Was this train car actually built in Nebraska?

I heard Kawasaki was manufacturing subway cars, sending them off to Japan for everyone to ride from here to there and back again, in their suits and shoes, club skirts and boots...

It's a place on a map, 6,000 miles West or East, depending on your position.

But it's not real to you or to me, depending on our position.

And though I can write about trains and crowds and this or that, it's not real; and if I write about an earthquake sloshing around the contents of my cocktail, of my mind, it too isn't real.

Like a stupid, broken clock, life is on hold when you are gone.

That horizon that I can't see, it's still there, still exits. You wake up to it every morning and you stare at it as your car devours pavement. Out your window, left or right, everywhere, that horizon that is invisible here, obscured by mountains, housing, city blocks that aren't blocks at all, but tangled sculptures of civilization compacted...

It swallows you, it swallows your memory.

You could just dive into this place, like one of those swans, down, down, down, tumbling twisting for miles and miles, as deep as the city permits... to the bowels, my friend, to the bowels.

6,000 miles one way or another, people are living, working, playing, enjoying those things so forgotten, so foreign.

The dark house, warm in the winter, the low buzz of music forgotten. The heartbeats of roommates asleep, tucked away in their beds. The smell of incense and carpet that hasn't been vacuumed in months.

Dirty ashtrays, house parties and the laughter of those who understand the meaning of the great American road trip; bottle rockets and box wine, sitting on a porch doing nothing but watching traffic creep b y like stagnated blood from all that fucking Burger King you ate back in high school, back when you drove cars like your hair was long, hot blooded, nothing to lose, so ignorant it was... so blissful.

Why can't we go back to that dark room? Maybe there was a Lava Lamp.

We don't feel anymore... not the same.

Time does it to us all, but distance does it in a different way.

The mirrors all look different here, and so do I.

So it's funny that I'm riding on a train that was possibly assembled in my hometown?

Ha, ha, ha, I know...

Why didn't I just ride it there? Taken a factory tour, perhaps, why not, why not? What drives us to cross oceans, to leave everything comfortable and concrete, to forsake everything familiar; to risk it all.

A few screws loose, like that broken clock--our lives standing still we jolt them forward with a voltage highly irregular and unnecessary. Travelers like us don't march to different drums, no, not hardly, our hearts beat like butterfly wings flirt with the breeze--calm and playful on the surface, truly reckless beneath. Fragile... crashing.

Too fast, we play, too fast.

But it's our nature, and it's why we cry at night. It's why every time we leave, our eyes sag to our chins and we walk carrying our own weight in tears.

No experience is new enough, and yet, the only one's we truly desire are those consumed the past, replayed over and over and over again not in our mind, but in our skin.

The kind of memory that makes you twinge.

The kind of memory that is physical, built into the body, written on the veins of your heart.

It makes you catch your breath, thinking about it, and yet...

What is life even about, then? The new experience or remembering the old? The anticipation or the actual climax, the moment when you realize you are standing at that point on the map that you've been staring at for months and months. Is it that moment... certainly not--but oh how your heart burned when you dreamed and planned, oh how there was fire--real fucking fire--inside of you.

You had to.

But it's never as sweet--nothing is, of course.

So, when is it supposed to be good?

Now, later, before?

Past, present, future?

If you could play your life back, feeling every moment as it had felt the first time, would it feel as sweet as the memory?

Because although memories burn too, they are a burn that can never be satisfied. What's done is done, and what's now will soon be memory, and it continues on to infinity.

What are we looking forward to, again?

The moment, the memory? That Polaroid hanging on the refrigerator.

When the lights go out we can paint what we like.

My hobby is remembering.

The trick to becoming fluent in Japanese involves a bit more than pure saturation in the stuff; simply existing in Japan will do nothing to improve one's proficiency in the language.

One can live in Japan with the speaking ability of an infant, and get by quite well, if they wish.

But, advancing and progressing toward fluency, well, that takes a lot more than a textbook and a Japanese Visa.

Of course living here does help, slightly--being surrounded by native speakers is good, and the fact that everything is covered in kanji is also a bonus--but all of this is worthless if one doesn't actually pay attention to it.

Pay attention.

The best advice I've ever been given, and it applies to any language learner in any foreign country throughout the world.

Pay attention to what's around you.

That little bit of kanji on the escape handle in the train.

That obscured writing the dirty plastic wrapper from your afternoon snack.

That car's license plate.

The conversations of every single person within hearing distance.

Everything, there are no exemptions if one is serious about sounding halfway competent.

And though I wish this bit of advice had been apparent to me earlier, it hasn't stopped me from devouring every bit of the Japanese language that I can.

Television was a forbidden fruit when I lived in America--in fact I hadn't watched it in over 5 years--and yet, here in Japan, I am addicted, staying awake for every soccer match, variety show, soap opera and music countdown that my little TV can pump out.

I am familiar with every advertisement on the Yamanote line, and though print ads used to be an irritation--nay, a scourge, to me--I find them delightfully puzzling here, and look forward to any new products that JR is willing to plaster their train cars with.

But again, all this saturation is no good unless one pays attention.

I used to look at ads, and watch TV--but I never paid attention.

I offer this here for every learner of language, because since discovering that paying attention means more than being surrounded by a language, I have improved tenfold.

Paying attention isn't just listening closely, it's listening closely and taking notes. Cataloging every tiny change in intonation and pronunciation to memory, acutely recognizing what prompts certain responses and emulating them in your own speech.

Paying attention is knowing when what you say is strange.

Paying attention is curiosity, and it can't be taught in a classroom.

Fluency demands it of us all.

Lately, I suppose, I've been obsessing over this language, and there seems to be little good advice coming my way--but I've found this useful, and I hope all of you can, too.

So from here on out, pay attention.

Every kanji is made of strokes, painted in a certain order, and if you're paying attention, you should be able to draw them backwards in your sleep.

Best of luck to us all.

Category 5: Attitude.

Judges should make sure that all contestants are properly dressed; skirts the proper length, buttons buttoned, proper ties, and nice black hair.

Nice black hair?

Apparently, when judging a school-wide chorus contest, hair must be taken into account. Having it combed right just isn't enough anymore, it must also be jet black, or else.

Though it's not a tough requirement to satisfy. Barring some strange anomaly, everyone in Japan is born with hair the same color as a coal miner's face.

The secret to the consistently black hair, however, isn't genetic, but rather, a byproduct of a diet rich in food from the bottom of the ocean.

Specifically, seaweed.

At least, that's what I was told by a charcoal headed young man as I was hungrily gulping down a mouthful of the stuff.

I wonder what I would have to eat to turn my children's hair green?

Oh how quickly one forgets what life is like from the eyes of a child.

Standing there in a speeding, swaying train, clinging desperately to his mother's leg as she grips the handle above her head--the handle that her child cannot reach even with a little jump.

How far he has to go, how little he feels, and yet, how quickly he wants to grow up.

But that race, that race to adulthood that he is running--that everyone has run at one point in their lives--is really a competition not worth finishing. Drop out now, if you can, because beyond the finish line isn't much.

Just sit down on the track, cross your arms, and stubbornly refuse to move.

Oh, if it were only that easy.

One cannot simply "not" grow up.

But, oh! How much more comfortable that train ride is when asleep on your mother's lap, face buried in the cotton of her blouse! How much better that is! Unaware of the evil in the world, existing only to play and cry and eat... existing to run and skip and make mistakes and not care about anything except only the most trivial of trivialities--toys and games, trees, flowers, dirt; the chirp of a bird.

The sun shines brightly on children for they know not how to make someone feel unwelcome, or uncomfortable. They know how to laugh, with minds empty as imbecile's.

Children are accepting, because they know no other way.

... and though every child that sees me stares at my hair and my white skin, the awe in their eyes is as innocent as Autumn rain.

Unfortunately, for me, when my fellow employees look at me at is not a look of awe or even of confusion--certainly not of acceptance on a level that could be considered anywhere near equal--but rather, it is a look that a child cannot give: it is a look down, a look down from above and it says "you are not welcome."

Is it normal after working one month at a job, to be completely alienated from the other staff members? To be completely petrified of stepping on someone's toes? To be worried sick that you might do something wrong, even if that wrong is not smiling big enough?

This problem was supposed to be solved, or at least, buried.

But apparently my hair, my appearance, the superficialities of my being are still hot topics in weekly meetings at the junior high. Apparently dreadlocks tarnish their precious private school's images.

What will the parents think?

Well, I can't say for sure, but thankfully solstice can be found in the children, who adore me in a way that can't possibly be reciprocated properly--though I try.

Their smiles say it all, and their eyes say the things that can't be said.

Those smiles and those eyes save me, they protect me from everything evil at that fucking school, everything horrible that tells me: Go home, go back to America--you are not wanted here.

That message, unfortunately, sticks with you.

You here it once and it follows you. To the train station and the Sushi shop. To all the restaurants and to all the convenience stores. The unshakable feeling that you are pissing everybody off just travels with you like a scar that won't heal.

It never used to be this way.

I never used to feel intimidated here.

But, those smiles, those eyes, those incredibly ambitious attempts at English--they save me.

"I love you," they said to me yesterday.

"I love you."

Do you know what that means?

It's ok, you don't have to.

"I love you, too."

Silence for half-of-a-breath, then a gasp, a giggle and a blush. Then laughter and the sound of footsteps skipping down the stairs, the sound of skirts in the wind, rushing out the doors to their next class.

Why must everything matter so much?

Why must everything have so much meaning?

Coming to Japan was supposed to be a test of my ability to adapt culturally and linguistically, not a test of my personal resolve to keep a hairstyle.

... and yet, the more the pressure me, the more they are pushing me away.

How badly I want to speak to them, in Japanese.

How badly I want to be their friends as all the prior interns with no "hygiene problems" have been.

How badly I want to have long talks with them about their families, their passions and the ticking things inside their hearts that make them get up every morning.

I only came here to talk to people, to meet them.

And yet... they provide not even a shred of opportunity. A chance was never given, even from the beginning.

Those who seem so preoccupied with me, who seem to want to do nothing but bring misery to me, are the very people who I want to speak with, to say "hello," and "I love you."

Because truly, I am but a child myself, even though I can reach the handles on the train--I am but a child, staring out of a pair of large, brown eyes.

And though I am the tallest on the train, constantly bumping my noggin on hanging advertisements, I am but a child, sitting arms crossed in the middle of the race track.

I refuse to run any further, I refuse to continue growing up.

Note: I want to apologize for constantly dwelling on this topic and really telling you nothing about Japan, but this little situation has lately been permeating nearly every aspect of my daily life, and I can't seem to write about much more.

The same look suddenly spreads across their face, the same look that has surely spread across mine so many times before.

So familiar, it is: a sort of wide, glassy-eyed gaze, a mix between shock, horror and helplessness.

"I don't understand a word you're saying," it says.

It flattens one's face and exposes one's weaknesses. It makes one vulnerable. And try as one might to fight through it, to continue on with the conversation as though nothing has happened, both the listener and the speaker felt the little speed bump in the dialogue, and have to begin to restructure their discourse.

I've felt it before, many times.

It's awkward as hell.

The look brings with it silence, a pause, and then feelings of humiliation and guilt, with a little bit of shame and self-doubt mixed in--not to mention that incredible dose of awkwardness.

It shakes your confidence, it really does, and if not dealt with properly, can effectively ruin a conversation.

The only way to combat such an awful roadblock is to smile, nod, and pretend to understand every single word coming out of the speaker's mouth. Your face no longer says, "I'm helpless and hopeless," but rather, "I get it, keep talking, I'm just as fluent as you."

Some of my students have mastered this ability already, for better, or worse.

After interviewing me and writing short summaries of what they had learned, I've come to find out that not only do I have two little sisters, but my cat died last year, I'm 26-years-old, and I'm apparently planning a trip to Nagano in March to go snowboarding.

Of course, when we were talking I was under the impression they had understood everything.

Not so, although one little girl did point out that my trademark is "dreadlocks," and another boy managed to gather from our interview that I hate President Bush.

But just incase any of these interviews are ever published, I need to set the record straight: despite what a certain 13-year-old Japanese junior high boy may tell you, I am not a fan of Metallica, neither their new work, nor their old.

Note: This is actually quite old, from December I believe, but I'm publishing it here, now, because I didn't publish it then.

So I guess it's fitting that on the evening after THAT evening, the sunset painting itself to darkness in the heavens above is the most dazzling 360 degree spectacle of purples, blues, oranges and yellows--sliding toward red--that these little eyeballs have seen in a long, long time.

Could be the jet lag or the reverse culture shock--choose whatever jargon you want to describe my awe--but I don't think so. This has little to do with long distance international travel. It's something else.

I've said a lot of ridiculous things in my life, but nothing so ridiculous as, "The world is beautiful today for a reason, for me. To tell me something." Since I've never said anything so foolish and ignorant as that before, I'm allowed to say it now; I'm using my one freebie--the one time I can say something so out of control and preposterous that I mean it: I think I'm in love.

You don't throw shit like that around--I know--but what am I supposed to say? I know what lust feels like. This isn't that. Perhaps at first, but what now, what the fuck now? Your life isn't supposed to get fucked up like this. Your life is supposed to stick to that stupid plan you made years ago, and adhere to the fucking track like a train headed downtown.

That never happens, of course.

But my train has fallen so fucking far off the tracks right now that discerning even a slightly appropriate course of action is impossible. What has happened to me? Have I finally grown up?

Am I the weary traveller in that foreign yet oh so local coffee shop writing about his love, his loss and the great pains movement throughout the world has brought him? Am I that guy now? ...Here in the corner, scribbling about nothing and everything. That goddamned beautiful sunset, like her eyes, that goddamned song, incessantly repeating in my mind. This goddamned life, designed to confound me, fuck with me, absolutely torment me to no end, so much so that my mouth is now bleeding slightly because I've been gritting my teeth so hard that I've unwittingly punctured some flesh.

I guess a slow loss of blood wouldn't be a bad way to go. What else are you really supposed to do in this circumstance?

Wait for karma to get you back? Wait for the plane to fly off, 6,000 miles from home; and from...

Is this where I'm supposed to throw my plane ticket in the trash--at the last possible moment of course--and come running back, ricocheting off the terminal walls like the tangled mess of nerves I am?

Or is this where I fly off into that goddamned beautiful sunset and never look back?

Flights across the pacific are painful because I'm always leaving those I love behind. What shore is she on this time, and are her eyes still blue?

I probably deserve to burn in hell, if such a place exists. First, for what I've done; Second, for what I didn't do; and Third, for all the people I've hurt as badly as my heart hurts today.

Just when you think you've seen something rare, it creeps up on you and happens again when you least expect it.

Though, this time I was watching the guy puke on the tracks of the Yamanotesen from inside the train, whereas last year I was standing on the platform next to him. Either way it's somewhat disgusting, and though there's nothing remarkable about vomiting in a train station, it tends to stick out in one's mind--especially when the doors open directly in front of a body keeled over a puddle of puke.

Needless to say the alighting passengers chose a different exit.

He lifted his head and toward the train as we pulled away, his eyes desperately trying to focus on what were surely blurry green streaks whizzing by at an alarming rate.

I looked back, reminded of the first time I left Shinjuku station by myself--Kyohei, Takayuki and Hiro standing there, waving, staring at my train car as it roared off to the West. So concerned, they were, with my well being, that they bought the ticket for me, escorted me to the platform, and repeated my destination perhaps 15 times to be sure no mistakes would be made.

Oh, how far we've come.

Now, it's a rare moment when they will repeat misunderstood words one time, let alone 15, but such is the curse of improving at a language--as one gets better, leeway disappears, expectations rise, conversation speed accelerates, and explanations are few and far in between.

Besides that, though, when a foreigner improves enough at Japanese, he becomes a tool for his Japanese friends.

"Here, I'm too embarrassed to ask them where the bar is, you ask."

Me?

"Yeah, just ask and see. We'll pretend we're Chinese."

And why can't you just ask yourself?

"It's fucking awkward."

No problem, really. It's good practice to ask your local policeman where the best bar to watch the Japan vs. North Korea soccer match in Shibuya is, while your blatantly Japanese friends stand nearby simultaneously pretending to be Chinese and eavesdropping because they were too nervous to ask themselves--though I somewhat imagine their desire to have me do the asking was hedged more on the hilarity of hearing formal Japanese come out of my mouth rather than the "awkwardness" of the situation.

Either way, a sports "bar" was located, if it could even be called that.

One hundred or more people crammed into a dark 8th floor room, drinking Asahi and Zima, eating eddamame, sitting shoeless on a blue carpeted floor--jersey wearing superfans and slarymen alike--all there to enjoy winter's most important battle: Japan vs. North Korea.

And a battle it was.

If you think America has problems with North Korea, think again: the Japanese hatred for North Korea runs deeper than anything I've ever seen. American's have the Pacific Ocean to act as a 6000 mile buffer for any ICBM's that may be heading their way, but as for the Japanese, their only protection from the Korean peninsula is the flimsy Sea of Japan, which provides about as much protection from a bombing raid as a screen door.

This was more than a game, I had been told, this was politics.

Japan could not lose, literally and figuratively: a loss meant that the World Cup hopes of an entire nation would be dashed, but also that their national pride would be trodden on.

I cheered with them.

I chanted and clapped and stomped with them.

I sang along to the Japanese national anthem.

And when Oguro scored the winning goal with less than a minute left in the game-an incredibly astonishing finish for a soccer game--I jumped to my feet along with the rest of them, and joined in the indiscriminate hugging; Japan had won! Japan had won!!

How could I not be involved to that extent? As the only foreign representation in the entire place--and, on top of that, hailing from the home of the Huskers--I had to show them that we too know how to be boisterous, obnoxious, and devoted to our team when game day arrives; and on this game day, my team just happened to be Japan.

Ni-ppon *CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP*

Ni-ppon *CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP*

Ni-ppon *CLAP* *CLAP* *CLAP*

When it was all over and everyone had cleared out to the streets, their suits revealed once again beneath the blazing lights, I quickly translated one of my father's favorite post game comments for my Japanese friends as we strolled lazily down the road...

"They're going to have a fun plane ride home, aren't they?"

They laughed and replied, "Yeah, Kim Jong-Il is definitely going to kill them."

Paid $18 dollars to watch a movie in Kabukicho.

Watched a television show where five businessmen entered a Sushi shop, but were only allowed to eat one dish of sushi for every time they managed to fart.

Received a "package" in the mail best described as a "Birthday in a Bottle."

And I definitely, definitely didn't have a pounding headache ALL DAY LONG.

Auld Lang Syne plays slowly over the intercom of a stuffy bookstore--time to make your final purchases, oh honorable customers, it tells us.

Burberry scarfed schoolgirls parade ruthlessly around Shinjuku, their shiny black shoes stomping in that oh-so-innocent manner indicative of youthful ignorance in bliss--the time in one's life when they are truly, the ruler of the world and nothing anyone can say will change that.

Yodobashi Camera closes it's doors for the night, and somewhere, in a smoky coffee shop, a Japanese girl is learning French from a man twice her age.

The stars shine brightly overhead, but not brighter than the lights of Tokyo--those infinitely burning candles remain invisible to anyone planted on the surface of the labyrinth that is Shinjuku. The Karaoke advertisements, game centers, pachinko parlors and Kabukicho solicitations completely obliterate any other galaxy while simultaneously erasing the darkness of the night.

I'm running for a train.

From platform 8 to platform 2--I can see the Joban express pull in from the causeway that me and forty other commuters are sprinting across; mothers, daughters, grandpas, grandmas and salarymen, we're all racing in our suits and ties, in our skirts and in our Kimonos.

Everyone pushes hard for victory: a spot somewhere on that train

But I didn't run marathons and 10ks to get stuck waiting for the next departure.

And as I'm passing them, I can't shake the feeling that there is nothing more patently Japanese than literally running at your top speed for 45 seconds--sprinting up one flight of stairs, over the tracks, down another flight of stairs, and into a train car--just to save a few minutes on the ride home.

But after I actually made it safely into the train car, I realized there is something more Japanese than that: sprinting the entire way, only to see the door closing in front of you--and knowing that you can't make it--hurling yourself hopelessly into it's merciless, unrelenting jaws, as the man directly behind me in that great race did.

Now that is fortitude.

Three-quarters of his body was in the door, but his ankles dangled out into the unknown as the door clamped down through his black suit, pinching his calves--and though I tugged frantically at the door, it took another burst of strength from this salaryman to finally send him crashing face first to the floor of the train, and to safety.

The train, of course, remained silent, except for his pants.

What is there to say, anyway? Nothing at all, just sit back and enjoy the ride--sit back and stare at the endlessness of it all buzzing quietly by just beyond the windowpanes.

Somewhere in the distance Tokyo Tower is shining.

Somewhere in the distance, somewhere in that endlessness, you are too, shining.

Back in Shinjuku, those schoolgirls are running for their trains, too, and though they are not my students, I can feel their youthful exuberance so full of mystery, so full of secrets--so curious about everything.

"Why, wh-why do you make your hair this way?"

"D-Do you know who we are?"

"D-Do you like us?"

The two plaid skirted green sweatered girls giggle, hiding their faces behind their hands and then quickly cowering behind a desk, out of my sight.

"Do-do... what do you think--do, do... Do you like ME?"

Her face beams, such an accomplishment, speaking English.

The life of a child, so full of all the things we forget as we age.

"Do-do you have girlfriend?"

"How many girlfriend do you have?"

Sometimes it's almost too cute. Too much to handle.

"Only one," I tell them, "She's very far away, and I miss her very, very much."

"Eeh?" They say, telling me in Japanese that they don't understand.

"She's in America, but I'm in Japan," I explain.

"Ahhh Sokka!" one of them exclaims, realizing what I had originally meant. "You are... ve-very sad."

Yes, yes I am.