I Am the 2.4% (Of the 1.22%)

So much of the news of the last 2 1/2 years has felt like something out of a dream, stories or fantasies that only exist on the Internet or the occasional English-language newspaper that I pick up: nobody here talks about the obstructionism of the Republicans or the economic crisis in Europe, and if they did, I wouldn't understand a word of it.  Pretty much the last news to come out of America and land over here was the death of Michael Jackson, which they still can't stop talking about (I have 7-year-old students who can Moonwalk).  I have a small group of gaijin coworkers and friends, of course, but most of them hail from places other than America -- according to a reputable source, Americans make up just 2.4% of the gaijin population -- which certainly broadens the conversation, but I don't hear all that much about American politics.  My only political involvement here consists of talking about the Daily Show with my Canadian coworker and talking about the news with Jenn (which is awesome, though we do tend to read the same articles and blogs).

The last month has been a hard time to be so cut off from what's going on Stateside...If I weren't here in Japan, I would be Occupying Wall Street or any other available thoroughfare I could find.  I'll spare the blogosphere a rehash of the typical laundry list of middle class liberal complaints -- others have said it a lot better than I would be able to --

Click to enlarge enough to read the whole thing.  Seriously, do it, this is awesome.

--suffice to say that I think the OWS movement will be my generation's defining moment that will finally get the damn Boomers off our backs about getting off the couch and fighting the power already. I consider myself an ideological hippie through and through, but I've got enough of a pessimistic streak that I honestly never thought a movement like this would come along; I assumed that the only angry mobs I'd be seeing in the newspaper were Tea Partiers waving guns and complaining about how hard it is for white suburbanites in the richest country of the history of the world (I mean, think of the unreasonable burden of income taxes they're being made to pay!  No group on earth has ever been persecuted this way except for everyone in the history of fucking civilization.  *Ahem*  End digression.)

In fact, one thing that (perhaps unwisely) defuses my rage at the Man is the knowledge that, like the Tea Baggers, I am one privileged motherfucker.  Not the Man himself, perhaps, but one who has benefitted from His doings...a Manling, if you will, or a Manlet.  As a white, heterosexual male, I've never had to face discrimination based on my origins or appearance; I'm 100% free of debt; I've gotten an awesome liberal arts education and two degrees for free.  In short, what do I have to complain about?  I guess it's typically been the privileged folk spearheading revolutions in the past, from the landed slave-owners at the original Tea Party through to all of the non-privileged non-white participants in Second Wave Feminism who had to remind the most prominent members of their movement that they and their mothers had been in the workplace for generations out of necessity.  In any case, it's a bit of a schlep to Occupy KC or StL, so I'll do the absolute minimum for the cause and...talk about Japan? Sure.

Returning to the idea of privilege, I really think that I've traded one privilege for another by coming to Japan.  On the one hand, I'm comfortable here, treated very politely by one and all, safe from the scary job market in the States.  I'm afforded some special treatment: I don't have to work the ridiculous hours my Japanese coworkers do, and I don't have to pretend that I have no desires other than doing my job satisfactorily.  On the other hand...

...This is an ad for my school's Halloween Party.  The line at the bottom reads "Gaikokujin no sensei to asobou yo!"  Pretty much translates as: "Come and play with our foreigners!"  I'm a token here.  A novelty for my curly hair and skin tone.  Part of the "Gaijin Zoo," as a friend of mine puts it.

The thing is, I can live with it.  But then, I signed up to be here; people who are subjected to this kind of fetishization or disenfranchisement in the US (and they are many) are being done wrong.  I'm a minority here, with a lot of the attached negative baggage, but I get that special treatment, too.  Some gaijin here make it their life's mission to fight this kind of divisiveness, as previously mentioned.  More power to them (if that expression makes any sense under the circumstances) for fighting the good fight. I'm not invested enough in living in Japan to put too much of myself into changing this country, nor do I really feel like I have the right to as a temporary resident (though I did march in the Kansai Rainbow Parade last year).

As it is, I'm kind of struggling with what my responsibilities are as an expat.  Is it enough to send in an absentee ballot every couple of years?  Do I have a duty to try and make Japan better for guys like me, who tend to have it pretty great everywhere already?  Is there more I can be doing to thwart the plans of the Owners in the US from over here?

Aw, who am I kidding?  By next year the Republicans will make sure absentee (Democrat) ballots are trashed or prosecuted for voter fraud.

Jenn, Empress of the Desert

As mentioned in the last post, Jenn and I got in a lot of traveling in a relatively (read: insanely) short period of time, opting for an overnight trip to Funkytown Japan and a camping trip to Desert World in the same week.  Tottori, located on the sea of Japan, is actually the least populous prefecture in the country, with a population of just holy-cow-that's-a-lot-of-people.  We opted to spend our 36 hours there mostly in the prefectural capital, Tottori (imaginative people, the Japanese).

When I informed my coworkers, friends, and neighbors that we took a trip to Tottori, responses ranged from "...Huh," to "Really?  Tottori?" (they said the same thing about Tokushima, as it happens).  As always, it seems our travel destination calculations were flawless. Wikitravel, our go-to free, mostly accurate, and above all, free travel guide, opens its section on Tottori with a description of a bleak Japanese tragic novel about a desert town that imprisons visitors in an enormous sand pit and forces them to dig for their lives.  It then goes on to point out that Tottori's locals "are certainly friendly — and thoroughly unlikely to strand you at the bottom of a sand pit."  *Cue "Vacation" by The Go-Gos*

As long as we were cramming new experiences into as short a time as possible, we also opted to camp rather than pay for a hotel.  This was the first time that Jenn and I had done anything related to camping that doesn't involve the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so we were thrilled at all the possibilities that awaited us in the exciting field of sleeping out of doors.  What new bugs and/or poisonous plants would we discover in our sleeping bags?  I borrowed the necessary equipment from a coworker, promising that we would return it in pristine condition barring any unforeseen circumstances such as dirt.

On the first day of our trip, we fell out of the early-morning bus and promptly made plans to leave town: according to Wikitravel, in a nearby village was a beach that was made up of a special silica sand that, so the legends go, "sings" under one's feet on a hot day.  After the slowest train ride we've ever experienced in Japan (the train was ten whole minutes late, if you can believe such an atrocity) and an hour-long hike around twisting, pedestrian-hostile roads, we found our way to Idegahama Beach.  The sand, while pleasant, was remarkable in its resemblance to all other sand on the planet.  With one exception, that is: due to the sand's ultrafine nature, we are still turning it up in our shoes, pockets, suitcases, and hair.  No singing.

Thanks to another late train, we made it to our campground approximately an hour after the sun had gone down, so we proceeded to play my favorite game: Assemble an Unfamiliar Tent in the Dark.  I can only assume that we won, though I may have broken the rules when I frantically called the tent's owner and begged for help.

The next morning, we packed up our numerous heavy possessions and set off for Tottori Dunes, which our map claimed was adjacent to the campground. Indeed, just a short walk took us to the Western end of the Dunes.  Most of the attractions, including the largest dune and the guest center (including the restaurant and restrooms) were on the Eastern end.  Pay attention, there will be a quiz on this in a bit.

The Tottori Dunes, which are legally required to be described as either "majestic" or "mysterious," are Tottori's main tourist draw.  Tourists flock from across Japan and all over -- well, OK, just Japan, really -- to visit the Tottori Sand Dunes and...look at them, I guess.  They're good for looking at.  You can also get your picture taken while riding a camel, but we ruled out this option from the start; I established a firm "no camels" policy when Jenn and I first moved in together, and I see no reason to revisit it years later (unless camels have stopped being total fuckers at some point in the last 5 years).  So, no camels for us, then, but fortunately for we city-weary travelers, the Dunes also abutted the ocean, meaning one side of them was a lovely beach (this kind of undercut the Mystery of the Dunes for me).

So, finding ourselves at the edge of the Dunes, we decided to take what appeared to be a short hike down the dunes to the beach rather than make the long trek Eastward to the visitor's center.

Our spirits at the outset, as you can see, were high and glamorous.  The beach was only a quick 20 minute stumble down the huge mountains of sand.  When we got to the water's edge, where we planned to relax and plan out the rest of our day, we were shocked to see that the beach was all but abandoned.  What suckers, these Japanese tourists!  What were they thinking, paying huge sums of money to sit on a resentful pack animal and get their picture taken when there was beautiful nature right in front of them?

After a nice, leisurely swim, we packed up our possessions once again and set off to climb the dunes back to the bus stop, near where we had camped the night before.  It was right about then when the fatigue set in; as it turns out, it's considerably harder to climb UP an enormous mound of sand than to shuffle down it.  Within 10 minutes, we had expended all of our energy.  Within 20, we had finished the last of the water we brought.  After 25 minutes we had turned into every cliche of dying of thirst in the desert we had ever seen in the movies (you know, "go on without me, can't go on any longer," imagining each other with a hamburger for a head, etc.).  In all, it took us about an hour and a half to get back to the top of the hill. By the time we got back to the city center, we had earned sunburns that actually radiated 6 inches away from our bodies.  Deserts, it seemed, were not your average vacation spot for a reason.

At last, Pismo Beach!  And all the sand we can eat!

It will be a long, long time before we plan a vacation around the concept that there is a lot of sand somewhere.