MEN WITH MULTIPLE NIPPLES, GIRAFFES GIVING BIRTH, TOMMY LEE JONES SLURPING COFFEE, AND JAMIE FOXX STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: TALES FROM JAPANESE TELEVISION

Jamie Foxx looked confused. Befuddled. Slightly out of place. It's one thing to be promoting your latest flick, The Kingdom, on a morning talk show back in the States, but it's another thing altogether to be sitting in a TV studio somewhere in Tokyo, sandwiched between six hosts, all of them asking questions in a language you don't understand, with only an eager but harried translator to serve as a linguistic go-between.

I felt his pain.

I tune in as much as possible to Japanese TV to brush up on my listening skills -- which need a lot of brushing up on -- and so I was pleasantly surprised to see an English speaking guest on a morning 'wide show', as they're called, and even more pleased that that guest happened to be Jamie Foxx, who is probably the most overall talented entertainer to come along in the past, what, ten years? (Watch his diverse performances in Any Given Sunday and Ali and Ray and Collateral and Dreamgirls, and you'll soon realize that he is a startlingly good, probably great character actor. Catch a DVD of some of his stand-up, and you'll realize he's almost -- almost -- as good a stand-up comedian as Eddie Murphy.)

Alas, all his thespiatic skills were no help in Japan.

He did a good job of it, though. Played along. Answered the questions well, gamely, professionall, humorously. The way it worked, the multitude of Japanese hosts asked questions, and the translator tucked behind his ear translated them into English, and Foxx usually gave a long, rambling answer that made me think he had actually forgotten that the lady hovered beeside him had to eventually translate the response, and I felt bad for her, and she usually only bothered to translate about half of the answer into Japanese, the gist of it. And at the end of the interview, Foxx took a picture of himself and his hosts with a cellphone camera. (I think it was his own, camera, too.)

Much is made back in North America of the ostensible 'wackiness' of Japanese TV -- and, don't get me wrong, there is a shitload of that stuff. But the strangeness is more in the way that it resembles American or Canadian TV, just skewed.

Their talk shows feature celebrity guests numbering to five to twenty, and many times what happens is simply that a feature story is shown, and, in the corner of the screen, we watch the guests' reactions as they, in turn, watch the feature alongside us. Is this because in Japanese society it's important to know what everybody else is feeling and thinking before you can make your own judgement? I'm not sure. But last night there was a segment on a vicious ice storm that hit Montreal and Quebec and Ontario a few years back (with footage that seemed suspiciously like something stolen from a CBC drama), and the guests' screen-within-a-screen reactions were all perfectly, appropriately sympathetic, horrified, relieved. Which encouraged me to feel the same way. Which is maybe the point.

There are also an insane amount of food and travel shows, with guests cooking and tasting and oohing and ahhing. Major and minor celebrities alike also travel around various spots in Japan and the world, pointing out interesting sights, visiting northern Japan or the Middle East, southern Okinawa or the the heart of the Netherlands. The Japanese have an insatiable curiosity about everything, and more important, a desire to constantly improve, to know more, to do better, so there are a multitude of books and TV shows centred around improving one's skills, etiquette, and overall knowledge of the world.

Of course, part of the fun for me is trying to figure out what, exactly, is going on. My listening skills are getting better, but they still have a long way to go. The other night I flipped through a channel that featured a baby in the womb. Ah, maybe it's about abortion, I figured. The scene then cut to the panelists in the studio, who kept repeating a single word, an unfamiliar word, and so I popped open my dictionary and saw that it was the Japanese word for 'evolution'. (Which I have now, of course, forgotten.) So they're talking about evolution. Cool. The baby in the womb, evolution, that all make sense.

But then they brought out a pony-tailed expert in a suit, and he started pointing to various graphs, and then unleashed a photo of a man with three nipples. He pointed carefully at the third nipple, located just above the waist, while the guests oohed an ahhed.

Baby in the womb. A man's third nipple. Evolution. It all makes sense.

However, the next guest threw things for an even bigger loop. A woman in her thirties is introduced, alongside footage of her in the wrestling ring, throwing butch chicks over her shoulders with supreme agility and ease. Ah, a Japanese female wrestler. I got it. Then they cut to her giving birth in the delivery room. Okay, fine. But then they show her and her husband at the zoo, I guess, watching a giraffe, and it soon becomes apparent that this giraffe is giving birth, and so the scene cuts from actual footage of the Japanese female wrestler giving birth to her and her husband watching a giraffe give birth! (Have you ever seen a giraffe give birth? No? Don't.)

Baby in the womb. A man with three nipples. A Japanese female wrestler. The wrestler giving birth. The wrestler watching a giraffe give birth. Sentimental music all the while.

Gotta love it.

There are also programs that feature learning French, learning English, learning Korean, learning German, learning Italian, learning more about haiku, alongside the usual Sunday morning shows about politicians, and, of course, the inevitable Hollywood star whoring themselves out for a bit of extra cash.

A Softbank ad features Brad Pitt outside of, well, I don't know -- an office? a museum? -- arguing with somebody on the phone while the camera circles around him. We can see him mouth: `Baby, I love you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.` He grows steadily more exasperated before hanging up and shoving the phone into the hands of a befuddled businessman walking the other way. Hmmm.

There's also one featuring Tommy Lee Jones (!) sitting on an airplane next to Dave Spector, an American TV commentator who's lived in Japan for thirty years and speaks freakishly good Japanese. I can't quite figure this one out. Tommy Lee Jones is looking grimly out the window. (Come to think of it, does he ever look anything but grim?) Dave Spector is cheerfully saying...something. Next they're in Tokyo, while Jones drinks coffee from a can and Dave Spector and a stewardness look on happily beside him.

The moral of the story is: If you're ever bored in Japan, flick on the tube. At the very least, you'll get to see Jamie Fox or Brad Pitt in cultural, linguistic limbo. At the very most, you just might be lucy enough to see a giraffe give birth.

Which is not such a bad way to start a morning, is it?

EVERYTHING ANEW AGAIN

Just a quick note to let everyone, all three of you, know that I'm alive, and well, and living in Japan, and bopping around various universities in the Tokyo area, checking on teachers, earning my keep, and the other day I happened to be at a women's university, which still exist in this country, and I was in a cafeteria with three hundred twenty-year old Japanese females, and one pasty-white Canadian male, that male being me, and I went to get a hot chocoalte from the vending machine, and I was actually feeling a little bit jaded, having been familiar with Japan since before Y2K, since most of these students were in elementary school, and I approached the vending machine, and I noticed that there was a digital key pad where I could conveniently place my order, and a lovely, digitized, smoothly synthetic version of Sonny and Cher's classic 'I Got You Babe' was pleasantly pumping out of the vending machine's speakers, and, the piece de resistance, hanging by a thread, literally, to the side of the contraption was a delicately designed, carefully crafted, covered in plastic, menu.

Let me repeat this, for it bears repeating:

The vending machine, which distributes hot drinks, had a touchpad screen. It played Sonny and Cher from its speakers. And it offered an actual, physical, tactile, honest-to-god menu for me to flip through before my purchase.

How could I have ever thought I could become cynical about Japan?

ON MY MIND

What's on my mind:


WHERE THE TIME WINDS BLOW

A 1981 science-fiction novel by Robert Holdstock, picked up by me for about forty cents at a used-bookstore here in Baguio. The story centres around a group of cosmic explorers in the far future (is there any other kind?) on a distant planet (is there any other kind?) who regularly and routinely find themselves evading giant, hurricane-like windstorms that just happen to leave debris, artifacts, dead aliens, etc., from either the past or the future. Time winds, in other words.

Kind of a cool idea. Things from the past pop up in the present. Or stuff from the future has been blown back. And there's an old man who is routinely seen popping in and out of time at the edges of this cosmic desert, and he may (or may not be) the future self of one of the novel's protagonists.

Good fun. I love time-travel stories, and this one has a fresh take on a tired genre. (Even though the book was published when I was in Grade 2, I'm still considering it 'fresh', because I'm reading it for the first time.)

I have my own ideas about a time-travel type story that I'm considering writing, which may dovetail nicely with a ghost-story type story that I've had rattling around inside of my head for a good five years. I like the leeway fantasty and sf gives your imagination. Anything goes, as long as it's halfway plausible and completely entertaining.

1408

This Stephen King thriller just left the theatres here, and I found it a nice, nifty throwback to THE TWILIGHT ZONE. Somebody described it as 'the mini-bar version of THE SHINING', which is as good a description as any, given that John Cusack spends most of the movie holed up in a single hotel room, fighting off ghosts and insanity and his own dark demons.

It's been awhile since I've seen a genuinely creepy movie, and this was it. With an ending that lingers.

JOSEPH ESTRADA

He's the former president of the Philippines who was finally sentenced to life in prison yesterday, after six years of court delays. A former famous B-movie star, he was elected president and then promptly proceeded to plunder the national banks for all they were worth.

A lot of the public, mostly the poor, seem to love him, mostly because he was an action star who promoted himself as a 'man of the people', but plunder's plunder, me thinks. He remids me of ousted Prime Minister Thaksin of Thailand -- loved by the poor because he throws them scraps every now and then, but disdained by the urban elite, who know corruption when they see it.

JAPAN

Back to Japan next Wednesday. (I'll take the night bus from Baguio to Manila on Tuesday around 11:50 p.m.) Once safely nestled in Nippon, I'll be living in a city whose exact name I forget -- never a good sign. But I think I'm pretty sure which train line it's on -- always a good sign. I'll be working as a 'cover instructor', filling in for teachers who get sick, or observing other teachers teach and giving them advice. Or replacing teachers who get fired (like I did last semester). So I could end up teaching at one university for three months, or bopping between schools and spying on other teachers anywhere and everywhere for three months. Time will tell.

CANCER

Second opinions being sought on the latest MRI. Another round of chemo possibly in the near future -- or possibly not. Being an observer, a spectator to the whole thing is frustrating beyond measure, but so it goes. Almost two years (and counting), so every day is something to be celebrated. Still. Let's just hope our genius medical minds come up with a cure pretty damn soon for this dreadful disease, right?

BEING LEFT-HANDED

I thought about it yesterday for no reason whatsoever: How often am I aware of my left-handedness? And I realized: Not very often. Once, twice a month? Usually when I spot an actor holding a gun with their left hand (Bruce Willis, in every action movie he's ever made), or I catch an actress unconvincingly attempt to portray a right-hander (the only example being Julia Roberts -- a famous lefty -- in Erin Brockovich signing a form on a clipboard handed to her by the delivery man, and she signs the sheet with her right hand, because I'm assuming the real-life Brockovich was a righty, but she holds the clipboard in such a way that she's shielding us from seeing her hand signing the paper, because it probably looked all awkward on her first two or three attempts, so the director, Steven Soderbergh, probably asked her to tilt the clipboard in such a way so that the audience wouldn't see her hand too much, and I'm such a loser with so much time on my hands that I spotted her deception right away and screamed: "Bullshit! You're a lefty trying to be a righty!" Okay, I didn't scream it, but I thought it...)

BEING THIRTEEN

There's a thirteen year old in the house, so I'm reminded of how far I've come and how soon it's all passed. A good age, thirteen is. Still a little bit of the kid left in you. Adolescence not completely coming down on you. Things are fresh. Still okay to sing goofy songs at the top of your lungs, and nobody's going to call you on it.

THE BLIND MAN ON THE STREET

There's an old and dirty and poor little man who sits on the sidewalk outside of this internet cafe, day after day, month after month year after year. His arm extends upwards in a creaky position, his fingers gnarled, his palm open. He might not be blind, actually, but his eyes are always closed, and his face is often grimaced, and he's been there for as long as I've been here, and, I'm told, for the twenty years before that, too.

NERDS

They have them here in the Philippines, too --not the geeky people like me, no, but those tiny, fruity candies we used to gobble as kids. Haven't tried any yet, though I'm tempted. I'm worried that the inevitable sugar rush would send me skyrocketing back to the past in a flash.

A time wind would pick me up and hurl me back and I might never be able to find my way back here, to this moment in time, to this place. I'd be lost in the past, wondering if everything after thirteen was nothing more than a sugar-fuelled dream, sweet and tangy, but distant, in a haze.

CLUMSY BUT CURIOUS

I recently read of a fifty or sixty year old Japanese woman who, fearing that her brain was getting a little lazy, her outlook on life a trifle static, decided to throw caution to the wind and move to Moscow. She's been there for over ten years now, teaching ikebana -- the art of Japanese flower arranging -- to eager, energetic Russians. (Or cold and frigid Muscovites, looking for a place to come out of the cold. One of the two, at any rate.)

Part of the reason why I keep studying Japanese, no matter what country I'm in, not matter how meager my progress, is that I, too, worry about my brain becoming dull. Ineffective. Like a razor that has long lost its sharp and ragged lustre. They say that writing and reading are great for the mind, and reading and writing in a foreign language is even better, especially when that language is Japanese, composed of odd and engimatic picture-shaped symbols that appear more artistic than linguistic. If I keep studying, poking away, plodding along, eventually comprehension will follow. Not complete, no, but my comprehension of English is not complete, either. (Having Japanese students ask me the meaning of certain English medical words only confirms this.) The best I can hope to do is refine my English ability by reading and writing in my native tongue, and hope to harness a teensy weensy bit of Japanese, because the more I learn, the more I comprehend, and the more I comprehend, the better I feel. The larger I feel.

The irony, of course, is that part of the reason why I meander my through the endless intricacies of the Nihongo language is that I feel myself becoming too self-satisfied with English itself. Having been a fairly steady readyer for almost twenty years now, a certain, well, smugness has settled in. Almost arrogance, you could say. I know the authors I like; I know the styles I like. I choose my books accordingly. Which, in and of itself, reveals a certain presumptuousness: How can I, just past thirty, assume to know what is and what isn't pristine and refined in the written word of the English world?

And that's the thing: The older we get, the more self-satisfied we become. I'm more and more amazed at people (myself absolutely included) who are convinced about the rightness, the goodness, the overall completeness of whatever it is that they believe. Whether it comes to art or sports or politics or science, there is something within each and every one of us that affirms the validity of each of our individual opinions. We all see the word through different eyes, and usually assume that our eyes are the most perceptive eyes.

Yet there's a double irony involved, I think, in that the older we get the more static and certain our viewpoints become, and yet at the same time, deep down, deep inside, we realize that we don't know much at all. If anything. So we have to overcompensate by recklessly and ruthlessly defending that which we do believe in, whether it's the potency of a particular political candidate or which burger chain produces the best hamburgers. (I vote for Harvey's, a Canadian original.)

So by studying Japanese, I admit, daily, that I don't, know, shit. And by admitting that, I'm allowing myself to learn a little bit more, for a little while longer. Something has been gained; something has been added.

Being a perpetual beginner, an unapolegetic amateur, ensures that I will always have something to shoot for. And being clumsy but curious is surely the most we can hope for out of life.

And, given that Blogger tells me that this is my 500th clumsy but curious blog entry, many thanks to those desperate souls who have read all (or one!) of them.

I don't know if I have another 500 in me, but I'm fairly certain I have at least another, and yet another, and perhaps, for the moment, that's enough.

MY TWO (CANADIAN) CENTS ON IRAQ

Here's what I don't get about George W. Bush's current rationale for the ongoing carnage in Iraq.

Essentially, Dubya is arguing that if we don't stop them over there (meaning Iraq), the terrorists will continue the fight over here (meaning America.)

Sounds good, right? We kill each and every terrorist in Iraq, not to mention Afghanistan (which is an unlikely, almost ludicrous prospect in the first place), and then they won't be able to blow us up in our own homeland.

Fine. But this is the thing. The terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan don't have passports.

I may sound flippant, but I'm serious.

Who bombed the World Trade Center? Sixteen middle-class dudes from Saudi Arabia. How were they able to travel around Europe and end up in America in the first place? Because they had passports.

The terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan are not middle-class. They are not doctors. They are not lawyers. They are not even teachers. They are desperately poor and hiding in the hills. I'm not saying that to justify their actions; I'm saying that to point out the fact that they don't have passports, and they won't be able to get passports, ever, and so they won't be able to get on the planes that would take them to the United States to continue the carnage.

Granted, they may have powerful friends who do have passports, but I don't think anybody from the Iraqi National Congress is willing to blow themselves up on the streets of downtown Baltimore. They've got enough problems in their own country without wanting to seek vengeance on grocers in Vermont. (Or wherever.)

Who was behind the recent, attempted attacks in Scotland and England? Middle-class doctors from India with a distorted theological rationale for their own violent, destructive actions. All of whom, it goes without saying, had passports.

What's amazing to me is that this fact hasn't been remarked upon more often (if at all) in what passes for the mainstream media. From Bush's words, you would think that the only thing that's stopping these terrorists from hopping on the first flight to Hartford is the price of a plane ticket. They ain't going anywhere, these terrorists, the one in Iraq. I have no doubt that there will be more terror attacks attempted in Europe and the United States, but they will only be done by middle-class folks with a twisted ideology and an axe to grind and, you guessed it, a passport.

One more thing: Besides Bush's absolute inane comparison of Iraq to Vietnam in the past few weeks, arguing that the States should stay until forever and a day and win this war that will most likely be generational, if not multi-generational, the other thing I can't get my head around is the fact that the American government and American media are somewhat naive about the fact that they just want to leave now, while the getting's good, and that the Iraqis will somehow be able to handle things on their own.

Now, I don't think it's good to stay, and I don't think it's good to leave; I think the U.S. is screwed four ways from Friday either way, frankly. (And yes, I don't quite know what that last phrase means either, but it sounds kind of neat.) I don't what the fuck to do there.

But it seems to me a lot of American poliicians' arguments boil down to: "Look, we invaded your country and started a war that you didn't want and didn't ask for, with no plan for what we would do once we were actually in control, and we have been killing you and your people for the past, what, four or five years, with our motives changing like clockwork every year-and-a-half or so from 'disable the weapons of mass destruction' to 'spread democracy in the Middle East' to 'stop them over here before they come back home'. We have the most powerful, advanced, high-tech army in the history of the planet, and yet we are getting are our asses completely wiped by a bunch of medieval religious nuts, poorer than dirt, who totally tear down our choppers and tanks using home-made bombs the size of a six-pack. We've fought for a few years, and we can't beat them, just like we couldn't defeat dirt-poor Vietnamese peasants a quarter of a century ago, so what are we going to do? We're going to pull out completely, and let you, the Iraqi army, take care of it, even though you are completely incompetent, corrupt, understaffed, underfunded, and devoid of adequate weapons. As I said, we are the most powerful country in the world, but we couldn't make much headway here, but you guys, you guys with your six-shooters and twenty-dollar-a-month wages will, I'm sure, be able to defeat the insurgents. After all, Allah is on your side. Good luck!"

An oversimplification, but I think the reality is that the United States is going to have to somehow figure out a way to stay for a little while longer (meaning years, not months), or else Iraq itself will collapse in on itself in the very near future with one gigantic whoosh of dust and air and blood and bones.

What I think will most likely happen is that Bush, with only one year and change left in his mandate, will keep most of the troops there, hand it all over to his successor, and then, five, ten years from now, when the troop pull out actually happens, and Iraq remains a devastated, distorted mess, will be able to point out comfortably from his couch at Kennebunkport that things would have been just hunk-dory if everybody had just stayed a little bit longer, and not been so wussy about the whole thing. (The scary thing is that I'm actually kind of agreeing with Bush about staying, but disagreeing with how he handled the whole thing to begin with, and how he will justify it to historians later. Either way, I seem to be siding ideologically on the outcome with Bush. Hmmm. Don't tell anyone.)

The circumstances are completely different, but after living in Cambodia for years, and seeing what a mess that country still is (though getting better -- anything after genocide is a step or a staircase or an elevator up, obviously) I think it's fair to say that Iraq will still be a poor, fragile, massively fucked-up nation when I hit the big 5-0. The best we can hope for, as in Cambodia, is that the war will have stopped, peace will have come, the schools will have lighting, and books, and desks, and democracy, corrupt and misshapen, but democracy nevertheless, will have a solid grounding. There will still be disease and unemployment and dirty water and dirty politicians, but people will be able to stroll the streets of Baghdad without the fear of bombs blowing them out of the markets. That's what the aim should be.

There.

That's my two cents, for what it's worth.

(And that's two Canadian cents, so my intellectual value has just really depreciated...)

FIXTURES

Standing in line outside of the Japanese Embassy in Manila last week, I tried to avert my eyes away from the skinny, slightly-dirty, probably middle-aged Filipino man trying to sell me a bottle of water, or a Coke, or an iced tea, but it was hard to do, because he was persistent, and constant. (I'm not proud to say that 'I tried to avert my eyes', but it's the truth. If you smile and shake your head, you feel kind of stupid, because he knows that you have more money than he does, and your not buying a drink is a not-so-subtle way of denying him some much-needed coin, so the smile comes across as possibly patronizing and definitely hypocritical, because what foreigner can't afford a bottle of water? But looking away doesn't help much either, because he constantly walked to and fro past the front of the embassy, so it wasn't like I could avoid the dude. Either way, as a foreigner, in a poor place, you feel kind of stupid.)

I then suddenly realized that I recognized the guy. From last year. From this same place, at this same spot, in front of the Japanese Embassy on Roxas Boulevard. While I had been to Japan and back again (and Japan and back again) in the ensuing year, he had been there, in that place, walking to and fro. Trying to sell water. Some Coke. Possibly an Iced tea. Probably ten, twelve hours a day.

Going back and forth from place to place these past few years, I find myself remembering, more and more, the people who work at the places I frequent. The privilege of jetting between countries has made me realize that most people stay rooted in place. So my return to Toronto inevitably finds me, at some point, walking into the Indigo book superstore at Yonge and Bay, and, over a span of three, four, five years, I've grown to recognize some of the staff. The pudgy man in his mid-forties with the shock of white hair quietly shelving books and asking if I need any help. The balding cashier with the dark goatee -- possibly a manager by now? -- in his early thirties who often looks like he would rather be anywhere but there, in that exact place, at the front of the store, serving up customer after customer, tallying up books, placing books in bags, checking the computer for the location of the latest Grisham.

They are fixtures, these people are. I go away and they are still there.

Sometimes I wonder: "Are they happy? Is this where they want to be? Do they dream golden beaches and crimson suns, of turquoise water and hammocks swaying them gently to sleep in the late-afternoon breeze?"

Maybe yes. Maybe no. Maybe they are exactly where they want to be. Maybe that's why they've stayed.

And then there's the chubby little man in his early sixties who runs the snack counter at the Yonge and Bloor subway. (Whether it's in the North/South/East/West direction, I can't remember.) He's been there since I first headed out to the big bad city of Toronto to attend York University in the fall of 1994, best as I can recall. Always looking tired, and stressed, and bored, and somewhat bloated. Dark, dense rings under his eyes, like soot-stained fingerprints poked in dough. Probably an immigrant. (Not such a tough call, given that Toronto is now composed of fifty percent immigrants.) Sitting there, day after day after day, selling gum, candy, magazines. Watching the commuters be so busy while he stays so still.

And then there's Japan, where I lived for four years in the past and have returned (in two month intervals) twice in the past year, and I've been somewhat startled to see some of the same familiar faces wandering around the train station where I used to teach. I was gone for four years, and there they are, still there, Americans or Canadians, whose names I never learned but whose faces I never realized I hadn't forgotten.

Of course, I've also been on the other side, so to speak. Coming back to Baguio after a few months away, clerks at the Internet cafes remember my name. Korean students who I taught last winter have returned for the summer session and are somewhat surprised to see that I'm still here. I formed a little piece of their mental picture of the Philippines, and to see me again, to be taught by me again, provides a little piece of stability in an otherwise ever-changing world.

We like to form little mental-slots in our minds, ways of understanding different places and different times in our lives, markers of the journey, and we like to fill those slots with the people we met along the way. Seeing them there, in their place, allows us to believe that what is in flux might possibly stay stable. If only for a moment, at least, for the time it takes to buy a magazine before hopping on the subway.

I have gone but they are still here, and when I come back again, someday soon, or five or ten years from now, perhaps I will see them again. And the world will thus make sense.

That's what I think, anyways.

But the man in front of the Japanese Embassy, the one trying to sell me some water, is most likely thinking of the sun, and its heat, and his feet, and their weariness, and his children, and their hunger.

For that moment, he needs to be nowhere but where he is.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Every man has his own patch of earth to cultivate. What's important is that he dig deep."


-- Jose Saramago,
Portuguese novelist