Golden Week
It is now what is known as “Golden Week” in Japan, a string of 4 national holidays in the space of about a week that, depending on how they fall in relation to the weekend, usually represent the most consecutive time off that the overworked Japanese employee has in a year.

Plane tickets, hotel reservations, and even karaoke booths sky rocket in price during this week. Expressways are jammed packed, and tourist areas are flooded with people. For this reason, Golden Week is considered the worst possible time to travel in Japan. One the other hand, it is a lot of time off of work that everyone wants to make the most of.

True to form, I have once again failed to make any plans, and somewhat let Golden Week get away from me. I made a half-assed inquiry into going up to Tokyo. (I know I was just up there, but that was for a meeting, and I still have yet to truly “do Tokyo” as a tourist). But when I heard a couple reports of how crowded and expensive Tokyo was during Golden Week, I quickly shied away from the idea.

A number of my JET friends from the area were going on a cycling tour of the Island of Shikoku, but as I don’t have a functioning bike at the moment, I had to give that a pass. Other friends are doing various other activities, but I have just ended up with a lot of time on my hands.

In retrospect maybe I should have just bit the bullet, fought the crowds and paid the money, and opted to go sight seeing somewhere. On the other hand, I made the mistake of getting on the express way yesterday, and had to wait in a huge traffic jam with all the cars trying to go to Beppu (the local tourist destination in Oita), and I thought then that maybe I had made the right decision to lay low.

I got a call from Randy (a friend in Oita city) the other day, asking what I was doing for Golden Week. I initially paused, unsure if I wanted to admit it. “Actually this is going to sound a little bit pathetic…” I started out.

“But you’re not doing anything,” Randy finished for me. “Yeah, neither am I. I was thinking about getting together everybody who’s still around and organizing a camping trip. Would you be interested?” I responded that yes, I was. “Okay, great. Also some of us are getting together on Saturday night to go see ‘Kill Bill 2’.”

“Oh, really? I didn’t realize that was out in Japan already.”

“Have you not seen the first one?”

“No, I’ve seen the first one. I just didn’t realize the second one was out already. Yeah, I’d be interested in seeing that with you guys.”

So on Saturday night I went to see the movie with Randy and 4 other friends. The others were all Japanese friends from Oita city, people I consider myself good friends with, and can’t remember their names.

I’ve always been pretty terrible with names, but in Japan my problems are magnified. In America everyone had a name I was familiar with, it was just a matter of remembering which name went with which face. In Japan, each name represents a series of syllables which have to be remembered in correct order, and then matched to a face.

I was one of the first to arrive at the theater, where I saw of the Japanese friends waiting. I then began one of those awkward situations where I had to initiate and carry on a conversation, all the while trying to dance around the fact that I couldn’t remember her name and didn’t know how to address her. She asked me what I was doing for Golden Week. I responded that I had no plans yet, but I was sure I would think of something. “But there are only four days left,” she said astonished. I just shrugged. We looked at the movie posters and talked about what movies we wanted to see until the rest of the group arrived.

After buying the movie tickets, we had some time to kill so we all went to a neighboring restaurant to get a bit of food. I was in a mood where I didn’t particularly feel like speaking Japanese, so I focused in on Randy for English conversation.

“What did you do today?” Randy asked me.

“Absolutely nothing,” I shot right back, hitting the table to emphasize.

“You know people always say that,” Randy commented. “But what exactly does it mean when you say you did absolutely nothing? Surely you must have been doing something all day.”

I smiled. He was going to sorry he asked that. “Well, I slept in until about 11ish. I took a rather long and leisurely shower. I studied Japanese a bit. Then I walked down to the local supermarket to buy something to eat. I walked back. I made a half-assed attempt at doing some cleaning. I did some exercise.”

“You exercise?”

“Ah, just some push-ups and stuff.”

“Do you do that regularly?”

“I’d like to but I can never keep with it. The spirit is willing but the body is weak.” I paused to consider whether I had used that expression correctly, since in this instance the weak spirit seemed perhaps more to blame. Randy jumped in again while I was thinking.

“Did you ever exercise regularly?” he asked.

“Yeah, I was pretty good about it in University, but the circumstances were different then.”

“Yeah, there’s probably no weight room you can go to in Ajimu,” Randy commented.

“That is definitely a factor. But also the schedule doing University is very conducive to exercise. You have a class in the morning, a class in the afternoon, and a couple hours in between where you have nothing better to do but go to the gym. After working the whole day, it’s a bit different. When you finish work, the last thing you feel like doing is exercise.”

Randy agreed. “When I finish a hard day of work I just want to go home and relax.”

“Even if you don’t work that hard, just the fact that you are at work all day takes something out of you. Even when I barely do anything all day, I hate exercising after work.” Having made my point, I attempted to return to my narrative about doing nothing all day. Randy had asked the question, and he was mistaken if he thought he could get me off topic now. “Anyway, where was I? After I did a bit of exercise, I tried cleaning again but ended up just reading the books that I had just bought.”

“Do you buy a lot of books?”

“I try not to on principle because there is a library I can go to, but every once and a while it is nice to just buy a book. I was in Forus department on Thursday and I bought a couple of books that had just been staring at me for a long time.”

“Really, what books?”

“One I don’t remember the name of, but it is about an American gangster in Japan. Perhaps you’ve seen it at Forus yourself?” Getting no response, I just moved on. “The other was called, “The Two Koreas”, which is a history of Korea. It’s really interesting, I’m almost finished already.”

“It’s a history of Korea?”

“Well, since the division really. Fascinating reading. For instance you know Kim Dae Jung? The President of South Korea until a couple years ago?” I just got a blank face, so I launched into my monologue anyway. “I had no idea what a fascinating life the guy had lead. Do you know they call him the Nelson Mandela of South Korea because he spent so much of his life in and out of jail before he finally became President.”

“Really?” I could tell he wasn’t interested, but I tried to press on anyway.

“Yeah, in fact he was once kidnapped in Tokyo in 1972 by the South Korean government. South Korea was a dictatorship at the time, and Kim Dae Jung had been criticizing it in exile from Japan, and so they kidnapped him, and Japan was furious that it’s sovereignty had been violated, especially since it had been violated by the Koreans, right? And it looked like it was going to be a huge international incident, so the US ambassador told the South Koreans that there would be serious consequences with the US relations unless Kim Dae Jung turned up alive, so the next day he was released outside his apartment.” I was eager to share all the fascinating details of this book, but figured I had pushed this as far as I could in the face of blatant disinterest. “I guess you have to be a bit of history buff like I am to really get into that stuff though,” I admitted. “What kind of books do you like?”

“I like history, but I like to learn it from stories more, like a novel set in the past,” Randy said.

I still had more boring details from my day of “doing nothing” to share, but decided to I had proved my point, and moved on to a different subject. “I noticed that “The Passion of Christ” is now playing here. I didn’t know that had opened in Japan yet.”

“I think it just opened,” Randy answered.

“Have you been reading about the controversy it has been causing back in the U.S.?” I asked.

At this point our Japanese friend Hanae, who was sitting on my other side, jumped into the conversation. Hanae’s English is very good, but for some reason she seems to prefer speaking in Japanese. I, on the other hand, can understand most of Hanae’s Japanese, but often prefer to shoot back my responses in English rather than struggling to formulate sentences in another language. Thus our conversations tend to have both of us talking in our native language and just assuming we are being understood by the other.

Hanae said in Japanese that in the U.S. some people had died from shock after viewing “The Passion” because of the film’s graphic nature. I hadn’t heard this, and in fact was somewhat skeptical of the claim, but decided not to challenge it. “I was thinking more of claims that the film is anti-semantic.”

Of course I meant anti-Semitic, but I always get those two words mixed up. I briefly confused Randy. “Uh, that means anti-Jew, right?”

“Yeah. Lots of people have been claiming the film is anti-Jewish, so I’d be curious to see it just so I could form my own opinion on it. I’ve been holding off on developing an opinion until I could see it for myself.” I stopped and there was no response from Randy. I was once again embarking down a path of conversation that was of interest to me only, but wanted to finish my line of thought. “Apparently the film contains the ‘blood curse’ from the bible.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s where Pilate washes his hands of Jesus’ blood, and says let it be on the heads of Jews, and the Jews answer ‘let it be on our head and on our children’s head’. Now I’m sure Mel Gibson would argue that he is only following the Bible, but I would argue that he should have left that part out of the film. Especially if he cut out other parts of the story. Which I’m almost certain he must have. I mean you can’t fit everything in, so you have to cut some stuff out, and if you do that, then you undermine the argument for including the blood curse. So I’d like to watch the movie with a critical eye and see what he included and what he didn’t include.”

I then let the subject drop at that, since it was clear I was the only one interested. The food came shortly there after. Randy discovered that he had mistakenly ordered a pizza with meat on it. Being a vegetarian, he tried to send it back, but I thought it was a crime to waste a pizza, and said I would eat it in addition to my dish. To further my unhealthy eating habits, I was the only one at the table who ordered a desert and a coffee afterwards, but we had the time to do it, and the other didn’t seem to mind waiting.

We went into the theater and found our seats. While waiting for the movie, I was playing with my cell phone when I happened to notice the date on it. “Hey, it’s May Day today!” I turned to make sure Randy had heard me. “Did you realize it is May Day today?”

“Now what exactly is May Day” he asked.

“I launched into my history of May Day. Hanae, interjecting in Japanese, supplemented much of what I was saying. May Day is an ironic holiday in that it originated in the United States, but is now celebrated almost everywhere else BUT the U.S. Japan is included that “everywhere else”. May Day is usually a day for Unions to have parades, or bazaars of some sort.

Randy, a Hawaiian native, said that in Hawaii May Day is also celebrated, but he had previously had no idea why or where it came from. He said in Hawaii a common expression was, “May Day is lay day.” I assumed this was referring to the Hawaiian wreathes placed on tourists. As the movie started, it occurred to me there might be a different meaning, but with the movie underway it was too late to ask for clarification.

Video Version The Passion of the Christ