Picture by E

Sendai Half-Marathon 2:33:45

One year ago, I could just about run 3 kilometers, and this weekend I strapped on my Nikes for a half-marathon! My time’s no good and I ran out of juice at the 14km mark, so I could only run/walk for most of the rest of it, but who cares? I did it! It was hot and gross and there wasn’t a cloud in sight, but I got to see a lot of Sendai, running under tree-lined boulevards and across bridges over the Hirose River. Pretty cool stuff. Boy, am I glad it’s over though. The time commitment for training was just too much for me. I can’t even imagine what I’d have to do for a full marathon. Let’s leave that for the far future.

And yes, I did wear a “Little Miss Trouble” to my first half-marathon, thank you very much!!

Spring is finally here! Only a month and a half later than the rest of the country, but it got here.

The rainy season should be arriving in, oh, maybe a week or so :)

Bar none, my favorite commercial right now is one for Suntory’s Green Dakara soft drink. I just love this little three-year-old with her chubby cheeks running through an Italian (?) market like its no big thing!

(It’s not enough to make me actually buy Green Dakara, god no. Japan has enough vaguely lemon flavored drinks)

Also, the best thing about Japanese tv is that the commercials are all 15 seconds long and commercial breaks are only like a minute. You get used to their schizophrenic editing after you’ve been here a couple years, and then American commercials get even more interminable! The only bad part is that whenever I want to find a Japanese commercial on Youtube, I just get bombarded with twenty year old CMs starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Guys guys guys! Did you know that celebs make weird commercials?? in Japan!?!?! That place is so wacky let me tell you.

Well, that was a nice Golden Week! I spent pretty much a whole week at home, running intermittently and then meeting up with friends a few days. Other than that, I replayed Chrono Trigger/Cross and filled my head up with useless information about animu time paradoxes and such. So nice! So nostalgic! And I realized it really had been such a long time since I had spent my time doing such things. I don’t think I’ll have too many more opportunities to spend a whole week doing pretty much nothing, so I decided to go for it and really sloth it up.

I won’t lie, I’ve been feeling a bit burnt out lately, even if on the surface of things I haven’t been busier than usual. The routine of things is just getting me down, man? X is gone, so that’s an adjustment, and my mom didn’t get to come see me either. Plus I have this specter of a half-marathon in Sendai next weekend that’s been looming over me since January (here’s a hint: even with 3-4 months of “training” I am no where near ready for a half-marathon). I think it was nice to just have a week where I didn’t really think about all of that. It’s not really good for me to indulge the introvert inside me too often, lest I turn into a hermit hikikomori, but I rationalize it by saying that when/if I get married and have a family, I will never have time to myself ever again.

(when i get married??)

Also, anyway, my opinion on the Chrono Trigger/Cross debate: I’m of the mind that Cross was a pretty neat companion piece to Trigger, and they didn’t even have to shoehorn all those Trigger references into it. Look, there was no way to make an adequate direct sequel to Chrono Trigger. The game’s a masterpiece created by industry old hands who have no more masterpieces left in them. And it’s about time travel for pete’s sake. How could you really say anything more about the matter without mucking everything up? So they decided to make a game about travelling through two different dimensions – one where you died and one where you lived. I think that’s just pretty cool, and a clever way of exploring some stuff that Chrono Trigger was too happy and optimistic to bother itself with. Trigger is about how your own choices and dreams can change everything, and that nothing is preordained. In the meantime, Cross’ plot is literally mapped out by a master architect (and a computer named FATE, for that matter). Cross also says a lot of darker things about humanity, and how we all have a little bit of evil inside of us. It’s not erasing the previous game, it’s simply grown up a bit and perceived things a little bit differently than before. The endgame’s a mess, and the plot gets all full of gobbledygook, but I gotta admire the guts it took to not only make a sequel that has little to do with its predecessor, but to refute some of the key tenets of the first game. It was the late 90s PSX RPG era – that’s what they DID! At least it’s better than now, where the RPGs are about exactly nothing.

(if i get married?????)

"coming to japan spring 2012"

I was watching the morning news and they had a special segment on American Eagle’s first store in Japan – a Harajuku branch right near H&M and Forever 21. Among polo shirts of every hue and purposely ripped-jeans, a reporter stood with a saleswoman who was wearing glasses without lenses. He said to her, “So this must be very exciting, to open up the first branch of American Eagle within Japan. American brands are very popular here – can you tell me what American Eagle’s brand is? What kind of image are they marketing?”

The woman nodded. “We wanted to bring the fashions that real American college students are wearing straight to Japan.”

First of all, since when has American Eagle been more than a mall brand for high schoolers with rich parents? Second, I didn’t realize that pajama pants and logo-ed hoodies were so fashionable! I’m pretty sure that when I was in college, I just wore the same hoodie to class five days in a row and I still looked more put together than a lot of people.

Then again, I do get excited every time a new American store opens up here because at least there’s a chance that I might find clothing in my size. It does get tiring when even the largest Japanese sizes still barely fit over my waist. Then again, if American Eagle has crossed over to the dark side and started copying Abercrombie and Hollister sizes, not even Japanese people would be able to fit into that clothing!

My mom was supposed to come to Japan today, but her trip had to be cancelled due to a family issue. Life… it really hits you smack dab in the head sometimes. I really don’t have much to say except that of course I’m bummed but I know she’s feeling even worse. Well, Iwate’s always gonna be here, and I will be too, for the time being.

What would be a good Japan care package?

foreigners just hangin out (credit: popular gusts)

The other night I went out for a drink with some friends and met up with a guy who I had met recently. Yeah, that’s right, Amanda got a casual drink ¿date? (?). Yes! I thought, rather pleased with myself. I sure am meeting dudes lately. Maybe April really would be the spring of my content! And gosh, dimly lit smokey bars are the perfect place to be meeting guys who are serious and looking for relationships. But anyway, I do tend to ruin things by thinking too much, so I figured I’d meet this guy again and see how it goes.

As we were conversing and having a pretty good time, he turns to one of his friends and says, “She’s so cute, with her broken Japanese and everything.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“I said, you’re cute,” he smiled.

“Yeah, but what did you mean by broken Japanese? What the hell?”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said, and turned back to his friend. I sat back and crossed my arms. Broken Japanese. Katakoto. That’s a word some people use to belittle foreigners who can “barely” speak the language. It’s a description for people who are just starting out, who maybe fumble a bit along in their daily lives, and it’s almost always used in a sense of – it’s cute, oh so cute, in the way a dog would be cute if it was trying to play the piano. I sure was a cute little retard, basically.

Now, because my entire identity is based on the fact that I can kind of sort of speak Japanese, I just had to sit there agape. Like, imagine an indignant white girl with no problems getting ridiculously offended. That was me – a parody of Jezebel.com in real life.

“I think I’m going to go soon,” I huffed after I had collected myself. “But I mean, I guess you couldn’t understand the conversation anyway, what with my broken Japanese.”

“What are you getting so angry for? It’s good that it’s broken. It makes you cuter.”

I know it’s silly to get upset over something so minor. In the long run of things, who cares if some rando at a bar insults my Japanese? Plus, it’s good to hear something other than “Nihongo ojouzu!! (Your Japanese is so good!!! – the standard phrase for both fluent residents to tourists who can say Good morning)”. I mean, I’m not a native speaker; I never will be, and I know it. I know I have an accent, and that I use strange turns of phrase, and that sometimes I’ll go off on a tangent and eventually words just start becoming odd noises in the hope that someone will get the gist of what I’m saying. It’s not pretty, but it works. But beggars can’t be choosers here! I’m the one responsible for the communication during 99% of the conversations I have. I know I’m not horrible, but even if I was, it’s not like fluent English speakers are waiting at every corner. Plus, learning Japanese is a struggle – it just is. It took me seven years to get to this point! I was a speaker of broken Japanese at a certain point of the game here – everybody is! There’s no shame in it; I just would like to think that my time and effort meant something. But ugh, whatever dude. I certainly refrained from judging your English.

But like yeah. You were just negging me (which, cool, I didn’t realize Japanese guys knew how to do that!). I gotcha, bb. And now I gotta lose your number – it’s the Japanese Way!

Edit: I wrote this up when I was still feeling the sting a bit, and as a result it came across as really defensive and prickish. I rewrote some stuff after reviewing it with a clear head and realizing that even tho the guy was a bit of a jerk, I’ve got myself a bit of a big head too, sometimes. 

tatemoto shingo on the grocery store beat

Along with large companies and government institutions, Japanese tv stations have personnel transfers in April as well, it seems. The past year has seen a good deal of change happening to my favorite morning wake-up tv, including the main newscaster Otsuka-san taking an indefinite leave due to sickness, the back-up guy Ito-san taking over his newscasting duties, and Shono-san trying her best to fill the shoes of Aya-san before her as the female main newscaster, and kind of not doing so well (unfortunately, Shono-san’s backup is far more charming than she is). But it was still trucking along, until March when I heard that not only was Otsuka-san going to permanently quit the show, but one of the sportscasters, the entertainment news girl, and even Ito-san were leaving as well. I really liked Ito-san as the main host – more than Otsuka-san, but that didn’t take much – but he seems to be moving to his own nighttime show, so I guess greener pastures and everything. The sportscaster was having a baby, and the entertainment news girl…well, she’s otaku-dreamgirl-fodder. She’ll be fine.

But instead of giving main hosting duties to someone with like, experience or something, they gave it to this random other old guy who’s about as interesting as glue. At least Otsuka-san spoke to his female counterparts, as opposed to this man who sucks his teeth at everyone unless they’re another man that’s older than him. They redid the set of the show too, and there’s just way too many colors and decorations and designs, kind of like if a first year graphic design student threw up everywhere. They must have really wanted to take advantage of the HD signal that they’re forcing on all of us now. Plus they’ve cut a lot of segments of the show (who thought it was good to leave all the weather reports until the very end of the show?!), and relegated my favorite reporter, who used to have her own segment every Friday, to backup entertainment news. It’s the pits, guys. The only good thing is the cute male sportscaster is now on the show 3 times a week instead of two, but I tell you what – he does not look happy with this new setup. I mean, he looked downright cranky this morning – my diagnosis? He was probably suffering a killer headache from their schizophrenic set.  That, or he’s broken up with Shono-san, who he was secretly dating.

I.E., I still make up weird theories and relationships between the hosts of my morning television.

In other news, one of the segments is hosted by Tatemoto Shingo up there, who was still relatively new to the show the last time I wrote a random entry about it. He’s probably the only reason I’m still watching – he’s always so infectiously happy. Today he dressed up in hip-hop dance clothes complete with white plastic eyeglass frames and called himself DJ-T-MOTO, since he was reporting on people who can dance in Japan. I guess the last segment they did on dance, where everyone pretty much said that even professional Japanese dancers lack rhythm, wasn’t rated so hot, so now he’s in search of the Dancing Sun (or, in his Japanese accent, Dancing-san). Of course, he had to tell us that all foreigners are really good at dancing, unlike all Japanese, and then showed only black tourists dancing to Michael Jackson. Oh, Japan.

But yeah, I have issues. This morning I saw him in his DJ-T-MOTO get-up and said, out loud, “WHEN ARE WE GETTING MARRIED?” I was only about 75% serious, too. He may even be the reason I stopped procrastinating and finally bought an HD signal tuner for my decrepit cathode-ray television. Yes, I am only keeping this unit because I need it as an extra shelf. So, yes. Mezamashi TV – because I never felt like turning to another channel in the mornings, and now I’m hooked forever.

The first time I saw her, we were in a crowded room full of new Chinese CIRs. K-san and I headed to our designated seats and there was a small girl with a round face and a blunt, short haircut.  She realized who we were and stood up, smiling, slightly nervous.

I was afraid that she would be beautiful, and that everyone would love her immediately, and forget all about me. I told myself it wouldn’t matter, but I was so constantly worried during that first year that everyone would find out what a sham I was, and how little I deserved to be in Iwate. I was afraid he would fall in love with her. I was being completely irrational, and I knew it, but a pit of worry and anxiety was lodged firmly in my stomach. Was I was going to be replaced?

It turned out I had nothing to worry about. She was beautiful, and everyone fell in love with her. But I fell in love with her too.

+++

I had for so long wanted a really close girlfriend here. I didn’t realize how much I missed having one until she got here. I don’t know when I realized it, but for the first time I didn’t feel like… we wouldn’t put each other down, you know? It’s not as if we never annoyed each other, it’s just even if we did, it didn’t really matter. It’s like, she realized who I was, faults and all, and I realized who she was, faults and all, but those faults didn’t bother us. She just accepted all my faults, and loved them. That’s just X. That girl has so much love in her body that she taught me how to love too.

She grew her hair out that summer, and so did I.

+++

We were lying in futons next to each other, in a dark room. Junya and S-kun were in the room beside ours, the paper fusuma doors pulled shut. We were in Junya’s family house, in Noda, a stone’s throw from the sea. There was no particular reason – it was summer and we were free. X and I had just wanted to see it. I wanted to see it. For just a moment, I wanted to be part of his life. In the room next to us was his family Buddhist altar, with pictures of his passed relatives staring down at us. Upstairs, his mother and father were sleeping.

X and I spoke softly in the darkness, pulling the soft quilts over us. We talked about the sea that day, and how beautiful it had been. We talked about the fireworks we had set off after we were done barbequeing dinner. She took a deep breath.

“I wish Y-kun could have come,” she said softly.

I murmured in agreement, and she looked at the ceiling.

“Sometimes I just feel so alone,” she said.

I breathed for second. “I do too.”

“Yeah. I just feel like there’s no one there to hold me in the middle of the night, and there never will be.”

“Sometimes it’s unbearable. I look around me, and everyone seems to be happy, and I’m just… not. I mean, I am, but…there’s something missing, I guess.”

We talked like that for some time before falling asleep, the boys already dozing to the room next to us. I wonder if they heard us. I doubt it.

But there was a comfort there, being together in feeling alone.

+++

When I got into an accident on my bike and Junya didn’t seem to care, I pushed my bike home and called her. She held me as I sobbed, and brought me bandages. She listened to me as I cried that I was never going to get over him and that it hurt so badly – and she didn’t tell me I was wrong. I think she knew I was, but there was no use saying it to me. She knew, she knew. She patted my back and smoothed my hair and waited while the storm passed.

Once, she had a very bad day – she got into a fight with her boyfriend and her computer died, and she cried while I tried to reinstall Windows even though it appeared very much so that her hard drive had died. “This is just the very worst day,” she said, and I hugged her, letting her sob into my shoulder. “But you’re here,” she said. “You’re here.”

The night after the earthquake, she stayed in my apartment and we slept in my double-size futon. A large aftershock struck in the middle of the night, and I woke up in a terror, but she put her hand on my back and whispered that it would be okay. The next day we came back from traipsing all over town and trying to broadcast foreign language warnings on the radio, and went downstairs to have lunch. We only got a raw egg to mix in a small bowl of warm rice, but as I sat across from her smiling, feeling more tired than I ever had in my life, I realized it was the best lunch I ever had.

+++

I sat next to her on the bus to Tsunagi Onsen, barely able to keep still in my excitement. We were heading to a hot springs about a half hour away from the city, as part of a goodbye-girls-weekend – just the two of us, relaxing in a hot bath, eating some delicious kaiseki cuisine, sashimi, sizzling shabu-shabu, warm egg and clam bake, cold beer. A nice, luxurious weekend before she’d have to start spending her weekends packing and saying goodbye. Me and her, talking about these wonderful, unforgettable two years.

At least, that’s what I had told her we would be doing.

Meanwhile, I had contacted all our friends on the coast – Junya, Y-kun, S-kun, Potato-san – and R as well, and planned to have them surprise X once we arrived at the hotel. X hadn’t seem the majority of them since they moved, and often said she felt forgotten by then. I knew exactly how she felt, because I felt forgotten by them too, but I swallowed my pride and tried to be a Big Girl, and emailed them about 4 months in advance trying to get this thing together. Luckily, they all said yes – even Junya, who waffled a bit, saying he didn’t have much money. I told him that everyone else wanted to do it so that’s what we were doing, and I felt a little brave for doing it, even if I ever-s0-slightly wanted to change plans to make sure he would come. But it didn’t matter. This was for X. I had never planned a surprise party before, and I probably won’t do it again -but for X, I would do anything.

I wanted her to feel like these past two years were worth something. I wanted her to see what an impact she’d had on everyone.

And I wanted most of all for her to remember me.

She sat next to me, looking out the window at the snow-white fields passing us by. I could barely contain my excitement, and tried to text R covertly, my fingers shaking. The bus dropped us off at a sleepy, mountain village, smoke billowing out of hotel chimneys. X was talking to a friend on the phone as we walked inside our hotel, and I hoped she would be distracted from the fact that there seven people checking in, not just two. I filled out the paperwork, locking eyes with the clerk in hopes that he knew not to spill the secret. He seemed to nod ever so imperceptibly, and covered the occupancy line of “7″ with his thumb.

Unfortunately, the boys were nowhere to be found. I fidgeted nervously as we walked to our room, and as soon as I had a chance, walked outside to make a “phonecall to a friend.” X turned on the tv and waved me off. As soon as I had closed the door behind me, I frantically inputted “R” in my cell, and huddled into a corner as I clutched the receiver to my ear.

“Hello?” he answered.

“Hey, where the hell are you guys??” I hissed. “X asked to see the receipt and I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.”

“We’re in the room next door!” he whispered. “Tell you what – you go take a walk with her and leave the door unlocked. We’ll sneak in to surprise you!”

“Good plan.”

I walked back into the room to see X uncovering a teapot to see what variety of tea was inside. “I’m excited about dinner!” she said. I smoothed the wrinkles on my grey checked dress.

“Want to go for a walk to see the hot springs before we eat?” I chirped.

“Sure,” she said, grabbing her wallet and camera. “Maybe we can play ping pong on that table outside on the way back, too! Work up an appetite.”

“Yeah,” I said, grabbing the key before she could. I closed the door behind us and rattled the key in the door, pretending it had shut. I even fake-double-checked, just to be sure. We walked down the long hallway, flanked by Japanese-style doors on either side, with names like the Hana room and the Sakura room. X glided down the hallway, running her hand down the wall gracefully. I put one foot in front of the other and felt like I was going to put myself in the hospital. She pointed out an ice cream machine and remarked that it would be a good dessert after the hot springs.

“Yeah, I feel like it’s really hot in here!” I shrilled.

“Your cheeks are kinda red,” she said.

We walked back to the room, and the door was still unlocked. I rattled it, and looked at X. “Huh? It’s unlocked,” I said loudly. She blinked at me, and I opened the door.

There were two sections inside of our room, with one set of paper shoji doors in between the foyer and the main room, and then another in between the main room and the window area. We could see inside the main room, but the back shoji doors were closed, and through the sunlight you could see five shadows inside, moving about. I stepped out of my slippers and into the room, but X didn’t move, staring straight ahead. “Wait, wait,” she said. “Is this our room?”

“Yep!” I chirped.

“I don’t think this is our room!”

“This is our room! X, this is our room!”

“What?!” She looked at me like I was a crazy person, and then inside again. “There’s, wait, what?”

“This is our room! Who do you think is in there?”

She stared at me like I had grown another head. “Amanda, this can’t be our room!?”

“X, come in! X, this is our room! We are in the room right now!”

“Amanda, what is wrong with you!”

Suddenly the shoji doors flew open and the five of them burst into the front room, dancing to some J-pop song or another, arms open wide, wide grins on their faces. But I wasn’t looking at them – just at the look of disbelief on X’s face. Y-kun, S-kun, Potato-san, Junya, and R crowded by the entrance, and I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Surprise!” I said.

She looked at me, and was about to say something until she let out a half-joyous, half-garbled cry.

“If you would have told me, I would have worn something cuter!”

And we spent the night eating, laughing, hot springing (genders separated by walls of course! it wasn’t THAT kind of party), drinking, reminiscing. S-kun and R fake-kissed like ten times. Y-kun kept trying to sit next to X, and Potato-san kept trying to give her a hug. We played dirty card games, where losers had to do what the winners said – and I ended up “accidentally” picking Junya more times than I’m proud of. R may have even gone running down the hall at some point. And we kept laughing. We laughed so hard my face ached. X smiled at me, not needing to say anything, because I already knew.

It felt more right than anything had in a long time.

+++

We rode a taxi home together after her going-away party with our division, silently watching the rain outside. I reached for her hand, and she smiled.

That was it. That was us.

+++

Her last day in Morioka was marked by a strong wind storm that ended up delaying the shinkansen she was due to take. Shinkansens are almost never delayed. Let’s put it this way, the last time a shink was delayed, there was a huge earthquake and it didn’t come back online for a month. Still, as a large crowd gathered at the station to say goodbye, I-san managed to transfer X’s ticket to a different train. She was still leaving, but Morioka was making it difficult, at least.

But the train did arrive.

Even though we had an extra hour together, an extra month together, an extra year together, that bell came way too fast. These two years passed by in an instant. She smiled at all of us, bowing, and R and I ran up to her to give her a last hug before she stepped inside. The door of the train slid slowly shut. It was too fast, too fast. She waved at us, a large crowd now on the platform. She waved and smiled as tears crawled down her cheeks.

Two years ago, during her first weekend here, we visited the nearby observatory on the small mountain behind our residence in Excellent Nakano. Morioka lay before us, cold and awakening after a long winter, and the sunset was the most gorgeous thing I had ever seen. It was the start of a new chapter of my life, even if I didn’t know it then. In the distance, X pointed out the small sliver of the shinkansen line, heading towards Tokyo.

And here I was, watching her train slowly take off towards Tokyo. This chapter had ended, but what a hell of a chapter it was.

A few days later, I took a long jog up that hill towards the observatory. Towards the end of my run down, the trees cleared on the side of the road and I could see all of Morioka past the rusting white fence blocking off the sidewalk. The clouds were blue and grey, with burnt orange light peeking out from between them, the last gasps of the sunset. It looked like that day, two years ago.

But it was different too.