July 14th

It turns out there are a lot of graduate students or older students in the group that Waseda has recruited this year. I count seven of us out of 58, but I think that’s an undercount. I’m extremely excited by the intellectual possibilities. There are people here from History, Art History, Anthropology, Economics and Business (but they’re forgiven), and one woman who is planning on going back to school, but I’m not sure for what. The woman studying art history is apparently a big Zizek fan, so I think we will have a particularly large amount to talk about, and the historian is interested in Taisho era Japan (basically, Japan’s Roaring Twenties, and a flowering of participatory democracy), so that’ll be a fruitful avenue as well.

The building they’ve got us in is at once very nice and extremely Spartan. We’re at the top of a small mountain overlooking the valley were the town of Kamogawa sits, and the building has a pair of amazing balconies that overlook the scene. In fact, this area seems to be one that soundly rebuts the construction-industrial complex thesis of Alex Kerr’s Dogs and Demons, as it still undeniably retains a huge amount of natural beauty, its steep valleys lined with a rich carpet of native trees. On the drive in I couldn’t help but complain about the thick haze that lay over the place, obscuring the distant skyline – but at least according to one of our Japanese RAs, that’s not smog but actual fog, rising off the sea just across a ridge. I can’t wait to spend this afternoon walking around and really seeing the place.

Of course, at the same time, there are some adjustments. We’re sleeping four to a room, and easily the most interesting cultural note so far this trip is that these four-deep rooms each come with exactly one key – so basically, you get the choice of either leaving the door unlocked or working out some elaborate system to keep track of your suitemates so you can get the key when you need to get into the room. I’m immediately reminded of the system of mutual monitoring among small groups of villagers during the Tokugawa period, one source of the mislabeled “collectivism” so often attributed to the Japanese. We also have communal baths, which, given the rather predictable number of awkward American otaku here in this group, I’m guessing will probably result in more than a few people bathing in secret shame in their dorm rooms, with a washcloth.

Another notable thing is that, on top of the sleep pattern fuckery wrought by jet lag, the lack of daylight savings time here is bound to make for some serious lifestyle alterations. I went to bed at 8:30 last night, and was awake (not to say out of bed) by 5:30 this morning – and the sun was fully up. A sad testament to my unfamiliarity with this thing called “dawn” in the States, I’m guessing, but made particularly annoying by the eastern-facing bay window that lines an entire wall of my room. I can already tell this is going to be a massive change, hopefully for the better.

Marroad International Hotel

The hotel we’re staying at for the first night has a few indications of the thesis of Japanese decline I’ve been immersed in – it’s a multi-story “international hotel,” but it’s undeniably shabby and, moreover, garish and tasteless. Elevator music, mostly versions of Western kitsch like “When a Man Loves a Woman,” suffuses the whole building. Then there’s the smell of cigarettes throughout the halls – I know this is a cultural difference, but it still says cheap to me. And the dining room we ate dinner in had a gigantic fake-crystal chandelier hanging from the towering marble ceiling – it would have been extremely fancy and up-to-date 40 years ago, just like the starchy, high-collared uniforms worn by the bellhops. For someone coming from the West such antiquities might be seen as cute or charming, but the fact is that, while I’m not ready to say it’s systemic, large sections of this country are very much frozen in time.

Today, For Lunch . . .

The Menu on American Airlines Flight 175 from DFW to Narita:

“Beef and Potatoes” served one hour after takeoff. A pot roast-like substance with mashed potatoes, with limp, hopeless vegetables. Salad, roll in a plastic baggie, oatmeal cookie in plastic baggie.

Sandwich in box AND plastic baggie, with Dijonnaise.

Pizza, gooey with cheese, oily crust. Pepperidge Farm Milanos. Coffee. I saved above-mentioned sandwich and ate it and the pizza back to back.

This is something I love about flying – because I have no control over my food intake, I can eat anything they put in front of me and not feel guilty. I’m nominally a vegetarian, but on a plane, or at my parents house, I Do As the Romans Do and love every minute of it. If American Airlines served veal with a foie grois spread, I would be able to happily chow down – “Hey, what can I do?”

Of course, this is coward’s morality. There are any number of ways I could have made AA accommodate my supposed principles, rather than bending to their shortcomings, but I chose not to. And you know why? Because what we all want more than anything is to transgress without having to take responsibility, to take a risk without taking a risk.