Gaijin Score!!

On the train this last weekend, I invented a new game – well, not totally new, but it’s an extension of another idea I really like. Anyone who has read Azrael’s blog is familiar with the concept of Gaijin Smash, loosely defined as a technique used by foreigners (外人 – gaijin; lit. “outside person”) in Japan in order to impose their will on the Japanese. Examples include charging through a subway turnstile without paying, sitting in the elderly/disabled seats when you’re clearly neither, and other sorts of general dickheadedness. Gaijin have the remarkable ability in this country to completely avoid all punitive measures so long as the action in question doesn’t break any serious laws or badly upset the social order, because most Japanese people are nervous about or unwilling to confront us. Reasons include:

1) They assume we don’t speak Japanese and won’t understand

2) They assume that even if we speak Japanese, we won’t understand the complexities of their rules and society

3) Culturally, most Japanese avoid confrontation if at all possible – they don’t view it as worthwhile

4) We’re really goddamn tall and intimidating

Along with the Gaijin Smash, other terms such as the Gaijin Perimeter have come into regular use in the last few years. The GP is the effect we foreigners have in public, when Japanese will naturally put a little extra space between themselves and us without even thinking about it. It’s kind of funny to observe this one in action because people do it here so obliviously that it’s almost like they’re on autopilot – as if there’s some mild magnetic repulsion taking place that no one discusses or even acknowledges.

I’m sure there are a few others, too, but that’s not the focus of this entry. Nay, today I’m writing about my own contribution to this little field of ex-pat humor, a simple game that I have termed the Gaijin Score. It’s not complex, and just started as one more way for me to amuse myself on boring bus/train rides.

To play, you have to be on public transit that isn’t too busy. This doesn’t work during a crowded-as-fuck rush hour, because no one has any choice but to be pressed together like canned sardines. No, your Japanese co-riders must have a little room to move about. Now, in order:

1) Find a seat that has an open space next to it. Sit in it. There must be room for someone to sit next to you.

2) At each stop, count how many people choose to remain standing rather than take the plunge and sit within mere centimeters of a foreign barbarian. Each person = 1 point. You only gain a point if they choose to stand as opposed to sit next to you. It doesn’t count if they choose to stand when they have plenty of sitting options – they may just want to stretch.

3) Gain 2 points any time a Japanese person already sitting next to you gets up and moves to another seat when it becomes available, because your powers over them are nigh legendary if you can make them take action specifically to get away from you.

4) Divide your total score by the number of stops your train makes – this allows you to compete with friends who are on different trains at different times.

5) Remember that if all competitors are on the same train, there must be enough distance between you so that everyone knows who gets to claim each point.

6) Finally, half your total score if you have any particular smell about you that would cause most normal people to move away – you can dress however you want, but bad BO is just cheating.

My top Score is 8 so far, going between Jiyugaoka and Shibuya.

Guess who’s back, back again. Shady’s back, tell a friend…

I miss wheat bread. I’ve been back in Japan for about three weeks, I’m updating a blog I haven’t touched in over a year, and…yeah – that’s really the first thing that comes to mind. The country doesn’t completely fail at bread, and in fact has been known to create some very delicious varieties of the paler species, but whole grains seem to be the proverbial needle in the haystack. So much for nutrients from that food group.

…Wow. I thought for about five minutes and realized that in my current position, updating this blog is going to be a pain in the ass…maybe. When I was a teacher in Japan, I could rest easy knowing that nothing I posted here had the slightest chance of negatively affecting my job – my boss and most of my coworkers didn’t speak English, except for a few who couldn’t care less what some website said about all the weird crap that happened at Kosaka Jr. High on a semi-regular basis. Now, in my wide, wide world of teh internets and a bilingual office and an American boss and the thought of landing a real job in this country, I am realizing that I have to be kind of careful. I mean, think about it. What would be the first thing you’d do to learn more about a person you didn’t really know but were considering hiring? Go ahead, think about it. I’ll wait.

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Was your answer something like, Google them? I have, of course, Googled myself before, and I know while nothing horribly scandalous comes up, it’s not hard to start there and find your way to places like this blog, where I have and continue to talk about topics generally considered too risqué for a work environment. So, puzzle puzzle. What do I do now? Do I delete my whole blog, or at least remove it from online access? That kind of kills the original point, though, and frankly, there’s a lot of writing in here that I’m proud of and want to share with my readers. And I’m certainly not going to comb through every previous post to censor the naughty bits that a conservative employer might frown upon. I guess I could migrate it to Facebook, where only people I have pre-approved will have access to it. It’s fair to say that most of my readers are probably already Facebook friends. But I don’t like Facebook Notes. It’s stiff and unwieldy. I can’t embed pictures in my entries. It doesn’t accept HTML/font modification of any kind. And of course, no one new who happens to hear about my blog can take a look without getting my rubber stamp of approval first. That’s just not in the spirit of what I feel like doing. And ‘sides, all my stuff’s here, anyway.

This leaves option four, taking a risk and saying, “to hell with it.” – which is more or less what I’m doing. That doesn’t mean I have no standards with regard to what I’ll post here from now on out, but it does mean that I am putting my foot firmly down with regard to my opinion of net-snooping. In short, information is easy to get these days – so easy, I say, that the gatherer of said information bears the responsibility of using it wisely more so than ever. No matter what you learn online, there are some things you probably shouldn’t do.

You shouldn’t cite Wikipedia on a formal research paper.

You shouldn’t send spam mail.

You shouldn’t make purchases with credit card numbers other than your own.

You shouldn’t use someone’s SSN to steal their identity.

You shouldn’t use MySpace to stalk teenage girls (or anyone, really).

And I’d like to add to that one more. You shouldn’t base your opinions of someone you barely know on information gleaned from sources that have nothing to do with your relationship to them. I can imagine what some of you are thinking now. That’s cute, Brett, but this is reality. And in reality, we keep our damn mouths shut and do what we’re told.

Yeah, well. Raise your hand if you know me well enough to know that I’m a bit of an idealist. *cough* Maybe more than a bit. *cough* Raise your hand if you’ve ever known me to challenge the status quo. I believe that within the bounds of sensibility, we all need to stand up for what we think from time to time, not even if, but most especially if it runs against the grain. I’ve never known real reality to be black and white. There’s a lot of gray to be enjoyed, if you can handle the big kid responsibility of knowing when it’s actually OK to color outside the lines and when you should listen to your internal filter.

So, wrapping up this blather and getting to the point: if you’re reading this and forming opinions of me, either deliberately or involuntarily, think about how well you really know me. Who are you? Are you my friend, my relative, my boss? Are you thinking about hiring me, firing me, or just unfriending me on Facebook? What do you know about the rest of me that I may not write about here?

And after all of that, if you still really are immature enough to take negative action against me for exercising my right to free speech within the bounds of reason, fine. Do it. I probably wouldn’t have wanted to associate with you anyway.

[/rant]

Not end entry, though. That got kind of bitchy, especially toward the end, so I’d rather conclude with some of the silliness and absurdity that Japan never fails to provide. Hold on to your hats, children…

** Fair Warning** Stop reading here if you have a weak stomach. This next part is maybe a little less than pleasant. I know – with a lead-in like that, I’ve grabbed your curiosity by the throat and you’re not going to stop reading no matter how badly you want to. Still, I did want to at least be fair. Kind of.

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So, on the train into work a few mornings ago, I saw the most disgusting PDA (I think?) that exists in recent memory. Now, this may not mean much since I have the short-term memory of a goldfish, but…

Anyway, this rather overweight (only important because no one is fat here, so they already stood out) foreign couple – I’d guess them to be SE Asian – were cuddling and smooching in the middle of the crowd, whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears, etc. In and of itself, a little against the grain here, but not too nauseating, right? Well, the guy leans over for what I assume to be some more osculation Ha! Do you know that word? …but instead of any sort of traditional gesture of affection that we’re all accustomed to, he sticks his finger in his lady-friend’s nose. And then he removes something that I didn’t care to inspect in great detail. And then he eats it. Eats it. As in, he dined on her snot and boogers right in the middle of a densely packed train of shoulder-to-shoulder Japanese businesspeople at 9 o’clock in the goddamned morning. I understand that sometimes we skip breakfast and get a little peckish, but…

It was like someone bent over the social order that normally (more or less) exists here and raped it right in front of me. Oh, but that’s not all…!

The world couldn’t possibly be so kind as to end this horrible rape metaphor that was taking place right in front of my poor, virgin eyes. No, it continued…with her picking something off a bulbous growth on the inside of this man-child’s ear and YES. EATING IT. It was like watching monkeys grooming, except about 6 million times more horrible. It was like watching my childhood idol sodomize a cow. It was like…I don’t know, I got nothin’. I only remember briefly exchanging a mortified look with a nearby man about my age, and then…I may have blacked out briefly. Next I remember, they were getting off the train and I was muttering under my breath, “Oh, most merciful God...” No, not because I was about to eat. I don’t think I (or any other witnesses to this atrocity) ate for the rest of that day.