Osaka Giganta-post
I'm not sure what possessed me to ramble on so much. I couldn't get everything down in one sitting, so it became a bit less like blogging and a bit more like memorandizing. I guess I want to write more, and this blogging process is one way to purge and refine. Purge and refine. Hopefully it's a bit like priming a pump, and this rough, cluttered, contaminated ooze will one day give way to a clear, satisfying, pristine prose.
A nutty preamble:
Whenever I meet a foreigner (non-Korean) I invariably seem to group these exchanges into two emotional categories. The first is reserved for encounters with North Americans. I am sorry to report, Canada, but the only real difference in first impressions between the Yanks and us is that we tend to be a little lower-key. This might be a form of restraint or it might just be a lack of personality. Sorry, again, to confirm this stereotype. The other category is for anyone else.
I hate meeting North Americans. This is usually a lonely English teacher (I’m lonely -ed.) who wants to feel some kind of secret brotherhood with a similarly oppressed E-2 carrier. He wants to bitch about the number of hours he’s forced to work at his crappy hagwon (I’ve been coming into school almost an hour or two early every day, which seems to be keeping the Overlord happy, but I get nothing extra done. I eat lunch there now, mostly microwaved mandu with the free rice they give us. I think I should start bringing the laptop in and write a chapter or verse every day. In fact, it’s as good as done.) He might want to impress me with the number of years he’s been unable to leave Korea or he might just want to show me how friendly he is. Yes, you’re friendlier than I am; I never would have approached you in a million years, but you made the first move, congratulations Future Mr. Extroversion 2006. Why don’t you remember my name and call me by it when you ambush me in another few months, just to rub it in? Fuck you!
Or they might just be complete psychopaths, like the guy from Nova Scotia who started talking at me in the airport coming home from Osaka. He starts with a banality about coming back from vacation, and then commits the cardinal sin of assuming I’m an English teacher. Yes, I’m white, I’m leaving Japan and I have a man-bag, but c’mon. At least make the effort to ask me what I do, as though there were some slim chance that a guy dressed like me, bathed in two days of sweat, could possibly be a salesman, or a male prostitute. As Bruce aptly pointed out, the only job worse than English teacher in Asia, is military. (I guess I’m slowly moving the family up the chain, but I still don’t have that 2k I owe them for this month.) Anyway, he staunchly keeps the topic of conversation fixed on himself until he sees the Korean girl he’d been styling moments before, and he stops, mid-sentence mind, to turn around and work on this lass. This conversation is OVER! Ok, whatever, I have My Country, and I’m reading the story about Gun-na-noot, a man who took no guff from anyone, red or white, and got away with the perfect crime. Fantastic stuff.
But, this, individual, is speaking loud and indiscreetly (a common Namerican* trait, after all what ignorant savage here could understand what we’re saying?) so I have no choice but to devote 15% of my mental processor to his bilge. He’s studying Tae-kwon-do here in Korea (yea whatever doughboy), and he was an actor before that; he plays guitar in his spare time (oh please) and he was in Edmonton for his brother’s wedding. This last tidbit he had told me before, and he made a face when he pronounced Edmonton. At least he didn’t say Deadmonton or Edmonchuck cuz I likely would have punched him in the head, delaying my flight, maybe. The worst part is – she’s eating it up. She just got back from a year in New Zealand, her English is not bad, and she’s going to university in Suwon (!) She sounds perky, bright, confident, optimistic. At this point I have to bookmark and peer over my shoulder – hmm, well, she’s too good for this troll anyway.
* yes I just coined that
You may have noticed that I used the masculine when describing these extemporaneous rendez-vous, since I don’t get approached (so alone) by random female weiguks (foreigners) very often. I guess I would change my tune if they did.
The other group of encounters is with assorted folks from New Zealand, Ireland, Russia, even Cambodia. I had a short conversation (in French!) with a Cambodian in front of Suwon James and Cornell Ben. Could I have been any cooler than at that moment? It was hard to understand him because of his accent. Cambodian French is straight out of Star Wars, but he was telling me the name of the current PM, and the trouble with the Khmer Rouge. He was a lonely guy too, but I was more than happy to make my friends wait while I played the friendly Canadian, since, well, this was just different. I guess the difference between group 1 and 2 is that the one is commonplace and plays out on the same themes whereas group 2 conversations could be like the one with the New Zealander who was escorting two Romanian models (I need a girlfriend) back to Seoul from Osaka. “I’m bringing these two with me – they’re models!” he whispered conspiratorially. Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll see you on the plane, and maybe they can set me up with some shorter friends … then again, I think I’ve flirted enough with the Eastern European ‘passion’ (read: anger).
To sum this part up – as long as you are exotic, I will like you, otherwise I am a complete jackass? No, that can’t be right.
Osaka – (feel free, at this point, to grab a coffee, finish a worksheet or come back in the morning -ed)
My first intercultural Japanese experience was to explain in Korean to the person at the information counter that I don’t understand Japanese. I felt some of the frustration that language students must experience when they get to Canada and realize that all their training is for nought since we speak too quickly and use a lot of SnoopDoggery. I can’t even ask where something is. I can’t even be sure I’m saying ‘konnichiwa’ properly. Ach!
Then I tried to decipher the subway ticket machine. Impossible to get right the first time. Luckily, all I had to do was say “Namba Nankai” and shove a yen note in the teller’s direction.
Then it was off to find the Korean embassy. It is supposed to be opposite the Holiday Inn, but I could not make head nor tails of the … Jason (Jason is one of my Basic4 students – he insisted on typing his name here. **) directions that came with my ticket. The directions rely on the directed to use a particular exit, but that exit was not indicated by a number. I resolved to correct this oversight upon my return. After searching fruitlessly for a few hours (I have nothing but time to kill at this point) I buckled and asked the taxi stand attendant (who speaks perfect English) for directions to the Holiday Inn. “The name has changed – but it is over there.” Well there you go – what chance did I have? The new hotel name is Riva Nanka (as in Nankai) and I also updated this inconsistency upon my return. Can you see how the perils of navigational failure were strewn across my path at every turn? If I had arrived on the correct flight I assuredly would have missed my appointment with the embassy so there is no further doubt in my mind that the whole adventure was a blessing in disguise.
**Yes I'm blogging on company time. It is a quintessentially ME thing to do. But don't worry excessively about the quality of my student's education - all my prep is done.
After locating the embassy there was only one further objective – locate a hot English-speaking j-girl and mack down with her post haste. In my airport-haggard state, complete with day’s beard growth and accompanying veil of sweat, it would not be easy. In fact, I found the whole population of Osaka surprisingly diffident to foreign faces, although there were a few curious stares. I tried to find a club where I could dance a few hours away, but it seems that the most popular pastime in this part of town is to ride one’s bike (bravo to Japan! – there is no similar practical enthusiasm for cheap, non-polluting transportation in Seoul) with the girlfriend suspended on rear wheel posts, overlooking the riders shoulders. Cruising.
It was not without it’s appeal, and I briefly considered commandeering one of the many unguarded Western Flyers parked everywhere. I did not, since getting caught stealing a bike would probably delay my visa application.
After another few hours of aimless wandering I decided it was time to seek shelter. It took me only a few minutes to find a capsule hotel very close to the embassy.
I wasn’t entirely serious about staying at a capsule hotel, but having found one, I wasn’t disappointed by the experience. You literally sleep in a capsule. There are hundreds on one floor. The capsule itself has a radio, alarm and a TV, that is coin-operated. By the time I had shaved, done laundry, showered, sauna’d, eaten dinner and figured out the locker system and how to tie the communal bathrobe, I was too tired to check out what manner of ‘world class perversion*’ might be on offer.
*G. Wallace ca. approx 2001
It was interesting to see how much I could obtain without speaking a word of Japanese besides ‘arigato’. I think the concierge was getting a little tired of my constant appearances at the front desk, though. In the morning I put my bathrobe (everyone wears this, all the time) in the laundry bin, collected my civilian clothes and got my shoes out of their special locker, back into the massively overpowered Asian sun.
The visa application process was simple. I spent the rest of the day touring around the giant shopping arcades in Namba, stopping at a small cafe near the subway station, reading a book on the top flight of stairs of a seemingly abandoned futuristic building until my shade ran out and then I spent a good half hour deciphering the subway ticket machine to get to the aquarium and the Tempazon harbour Ferris Wheel.
For 700 yen, this was a bargain. A canned soundtrack in Japanese and English tells you some interesting facts about things like the suspension bridge (largest in the world) that spans Kobe and Osaka, and it’s (obviously) a great view. Crom curse me for a fool for forgetting the camera. I saw more cool images in 1.5 days in Osaka than I have in the whole time I have been in Korea. This is most likely due to the type of leisurely wandering that an unscheduled visa run encourages. The aquarium was a bit expensive, but I got to see some sharks and rays. Speaking of the largest in the world, there is some confusion about whether I was in fact, on the largest Ferris wheel in the world. I’m still not sure; a box of rice cakes to whomever can settle the issue.
After that it was rapito train back to Kansai airport. Goodbye Osaka, for now.
When I left the airport in Seoul I was gratified to see that Nova Scotia Nob had struck out with Suwon Sally and was taking the bus home alone to Sinchon. He didn’t return my cheerful farewell.
A nutty preamble:
Whenever I meet a foreigner (non-Korean) I invariably seem to group these exchanges into two emotional categories. The first is reserved for encounters with North Americans. I am sorry to report, Canada, but the only real difference in first impressions between the Yanks and us is that we tend to be a little lower-key. This might be a form of restraint or it might just be a lack of personality. Sorry, again, to confirm this stereotype. The other category is for anyone else.
I hate meeting North Americans. This is usually a lonely English teacher (I’m lonely -ed.) who wants to feel some kind of secret brotherhood with a similarly oppressed E-2 carrier. He wants to bitch about the number of hours he’s forced to work at his crappy hagwon (I’ve been coming into school almost an hour or two early every day, which seems to be keeping the Overlord happy, but I get nothing extra done. I eat lunch there now, mostly microwaved mandu with the free rice they give us. I think I should start bringing the laptop in and write a chapter or verse every day. In fact, it’s as good as done.) He might want to impress me with the number of years he’s been unable to leave Korea or he might just want to show me how friendly he is. Yes, you’re friendlier than I am; I never would have approached you in a million years, but you made the first move, congratulations Future Mr. Extroversion 2006. Why don’t you remember my name and call me by it when you ambush me in another few months, just to rub it in? Fuck you!
Or they might just be complete psychopaths, like the guy from Nova Scotia who started talking at me in the airport coming home from Osaka. He starts with a banality about coming back from vacation, and then commits the cardinal sin of assuming I’m an English teacher. Yes, I’m white, I’m leaving Japan and I have a man-bag, but c’mon. At least make the effort to ask me what I do, as though there were some slim chance that a guy dressed like me, bathed in two days of sweat, could possibly be a salesman, or a male prostitute. As Bruce aptly pointed out, the only job worse than English teacher in Asia, is military. (I guess I’m slowly moving the family up the chain, but I still don’t have that 2k I owe them for this month.) Anyway, he staunchly keeps the topic of conversation fixed on himself until he sees the Korean girl he’d been styling moments before, and he stops, mid-sentence mind, to turn around and work on this lass. This conversation is OVER! Ok, whatever, I have My Country, and I’m reading the story about Gun-na-noot, a man who took no guff from anyone, red or white, and got away with the perfect crime. Fantastic stuff.
But, this, individual, is speaking loud and indiscreetly (a common Namerican* trait, after all what ignorant savage here could understand what we’re saying?) so I have no choice but to devote 15% of my mental processor to his bilge. He’s studying Tae-kwon-do here in Korea (yea whatever doughboy), and he was an actor before that; he plays guitar in his spare time (oh please) and he was in Edmonton for his brother’s wedding. This last tidbit he had told me before, and he made a face when he pronounced Edmonton. At least he didn’t say Deadmonton or Edmonchuck cuz I likely would have punched him in the head, delaying my flight, maybe. The worst part is – she’s eating it up. She just got back from a year in New Zealand, her English is not bad, and she’s going to university in Suwon (!) She sounds perky, bright, confident, optimistic. At this point I have to bookmark and peer over my shoulder – hmm, well, she’s too good for this troll anyway.
* yes I just coined that
You may have noticed that I used the masculine when describing these extemporaneous rendez-vous, since I don’t get approached (so alone) by random female weiguks (foreigners) very often. I guess I would change my tune if they did.
The other group of encounters is with assorted folks from New Zealand, Ireland, Russia, even Cambodia. I had a short conversation (in French!) with a Cambodian in front of Suwon James and Cornell Ben. Could I have been any cooler than at that moment? It was hard to understand him because of his accent. Cambodian French is straight out of Star Wars, but he was telling me the name of the current PM, and the trouble with the Khmer Rouge. He was a lonely guy too, but I was more than happy to make my friends wait while I played the friendly Canadian, since, well, this was just different. I guess the difference between group 1 and 2 is that the one is commonplace and plays out on the same themes whereas group 2 conversations could be like the one with the New Zealander who was escorting two Romanian models (I need a girlfriend) back to Seoul from Osaka. “I’m bringing these two with me – they’re models!” he whispered conspiratorially. Yes, I can see that. Well, I’ll see you on the plane, and maybe they can set me up with some shorter friends … then again, I think I’ve flirted enough with the Eastern European ‘passion’ (read: anger).
To sum this part up – as long as you are exotic, I will like you, otherwise I am a complete jackass? No, that can’t be right.
Osaka – (feel free, at this point, to grab a coffee, finish a worksheet or come back in the morning -ed)
My first intercultural Japanese experience was to explain in Korean to the person at the information counter that I don’t understand Japanese. I felt some of the frustration that language students must experience when they get to Canada and realize that all their training is for nought since we speak too quickly and use a lot of SnoopDoggery. I can’t even ask where something is. I can’t even be sure I’m saying ‘konnichiwa’ properly. Ach!
Then I tried to decipher the subway ticket machine. Impossible to get right the first time. Luckily, all I had to do was say “Namba Nankai” and shove a yen note in the teller’s direction.
Then it was off to find the Korean embassy. It is supposed to be opposite the Holiday Inn, but I could not make head nor tails of the … Jason (Jason is one of my Basic4 students – he insisted on typing his name here. **) directions that came with my ticket. The directions rely on the directed to use a particular exit, but that exit was not indicated by a number. I resolved to correct this oversight upon my return. After searching fruitlessly for a few hours (I have nothing but time to kill at this point) I buckled and asked the taxi stand attendant (who speaks perfect English) for directions to the Holiday Inn. “The name has changed – but it is over there.” Well there you go – what chance did I have? The new hotel name is Riva Nanka (as in Nankai) and I also updated this inconsistency upon my return. Can you see how the perils of navigational failure were strewn across my path at every turn? If I had arrived on the correct flight I assuredly would have missed my appointment with the embassy so there is no further doubt in my mind that the whole adventure was a blessing in disguise.
**Yes I'm blogging on company time. It is a quintessentially ME thing to do. But don't worry excessively about the quality of my student's education - all my prep is done.
After locating the embassy there was only one further objective – locate a hot English-speaking j-girl and mack down with her post haste. In my airport-haggard state, complete with day’s beard growth and accompanying veil of sweat, it would not be easy. In fact, I found the whole population of Osaka surprisingly diffident to foreign faces, although there were a few curious stares. I tried to find a club where I could dance a few hours away, but it seems that the most popular pastime in this part of town is to ride one’s bike (bravo to Japan! – there is no similar practical enthusiasm for cheap, non-polluting transportation in Seoul) with the girlfriend suspended on rear wheel posts, overlooking the riders shoulders. Cruising.
It was not without it’s appeal, and I briefly considered commandeering one of the many unguarded Western Flyers parked everywhere. I did not, since getting caught stealing a bike would probably delay my visa application.
After another few hours of aimless wandering I decided it was time to seek shelter. It took me only a few minutes to find a capsule hotel very close to the embassy.
I wasn’t entirely serious about staying at a capsule hotel, but having found one, I wasn’t disappointed by the experience. You literally sleep in a capsule. There are hundreds on one floor. The capsule itself has a radio, alarm and a TV, that is coin-operated. By the time I had shaved, done laundry, showered, sauna’d, eaten dinner and figured out the locker system and how to tie the communal bathrobe, I was too tired to check out what manner of ‘world class perversion*’ might be on offer.
*G. Wallace ca. approx 2001
It was interesting to see how much I could obtain without speaking a word of Japanese besides ‘arigato’. I think the concierge was getting a little tired of my constant appearances at the front desk, though. In the morning I put my bathrobe (everyone wears this, all the time) in the laundry bin, collected my civilian clothes and got my shoes out of their special locker, back into the massively overpowered Asian sun.
The visa application process was simple. I spent the rest of the day touring around the giant shopping arcades in Namba, stopping at a small cafe near the subway station, reading a book on the top flight of stairs of a seemingly abandoned futuristic building until my shade ran out and then I spent a good half hour deciphering the subway ticket machine to get to the aquarium and the Tempazon harbour Ferris Wheel.
For 700 yen, this was a bargain. A canned soundtrack in Japanese and English tells you some interesting facts about things like the suspension bridge (largest in the world) that spans Kobe and Osaka, and it’s (obviously) a great view. Crom curse me for a fool for forgetting the camera. I saw more cool images in 1.5 days in Osaka than I have in the whole time I have been in Korea. This is most likely due to the type of leisurely wandering that an unscheduled visa run encourages. The aquarium was a bit expensive, but I got to see some sharks and rays. Speaking of the largest in the world, there is some confusion about whether I was in fact, on the largest Ferris wheel in the world. I’m still not sure; a box of rice cakes to whomever can settle the issue.
After that it was rapito train back to Kansai airport. Goodbye Osaka, for now.
When I left the airport in Seoul I was gratified to see that Nova Scotia Nob had struck out with Suwon Sally and was taking the bus home alone to Sinchon. He didn’t return my cheerful farewell.
posted by Vivec at 1:23 a.m.
6 Comments:
Thats one of the longest blogs I've ever read. Congrats!
I probably deserve a sound caning, but thanks. How'd you find me?
And what's the story behind your blog - looks an interesting collaborative effort.
1.5 days in 20 paragraphs. Sure beats 100 words!
Hey, some good observations. Not being North American made me feel deeply superior for a bit and then crap at myself for being elitist and European, when actually, you scratch a nova scotian and you get a ... well.
About the Weiguk females. Have you noticed that none of us stick around for long?
I suspect it must be 3x more difficult to stay in Korea if you're female.
Although I have 'seen' some superficial examples of Western women meeting Korean men and forging a happy life, then I hear some more peripheral horror stories about what happens in a year or two (tired of the late night drinking, institutionalized infidelity). These are all things that could happen in any relationship anywhere, I suppose.
Basically, I am completely unqualified to analyze or comment on female weiguk experience, but I am INTENSELY, voyeuristically curious. ;)
Terrible. Just terrible.
Now I am a bonnie voluptuous lassie, but Korea made me feel like a "fat slag" (I realise that even quasi-Scots may not fully comprehend the sheer magnitude of that term, but I suspect you'll get the general idea). I realise that if you are a weiguk chick, you CAN'T date in Korea unless you (and I list in order of preference).
a) Are involved in the sex industry or as a hostess (hell, your love life is so bad, you may as well paid for it, and it's work that doesn't involve Hagwon Hell. It does involve pretending you are Russian. Da. Da.
b) A student. (Will-you-be-my-girl-friend-for-engrishee). Same reasons as above, only you can charge more, and it's just one guy. Downside is that you have to call him Opa in saccharine tones. There are others too, but I won't get into that.
c) Date an uneducated migrant factory worker. Desperate. Poor. Excellent dancers. Can't string a sentance together. Can be found in the bars on a Saturday night looking for bad girls, and at church on a Sunday morning looking for good ones for children and visas. (Oh the confusion that causes them when they see you at Caliente in Shitiwon, and then at mass at St Francis in Yonsan in the morning. Of COURSE a lady spends the night in the woman's side of the jin-gil-bang ;-).
d) Date a GI. As above but you won't see them in church. Or indeed every again. Downside is that they tend to get shipped out at short notice, they call you in the middle of the night because they can tell a lassie all the stuff they can't tell their buddies.. like "those Aye-rakies gonna kill me, babe, I'm gonna die.." So, if you've no counselling skills for condemned men, not a good idea.
You guys have it so damn easy, you don't KNOW.
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