Crunch

I’m pleased to report the reunion (in all its denim) was a success. In the words of Yelena, 2002 class reunion chair, “I just love those jeans on you.” Thanks, Yelena.

The other compliment came from my friend Heather’s psycho freshman year roommate. In the barbecue buffet line, I had my hand on a hot dog bun when hers grabbed my shoulder. I took me a moment to remember who Pam was, but she didn’t miss a beat.

“Oh my gosh, Jeff, you look great! The goatee looks so good on you!”

She wouldn’t have said the same for some of my fraternity brothers who I bumped into at the diner down on Main Street Sunday morning. With bloodshot eyes and stained t-shirts, the three zombies smelled like they had slept in a landfill.

“Hey guys…what’s up?” I asked with hesitation.

Yogi went first. “Odie pissed his car.”

Odie went second. “Yogi broke the lock off the [frat] house with a rock to use the bathroom but hosed himself right there standing up.”

It was Jester’s turn. “I woke up in Butterfield [dormitory]. I have no idea how I got there.”

I surveyed the group with arced eyebrows. Then Odie spoke up, admitting that, yes, after a night of binging on beer pong he passed out inside his Ford Explorer behind the house and lost control of bodily functions.
Jester (left) and Odie exchange paddle slaps after winning a point in pong. They'd both be on the losing end come sunup.

“Yeah, and he also booted all over the driver’s seat!” Yogi volunteered.

"Shut the hell up, Yogi, no I didn't."

There was no denying, however, that Odie had also drained his truck's battery. Yet Yogi and Jester weren’t home free. The SUV (Smelly Urinated Vehicle) was their only ride back to Boston.

* * *

After reliving liquid college memories followed by a week of hosting a Japanese friend (blog entry forthcoming), I found myself sitting aboard American Airlines flight 167 bound for Narita.

During the delay at the gate, I polished off leftover apple pie and a container of chunked melon and strawberries for breakfast. Now past noon, I was ready to snack again. I inflated my air pillow and settled into my coach seat. With legs on this 6’2” frame, I can vouch that American does have more legroom.

I was nibbling my third handful of Snak Club Yogurt ‘N’ Nut Mix when an unusual announcement came over the PA.

“Ladies and gentleman, the mother of a little girl in seat 42B has alerted us that her daughter has an extreme allergy to peanuts. Anyone seated nearby is asked not to eat peanuts.”

I stopped mid-munch. Snak Club had no cholesterol, no preservatives, but plenty of peanuts. Was I the subject of censure?

I glanced up at my seat assignment. 36B. Six rows. How near was near, and was I far enough away from near? How much of a whiff of peanuts was gonna choke the little girl’s throat? What if I left the offending nuts in the bag, could I keep indulging in almonds, raisins, dates and irresistible white chocolate chips – mouthwatering bits of perfection my taste buds suddenly craved at any price? I mean, there were plenty of other little girls on the plane. Healthy ones, too.

My jaw locked shut for fear of contaminating the air with peanut particles, the fallout of which would surely suffocate girl 42B six rows back. I decided to sacrifice for the greater good, and carefully rolled up the plastic bag.

“Excuse me!” barked a voice from behind.

Shit, too late! Wrongful death was my first thought.

Like the airline’s Boeing 777 fleet, Marilyn the flight attendant was an aging hen rolling through the aisle in preparation for take off. Unlike slinky stewardesses on Asian carriers, Marylin and American's girls were probably now grandmothers who had pedaled beverage carts long enough to land the coveted international routes. Grace had worn off years ago. Riveted elbows and sliver hair matched the exterior of the fuselage.

“EXCUSE ME?” she clucked again. “Can you get that? I can’t reach.”

And just like that she resigned herself from closing the overhead bin above me. For the base fare, taxes, security fee and fuel surcharge I paid to sit on my air pillow, I didn’t take kindly to a do-it-yourself attitude from an employee of an airline behind schedule.

She moved along tapping shoulders down the aisle, delegating duties to Chinese and Japanese passengers who couldn’t catch her rushed instructions in English. I did her job and fluffed my cushion. Buckling my belt, I reached for the seat pocket and unleashed the bag of nuts.

Tohoku, We Have A Problem

Within the first two weeks of my new commute to Shin Gakko, I was delayed more times than in the previous year combined. I can thank the Keihin-Tohoku line for that. It’s one of Tokyo’s busiest, and as I’m learning, most breakable.

One morning the train stalled in the station for 10 minutes, rattling my confidence in Japan’s to-the-minute timetables. However, as this line also serves the 2,000 students at Shin Gakko, I felt safety in numbers showing up late.

Two weeks later it got worse. Much worse. Ascending the platform at fun-sounding Okachimachi station, I saw a blue train stuck halfway in the station. The doors were closed, but some passengers were inside. Concern crossed the face of the young conductor poking his head out of the window. After an unusually loud horn, the train lurched forward 15 feet and halted. On the opposite side, a green Yamanote line train glided into the station. I smirked to the suckers stuck inside the blue train, and hopped aboard.

Blue and green lines run parallel before green splits off to loop around central Tokyo. I thought I’d be clever to bypass the disabled blue train by riding the green one to the last of their shared stations, and catch a blue train further down the line.

Four stations later, I joined the throngs at Tabata station. I had outsmarted myself. There were no blue trains here. Everyone was waiting for the one stuck at Okachimachi. And when it did get moving, that train would be packed with four stations of stranded commuters.

Long overdue, the blue train arrived to an agitated swarm of commuters jockeying for inside position. I laughed to myself. They would never all fit. I didn’t join the fray because I had chosen a poor day to shed my laptop’s bulky carrying case in favor of an unpadded messenger bag.

As only the Japanese can do, everyone squeezed aboard. Except for me. Alone on the platform, I felt their stares drawing me inside. I scanned their pained expressions and noticed a woman smiling at me. I returned her smile with a shake of my head. I was waiting for the next one, which would be almost empty. Had I outsmarted myself again?

The doors never closed, and passengers were gasping. Embarrassment turned to satisfaction as riders rethought their decision, and began lining up behind me. An incomprehensible announcement (at least to my ears) led more to switch sides until the train was less full than when it arrived. That’s when I went in.

I spotted two of my students standing inside. Now with enough space to safeguard my laptop, I joined them. They became my lifeline for what qualified as a serious delay, but one that was seriously refreshing.

Some locals gathered along the fence watching the empty tracks. The silence was deafening. Today, the rails shined brighter. Concrete buildings looked a little more charming. The unpredictable had tossed routine on its head. Fretting commuters checked their wrists while I rocked back on my heels.

I spotted the same youthful conductor, and took an interest in his increasing exasperation. No one confronted him, but he could feel the scorn of hundreds of grumbling commuters. I wanted to buy him a beer after this run. It was Friday for me, but his weekend (career?) was ruined. He announced alternative routes to reach destinations, including mine. It involved transferring three times when all I wanted to do was take this train directly there.

If you’re late, you might as well be really late. I wasn’t in the mood to move, and of course the lazy junior high kids weren’t either. Service resumed after 20 minutes, and despite a reverse commute, plenty of people were now waiting to go to the suburbs. I staked out a corner and stood facing the wall to shelter my bag in front of me.

The conductor announced stops with his eyes closed. He looked 22, and was breaking out around his temples. The microphone trembled in his white-gloved hands. His voice remained composed over the P.A. system, but speaking from the back of his mouth and not his diaphragm, it sounded like each word would be his last. The burden of everyone’s lateness was suffocating him.

And then it suffocated me. Passengers flooded in at the next station. I saw one of my students get carried away in the human tide. Uniforms, briefcases, and backpacks crunched together. I got thrown face-first into the wall, and the safe zone for my laptop vanished. I elbowed the bag above the masses, and cradled it on my shoulder like a baby in rising floodwaters. Toes tingled and my arm tired; I rested the bag on a schoolboy’s back, his cheek smeared against the glass.

When the doors opened at my station, it was like pulling the stopper out of a bathtub drain. Train etiquette in polite Tokyo doesn’t include waiting for passengers to exit before boarding. I waited until the flow had reduced to a trickle to make my move, but once again misjudged. The tide reversed itself before everyone had cleared out, and commuters – backed up into the stairwells – rushed in.

I punched into work 30 minutes late, but was hardly the last to arrive. Quadruple suicide? I asked the other teachers the cause of the delay.

“Nah, they can hose that down in five minutes,” another foreign teacher said. “It must have been a signal problem.”

On the way to first period, I mechanically asked a high school girl, “Hi, how are you today?”

“I’m surviving,” she said with a smile. Surprised at her skillful English expression, I couldn’t have agreed more.

Freaky Foreigners

Halloween. You get the feeling that the Japanese think they should be celebrating it because it’s Western and in the movies, but aren’t sure how to go about it. Pumpkin-themed things are available, and if you look hard enough you may find a genuine miniature pumpkin, which in central Tokyo looks lonely and lost from the patch.

“Happy Halloween” signs are just window dressing. There’s no substance behind the decorations. And without Thanksgiving as a buffer holiday, some stores launch into Christmas mode in mid-October. That's another Western holiday the Japanese don’t quite grasp, but have added their own twists.

Thank goodness for foreigners to set them straight. In addition to conversational English, we can prove our worth by teaching the joys of dressing up like freaks and gorging on candy until our stomachs explode (nowadays from liquor).

Every four years I’m due to celebrate in full gear:

1998. New Hampshire. Freshman year of college, hallmate Susannah persuaded me to cross-dress so that she could do my makeup. Thankfully those were pre-digital days.

2002. New York. My resort uniform (purple swimming trunks, white tank top, shell necklace) from a former job in Guam was widely mistaken for a marathon runner, an event held later that week.

2006. Tokyo. Having already purchased red wristbands, finger guards, headband, and bandanna to dress up for school sports day (think color war), I realized I could save money and be creative at the same time. The subway line closest to my apartment is coded red. Inspiration met originality – I would be the Marunouchi Line, Tokyo’s second oldest and my second most disliked after the Ginza Line. Sometimes it’s so crowded that I miss my stop because I can’t fight my way out fast enough. Carriages that smell like the men’s bathroom don’t add appeal.

After working a thankless 13 consecutive days at school, I was ready for a holiday, any holiday. The Halloween dance card was full: four parties in one night. The first required no invitation.

In the same vein as a flash mob, an expat Halloween tradition calls for a costumed convergence on platform 13 at JR Shinjuku station, the busiest in the world. Here we would catch (commandeer) a Yamanote line train. With 3.55 million riders daily, this line is the bread and butter of Tokyo mass transit. Famous for its light green color and cattle cars where the seats fold up during rush hour, Yamanote trains endlessly circle the core of Tokyo connecting the city’s major transit hubs.

Dressing in red wouldn’t be clear enough, so I spent two hours fashioning the Japanese for “Marunouchi Line” onto the back of my red track jacket. It’s the first and last time I’ll ever write kanji, but the result was striking. Two letter “M”s taped on the butt and thigh of matching sweatpants completed the look.

From the front, I looked like a bad 80s rapper. From the back, I was more puzzling. Who would embody a subway line? Again, Halloween is not a well-known concept here, so I simply looked freakish from every angle. Stepping outdoors, I quickly retreated back in – to a convenience store to pick up two canned cocktails (7%) to calm my nerves on the way to platform 13. I got the rare-bird-escaped-from-the-zoo look. Tropical plumage from head-to-toe was a magnet for attention. I became sensitive to sounds. Even busses rumbled by with laughter.

Powerless police officers puttered about platform 13, whispering distress into their radios. Open containers, however, were legal. And so were we, just waiting for the train.

The 21:07 to be exact. That was the pre-decided time to ride. I stepped on the yellow line, and aimed my camera at headlights growing in the dark. The conductor, aware of who awaited, put some serious juice on the horn as the train blew into the station. The crowd cheered. It was party time.

Without enough crazy foreigners to take over ten cars, only the last was targeted. Passengers were given the courtesy of exiting before the spirits of the night stormed the carriage to rile up the unlucky remaining ones. One Japanese woman, coincidentally in an orange sweater, looked like she had seen a ghost, so to speak. The doors closed, the gears wheezed, and we cracked open beverages and yelled “kanpai!” to toast our departure.

Shin-Okubo…Takadanobaba…Mejiro. Locals left and those in costume consolidated control of the car. At each station, boarding passengers received a rowdy welcome, whereupon they scrambled up the platform to find a tamer car. As usual, many commuters waited at Ikebukuro station (change here for the Marunouchi Line). They froze on the platform. The next train was only five minutes behind.

The mood inside was festive, but there’s really only so much fun you can have drinking aboard mass transit. The Yamanote loop takes about an hour, but my next party started in half that time, so I jumped train at Komagome station to retrace my tracks back towards Shinjuku.

According to someone who saw the evening news, foreigners were blamed for causing delays on the line because at each stop revelers would dance on the platform right through the closing door melody and jump back on in the nick of time (see footage below).



For more, check out these Youtube highlights. I guess I exited too early cause it looks like they had a lot more fun than I had.





My friend Delphine, uncostumed but accompanied by a Columbian suitor, also reversed course. Pabo seemed a little spooky himself, a hunch that she confirmed at lunch the next day. Apparently he had a thing for the French damsel, which he subtly conveyed by trying to force her hand down his pants to prove just how small it was. Over instant messenger he once sent her an unsolicited picture of his toothpick.

“He goes on three or four dates a week,” Delphine said. “And he takes girls to love hotels and films it. He’s showed me. ‘It’s small, isn’t it?’ he asks me.” Delphine said that while he’s kooky, he’s no liar.

After Maria’s birthday and Halloween party in Shibuya, I cabbed it to DJ’s place. Rain began to peel away my letters, so I skipped the fourth party to crawl home to bed.

Meeting up with Delphine for lunch the next day, she took one look at my clothing and said with a smirk, “I like you in red better.”

* * *

A week later was Jackson’s birthday, which he rolled into a post-Halloween bash on a boat cruising around Tokyo Bay. Ever the crazy Canadian, I like Jackson because he’s that guy. Check him out here lounging on the Yamanote line’s luggage racks.

Once again I dressed up in the color of embarrassment. Halloween was so last week, I thought. No sooner had I locked my door than I heard English voices echoing down the corridor. Crap! It’s my neighbor Mike whose name I’ve seen on the mailbox but hadn’t met in person. He and three friends turned the corner before I could unlock the deadbolt and hide inside.

“Uhh, hi?” I said, clutching my keys.

“Hi, I’m your neighbor” Mike said, doing his best to act casual.

“I don’t usually dress like this, I swear.”

“You’ve got a party to go to, I see,” a friend said.

“Yeah, it’s a post-Halloween thing. I know it’s over, but….”

“Hey, it’s been happening all week,” the friend said, bailing me out.

To get to the pier, I caught a ride on what else but the Marunouchi Line. On the platform, a Japanese man came up to shake my hand and call me a “cool guy.” I felt like a traitor transferring to the Ginza Line, where a drunken salaryman also stopped to shake my hand with a giggle, but fortunately not a grope.

Party pictures can be viewed here.

Train Bingo

How well do you know your fellow commuters? Play the game and find out. I'm behind the concept and text. My co-worker labored on the illustrations. Disclaimer: some squares may only apply in Japan. Click to enlarge.

Going Up?

I had three weeks in between jobs. The day after my last at Kanokita, I was on a plane to Myanmar. There was something excitingly controversial about visiting a country where the Lonely Planet cover included parenthesis around the country’s name (Burma).

The contrast between industrialized Japan and a land using World War II-era buses was startling. Traveling by train provided an even bigger contrast. The following is an entry lifted outof my journal:

3/20/06
There was nothing special or express about the “15 Up Special Express” going north (or up) from Yangon to Mandalay. Wide, padded upperclass seats offered ample legroom, but the carriages were vintage Chinese jobs. The seatback reclined 120 degrees, but the bottom cushion slipped forward, creating an abyss for my ass.

I was surprised to be the only foreigner. Ordinary class (wooden upright seats, no electricity) was for locals, some of whom paid extra for the “comforts” I was “enjoying” for $35. Even my air pillow met its match on Myanmar Railways.

While the guidebook didn’t mention anything about air-con, it didn’t mention anything to the contrary. Ceiling fans sat motionless while the sun baked the train in the station. Two men in forest green uniforms began smoking.

Like Japan, departure at 18:00 was on time. Apparently this called for a thunderous send-off with Burmese rock music blaring from the speakers (that worked all too well). The beats outpaced the train’s speed. So did a boy on a bicycle. Is this why the 650 km (400 miles) trip took 14 hours? The rock music was a distraction from the heat, but auditory discomfort lasted until the music switched to more poppy beats to which the rattling train grooved.

Families sat on weedy tracks, some with a teapot and food while train-chaser kids jumped from tie to tie. Yangon’s grimy outskirts gave way to thatched huts and concrete stupas. The country air smelled sweet like a campfire. As the sun set over the flat plains of the Bago Division, the sky turned the color of the pink-robed female monks sitting behind me. Dusty breezes (now cooler) mixed with Vegas brand tobacco fumes across the aisle.

To my pleasant surprise, at 18:30 bare bulbs flickered to life. Locals continued reading The Flower News while I journaled, now in the company of insects who detected that I was the only foreigner on board. At first, many of the bugs that blew my way were small and dead. Further north, they increased in size and vitality.

I bought only one bottle of water so that I could avoid using the restroom. I thought I could handle 14 hours, but the narrow gauge tracks provided stagecoach comfort. A few bounces nearly threw me out of my seat.

Of course, this jostled my bladder, too. With the train rattling, peeing into the open-hole pit was a physical challenge. The door jammed closed, leading to momentary panic of being trapped for the remainder of the rough ride.

At first, I enjoyed the bounce like a cheap amusement park ride. However, the hours dragged on, and I found myself the only one awake after midnight. I guess everyone else got used to it. Some slept on mats under the seats or in between cars, including in front of the restroom. The lights remained on, so to pass the time I began a log:

00:15 We’re stopped. Noises outside, but no lights. Men are near the undercarriage of my car. A kerosene torch reveals their shadowy figures like a Rembrandt painting. They have longs sticks, or were they guns?

01:15 Pyinmana. This is the remote interior city where the dictatorship is moving the capital from Yangon to better consolidate its grip. Darkened faces are waiting in dark places. People are sleeping wherever there’s room – under benches on the platform or in piles of dirt to be used for construction.

“Hey lama, hey gobimon, wabey!” a woman repeats while walking up and down the tracks balancing a basket or water jug on her head.

A barbed wire fence separates me from the kids clustered outside my window. A pig the size of some cars here feeds on garbage by the tracks. The shadows and unfamiliar shapes make my hairs stand on edge.

01:59 Do you really have to smoke that cigarette now?
03:01 Snack time! Caramel and peanut candy and Cowhead Chocobiscuits.
04:07 Landing rights denied to huge beetle thing. Thwà-zàn! (Go away!).
05:05 We have arrived in Thazi (English announcement) 10 minutes early. Hawkers board trying to sell moist face towels. Bags of something are piled high on the platform. My throat hurts – from the air? From the insects? It’s cooler out. Some people in the train are sleeping with blankets.
05:11 Snack time! These Cowheads are addictive.
05:35 Third bathroom break. It’s like peeing off the back of a galloping horse.
06:11 Here comes the sun.
06:34 Here comes the music. Again.
07:56 Arrival in Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, four minutes ahead of schedule, which, come to think of it, beats trains in Japan.

Key statistics:
13.9 hours of travel time
10 Cowhead biscuits consumed
5 big, itchy bug bites
2-3 hours of interrupted sleep
0 more times I’ll take the train over a plane to Mandalay.

C’mon N’Ride The Shink

Model trains. Visitors of Japan marvel at its advanced rail network, the pride and joy of this punctual and technology obsessed nation. Wherever it is you’re going, you can get there from here. Mass transit. Fast transit. In transit, expect to ride in cleanliness, depart on the dot, and – depending on the size of your wallet – arrive in record time. Express trains 15 to 30 minutes quicker than limited express trains are twice as expensive, underscoring the premium the Japanese place on swiftness. Sure, express trains are faster than limited express, which trump rapid service, which out-chug slow-poke locals, but behold the all mighty bullet trains – the queen bees in Japan’s railway honeycomb that fly along continuously welded tracks.

I tested the ease and speed of Japan’s intercity transportation system with a trip to Nagoya, Japan’s fourth largest city 230 miles west of Tokyo. The journey played out like a SimCity commute: walk eight minutes from my apartment to the subway, hop off two stops later, dash for five minutes – including into oncoming traffic – to reach Tokyo Station, board a Shinkansen (bullet train) 30 seconds before it departed, arrive three stops and less than two hours later, and check into a hotel above Nagoya Station. Beat that, Amtrak.

Although the seats could have been comfier, the Shinkansen proved to be a quintessential Japanese experience. The inaka (countryside) blurred by at 168 mph. Inside, only faint purrs and whirls interrupted a stillness that reminded me of an airplane, but with less turbulence and more legroom. Revving noises of the engine pulsed through the carriage like a Nintendo character grabbing power-ups. The shink was at full throttle. Any faster and we’d be traveling back in time.

Popularly labeled a characterless industrial business city, Nagoya was the gateway for the 2005 World Expo in Aichi prefecture. On display was a MagLev train, the future of rail travel. Magnetically levitated above the tracks, these trains hurtle at more than 311 mph, a world record for a manned train. Read about my close encounters with the Expo’s cast of talking robots and other cultural attractions on Monday.

Next Stop…Kachidoki

5.69 million passengers on an average day. 168 stations. 114 miles of tracks. 9 lines. And that’s just the Tokyo Metro system. Four private Toei subway lines and about 30 above ground Japan Rail (JR) East lines also crisscross greater Tokyo. There isn’t enough room on one map to depict them all.

When I’m asked about my favorite Japanese words, I rattle off subway stops to surprised reactions. “I never thought about the names before. They are just station names,” one local girl told me. Well, so is 51st Street, or Brooklyn's Avenue X. Unlike their New York City counterparts, however, Japanese names naturally roll off the tongue, begging to be repeated for sheer linguistic enjoyment, which I do to puzzled looks from fellow commuters.

I’m partial to stations starting with “K,” “O,” or on the Chiyoda Line. Here are my Top 10. Can you find and pronounce them all on the map above? Click on it to enlarge.

10.Kayabacho 9.Sumiyoshi 8. Ochanomizu 7.Kasumigaseki 6. Higashi-nihombashi 5.Okachimachi 4.Kita-senju 3.Nogizaka 2.Kiyosumi-shirakawa 1.Kachidoki

Singing Subway Praise

My first monthly teachers’ meeting proved to be a lesson in where not to host it. The company office, about the size of my studio, would not seat nine. Instead, we rented a room across the street – in a karaoke parlor. At first, the idea seemed genius. Private booth with seats for all, eighth floor views of the approaching thunderstorm, and a one drink minimum on my employer’s tab.

The only hitch was that our neighbors were using their space for its intended purpose. Blood-curling yelps rivaling those at Abu Ghraib distracted our getting down to business. The language was incomprehensible. Were 1,000 cats dying a slow death, or was it one of Metallica’s greatest hits? The finer points of flash card use went in one ear and out the other.

On the subway ride home, I witnessed a miracle in public transportation. Tokyo’s Metropolitan Subway is a well-oiled machine. A paraplegic boarded with the help of a station attendant who bridged the gap between the train and the platform. The wheelchair glided into a designated section. The point of disembarkation was radioed ahead, whereupon a new attendant waited with another bridge at the exact set of doors closest to the passenger. Not one bump in his ride or ours.

Now let’s imagine you’re a paraplegic riding the MTA. First off, most stations aren’t handicap accessible. Three of the City’s 12,487 taxis are, so here’s to hoping you never have to leave your apartment. But if you do, good luck with figuring out which subway carriage is equipped with a berth for wheelchairs. Weary commuters eyeing your extra seat eject you from it. You’d never get off the car’s floor because rainwater short circuits the signal system installed circa 1090 B.C., stalling the train in the tunnel and plunging the A,C line into un air-conditioned chaos.

Jetting to Japan with JAL

Posted by: marmotny

Jetting to Japan with JAL
Yokoso...
Bienvenue...
Benvenuto...
Bienvenido...
Willkommen...
Shalom...
Jambo...
Namaste...
Salaam...
Welcome!

Be sure to check back here for amusing updates on my new life abroad, which is scheduled to begin when rubber wheels meet Narita tarmac at 00:00 EST on 4/16/05.