Purple Junkohausen

It’s been a long time since the last post - i know. I have been overwhelmed and absorbed by those people who commit their lives to papers with ink on them. And I was about to be one of them! Yes, I know we all do that in our office, in our little booth, typing away and editing documents. But finally, after watching and supporting those people I discovered that I can probably never be one of them. Of course dressing up and going to work wearing high-heels kind of appealed to me to start with, and I still like watching myself wearing nice pants and heels and ID cards hanging off my neck. But at the same time, I dont feel greatest about it either.
Once again I am assisting people, as a secretary this time. It’s amazing watching those people. Every single day they spend their day telling themselves (and us too), that they can do one more edit at 3am in the morning. Yeah right, one more edit - and they do it. And because they voice it, I feel like helping them and end up saying “yeah, just one more, you can do it” - the trap I always fall into…. They get paid well, but just very strange to me. What is more strange is that they seem to have their own life sorted out. Do they sleep? What do they do in the bed inbetween those comfortable sheets? I dont want to imagine, thank you. Anyhoo, I read and edit all those legal documents which don’t really make any sense, in Japanese or English. I suppose I do understand, but I just don’t want to admit that I do. When you go out for lunch, you see all those people wearing quite identical clothes (hundreds of them) walking out of the high rise going for lunch. You see it from above, I am sure it would be scary, or it may remind you of ant nests….. Did someone call Japanese people “Yellow Ants”? I wouldn’t doubt that. Stepping away from that, resisting the atmosphere and power and authority that could possibly swallow me, I am still standing here like nobody else. Struggle goes on. And the truth is, that I was hired by this great hugest international law firm because they needed some laughter at night….. meaning that I have a role as a comedian and optimistic fool who makes everyone’s day (or night) a little better. Great, a new career for me - sarcastic I may sound, I quite like this job after all. Finding joy in such workplace is priceless.

Finally I am starting to slowly realize that reasoning don’t always help. For one year, I was trying to determine what is right and wrong, and what is acceptable and not, and what are the strengths and weaknesses - of everything. Of course all that are different for different individuals, but I am starting to accept the way things are. There are things to be judged to certain extent, for my own wellbeing or for my own happiness, but other things are just the way they are. This does not mean that I am helpless, or those things should not be discussed, but I suppose that I cannot always judge. I was quite synical about my own country, and I still remain so. However, after all these thinking and struggles, all I hope is for every individual in this country to be slightly happier, and look slightly happier, than they are, instead of killing themselves by overworking, or only finding escape in other countries or soap lands. I sincerely hope that from now on the country would grow mentally, not necesarrily economically or financially. And I want Japanese people to slowly find their happy comfort zone where they can work to live, not live to work. If you ask me about Japan, I may still have a very negative point of view, but now I realize that this comes from the love for this country, people, and culture, and the appreciation towards the sheer fact that I was born and raised in this country. I am not a patriot, but deep down maybe I am…. so, here is the photo of patriotic Japanese who don’t seem to know what soccer is, and a wanna-be-patriotic gaijin who thinks sports is all about wrestling.

I see many fabulous qualities of japanese people, and i am one of them (proud proud?!), but at the same time, everyone says "japanese are nice". is that true?

I suppose you find selfish people all over the world, but some Japanese people really annoy me. Especially on the train….. yes i commute everyday on the train, half an hour each way. it is not a bad ride since i get to sit down, but some people are so selfish they want to stretch out on the seat rather than to let one more exhausted person like them sit down for a comfortable ride. so i had one of those right next to me on the way back from the city after work. he sat down next to me, and looked at me and literally pushed me away using his elbows!!!! so subtle he thinks, but so bloody rude i think! so there are many more people nowadays who just cannot spare a piece of their mind to others, but rather would impose their wagamama (selfishness) on others. i really wanted to punch him in the face, but thanks to my itzy-bitzy inner calm i resisted. others will never give up their seats to elderly people or pregnant mothers. pregnant mothers are quite easy to tell (cos most japanese ladies are small!!!). but the other is complicated. i sometimes wonder if they dye their hair because they want to look young. if I think logically with my twisted aquarian brain, "they try to look young" means "they shouldn’t expect us to give up seats". and some elderly people indeed get offended by us giving up seats for them! however, others will get annoyed if we don’t! so its a total gamble when we intend to be nice… i just wish that japanese people would be more accommodating.

another point i want to make is that they are nice with the brightly clear prospect of getting that niceness back. "obligation" is one of the keywords, but also "dependence" is another. they can be accommodating to people from outside, but are they really being accommodating? or are they superficially nice? they live in a very very closed society where they only think about what they deal with in their daily life. they heavily depend on other people, while they do that subtlely. because their world is so small, when they depend on something or someone, it is with amazing intensity. they often cannot express their opinions on many things. grey zone is ok, but their grey zone is super huge and for the most part it is "never thought about it, and i am not intending to think about it ever". is that stupidity or ignorance? or shall we blame that on the society filled with more information than we can possibly take? that we cannot think about everything?

in the meantime, i see many fabulously nice people too. and many of them are growning to become sensible decent people with open minds and broad perspectives. there are many kind people, genuinely kind. of course i know this for the fact. and i feel great empathy towards them, and i understand, to certain extent, by being one japanese, why they are they way they are. so, then my question is, you say japanese people are nice - well, what do you mean by nice?? and what kind of niceness do you look for in people?? think about it - they make me think about it, and they certainly make me look at myself in the mirror once again.

  Yes those two names sound rather familiar to a few of you. I finally downloaded some photos from those two places I went to in November and selected some photos. Okinawa is a small island on southern end of Japan. It’s so close to the equator it stays rather warm most of the year. Unfortunately this place has been modified to accommodate stupid tourists, and we weren’t blessed with the best weather, so photos are very limited to some of the touristy places. However, we found a little beach off the Okinawa Land or whaturmacallit so Ryan took a dip while I was being an soft porn material for some fishermen with binoculars.

On the other hand, Kawagoe is a town only 20min from my place. It still retains its old temples and township, and it is filled with nice small shops. I don’t have many photos from there simply because I was too busy finding anything that looked interesting for Ryan to taste. Anyhow, we enjoyed the temple, and we enjoyed our short walk around the area. If you go to Kyoto, everything is for tourists and although it is beautiful, it can be too much. But I quite liked this place because it was a small pocket in the heart of crowded Saitama, with fewer people and more laid-back atmosphere. We also saw some kids in kimonos running around, as it was the time for what is similar to your baptism. Kids who are 3, 5, and 7 years old go to temples or shrines to make prayers for bright future and to get blessings from the god of whatever. The photo is of a kid who was running around in the garden. While he ran around, Ryan followed him like a weird Gaijun (foreigner) stalker just to take the photo of the kimono. That was quite a site.

I should have more photos at the beginning of next year when I go for a visit to temples to make a wish for 2006……..

As i stroll through the heart of Tokyo, i feel the cold seeping into my bones. this is the cold i never got in Canberra! Interesting enough, i am still wearing my old thin jackets while my lovely boyfriend tells me he would buy me a new one, and while the snow hits my face! yes, it has been a while since the last blog, but i haven’t forgotten anyone and i still wish everyone the best. and i hope at least one of you is reaching out to the last resort of our christmas gifts - super-duper-reindeer-pooper! if you find one of those, please please send me one. i need to get at least one christmas present from someone, while i sadly spend my christmas alone! in the meantime, i am writing cards to all my friends, so please send me your address over emails please!!!

Long time no posting! I have been changing jobs…. yes thats why i was so busy! now i am an english teacher, only english but the joyful english. today, i found this cute little thongs in the shoe box at the english school i have been working for - for the last 6 months. as i said before i have 90 kids to take care of, and they are all so very precious. many of them go to the sam pre-school, and there, they wear thongs, good old traditional japanese thongs (NZ call them jandals) as a part of their uniform. i could not resist and took a photo. they are so tiny and so cute!! i appreciate that beautiful culture lives on in places like pre-schools. kids give me hope, really.
on the other hand i teach many adults at a different school called GABA. its a nice school, interior is fabulously clean and chairs are comfortable (well, this is more important than you think). i teach people who are all very different from each other. i am glad i started this job because japanese people seem to open up when they are speaking english, and they have their colour, their identity, and their own personality that are different from one another. i learn a lot about this country everyday from these people, they give me hope, and they make me feel that it was right for me to come back to japan even for a short period of time.
i am heading off to Okinawa in a couple of weeks, the southern end of japan where it was not japan before, and has its own interesting culture. its an island and is known for its scuba-diving spots. Ryan and i are quite excited to spend some time there. discovering japan is such a great fun for me right now. i will let you know about Okinawa when i come back, but in the meantime i hope everyone is well!

Its amazing how people survive in this country, maybe more so for me. Every morning people get on the same train to get to work, being crushed like everybody else, and still they are alive to do this life. I have been working crazy hours from 8:30am to 11:00pm. I finally had it. I called it quit with my teachership at after-school cram school. Teaching kids there was fun, and kids trusted me and listened to me and I knew I could do a lot for them, but I did not understand the reason why they have to be put into a better school to survive in this country. Not only that I didnt understand why I had to put int hours and hours of voluntary unpaid work into organizing classes and looking after those kids. I didnt wanna be a part of this life, I didnt wanna promote this kind of life people live. I was one of those kids who studied like crazy in primary school, but that, after all these years, dont matter to me. And i would be really sad if that actually matters to me now. Life is more than just that. Learn a lot, there are tons and gazillions of amazing stuff out there, I say to kids, but only if they want to. What is it that they see at the end of a marathon starting from the age of 10? Why dont they marathon for real? So i am currently attending orientation for a different teachership. Maybe this is the way, maybe not. At least I do not have to work for 13 hours with not even a single person at work asking me how i am (when there are 30 of us there). That night I couldnt stop crying all night. That I would call death. Heavy topic, but truth in it. I did not start teaching kids in order to teach them the Jap idea of study, or to tell them to study hard to be a better person. Working there wrecked my value on teaching, learning, friendship, life, and everything. I have to build myself back up again. I am trying now. And as a honest message to you, please live your life for yourself, for your happiness, and for the happiness of the world. Not for others’ skewed intention to benefit themselves, not for wealth of materials, or for plain nothing.

believe it or not, i became an aunti. i have a niece called “hannano”. never thought what it would feel like. well, it was a shock, but not like a harsh shock, but rather a very slow and jelly-like, and yet very huge. it hit me and i could feel my heart beating a little faster and at the same time being surrounded with some huge huge jelly. i dont know how to describe that feeling. apology and big thanks to ryan who hang out with me all day today…. i kept calling myself aunti junko. but i still cant believe it. i feel quite responsible 12hrs after the news. whats worse, having babies and all that fuss is starting to get closer and more real to me than i have ever imagined… once my best mate chiharu has a baby i will probably feel a clacky? til then, lets just forget me having a big belly and a baby rocketing out of me!

the great topic of conversation in oz is the funniest bumper stickers. well, in japan, its the t-shirts with english alphabets on. wearing one is the best way to be a part of jap society. the funnyness of it wears off after a while, but not for me. ryan and i loved this one, as we grabbed cheap lunch in a rather exotic little asian restaurant full of housewives and OLs (office ladies) lunching away. i (im sure ryan too) dont need to know what kind of forest area she secretly nurtures. do you remember the t-shirts that were pretty popular last year in oz, the ones with lots writings and pictures? well, similar things are in fashion here… except that they have relentless english writings on them which were originally translated by someone, and has absolutely shit grammar and spelling and constructiveness in sentenses that i cannot encode into anything that makes any freaking sense! at least japanese people love alphabets so that if you can speak english you can earn over 3000A$ per month even if you dont have a uni degree. makes me wonder who i am getting half that money for more work hours….

by the way i have a t-shirt to that has good writings on it, the one i bought in harajuku with my friend mike. here it is. guess what looks awful, tastes good and feels so high. use your imagination, but this is not anything related to sexy stuff.

Japan is a really strange place. People work crazy hours, get little money, but this place is swamped with absolutely useless things. One of those is what Ben calls “Junko’s friend” real size ultraman. He probably has been sitting there in Ikebukuro, Tokyo for a number of years, attracting attention of by-passers such as Ben and little kids. Wherever you go people are selling things in shops, but I never find what I want. Most girls say their hobby is shopping. What the heck is wrong with this country? I still have a troublle understanding the real meaning of people’s lives here. A little thought of the day for you. What is going on here? At least I intend to throw questions and introduce interesting things while I update you with my recent doings.
In the meantime, I have a lovely boyfriend Ryan with me here. He is one of two things in my life that make my day and life here worthwhile. We went to Nagatoro the other day, a small town on the mountain side through which the river runs. We drank, swam, and did water rafting in the river. That was one of the nicest getaways I have done in a while… except the ones i did while in oz!!! they were da best!

After being so far away from friends I finally decided to open this blog…. to send out all the purple power I have, and to get some from my dear friends too!!
To start with, I will tell you a bit about my life right now.
Nothing has changed since the last group email, but I am in Tokyo, well, Saitama to be exact. I am working my little butt off with the kids around. I teach English, Math, Science, and a bit of Japanese as my expertise…. you wouldnt believe what I teach these kids (in terms of the academic level), and the number of hours I work for so little money. Even though I have lots to complain, I quite love my job.
Other than work, I still havent made any friends here. strange but true. my day finishes at 11pm. how would i be able to hang out when the curfew is 12? ?????? and you ask me how old i am? well, ask my parents they told me 14. that is another little element contributing to my restlessness.
So, I will slowly start adding my days and interesting things I come across in Japan.
Love you all, and miss you heaps….