Disneyland- I went to Tokyo Disneyland (which, interestingly enough,
is located about 40 minutes outside of Tokyo). That was quite a trip.
I was expecting a totally crowded, too-cute, boring, long-lined, rip-off.
I wasn’t too disappointed. Actually, I did have a bit of fun, but
I had been to Disney World (Orlando’s) when I was a kid and I just kept
comparing Tokyo Disneyland to it as a far second. Space mountain,
a ride that I’ve been on so many times that the bends and curves of that
subtle night ride have embedded themselves into the double-helix of my
DNA, was only half as long as it should have been. I took the skylift
from Tomorrowland to Fantasyland- I didn’t realize until we were in the
middle of our 4-minute ride that making such a journey by skylift at T.D.
is about as epic as rolling over on your futon to silence an alarm clock.
However, there were some points that I found interesting: Splash
Mountain- it was the first time that I heard the story of Brear Rabbit
since my skull was soft that I didn’t understand at all what was going
on. Star Tours- I never was on the REAL Star Tours,so I don’t have
anything to compare this to. It was quite fun, actually. The
only thing that totally threw me off was that C3P0 was talking in Japanese,
but with the high-pitched metallic C3P0 voice that we all know and love.
I just started to wonder, jokingly, if the Eurodisney C3P0 cops a beret
and an ‘attitude. There was this new 3-D show called “Micro-Adventure”
(I think it was in the “Honey, I Shrunk Just About Everything” series).
That was the one I didn’t wait for. The line, when it was shortest,
was 90 minutes long. At longest, it was about 2 and a half hours
long. My friend and I were so tired that we went to the Japanese
Riki Tiki room and passed out.
I must warn you, there is no experience in this world like falling
asleep in the Riki-Tiki room. The kinds of semi-asleep hallucinations
that you’ll get are the kind that haunt you for the rest of your life.
Not into drugs? Simply go for a nap in the Riki-Tiki room- you’ll
have a trip that not even a hard-core acid user could compare with.
New Year’s Eve- O-shoogatsu (New Year’s Eve, Day) in Japan is the Family
Holiday equivalent of Christmas- it’s the time of year where all the family
gets together to snuggle under the Kotatsu (see below), eat, drink, and
be generally merry. Often, a family will do something called Hatsumode
on New Year’s Eve- that is, they go to the local Shinto shrine for the
religio-social circus of events- tossing money in a bin for good luck;
burning the “household arrow” that spent the last yearinthe house accumulating
all the bad karma, and buying a new one for about 10 dollars; drinking
the Japanese equivalent of Eggnog, a mildly alcoholic drink made from old
rice (which tastes like old rice. Well, Sweet old rice anyway); buying
all manners of cold-weather foods- your standard yakis: Yakitori, Yakiniku,
Takoyaki, Yakisoba, Okonomiyaki…
All in all, it’s a wonderful time to be with family and reflect on
how much you really have going on in your life.
I spent my O-shoogatsu by myself, drinking old milk and watching The
Deer Hunter.
Kotatsu- This is one of those cultural appliances that you won’t often find outside the country (or at least in the Occident). It’s basically a small wooden table, rather wide but low to the ground. You put one large, thick futon underneath it, and you lay another, thicker futon on top of the table (and then replace the wooden top of the table so that it has a flat, hard surface). Everyone sits around the table, eating, chatting, watching TV or whatever, with their feet sticking under the covered table. Now, the magic of the kotatsu is that it is electric. You plug in this table. Theres a heat-lamp on the underside of the table, and this keeps people’s feet nice and warm. This is an important cultural appliance of Japan- the Kotatsu is the Western social equivalent of The Dinner Table and The Living Room all in one. Also, most Japanese houses don’t have central heating so the kotatsu is often the primary source of comfortable artificial heat.
More TV- I miss American comedy shows. OK, not all shows.
Not even most of them. OK, Frasier. I guess that I miss Frasier.
You know the kind of comedy that I’m talking about- slightly high-brow,
most jokes involve subtle twists, skillful sarcastic barbs and twists in
plot that you could miss if you’re not paying attention. I miss that.
Comedy in Japan is quite different. There aren’t any sitcoms,
save when Full House and Growing Pains were imported from Japan.
No, comedy in Japan is primarily stand-up comedy, with comedy teams of
two or three men being the common. Instead of asking if you saw “Friends”
or “Seinfeld”, you might get asked if you saw the “Downtown” special, the
“Drones” show or the latest escapade when “99” appeared on a TV game show
(most Japanese Comedy teams name give themselves nonsensical English names-
actually there is a bit of meaning behind Downtown’s name but it’s kind
of a long story). Oh, and instead of subtle, refined wit we usually
have two guys talking really fast to each other until one slaps the other
on the head, or maybe making skits about their phalluses.
Here’s a TV show that I caught that entertained me for a couple of
reasons reasons: This comedy team consisted of a rather fat guy and
a weird-looking guy. In this particular show they were going from
one hotel room to another, waking up young Japanese models who were asleep
in strange and interesting ways- putting fake moustaches on them, licking
their feet, or just shooting cannons in their room. Well, they came
to one girl, and she had a can of 7-UP on the nightstand next to her.
The fat guy, the mouth of the group, was busily talking away until he saw
the can,and then just stopped talking and stared at the can- obviously
he had never seen 7-UP before (it’s sometimes hard to find in Japan).
After about 10 seonds of just staring at the can, in the blink of an eye
he has the can in his hand, his head tipped back, and it pouring it in
his eye like it was eyedrop formula (2 seconds later the guy is screaming,
covering his eye and running in circles screaming “It hurts! It hurts!”).
I thought that this was one of the most insane things I had ever seen,
but it was so spontaneous that I couldn’t stop laughing.
Anyway, I went out to eat some ramen, I came back to the house and
took a quick nap. I woke up, turned on the TV (It must have been
at least 2 and a half hours later) and there was that comedy team again,
still waking up women in different hotels. THAT was eerie.
Pro Wrestling and DIDI 7- Yes, Pro Wrestling- It’s in Japan and it IS
big. There’s even a Japanese NWO. Also, and even more unfortunately,
American Infomercials have somehow found their way to Japan as well.
DiDi 7, Touchless car wax, Tony Little’s Exercise Shit, Knives that can
cut through the head of a hammer, they’re HERE now. It’s times that
I see commercials like these that I feel empathy for the Japanese Extreme
Right, wanting to flush every visible trace of Western influence from Japan…