Tokyo & Mo

So I have had this draft for my next blog sitting here on my computer for about 2 weeks now. I would try to sit down and write something every now and then, but I just haven't been feeling it. Maybe I was too tired at times, or the wireless internet wasn't working good enough. I don't know. But know I'm feeling good and I feel I have alot to say.

So last weekend was our second time to go to Tokyo in 2 or 3 weeks. I can say that I LOVE Tokyo. Now I have been to some bigtime cities in my days. Chicago, Houston, Seattle (the "bigness" of that one is up for debate I guess). And in Europe I have been to all the big ones, London, Paris, Rome etc. But Tokyo, man I don't know, there's just something really cool about Tokyo. We went to the top of a 52 story building that had a sky view platform on top. A 360 degree view of the largest city I have ever seen. From the top, 500 some odd stories or so I guess, I couldn't see the edge of the city. nothing but winding streets and towering buildings. It looked like a giant maze.





-A side note: While discussing some differences of America and Japan with a Japanese person at school, I was told that the Japanese however many hundreds of years ago, would first lay out the location of the buildings, then map out the roads. This is why there seems to be no rhyme or reason as to why the streets are the way they are. Now I feel like I am usually pretty good with directions, discerning which is N E S & W for the most part pretty easily. But you throw me in a city like Tokyo, or even here in Mito. And I’m running in circles in my head trying to connect streets and intersections in my head.

So staring at Tokyo from 50 stories up really impressed me. I can’t wait to go back again and again. You should go if you ever get the chance.

So Sumo wrestling has always been a pretty easy sport to make fun of. Well maybe not as easy as horse racing or the biathlon. “Swimming and strangling a guy, that makes just as much sense to me.” Sorry had to throw that in there for my Seinfeld friends. That’s a pretty skimpy wrestling outfit that’s also not too flattering.

But after reading the little pamphlet that was nice enough to be in English, I understood Sumo a bit more. And it’s so interesting. Everything in Japanese culture and tradition has a meaning. The colored tassels hanging above the ring. Every movement and word spoken has been done the same way for hundreds if not thousands of years. I mean the ring is still constructed the same way it was the very first time it was created. They still make it out of clay.

The Sumo wrestlers are like rock stars over here. I mean if you could imagine Josh Walters meeting Bobby Knight. This is the kind of reaction you would get. This is the kind of obsession you have of these athletes.


Another thing that makes me tilt my head about Sumo. These guys are huge right? I mean HUGE. Now in my one month and a couple of weeks here I have seen many Japanese people. And I am taller than most all of them. The fact that the National Sport of Japan would include and be limited to men over 6 feet tall and weighing over 250, 300 pounds minimum is kinda wacky to me. Its like everyone else watches Sumo and plays soccer or rides a unicycle. Not sure Ill every figure that one out.


I could go on forever and ever about Sumo, but I am getting bored with myself so I’ll move on.

I know Carla has talked some about the language but I wanted to give some of my thoughts on it. Its so hard. At first, like many times over here, I was mad as to why the Japanese have to make things so hard on themselves. (And everyone else for that matter).

I know you remember the squatty potty. You know they have seen the sit down style. Don’t they realize that its much more comfortable? I mean how are you supposed to watch your iPod while squatting like that. You need one hand to brace yourself against one of the walls, and the other hand to hold your pants back. But even the squatty goes back to tradition. Most new homes in Japan don’t even have sit-down style thrones. It’s a pride thing. As weird as it sounds, they feel that there should be a certain level of suffering in life. If you take advantage of something easier, then you are seen as lazy. There is pride to be had in suffering.

Sorry back to the language stuff. So you know there are 3 different “alphabets” in the Japanese language. Hiragana, Katakana (which is used to write out foreign words) and Kanji (which are the characters that stand for entire words or phrases, over 10,000 of those by the way). I am studying Hiragana right now and it’s coming along pretty well. But I hated it at first. Why on earth would the Japanese need 50 characters for their language when we only use 26 for ours? Why would they make it so hard on themselves? Its like this, The Japanese have symbols and “letters” for all of the sounds in their language. It would be like us having a symbol to use every time we wanted to put “ing” at the end of something. Or “tion” or “ph” and stuff like that. In a way English would be much harder to be learning for me right now because our language, you just have to know what the letter combinations are supposed to sound like. You can’t tell just by reading. With Japanese you know exactly what its supposed to sound like just be reading it. Even if you have never seen the word before.

Its kinda cool like that. In that way it’s easier to learn I think.

So Japan is cool. It’s hard sometimes and really cool most of the time. We have had great weather the past week, although its getting warm enough to wish the schools had air conditioning. This weekend we are going to go to the beach, if the weather keeps up.


In the meantime, I think I’m turning Japanese…

More pics at :
http://oc.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2479&l=d0a64&id=504402219