Shanghai (Part 1)

The People’s Square - a large park in the center of the city containing several museums and several more “colorful” locals.



The first thing you will notice is a crowd of Chinese people gathered around, what appears to be, a policeman arguing with a woman in a wheelchair. Upon closer inspection, you will discover that the crowd is gathered around a policeman and a woman in a wheelchair screaming at each other. The crowd has nothing to do with the dispute. They have nothing to do at all. In China, you will discover, there are many Chinese people who just sort of mill about. After ten minutes or so, the policeman will acquiesce (or maybe it is the woman in the wheelchair who gives in) and he will wheel her into a nearby building. Robbed of entertainment, the crowd will slowly disperse.












Be sure to visit the urban planning museum. There, they have a giant scale model of the city as it will look in 2020. It will be enormous. To achieve this ambitious goal, there are construction projects everywhere. Everywhere. Skyscrapers are going up at an incredible rate. “What was here before this skyscraper/skyscraper-construction-site?” you will wonder. An old neighborhood. “Where are the former residents?” They have been relocated to a new skyscraper/skyscraper-construction-site. The plan is to, by 2020, demolish virtually every old building in the city and replace it with a giant, shiny, new one.












Walking around the park, you will encounter a number of young people who will say “hello” and want to speak English with you. Other guide books warn about these people. Many want to sell you things. Stay away from anyone that extends an invitation to a friend’s “tea ceremony”. However, most of the people you will meet will be university students, or recent graduates, who just wanted someone to practice their English with. Your friend will take these opportunities to turn it around and practice Chinese. His Chinese will be excellent, but you will be a poor judge of this. It will all sound like Chinese to you. Though, Chinese people will have no trouble understanding him.



Saturday afternoons at the People’s Square are not to be missed. Wandering through the Square, you will stumble upon a large gathering of Chinese people, from middle-age to old age, talking in small groups. Wading into the crowd, you will notice this on one of the shrubs.




Your friend will then recognize what this is. The flyers on the shrubs each contain a picture of and assorted stats about a young Chinese man or woman. The mingling old people are their parents and grandparents. They are trying to arrange marriages. Poking around to take pictures, one of the women will come up to you. She will have with her pictures of her daughter in various outfits. The pictures will be professionally done. This woman will not be joking in any way. She will not be behaving ironically or sarcastically. She will want you to marry her daughter. As you humor this woman – trying not to lead her on – a crowd will form around. Your friend will step in to speak with this woman in her native tongue. She will give you her “business” card. If you ever become interested in marrying her daughter, you can email her. You will keep this card. More Chinese parents will approach you. You will be a hot commodity. Escaping at this point is advisable.

China

[Ok. It took way to long to post about my trip to China. So, I'm finally gonna post some stuff now. There's still a lot to come. So... that's be soon.]

So, I recently came back from a 10-day trip to China. I met up with Cole in Shanghai, stayed there through New Years, then went up to Beijing for a little, and then went down to Hong Kong for the rest of the trip. It was great.

After traveling all day on Friday, I arrived in Shanghai at about 8 pm (and yes, I got another kosher meal on the way over). Cole was there at the airport to meet me. I hadn’t been in his presence for five months, but we skype often enough that it felt like no time had passed.

Immediately after getting off the plane, I realized I wasn’t in Japan anymore. First thing I noticed: no katakana. I rely on katakana so much to get around Japan – I read it on everything (its just English in disguise). In China, it’s all kanji. I can read, like, three kanji.

The first thing we did, after dropping my stuff at Cole’s apartment (which is amazing, by the way – huge, two-bedroom, two-bath, study, furnished, with an amazing view, and a maid service), was go out to eat. Chinese food is great (as one of the teachers in my school said before I left, “Chinese food is very very delicious, but very very greasy"). The Chinese all know that foreigners love kung pow chicken. We got kung pow chicken. It was very very delicious. I kept having to fight back the urge to speak Japanese. Just little things like saying “thank you” to the waitress, and stuff.

[This first person stuff is boring me… I’m gonna switch to a more entertaining style (more entertaining for me to write). Sorry…]

Someone Call the IWC!

I just ate some whale meat! I swear, I didn’t kill the thing. It just showed up in the school lunch today. I’m sorry!

So, I was in the tea room today, and the tea lady and another teacher said that we were having “kujira” for lunch. Kujira is whale. “Ahh!” I thought. “Oh,” I said, “isn’t that a bit expensive for school lunch?” (We can’t even get beef for school lunch because it is prohibitively expensive.)

Ok, a little background. Japanese people eat whale meat, but only very rarely. Traditionally, whale meat was a delicacy, but recently it has become enormously expensive.

Ok, more background. Japan is a member of the IWC (International Whaling Commission) which monitors and sets (non-binding) standards for commercial whaling. In 1986, in the face of a lot of “Save the Whales” signs, the IWC passed a moratorium on all commercial whaling – effectively reducing yearly catch quotas to zero. Because of this, some countries (like Canada) left the IWC, and others, like Norway, simply exempted itself from the ban (with no penalty, I might add). There is a little loophole in the ban that allows whaling for “scientific purposes.” This is where Japan comes in. Japan complies with the moratorium, but still continues active whaling under the auspices of “research.” They say they can learn only learn certain things about the whales if they kill them and cut them up. Most Western scientists think this is BS. Did I mention that a stipulation of the exemption for scientific research is that none of the whale meat can go to waste? Jackpot! Kill the whales for “science” and then sell the meat. Everyone gets what they want. Japanese whalers get their profit, and the few people in Japan who want whale meat get their whale meat. Way to work the loopholes.

So, this is how whale meat comes to Japan. There’s not very much of it, and its very expensive, so you’d almost never see it in supermarkets or at regular restaurants. So, how did it make its way into my school lunch? I was told that this whale meat was “special” whale meat that is only available for schools. So, whomever the nutritionist bought the meat from must have been greatly discounting the price. Here’s my theory: the whalers make a small portion of their catch available, for almost no money, to schools. That way, they give a generation of children (from whose diet whale meat is completely disappearing) a taste for kujira. That doesn’t sound so crazy, does it? If no one is exposed to whale meat, no one will want to buy whale meat, and the whalers will be out of work. They have to occasionally give a common folk a taste of their goods.

So, that was my moral dilemma for the day. First, whether or not to protest. When I decided against that, whether or not to eat it. Which I inevitably did… It really didn’t taste all that different from beef… or horse for that matter. Yeah, they eat horse here too.

Chinese Students

Yesterday, a bunch of Chinese students dropped by the school. I think the Chinese students were from a wealthy private school, they were on a four-day field trip to Japan, and they wanted to stop by a Japanese school on their way to Mt. Fuji. So, they came here. Not surprisingly, the staff here had been excited about this for weeks, so, they’d been preparing by practicing their Chinese.


When the Chinese students arrived, there was a lengthy opening ceremony. The Japanese students performed a choral piece for the occasion. Guess what it was. Hallelujah! Again… It never ceases to be weird. The Chinese students then answered back with their own song. It sucked. They totally half-assed it. The Japanese don’t mess around when it comes to chorus performances. They practice and practce, and nearly every sings their hearts out. These Chinese students just couldn’t commit.

After the songs there were a bunch of boring speeches. Then, the leader of the Nakatomi student council stepped up to the mic and said (in English), “now we are going to have an arm wrestling competition.” “Really?” I said to the teacher standing next to me. “Yes,” she replied. Then they brought out a desk with a pad on top of this. They were serious. “Takeshi our school champion. Who will face him?” The Chinese students looked confused. I don’t think they were prepared for this. After a lot of hesitance, a very large Chinese student stood up and walked over to Takeshi, who is about a foot shorter. These Chinese students were from Beijing – Northern Chinese – horsemen. They are tall. So, Takeshi faced off against this enormous Chinese man, and, after a long deadlock, won. He actually won. I was surprised, but not as surprised as I was about to be.


“The girls’ champion is Nao. Who will face her?” Really? Nao? Nao is this short, little cute girl with wide eyes and a perpetual look of confusion. She, apparently is the girls’ champion. So, an enormous Chinese girl stands up and towers over Nao. Then they arm wrestle. Nao destroys the Chinese girl. It was unbelievable. I think the Japanese kids had been practicing their arm wrestling for this occasion. I mean, their form was really good. They practice everything.


After the feats of strength, nothing else interesting happened – more greetings and gift giving. The Chinese students were only here for two hours. Come in, sing a song, give some gifts, say “thank you”, arm wrestle, and get out.

The Salesman

Occasionally, a salesman will come to the teacher’s room and try to sell something (I’m not sure what they sell, or who they speak to about it, I only know when they come and when they go.)

The Japanese salesman is easy to spot. He is dressed well, his hair is nicely styled, and he is filled with a deep feeling of soul-crushing shame. When he enters the teacher’s room, he apologizes profusely and bows so deeply that one can see the spirits of his ancestors bowing along with him. He has invaded another’s workplace. His ancestors have been dishonored. When he leaves, it’s more of the same. As he apologizes for time wasted, somewhere nearby, corpses slowly turn under headstones. The indignity reaches back for generations.

So, some of the other JETs and I got to thinking, “what can these salesmen do to make their intrusions less shameful?” We came up with an idea:

The salesman enters – apologizes profusely. It can’t be helped. He brings with him brochures and two attendants (maybe trainees). After making a small pitch, the salesman makes his brochures available. He then apologizes once more, bows deeply, and, in a final expression of his humility, expires. Not a messy, blood-filled death – rather, he instantly, and of his own willpower, ceases to live. His attendants then carry his body from the room, bowing and apologizing as they do so.

I really think that would take a lot of the stress and embarrassment out of being a Japanese salesman.

First Day Back

Today was the first day back to school (I mean, I came in on Tuesday, but it was a no-classes-pretend-to-be-doing-stuff day). School started with an opening ceremony – of course. Then there was a fire drill. Fire drills only happen once a year – the first day back from winter break. Everyone puts on helmets and the vice principal times everyone as they run out of the building. But, don’t forget to change your shoes on your way out. You wouldn’t want to get your indoor shoes messed up fleeing from a burning building (I assume if the fire was real we wouldn’t bother with changing our shoes, but who knows…). When we got outside, I discovered, to my surprise, that the entire Minobu fire was observing us. They even brought a fire truck with them. All the teachers made a big deal of acting formal. The vice principal gave a military-like report to the principal that everyone was safe. Then the fun began. The fire department did a demonstration on how to use a fire extinguisher. They lit up a (contained) fire with a whole bunch of kerosene, and had some of the kids take turns putting it out with the extinguishers. It was pretty cool.

Then, we cleaned the school – again. Didn’t we just clean the school on the last day of classes? I guess new dust builds up. During the cleaning, I realized that the purpose of having the kids clean the school is not actually to clean the school. They do a terrible job. They use the same dirty rags to wipe everything with, they never use soap or any kind of cleaner, and they wash the windows with wet newspaper. The school is filthy. Rather, the cleaning is part of the whole junior high school socialization ritual.

Winter Break

Winter break is interesting here. There is about a week where everyone is off – no classes, no nothing. But this period is book-ended by another week or so where there are no classes, but some people still come in. Some of the students come in to do club activities or prepare for entrance exams, and some of the teachers come in to help the students. They want me to come in on those days. I’m not sure why. There’s barely anyone there and I have nothing to do. So, I make an appearance and pretend to be doing things.

I took most of winter break off and went to China to visit Cole. I’ll post stuff about that soon, even though it’s not about Japan.