This Past Weekend

Friday
Went out for a night on the town in Gifu city. Tried, with my friend Adam, to get away from our usual spots and find a really cool, undiscovered place, but had minimal success.

On the way back we saw three police cars with flashing lights stopped at the park. 3 policemen were trying to deal with some sort of disturbance. Public disturbances are rare in Japan, but you see them every once in a while. A group of guys, probably all in there early 20s, were yelling at the policemen.

Fighting Japanese is often uttered in a low guttural tone and it is hard for me as a learner to make it out, but it was something about a photograph. The guys were upset because the policemen had taken a photo of them I guess.

“Why did you take my photo? Why did you take my photo?” One of the men said as he pushed the policeman around. His friends crowded around to assist. The three policemen did nothing. They just let themselves be pushed around.

Adam and I couldn’t believe it. “Man, you could not get away with that back home,” I said.

“You’d be on the ground,” Adam said.

“You’d have your jaw broken,” I said.

Adam considered it. “But, really, what are the policemen going to do?” he said. “They’re only 3 of them, and they all look really old.”

We stood around for a while to watch. There were a lot of gawkers standing around watching the scene, but we stood out because we were foreigners. Some of the men arguing with the policemen began pointing at us, and we suddenly felt uncomfortable and wondered what would happen if all their aggression was suddenly channeled in another direction. We left.

Saturday
Some Japanese friends took me up to visit Takayama in the northern part of the prefecture. I’d been there once before, but it is a beautiful and historic area, known as the “Kyoto of Gifu”.

It rained the whole time. In fact lately every time I’ve done anything, it has been raining.

I’ve come to suspect that I am what the Japanese refer to as “Ame Otoku” or “rain man”. A rain man is someone upon whom the rain always falls whenever he does anything outside. It’s not a discovery I’m pleased to make, but the recent evidence is hard to refute.

Saturday night my friend Matsunami took me to a hip-hop dance contest. This time we just watched and didn’t participate, so I didn’t have any more opportunities to embarrass myself.

The club was pretty amazing though. And by that I mean not the building itself but the people in it. The imitation of American urban street fashion had been perfected to an art. It seemed like a cool place where a lot of other foreigners would want to hang out, and yet I was the only non-Japanese person in the whole place. I had the impression that the dance event and the whole club were a well kept secret within the Japanese community, that I had just been allowed a quick glimpse of. It made me wonder how many events like this go on nearby all the time, but just fly under the radar of the foreign community.

Sunday
One of my Japanese co-workers, when she found out I liked hiking, invited me to go mountain climbing with the “Gifu Workers Hiking Association”. Sounds great, I thought. Hiking is always more fun in a big group.

The catch? We set out at 5:30 in the morning. Japanese people, and especially Japanese old people, love to get up early.

In order to make the 5:30 meeting time I had to wake up at 4:45, which is the earliest I’ve woken up in years. I don’t know how long. And after being at the hip hop club late the night before, it was a hard morning.

To add insult to injury, there was absolutely no reason why we had to start so early in the morning. The early hours of the morning were filled with meetings, speeches, opening ceremony, numerous bathroom breaks and equipment checks (completely unnecessary for a day trip in my opinion). It was a very Japanese expedition. It was close to 8 by the time we actually started to ascend the mountain. I really appreciated the invitation, but I don’t think I’ll ever go hiking with this group again.

The hike itself was all right. I was the youngest person there by far, and so I didn’t feel a lot of connection to the other hikers. They were friendly enough, but I was too tired and cranky to be sociable.

The exception to this was of course the teacher who invited me, and someone who was a professor of Indian history at the local University. I talked with him about Indian history, and not only did I learn a lot, but it was great Japanese practice for me. Later in the hike though I realized that everyone was talking to him about Indian history. “Oh, you teach Indian History huh? Well I was wondering….” And then I felt a bit bad for making him talk about his subject on his day off.

I also had some interesting conversations with the Japanese teacher who invited me. “How old are you again?” she asked.

“27”.

“You know in Japan, sometimes younger teachers marry their students at the junior high school.”

Naturally I assumed she had mixed up high school and junior high school (a common mistake in Japanese English). I already knew that in Japan it was not uncommon for teachers to marry high school students. “Um, you mean high school, right?”

“No, in the junior high school also. Sometimes there is as much as a 12 year difference.”

Don’t worry folks, I wouldn’t dream of it.

I was pretty worn out from the day’s hike, but a Japanese friend had invited me and another American to her family’s house for dinner. The food was very good. Hospitality in Japan is something you can always count on. I’ve never left a dinner invitation and not been stuffed. And the family was so thrilled to have foreigners at the dinner table. “This is the first time my father has ever talked to a foreigner,” our friend explained. The father even got out the video camera to record us eating the meal.

Link of the Day
My friend the Tyger is back on-line now.