(no subject)
I'm a bit drunk. Let's just put that out there as a disclaimer.
The best ways to encounter a culture - in my opinion - are a) to get drunk with people from said culture, and b) to watch local sporting events. If you're lucky enough to combine the two, you're likely in for a full immersion experience.
As you may have guessed at this point in the narrative (i.e., the last two years of posts), I'm not generally susceptible to culture shock. This is a learned, rather than inherited, trait. I remember being twenty years old, enroute to an entirely new life in Ghana, bumming around Scotland... and struck with nausea every time I saw a sign featuring prices in pounds and pence. There's something about situations that are familiar... but just slightly... off... that's far more disconcerting and shock-inducing than wholly unfamiliar situations.
(That said, wholly unfamiliar situations are what ultimately cure culture shock. Successfully navigate enough of them and you're unflappable, vaccinated, immune. Mostly.)
I was supposed to spend today at the 14th World Wide Web conference, listening to a dozen academic papers and getting a sense for the current status of research on the Web. Instead, I spent about four hours at the conference, another four hours hanging out with T. at J.'s house in a small village outside Chiba... and an additional four hours at Chiba Marine Stadium, getting extremely drunk with a small contingent of sararimen from the Sumitomo Chemical Engineering company.
(I love my life.)
J. is possibly the only person I know who travels more than I do. He's got a goal for this year - 100k miles on the three major carriers he flies. (Just by way of contrast, I'll probably just break 100k on the one carrier I fly.) Like me, he's an independently wealthy (self-made) international man of mystery who has no real "job"... but is constantly, insanely busy. We have a lot to talk about.
J. is Japanese, but grew up in the US, mostly in a Detroit suburb, son of a Japanese auto executive. In his early business career, he lived in Tokyo - he's now moved, with his fiance, to what he refers to as "rural" Japan. We drive for forty minutes in his black BMW through a set of small towns that look a lot like the northern suburbs of Boston - a few businesses surrounding a two lane road, houses behind them, tightly packed together. We stop for sushi at his neighborhood sushi bar, and I get to eat some of the best fish I've ever seen, wondering if this restuarant occupies the place in his life that the Old Forge plays in mine.
J's house is surprisingly traditional for a guy who lives - to a greater extent than anyone else I know - online. While there's wifi throughout, there are also tatami mats, floor chairs and a traditional deep bath. The house is thirty years old - the biggest in the "village" (by which I think J. means the street the house is on), but to my eye looks like it could be a hundred. We walk around the backyard, kicking over bamboo sprouts so that his grove doesn't get too overgrown, and I see the same sort of homeowner joy I feel pruning raspberry bushes.
On the other side of the bamboo is the village shrine, which burned down last year and was rebuilt by the son of the man who built J's house. For a brief moment, I want to drop everything, learn Japanese and apprentice myself to a traditional carpenter somewhere in Hokaido. These feelings happen, They pass.
As much as I want to tease J. about his "rural" lifestyle (he's ten minutes drive from a train that puts him into downtown Tokyo in under an hour. Come live through a winter in western Massachusetts and talk to me about rural...), I feel an odd sort of kinship based on a love for the place you live. J. wrote on his blog today about feeling stupid that he didn't spend more time at home. I feel that way roughly as often as I feel grateful for the opportunities I have to wander the globe.
J's on the road again, off to San Francisco. His fiance drives T. and me to the train station, and T. and I - two American geeks - are left to navigate our way back to Makuhari. T. takes photos of subway maps with his digital camera and consults them - I whip out printouts of diagrams of the train line that I've produced ahead of time. Realizing our shared geekiness, I unbutton my shirt and reveal that I'm wearing a t-shirt which reads: "$: cd /pub; more beer;" which reduces him almost to tears with laughter.
On a train filled with schoolgirls, we talk about something that's made me very uncomfortable at times in Japan - the fetish for very young girls. Schoolgirls are groped so often on subway trains that Tokyo and Osaka have added special women-only cars to every train running during rush hour. Walking through the video stores in Akihabara, I'm stunned to discover that most of them include a category called "virginal photography", which feature DVDs of photos of clothed young girls, often wearing bathing suits or tight athletic uniforms. The packaging features the age of the girls in question - most of the numbers I saw were between twelve and fourteen. All of this makes anime a bit more creepy for me...
After spending a couple more hours pretending to attend an academic conference, I undertake my main mission for the day - a Japanese baseball game. The Chiba Lotte Marines are hosting the Hanshin Tigers, and the stadium is directly behind the hall where the conference is held. I would dishonor my father's baseball fandom by failing to attend the game.
The walk to the ballpark is one of the prettiest I've ever seen. Ballparks in the US are usually in the grungiest parts of town, where land is cheap. Walking to the ballpark - if it's even a possibility - usually involves tripping over drunks and sacks of garbage. The walk to Chiba Marine Stadium involves a well-trodden path down a grassy strip lined with flowering shrubs. Given the walk to the park, I can only imagine how beautiful the park with be - graceful, landscaped, a subtle marriage of natural yin with baseball's yang?
Uh, no. It's the ugliest stadium I've ever been to in my entire life. (And yes, I saw the Expos when they were still in Olympic Stadium.) For those of you who don't know, one of the most beautiful things about baseball is that there's no "official" playing field. Yes, the bases are always the same distance apart from one another, and the mound from the plate, but the shape of the outfield varies wildly from park to park, giving each stadium its own distinctive character.
Chiba Marine Stadium has approximately as much character as an airport McDonalds. The field is perfectly circular. The outfield is perfectly symmetrical - 99 meters to right and left field, 126 to deep center. There's no infield dirt, just small patches of dirt around the bases, and no warning track. I find the field deeply unsettling, like seeing a man without eyebrows.
Adding to my discomfort, the reasonably expensive seat I've paid for (behind first, where I insist on sitting) is "protected" by thick, black wire mesh, giving me the overall sense that I'm watching the game from inside a dog's pen. (It's all for the best that I haven't gone for cheaper seats - they're filled with uniformed members of the cheering squads for Chiba and Hanshin.) Plus, I haven't been able to find a scorecard as I come into the stadium - I'm religious about scoring baseball games that I watch in person. And I've arrived at the top of the second inning, a sin roughly equivalent to showing up at mass when communion has already been served.
So I settle into my seat, meditating on the universal truth that, whether the field is circular or irregular, there are three strikes, three outs, three times three innings, and I can understand a baseball game perfectly well even if I don't speak a phrase of the local language. I'm starting to understand why there's no infield dirt - it's a game for singles hitters, and a live infield means that a ground ball is more likely to become a hit. The pitching is bad - their best heat is around 85mph - but the hitting is great - really impressive contact hitting, putting the ball into play, even if there's seldom a hit deeper than shalllow center field.
"Where you from?" asks the sarariman sitting to my left. "Boston", I explain, pointing to the ball cap I'm wearing. "Boston Red Sox".
"Ah, Boston Braves".
I'm impressed by his historical knowledge, but suspect he doesn't understand. I say "Red Sox" again, pointing to the dark socks peeking out from below his blue suit. He pulls my jeans leg up, points to my bare foot in my sneaker and announces to his companions, "No socks!"
We're going to be friends now. One of the men in the party - there appear to be four or five men out for the night together, scattered in two rows to my left - goes to the concession stand and returns with four foil cups filled with hot sake. He offers one to me, announcing, "Japanese whiskey!" and I accept, bowing three times, offering my best "domo arigatos". And I realize that I've now got two problems. My personal sense of honor won't let me accept a drink without buying a drink, so I've got to go buy this man a cup of sake. And I'm already drinking a beer, and I'm hungry, which means that this cup of sake is likely to make me very, very drunk if I don't put something in my stomach.
I leave my Sox cap on my seat, grab my briefcase, and head off to take insulin, buy a hot sake, some noodles and a couple of rice balls. I present the sake to my seatmate, which inspires a flurry of conversation in Japanese. Now my new friends are taking turns sitting next to me, trying out a few words of English, offering me edamame and asking my opinion of Japanese baseball players playing in the US.
"Ichiro?"
"Ichiro's great. He's probably the best hitter in the major leagues right now."
And that's the tipping point. Sake and beer keep coming my way, and my friends get increasingly chummy, putting their arms on my shoulders. I open my briefcase and present my business card, making sure to be formal, presenting it with both hands. I collect three business cards in return, discovering that I'm sitting with the executive committee of the Sumitomo Chemical Corporation. One of my new friends, settles into the seat next to me and explains, "I live in Houston for six months. Dow Chemical. Every night, Americans invite me to drink beer. I love Houston. So I want you to enjoy tonight."
Not for the first time in my life am I glad for Texans' natural generosity. The guy to my left is clearly a decent guy, and I'm proud in some deep, nationalistic way that the good ole boys in Houston showed him a good time. When he gets up in a few minutes to buy beer and hotdogs (served skewered on sticks), his companion sidles up to me and informs me, "The whole time he is in America, he drinks. He is drunk all the time." But hey, the guy's my friend, and I defend him, "Yes, but he has a very big heart."
New guy is not nearly as personable as Houston-san. He makes a big deal of my German last name and ensures me that the Japanese and the Germans have been friends for a long time. Yes, I think, I seem to remember a war where Japanese/German friendship made a real impact on world affairs... He's a racist as well. We get to talking about sumo, and I mention my love for Asashoryu. He says, "Ah, he is Yokozuna, but he is not Japanese." I reply, noting that he's Mongolian, and mentioning that he's one of the youngest Yokozuna in history. And, seeing that it bothers him, I start rattling off my favorite sumo wrestlers... all Mongolians...
The night gets increasingly drunken. The Sumimoto boys aren't big baseball fans. I'm doing my best to watch the game - which Chiba is winning decisively - and they're clapping a few moments after I clap. But they're excited by the pagentry of it all - the fireworks in the middle of the fifth inning, the Tigers fans launching yellow and white balloons into the air during the seventh inning stretch.
I'm of two minds. On the one hand, I'm having a good time with my new friends, and I realize that I'm going to have a good story and some great pictures. On the other hand, it's not what I wanted out of a baseball game - the boys are interested in getting drunk and rowdy, not in rooting for Chiba. As we head into the ninth inning, Chiba leading four to one, I'm ready to go home. And when the Marine's reliever retires their last batter, I'm outta there, bowing and arigato-ing, and moving at high speeds in the other direction.
I join the crowd walking to the train station. It's orderly, calm and deeply weird - I keep waiting for someone to give a friend a high five, or to start one of the chants or songs that happened every time Chiba went to bat. But it's calm, orderly and eminently Japanese.
Ahead of me, I see someone wearing a Green Bay NFC North Champions cap, and I have to say hello. I fight my way through the crowd, get close enough to tap the guy on the arm and say, "Nice hat. Go Pack!"
To my great surprise, he's Japanese. (His hair is blond, and his skin is very pale, so, from behind, I'd assumed he was a misplaced Cheesehead.) He replies, "Go Pack!" and, pointing to the woman next to him - his mother, perhaps? - says, "She's a very big fan. Last year, she went to San Diego to see a game."
"I've been to Lambeau three times," I tell them, and we stop, foot traffic parting all around us, to discuss whether this is Farve's last year, whether Minnesota is more dangerous without Moss, whether we've got enough cornerbacks. It's deeply weird, but also profoundly right - they're fans, I'm a fan and the fact that we're walking around Chiba is more or less irrelavent. We thank each other, bow, and walk on into the night.
I follow the crowd into the train station, hang a right and head into the mall at the heart of the complex where I've been staying the past three days. I have the worst Japanese meal I've ever encountered - breaded cutlet which I assumed were Tetsuo - pork - end up being some potato-like substance. I head home via the Chiba Marines souvenier store, stopping to pick up a Marines baseball for my father. And a fan emblazoned with the image of Bobby Valentine, formerly the manager of the Mets, now the manager of the Marines. Bobby, do you find it as weird here as I do? And as wonderful?