My fifth Japan Journal, sent in June 1995.  

Japan Journal #5

I had a few ideas and thoughts so I thought I'd share them with everyone...

Bowling for Yen

Wednesday (after work) was a bowling night for our department. I found this out when I arrived at work on Wednesday morning. (Apparently my manager mentioned to me at some previous point, but my memory, true to form, decided not to file that particular piece of information.)

I asked if we were going five pin or ten pin bowling. Many blank looks. Apparently five-pin bowling doesn't exist in Japan.

I had a kick-butt first game (score: 185). 1 got a strike on the 9th frame and struck out on the tenth. I was pretty excited. 8 frames with colour... Of course, I lost my rhythm entirely for the second game and ended up with a score of 101. But I ranked 7 out of 35 or so people, and my first game was the high single.

(As the general reaction seems to be people staring at their respective computer screens, leaning back, yawning, looking bored, and other subtle-like-a-sledgehammer signs of people thinking, "Who cares?", I'll move on to another topic.)

A Three-Hour Tour

There was a traffic accident this morning on the Keikyu railway line between where I live and where I work. It took me nearly three hours to get to work today. I took a couple trains until I reached the last station that was in service. Remember when I said that the trains aren't all that crowded? They were this morning. Wow. I had my knapsack between my feet and I wanted to pick it up. Wrong. I had no room to lean over, no room to bend my knees, nothing. So I ended up shuffling from place to place. Insane.

At the last station, I asked how to get to Nobi station (that's the station I would normally get ff the train at). To get to Nobi, I had to take the train BACK a few stops, and take a bus from there. I did. Now, if you walt crowded, pandemonium, chaos, and a few other words that illustrate disarray and disorder, you should have seen this place. It demonstrated quite graphically to me how efficient Japan's train system is for commuters, and also how dependent Japan is on the trains. When the train went off-line, it was a major undertaking to get people to work, school or wherever. 

And, as someone put it, I work "out in the sticks". I can only imagine the problems if a similar event occurred in or around Tokyo.

But a series of buses (where taking a deep breath could be felt by the three people pressing up against you) later, and I arrived at work just before 10 o’clock. (I left my dorm this morning, as I do every morning, at 7:10. Usually I get to work at 8:30.)

However, I didn't find any of this stressful. One, I knew that everyone living in my dorm had to face the same thing. Two, there was nothing I could do, so why worry? Three, I was able to ask for, and understand, directions in Japanese. And I got here with no wrong turns, or additional delays.

For the first time, I feel comfortable here. I’ve been quite perky all day as a result. Granted, my Japanese was not as eloquent as I like to believe my English is, and I had to ask people to repeat themselves, but I was able to communicate, to ask and understand the response, in Japanese. 

It's still at the level of "Where is Nobi Station?" "Take the number 3 bus." -- but it works. And I can build from there. Which makes me a happy camper.

Japan Times

There is a table that contains several newspapers for general use by the department. One of them is the Japan Times, which is an English-language newspaper. I got used to reading a paper each day in Canada. It’s nice to keep abreast of events. Of course, some things take a bit of getting used to-- the dollar refers inevitably to the U.S. dollar, the TSE is the Tokyo Stock Exchange-- but it does cover world events satisfactorily. 

An All-Nippon airplane was hijacked a couple days ago. The guy may or may not be an Aum cult follower. Basically, a guy with an ice pick wanted to be flown back to Tokyo. The police did nothing for several hours, then rushed the plane, disarmed the hijacker, and released all the hostages. I think no one was hurt during the raid, though a few were injured beforehand.

In my opinion, the Japanese did exactly the right thing. Reminds me of Israel's policy with hijackers-- "We make no deals with terrorists." (I'm trying to remember where I read that. Damn, I hate it when I forget my sources. Oh, well.) if you are known to stand by that principle, people aren't going to mess with you... or rather, if they are, they won't bother taking hostages in the process.

I also read about the Shell sea-burial turnaround about disposing of one of their oil-carriers. I have a few thoughts about that, too, but that's not Japan-related in any way so I won’t take up your time preaching my thoughts about it.

I hope everyone has a fun and safe weekend.

Leslie