Things I won't: Insulation

Cold in the winter, hot in the summer.  It's the story of life in the 'Pan, indoors and out.  Japanese are peculiar in that they are quick to brag that Japan is a country with four seasons, often going so far as to doubt anyone else claims their own country can boast the same.  At first I was puzzled as to why any culture would brag about something so trivial; akin to Foot Locker hanging a sign out front announcing "OUR SHOES HAVE LACES!"

But, like Squanto, many summers have I seen, and wiser am I for it.  I also have smallpox.

And after all this time, I've finally discovered the rea reason Japanese brag on their country offering four seasons: because indoors in Japan, there are only two.  I call them "Frigid" and "Ballsy."

Frigid is, as the name might suggest, a rush of arctic hospitality greeting you at the door after a long day at work. A nutsack-shriveling walk from bed to the bathroom at 3AM.  A bleak, hollow presence that hangs like a nightmare, or perhaps that girl in The Sixth Sense who threw up a mouthful of Jif, stealing away any trace of warmth your space heater bravely putters into the room.

Ballsy, is, again as the name might suggest, akin to spending six months in the jock strap of the world's least hygienic Yokozuna.  Hot.  Humid.  Vinegary. 

Miserable.

The existence of both can be attributed to a common source which can be found in the title of this entry and cannot be found anywhere else in this country with "four" seasons: insulation.

It wouldn't be so bad if the heating and air conditioning units weren't so God damn puny, while simultaneously being outrageously expensive.  Or if people in Japan thought "central air" was something other than an airline.

But alas, no.

You know those rice-paper sliding walls in The Last Samurai or actually good movies set in Japan?  That's apparently as far as wall technology ever got here.  Yeah, it might look like drywall, but it's about as good at blocking out sound or the elements as a mosquito net or similarly bad object at those things.

Given its utter inability to actually, you know, insulate your home from extreme heat and cold, you'd think that, at the very least, the walls of your apartment might afford the occupant a bare minimum of peace and privacy. Again, no.  Through those flimsy walls, you can hear, in crystal-clarity, your neighbor watching a bunch of washed-up, talentless failures scream and flail uselessly in front of a couple hundred slack-jawed idiots... but enough about the Hanshin Tigers.  In all seriousness, they should figure out how to make headphones out of this material--audiophiles would eat it up.  Because a food source is yet another thing walls in Japan are better at being than walls.

I'll be candid: I've lived in extreme temperatures before.  I lived on the infamous "heat or eat" budget in college.  In the summers, the air was off. In the winters, the heat was set to a balmy 55F, just enough to keep the pipes from bursting. So I've been through the shit.  While my minimum-wage part-time job was certainly good for stealing food and putting pounds on my waist, my paychecks were stretched a little too thin for luxuries such as heating, air conditioning, or maintaining a climate capable of sustaining life.  My bed wasn't so much "where I slept" as it was "the most comfortable place to succumb to heatstroke" or "the least troubling place for my loved ones to discover my frozen corpse, if tomorrow I do not wake up."  None of it even comes close to the two-season tag-team that comprise a year in the 'Pan.  Allow me to introduce our champions:

The Two Seasons:
Frigid
Weighing in at six months even and hailing from October to April, the Cold-and-Flu from Tohoku... FRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGID!

This one's a son-of-a-bitch.  It's bad enough that it gets dark around 5PM and freezing drizzle is about as common as takoyaki stands in Kansai (writers note: takoyaki stands are very common in Kansai), but that's actually the good part!  It's once you go home and settle in for the long night ahead that the shit really starts.

The lack of insulation in the walls means that the cold outside devours any semblance of ambient heat down to the last degree.  Every night I'd come home, throw on some sweats, then throw on another set.  Then, time for dinner: a nightly ritual of heating up some convenience store bento in the microwave and racing thermodynamics to see who could ruin my meal worse as I alternated between stuffing piping-hot noodles down my throat and frantically chugging the nearest liquid available before the burns go from "severe" to "life-threatening." As a lifestyle, it totally sucked. As a performance art, however, my perfected routine was a stunning display of raw willpower and esophageal elasticity that would put former World Champion Hot Dog Fellationist Kobayashi to shame.

After that, a long night of watching videos and surfing the Internet, occasionally interrupted by plunging my hands down my pants.

To warm them up.

(because friction produces heat)

Ballsy
From May to September, also weighting in at six months, the Sauna from Okinawa, BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALL-SYYYYYY!

I saved the worst for last.  And boy, is it ever.

As bad as spending the night in an ice box is, at least you can save yourself some coin by leaving the refrigerator unplugged (seriously).  And if you don't mind the bulk, you can always throw on another layer of sweats.  But when the weather gets hot enough to discover the adhesive properties of scrota (that's the plural of scrotum), there are only so many layers you can take off.

Nowhere was this problem more evident than when I attempted to use the small air-conditioning unit that was provided in my first apartment in Osaka which, seemingly in accordance with the laws of douchebaggery, regarded having an automatic three-hour kill-switch as a "feature." That you could never turn off.

See the problem here?

Again, the problem boiled (see what I did there?) down to a lack of insulation (I'll get to that later).  During the day, I could kick the thing on when I got tired of sitting naked in the dark surrounded by a tepid pool of my own sweat, and, once the thing had an opportunity to rev up, it could be fairly comfortable--dare I say, even pleasant--in my room.  Once the kill switch hit, if my reflexes were good enough that day, I could just turn it right back on before all the cool air could rush out through the useless, useless walls (I'm seriously talking seconds here).

The ladies don't call me "Quick Draw" for nothing.

I remember one summer I got up to take a particularly influential aristocrat (a mighty duke, if you will).  Couldn't have been gone more than five minutes, but in the time I was gone, the automatic shutoff kicked in and my room's coolness disappeared faster than acid-wash jeans.

Perhaps I wouldn't have been as frustrated if I had been better rested.  But alas, the three-hour limit ensured only three hours and one minute of uninterrupted shut-eye every night.

My fellow 'Mericans, you don't know how good you've got it.

And so Japan, sucks to your (lack of) insulation.  And your two seasons, too!

Things I'll miss: the arcades

There you sit, surrounded on all sides by sweaty, smoking, middle-aged Japanese businessmen, furiously flapping away at their joysticks, paying 100 yen a pop for the privilege.  Kinda makes you wish you were at the arcade.

Japan's arcade (or "game center," for the culturally initiated) scene is unlike anything else in the word--particularly the American arcade scene.  Crowds pack the smoky corridors after working hours to let off steam (you can tell it's steam because of how heavy the air gets in there).  Fighting games, particularly, are the altar of choice in this geek mecca.  The city of Akihabara, near my old apartment in Tokyo, plays host to the upper one percentile of the upper one percentile of fighting gamers in the world.  Tekken, Virtua Fighter, any flavor of Street Fighter.  Pick your poison, drop in your coins, and marvel at how quickly the money goes.

A number of theories have been tossed around these humble Internets of ours, of varying validity, as to why the Japanese arcade scene is so lively--and why its members seem to crush ours in virtually any competitive fighting game in international competition.  That "they are robots" is, in particular, a strong contender, given the absence of seemingly any capacity for love or, indeed, emotion of any kind--as well as anything resembling a soul.  However, I find that there may yet be a better theory: a combination of influencing factors to explain Japan's dominance on the sticks.

1.  It costs a buck to play
Quick: when was the last time you got really, really pissed off the last time you burnt toast?  Or mac and cheese?  Or am I the only asshole that fucks up noodles and yellow powder?

Now how pissed would you be if you fucked up the turkey on Thanksgiving?  Or accidentally smashed all your Easter Eggs?  Or dropped the dinner you just made for your hot date on the floor, and knew she was only coming as a favor for a friend, and you really liked this girl and this was your one big chance to impress her and now you look like a clumsy idiot and she says she's okay with pizza but you know she's just counting down the minutes until she can say she has to leave and you're stuck sitting in the dark alone at 2 in the morning jerking off to the models on the Home Shopping Network because you forgot to pay your cable bill?

Why the difference in attitudes?  In both cases, it's just food, right?  But in the latter situation, there's more: the investment of effort and money.

If you've ever been in a Japanese arcade, you know how quickly you can burn through a crisp 1000 yen note (or more).  Japanese gamers invest anywhere from two to four times as much cash into a single play at the machine.  Meaning half to a quarter of the margin of error.  With each game holding considerably higher value than the American equivalent, the incentive to make that value last rises accordingly.

2.  Gamer ID cards
While a fairly recent introduction in the American gaming lexicon, the idea of BP (or "battle points") tracking a player's progress is still, in America, restricted to XBox Live or Playstation Network.  In Japan, however, players can buy a card for 500 yen that carries their alias and can be inserted into any machine for its respective game.  This gives each game an additional intangible value--in addition to a monetary one.  With each win, a player's BP climbs--or falls with a loss.

This plays not only on the competitive psyche of the average fighting gamer, but the hoarding and collecting instinct of the nation that gave us "Gotta Catch 'Em All."

3.  A gaming commuter culture
In the US, it's really not that cool to be a gamer.  In spite of the strides made by gaming companies and consoles this generation--largely thanks to the Wii--there's still a stigma attached to adult gamers that falls somewhere between "30-year-old bed-wetter" and "registered sex offender."  In Japan, the stigma... doesn't exist.

For some reason, it's just not that big a deal

Not that there's a wholesale embracing of obsessive gamers or gaming, but rather a tacit acknowledgement of gaming as an acceptable pastime.  And in a country where an hour-long train commute to work is on the lower end of the spectrum, pastimes are at a premium.  On any given train ride, you're bound to see a junior high-schooler plugging away at Monster Hunter, flanked by a housewife studying English on her DS and a businessman grinding a few levels in Dragon Quest IX on his.

4.  The abundance of novelty

Japan is a nation founded on novelty, or so said the placard at the feet of the 59-foot-tall robot statue in Odaiba.

Suddenly, fessing up to spending last weekend playing Fallout 3 doesn't seem so geeky

The concept of "flavor of the month" is a concept taken to dizzying new heights in the 'Pan (more on that in a later installment), and the arcade is no exception.  When you think of the American arcade scene, what do you picture?  A couple light-gun shooters, a couple shmups, maybe a racing game.  And a whole lot of cobwebs.

In Japan?

A pirate ship shooter--complete with an actual pirate ship you sit in that rocks with the tide and cannon-fire.

A Harley-Davidson racer with a life-size hog rumbling beneath you as you twist the accelerator.

A pogo-stick racer.

A Japanese traditional drum game encircled by a candy-colored halo of guitar, DJ, dance, and rhythm puzzle games.

A game where you climb into a pod and pilot a giant robot.

A game where the sole purpose is to angrily flip a table over and cause as much damage as possible.

A shooter with a built-in elevator door used not only to escape bad guys, but as a framing device for the dialog scenes.  And also the greatest name for a video game ever.

And enough claw games to shrivel Inspector Gadget's robo-ween.

All of these things have nothing to do with Japan's dominance in fighting games.  So why mention them?  Because they're fucking awesome.

And.

They serve one very distinct, valuable purpose that no arcade in the US (that I'm aware of) fills: they get people to come inside.

And that's the thing.  As we in America are seeing with the new wave of Wii-grannies (gran-wiis?), a lot of people aren't initially interested in sitting down and playing a heavily obnoxious button masher technical fighter like Tekken Street Fighter or Blazblue.  They need a hook.  They need to be sold on games as a source of entertainment, and not just entertainment but lasting entertainment, before being enticed into committing the necessary time and money into becoming a competitive player.

Sure, the guys in Japan who consistently win tournaments probably didn't need any encouragement to decide to grind out thousands of hours on Street Fighter, but of the tens of thousands of good-to-great players they had to practice on to become the best, yeah, I'm willing to bet more than a few were just guys looking for a cheap alternative to pachinko that wouldn't cost them their hearing years down the road.

I have to be honest: for everywhere else where novelty falls flat, disappoints, or flat-out pisses me off in Japan--whether it be from the corn and mayonnaise pizza, the mayonnaise-themed cocktail bars, or other, non-mayonnaise themed bullshit

You know what I mean

but the arcade is one place where it really works.  Corn and mayonnaise pizza is still food; it has to at least be palatable to be a success (it isn't).  But games are entertainment.  A distraction from the ordinary.

A novelty.

That's all they ever have to be.

And so, Japanese arcades: good job.  You made my three years in Japan a better experience.

The last month

I'm on the way out now.

It's an introspective time, knowing that in just a shade under four weeks I'll be back in 'Merica, detached from everything that defined the last three years of my life.  So, in celebration of the remaining four weeks, I'm adding two new articles each week: one regarding something I'll miss about Japan, the other something I'll be glad to leave behind.  By the end of the month, I hope to compile a lasting tribute and anthology to my time here and everything I've learned about this mysterious Eastern land and its culture.  Think of it as the Yin and Yang of my time in Japan.  Actually, bad example; think of it as the sweet and sour of my time in Japan.

I submit to you you part one of my eight-part series: "Bad and Good Stuff: The North and South Koreas of Japan"