He has arrived!

My new nephew arrived today at about 4 pm Tokyo time! I missed the first phone call and didn't hear about it until about 7 pm. After 30 hours of pretty grueling labor, it was decided that my sister needed to have a C-section performed. Of course, she is fine, and that is a totally routine surgery, but it didn't keep me from bursting into tears over the phone. I really wish I could have been there for her. Sadly I cannot join mama and baby until Sunday, so it's four more days of waiting for me. It's really no surprise that she had to have the C-section, though, the baby was a whopping 8 lbs. 3 oz!! Just to give you a comparison my sister is about five foot 2 and weighs about 140 lbs., so you can imagine how rough that must have been. I really can't wait to see them!

New baby!

Just writing to say that my little sister is in labor! She is due to actually give birth in about 6 hours or so... she just had an epidural, and is pretty groggy, but I am so excited! Hopefully I will be able to go to Yokohama tomorrow to be with her and the new nephew.

People Watching

People are strange.
Nowhere is that more obvious than in a youth hostel, where dozens of young people (and sometimes not-so-young people) from all over the world share small spaces and limited resources. In the week that I have been staying at the Sakura Hostel in Asakusa, Tokyo, I have seen more strange human behavior than I had for months beforehand. For example: On the day I arrived I lugged my (far too copious) luggage up to my room, which contained six beds and several lockers. The room was clean and neat and I immediately struck up a lively conversation with the young Dutch man in the bed opposite mine. When I asked about our others roommates, he grimaced slightly, which gave me a bit of a warning. He told me that three of the other residents were pleasant enough people, but were also a mother, father, and grown son (also from Amsterdam) who spent all day away from the hostel, only to return at 9, sleep from 9:30 to 10 am, and then leave again, barely speaking with the other people staying in the room. He mentioned that he often stayed out of the room until he himself was ready to sleep, as this trio went to bed the earliest and slept the latest, and he got the sense that they were irritated with anyone who didn't keep the same hours. Although that seemed somewhat odd to me (you do have to make some compromises in a shared space), I wasn't all that phased, until I returned to the room to sleep at 11 and found the father glaring at me from his bed as I used my alarm clock light to search for my toothbrush. Luckily they only stayed one night, after which I didn't have to worry so much about disturbing their obviously delicate sleeping schedules.
I have to say, however, more so than the issue of sleep courtesies, I was disturbed by the age of the people staying in my room. I tend to think of a "you hostel" as just that, a place for youths to stay as they travel or backpack through a country. And yet in just the last week I have encountered several people that forced me to re-evaluate this, sometimes to my discomfort. It is difficult enough to share a small room with strangers, but even more difficult and uncomfortable when those people are significantly older than oneself. There is a big difference between wearing your pj's and brushing your teeth in front of 20-somethings and doing the same in front of a 55 year old man whom you have never met. For another example, just three days ago I was sitting at a table in the lounge, surfing the internet and drinking a beer, when a trio of people sat down at my table. Looking up I was somewhat shocked to find a woman in her 60's, at least, with a younger woman who was most likely her daughter, and a boy no more than 6! I suddenly felt the urge to both hide the beer I was drinking and to sit up straighter. I hate to judge, but, well I will. What the hell?! Who brings a six year old to a youth hostel full of hormonal, drunk college students? And for that matter, Mom and Dad, why are you not in a hotel? What 55-year old mother and father are so cheap that they are willing to bunk down with a bunch of kids half their age? Especially in Japan, where getting a business hotel is only about $10 more than a hostel.
However, my experience earlier this very day took the cake for me. Beyond the issues of age-appropriate lodgings and money, this next story also dips into my feelings about child care and age-appropriate behavior, period. In order to facilitate and easier move into a new room tomorrow, I took half of my luggage down to the storage space in the basement. As I arrived I was surprised to meet yet another young kid, this one perhaps 7 years old. I rolled my eyes to myself, once again feeling like a hostel is not a great place for kids. However, I was even more surprised by his mother, a young woman, who had three suitcases and about 15 shopping bags strewn about the storage room, blocking almost all access to the shelves. She was dress in a skimpy, hot pink terrycloth tube dress that was both strapless and short enough to show the curve of her buttocks. When she spoke to me (In English and with no traceable accent, either American or Canadian), her voice was girlishly high pitched and giggly. She politely apologized for having her stuff in the way, but made no move to actually pick up or move any of her assorted junk. She asked how long I had been in Japan, and I breathlessly explained I had been at this hostel for a week as I wrestled my suitcase onto the top shelf. She told me that she and her son had been there for a month.
A month?
A month of keeping a child in a shared bedroom, living out of suitcases, surrounded by strangers in the bed next to you, with no personal or private space? The though boggled my mind. I was shocked that she had spent a month in a hostel, when judging by her bags of shopping she clearly had enough money to afford or hotel or even an apartment. Which is to say nothing of her attire... but then, I could do an entire other blog entry about my feelings about women who dress like hookers even after they have married and had kids. Another time, perhaps.
Of course, in a shred space such as this, little things like courtesy and manners also take on a new and exciting twist. As anyone who has ever lived with others knows, it is sometimes amazing how completely lacking in common courtesy some people can be. This weekend, the hostel was inundated with guests, many of them from France. Now, I am not making any judgments about France or about the French people, but this week the perpetrators of rudeness have so far all been French. One young man has annoyed me multiple times. The first evening he arrived, he and his friends rented a film to watch on the big screen TV in the lounge. I was sitting at least 20 feet away from the TV, on the other side of the lounge, yet the movie was turned up so loudly that I could not hear my music in my headphones. Everyone else in the lounge was cringing from the noise, shooting dirty looks and the boys on the couches, and generally being irritated by the whole thing. I hated to be the one to bitch, but as no one else seemed willing to say anything, I finally got up and asked them to turn it down. They did so, fractionally-- and proceeded to watch another movie just as loudly, well into the small a.m. hours.
This young man wasn't done yet, though. As I speak, this is his third evening of contact with what I can only assume is his girlfriend, as he has loud conversations with her on his computer without the benefit of headphones. I can hear both sides of their conversation for hours as a time and he laughs and yells into his computer so that she can hear him. Yet, oddly enough, he does own headphones-- he just only uses them to watch movies on his computer.
Watching movies and TV shows on our computers in one of the main activities here at the hostel. I have spent many hours laughing quietly to myself as I watch old episodes of South Park, one of the only shows I can stream in Japan. Hulu and the Cartoon Network website are both locked to American, and thus unavailable to us poor stranded Westerners here in Asia. So too are most of the network websites like NBC and CBS. So, as usual today, I was seated at my computer, giggling at the antics of Cartman and the boys, when a shadow fell over me. I looked up and a young girl, no older than 15, was watching over my shoulder. Alright, no big deal, she's just wondering what I'm watching, right? Wrong. She continued to stand there, right over my shoulder, or occasionally sitting in the chair next to me, and stare at my computer for a good 20 minutes. I kept looking at her, trying to tell her with body language that she was making me uncomfortable, and exchanging exasperated looks with my Australian friend seated across from me. The girl seemed as oblivious to her breach of etiquette as she was at my attempts to politely make her aware of them. However, just as I was about to lose my temper and ask her "Can I help you?", my episode ended, and so I decisively snapped my laptop shut. Robbed of her sparkly lights, the girl then proceeded across the table and set up shop behind my Australian friend! Just as with me, she stood behind him and watched what he was doing on his computer. However, apparently what he was doing was not as fascinating as my activity, and eventually she moved away to go sit directly behind someone I assumed to be her brother who was playing a Nintendo DS. I left to return to my room at that point, but my occasional trips down for a drink or a snack found her in exactly the same place.
There are, of course, other stories, like my roommate who makes a little double throat clearing cough every three minutes, or the French girl in the elevator in just a tank top and panties, but I have to say, strange computer staring girl is so far my favorite wierdo of Sakura Hostel.

Background info essays

I moved to New York City when I was 23 years old. At the time, I was still extricating myself from a two year relationship that had become increasingly abusive, despite my initial refusal to see it. I had known for quite awhile—looking back, most likely within the first six months—that we had an often difficult relationship, but as is common with such things, I assumed it was something that I could fix, and continued to try to do so for the next year and a half. I think people tend to misunderstand abuse, particularly of the more invasive but less visible emotional kind. We pity women who stay in abusive relationships but also judge them harshly, telling ourselves that we would never put up with that kind of shit; assuring ourselves that our self esteem is too high for that kind of co-dependent drama. Yet, there is a more pervasive and lingering form of abuse that may not be perpetrated in black eyes and “accidental falls;” a kind of manipulation of one’s very self that in some ways is more damaging than any broken bone. We all know what it is like to be in love—that initial infatuation, when all you can see in the world is this other person, the perfection of them, and if there are any clues to possible personality issues they are easily glossed over by an eagerness to let this one, this relationship, be better than all the others, to make it more meaningful, more lasting, than ever before. So we try hard not to annoy, not to cause fights, not to upset our lover but instead try to be the perfect, sympathetic and understanding person that you have always wanted to be. And you have so much fun; he makes you laugh so hard it hurts sometimes, he gets all your weird geeky jokes, he praises the body you are so self-conscious about. And so you change some things about yourself—maybe you dress a little differently, to turn him on. Whine a little less about your job, his is just as hard. Or maybe you don’t bring up an overdue electric bill because you know he’s had a bad day, or try not to be offended when he shuts you out emotionally, no, really, it’s just that his mother was so cold to him and he never had a dad, he just doesn’t know how to connect, but I can help him, I love him, I can make him better.

I can fix him.

This is the phrase I kept finding myself coming back to, for those two years. I love him, I can help him, I can fix him. Surely that is what a good friend, a good lover, and good person, does, right? They help, they listen, they do what they can to make the lives of the people they love better. So, in our desire to be a good person, and good woman, we push our own needs and thoughts back, so often that it becomes a reflex. And before you know it, you are trapped—unable to extricate yourself from this person who has taken over your life, chained by love and by that desire to help that overwhelms all good sense.

When we first started dating, it seemed as though Luke came along at the perfect point in my life. I was 21 and still a virgin, relatively inexperienced with men, stymied by an unsatisfying relationship that lasted senior year of high school and my freshman year of college, as well as my own dissatisfaction with my body. For two years since then end of my high school romance, I had countless times been at a party, or a bar, having a fantastic conversation with someone cute and witty, only to be dropped like dirty laundry the minute a thinner, more fashionable, girl entered the room. I had, at some point, decided that it was not worth the disappointed, and retreated to an expectation-free life of platonic male friends and a gaggle of wonderful girlfriends. It was these girls, as well as a new living situation and 10 pounds lost, that convinced me to join them going out more often. It was at one of these weekly outings that Luke and I met in a bar in Santa Cruz, somewhat randomly; he was a friend of a friend who happened to be sitting at the next booth. He overhead me make a reference to Eddie Izzard, and we spent the rest of the evening drunkenly quoting lines from our favorite pieces. We met again the next week, and laughed our way through a mutual love of good beer and science fiction movies. It was the laughing that drew me to him initially—I have always loved to laugh and to make others laugh. I was surprised to learn that he was in fact six years my elder, which perhaps should have been a clue to his immaturity, but also deeply moved by his telling of growing up never knowing his father, who had run out on his pregnant (and teenaged) mother. I think I felt some sort of guilt for my upper-middle class two parent upbringing; I had certainly never experienced the things that he had. He was so much like me and yet totally alien. And he kept making me laugh.

In a fit of drunken confidence, I took him home that night, and although clothes were shed, I managed to hold off actually having sex with him until our third “official” date. I didn’t mention at the time that I was a virgin, because I really didn’t know where this would end up going and frankly didn’t want it to be a big deal. I’ve always despised the ideas of “purity” and “honor” that are associated with virginity—frankly I think the cult of virginity has done more to harm women than just about anything else in the long and sordid history of women’s rights. I believe I said something vague about “it’s been a long time,” referring more to dating than anything else. The experience was extremely pleasant, for which I am still grateful. Too many times I heard stories from my girlfriends about their first times, usually hurried encounters before mom and dad got home, or cramped in the back of a car, that were either painful or awkward or both. This was neither. The next morning, when I had to drag myself out of bed to catch and early train back home for Thanksgiving, saying goodbye was almost pleasantly painful.

I think, honestly, that our entire relationship could be summed up in that phrase, “pleasantly painful.” When things were good, they were amazing. We fit like a glove in hand. Our senses of humor, tastes in music and clothes, even our political ideologies were completely in tune. It was so easy to forget his angry emotional outburst, his insults, when he was apologizing five minutes later and offering to buy me ice cream to make up for being a jerk. His drinking had always been heavy, but as our relationship progressed it began to become more and more of a problem. He would spend not only almost every evening at the bar with his friends, but most of his paycheck as well. At first I didn’t really mind, I hung out with them all at the bar and for the first year of our relationship he would usually leave whenever I did, coming home with me to my bed. I got so use to his snoring that when I would visit home, I often couldn’t sleep for lack of it. However, after my graduation from college in ’05, I didn’t really have the same time or money to spend at the dive bars of Pacific Avenue. I was only working part time, and paying rent only by the grace of my overly-indulgent parents, and I was begging to be annoyed not only with his drinking but his absolute inability to come home when he said he would. I’m sure his friends all though I was the clingy girlfriend, calling his cell phone multiple times an evening. Yet at least twice weekly we would have plans, dinner or a movie or just hanging out at home, and he would be three hours late by the time I called him, at which point it was always “Oh, yeah, sorry, be home in 30 minutes,” after which I would wait another three hours before giving up and going to bed. He would inevitably crawl in at 2 am, snuggle up to me smelling of cigarettes and whiskey, and I would pretend not to be angry that he was too drunk to remember he was supposed to be home four hours ago and that the spaghetti was getting cold in the refrigerator.

I’m sure many of you are asking why I would put up with his bullshit for so long. I can only say that I loved him, in all of his flawed nature, and my own insecurities made me cling to what I saw as my only hope for love. I was still young, and new to serious relationships, and I clung to him with a fierceness that looking back is eminently pathetic. But I still wanted to help him, I wanted to be the one to help him quit drinking, get a better job, I somehow felt that I could take the good parts of him and mold them around the bad parts, hiding them behind his better features. I looked always for the positive, and took great joy in those times when things between us were good.

In the end it was our differences, both in drive and in maturity, which brought things to a head. We had moved into together, and we celebrating three months of being able to put up with one another, when I was accepted to Columbia for graduate school in March of 2006. Those three months has been some of the best between us—Luke had cut back on his drinking significantly, and we reveled in a shared space that could really be called our own. He was so happy for me when the letter came from New York, so proud that I had been accepted to a school to which I had always been sure I would never go. For the first three weeks it was a haze of excitement for me, as well as a sort of dumbfounded disbelief that I would actually be attending such a prestigious institution. I was ready, after five years, to leave Santa Cruz, with its beach bum laziness and lack of drive, for the excitement and flurry of New York City. But it wasn’t nearly the same for him. Luke had never in his life ridden in an airplane, and despite nearing thirty, he had in fact never left the borders of California. His immaturity and lack of experience, which at first had moved me to want to show him new places and encounters, developed into a full blown fear of leaving everything he knew. Within a month of my acceptance, he had changed his mind twice about joining me in New York, and had gone back to his routine of alternately abandoning me to drink with his friends and clinging to me, begging me to take him with me, that he couldn’t be without me. Things unraveled quickly after that, and by mid-May we had stopped having sex, and he spent at least once a week on the couch after starting and then refusing to finish a fight. He had turned completely passive aggressive, calling me names and purposely starting fights only to paint me as the bad guy. I think now the only reason I kept trying to work things out was that I was so scared to move all the way across the country by myself. Just before the fourth of July, which was a sort of anniversary for us, we had the fight that made me realize I was completely wasting my time trying to save this relationship. In a drunken fit, Luke had purposely picked a fight, and a physical one at that, but in his strange victimizing way, he kept trying to goad me into hitting him. He kept telling me that he was sure I hated him anyway, so why not just hit him and get it over with, forcing me into the position of aggressor without my consent or participation. I was so angry I couldn’t speak, and honestly did want to hit him pretty badly, just to snap him out of this ridiculous obsession with being the victim. The fight escalated verbally, and finally in a fit of pique, distress, and anger at his insults and cuts to my character, I gave in, and slapped him once, hard, across the face. I t was a huge mistake, and I know it; not only had I given him exactly what he wanted, but I had broken my own rules about physical reactions to anger. If it is never appropriate for a man to hit a woman, neither is it appropriate for a woman to hit a man. I felt like an asshole, both for the slap and for allowing myself to be made into the abuser. I was so turned around I didn’t know what to do, I felt like I was the one who had crossed the line, despite his obvious desire that I do so. Perhaps it was his inability to take the lead, to take any kind of responsibility that demanded that I be the one to irrevocably decide to end the relationship.

To be continued...

Hooray!

Just posting to say, huzzah! I finally got my laptop online with the school's crappy internet. I have been sans personal internet access for six weeks! Now I can finally Skype with my family instead of having to pay $15 for a ten minute phone call. Hooray for the intertrons!

Making lists keeps me sane

At the six week mark in Japan, and so far my list of things that keep me sane are as follows:
Number of books read: 15
Pairs of shoes bought: 2
Seasons of Venture Brothers Watched: 3
Days I missed the last train and stayed out till 5 am: 2
Friends made: 7
Visits to the very pregnant lil sis: 1
Eps of Sex and the City watched: 4
Hours of flute lessons: 30
Hours of practice:...14 (or so)
Bands seen: 4 (bands that rocked, 1)
Trips to Yokohama: 1
Meishi (business cards) handed out: approx. 50
Money spent on beer and ciggies: Too much

I could go on forever like this, but a funny thing just happened. As much as I whine about being here (and I do, too much, I know), making that list just sort of reminded me of the fun things about being in a place like Japan. Its such a small country, really, that getting where you want to go (although expensive) is pretty easy, considering. I am currently looking into night buses to take me up to Sendai, as the Shinkansen is at the moment prohibitively expensive, but I would be really pleased if I could make it. Some of my fellow Columbians (the school, not the country) are living up there right now, as well as the guy who did my leg tattoo. It`s been a year and it could use some touch-ups (as could the one on my arm, really). I wonder if he`d give me a cheaper rate for touch-ups? I also wonder if he is still with his Japanese girlfriend... boy is adorable, with his Canadian accent and mohawk. A body full of tats doesn`t hurt the cuteness factor, either. Ah well. At least he could direct me to a onsen where they wouldn`t kick me out.

As for the books mentioned above, I just picked up Steven Erikson`s Malazan Empire series, and so far I am enjoying it immensely. I tend to re-read favorite authors often (not a bad habit, but not a great one), and in my attempt to spread out to new authors, I have come across more than a few really terrible, or just mildly terrible, books. So, to find someone with some actual talent and ability is refreshing. He reminds me (and apparently many people) of George R. R. Martin, but without all the rape. I honestly had to stop reading the Song of Ice and Fire because Martin apparently can`t go 20 pages without mentioning rape, particularly anal rape. What is that man`s issue? I`d love to be able to finish his series (if he ever finishes it... hint hint) without feeling physically threatened by his books. However, Erikson`s novels have the promise of the same epic scope and cynical take on war and life, which make his books far more three-dimensional than your basic sword-and-sorcery kind of thing. I look forward to seeing where he takes it.
I also, in my apparently hunger for fantasy, read the Lord of The Rings again. I read them once, just before the films came out, hoping that I would enjoy them as much as I had the Hobbit, a staple of my childhood. I remember finding them somewhat boring as an eighteen year old, and although I enjoyed them more this time, I can still see the reasons behind my initial dislike. Tolkien is an incredibly imaginative creator of worlds and languages, and I in no way meant o diminish the epic story he created, but it really is a rather boring series of books. Tolkien spends pages describing his characters traveling across gorgeous panoramas, but when it comes to moments of emotion or character development he falls disappointingly flat. The death of Boromir takes place in less than four sentences, and the battles are over in mere paragraphs. Even the end of the ring itself is described almost off-hand, sans reaction by Frodo, who is, in the book version, barely involved in the actual destruction.
I have to say, though, I find this to be a theme within a certain style of writing (I mean, really, how three dimensional are, say, the Pevensie children?), in which the actual emotions and personalities of the characters are sacrificed for the epic scope of the overall story. The one exception to this in LOTR was Sam, of course. It is really no wonder that he is a favorite character among fans-- not only is he in some ways the true hero of the story, but he is also the only character whose personality and emotions are made available to the audience. Although one could argue that Eowyn shares some of this (as in her arc of looking for death, and her unrequited love for Aragorn), she is, as with most women in Tolkien, eventually returned to her pedestal, another thin, noble woman to be admired. In Sam, though, we see beyond the large scope and into the personal one, which for me, saves the books from simply being a hugely epic, yet cold, history of a time and place.

The Inevitable First Post

Well, I`m back in Japan. I honestly didn`t expect to be back so soon, after having left Hikone only last August. And yet I find myself back in Tokyo for the summer, once again making my way through crowded train stations, alternating between sweating in the humidity and attempting to keep out of the rain. Japanese summers are a weird mix of unbearable heat and endlessly overcast skies, which as a person born and raised in California is eminently confusing. I like it to be hot and sunny or cold and rainy; the idea of sweating in the rain is just so wrong to me.
It`s going on five weeks now that I have been back in the city, or at least it`s outskirts, and I am remembering both all the things I love and hate about Japan. I dreamed about Lawson onigiri for weeks before arriving. I looked forward to karaoke and all-you-can-drink restaurants specials, and being able to smoke in bars. Yet, upon arriving, I was once again reminded of the drawbacks of this country. The expense, of both travel and simply living, and the small but inescapable things that constantly remind you that you are gaijin, never fitting in. Having lived for the last three years in Manhattan, I got so used to the plethora of races, languages, and foods of that city that to return to a place where the only weird thing is yourself is certainly disconcerting. Particularly for me, a blond woman, a size 12 in a land of size 2s, with quite a few tattoos-- suffice to say I stand out more than the average gaijin.
The gaijin thing, as any of you who have visited or lived in Japan know, gets old pretty fast. The old ladies who get up and move if you sit next to them on the train, the schoolchildren who stare and point-- at least in Tokyo it is not as bad as the boonies, but it beings to wear on the self-image after awhile. I don`t think, honestly, that it is nearly so bad for the American men who come to Japan. This is a country of beautiful women, women who wear heels and dresses everyday, who laugh and titter and love to date American men. They are women who are used to a patriarchal society, in which men are placed first, and one`s worth is often based on her viability as a bride. In a country where women are still expected to quit their jobs when they marry, and have their husbands bath and dinner ready when he gets home, and turn a blind eye to his infidelities, it`s really no wonder that many of them turn to foreigners. Alternately, perhaps it is fair to say that many American men long for the type of marriage not usually found in America anymore, a wife who is quiet and obedient and has dinner ready when he gets home.
I have to say, on either side, it frustrates me to no end. I hate the society that creates such purposefully weak women, and particularly the women who are so intensely complacent in such a life, the ones who care nothing for anything beyond make-up, clothing, and landing a rich husband. Although I have to admit, the frustration with the American men in the equation comes for a more intensely personal space. Living in Japan, I always have to remind myself that however long I am there, I will have to put my love life on hold. As a person who doesn`t have any interest in dating Japanese men, since I am not the arm candy that they prefer, and refuse to be a housewife, I am limited in my interest to foreigners, who of course prefer the uber-feminine Japanese women. I know this stems from a place of jealousy, somewhat, at the easy beauty of Japanese women; but it also reminds me of my own American-ness, my need to be independent, to have a career of my own, and I really can`t be angry about my unwillingness to give up my values.
Sign. Japan is always such a confusing place.