Confessions of a Grade School Role Model

A Japanese friend invited me to his house for Christmas Eve dinner. I got snow tires put on my car, and drove out to his town, about an hour away. He greeted me at the door with a small Christmas tree-shaped plant in one arm, and a smoked turkey leg in the other. Gesturing at the turkey leg, still in its plastic wrapper, he said, "This is what we're supposed to eat, isn't it?" and I giggled. He told me he felt "mortified" because, he had ordered a Christmas cake, per tradition, but the bakery had closed before he could pick it up after work. He was only mildly relieved when I told him that, Christmas cake not being a tradition I'm accustomed to, I wouldn't miss it if he didn't. We picked up a couple of slices of strawberry cheesecake from the convenience store anyway, and some champagne. We spent the evening eating turkey with chopsticks and sushi from his family's restaurant, dunking the convenience store cake's strawberries in cheap champagne, listening to "James Brown's Funky Christmas" CD, and trying to keep the dog from eating the tiny paper chain I was making for the "tree." Actually a very lovely Christmas.

Merry Christmas to you, too.

Christmas Eve. I was just about to settle into a long day of feeling sorry for myself, when a deliveryman brought me a box full of home-baked cookies sent by a friend in Texas. I always try to remember to get through hard times by distracting myself analyzing for any lessons being offered. It could make me feel a bit distant, but it usually helps. I've been trying to grasp what lesson I could possibly learn from being stranded from all friends and family on Christmas. I'm certain there is one if I reach far enough, maybe involving appreciation or self-reliance or some such thing I am in no mood to think about quite yet, but in the meantime, I've found this: you never can tell how great an effect some small gesture may have on someone, or how completely it might change their day. Thank you for the cookies, Sarah. Merry Christmas, everyone.

There is a pile of Christmas presents growing on my kitchen table that I can't afford to send. I'm partly reluctant to send them anyway, because looking at them cheers me up. All these real objects will soon be in the fond hands of friends and family I can see only in memory, and as soon as all the bright packages are gone, Christmas will be too. Japan has in its department stores wreaths and trees and ornaments and all manner of things shaped like Santa Claus and reindeer and snowmen. It even has some of its own Christmas traditions -- department stores, bakeries, and convenience stores alike stock elaborately-decorated Christmas cakes, some with candles. I could easily fill my apartment top to bottom with all of these things, but I still wouldn't have any people, and really then, there is no point. Foreign friends are all going home or travelling, and Japanese friends will be going to work as usual. I've bought myself lots of presents this year too, but I'm not sure that I'm yet desperate enough to wrap them.

What I bought myself for Christmas

Trips to the toy store may be one of the greater pleasures of life in Japan. When one can no longer stomach the saucer-eyed sugar-voiced cuteness that attacks from every TV commercial, dashboard, dentist ad, toilet bowl cleaner bottle, and garbage day information pamphlet, there is always a second strain of disturbingly-twisted cuteness to turn to.

Gloomy the Naughty Adult Bear violently attacks children and seems to have no qualms about walking about with a face full of blood. Panda-Z is a large flying robot panda controlled by another smaller panda seated in his head. San-X Company offers Atsugarisan, a small sweaty devil with a penchant for hot baths, Kogepan the grouchy burnt bread loaf, Beer-chan the brew-swilling moppet, and a series of small kittens trapped in food. All I remember America having was lots of urinating baby dolls, but maybe that is more twisted.

Winter from my balcony

Seasons change without subtlety in Japan. If Texas' seasons were controlled by a rather indecisive dimmer switch, Japanese seasons are changed by a forceful hand with strict orders on a control panel. "1-2-3-Cue Fall!"

Winter in my city was scheduled to begin yesterday at precisely 2:45, and did so without so much as a thunderclap. Japan's behind-the-scenes-maintenance-team (think the Queen's playing card-rose painters from Alice in Wonderland) turned on the snow-taps full blast at the appointed time, not allowing anything so discreet as a few preliminary flakes to usher it in first. I took the first drive in snow of my life yesterday, no light graceful snow as I had imagined, but an aggressive swirling snowflake tunnel that made me dizzy. It was like racing through warp-speed in the driver's seat with Chewbacca, only with a lot more oncoming traffic and stoplights.

I wish I had a before photo. In 24 hours, my neighborhood has gone from being on a pleasant-autumn-island-in-the-east to oh-yeah-we're-right-next-to-Russia. I'm still quite giddy about snow, this being only the second winter of my life where it's fallen where I live, but I'm still avoiding going outside. I've eaten everything in my kitchen but the spices, trying to postpone the inevitable Journey Into Snow. Fortunately, my wonderful grandmother sent me a box of Russell Stover chocolates for Christmas, but I don't think she intended it to be dinner.

Gas station, Siem Reap, Cambodia, December 2002

(That's gas in those old soda bottles. Don't try to buy a Sprite.)
(The kid works there.)

The first time I ever drove anything with a manual shift was on a rented motorbike in Koh Chang, Thailand, one year ago. That was also the first time I ever drove on the left side of the road. The hilly island's roads followed drops so steep and turns so sharp, that when they occurred in certain combinations, they would send me into a panic. On one of the worst turns, I leaned so hard on the brakes that the bike simply fell over from lack of momentum. The patient truck driver on the road behind me pulled over and got out, picked up my bike, and drove it, with me clinging shaking and speechless to the back, to the bottom of the hill. I got the feeling he'd done that before.

Even just riding in taxis and buses, I couldn't quite get used to being on the left side of the road. Some small mental policeman kept screeching about me going the wrong way. So in a taxi from the airport in Siem Reap, Cambodia, I was relieved to find myself again on the right. Thailand and Cambodia share a land border though, and my friend and I wondered how that worked at the crossing: do cars at that point have to cross to the other side? We asked the driver, his English was good.

Cambodia doesn't actually have an official side of the road to drive on, he told us with what I could swear was bemused pride. People just kind of drive wherever, although people in certain cities at particular times generally try to drive in agreement. That agreement just might vary from day to day and hour to hour. And with that, he lurched into the middle of the road, with motorbikes streaming past us on both sides, to prove his point.

What not to get Dad for Christmas

If neckties are supposed to point, you know, down there, what should one think of a tie depicting the Gonorrhea virus? See other disease-themed ties here.

New photo album: Vietnam, photos taken last year. Includes Hanoi, Halong Bay, and Sa Pa, the foggiest place on earth.

There are moments here so surreal I would need Franz Kafka to do them justice.

Yesterday, I accompanied the entire kindergarten, 400 squirming, school uniform-clad three, four, and five-year olds, to a performance hall. The hall was in the downtown convention center, built in the style of suburban modern-classy. All varnished wood and earthtones, multi-tiered chandeliers, the creme of local art adorning the hallways, and a huge brass monstrosity which, to my frustration, a Japanese teacher kept introducing as the "pipe-oo organ." It was a nice hall, the sort that usually makes me feel self-conscious in the way that fancy restaurants do, but the sight of 400 tiny bodies writhing on top of the upholstered theater seats kept me giggling. It was like a pit of very cute snakes.

A gleaming black grand piano stood alone on the stage, and a graceful young woman soon came out to play it. She played something far less complicated than I was expecting, and I deduced that we were about to witness a special kindergarten-edition concert.

As the song's last notes faded from the piano, two more women took center front stage. These were middle-aged women with housewife faces, swathed in pink taffeta horror. It was difficult to keep my eyes off the errant strings hanging from their cheap shawls, the gleam of synthetic fiber dancing in the light, but I was soon distracted. They started singing.

The wildly-smiling taffeta housewives broke into a Disney medley, sung in falsetto heliumtones, in Japanese. "Mickey Mouse" was followed by "Chim Chim Cheree" and "Beauty and the Beast," the titles sung in English, the rest in Japanese. I almost sang along to "Doe a deer, a female deer," until I realized the only part of the song I actually could pronounce now was "Doe." "It's a Small World" took on a real theme park-ride feeling for me being sung in a foreign language like that. "Bibbity Bobbity Boo" nearly sent me running into the hallway in hysterics.

While the entire auditorium sang along, I had my own private concert in my head, unable to help singing along to the songs of my childhood, only in my mental concert hall, it was all in English, about 2 octaves lower, and the taffeta housewives were definitely not invited.

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