#case study shop nagoya | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nagisasstunningpersonality · 4 years ago

Text

Karma’s Backstory HC

So your homeboy doesn’t really have much of one to be honest. Breaking down what we do know:

His parents are wealth day traders

He’s left home alone most of the time

They’re really into India

They’re free spirits who care more about whims than responsibility

Now, just a prewarning that literally none of what I’m about to say after this is canon. This is just the ideas I’ve developed over the years of having to come up with stuff for fics, and it’s the narrative I use for canon based fics. That being said, anyone who has a hard time coming up with this stuff is totally free to use it however they want! It’s weirdly in depth, I will say.

Karma’s father comes from Hokkaido (the northern island of Japan - famous for farming and lots of snow), mostly because I really like Hokkaido, but there’s definitely this countryside kind of reputation that comes with it.

His family is very much one of those generational farmer families who don’t feel the need to leave their community. He has three sisters, but he’s the only son. He went to Sapporo for university which was a shock to the family.

Kind of a Japanese cultural no no to be honest.

During his time at university, studying business, he decided to travel Asia a bit, eventually meeting his future wife (who is also Japanese, as fun as Karma being mixed headcanons are to me) on some kind of trip. They’re around the same age, maybe give or take a year or two.

The two of them ended up falling for each other very fast, the whole ‘if you know you know’ thing.

Her family are from Nagoya, just normal business people with nothing special about them. She’s an only child and they always had this view that she’d marry into a nice stable life.

They get married pretty much as soon as he graduates, moving to be close to Tokyo since it was the best option for their jobs. Neither of their families is happy about this, but they don’t really care.

Karma comes along pretty soon after, before they’ve really had a chance to settle into their lives together. They’re caught up in the whirlwind of their romance, soon, so they think having a baby is a great idea.

Pretty soon, the itch of staying too long in one place starts to set in. Furthermore, the reality of a kid is very different to the fantasy. I think Karma probably cried a lot, even as a baby quickly figuring out the way to get attention. Karma’s mother doesn’t give up work, either, so managing everything starts to get stressful.

After maybe a year of stability, they decide instead to just go back to the people they really are, moving around wherever the work takes them. Even as a toddler now, Karma starts to really get attached to things he has, because without much of a permanent home he doesn’t get to own a whole bunch of toys etc.

When they’re not travelling for work, they’re travelling abroad. Actually, I think they took Karma with them a lot when he was old enough to have some kind of awareness of what’s happening around him. He really enjoyed those times, but he didn’t have a new normal yet. This fit in with their cute life vision, at the time.

I picture them being Hindus, but not very strictly? Japanese attitudes towards religion are a fascinating subject honestly, but the long and short of it is that strictly following one down to the ‘rules’ isn’t that common. I think they’d like it more for aesthetic reasons than actually believing in it.

Controversial, but I actually think Karma was genuinely a pretty sweet and quiet kid. Due to moving so much, he never really got to settle in anywhere and make friends, so his social skills are lacking when it comes to people his age.

Around that age, his parents teach him stuff that’s not so appropriate for a child, such as how to manipulate people into doing business deals with you, the value of money etc.

However, once again they started to get a little tried with him. Karma’s a really curious kid, which leads him into running off and not always doing what his parents want him to, asking questions about things to the point it gets irritating to them. They feel like he’s now holding them back. So, increasingly, they reach out to neighbours they have at the time, asking them to watch after Karma when they go on these trips together.

Karma starts to develop this really bad separation anxiety, like he doesn’t understand what’s happening when they’re suddenly leaving him. He gets the idea to start lashing out at whoever’s meant to be looking after him, in the hopes that they’ll be forced to come back. Most of the time, they don’t have a choice.

Karma begins to resent his parents, and they begin to resent him further for misbehaving.

Since this is some kind of solution to him now, he applies it to his school life. At this point it’s the age where kids really know how to pick on people and target. Karma shuts that down quickly, by fighting his way out of it.

Since he ends up getting suspended a lot, he has free time to learn ahead of school. He genuinely likes that part of school, but it’s just the everything else he doesn’t.

He’s actually very passionate about the things he enjoys, but he’s learnt that expressing it at school would get him teased, and his parents don’t care at all. It’s rare even as he goes into canon and beyond, then, that he expresses his more fanboy sides.

Even when his parents are in the country, they find it suitable around the age of 7 or so to let Karma be in the house alone whilst they work for long hours. As such, he gets really into watching movies as a distraction.

They don’t hate Karma by any means, they definitely ‘love’ him in a way, though it’s not the same kind of parental love most people receive. They try to placate him with gifts, when they leave the country, but Karma doesn’t easily just forgive and forget. After a time he just asks them to bring him spices, in a sort of self protest of not wanting their gifts. Those spices become his prized possession.

By about 10, Karma stops fighting it. He locks his feelings about them away and accepts that nothing he does will make his parents stay. Whilst he doesn’t purposely act out to get attention, acting out at this point has morphed into a normal part of his personality.

There’s been nobody to teach him right from wrong, so he’s left to make mostly his own decisions about it.

When he’s approaching eleven, and his parents are just the slightest bit more responsible, and decide that in the effort of not messing up their son’s entire education, they’re going to buy a house and make it a permanent home until he at least graduates junior high.

Did I say responsible? Because that also comes with the decision that he’s old enough to be left at home alone. At first it’s only for a night or two, but it slowly becomes weeks and months at a time, until Karma’s practically living alone with barely even a phone call from them.

Karma’s actually really lonely, though he shrugs it off and perfects his act of being unbothered. He misses them, but he shoves that embarrassing feeling right down and ignores it.

Since he has to, Karma learns how to cook, along with general domestic stuff such as shopping for a reasonable budget and

His parents send a ridiculous allowance, though, which he doesn’t like to touch much of if he can help it.

He also booby traps his bedroom, and other areas of the house. Just in case.

Nagisa’s his first genuine friend.

It’s not until 3E where he finally develops healthy bonds with multiple people, and really learns that it’s okay to trust.

Wow that got long. As I said, I have thought about this a lot. I feel like it would explain why Karma is the way he is. Honestly, it’s a bit depressing too. I just don’t see Karma’s parents being Good People.

#ass class #assassination classroom #ansatsu kyoushitsu #Karma Akabane

165 notes · View notes

akkohamasaki · 5 years ago

Text

ワークチェアの世界

私の知らない「ワークチェアの世界」

出不精の息子から「ワークチェア」を見に行きたいと言われ名古屋市内の家具屋を回ってきました。全く興味がなかったのですが最近はテレワークの増加に伴いワークチェアの人気沸騰中だそうです。 iPhone 4月に社会人になった息子曰く「椅子は大事だから良いのが買いたい」と。ということで、あちこちで座り説明を受けて正規販売店でハーマンミラーのアーロンチェアを購入。 6月末には届くそうです。『case study shop Nagoya』さんありがとうございました。 https://www.casestudynagoya.jp/

私は知らない「ワークチェアの世界」でした。全く知らないので興味深かったです。写真は、ランチに頂いた「ささや」さんのかき揚げと鉄火丼です。＊もっと楽しく、もっと自由に♪ ＊アンガーマネジメントで“日本…

View On WordPress

#名古屋市 #ワークチェア #アーロンチェア #ハーマンミラー #case study shop nagoya

0 notes

obliterus · 6 years ago

Text

CHARACTER PROFILE// 1

FULL NAME: Kajitani Shion ( 梶谷紫苑 ) AGE: 15 ( newly turned 16, but verse dependent ) BIRTHDAY: April 15th SCHOOL: UA High School CLASS: 1-C; General Studies ( 1-B in hero verse, hero in training ) RESIDENCE: Tokyo, Japan HOMETOWN: Nakamura, Nagoya HAIR COLOR: Black EYE COLOR: Deep lavender ( known to be extremely striking upon the first gaze ) HEIGHT: 5′4-5 (152cm) MARKINGS: Beauty mark under their right eye PRONOUNS: They/them SEXUALITY: One giant question mark because here’s the thing, they’re in love with a blonde boy in 1-B ( hello Monoma ), and it really doesn’t matter in the end because they’re only romantically attracted to one person. I never really thought to define it out because Shion’s still quite young, still figuring things out about themselves along the way, and committed for the long run.

Shion is known to be built thin, and almost fragile looking - but don’t underestimate them. Although they are reasonably weak in their canon verse, they can still hold their ground physically quite well. Shion is also designed to be more of a powerhouse in their hero verse, still thin and one to be underestimated, but can serve up a nice roundhouse kick to the face! They’ve never been self-conscious of their body itself really, but they have struggled with identifying their gender most of their life. They do not identify as male or female, preferring to be referred to as they/them rather than anything else. They’re a nonbinary individual who is slowly starting to come into themselves, choosing to wear what’s most comfortable to them rather than what is expected of them to do. Shion wears the female UA uniform a good half of the year, the male uniform the other half.

As a result of this struggle, Shion was repeatedly bullied as a kid in elementary school and in middle school. Often their feelings being pushed aside by teachers and classmates, who would tell them that them wanting to be “different” was as good as being seen as a “difficult” child and that they’d be causing problems for their parents. At first, Shion’s parents hadn’t a clue on how to approach their child’s feelings and often made mistakes in understanding Shion. Haruki, Shion’s father, has since made up for that after doing his own research to understand what his child’s going through, seeking to be a better father and support them. Mother Himawari was the first one to take Shion shopping for new clothes, wanting them to pick out whatever made them feel the most comfortable.

Shion’s elder sister Suiren, has always been a major part of Shion’s journey and encouragement. She’d be the one they’d seek out when things got especially difficult for them in school. Suiren often will go shopping with Shion when she’s up north visiting them.

QUIRK: ERASURE

It falls into the memory manipulation category, in which a user can remove memories from a person’s mind. Shion directly inherited this quirk from their grandmother Nagi, who was the original wielder of Erasure. With the inheritance of such a quirk, Shion also was born with her piercing lavender eyes. (Neither of their parents have their eye color.)

Shion must see a photograph of the person who is being erased. While in proper headspace, Shion cannot erase a person they’ve not seen from somebody’s mind. The photograph can be one they present in person or pull up on a phone, or any other means. Once they see it, their eyes will automatically start to scan a person’s mind for the individual in the photograph, beginning to erase all trace of them. Certain memories will be altered automatically once this happens, such as if the individual was part of a group of other people that they were interacting with at the time.

Shion uses the center of their palms to do the actual erasing, as their eyes only focus in on each memory. Either palm must be pressed over the person’s eyes. Depending on how emotionally attached the person is to the individual, the process could be anywhere from 1-5 minutes to 10-15 minutes. Shion can erase multiple people from an individual’s mind, but they must do this one at a time. The more memories/people that are erased from one’s mind, the more painful it can be to both parties involved. For the person getting their memories erased, it’s a pain similar to a bandage being slowly ripped off a still healing wound. For Shion, it’s extreme pressure against the front of their head, dizziness, and fatigue.

All line creases in their palms light up in purple upon quirk activation, trace their ways up both their arms and settle up their neck. Shion looks like they’re covered in glowing spider webs when their quirk is activated. The most Shion has ever erased from a person’s mind is 5 people.

Overusage of their quirk causes fatigue to the point of sleeping for a full 24 hours. (This was the case when they erased 5 people from somebody’s mind. Out cold for 24 hours.) Shion also tries to avoid extreme mental stress, because this could also affect their quirk negatively, causing it to activate without prompt. It’s pretty harmless when activated spontaneously, they just have to wait for their mind to calm itself down before it deactivates. (There were rumors going around in middle school that merely touching Shion would activate their quirk and they’d erase a loved one from your mind. This isn’t how their quirk works, but kids will be kids.)

Shion focuses on using their quirk to help people suffering from a trauma that they cannot forget that’s brought upon by people that have come in and out and their lives. Their main focus point at UA is to study to better themselves, learn new ways to control their quirk, and how they can be of service. Shion’s quirk has been compared to ‘playing God’ in the past, or a mixture between heroics and villainous. Bottom line: Shion just wants to use their quirk to help and sooth people to be able to go about their lives. They don’t consider themselves godly, or a Hero. Just a person that wants to use Erasure to help. Erasure CANNOT be reversed. Once the process is finished, it’s finished.

Shion is known as MINDSWEEPER in their Hero verse, which is a fitting name, actually. Neito helped them come up with it!

#& — kajitani shion. ⋇ hope's gentle gem the sweet forget-me-not #& — musings. ⋇ never underestimate the power of thought ; it is the greatest path to discovery.#character profile. 01

2 notes · View notes

after-words · 4 years ago

Photo

(ヴァーナー・パントンのフラワーポットペンダントランプを飾りました|case study shop nagoya Blog ミッドセンチュリー期の家具専門から)

DRIES VAN NOTENの服からVerner Pantonに興味が湧いてきています。

#home #art #furniture

0 notes

ratralsis · 8 years ago

Text

I don't think I've mentioned it here or on my AC blog yet, but I'm taking a two week trip to Japan this Saturday. It's pretty stressful, for a number of reasons. Despite the trip being less than a week away, I'm STILL trying to hammer out my plans and schedule with everybody I'm hoping to see, visit, or stay with. I'm avoiding hotels and hostels and just staying with a couple of friends in two different areas: Nagoya, which is west of Tokyo, and Okayama, which is further west than that. This is also my first vacation in six years, so there's that. It's my first time back to Japan in eight, since my internship in the summer of 2008. I'm hoping to visit my very first homestay family from my first study abroad, the Mizuno family, on Saturday, June 3. I was pen pals with Mr. Mizuno's daughter for a few years, until, I think, her phone's anti spam measures blocked my gmail.com account. I could be wrong. I enjoyed writing back and forth with her, though it always struck me as a little bit weird: when we met, I was 24 and she was 12. When I left the study abroad program and we became pen pals, I was 25 and she was 13. So I was always super careful about what I said in my emails. I figured that so long as I didn't use any bad or rude language, and kept it all G-rated, you know, didn't talk about porn or whatever, it was basically fine. A lot of people told me I was overthinking it. Which I probably was. But like, for example, when her 15th birthday was coming up, I joked about sending her a present. I was only being half serious, but she was happy about the idea, so I bought her a keychain with the first letter of her first name on it (incidentally, whole I won't say her name here, it was one that was written with a weird pronunciation of the kanji, so I always had to type her name incorrectly to get the kanji to appear, and in my head that became her name instead of her actual name... That story doesn't really go anywhere, I just thought it was funny) and mailed it to her family's house. When she got it, she told me that she liked it so much that she put it on her school backpack, and I was a little worried that this would seem weird. So I said "you are? What, are you gonna tell people that you got it from your foreign friend in America?" And she replied, "yes, that's what I'm going to tell anybody who asks me about it, that I'm pen pals with an American who sent me this for my birthday." Like it wasn't weird at all to her. I was the only one who thought it was weird that I was in my late twenties sending birthday gifts to Japanese schoolgirls. And I mean, maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I have no idea. I got an email out of nowhere from Mr. Mizuno last fall saying that he found some old souvenirs that his kids had meant to send to me years ago and never had, so I gave him my address and he sent them. I sent back a box with a few souvenirs I picked up at local gift shops and a long letter that took me hours to write. None of them speak English, and it's been years since I've studied Japanese in a school setting. So I've gotten bad at it. To prep for this trip, I've spent the last two months studying on my own like crazy, but that only gets me so far. Anyway, this letter was surely a difficult to understand mess, so I also included an English version in case they knew somebody bilingual who could help them out by translating it. I don't know if they did or not, because the reply I got back via email from Mr. Mizuno simply said "We got your letter. The chocolate you sent was good." So, okay! Great! I'm pretty sure he just doesn't like writing emails. I don't think he has anything against me, because, when I told him about this trip and said I'd like to see everybody again if possible, he offered up Saturday evening. I leave Nagoya and go to Okayama the next day, so it's the last chance. I was trying to make plans to visit another friend of mine, the ex girlfriend of the guy I'm staying with in Okayama (as far as I know, it was an amicable split; he (an American) was leaving for Japan upon graduation, and she (Japanese) was leaving for China, and I've never heard either one say anything bad about the other since), who is now living in Tokyo, but she hasn't replied to my last couple of messages. This is not, I must add, the first time I've tried to make lunch plans with a Japanese woman who acted like she would be up for it and then just stopped talking to me and never showed up. So I'm guessing that that's what's happening here, and I'm not going to write again. I'll just assume she doesn't actually want to meet me for lunch in Tokyo after all. I'm not trying to date her, I mean, that would be fucking idiotic, I'll be there for one day and then very likely not see her again for many more years, but I don't know what she is thinking. In Okayama, things should be a lot less stressful. I'm going to try to find a day when I can visit the peace museum in Hiroshima. I've been there once before, as a student, and it was a truly life changing event. I can't say I loved it, because I didn't. But it was good for my soul, to use a second cliche. But while in Nagoya, I'm trying to visit possibly five different people in four different places, as well as two shrines I very badly want to visit, in only six days. It's pretty rough on me. But I will honestly give up on seeing some of the people if it means seeing the shrines -- they're important to me. First is Atsuta shrine, in Nagoya, only a few miles from where I'll be staying. It has multiple deities enshrined within, most important of whom is Amaterasu, the sun goddess. She's a pretty big deal in Japan, so she has multiple shrines. The idea is that she has a place set aside for her in each of them, so she can visit any of them in relative comfort. I don't know all of the rules regarding her omnipresence, but my understanding is that she isn't "everywhere" so much as she's "anywhere she wants to be," and giving her a shrine is a good way to make her want to be somewhere. The other shrine is Ise shrine, in Mie, a bit of a long bus ride from Nagoya. It's a huge sprawling shrine that is completely rebuilt every few years, bit by bit so that most of it is always open, and is Amaterasu's main shrine. I badly want to pray directly to Amaterasu. If I could, I'd like to do it in a more polite style of Japanese than my current most polite form, but I'd surely just embarrass myself if I tried to learn it in such a short time. I have no reason to think she speaks English, and I have no reason to think she doesn't. I also have no reason to think she even speaks modern Japanese. But my best bet would be to just use regular polite modern Japanese and hope for the best. Which, naturally, raises the question of whether or not I actually even believe she exists. That's a complicated question. The short and simple answer is no, I don't believe any gods or Gods exist with any certainty (fun fact: I'm a born-again Christian, baptised at age 27). The longer answer is that I think they might, it's better to play it safe since I'm not out much if they don't, and I absolutely believe in the shrines and the religious trappings thereof. Whether Amaterasu can hear my prayers or not, let alone answer them, is unknown to me. Whether or not her shrine and priests exist is something I hope to verify with my own eyes. I guess the most honest answer is that I hope gods exist, despite there being no scientific evidence of them, so I want to do what I can to try to find this sun goddess. And throw money at her. Literally. That's part of how you pray. You throw money over a little rail into a box. Anyway. I'm trying to build up a 70-post queue to get me all the way through the trip without Megatown going silent. It's hard. I might not be able to do it. It shouldn't even matter to me. But I really don't want to miss any days. That blog has been very difficult and, lately, not very fulfilling, but I guess it's sheer momentum that keeps me going. Once in a while I can buy somebody something from my catalog or give somebody some flowers, and that makes it worth it. I kind of want to do a long post here about the state of that blog and what I've learned from it over the years... maybe next time.

#long post #text post

1 note · View note

mastcomm · 5 years ago

Text

Coronavirus Outbreak Sours Japan on Chinese Tourist Boom

TOKYO — Just as Japan and China have been taking tentative steps toward moving past old animosities, a fast-spreading virus threatens to push them apart.

A deadly coronavirus outbreak in China, which has spawned fears of a pandemic across Asia, is raising concern in Japan that public sentiment could be damaged as Chinese citizens have become an increasingly visible part of daily life.

The alarm over the virus is unlikely to hurt formal government relations. After years of mounting tensions over history and territory, the two largest Asian economies have been drawing closer, with Japan planning a state visit for the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, this spring.

But with the start of the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday ushering in one of the busiest travel seasons for Chinese tourists, some Japanese say they cannot help but regard Chinese visitors warily. It is a view shared in many Asian countries that have experienced an influx of Chinese tourists — and their money — in recent years.

“I’m worried about the epidemic spreading here,” said Naho Imajima, 34, who works at a tobacco shop in the Kabukicho entertainment district in Tokyo, which is popular with Chinese visitors. “Even people who cough, most of them aren’t wearing masks. It could just be a cold, but I never know. I get nervous when a foreign tourist passes by and they’re coughing.”

Chinese travelers have fueled a tourism boom in Japan, increasing fourfold in the last five years to more than 9.5 million annually, and now representing about a third of all foreign visitors. In addition, more Chinese students are enrolling in Japanese universities, and in some cases they make up a majority in graduate programs.

Many shops and restaurants around Japan now cater to Chinese travelers, posting signs in Chinese and accepting payment systems from China like Alipay or WeChat Pay.

But after two visitors from Wuhan, the epicenter of the new outbreak, were hospitalized in Japan for coronavirus infections over the past week, nerves have been on edge.

This month, a shop owner in Hakone, a popular hot-springs resort town, posted a sign reading, “Chinese are not allowed to enter the store.” A photo of it was widely shared on social media in both Japan and China, and some began to wonder if the new coronavirus would amplify an anti-Chinese undercurrent that persists in Japan.

Others applauded the shop owner’s move, saying that Chinese tourists often exhibited “bad manners,” a common theme in online complaints and news reports.

Masanari Iida, a former candidate for public office in Kanagawa Prefecture, argued on Twitter that the owner was acting in “self-defense.”

“I don’t understand why this is a problem,” Mr. Iida wrote. “The store has a right to choose its customers.”

Fears have spiraled across Asia as China reported that the virus has caused at least 26 deaths and sickened more than 800 people. The Chinese government has put a dozen cities in the central part of the country on a travel lockdown, effectively corralling 35 million residents.

The Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said on Friday that Japan would increase efforts to quarantine visitors who showed symptoms of the coronavirus. The government also recommended that Japanese citizens refrain from visiting Wuhan for “unnecessary or nonurgent trips.”

All Nippon Airways canceled all flights to and from Wuhan until Feb. 1. JalPak, a package tour operator owned by Japan Airlines, said that 50 customers had canceled trips to China in the past week because of news of the virus.

At a cabinet meeting, Mr. Abe said he hoped that the public would not “worry excessively” and would act calmly, and he called for people to take the same precautions that they would for the common cold, including washing their hands and wearing surgical masks.

With tourism from China such an important segment of the Japanese economy, some business owners said they did not want the coronavirus to affect views of customers from China.

“Seeing the news, we worry about the disease a little, but I cannot say ‘please don’t come,’” said Setsuko Yoshizawa, 70, the owner of a shop in the Tokyo district of Asakusa, the site of a temple that is often mobbed with Chinese tourists. “We cannot survive without customers visiting us. I welcome Chinese visitors.”

Japanese public sentiment about China has improved since the lows seen when the two countries were locked in an intense territorial dispute over islands in the East China Sea, but it is still not terribly high.

According to an annual survey by Japan’s central cabinet office, just over 5 percent of those polled in 2014 said they felt “an affinity with China.” Last year, the figure was about 23 percent.

Komaki Lee, a Chinese-born naturalized Japanese citizen who has twice run unsuccessfully for public office, said he had often experienced discrimination because of his Chinese heritage.

When he was a candidate four years ago and again last year, he said, people defaced his campaign posters with the words “Go home!” or trolled him with similar sentiments online or in person.

“Now it’s the season for a lot of Chinese tourists to visit Japan, and there is this pandemic happening,” Mr. Lee said. “So I think that Japanese people will try to avoid Chinese people more, and I think that’s when discrimination might worsen.”

Still, the more hostile strains of anti-Chinese expression in Japan are met with pushback. When Tsuyoshi Iida tried to run for office in Kanagawa last year, his party declined to endorse him because its leaders said he had repeatedly posted hate speech online directed at Chinese and Koreans.

This month, the University of Tokyo fired an associate professor of artificial intelligence, Shohei Ohsawa, who made anti-Chinese comments on Twitter, including saying that he would never hire Chinese students at a company for which he was doing research.

Japanese attitudes about China may be shaped more by criticism of the Chinese government than its people, said Atsushi Kondo, a professor of immigration policy studies at Meijo University in Nagoya.

“More people question human rights and democracy over the Chinese government’s policy against the Uighurs or Hong Kong,” said Mr. Kondo, referring to the Chinese government’s detention of Muslim ethnic minorities in internment camps and its repression of the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong.

“There might be some cases where some people experience trouble over the manners of tourists and have bad feelings,” Mr. Kondo added. “But I don’t think anti-Chinese sentiment is growing in general.”

Eimi Yamamitsu, Makiko Inoue and Hisako Ueno contributed reporting.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/event/coronavirus-outbreak-sours-japan-on-chinese-tourist-boom/

#Event

0 notes

japansojournsummer2018 · 7 years ago

Text

A Sojourner’s Guide to Japan

So, you’re planning on staying in Japan for a while? If you need help figuring out what to expect and how to behave, look no further.

Where?

Japan is a small island nation located to the East of China and the Koreas, at the far Eastern edge of Asia. It is a traditional and ceremonial culture, and it celebrates its roots that go back for thousands of years. While it is not correct to loop it in with all other Asian cultures, it does share several similarities with its neighbors China and South Korea. For starters, the kanji system used in Japanese writing borrows thousands of Chinese characters that use the original Chinese pronunciation and the Japanese version. Both Koreans and Japanese people bow to each other as a sign of respect. All three have mixture of Buddhism, Christianity, and Shintoism, though Shintoism remains mostly in Japan. Japanese people often practice parts of both Shintoism and Buddhism. Most other religions cover a much smaller portion of the population.

How is it run?

Information taken from (https://www.eubusinessinjapan.eu/why-japan/regions-prefectures). Japan is divided into 9 regions and further into 47 prefectures. The regions are Hokkaido, Tohoku, Kanto, Chubu, Kansai, Chugoku, Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa. Japan’s capital is Tokyo City, located in the Kanto region. Other major cities include Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Kobe, Kyoto, Fukuoka, Kawasaki, and Saitama. Japan is a constitutional monarchy, where it has an emperor with limited power. It has an executive, legislative, and judicial branch, much like the US. The Prime Minister acts as the official head of government. The emperor acts as a ceremonial leader, which is the only real area in which Japan’s government involves religion. Japan’s government is very modern compared to the ancient feudal times when much was decided by war and conquest.

Major Historical Events

Japan has experienced several significant events in its history, concerning both itself and the rest of the world. Information taken from (http://miner8.com/en/13587) The US dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th, 1945, taking tens of thousands of lives and forcing Japan’s surrender in WWII. Japan’s constitution was put into effect on May 3rd, 1947, under the United States’ supervision. Japan gained its independence from US control on January 1st, 1952. It joined the UN in 1956. It was the host of its first summer Olympic games in 1964. Some historic battles include the Battle of Sekigahara and the Battle of Tsushima. (https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/features/2017/jul/ten-moments-that-shaped-japan/) The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 killed 100,000 people and leveled Tokyo and Yokohama. The attack on Pearl Harbor was orchestrated on December 7th, 1941, triggering the US’s entrance into WWII. Matthew Perry was responsible for the end of Japan’s isolationism, when he signed a treaty with Japan to allow the US to sell goods in Japanese ports.

Society

HeirarchyStructure.com (https://www.hierarchystructure.com/japan-social-hierarchy/) describes Japan’s class system as a 3-class system. The upper class, comprised of royals and business owners, the middle class, full of small business owners and servicemen, and the lower class, comprised of laborers. This follows a similar structure to the US, bar the royal family. One could ascend or descends the classes based on their income, and the system is not a strict one. Gender roles in Japan typically follow the same blueprint. Men are expected to work and bring home the paycheck, and women are expected to stay home as a housewife. As with many cultures, this has been challenged in recent years, with the roles being reversed or completely ignored in some cases. Despite this social progress, the work-oriented mindset still dominates the culture regardless of sex and has led to a lower birthrate in the country. To continue to work and contribute to the company takes place over family matters in most all situations.

Japanese people are taught to save face in public situations, which means that they will avoid confrontation at all costs. They will avoid discussing hot button issues as arguing in public would be disruptive. You can expect a Japanese person to agree with you or appear to even if they do not, as saving face takes priority over honesty if it means causing discomfort. In this sense, Japanese culture is very high-context, as you will have to rely on one’s body language and behavior more than what they are saying to truly understand what they mean. Their communication is very neutral, and this can often lead to misunderstandings with foreigners who are used to being very expressive. Choosing to yell or openly voice your opinion will make you come across as a brash and loud person, so trying to be quiet and not stand out is usually the best route to take. It is also a good idea to study Japanese as much as you are able, as it is the only language outside schools that is officially used. School teachers are required to have a good amount of proficiency in English, so you will hopefully have less trouble there if you are traveling as a student.

The culture is also a very polite one, where greetings change based on who you are addressing. You might say “yo” to a friend you see on the street, but if you were introducing yourself to a stranger, you might open with 初めまして、私は_____ です (hajimemashite, watashi wa ____ desu), which translates to It is nice to meet you, I am ____. Clothing and posture are also very important in the workplace. You are expected to bow at different angles when thanking someone, which also depend on who you are thanking. Depending on the company, you will likely be expected to be dressed professionally at all times. Japan is a very monochronic culture, where punctuality is an absolute must. There is even a saying, “if you arrive on time, you are fifteen minutes late.” This simply means that you should always strive to be early as it is simply expected of you. You should also be respectful of others space, as touching is very rare in public among most people. In other situations, like drinking or on a subway, it may be different. Just don’t run up to hug your Japanese friend despite what you might be used to back home. (http://guide.culturecrossing.net/basics_business_student_details.php?Id=9&CID=104)

The fun stuff

Let’s start with the cuisine. Japanese people typically eat three times a day- breakfast, lunch, and dinner. There are no cultural norms regarding who you must eat with and where, so go out and eat to your hearts content. I would advise carrying cash on you at all times, as not every store will accept credit cards. The Japanese currency in the yen (pronounced “en”), and it comes in numerous coins and paper notes. (https://www.oanda.com/currency/iso-currency-codes/JPY) It was made official in 1871 and has been the national currency ever since. As for where to exchange USD for Yen, you can find exchanges at airports, and most banks and post offices will have an exchange available as well. 100 yen is worth a bit less than a US dollar, so you can kind of estimate what something costs in dollars if you can round down a little. Food does not necessarily cost more over in Japan, but portion sizes are sometimes smaller and may have you buying more servings depending on your eating style. Much of Japan’s food is based around fish, as they are an island nation with fishable waters on all sides. Also expect to see lots of lobster, octopus, shellfish, and other aquatic foods you might not normally see. Beef will be more expensive, as Japan has limited access to supplies of it. Japan has thousands of ramen shops, and you won’t have trouble finding a quality sushi restaurant either. Sushi, curry, and ramen share a spot as the most popular foods in Japan. Most meals will have a bowl of rice and miso soup, with an assortment of other dishes. Pickled vegetables and some sort of meat will usually accompany them. Table manners are a whole different animal. I have shared a video earlier on my blog that you can use to get a decent idea of how to behave at the dinner table.

If you’re looking for entertainment, you likely won’t need to travel far (unless you’re out in the inaka, or countryside). You can sing karaoke with friends, go out to a bar (if you’re old enough), join a community group, go fishing, go skiing/snowboarding, sightsee, the list goes on and on. If you’d rather stay home and watch TV or listen to the radio, they have that too. NHK is a massive company funded by viewers that serves as a neutral reporting station. They are a good source for national news if you can get the information translated. There will also be local stations depending on where you are located, so check with the locals to see who is best to tune in to. Japan also has one of the largest film industries in the world. The movie Tokyo Story won Best Film produced in Asia in a Sight & Sound listing, and Japan has also won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film four times. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Japan) Check out a studio Ghibli film for a classic anime masterpiece, or head down to the theater to see if you can find a movie with English subtitles.

Regardless of your reason for going to Japan, I hope that this paper helped you out, and maybe even saved you some embarrassment in an otherwise unfortunate situation. Be sure to check out Mount Fuji during your stay and visit an onsen (hot spring) before you go. Good luck!

0 notes

attractionjapan · 7 years ago

Text

The Birth of Japan Game: Episode 4: The Exile

The Birth of Japan Game is a chronicle in ten parts, recounting the early years of Dorian Gray’s journey along the path. The narrative begins some time in 2006 and concludes in early 2012. Names have been changed to protect the guilty and innocent alike. Previous episode here.

After my year as an exchange student finished, I returned to Australia a mess. My emotions were all over the place from Maya and Momoka, and the thought that I’d been uprooted just as I was starting to get a handle on Japan. Preoccupied with girls, I’d ended up doing very little actual study, barely managing to scrape through with a pass. But it was all for nothing anyway, as my university was in the process of downsizing the Japanese program, and there were no longer any classes in which to put my sharpened language skills to use.

Over the course of the year I’d become a different person. Friends and family alike noticed the change: I was wearing Japanese clothes and my skinny-to-start-with frame had become even more angular through the barely-there serving sizes of a Japanese diet. I’d brought strange books, magazines and CDs back with me. Everyone around me seemed louder and larger than I remembered. Reverse culture shock was hitting me hard; for weeks I wandered around in a daze. The university campus seemed like something from a past life. I felt like a ghost.

All I could think of was getting back to Japan. I’d glimpsed a new and hypnotic world and knew that it was where I belonged. J-pop songs were blasting in my head all day; the futuristic rush of Hikaru Utada’s “Traveling” with its psychedelic music video seemed to encompass everything I felt. In contrast, Australian life seemed provincial and irrelevant. I drifted into the orbit of the city’s Japanese scene – a loose conglomeration of exchange students, permanent residents and those on working holiday – and even had a few girlfriends, but none of it seemed to matter. I was adrift, dreaming of sleepless neon cities across the ocean.

The only thing to do was plan my return to Japan. I set about applying for the Japanese government’s JET scheme, which sponsors foreign workers as teachers and town council employees. Still fairly prestigious despite years of cutbacks, it seemed like the best bet for housing and a reliable paycheck, especially since I still wasn’t confident enough in my Japanese language skills to consider simply travelling over on a tourist visa and applying for company jobs.

Just as it had with the exchange program, my academic record and period as the Japanese Society president served me well, and I turned in what I felt to be a compelling application. The process was long – nearly half a year – and each step of the way filled me with maddening anxiety. First my application was accepted, then I had to attend an interview in person. I felt that my entire future hung in the balance, and some nights I could barely sleep.

On the application I was asked to put down where I wanted to work. I filled in the most urban locations I could think of: Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, and a few smaller-but-still-close-to-cities areas such as Chiba just in case.

Finally an offer came.

It was an island in the Seto Inland Sea.

I jumped onto Google and immediately searched for it.

No.

No, it couldn’t be.

I flipped back to the email and read a message from my predecessor describing his life. The picture he painted wasn’t simply rural, it was another world altogether that seemed utterly disconnected from the Japan I knew. He described fishing trips, deserted fields and simple country people. Under “things to do in the area” he had written “quiet walks in the dark.”

I’d heard about such cruel placements, but surely the strength of my application and the preferences I’d put down would have counted in my favor?

Reading the fine print, I saw that there was really no choice: the placement offer was take-it-or-leave-it, and if I left it, I’d have wasted six months on the application. There weren’t many other options: for the past six months I’d been working at a hardware store, and the thought of another year or more of redirecting surly Australians to the hammer section filled me with despair. After punching the wall a few times and cursing the authorities, I wrote back confirming my acceptance.

My mood improved somewhat on the flight over, and during my orientation in Tokyo, which still seemed like home. But when I eventually flew out to western Japan and caught the long bus and then ferry that would take me to the island, I felt my confidence slipping. Instead of attractive young women, I was surrounded by aged farmers and other toothless geriatrics. I tried to make small talk with my coworkers, who had come out to meet me, but didn’t get very far. One of them asked me about my interests.

“Clubbing, fashion, music,” I said. “And you?”

“Fishing. And, smoking.”

The types living in my apartment complex seemed barely more exciting. As I lugged my suitcases up the hill, I saw that a number of the residents were outside having a barbecue. The men were mostly tanned, pot-bellied and barefoot, while the women had missing teeth and blonde dye-jobs that had been left too long without maintenance, resulting in an abrupt black-and-yellow streaked look (the Japanese refer to this as “pudding” hair). There were a few local gangster types who seemed more out of shape than threatening, and a scattering of Chinese and Brazilians who had come over to work on the ships. I tried talking to everyone, but heard mostly complaints about the island’s monotony, and incredulity that I had actually agreed to come here. The island didn’t even have a convenience store, just a market. There seemed to be nothing to do but get wasted and go fishing. Apart from that, the height of excitement was an establishment just across the water that was well-stocked with Filipina hookers.

“I’ll take you there some time,” a young man told me. “The girls are kind of busted up, but their bodies are okay. Better than my wife, at least.”

His wife was seated next to him. Her expression conveyed less anger than total, paralytic weariness.

I settled into my apartment, which looked as if it had last been renovated fifty years earlier: tatami mats, low ceiling beams, no air conditioning and a toilet that backed up constantly. Still, I tried to make the best of things. My work in the town hall was a joke; most of the office workers were incompetent at best, barely able to perform their meagre administrative duties, but at least they left me to my own devices. Helping out in the island’s schools was equally undemanding, and from time to time I taught English to an assortment of elderly pensioners who seemed more interested in drinking than talking.

And, of course, all I could think about was girls.

Utterly fixated on my goals, I went about building my “urban lifestyle” even in the midst of this absurd situation. My determination to inhabit my dream life was nearly quixotic. I walked along the island’s dirt roads in flashy clothes while humpbacked old women passed me carrying vegetables. The spectacular scenery of the Inland Sea was lost on me. Lush forests, misty mountains and traditional architecture? What? I wanted to be attending parties and hanging out in clubs all night. I worked out early on how to catch a ferry to the mainland and then take a bus into central Hiroshima, which I proceeded to do without fail nearly every weekend for the next two years. These weekend trips were my life: even now I think of this period as “the Hiroshima years,” and few of the monotonous weekdays on the island have left any lasting impression.

Slowly, against all odds, my dream life came into being. Hiroshima was a small city, but it was a city nonetheless, an urban center with shops, bars and clubs. Commuting there every weekend and staying for two nights was expensive, but what else was there for me to spend my government salary on? The island’s cost of living was nonexistent; my subsidized rent and utilities were all but free and my neighbors left me fresh vegetables and often bought me lunch during work hours, so that I hardly spent anything on food. The prospect of living frugally and simply saving the money – as my predecessor claimed to have done – never occurred to me. I wanted to live.

During my first weekend in the city, I managed to find the Nagarekawa nightlife district – a shadow compared to those in Tokyo, but still packed with tons of bars and clubs to explore. I struck up a conversation with one of the bartenders and was soon introduced to a group of young Japanese men who offered to take me out drinking with them. I would end up hanging out with this same group for most of the next two years. They would go on to show me the ins and outs of the small but surprisingly active Hiroshima club scene.

I was still eager to make more Japanese friends, spurred on by my memories of those I’d met in Tokyo. In my mind, Hiroyuki, Rintaro, Ryu and the rest had grown into idealized heroes. I was determined to follow in the footsteps of these nanpa geniuses and start tearing up the streets. The thought that I could simply approach the girls I wanted anywhere and at any time filled me with an almost unbearable excitement.

Somewhat eccentrically, I’d started to think of nanpa as an actual art, something requiring as much discipline, training and contemplation as martial arts or a foreign language. I felt as if I were investigating Japanese tradition as much as anyone researching the country’s literature or learning its tea ceremony. I was deep in the nightside of the culture, a latter day disciple of that mythical “soft bunch,” those fin de siècle Meiji and Taisho era decadents who had, I imagined, lived only for women, shrugging off the harsh heritage of Bushido in favor of a floating world of ethereal beauty and slick, perfumed flesh. I was a deracinated foreigner in the middle of nowhere, an anonymous kid on the street talking to strangers, but in my head I was an initiate, a young monk sworn to the hunt. Thinking only of girls every day and every night, I attained an almost mystical level of concentration and felt an attendant joy. Little by little I cast off my weaknesses and aspired to the level of absolute indifference to rejection that I’d observed in Hiroyuki.

The process was painful, though, and through it I became well acquainted with my own petty weaknesses and entitlements. The first three months I spent mostly on my own, trying desperately to pull girls from bars, clubs and train stations and striking out more often than not. I was still reactive and inexperienced, and it showed. I knew that I’d have to “level up” everything about myself if I wanted to succeed.

I thought long and hard about the kind of man I wanted to be. I would have to be daring, but also discreet: Japan was a land where surfaces counted. If I was seen as a loud, obnoxious foreigner, the social circles I wanted access to would be closed to me forever. I would have to be stylish: this was a fashionable country where looks mattered.

And so I hit the gym to stack some muscle onto my slender frame. I dyed my hair from light brown to a striking blonde and got a haircut from a Japanese hairdresser. “Kakkoyoku kitte,” I told her: “Cut it cool.” I read magazines like Joker and Men’s Egg and copied the male models I saw in them. I was tall and wiry enough to get away with the often punishing clothing sizes, not made for thick Western frames. I can see now that my efforts were superficial imitations, but at the time they were what I needed. I felt like a different person: the mental changes I’d initiated were now radiating outwards.

The other key change was the result of a gradual process that was now paying off: my Japanese language ability. Over the years I’d whittled this initially blunt instrument down to something closer to what the poet GZA of the Wu-Tang Clan referred to as a liquid sword. During my year in Tokyo I’d spent enough time in bars, izakayas, karaoke booths and, perhaps most importantly, sitting on the couch of the dormitory living room watching hour after hour of formulaic, implausible, poorly-filmed and edited but still somehow compelling Japanese soap operas that I’d actually reached something like near-native conversational fluency. And the hours spent in classes and studying textbooks added the final grammatical finish. I could talk.

Incredibly, when I approached girls with my new clothes and language skills, I was sometimes mistaken for a half or even full-blooded Japanese. This seemed absurd beyond words, but it told me something about the power of suggestion. Wasn’t race, after all, just another fiction? I had no desire to actually be Japanese, but I saw now that even in this most rigid and racially conscious society, the boundaries were flexible. Performance was everything. And hadn’t it always been this way? Hadn’t the onnagata, the female impersonators in kabuki theatre, been considered more feminine than actual women? Why couldn’t a foreigner fully integrate himself into Japanese society, provided he acted the part and, more importantly, understood the mindset of those around him? He would still be a foreigner, of course, and seen as such, but over time he might become something more; might become, simply, a person.

But I was still looking at the process through the rose-colored lens of idealism. True integration doesn’t just mean skimming the cream off the top of a society, it means duty, hardship and, inevitably, heartache. When people start to see you as a person, I learned, they start to expect things from you. And nowhere is this more apparent than in relationships – not the fast, anonymous one-night hookups of the party scene, but lasting relationships where the girl invests in you, imagining your shared future and discussing you with her friends.

Back then, most of this was still beyond me, but now, almost ten years later, I can see that my intuition about language, at least, was correct. I’ve met hundreds of Japanese-illiterate foreigners in Japan – some of whom have lived here for decades – and they’ve always seemed curiously divorced from their adopted home. Many of them fall into routines of dependency, relying on wives or girlfriends to take care of everyday tasks, everything from paying bills to doing taxes to ordering in a restaurant. But I have no desire to be a child again. And even as a student I knew that in the real world, language, culture and psychology are largely inseparable.

Now, when someone asks me how they can hook up with the Japanese girls of their dreams, I always ask them how good their Japanese is. If it’s not at least conversational, I tell them to go back and hit the books. I don’t believe that language skills are utterly necessary – if your confidence is rock-solid and your charisma world-class, you can get by. But why not give yourself the advantage? Even a few phrases will put people at ease. The fresh-off-the-boat act is no draw for the nation’s most beautiful and desired women, if it ever was. Too many foreigners here limit themselves to internationalized, English-speaking girls when they could be going for the top beauties. This “international party” scene can become a trap: not only are you likely to be competing against scores of other foreigners there under the pretext of “language exchange,” but the limited pool of girls is nothing compared to the endless variety on parade in the streets.

On that note, it’s worth mentioning the kind of girls I was interested in. Along with the previously mentioned stereotypes about Japanese men, there’s still what might be called the Madame Butterfly archetype – the idea of a Japanese woman willing to endure endless privations for her errant lover, selflessly devoting herself to an imagined future and all but wasting away in the process. Perfectly feminine, perfectly submissive, perfectly forgiving.

Perfectly boring.

More recently, this stereotype has had something of a resurgence in the context of dismissing Western women as less feminine and desirable. It’s a frequent theme in expat bars: Western women – presumably because of their historically recent social and economic equality – have lost their charm, and so it’s time to turn East in search of “unspoiled” and “natural” girls. Needless to mention, Western women themselves are rarely present when this unconvincing theme gets trotted out.

All this was anathema to me. I still loved Western (and African, Latin and Middle Eastern) women, and even in Japan I didn’t want wilting geishas, I wanted strong women with their own drives and desires. I wasn’t looking for a mother or daughter but someone I could look in the face and be proud to call my equal.

And, for the most part, that’s what I got.

Okay – except for the “looking in the face” part. Girls here above 170 cm are still rare.

In general, Japanese women are not at all like the stereotypes. Most of them know exactly what they want and wield considerable social power – and this is doubly true for the more sexually attractive ones. And while economic inequalities persist, often manifesting as glass ceilings at work and the pressure to put marriage and children before career, it would be a mistake to call Japanese women powerless or second class citizens. Neither are they waiting around for a foreign knight to sweep them off their feet: most are perfectly content with the high value Japanese men in their lives.

So despite the considerable time I’d spent studying Japanese language and culture, I still came in with the attitude that I needed to prove myself and wouldn’t be given any free points or passes. I was an outsider, and so I’d have to work twice as hard as the locals to get what I wanted. This attitude served me well when grinding out long hours doing approaches on the streets and in the clubs. But even now I see fresh-off-the-boat foreigners wandering around with a crude sense of entitlement, as if Japan were a third world country or colonial port. Wearing gauche tourist clothes, speaking loud English and staggering around drunk, not realizing how dated and unattractive they seem. Needless to mention, these types are almost never seen with high quality girls.

My ideal was also sexual rather than cute. To put it mildly, I wasn’t turned on by girls who looked and acted like children. I wanted women: powerful women aware of their own allure. I was through with girl next door types like Maya and wanted the girls who turned heads in clubs. Right away this differentiated me from most of the foreigners I met, who seemed content with any girl at all as long as she was Japanese and willing. It’s not my place to judge other people’s tastes, but I saw my share of handsome young men with frumpy middle-aged women and serial foreigner-daters who wanted them more for their ethnicity and fantasy image of Western (almost always meaning American) culture. My black friends attracted a different kind of “gaijin hunter,” and often complained of being stereotyped into a hip-hop role, even if they were more into jazz and house. I learned to avoid these types; they were as bad as their Western equivalents, the fantasists longing for Cho-Cho-San.

Striking out on my own in Hiroshima, though, I quickly realized that Momoka had been a fluke; most of the top level beauties I approached wanted nothing to do with me. High on beginner’s luck, I’d assumed I could easily replicate my earlier successes, but instead I ran headlong into a period of repeated failure. I was being jerked around by my emotions and taking everything too seriously. Worse, I had no one to talk to about any of it. My new Japanese friends in Hiroshima were into partying, but none of them seemed as nanpa-focused as my Tokyo-based friends had been. I needed someone to talk to about the path I was starting down, but I was alone.

Over the past year or so I’d been corresponding online with a man who called himself Nubreed, an American who had spent several years living in Osaka and practicing the art of nanpa. Nubreed was back in the U.S. now, but he still maintained his blog, which had been an invaluable early source of info on the Japanese game scene as it then existed. Unlike the clownish pickup artist types who seemed to think the “Mystery Method” and its derivatives were a good fit for Japan, Nubreed kept a cool head and practiced a more empirical approach. Thoughtful and sensitive, he was attuned to the realities of life in Japan, and took time to learn the language and culture. And just as importantly, he actually seemed to care about the attractiveness of the girls he approached. Indeed, Nubreed’s standards were probably the most punishing I’d ever encountered. According to him, next to no foreigners other than himself had ever really made inroads with truly attractive and popular Japanese girls, who he defined exclusively as the girls most desired by aggressive Japanese gamers: young, slim, tanned and fashionable, the kind of girls who appeared as models in magazines like Egg and Blenda. Over email Nubreed showed me photos of several of his hookups and ex girlfriends, which more or less confirmed what he’d been telling me. Even better, his blog was written in a clear, accessible style that was totally free of unnecessary jargon. I knew that he was the real deal, and only wished that he was still in Japan so we could game together.

In frustration at my recent lack of success, I mailed Nubreed and told him about my solo attempts at street and club game in Hiroshima.

“I’m going hard but just don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

“You need a wing, dude,” he told me. “Actually, I think I might know a guy in your area. He’s going up to Osaka for Silver Week and will probably be rampaging around. Why don’t I tell him about you and you could maybe hang out with him? I know he goes into Hiroshima a lot too.”

Nubreed put us in touch over email, and I resolved to head up to Osaka to meet Dylan. I was excited but also exceedingly nervous, as I knew next to nothing about him and had never before met anyone who self-identified as any kind of gamer or pickup artist. I imagined that he would be some kind of aggressive frat type, or else a high-powered businessman down to slam drinks and aggressively pursue girls. I worried that he’d consider me a deadweight newbie.

Amusingly, my fears couldn’t have been more unfounded. Dylan turned out to be a short, mild-mannered, very well-groomed Australian who’d been living in Japan for close to a decade. Even now he remains possibly the most socially-calibrated individual I’ve ever met, and one of the few foreigners to have integrated with absolute smoothness into Japanese life. His spoken and written Japanese were beyond flawless, well up to interpreter level, and his cultural knowledge was vast. He was about six or seven years older than me and currently living in the Shimane region, which meant he could fairly easily take weekend trips to Hiroshima. He was accompanied on the trip by his friend Jared, another Australian with a close-cropped shaved head and a dour expression. Again, neither of them matched my preconception of what a gamer or pickup artist would be like; they were about as far from the douchebro stereotypes I’d read about online as I could imagine.

Catching the shinkansen train up to Osaka alone, I felt the same sense of excitement I had when I’d first visited Tokyo. I’d never been to the Kansai region before and had no idea what to expect from Osaka, a city I’d heard was “dirtier than Tokyo, but more relaxed.” That actually sounded right up my alley, and I imagined there would be certain kinds of girls in Osaka I’d never see in Tokyo or anywhere else. This proved to be correct, in a sense, and the city remains one of my favorites.

I met up with Dylan and Jared outside the capsule hotel we’d all decided to stay at, and that night we attended an international party, then spent the next few days doing street nanpa during the day and going clubbing at night. None of us managed to pull or even did particularly well, and in fact it was difficult for me to tell what “doing well” would even entail. Were we supposed to be shooting for fast sex as soon as possible? This clearly seemed like the best option, given that we’d be leaving Osaka in a few days and wouldn’t really be able to arrange any dates. Even so, we mostly went around collecting contact information, using the then-current sekigaisen or infrared ray exchange function on our old-style clamshell phones. Both Dylan and Jared seemed very polite, not at all close to what I remembered of the street nanpa I’d witnessed from Rintaro and Hiroyuki. Weren’t nanpa dudes supposed to be a bit more thuggish and direct? I tried to adjust my style to come off as more “nanpa,” and Dylan seemed surprised.

“Wow, you’re pretty aggressive…we usually don’t open this much,” he said. “You just shoot right in after anyone with no hesitation. Never seen anyone with this little approach anxiety. I mean, what are you even using as an opener?”

“Um, what is ‘open’?”

“Talk to girls. Like that three set we just did.”

“Sets? What is this, tennis?”

“Set just means a girl or group of girls. Like that static two set over there.”

“Static…what?”

“They’re sitting down in front of Starbucks. Static sets are ones that aren’t moving,” Jared explained.

As became clear over the course of the week, these two had been influenced by the Western “seduction community,” which I was still pretty much entirely oblivious to. I’d never read Neil Strauss’s book The Game and didn’t have much idea what the Mystery Method or anything else was. I’d heard about this scene online, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with Japan or the girls Nubreed and I most wanted to approach. What was the point of making up unnecessary jargon about “sets” and “escalation ladders”? I’d seen successful nanpa in action from my Japanese friends, and it didn’t seem to require any of this kind of terminology.

Dylan and Jared seemed impressed with my approaches and my ability to hold a girl’s attention. Even so, I didn’t feel like I was much good at nanpa yet, and I still wasn’t getting laid. But the novelty of taking so much consistent, concerted action over such a long time period was intoxicating, almost like an altered state of consciousness. This was something I’d never really done before at such length, and certainly not with like-minded people who were totally on the same page. I couldn’t imagine my old university friends being up for it.

“You’re going to put that much time and effort into just talking to girls?” I could imagine them saying. I’d always felt that my deep-rooted desire to get better with women and engage with more of them was somehow abnormal, stronger than most people’s, but the presence of Dylan and Jared normalized it. We were all on the same page, and we soon became fast friends.

While I was driven by raw libidinal fire and obsession, Dylan treated nanpa as an amusing diversion. He even claimed not to particularly care whether his encounters with girls ended in sex or not. Looking back on it now, his attitude was clearly healthier than mine, but at the time it was difficult for me to understand his detachment. Over the next two years he would act as a calming influence, helping me keep perspective in the face of what often seemed to me like devastating upsets and failures. It was exactly what I needed: encouragement leavened by a sense of proportion. In other words he was exactly the kind of “big brother” figure I needed at the time. Dylan also introduced me to the Japan Lair forum, which was where he had met Nubreed, and which proved to be an invaluable resource. On a whim I chose the screen name “Dorian Gray,” as I was a big fan of the Wilde novel and related to the hero’s theme of carrying on a double life under a mask of respectability.

I returned from the Osaka trip galvanized, utterly certain that I was on the correct path. My life fell into a predictable routine: sleepwalk through working life on the weekdays and head up to Hiroshima on the weekends for street game with Dylan and Jared. We soon learned the layout of the city, and came to concentrate our nanpa efforts on the area around the long, crowded Hondori street of shops that led down to the Parco department store. The Nagarekawa nightlife district was only a few streets away. Hiroshima was no Tokyo, but there was no shortage of beautiful girls, and we almost always returned home on Sunday with our phones full of new numbers. We made friends in the Hiroshima night life scene too, and one young Japanese man, who I’ll call DJ Zero, turned out to be a reliable guide to the bars and clubs.

One night I arrived in the city on Saturday for a date with a girl I’d approached outside the Aeon Mall a few weeks back. This girl turned out to be half-Korean, tall, decent body and face, good hairstyle. During the initial conversation she’d mentioned being a fan of the author Eimi Yamada, whose books mostly concern Japanese women having sex with foreigners. This would seem like a good sign, but it would turn out later to have unexpected consequences.

We met up about 9:30 outside Parco and I took her to an Irish-themed pub called Molly Malone’s. Over mail I’d asked her if I could borrow one of her Yamada books, since I wanted to try reading it in Japanese. She brought it along and I flipped through it a bit while we were ordering drinks. The date proceeded reasonably smoothly; she mentioned wanting to go overseas and seemed generally interested in foreign culture. The conversation was going well and all seemed on board for bringing her back to my hotel afterwards. Everything was going well…but then at one point she excused herself to go to the bathroom, and on the way back she went up to a tall man standing by the bar and started talking to him. I was a bit pissed off at her approaching someone else right in front of me, but I assumed it was someone she knew. Eventually she came back over and sat down.

“Is that your friend?” I asked.

“No, it’s my husband,” she said, with no hesitation.

I looked at her in incomprehension.

“Actually, he’s my ex-husband…” she continued. “We’re divorced, but I’m still living with him. He’s from Nigeria and wants to stay in Japan, but he can’t find a job. Actually, I’m still in love with him.”

“Well…maybe you should get back together with him then?” I said with an icy tone.

I looked up and saw that the Nigerian ex-husband at the bar was giving me his own frosty gaze.

“I want to, but he doesn’t want to get back together with me,” the girl said.

“Why not?”

“I have too many friends…he became jealous. It’s difficult.”

At this point I was still on board for taking her back to my hotel, but during the course of the evening she kept excusing herself and going over to talk to the ex-husband for ten minutes at a time. As a result, I rapidly lost interest, and actually felt bad for the Nigerian ex-husband, who looked increasingly angrier each time she went over to talk to him. This culminated when we got up to leave, and instead of coming up to pay half the bill she ran off and started talking to him, then disappeared, leaving me with the bill. I paid it all, then sent her a message telling her to come back. Half an hour later she reappeared.

“I’m really sorry…things are difficult,” she said.

“I understand…anyway please pay your half of the bill.”

She looked down. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money at all.”

“Nothing in there?”

I pointed at her bag, where I could see the Eimi Yamada book. On a whim I reached over and took the book out. It was hardcover and looked fairly new; it would have been at least the price of what she owed me.

“Well, I guess I’ll borrow this at least,” I said.

“But I think you don’t want to see me again, right? When are you going to return it?”

“Not sure. Maybe after I’ve read it.”

“Sorry…you can’t have it.”

I held up the book and walked away from her. “Thanks…maybe I’ll see you around,” I said.

Dejected from the encounter, I went to McDonald’s and tried reading the book for a while, but eventually became disgusted with Yamada’s weak prose style and threw it in the trash. After that, still drunk and somewhat hyped-up, I wandered alone over to Nagarekawa and entered the club called Mugen. I went up to the second floor and saw that they were having some kind of reggae event; it was fairly crowded and there were several attractive girls, although most of them were with guys. I introduced myself to a bunch of people and danced for a few hours. At around 4 AM I tried pulling one girl out of the club and got her as far as the door before she insisted on waiting for her friends. I left and started walking back to my hotel.

As I came within less than a minute’s walk of the entrance, I noticed a young girl wheeling her bicycle along the sidewalk. She stopped to check her phone, and on impulse I went over and started talking to her.

“Are you grounded in the Enlightenment?” I asked her in English. Recently Dylan and I had been experimenting with exactly this kind of nonsensical “opener.” I half-suspected that the content of any opening line made no difference whatsoever, and this experiment seemed to prove it, as the girl suddenly stopped and took off her headphones.

“What?”

“I like your bike,” I said. “What did you do tonight?”

The conversation progressed over the next ten minutes. She was a short girl, twenty-two years old, and I noticed her extraordinarily thin legs, displayed by black mini shorts. She was generally very pretty. I learned that she had never left Hiroshima, spoke no English and had no interest in foreign countries or culture. Her name was Miya.

“What are you doing now?” I asked her.

“I was going to go to a bar run by my friend, but it was closed so I’m going home now.”

“Let’s have one drink together,” I suggested.

“Huh? Where?”

I pointed to the nearby Lawson convenience store. We went and got drinks, and then very naturally, with no hesitation I led her back across the street to my hotel. Once inside my room, we popped open our drinks and talked for a while longer. It turned out Miya was a dancer and was taking some kind of Hawaiian dance class. I got her to do a demonstration, then started giving her a massage, which somehow transitioned into a make-out. Before long we were naked and going at it with furious energy. Her body was slim and tight, and she apologized for “looking like a shougakusei (school student),” but for me it was unforgettable.

After only an hour of sleep, Miya awoke and excused herself with a final kiss, then headed out to catch the first train of the morning. I went straight back to sleep and awoke at noon, unsure of what had just happened. My night had gone from terrible to amazing with no warning. Had I really just slept with a girl not even twenty minutes after meeting her for the first time? A girl I had approached alone on the street in the middle of the night? In spite of all I had learned about nanpa so far, in spite of all the time I’d put into street approaches over the past few months, next to everything in my background screamed at me that this shouldn’t have worked, couldn’t possibly be real, in fact might even have been some creepy form of harassment or coercion! And yet Miya had been ecstatic. What had I gotten myself into?

The post The Birth of Japan Game: Episode 4: The Exile appeared first on Attraction Japan.

from Attraction Japan http://attractionjapan.com/birth-japan-game-episode-4-exile/

0 notes