The passing of MJ and other weird shit

Yes, the demise of Michael Jackson is by now old news and has already been blogged into the ground. But I mention it here for the following reasons:

-I have been watching the original Thriller video pretty much every day for the past week, and it still rocks. I mean, it has dancing zombies in it for chrissake.

-Given how much the people here dig MJ, I started wondering if there was a Japanese- language subbed version of the Thriller video out there. Finally found this one here, but it’s like trying to watch a movie when no one in the theater will SHUT THE HELL UP, in that there’s a constant scrawl of “witty” comments that has been added to the vid by the uploader. I’ll say it for the record: Japanese internet culture sucks.

-I subsequently got to wondering if there were separate, Japanese-language lyrics for Thriller posted somewhere online. And I finally found these, which educate as well as entertain; gotta love it when “I’m gonna thrill ya tonight, ooh baby” is translated as 私は今夜、オーッ！赤ちゃん屋スリルつもり. That’s just nutty.

-In looking for the original Thriller video, I stumbled across the so-called “Indian Thriller,” a ripoff scene starring the suave gentleman in the picture above. The video itself is embedded below for your viewing displeasure.

p/s – Sorry for the dropoff in posting, folks. The workload has been taking its toll…

The 300-yen Man

A shit day at work. Political, Big Brother-type bullshit of the sort that reminds you how big companies have a way of turning adults into blighted, idiot children.

Ikebukuro Station. Chuhai in hand, my third I think. Hacking away at a sobriety that refuses to know when it’s not wanted. My other hand holds a printout of a work-related materials; I can’t believe I voluntarily read this shit off the clock.

Headbanging slightly as I blare Arch Enemy on my iPod. I turn a corner, head toward my second train.

There’s a tap on my shoulder. Not an “Excuse me” sort of tap, but a tap that says, “Hey there, I know you.” Which adds to the surprise of turning around and realizing I have no idea who the tapper is.

“Excuse me,” the man asks in English, “can I help you find your way?”

Pause.

Do I look lost? I imagine I look a bit pissed off, but lost? I doubt it.

“I know exactly where I’m going, man,” I reply, gesturing toward the turnstile.

“Ah.”

Short silence.

“I am poor,” the man suddenly says. “Can I have 300 yen?”

I look at him a while, take in his crazy haircut and cheap canvas belt. It’s hardly the first time I’ve been hit up for cash; back in the States, I’d been asked for amounts several times in excess of what this guy is after, been given excuses of abusive husbands and stretches of bad luck. Quite possibly utter bullshit, but while I’ve never had to ask complete strangers for money, I can only hope that if it came down to it, somebody out there would help me out. Which makes it hard for me to refuse when I’m the one being asked.

I don’t think I sighed as I put down my drink, fished out my wallet, but I may have. Crazy haircut man bows deeply. He lapses into Japanese and thanks me profusely as I give him three 100 yen coins.

“Where are you from?” he suddenly asks in English.

I tell him. And I tell him which state when he wants to know that as well.

“Oh, so hot!” he replies excitedly. “And your heart is hot, too!”

He’s translating directly from Japanese. I know what he means. I put my headphones back on and begin walking away.

I don’t know what Ｔhe 300-yen Man needed money for. But at least for the moment, I have a job and I don’t have to hang out at the train station asking strangers for money.

I have my chuhai and my iPod.

A shit day, but it could be worse.

Patient Zero

It has not been a good week for me, dear Reader.

I have been, frankly, sick as hell — to the point I’ve lost about a pound of body weight a day for the past four days due to not being able to keep any food down. Today’s pukefest was the straw that broke the dromedary’s back, and I decided to take the day off to get some rest and go see a doctor.

I enter the neighborhood clinic. I explain my symptoms to the doctor, a man who acts as if he’s in a terrible hurry despite the fact that I am the sole patient in his clinic.

“I’ve been throwing up for days,” I explain. “I have occasional hot-chills, and my joints hurt. I think it’s a flu bug.”

The doctor examines me. He examines me to the point where I want to smack him for prodding my stomach and asking, “How is this?” when the previous several prods have almost made me throw up and I have through gritted teeth informed him of such.

Finally, Dr. Prodder determines that what I have isn’t a flu bug but a stomach virus. He begins writing out a prescription.

“Also,” I mention, “I had to take a day off work for this, so could you please write me a shindansho?” I ask, using the word for a doctor’s certificate. As in, the thing that can prove to my bosses I was actually being seen by a doctor and wasn’t out getting piss drunk or something.

“What would you like it to say?” Dr. Prodder responds.

This takes me back a bit.

You’re the goddamn doctor, I think to myself. You’ve examined me, now just put something about this experience on a piece of paper.

I look at him. He looks at me, obviously expecting an answer.

“Uh … That I didn’t go to work because I felt like I had flu-like symptoms, and that you examined me for it?” I ask.

Dr. Prodder looks at me, tilts his head to one side as if not quite understanding where I’m going.

“As in, mention your condition and prescribed medication?”

As sick as I am, I want to put my foot through the back of this guy’s head.

“Yes. Please.”

He grunts, scribbles something into my file and mentions that a shindansho will take chotto (”just a little”) more money. I say that’s fine. And then I’m practically being shooed out the door.

I’m told my bill at the receptionist’s window: 4,200 yen, or roughly $42. In America I wouldn’t have blinked at a bill like that, but I’ve gotten used to doctor’s fees here regularly being in the $5-$10 range. Regardless, I fork over the cash.

Once outside, I give my shindansho a glance-over. Unlike the last one I received for that time when the people of Tokyo decided to screw up my back, this one is actually handwritten.

And the writing is so terrible that I can barely make out what it says.

“Virus … Work … Medicine something. What the fuck is this?!”

I get frustrated, move my attention from the shindansho to the printout of my bill.

Visitation fee: cheap. Medicinal fee: cheap.

Cost for written materials — i.e., my shitty illegible shindansho:

3,000 yen. Thirty goddamn U.S. dollars.

Cocksucker!

A typical day

9:30 a.m.

I walk into the neighborhood supermarket. The guy exiting gives me the evil eye for no reason.

Walking past the pharmacy section, I hear a cheap ’80s-era boombox blaring the jingle the supermarket always plays on the weekend.

“Today is double-point day! Double-point day! Oh, such are the chances for savings that can be had today — it’s double-point day!”

Ugh.

There are, however, some good specials. I pick up a couple spices, some chicken, and a yakipurin that reminds me of the flan I used to eat as a kid.

There’s another ’80s-style boombox set atop the table in front of me. It plays the same jingle: “Today is double-point day! Double-point day!” I wince, move down a couple aisles to get out of the range of that aural fuckery. Suddenly the supermarket intercom switches from light Muzak to the same jingle, and “Today is double-point day! Double-point day!” blares across the entire store.

Lovely.

I exit. A light rain has started to fall, and I don’t have an umbrella. It’s a little early, but I say screw it and pop open a chuhai and have some of the chicken, a charcoal-grilled yakitori skewer in special sauce, while waiting for the rain to die down. The yakitori isn’t so much cold as it is near-frozen. As I chew on it, it occurs to me that the Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound it makes in my mouth is shari shari.

A man walks up, a fellow foreigner. He looks to be in his mid-forties, with a handlebar mustache and unkempt hair, walking a white Shiba dog. Back in the States, he probably rode a Harley to work and looked men in the eye like he was the shit. But here, today, we do the gaijin dance and pretend not to see each other, me looking off to one side while he suddenly feels the need to check his watch. His dog saves the moment by pulling him in another direction, and in seconds they’re gone.

I begin walking home. On the way, I turn down a side street to check out something that’s always intrigued me, a sign for a 手打ち (handmade) soba restaurant smack in the middle of a residential area. It turns out whoever runs the place is running it right out of his own house; the door next to the “restaurant” entrance is open, and through the sliding door I can see a TV, a living room scattered with magazines.

A lady exits. She wears jeans two sizes too small and works it like someone who knows exactly what she’s doing. She catches me peering under her umbrella to confirm what I’d already guessed, that she is in her late 30s/early 40s and strikingly attractive. I turn, pretending not to have been staring.

A portly elderly gentleman approaches. He does that really annoying thing that Tokyo people do, walking directly into your trajectory and pointedly ignoring the fact that you exist. At this rate we’re bound to collide. I consider ramming my shoulder right the hell into him to teach him a lesson. Instead, I move to one side and let him pass. Wouldn’t want to spill my chuhai.

Sigh.

Just a typical day.

Really, REALLY juvenile ways of employing new technology

Inbetween doing a bit of overtime, drinking too much and watching a couple Tony Jaa movies this past weekend, I decided to try out the recently launched “computational knowledge engine” WolframAlpha and see what it was all about.

Predictably, it didn’t take long for me to sink down to the level of a 14-year old.

I had no business giggling as much as I did over this screenshot, but there’s just something about seeing this word — which has meant everything from a bundle of sticks to weird English meatballs to a homosexual to someone embarrassingly lame — being used as a unit of measurement that I apparently find pretty amusing.

Sigh.

I’m an idiot.

Novel ways of fighting organized crime

I passed by this poster in the station for a week or so before taking a good look at what it had to say … and then I was pulling out my cell phone and snapping a photo.

It’s a poster released by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police concerning 暴力団 (boryokudan), or the organized crime syndicate. It specifically concerns how best to 追放 (tsuiho), or drive them out. Three helpful suggestions are offered there on the bottom right:

Do not fear them
Hell, yeah! Stand your ground!

Do not give them money
Show those bastards who’s boss!

Do not employ their services
Uh…

Your police department at work, folks.
Feeling safer yet?

To surf, perchance to Google

I do a lot of bitching about life here, dear Reader. Frankly, it’s quite easy to rant about the zombie-like freakwads that seem to make up most of Tokyo’s populace.

But today, an uncharacteristic bit of praise.

My internets have been giving me some trouble recently. Today, the connection was so slow that webpages simply refused to load. So I called my ISP’s tech support, with the following results. (Anyone who’s dealt with tech support in your home country, feel free to compare.)

-After selecting the appropriate category from the automated recording, my phone call was picked up by a live operator on the third ring
-The operator ran a few diagnostics and determined it would take a technician to repair the problem
-A technician was at my door in less than two hours
-Said technician was already aware of my problem, and telling me how he could fix it while still walking inside my house
-My connection was up and running in about 15 minutes
-Total cost to me: nothing whatsoever

People of Tokyo, you’re on your way to redeeming yourselves.

As a counterpoint to this anecdote, however, I had earlier run into a guy that, at 9:30 am, was so drunk as he stumbled out of a 24-hour karaoke bar that he was being literally propped up by one of the bar’s employees, lurching madly down the street and crying out “Do you know me?!” in English upon seeing me, and then suddenly rolling his r’s and threatening to kick the ass of some random passerby.

This place is weird.

Nice tech support, though.

Street drankin’

It being a public holiday and absolutely gorgeous weather yesterday, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity by once again ripping off Good Beer and Country Boys and finding myself a street corner to settle down for some roadside drinking.

Had to retire the Joker cell phone strap. His mouth has all but rubbed off...

This being a special occasion (you can tell I don’t get out much), I opted to hit the neighborhood import shop and hunker down with some specialty craft brews. One of these was the Karuizawa Kogen Seasonal 2009 ESB you see pictured there to the right, and it was fantastic.

Smooth, full-bodied, hoppy and sweet, this is one beer that I knocked back in no time flat, and found to be far superior to any of the other brews I imbided that afternoon. In fact, I’ll go a step further and say that this is hands-down the best canned beer I’ve had in Japan. If you run across this bad boy, do yourself a favor and get it. At 348 yen a pop it’s a little pricey, but well worth the extra dough, especially when you consider that this is a limited-time release. Believe me when I say I’ll be stocking up on more this weekend.

And so, I leave you with a couple pics of my afternoon on the street corner, listening to my iPod and getting more than a few stares from curious passers-by.

p/s – Thank you WordPress for making me stagger these pics because I apparently can’t post two on the same line without the code freaking the hell out. Idiot software.

The beer in question

and the choice locale in which it was imbibed.

Chotto…

Sunlight. Birds twittering excitedly.

The muffled sound of the occasional car passing below.

Sunlight?

“Shit! Shit!”

I spring out of bed, flip open the cell phone that doubles as my alarm clock.

Why didn’t my alarm go off?!

I look at the time as it’s displayed on the phone’s digital readout: 4:27.

Four-fucking-twenty-seven am.

Hey Japan — You might want to think about instituting a goddamn daylight savings program sometime soon.

And shutting these idiot bluejays up while you’re at it.

Awesome.

Having gotten such a kick last week out of the weirdness that is your coworker Mr. Balls, you’ve found yourself listening in to his conversations to see if he has any other interesting anecdotes. Or updates regarding the state of his genitalia.

Unfortunately, neither have been forthcoming.

What has been forthcoming, however, is Mr. Balls’ rather annoying overuse of the word sugee, meaning “awesome.”

Given the number of times sugee gets thrown around on any given day, there are apparently a great many things Mr. Balls finds pretty fucking awesome. And the awesome-to-any-other-word ratio gets upped even more when fellow office drone and stater-of-the-obvious The Parrot gets in on the conversation. A typical example:

“This is awesome!”
“It’s awesome, right?”
“It’s so awesome!”
“It’s pretty awesome.”

According to Mr. Balls’ strict criteria, anything that is not awesome would by default seem to be yabee, meaning “bad” (as in, having potentially damaging consequences).

“This is bad.”
“It’s bad, right?”
“It’s for real bad.”
“It’s bad, this is.”

On rare occasions, when something is really bad, the two words are combined to make sugee yabee, or “awesomely bad.”

Today, as it turns out, nothing bad is occurring. On the contrary, something must be pretty freaking incredible, judging by the number of times sugee is being used.

You’re staring at your computer, putting the finishing touches on a paragraph that’s been giving you a fair amount of grief for the past half hour. Mr. Balls and The Parrot let loose with another “Awesome!” and you sigh loudly, shaking your head. The Posture, seated in the cubicle to the left of yours, leans in toward you.

“What do those guys even do?” he asks you in English.

“I don’t think they do anything,” you reply, which gives him a bit of a giggle. Just then, the pair in question shoots off yet another “Awesome!” The Posture, who’s actually turned out to have a decent sense of humor, mimics snatching a dictionary off his shelf and punting it over the cubicle. This time it’s your turn to laugh.

Then — as if on cue — you hear Trixie the Monotone Pixie walk up, thus completing the unholy trio.

“Dude!” Mr. Balls calls out. “Look at this!”

You hear a paper rattle.

Silence.

And then a female voice exclaiming:

“This is awesome!”