Oakhouse Miyazakidai is the name of our current guesthouse, the home of 5 Americans (us) and around 20 other residents.  Given that our financial limitations afford a short leash, Oakhouse is our most common restaurant, office, and bar – it’s where we eat, work, and play.  And when Jed arrived, we ate, worked, and played aplenty.

Here is a picture from Jed’s birthday, and there are so so many things to point out.  Yes, those are 4 bottles of Wild Turkey, and yes Rob seems transfixed by them.  Yes it’s cold enough inside that we wear jackets and beanies, even when drinking.  Yes the walls are mottled and dirty, and yes those computers are probably from the early 90’s.  And, finally, yes Jed is not in this picture, but don’t worry, he was very much a part of these festivities.

With Jed out here, this was one of our first gatherings with everyone, and I have to say it wasn’t a mild night…

The irony here is that we didn’t buy all this alcohol – in fact, we’re trying to detox after all our bonding with our Vietnamese friends.  Mr. Isume and Mr. Mickey – in the top photograph – supplied all of this, and what were we going to do?  We can’t be rude guests in a guesthouse to our gracious friends…

So here at Oakhouse, we were well on our way to bonding as a team and bonding across cultures.  And we’re unfortunately finding that sharing drinks so easily fills the gaps left by their limited English and our virtually nonexistent Japanese.

You saw this message as well as I did.  As Brian just mentioned, we aren’t in good shape (I try to be positive and think of being 20% not-fucked…).  We have a couple creative strategies for getting nutrition, taste, entertainment, and something that is vaguely Japanese on our empty budgets.  We haven’t considered shoplifting BUT I’m just saying that a bumper sticker illegally pasted on the side of a road told me that it wasn’t crime if we decided to go there…

I’ll try and sum up where we are in Tokyo right now.  We are not totally fucked, but maybe 80% of the way there.  The perfect storm of job impacting factors we experienced has not really let up, and as such we have continued to get poorer and poorer.  Now we are playing a simple game called “survive somehow”.  In just a few weeks we will be able to leave the jobless money hole that is Tokyo and head to the sunny rolling green paradise lucky fun hills of Korea.  A land, I’ve heard, where money shoots from the mouths of passing street vendors directly into your pockets and the city holds a parade in your honor the day you step off the plane.  I certainly hope I have not been misled.

Needless to say, the lack of money affects every part of our daily lives here, from eating food that has flavors to actually getting to do things other than crying alone into empty wallets.  As awesome as this city is, having money in a different city could possibly be much more awesome.

Rob returns to the field, but even more adventure is afoot: Jed arrives in Tokyo to begin the New Year.

So here I am, on screen.  It’s very weird, actually, to see myself in an episode.  It’s weirder still to hear myself in an episode.  For those of you who’ve never had the pleasure of being on camera, it does terrible things to your self perception.  In particular, the sound of your own voice will bring most people to tears for the first several days of hearing it.  I’m getting over it slowly, but it’s an uphill battle.

I actually won a heart shaped box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day, at a bar, in a raffle that I didn’t enter, and there was not ONE SINGLE LADY AT ANY OF THE BARS I WENT TO UPON WHICH TO USE THE LINE “I guess I got lucky tonight; want a chocolate?”

Also, screw you, Molly Daniell. You’re an idiot. And, screw you, attractive, happy couples.

Actually, that last bit was a cheap shot. I’m just jealous of you, couples. You rock on with your bad selves. Instead of cutting my losses and going to bed, I will now have myself another 3 beers and make some nachos while playing Beyonce’s Single Ladies at full volume ad infinitum. God I wish the bars stayed open later here.

Episode 2 is going to be a little late this week: we had a shipping schedule error and I won’t be getting the last of the tapes I need until this afternoon or Tuesday morning. Look for an episode Wednesday/Thursday!

What do you picture when you think of Tokyo? If you’re anything like me, you might expect layers brightly colored signs stacked on a massive high-rise, or a river of outlandishly costumed teenagers silhouetted against an enormous televised billboard. You probably wouldn’t expect to see a tree-lined suburban street, or cookie-cutter subdivision. And yet, of these two contrasting images, the latter has become much more emblematic of my short time here. We live in a city called Kawasaki, in Kanagawa Prefecture, an affordable distance from the bustling hubs that comprise downtown Tokyo. Our neighborhood is quiet, and the people in it seem to have more in common with the commuters from our old neighborhood in Pinehurst, WA than they do with the flamboyant gamers and anime-inspired maids found elsewhere in the city. Despite being a welcome reprieve from raucous Saigon–and despite the the wealth of characters in our guesthouse– our new neighborhood doesn’t register very high on the adventure-meter. To make matters worse, the cost of any given trip into Tokyo ranges from between $6 RT, to $12 RT (unacceptably high for our unemployed souls). So I’ve started a daily routine that I like to call the Kanagawa Constitutional.

The process is pretty simple. Step outside. Pick a direction. Walk that direction until you get bored, or your back starts to hurt. Walk the opposite direction for the same amount of time. Repeat daily, or as desired.

So far, my discoveries have been pretty underwhelming, and include a police station, an orange tree, and a small city park resembling a moon crater in both shape and overall appeal. I’ve gone uphill three times, and downhill twice, but tomorrow I’ll attempt to follow the steps of our brave crewman, Kevin, who found a 99¥ store during his own Kanagawa Constitutional. Sometimes, on the walk, I close my eyes and envision myself stumbling upon a grove of trees tucked between apartment buildings, bearing ripe jobs –and the adventures those jobs would afford us– ready to pluck.

We’re known for a lot of things, however timing has never been one of them.  When we made our final decision to move to Japan, we had spent weeks reading forum postings about the reasonable condition of jobs, the exciting life the city had to offer, and the seemingly acceptable exchange rate of 100 Yen to the dollar.

One month later we arrived, eyes full of neon and dreams.  And with those shiny eyes we watched the economy further implode and the yen soar to ever increasing heights.  At the time when we exchanged our money in Tokyo we had seen 20% of our money disappear.

Next we watched widespread layoffs.  All of a sudden there was less money in the city for luxuries such as private English lessons, and an excess of English teachers with experience in the city.  The reasonable job outlook was replaced with stories of professionals from other failing economies heading over to ride out the storm with and ESL career.

“Believe it or not; with the US economy in the tank and things being what they are, the school I work for gets quite a few resumes each week from a lot of professional people (lawyers, engineers, and IT folks, not so many doctors) who are considering packing it in and doing eikaiwa [independent conversation school] work for a year or three.”

And everyone’s favorite job application response:

“To date, 1655 resume(s) have been submitted through […] for this position.”

Then came the holiday season.  We had arrived early to kick off the search process before the holidays hit, but with no solid leads in sight we ran into a near two week period where getting job became next to impossible.

In short we managed to arrive at what may have literally been the worst time to teach English in Japan in the last ten plus years.  Failing economy, soaring yen, glut of English teachers.

This will be an adventure.

Brian, Matt, Jed and I were all born during the auspicious year of 1984– a year of plenty. We took our first steps as Joe Kittinger made his daring hot-air balloon voyage across the Atlantic. We spoke our first words as Doug Flutie threw the game-winning 48-yard Hail Mary pass to Gerard Phelan to defeat the University of Miami Hurricanes 45-41. Just three days after the dawn of this brave new year, Jed Mitchell was born. Although today marks the 25th anniversary of that special day, you can still occasionally find him nursing a bottle. Last night was just such an occasion.

With the whole team assembled in Tokyo, at the beginning of Season 2, we decided to celebrate one of our most valuable team members with an orgy of grilled meat and beer known as “Yaki Niku”– all you can eat, all you can drink. There is no greater sound to our impoverished souls than the promise of never-ending grilled meats, but the greatest part of all was, of course, the company. Together, we roasted meats ranging from scallops to “beef face”, and performed a series of rhyming toasts to each episode (“To Episode 1, when it was done, we knew we had won, and our lives would be fun”). We drowned the night with merriment, absorbing the neon glow of exotic downtown Tokyo, filled with laughter and hope for 2009, the 25th –and best– year of our lives.

Happy birthday Jed, from your colleagues and friends at Jet Set Zero.

As Brian explained, New Years in Tokyo was more quaint than crazy, and the entire holiday season wrapped up for us without a show of fireworks, real or metaphoric.  We definitely had fun times together, and those fun times definitely coincided with major holidays we’ve celebrated before, and there was something vaguely holiday-ish about those fun times, but trying to piece it all today into a coherent “holiday season” feels like trying to remember a hazy dream from a deep nap. 

Nonetheless, Tokyo continues to offer its unique brand of the quirky and random, and I thought we’d share some of the wisdom this city so far has given us.  Most of this wisdom has come in the form of signs and advertisements, giving us guidance, helpful advice, and food for thought. 

 

This message is clearly intended to preserve the peace and cleanliness of the subways.  No warning that such excessive drunkenness – a spilled beer, a stray shoe, a leg hanging awkwardly over the armrest – is self-destructive and detrimental health.  The briefcase, unceremoniously serving as a pillow, also suggests that the passed-out gentleman went straight from work to the bars.  Clearly, he should have thought of the other passengers, especially the poor man turned away in empathetic shame, and gone straight home to drink himself into oblivion.  Usually we say “When in Rome…” but I think in this case we should exercise a little more judgment before obeying the subway sign…

 

This one is more or less agreeable – who shouldn’t…do! more safety…?!?  The message sounds great – perhaps a candidate motto for 2009 for some people – but what on earth does it mean?  And what kind of safety should we do?  The young smiling girl certainly doesn’t offer any clues, nor does the disorienting corridor of insistent messages.  Are those lockers?  It’s quite mysterious, but we think this is a message we should all heed…

 

And finally, one of my personal favorites, overlooking a main strip in Shibuya, an imposing reminder to us all…

Once again, this is a message we can all get on board with.  But why is there a massive picture of a gorgeous woman?  She doesn’t quite seem sad or stern, and at first, we’re not really sure what she has to do with stopping STD’s.  Also, there’s no direct mention of a *method* for stopping STD’s – birth control, condoms, abstinence, regular testing?  Then, at the bottom, we find the sponsoring company, Soft On Demand.  As it turns out, it’s a pornography company, and you can scan the QR code on the bottom left to visit their website and order yourself some DVD’s.  Absolutely brilliant – once I pieced the implied message together, I found myself astounded that I haven’t seen this argument before.  So you rambunctious young adults, next time you feel like putting public health at risk by giving into your sexual urges, do the right thing – order pornography.  You and your partner, should s/he actually exist, will benefit from reduced exposure to dangerous STD’s.  [Soft On Demand is a staunch supporter of safe, do-it-yourself methods of dealing with your desires.  Note: clearly, no STD’s were possibly transmitted in the production of these films.] 

Well Tokyo, thanks for these helpful pieces of advice.  We’ll be sure to share some more precious wisdom from the strange signs all around Tokyo.