Saturday, May 31, 2003
So backlogged this week. I've spent hours trying to find a new place but it looks like I'm going to have to make some tough choices. Which will the tradeoff be--comfort, price, space, location or amenities? In a way, it's not that different from Chicago when I was looking for places, but as a gaijin only here for a month, my options are more limited. Most Japanese have to sign a 2 yr lease with several months deposit and several months key money(basically gift to landlord)--apparently the market is very tight in Tokyo.
Tuesday was my first venture, visiting a guesthouse in Asakusa. The manager met me at the station and immediately asked me where I was from and if I had had a direct flight to Japan or had stopped over somewhere else. He was very concerned about SARS, but after I assured him that I hadn't been to any SARS-infected places, he smiled and shook my hand. We drove to the place in his car, with the radio music of high-pitched female Japanese voices with Japanese lyrics except for the chorus "Leti-be". He was very friendly, driving past his soba shop and introducing me to his family with his waving little boy, but despite the low price, the distance and sharing a room with 5 other girls scared me off.
The next guesthouse, run by a hip single mom with a half-n-half girl, was very convenient and impeccably decorated but I didn't want to pay 69,000 yen to share a small room with up to 8 other people(3 sets of 3-stacked bunk beds), some of which were guys.
Next I visited one even closer to school, but about the size of my walk-in closet. The guy showing me was Chilean, so of course we chatted in Spanish about my time in Chile and how he ended up here.
My last find of the day was a fun guesthouse which was cheaper, roomier, and had all the amenities but even further out from school and central Tokyo than I am now. The assistant manager picked me up from the station in a brightly painted car, which matched the office decor. He seemed curious, asking me questions about what I thought of Japan. When we arrived in the office, the whole staff acknowledged our presence by standing up and saying something. The asst manager went up to someone and made a little bow which seemed to reflect an office hierarchy.
Today(Friday) I went to two places,one shown to me by a Ghanaian who had moved here to find work and the other by a Japanese woman who had gone to college in Colorado.
Tuesday was the class field trip to Asakusa. It was less exciting than the first time when I went to the festival, but it was more relaxed since it wasn't so crowded. We walked through rows and rows of stalls, selling clothes, souveneirs, kimonos, and food.
One of the first images we encountered was a woman dressed in full white makeup, hair in a bun, and beautiful purple kimono hawking cookies. Almost everyone in the group wanted a picture with her. The purpose of the trip was to find examples of hybridity, such as the Hello Kitty dressed in a kimono. I was reminded of the whole scene in the Bible where Jesus overturned the stalls next to the temple. In class, Fab compared the scene to seeing an amusement park next to Notre Dame or a crucifix being sold with Brad Pitt on it and mentioned Japan's more relaxed view of religion. But although there were a lot of random school kids and tourists, there also seemed to be people there to worship.
Inside the temple, people threw coins and bowed with their hands in praying position. In front of the temple, there was this big pot where people were sticking bars of incense and trying to move the aroma toward them, waving it to make it spread all over their body. Next to it, people washed their hands with ladels at a big water fountain--I wasn't sure if this was a particular purification thing or more of a general hygiene thing if they touched the incense. There were several smaller temples off to the side along with a little bridge and pond which added a more tranquil nature to the place.
Wednesday our class went on several field trips. First we went to a store to find examples of intertextuality. Apparently this is a big deal in Japanese culture since J-pop singers appear in magazines and commercials and movies. This didn't seem that different from a lot of the crossover artists in the U.S. The biggest example I can think of is Brandy, who had a singing career, then a TV show and was a cover model for Maybelline I think. J-Lo was an actress, then a singer and now seems to be popping up everywhere. There are so many singers that try to get into acting and vice versa, but here it is more of a given I guess. I didn't know any of the artists so ended up with a video and CD for the Kinky Kids. A beautiful moment, worth noting for my project, was when Fab was trying to find her husband, telling him that she was in front of the store too and they practically crashed into each other, each one on their phone.
After that, we went to sing karaoke. The last time I had tried had been a disaster since I didn't remember how the songs went, but this time it went ok. The first song I picked got deleted since I was too shy to say it was me who picked it, but when I finally did sing it, people applauded although I think my voice was barely audible over the music. There was definitely a gender divide, especially when the girls did "I Will Survive" and the guys all used this as an excuse to go to the bathroom. Two of the guys did a mostly improvised rap. Fab brought her 2-3 yr old daughter who kept on grabbing the mic in between songs and saying "thank you". The final song was one I picked, Ricky Martin's "The Cup of Life" which everyone ended up singing and dancing to--very fun. The two hours went by very quickly.
Tuesday was my first venture, visiting a guesthouse in Asakusa. The manager met me at the station and immediately asked me where I was from and if I had had a direct flight to Japan or had stopped over somewhere else. He was very concerned about SARS, but after I assured him that I hadn't been to any SARS-infected places, he smiled and shook my hand. We drove to the place in his car, with the radio music of high-pitched female Japanese voices with Japanese lyrics except for the chorus "Leti-be". He was very friendly, driving past his soba shop and introducing me to his family with his waving little boy, but despite the low price, the distance and sharing a room with 5 other girls scared me off.
The next guesthouse, run by a hip single mom with a half-n-half girl, was very convenient and impeccably decorated but I didn't want to pay 69,000 yen to share a small room with up to 8 other people(3 sets of 3-stacked bunk beds), some of which were guys.
Next I visited one even closer to school, but about the size of my walk-in closet. The guy showing me was Chilean, so of course we chatted in Spanish about my time in Chile and how he ended up here.
My last find of the day was a fun guesthouse which was cheaper, roomier, and had all the amenities but even further out from school and central Tokyo than I am now. The assistant manager picked me up from the station in a brightly painted car, which matched the office decor. He seemed curious, asking me questions about what I thought of Japan. When we arrived in the office, the whole staff acknowledged our presence by standing up and saying something. The asst manager went up to someone and made a little bow which seemed to reflect an office hierarchy.
Today(Friday) I went to two places,one shown to me by a Ghanaian who had moved here to find work and the other by a Japanese woman who had gone to college in Colorado.
Tuesday was the class field trip to Asakusa. It was less exciting than the first time when I went to the festival, but it was more relaxed since it wasn't so crowded. We walked through rows and rows of stalls, selling clothes, souveneirs, kimonos, and food.
One of the first images we encountered was a woman dressed in full white makeup, hair in a bun, and beautiful purple kimono hawking cookies. Almost everyone in the group wanted a picture with her. The purpose of the trip was to find examples of hybridity, such as the Hello Kitty dressed in a kimono. I was reminded of the whole scene in the Bible where Jesus overturned the stalls next to the temple. In class, Fab compared the scene to seeing an amusement park next to Notre Dame or a crucifix being sold with Brad Pitt on it and mentioned Japan's more relaxed view of religion. But although there were a lot of random school kids and tourists, there also seemed to be people there to worship.
Inside the temple, people threw coins and bowed with their hands in praying position. In front of the temple, there was this big pot where people were sticking bars of incense and trying to move the aroma toward them, waving it to make it spread all over their body. Next to it, people washed their hands with ladels at a big water fountain--I wasn't sure if this was a particular purification thing or more of a general hygiene thing if they touched the incense. There were several smaller temples off to the side along with a little bridge and pond which added a more tranquil nature to the place.
Wednesday our class went on several field trips. First we went to a store to find examples of intertextuality. Apparently this is a big deal in Japanese culture since J-pop singers appear in magazines and commercials and movies. This didn't seem that different from a lot of the crossover artists in the U.S. The biggest example I can think of is Brandy, who had a singing career, then a TV show and was a cover model for Maybelline I think. J-Lo was an actress, then a singer and now seems to be popping up everywhere. There are so many singers that try to get into acting and vice versa, but here it is more of a given I guess. I didn't know any of the artists so ended up with a video and CD for the Kinky Kids. A beautiful moment, worth noting for my project, was when Fab was trying to find her husband, telling him that she was in front of the store too and they practically crashed into each other, each one on their phone.
After that, we went to sing karaoke. The last time I had tried had been a disaster since I didn't remember how the songs went, but this time it went ok. The first song I picked got deleted since I was too shy to say it was me who picked it, but when I finally did sing it, people applauded although I think my voice was barely audible over the music. There was definitely a gender divide, especially when the girls did "I Will Survive" and the guys all used this as an excuse to go to the bathroom. Two of the guys did a mostly improvised rap. Fab brought her 2-3 yr old daughter who kept on grabbing the mic in between songs and saying "thank you". The final song was one I picked, Ricky Martin's "The Cup of Life" which everyone ended up singing and dancing to--very fun. The two hours went by very quickly.
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