Wednesday, February 2^nd-Thursday, February 3^rd: Come, gentle night bus, come, loving, black-brow'd night bus…

In efforts to reach Tokyo in an economic fashion for my Fulbright mid-year conference, my wonderful gal pal Kavitha and I chose the infamous “night bus” in all its regalia to take us to our destination. Little did we realize that with the upcoming akiyasumi, or the two-month long spring break most colleges had sprung on its students, we were surrounded in Kyoto Station by hopped-up teens sporting the latest 4 inch boots, gelled hair with snowboards and Louis Vuitton purses in tow.

The night bus is something of a rather eponymous variable in Japanese culture. Akin to a Greyhound in the states, we must remember that the Japanese people are much shorter than their American counterparts, meaning that two lovely 5 foot 9 inch women can barely squeeze into seats that barely accommodate the thousands of 4 foot 10 inch ladies that frequently use these buses. With my heels on, I literally am double the size of many Japanese woman, creating a sort of albino Bigfoot anomaly that has more than once been cause for havoc and impromptu photo shoots. Oh yes, the words, “mite” or “look!” are emphatically shouted when I walk by just so avid onlookers can take in the frightening giantess that happens to grace the presence of many Kansai inhabitants. Thank God we were headed to Tokyo, where 1 in 10 residents marries a foreigner, and therefore is used to this strange spectacle!

Unfortunately, Kavitha and I were so ecstatic at the end of classes and kanji quizzes that we did not realize how early our bus would land in the phantasmagorical land of Tokyo. At 6:17 A.M. we were shortly shoved off our night bus and forced to reckon with the fact that we were in the middle of Tokyo for almost an entire day before we could check in to our hostel. But fear not, Starbucks was to the rescue! As your prototypical gaijin, we headed to the nearest over-priced coffee joint and relished in the free, heated environment of mass globalization for over three (yes, count ‘em three) hours until the stores in the glamorous Ginza opened for our perusal. Just imagine seeing two foreigners, hopped up on caffeine with no sleep and no showers for twenty-four hours gossiping over the latest news and excitedly pouring over the vast expanse of consumerism that is Ginza, and you’ll realize why few Japanese patrons actually chose to sit next to us at the crowded Starbucks….folks, this was a desperate situation!

Finally we decided to lug our luggage to the historic Asakasa where our hostel had been arranged. After a forty minute train ride, half an hour of searching, ten minutes of phone calls, and two minutes of Kristin throwing down her gargantuan suitcase in the middle of the street and crying for desperate help did we find the “luxurious” Khaosan Hostel. Imagine a prison cell…now imagine sharing a prison cell, one shower an sinks with no running water with 25 other people….that was the loveliness of our hostel. Despite its low price of $20 a night and free drink tickets to the nearby (20 minutes) bar, the place had no walls, little heat and foreigners that had been living there for months. If this was hell, we were certainly in its 9^th ring!

But, other Fulbrighters were quick to rescue our despair. After a quick shower and cat nap, we met up with friends and found a lovely restaurant in the nearby shopping district of Ueno, where we shared our tales of research and adventure for the past five months. With fabulous $3 glasses of wine, spectacular Italian-Japanese cuisine, and enough laughs to last us years over, we realized the close ties that we had formed with one another as we wined and dined one another. After all, when in Japan, do as the Japanese do, which means you must simply embrace your surroundings and let your friends melt away your fatigue and hunger with laughter and kinship!

February 1st, 2006: Get your parkas: truthiness is the new black!

As I prepare for my trip to Tokyo, in great anticipation of joining my fellow Fulbrighters for our mid-year conference a melange of feelings has washed over me. Jumping on my suitcase, cramming in warm sweaters for our trip up to Hokkaido, the Northernmost island of Japan, to partake in the winter festival celebrations, sending off the last of letters and packages, I realize that in the midst of my life in Japan, something extremely significant has happened, and it almost slipped me by...

Hell, folks, has frozen over.

What? When did it happen? It started when truthiness, that word that defines, as the thoughful Stephen Colbert poignantly put it, the feeling in your gut rather than anything that can be claimed as fact, took precedence over anything concrete. Sure, James Frey fell to a million little pieces, Oprah supported, flip-flopped and then yelled. The Senate droned on and on and on about Alito, Bush wiretapped us all to figure out who's dating who and why....and now, W has seen the light...

The U.S.? Addicted to oil? Gosh, where have I been for the past 23 years...I must have been living under a rock in the Arctic Refuge...or hiding in my ginormous pimped out H2.

Or maybe, just maybe I was protesting for the freedom that all women want: the right to have men butt out of my reproductive private life and leave the abortion debate to my own choosing, rather than Sammy becoming the deciding factor.

Gosh, I'm gone for five months, and the country goes to pot (actually, it would of, but the Supreme Court ruled that we can't do that medically any more without fear of retribution).

So, I'll just put on my parka and ice skate over to Tokyo, where I am amicably joined by optimists, bright-eyed brilliant minds who still believe that the world can be saved. And we are going to do it, through medicine, education, human rights, economics, literature...and never give up, no matter how low our approval numbers drop, how often we are called traitors for questioning fundamental beliefs and no longer will we sit idly by and let our nation be destroyed by pundits.

I left America to study human rights....I never thought that the best place to do so would be right where I started.

Love,
An [extremely frustrated] American in Japan!