Home sweet Japanese home

There's a lot you miss when confined to your apartment.

The sights, sounds, and smells of the world around you somehow seem less vivid when experienced through six inches of drywall and insulation.  Funny how that happens.  Alas, still confined to my apartment due to still being on the rehab from surgery, cabin fever is starting to set in.  The occasional stroll pitiful hobble to the doctor's office at 6PM sharp every day leaves very little time for the sights and sounds.  Smells are right out.

Indeed, there is a lot to miss about my neighborhood, and neighborhoods in Japan.  Whereas life in the suburbs is a quiet, sterile thing, Japanese neighborhoods throb with activity--the kind of throbbing that leaves me feeling uncomfortable with my masculinity.  My apartment is situated on a red brick road.  Suitable for a Kansan; we feel at home within close proximity of a brick road of any primary color.  I didn't choose this place--my company did--and I can't help but feel that whoever made the decision to pick the apartment within spitting distance of a McDonald's and a fried chicken stand did so largely due to my nationality.

Not that I'm complaining.  If stereotypes like this worked out in my favor more often, I'm sure a lot less people would ask to see me dance at parties.  It's not pretty.  Like a two-headed snake on mescaline.  Little kicks.

But beneath the quiet exterior lies an unprecedented level of diversity, particularly for a 99% ethnically homogenous society.  Here I've met Australian, Canadian, American, Nepali, Kazakhstani, Ghanan (sic?), Indian, Korean, and Chinese people all sharing the same place.  And Japanese, of course.

Whereas most American suburbs meditate in silence and the quiet purr of traffic, Japanese neighborhoods are a rich blend of glorious noise.  The sound of friends meeting and striking up a conversation, people walking their dogs, the neighborhood butcher calling out the price of his latest freshly dissected carcass, children actually playing outside.  And, the ebb and flow of karmic balance being what it is, the inglorious din of trucks blaring an ungodly wail from their speakers as they hawk steamed sweet potatoes, the constant reminder of the bargain price of your rent vis-a-vis your neighbor's awful taste in house techno penetrating the wall and your skull at three in the morning.  The neighbor's dog which doesn't bark so much as it screams a horrific wail like a velociraptor being strangled.  And I think my upstairs neighbor devotes the hours of 8PM to 2AM to fucking his girlfriend, practicing judo, moving furniture, and playing Dance Dance Revolution.  At the same time.

Campaign season is the worst for those who like to sleep in.  Whereas in the US, campaigning is done by broadcast or by those quaint signs seemingly designed to both be obnoxious and lower your property value, Japanese campaigning is obnoxious in a much louder, more obtrusive way.  Every morning, at 9 AM, onward come the campaign trucks.  Tiny, plodding things with megaphones heaped on the back in the shape of an oversized pine-cone belting empty promises through the morning air.  Sometimes they even come back the morning after election day.

Nobody knows why.

Yes, neighborhood life is woven of ups, downs, and often the inexplicable.  The local ceremony where a bunch of old dudes hoist portable shrines on their shoulders and parade around the city circuit for hours on end, chanting as they bear their burden.  The myriad of smells and promises of flavors to come beckoning from every small restaurant along the humble red brick road.  My God damn judo-practicing, DDR-addict, porn-star, piano-moving upstairs neighbor.  And I count myself lucky to experience it.

Except my neighbor.  Fuck that guy.