beautiful absurdities

Here begins a rehash of the past few days. Yesterday, our first full day in Japan, for lunch, we went to a nice pasta place that had a salad buffet. I would venture to say that the Japanese are becoming closer to the Americans in terms of waist size, but the Japanese have one thing going for them that Americans don't, we (Japanese) walk everywhere. On the other hand, I would also venture to say the food in Japan may be some of the best in the world, so that probably doesn't help either. Anyways, the food was great but the atmosphere a little too frou frou for my tastes, being filled 95% with mostly young and middle-aged Japanese women. In the background played Juanes, a Colombian pop star, and I smiled at the coincidence since I had been learning his songs to help me study Spanish the past couple of weeks. As nice as the restaurant was, I prefer the kinds of places where my cousin takes us, mostly full of middle-aged men eating stick-to-your bone type meals of ramen or other noodle in some hearty soup. That'll have to wait until this weekend when he comes back from work in the prefecture next door.

One thing I noticed about the restaurant - while the salad and stuff was buffet style, the plates, cups, utensils, everything are a smaller size. I would make a bet that if everyone in the US reduced the size of their plates, cups, bowls, etc. the US would see a massive reduction in the obesity epidemic. It's all psychological, but with the smaller plates, a regular amount of food looks a lot bigger. I think I read about this in the New York Times or somewhere, but the size of plates in American restaurants has grown through the past couple of decades, and the serving sizes have followed. Seems like such a small thing (no pun intended), but it could make a great difference in the health of many Americans.

Another thing that was striking about the restaurant, and everywhere else in Japan. The service is top notch, whether you go to the most expensive four star restaurant or whether you're sitting in some working man's food stall on the side of the street. At the same time, you walk through a department store, and the way the workers greet everyone is almost robotic that it does feel a little strange. I guess there's good and bad to that.

In the afternoon, we went to my dad's alma mater because a family friend of ours, one of them goes to the school now, and his mom and my mom are pretty good friends. He gave us a tour of the campus while our moms sat in a coffeeshop talking about mom things, and one thing struck me, or rather confused me. I can't decide who is more superficial - Japanese or Americans. The Japanese are extremely obsessed with brand names, even more so than Americans. We just had lunch with the aforementioned lady, and walking through one of the mall/deparment stores was like walking down a mini version of Fifth Avenue - Chanel, Coach, Cartier, Versace, the best brand names you could think of, and this wasn't even the best mall. However, walking around the school and seeing the classrooms, they are obviously not so concerned with the appearance of their buildings or their green spaces as much as their functionality. The green spaces between the buildings were left completely to nature, and while it looked nothing like the perfectly manicured lawns of the typical college quad, it still had its own sense of beauty. The classrooms were very utilitarian, perhaps even too much - our friend giving the tour claimed that they designed the chairs in the lecture halls, so that they were nearly impossible to fall asleep in. The hallways were sparse and had that familiar antiseptic smell of a hospital corridor. I feel like Americans aren't so fashion conscious, as our females will fawn over the fashionable Europeans, or anyone else for that matter, but if you look at everyone's house, university, building, everyone is competing with the Joneses.

It makes me a little sick to think about how much money went into the landscaping at Emory. One week, I spent every morning selling stuff for a bake sale outside, and I saw the landscaping crew replace flowers TWICE! I could understand once because perhaps it just happened to be that the week I was outside happened to be the week they were replacing flowers for the month, semester, whatever, but how do you explain the fact that they replaced them TWICE in the same week? Did they start turning brown? Umm...... anyone heard of watering them?

Walking back to the train station, we passed this beatiful enclave off the main street with an ancient temple set in the back. The interesting thing about Japan is the juxtaposition of modern and ancient, almost everywhere you go. Here in the middle of this modern city sits a serene grove of trees and shrubs with arches leading to a temple probably hundreds of years old. Next to the new house built in a modern Western style is the tin roofed house built in the poverty of post-war Japan. Upperclass Americans would throw a hissy fit over the lack of apparent building regulation in Japan, but it's just a way of life here. It's rich and poor all jumbled up into the same block, there's not much you see in the way of a uniform rich or poor neighborhood.

Last night, my uncle had to drive my aunt into the downtown area (if translated, it would be called "prosperous town") of Nagoya where she gives piano lessons, so he invited my brother and I to come hang out with him while he waited for her to finish. We ended up going to an internet cafe, but in Japan, what they basically have is a place where you can get on the internet, read manga or magazines, play video games, and drink (juice, coffee, coke, sorry no alcohol) for an hourly fee. The one place we went last night was super shady, kind of dark, and there were porno mags and vids lying around, so I felt kinda dirty and sticky leaving (not literally), but we ventured out again today, and my bro and I found a much cleaner place, so I won't feel as dirty leaving here this afternoon although the cigarette smell will still linger in my clothes.

I just noticed, looking at the price here, it would be much cheaper to pay for the 10 hour pack ($20 or so) and sleep here rather than in some hotel. They have a shower, comfy chairs, and a small closed cubicle, so you could easily sleep in one of these if you wanted to travel on a shoestring budget through Japan. When I was at the airport, I also saw an ad for a capsule hotel - essentially a hotel with beds that are lined up like the storage lockers in a morgue, yes I know, quite odd - but even that cost about $30, so I think you'd get a much better deal here.

I started reading Barack Obama's book Dreams of My Father on the airplane over since I forgot to bring much reading material, and one point has struck me so far about his story. He has, and always will be, an outsider. I can't say I've really made my mind up on him about his qualifications as a presidential candidate, but his book is a good look into the phenomenon of race in the US. While I can't claim to be black (although I could probably claim some ancestry considering my darkness), I can feel where he's coming from. However, I'll never claim to be a "victim" of this outsider phenomenon. In fact, I wouldn't have it any other way. Who else can see and appreciate the aspects of different cultures?