Tsukiji Fish Market – October 10, 2007

I have been fascinated by fish and fishing for a while now. I think that this fascination came as a result of watching Japanese television shows in America. The one show that I am talking about is called ‘Sasuke,’ or ‘Ninja Warrior.’ It is basically an obstacle course show, where contestants try to complete a nearly impossible obstacle course. In any case, many of the more successful contestants were fishermen by trade. I had never heard of someone being a fisherman before, or rather, because it is obvious that there are people who are fishermen, I had never seen a fisherman before. It seemed to me an odd profession that one might pick. However, after watching the show for a while, I saw that there were a lot of people who, not only were fishermen, but also those who wanted to be fishermen, as if being a fisherman was a noble profession. So then I thought about it. Indeed, I then realized the nobility in fisherman-ary. So it was important to me to see the Tsukiji Wholesale Fish Markey in Tokyo.

Even more, I think that at this point of our stay in Tokyo, something like a fish market is what I needed to see. I wanted to see normal people doing normal things; I wanted to see what it is like to be a Japanese person in Tokyo. It seemed to be an obvious thing to see, and something that should be easy to see everyday. However, most of the Japanese people that I see are on some part of their commute either home or to work, or they are in my classrooms, trying to speak a little English. It didn’t seem to me that I was seeing more than a small sliver of Japanese life. Perhaps today I might widen that sliver of Japanese life that I experience.

It is said that all the different fish are sold here first thing in the morning through auction. I wanted to see some big tuna, or something, but by the time we came, at noon, everything was closing down. We could see the different isles where I could imagine fish and other seafood was being sold earlier in the day, but there was no fish. Instead we saw the few people who were left cleaning up their locations, and themselves; some people were eating lunch. There were also a lot of forklifts driving around, putting pallets back in their stacks, and placing boxes of vegetables on a truck for delivery to whoever bought it. Basically, it looked like a big industrial lot next to a river. I was disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to see the action take place, but I knew that it was unlikely that we would ever wake up early enough to see the auctions (at 5 or 6 in the morning), so the view that I got today will have to do.

Akihabara

Akihabara is the neighborhood in Japan where they have all of the electronic gadgets and things for sale. Of course, you could find them elsewhere, but one neighborhood has a whole street devoted to computers, cameras, stereos, dvds, video games, etc.

Perhaps I am not that into this sort of stuff, but it was a little disappointing for me. It didn’t really make that big of an impact, perhaps because all I wanted was a small camera, and although there were many to choose from, I didn’t find one at the price that I wanted. Most of the stores weren’t even electronics stores, but stores that focused primarily on dvds (of Japanese cartoons), and video games (which would be cool, but after playing some Japanese video games, I realized that you need to know how to read Japanese to play a lot of them).

I was excited to go into my favorite Japanese fast food place, Yoshinoya. I always get the same beef bowl. Paola thinks that the beef tastes either raw or like fat, so she doesn’t eat it at all, and I end up eating hers, which suits me fine.

Kanda Myojin Shrine

After taking care of our official business, we decided to do a little more sightseeing. I wanted to go to Akihabara because I was thinking of getting a new camera, and I had heard that they might have cameras cheap in that neighborhood. Since there was a shrine nearby, we decided to go there first, before the sun went down.

Kanda Myojin shrine is at the top of a hill, in between several big buildings. It is a neat setting for a shrine. The grounds are big, and there were several buildings, temples, and little shrines all around. It was pretty neat. I got some pictures, but I could tell that they were not that good, and I was anxious to go and try to find a new camera. So, although there was a lot to see there, and we spent quite a while walking around, I never got in a good mood. Another thing might be that after seeing several shrines by now, it is getting a little boring seeing another one. Maybe when I am in a better mood (a mood set off by the impersonal people at the Citibank), I will go again and try to get more of a good vibe about it.

Official Business – October 9, 2007

Today we got our Gaijin id card. (Gaijin is the Japanese word for foreigner; although in the past is was a derogatory term, it is accepted in common usage now.) We went to the same bus stop that we went to about a month ago to fill out the paperwork for the card, but we got on the wrong bus. We figured out where we were, though, and got off, and walked the rest of the way.

After getting our gaijin card, we wanted to rush to go to Citibank to open a bank account. The thing is that most banks in Japan close at 3, and it was already 2, so by time we got on the train, got there, and finally found the Citibank branch, we just made it. There was a lot of voodoo that the person was telling us that I didn't quite understand, but I figured that I would just do what I had to in order to open the account, and hopefully we won’t get too screwed. We’ll see what happens, though.

Going out – October 7, 2007

Like usual, we went to work today. Paola told me that a girl at her work, Cheryl, was going to be celebrating her birthday at a local bar called Watami. This was in Kawagoe, where Paola works, so I had to go home, change, and then meet everyone there at 7, while I got home around 6. Perhaps since I got off of work earlier, I should have been able to be there before everyone else. Instead, I got there late, and about 15 people had already filled the table. I told a friend, Tony, to scoot over, and he did, so even though there wasn’t any room, we made room. I was surprised to see so many familiar faces around the table, but I suppose that since Kawagoe is a pretty large branch, that a lot of people do work there.

After drinking for a few hours, everyone emptied out onto the street. It was cool because in Japan, you are allowed to drink in public. We camped out in front of the 7-11, where some people had already begun drinking (they left Watami earlier because they knew they could get cheaper beers at 7-11). By about 11 o’clock, a bunch of us had taken over the streets, and, being drunk, were hassling the locals. One guy, Darren, took a liking to me, and insisted that Paola and I could sleep at his place, instead of catching the last train in at 11:45. Being drunk, we decided to stay in Kawagoe, and went out for Karaoke.

I have been to Karaoke before in America. It didn’t appeal to me in America, and it doesn’t appeal to me in Japan, either. We decided to go home after a little while, meaning that we would have to pay about 4,000 yen (about 40 dollars) for a cab ride home. We split it with a guy who happened to live in the very next building to us named Andrew.

All in all, it was cool to meet people and hang out, even if we didn’t like Karaoke.

Peeping Tom - October 5, 2007

Paola and I went to bed late last night. This was because I get home from work at about 9:30 at night, and also because after I got home from work, we watched some shows that we recently downloaded with our new internet connection.

Let me back up a bit. Earlier in the day, I knew that people were upstairs renovating a vacant apartment. This caused a bit of noise during the day. Because of this noise that I was used to earlier in the day, I didn't think much of the noise that I heard at 11:30 at night.

The noise that I heard late at night sounded to me like water pouring. Like I said, for whatever odd reason, I thought that it might have been some water that was being poured out onto the ground from the apartment upstairs. I looked up, and saw a person standing at our window.

Allow me to explain this a bit more clearly. Behind our apartment, there is a balcony, or veranda. It is no more than a meter deep and 6 or 8 meters across. It is not really useful for much more than hanging up the clothes after being washed, especially since there are two big pieces of machinery at either end of the veranda (I think that they are for the gas, and water heater, but I am not sure). There is a railing along the balcony, about chest high. There are sliding glass doors that lead from our bedroom onto the balcony; there are another set of similar glass doors that lead from the other bedroom also (we have converted the other bedroom into an extension of our living room). The person who was looking in my window was resting their arms on the balcony, folded in front, as if leaning on the railing.

There was a bright light from a house behind ours that was pointed towards our bedroom window. I don't know how much light it provided for the person to see into our room, but it lit the person from behind sufficiently for me to see the outline of the person standing there.

As I had begun to lift myself up, and after seeing the person, I froze still. I must have been holding my upper body up for at least five minutes, trying not to move a muscle, so as to not allow the person any more advantage of seeing me move. I told Paola what the situation was, and told her not to move. At this point, I wasn't exactly sure where the person was, on the balcony, or on the outside of it. The screen was off, and I asked Paola in as low a whisper as I could if she had taken the screen off earlier in the day while she was bringing in the dry laundry. If she answered no, that would mean that it either fell, or the person had reached in and taken it off. Paola reassured me that she took the screen off herself earlier. Perhaps the screen being off was a good thing, since if the person wanted to jump over the railing onto the balcony, there would be that one more obstacle.

It was so obvious to me at this point that it was the person standing there who was making the noise that sounded like water being poured. I asked Paola if there were rocks on the other side of the balcony, and she said there were. So this person was peeping into our window, with a light shining from behind, and making so much noise while walking on the rocks. Perhaps from across the street, this halogen lamp could light up our room enough to for the person to see through the thin curtains, which I could so clearly see through from this side. Certainly, the light illuminated the whole apartment enough so that I could, from within, see enough detail to navigate myself through it. It was this light that revealed a few more details about the person.

I could tell from the black outline that the person had straight shoulder length hair, but I couldn’t make out a face beyond the blackness. In fact, I could not even be sure if I was looking at a face, or the back of someone’s head. While I was frozen solid with fear, the person turned their head a couple of times, and the light bouncing off showed fair, soft skin, and I could finally determine that the person was, indeed, faced towards our window, trying to look in. It looked to me like it was a girl. That was very surprising to me. However, I couldn’t immediately rule out the possibility that it was a man, since Japanese men sometimes have similar features.

As I said, I must have stayed there, absolutely still for five or ten minutes; I didn’t know the person’s intentions, or what the person might do if it was known that I was looking right at her. By this time, I assumed that she could not see me, and that the halogen lamp from across the street did not light up our room so much, since I was there for so long, and her random looks in other directions didn’t seem to me to reveal that she knew I was looking right at her. This made me a little more comfortable in the situation; but after all, how comfortable could I be? When the person did finally step away from the window, and walked towards the left, I went against the wall, where the light did not shine. I told Paola to stay down, on the floor (Japanese futons lie on the floor, unlike Western beds).

My goal now was to get to the kitchen and get a hold of the big butcher knife. However, the beam from the halogen lamp that shined across my room seemed like an impassable barrier, since if I did pass it, the person might be able to see some form move against the light, and who knows what would happen then. I was also scared to walk across the floor, since it was a wooden floor, and it might make a sound. What if she could hear my heavy stepping on the hollow boards of the floor?

I decided that the best course of action would be to just go, as quickly as possible, and get a handle of the knife, which I thought would give me some sort of leverage in the situation. After waiting long enough, I was convinced that the person would not walk back across our window. I made my way quickly, with as light of steps as I could manage (people who know me could attest to my difficulty in managing that), then across the living room, and to the kitchen sink, making sure once I was there, to stand out of the beam of light that made its way from across the street to my bedroom window, and from there across my apartment, straight through to the other end in the kitchen. Since I was now at the kitchen sink, and the ordeal was basically behind me, I could now take my time.

It must have been in an instant, but it was fast enough to startle me. She walked in front of the open kitchen window. The only thing between us at that moment was the screen of the small kitchen window. I froze for only a moment because I had not yet secured the knife. Although I looked right into her face, and she seemed to look into mine, her eyes looked right through me. I couldn’t tell you know what she looked like. The image of her face did not burn itself into my memory, but I do remember thinking that it was an unusually generic Japanese girl’s face, who looked like a young teenager, but knowing Japanese features, she could have been thirty. She tilted her head back and forth, as if to try to see anything she could through the open window. I reached for where I thought the knife was, but only grabbed the dish rack.

At that point, I decided, for the first time, to let her know I was there. I shook the rack, rattling the dishes and silverware, and deepened my voice to a guttural growl. “Hey!” I yelled at first. Then for a split moment, I tried to think of some Japanese to add to the yell. But that moment passed, and I snarled, “Who are you… Get outta here!” in English. It didn’t seem to make sense to string those two phrases together, but thinking as I was, I just yelled the first thing that came to my mind. Looking back on it, I know that it doesn’t really matter what I would have said, since she probably wouldn’t have understood my growling, even if she spoke perfect English.

I don’t remember exactly how she looked, but it was clear to me that she was scared, and she ran away. I thought of what I should do next. So many thoughts raced through my head, and I made the mistake of wasting an instant with trying to think rationally about what to do. “Should I take advantage of my obvious upper hand? Should I run after her or not? If I run after her, I will have to put on my shoes! Can I put on my shoes fast enough to catch up to her and overtake her? What would I do if I did catch her, now with a knife in my hand? What if someone saw?” I took the knife, and with bare feet and a bare chest, I ran to the door and opened it. “Would I really run after her?” The situation dictated an answer for me when I saw her race away on her bicycle. I only caught her leaving the the driveway (a good twenty meters away), and then turning left. There was no way I could catch her. I stood at the door, looking out, with a knife in my right hand that was inside, holding the door open, for two moments. I closed the door without stepping outside, and it was pretty much over.

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