless face is reminiscent of Mike Myers, Jason, or any number of masked psychotic killers. I film in peace.

I see Fred Flinstone and Wilma walking around as well. Every conceivable type of character is out and about. Men dressed like playboy bunnies, girls dressed a little more skanky than normal, old drunk men acting bizarre, a Disney character here or there. Near a popular Star Bucks, a guy with a black brief is holding massive dildo by his groin, as a girl eagerly holds it, smiling for the camera.
“That’s tasteful.” a tall man mutters as he walks past.

I see a poorly organized Darth Vader costume. The fellow is wearing the Darth Vader helmet and his chest piece, but a black jersey and blue jeans with black shoes with exceedingly white laces. Add to that a short stature and his Darth outfit was dead.

Further up the strip, a short man in a red loincloth is doing aerial splits by holding his right leg out and up with one hand while the other is around whomever wants to take a picture with him. An American guy in a dinosaur outfit is doing a jiggy dance by the sidewalk. Two short, attractive Japanese girls wearing skinny jeans with thongs visible walk past him. One of them rubs a hand sensually across his dinosaur chest. For a moment the guy stops his jiggy, and watches the girls cross the street. His friends appear. “Damn dude, let’s cross the street.” He says. The friend is wearing a similar costume, large and voluminous. It appears to be a horribly obese duck.

I go back down the strip and make a pit stop near the McDonalds. A set of very attractive women of mixed ethnicity are grabbing people with interesting outfits nad taking pictures. One girl is dressed like a dominatrix maid. The other looks exactly like Ashley Simpson, which doesn’t seem like an outfit. They stop Peter Pan (a woman), Winnie the Pooh (if he was a chill black dude), the Power Rangers (all seven of them) and a host of random individuals. One of the girls leans back comfortably on a rough-looking Japanese guy with a shaved head wearing a Jailbird outfit. They have specific and recognizable accents. I think they are from California.

Beside me, a girl says something to two men a few feet away. She screeches as she learns they are from Texas, her home town. She is African-American with a solid flair of uptown in her mannerisms. The guys from Texas are in town for a 15 hour layover before headed back to the states. They were previously in Thailand and China.

Behind me, Fred Flinstone is talking to a massive biker who speaks in an almost classic stereotypical jive. The man is a tall African-American in a huge biker jacket. He doesn’t seem like he’s wearing any costume, save a little face paint on his cheek, and I wonder who he is, and what he’s doing in Tokyo. On the street, two men in red jumpsuits sprint through moving traffic, causing cars to screech and blare their horns. It is completely wild.

Everyone has glassy eyes, and every club, bar and restaurant is filled to the brim with patrons. A man wearing a Dracula outfit walks past me.
“Fuck yeah! Mario and Luigi in the FUCKING BUILDING! “he says to a guy in a Mario costume in line. I roam some more, watching a set of Japanese nurses with blonde hair walk by in a stream of colour and giggles. I don’t know where everyone is going, but they are all walking very fast.

There are so many people it is hard to discern race or nationality. All I can see are bobbing heads and flashes of colour from the outfits. I pass Don Quixote, the place where I bought my mask, remembering a middle-eastern looking fellow that asked me if a man wearing a Witches’ hat was okay.

I like Halloween in big cities. It is such a raging ball of energy, watching people lose themselves in costume and drink. The crowd is so diverse it doesn’t even feel like Japan. With all the masks, elaborate outfits and foreigners, I feel like I’m in New York, though I’ve never been in New York for Halloween.

I’m meeting some friends at a bar near the strip, and as I walk down a small street to go to the bar, I see a set of people dancing. Barack Obama, Two Spider men, Captain America and Wolverine. A lady in a bunny outfit is grinding Captain America, and a guy in a Yellow Jumpsuit mysteriously starts humping a hazard cone.

I enter the bar, hearing the laughter of Roppongi fall silent as the door closes, and I chuckle, because I know the night isn’t over.

 

I’m dressed as a spade, and I’m sprinting up a hill. Behind me, four small Japanese boys scream “Ashi hayai ne!!!”  (he runs so fast!) I crest the hill, and in front of me, is an army of little Japanese kids dressed like witches, goblins and ninjas. Giggling and screaming, they dart from place to place, in search of candy. The four boys behind me catch up, huffing and puffing. They point towards a thick grove of trees fifty feet away and we start running again, navigating between little bodies and screaming voices.

 

I’m a counselor at the annual Mikkabi Youth center Halloween camp.

 

Mikkbai is a quiet town about an hour from Hamamatsu by train. The vista I received after stepping off the train was exquisite. In the near distance I saw green rolling hills and fields of tall, dark grass. The surrounding had a panoply of plants and colours. The train station had a quaint touch; it was small and built of wood, and doubled as a bakery. The place immediately made me feel calm and relaxed.

 “From what I heard last time, the camp was a nightmare.”

Another ALT had told me this at a bar after a few drinks three weeks ago. At the time I hadn’t planned to go, and paid it no mind. But I had no apprehensions about doing the camp. At some points, I had envisioned a huge log cabin filled with wild young Japanese kids, screaming at the counselors and wreaking havoc. It wasn’t anything like that.

 

“This reminds me of Jamaica.” I said to Emma, another counselor. I ran into her at the station and we took the train up to Mikkabi together.

“Really? Why?” she replied.

“Well I realized something when I traveled to Osaka a few weeks ago. I noticed that when I got there I felt very calm and secure, but I wasn’t sure why. The Japanese people hadn’t changed, and nothing was horribly different but then I realized that in the distance I could see mountains. Then I said to myself, wow, I grew up for most of my life seeing mountains wherever I went. I even live in a community in the hills overlooking Kingston.”

 

My spiel revealed something else to me I didn’t realize either. Living in a foreign country has certain demands, which are mostly mental after you get adjusted to your work environment. Trying to escape for many people involves engaging in various activites to keep busy, but its not always garaunteed to make you feel that good.
For me I discovered that I had an escape. I just needed to find a place with hills.

 

The youth center was a large modern building that felt like a hotel. We were greeted by staff and a few volunteer high school students. Upstairs was a meeting room with several other counselors, mostly twenty somethings that lived in different parts of the Shizuoka prefecture. It was funny to see so many foreigners in one place. It had been weeks since I spoke much that English on a Saturday during the day.

 

As I sat there, watching the groups interact with each other, I got sudden flashes of the past from living in America and Jamaica; the fleeting glimpses of those memories a quiet echo of my western culture.

 

My charges were four young boys, whom I met at lunch. Kyoko, one of the founders of the event, explained to the children what the events would be. As we started singing songs and playing with the children, I felt more like the sensei  I had become.

 

Watching grown people play with children is always a little weird. In our adult lives we rarely do exaggerated things unless we are drunk or engaging in specific physical activities. Seeing tall young men and women running after little children, making smiling faces and gesturing wildly with their hands was interesting. In a way, I was looking at these people being parents, or practicing. I was seeing how humans are, and how our roles interlink from place to place. Our charges for the weekend were our kids, and we had to watch them and protect them, make them happy and not get exhausted in the process.

 

“Yes we can! Yes we can!” everyone chants after singing a halloween song. Outside, the sky is a cool gray, and the sea is near motionless save a lone boat sliding across its surface. In a gymnasium with one hundred and forty children, twenty counselors and another twenty staff, I feel quiet and at peace.

 

We do some early trick or treating and I change my costume three times before I decide on what I’m going to be, which is a Spade from a deck of cards. My guys are all dressed as a certain Japanese wizard, the name of whom I can’t recall. As night falls and Iget used to the routine of watching my group and playing with them, I learn about the people around me in soft sprinkles of information. The counselors are mostly from America and Canada with a couple Scots and English people tossed in for good measure. I am one of two Jamaicans in residence, which is pretty cool.

 

Later we make Jack-o-laterns. I’ve never carved a pumpkin before, and I take make sure to design the perfect pumpkin for my guys. Yutaro, a small, wide-eyed child with a man’s confidence is fiercely debating how we’ll make the eyes.

“Let’s use this stencil.” One of them says to me in Japanese, pointing at a stencil book.

The image is a frightening pair of eyes and a grisly smile.

“No, we need an original design.” Yutaro retorts, and they eventually decide on eyes that are shaped like Stars.

I’m proud of the finished product and so are my charges. They happily smear fake blood on the Jack-o-latern and disappear to their rooms before we head back to the gymnasium for some more games.

 

By the time the kids go to bed we get some good news. A local hotel, called the Ryokan will be where we sleep. One of the event managers knows the hotel very well; her family owns it. We walk down a quiet street that opens into a wide view of an inland lake. In the distance like a burst of colour, are the spinning lights of a ferris wheel. It’s chilly, and I made small talk with a girl from California, practicing my horrible Spanish.

 

At the Ryokan, the natural progression of events leads to drinking. We all sit in a large room, chugging beers and playing drinking games. As things start to wind down, everyone for some reason starts speaking about names.

“How do you get ‘bob’ from Robert?” someone says.

“How do you get ‘Bill’ from William?” a female voice chimes in.

“How do you get ‘Dick’ from Richard?” a guy name Mike says to me.

I pause, then I respond: “How do YOU get dick from Richard?”

Everyone laughs and this becomes a running gag for the remainder of the camp. The next morning, I wake up to the sound of my phone alarm. Ben, an English guy sleeping in the room with myself and two other guys, groans.

“It’s cold. It sucks” he says from underneath the blanket.

I stumble over to the window, which gives an amazing panoramic view of the lake in the morning. We stand there, the three of us, in our underwear for all of thirty seconds. “Time to go.” I say, rubbing my arms to keep warm. I slip on a sweater, grab my bag and prepare to head out. Ben, still putting his clothes on mentions something.

“I had a friend named Richard.” he said. “He never liked the nickname Dick. It really bothered him.”

“You mean Richard didn’t like Dick?” I said.

Ben laughed.

“I walked right into that one.” he said with a smile.

 

 

The day is a whirlwind of activity including a campfire, toasting marshmallows and trick-or-treating; all things I have never done. As the day progresses, the sun breaks through the gray bank of clouds shadowing the city and it gets warm. The kids feed on this weather with rabid enthusiasm. The day becomes a melee of running, Frisbee throwing and field games.

 

As the event comes to a close and we stand in a line to take pictures with our groups, two small Japanese girls standing in front of me ask to touch my hair.

“Cool!” they say to each other.

I respond to them in Japanese and they proceed to pepper me with questions, tickle me and teach me Japanese words like “bag”, “shoe” and “glasses”.

 

The camp feels like it ended a little quickly. I enjoyed my spirited conversations in Japanese with the energetic little boys, and barking their names whenever they got into mischief. I take a picture with the mother of Ritsuki, the tallest of the group, and she thanks me profusely for showing them a good time. I wave goodbye to Koki, the most shy of the group. Shintaro, Yutaro’s twin brother, gives me a happy high five before he runs to his mother. As they each go back to their parents and start walking away I smile. It feels good.

 

Kyoko’s house is both a school and a residence. It is clean, spacious and has a small back yard. The deck oversees train tracks and hills in the distance. The counselors eat sushi, chips and drink beers while occasionally singing along to popular songs (A counselor named Kat could play the guitar). I was horribly comfortable, singing along to Oasis, trying to play a Bob Marley song in between drinking and snacking on food. The high school students who helped out with the event were in residence too, chatting with each other and occasionally interacting with the counselors.

 

Watching the high school students help over the weekend was like taking a hot bath in Japanese culture. If you didn’t know beforehand they were students, you would think they were employees of the Mikkabi youth center. They did every duty diligently, everything was on time and no one had a sad face.

 

Before I went home I took one last look at the brown hills in the distance, looking at the tall trees which dotted their surface, and the undulating patterns and bumps along their breadth. There I was, standing on a deck in a far off place, and a sharp feeling of familiarity hit me which made me smile, even though I was nowhere near home. Happy Halloween.

 

 

It’s the third day of Golden Week, and I’m in the middle of a crowd of people, all chanting and soaked from running up and down all day in the rain. Their voices are brittle screams. Two days ago, the Golden week felt very normal and organized, more tradition than crazy, but now the real side of the event was rearing its head.

It was raining, which normally kills things like parades out west, but here, it didn’t matter. The scattered groups I had observed the night before marching and chanting had doubled. Dozens of men and women in Happis ran around, chanting and drinking. It was a smorgasbord of excess. If they groups weren’t chanting, they were sitting on the sidewalk, wolfing down Japanese snacks, or sipping on Sake until they got up again.
As a foreigner, I feel completely out of place. So far my days have been quiet and somewhat lonely, and this sudden eruption of outgoing Japanese before makes me smirk more than anything. I’m riding my bike through the city, cursing myself that I didn’t bring my camera. Even though there is a slight drizzle, I always forget my semi-waterproof camera bag.
I stop near a group of people sitting on a sidewalk.
One person, a young man, catches my eye. He runs over to me. “Yo issho! Yo issho!“(together! together!) he shouts. Within second, a group of twenty young men are around me, chanting the same words. One pulls out a two litre bottle of sake. I drink almost half the bottle, while their chants float into the nighttime air and I get pats on the back.
“I’m Marcus.” I say in Japanese. “This is my first Golden Week.”
I’ve only heard snippets of things about Golden week through the grapevine–the ten of thousands of drunk people, none stop parties and all out madness–but experiencing it first hand was interesting.
Golden Week is a collection of Japanese holidays bundled at the start of May. People celebrate different things. Some celebrate the birth of their first child, others simply enjoy the time honoured tradition of getting completely drunk with a thousand of your closet friend in public view. For some Japanese people, these three days are their only holidays for the entire year, so they make it count.
The festival is more that just people getting drunk. Entire villages of people coordinate routes to run and chant through the city, while task masters make sure people don’t’ get too drunk and left behind. Shouting “Yaisho!” revitalizes the group and keeps the party going… for four days. In the morning you can hear the whistles and trumpets from somewhere in the city, accompanied by dozens of footfalls.
On the second day, I went to a street party. Darryl is a friend of mine who teaches English in Hamamatsu. His friend is celebrating the birth of his son. Here I was pulled in as the meek foreigner. A large Japanese man with a broad chest and  bright smile pulled me into a raging group of men shouting. I got into it, shouting myself and jogging rapidly. Behind me, was a platform with a large tub of Sake. As people chanted, young men would drink constantly from the tub. To see people so actively celebrating the birth of their friends son, as well as their own livelihood and happiness was  touching. A man came onto the podium. He was short, with bright eyes and had a warm smile. I could tell he was the father. People screamed louder and as he drank from a wooden cup that looked like a large spoon, then all the Sake was thrown on him.

Yo issho indeed.
I also saw a few girls I knew from my program. They were three English girls and two Aussies. As thrilling as running with the crowd minutes before had been, I started feeling cold and alone as I watched the bodies walk off in the distance, chanting under a blanket of raindrops. I walked with the English girls for a little while, following the group. Two adventurous Japanese guys were trying to talk to them the whole time, and I eventually rode away, heading to another part of the city.

The spectacle is amazing, people pulling carriages with ropes, and the carriages lit by lamps, glowing in the nighttime.

However, my chest felt tight and I felt bad. There I was, in a town were everyone was happy and celebrating, and I felt like the odd man out. I couldn’t be sure if it was simply culture shock, or the fallout of bad relationships, or an uncertainty about my near future. With my shirt sticking to my skin and the sound of whistles and voices blasting my ears, I rode around on my bike, in no particular direction.
I got many free beers, and once or twice I chanted Yo isssho! with a few people. I tried to imagine myself in their eyes, with my dark skin and curly hair, my height and my different features. What was me saying Yo issho! To them? It must have been bizarre. I wished in that moment I could have experienced a catharsis, with tears running down my eyes, masked by the rain as I lost myself in the tradition.
But that didn’t happen.
When I was tired and a little buzzed, I rode back home. It was chilly and I was looking forward to hop into my warm bed. As I neared my apartment, I heard whistles and trumpets. The reflection of a very bright light illuminated the street, and I heard voices chanting. People near my apartment are shouting and celebrating with the gusto of men going to war. A large light had been erected only a few feet from my apartment, and close to the light were about three hundred people.

A man barked commands into a loudspeaker, then the whistling began and the shouting. Girls barely able to walk held on to each other, their Happies so large they look like hand-me-downs. I stood on the corner of the street, feeling quite challenged. Could I run into the group, start chanting and meet everyone in my neighbourhood? Or would they see me coming and stop everything, making me feel ridiculous. In that moment I felt far, far, away from everything I knew. As the people chanted and reveled, none of them looked at me.
I sighed, and went into my apartment, falling asleep with the sound of Yo issho in my ears.

I’ve
 held a few titles in my life. Writer, Intern, sometimes traveler… but now I can 
add a new one to the list:

SQUATMASTER.

I worried about using tiny toilets in Japan. Not because of my monstrous size,
 but small toilets are like little divas; they need lots of attention and they 
can snap at any moment. The mechanics of their use can be troublesome. The
 knobs to flush are really tiny, and if the bathroom is equally tiny, good luck
 trying to flush, or reach for the roll of toilet paper directly behind your 
shoulder blades.  I frightened 
myself with these images constantly before I came to Japan, imaging myself 
stuck in a bathroom unable to leave because I wouldn’t be able to grab any 
tissue. As time passed I realized I wouldn’t have to deal with this issue,
 because almost everywhere I went, there were no toilets.

Just holes in the ground.

These are the toilets of the future. Simple and to the point. You pee in the floor, 
you squat to take a dump, but you better aim carefully. The first time I saw on
e of these “holes”, I thought it was just a urinal, but then I saw a roll of 
tissue paper beside the smallest garbage receptacle i’ve ever seen. In the last
 few weeks, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a cycle of eating that finds me 
at home should I need to use the throne. But the first time I saw the shiny
 porcelain toilet, gurgling in the ground, I new eventually we’d meet again.
 That was yesterday.

Yesterday

I’m in the bathroom, and I’m debating. I’m wondering if I should clamp up and wait
 five hours before I go home, or lose my squatting virginity. I stand in the
 shadows of the dark bathroom, looking through a stained glass. I laugh at 
myself and remember the term ‘Squatmaster’ from high school in Jamaica. When 
you need to use a really digusting public bathroom, you don’t sit on the seat,
 you squat over it to protect yourself from diseases and infections. I’d never 
been in a situation that required the use of this technique. Now, in Japan, I’m
 pacing around in a small bathroom with tiny blue tiles, figuring out my
 strategy. I said what the heck.

I stepped into the bathroom and shut the door. It was very small–no more than
 five square feet–and I stood there, figuring out the logistics. Number one, I
 have bad knees. I can barely dance much less squat carefully to get rid of my 
body’s excreta. Number two, there were any variety of unknown things that could 
happen once I turned around, and pulled my pants down. I crouched, feeling 
quite infantile. Then I smiled, because for millions of Japanese people, this 
was normal. My pants came down with a swoosh.

Then I realized, I should have hung up my pants. Overhead was a hook on the door,
 but it was too late, I’d already started. I felt a little panicked. Where my 
pants going to get smudged, or wet? I barely had space to move, much less 
manouver. I treid reach back for the toilet paper, but my hand kept hitting a
wall. “Dammit.” I said, trying to shuffle properly. I couldn’t move. Any 
movement of my feet a few inches to the left or right and my pants would be
 soggy with toilet water. Or I’d dunk a shoe in the toilet. I glanced up at the 
hook again and groaned.

My thighs were hurting now and I could feel it in my knees. This certainly wasn’t 
the sweet relief I’m accustomed to. I wondered if people squat and read. It 
didn’t seem likely.

I brought my self up into a half crouch, my entire body trembling. Making sure 
not to get my belt or pants wet, I slowly removed one shoe. Tiny beads of sweat 
formed on my forehead. My level of concentration was high; I felt like I was
 diffusing a nuclear weapon. I took off the other shoe, shaking like a leaf. I 
got my pants off and went back into the normal squat. It was a good thing the 
doors were small, I could hang up my pants easily.

I breathed more easily, but it wasn’t over. I was concerned about aim, because if
I didn’t aim properly, I’d be the obvious culprit and I could never some into 
the establishment again. I was skating on thin ice. I tried to remember my 
early potty lessons. All I got were a few blurry images of a smelly yellow
 potty from twenty years ago. The ease with which little kids do what they had
 to do eluded me, I almost laughed.

I grunted and shuffled forward. I was good to go.

After I was done, I hit another snag. Toilet paper. The toilet paper was on a roll in
t he corner of the bathroom. I had no space to move. I couldn’t turn around to
 grab it, and now my legs were really starting to feel it. I wondered how the 
hell people were comfortable doing this.

I took a deep breath. Above me were two replacement rolls on a tiny shelf above 
my right shoulder. Slamming my elbow into the wall as I reached up, I grabbed a
 roll. I paused as I held it in my hand. Wiping logistics had changed. The way a 
person cleans themselves changes drastically when you are stooping and 
trembling. I missed the comfort of my toilet.

I was wearing a long sleeved shirt,
 which made things even more interesting. One slip up and I’d be scrubbing the
 end of my shirtsleeve for a while before I came out of the bathroom. Thirty
 seconds later, I was done. No scuffs, no smudges.

I stood up and my thighs screamed with relief. I felt massive in the tiny space;
 this kind of thing was definitely not designed with me in mind. Images of small 
Asian men and women squatting on millions of these things popped into my head.
 Talk about culture shock.

I slipped my pants back on and did a proper hand wash. I never thought a daily 
bodily would function could double as a workout. This, I said to myself, will
 not become a habit.

April 16, 2009

I’m reading a Superman comic book at my workplace.

I sit in solitary silence, in the spacious Eigo Room. This is where countless students have been taught English. The room is empty. I’m sitting near the front of the class, away from the windows so no one can see me. The door windows are covered with paper, giving me an added touch of privacy. I close the comic book for a second and close my eyes.
In moments like these, I remember why relationships are necessary.
Many jobs have a monotony inherent to their inner functions. Twice a week you have meetings. You teach the same classes every Thursday and Friday. Happy hour is on Wednesdays. Your mind gets programmed to this routine, and your emotional expectancies are aligned to your job. But then, one day you go home and you get horny.

Or bored, idle or frustrated. You realize that your rigorous schedule is sapping a portion of your life experience. The work you do to ensure that you have a place to live and eat is also the bane of your existence. Some days might be fun, but they all won’t be. There will be days you want to toss your files into the air, throw your tie in the toilet and hit flush. Then you’ll want to run outside, smiling gleefully and run naked through a public park. You won’t do this, but you’ll think about what you want to be. Your’e still young, you say. There’s still time.

Maybe you’ll be  a rock star or a famous writer. Maybe you’ll spearhead a new tech company and be a billionaire in a manner of months. You could be a travel writer that does dangerous assignments, and joke in broken Portuguese with guys you barely know about that girl you slept with in high school.  Or you could take that really interesting route–TV personality. You could be the next Howie Mandel or Chris Rock, getting a thousand hits on a grainy YouTube video where you chat about that time you got booed at a comedy club in Philly.
Or maybe you’ll be a game programmer, like those MIT kids who came up with Guitar Hero. Maybe you could just be a bum after winning the lottery, sitting home idly buying whatever you feel like, and only date women in Paris, even though you live in New York. Maybe you could do all these things, but then you wake up.

You are at work, and you’ve been fantasizing. The voices around you coalesce into an onorous din. Closing your eyes doesn’t help, and thinking about escaping wont’ help you either. Someone walks beside you and taps you on the shoulder. “Hey, we have a meeting in ten minutes,” they say. You smile and nod, but inside you want to be in Bali, walking with a cute chick on the beach.

You want to be in Senegal, snapping pictures of dancers with crystal dark skin. You want to be in Germany, running your hand across the Berlin wall, snapping pictures with tall blonde people and asking questions from a five dollar phrase book.
Alas, you can’t. You are at work, and you have a contract.

The most you can look forward to are holidays and weekends, and you eye the calendar with anticipation as each day crawls along. You can plan ahead, and squeeze some trips into that three day week, or that five days of sick leave you never take. You sit happily and fantasize about that two day trip to Disney world you’ll take, but know you’ll probably just sleep in. You sigh as inevitability hits you. This office is as much your home as your actual one.

I’m not at this point yet, but sometimes I fear reaching there. A relationship can make that easier. You go through your day of repetitive activity, but out there, somewhere is someone thinking about you. She wants to feel your touch at night, and smell your body next to hers. She wants to have those fleeting moments with you, even if work is at 8 a.m the next day. For her, you will be a priority, and that might make things more palatable.

You’ll sit in a meeting and smirk inwardly about the comment she made the night before when you went out to dinner. You will blush when raw sexual memories spring up at not-so opportune moments.  You will let out a heavy breath when something happens and you get pissed off, but you know that your baby will be there to make you feel better. You will wake up at the crack of dawn, ready to work, knowing that under the stillness of the morning sky, when we come to life, she’s out there, and maybe after she brushes her teeth, a thought of you will pop into her head, and she’ll smile. This keeps you going.

Sometimes.