Brothers & Sisters

In Japan, on a thing like this, you make your own family. Relations of blood get replaced by relations of proximity and of commonality. The only history you can hold onto is the group of people who accompanied you on the plane from home to here, and you find yourself praying to god that at least a couple of the cool ones wind up in your backyard.

I can’t comment what things are like in other prefectures, but on this New-Brunswick-sized northern island of ours the JET family seems pretty tight. Realities of size and space mean that some of us are—at best—distant relatives, but when we all come together for the semi-regular reunions, you wouldn’t know the distance to look at us.

Among all of these people, I’ve been fortunate enough to cling to a few small pieces of home. When we all came over last August, the shallow bits of history I hung onto took the form of Mark and Lindsay, two Toronto JETs (though they’d tell you they’re Georgetown and Mississauga JETs, respectively) who wound up being placed, essentially, in my backyard. For all our common geographic origins, I never thought that we’d wind up being much more than fellow Canadians over here. And yet, here I am, writing about these two as pillars of this experience.

Mark

My first thought when I met Mark at the Toronto orientation, and I found out that he would be placed near me in Hokkaido, was “what a dud.” Between the glasses and the ginger hair, the gangly frame and the weird suit/tie, Mark had “dork” written all over him. At that early point, what verbal interactions I had with Mark failed to sound his true depths, and what I’d seen of his sense of humour left me more confused than anything.

But it wasn’t long before Mark made himself known. I think it went down some time at Tokyo Orientation, when I was forced to share a room with him and Brian from the Toronto group. Victims of the hideous jet lag, Mark and I woke up almost simultaneously at 5am one morning, and when it was clear we weren’t getting back to sleep any time soon, we fell to discussing a shared love for Chrono Trigger, heedless of Brian trying to sleep in the next bed. Throughout the day, our conversation continued and ranged onto other topics, eventually turning to Mark’s university days and the mad, booze-fueled antics he’d gotten up to at the time. Rather quickly, I lost my first impression of Mark as some kind of square, replacing it with an image of him as a wild party animal.

And I think the reason I thought Mark a dud when I first met him in his business duds is that Mark isn’t meant to wear business duds. Mark is better suited by blue jeans, bush jackets, and bandanas. This was a man who had lived and worked for months in the northern reaches of Canada, where us soft, whities of the south often fear to tread. He had become a part of Inuit communities and had drank his way through the midnight hours of neverending days.

Pretty much as soon as he got set up in his high school ALT position over here in Hokkaido, Mark set to work trying to press the limits of the smart business attire demanded by the high schools. He bought hideous skinny ties and scratchy wool cardigans.

The cramped confines of his monkey suit on that first day also hid Mark’s madness. I have heard more “your mom” jokes from Mark—honestly delivered—than from any other source, and this stream of misogynistic filth seems to inspire similar outbursts from me as I try to keep up with Mark.

The lion’s share of the adventures I’ve had in this place, I’ve had with Mark. He seems to be the very definition of “ride or die” as he comes up with new, crazy ideas for adventures daily, and he’s rather good at convincing you that you want to accompany him on them. Mark’s the reason I climbed Rishiri, and Mark’s the reason I fell in love with Shikotsuko. Mark’s been my wingman since before I realized I needed one, and Mark gets a Best Supporting award for one of the loveliest things to yet happen to me out here.

Once I started to get the hang of Mark, one of my first thoughts was “my brother’s going to LOVE this guy.” However, it wasn’t long before I realized that my brother WAS this guy, and this guy was my brother: some strange ginger echo of Craig, as he’d have turned out in some alternate reality. Though they’re different enough to be distinct, Mark and Craig’s areas of overlap are more than a bit unnerving. I guess that’s why it’s not such a stretch for me, now, to call Mark my adoptive Hokkaido brother.

Lindsay

Though I was never blessed with a genetic one, I seem to pick up surrogate sisters wherever I go. I also seem to pick up Linds(a/e)ys. The name, for me, has become a bit of a signpost—a hint or, perhaps, a warning that this person is meant to figure heavily in my life; that, if I’m not careful, this person may just be the end of me.

From fairly early on Lindsay struck me as an echo in my life: when I met her, I felt instantly comfortable with her and I felt a bit like I’d known her before. When I met her at Toronto Pre-Departure Orientation and when we would run into each other at events after it, we always seemed to fall into a kind of chill rhythm with each other. Even as she yakked in a plastic bag next to me on the bus from Keio Plaza to Haneda airport after orientation, and I bought her the Japanese equivalent of Gatorade to hasten her recovery, we were chill.

So, yeah: Lindsay has definitely become my surrogate sister in Hokkaido, but she’s been known to play the part with the hard-nosed, don’t-take-no-shit attitude that one might more accurately expect of a brother. Hell, she has taken to calling me “Princess” when the time comes for us to be out the door, but I’m still busy faffing about.

Though Lindsay might not be as ride-or-die as Mark, she’s definitely a close second. The majority of those adventures I’ve had with Mark have also been adventures I’ve had with Lindsay. When Mark and I scaled Rishiri with our hiking packs and hiking boots and rain gear and extra clothes and emergency food and at least 2L of water, Lindsay made it up with us (and made it down faster than us!) in skater shoes, a school bag containing a couple of onigiri, and a hideous jacket she’d picked up on clearance.

Lindsay can pick up Japanese guys with the deft skill and non-challance of a strapping Gaijin lad picking off giggling Japanese girls, and then she’ll go and surprise me with just how big her heart is when it doesn’t work out. She’ll dress up nice in heels and a dress, only to speak to you in a language written in video games. She’ll make you a card from scratch for your birthday when you all go out to celebrate, and then she’ll drink you under the table. She’s also one of the few people I know who actually reads this blog and seems to like it as much as I do, for which I’m very grateful.

One of the most profound things Lindsay ever told me about her and I and this whole JET experience is that, no matter what happens and who stays for how long and where they wind up along the way, when it’s all over her and I still come from the same place. And, should we ever find ourselves pining away for Japan in distant years, we’ll likely have the benefit of each other to reflect on the wacky foreign experience we shared.

They're fine folks, the both of them, and I look forward to the hijinx we'll get up to in the coming year.

The Four Points Tour: Know the Players

To be sure that this year’s attempt at the ever-elusive Four Points Tour of Awesomeness succeeds, we have assembled a crack team of Roadtrippers—individuals with years of experience in holding it for the long haul. In this Four Points update, we’ll meet this team of shadowy professionals and plumb the depths of their wanderlust.

Operative 01: Nicholas

AKA: The Architect
Codename: Princess
Specialty: Documentation
Roadsnack of Choice: Bananas

Princess has had an itch to circumnavigate this island ever since he didn’t request it as his placement on JET. It’s still unclear whether it was he or Fire Bush who initially came up with the idea for the original Four Points Tour of Awesomeness, but it is definitely Princess who held so tenaciously to the idea of circumnavigating the island, becoming so obsessed with the idea of performing the roadtrip solely on coastal roads that he was caught trying to “liberate” a section of coastal highway long-ago fenced off when a much more convenient tunnel was built to bypass it. If anything of note happens on the Four Points Tour, you can bet that Princess will be documenting it photographically and with a “Dear Diary” entry.

Operative 02: Lindsay
AKA: The Driver
Codename: Padfoot
Specialty: Rapid Evac
Roadsnack of Choice: Seico-brand Fried Chicken

Padfoot has been a seasoned roadtripper ever since the initial team of her, Princess, and Fire Bush set out to blaze across the island of Hokkaido one year ago. Though many of the operatives on the Four Points tour have driven the narrow, winding roads of Japan, Padfoot is the only one who can claim to have racked up hundreds of hours on the wrong side of the road. She holds the dubious honour of having christened a stretch of highway through Sarobetsu the “Hokkaido Autobahn” by virtue of having blown down it at speeds the road had never imagined and hasn’t seen since.

Operative 03: Mark
AKA: The Pathfinder
Codename: Fire Bush
Specialty: Cartography and Logistics
Roadsnack of Choice: Volcano Rings and Ninja Chips

Though Princess may have been the one to dream up a circumnavigation of Hokkaido in nine days, Fire Bush is the one who will make it happen. On last year’s voyage, it was Fire Bush who guided Princess and Padfoot to the summit of Mount Rishiri and back again in an impossible time of seven hours. And, when it comes time to venture into the dark, bear-infested wilds of Shiretoko on the Four Points Tour, it will be to Fire Bush (and his massive set of low-hangers) that the operatives turn to find their way out of the forest alive.

Operative 04: Heather
AKA: The Voice
Codename: Dubbs
Specialty: Japanese Decryption
Roadsnack of Choice: Oden

Dubbs is the operative on the Four Points Tour with the firmest grasp on the Japanese language. So complete is her mastery of Nihongo that she was once refused her own reservation at a hotel because the hotel manager refused to believe that she was the same Japanese native speaker who had called to reserve the room. Dubbs has already put her decryption skills to work securing transport for the Tour, as well as lodging and food for the operatives along the way. Should the operatives be faced with a linguistic impasse once their mission is underway, it will be Dubbs who saves their bacon.

Operative 05: Sonomi
AKA: The Outsider
Codename: Sonomo
Specialty: Japanese Infiltration
Roadsnack of Choice: PAN!

Though not technically based in Hokkaido, as are the rest of the Four Points team, Sonomo’s ties to the island run much deeper than any temporary teaching contract. She is able to trace her lineage back to a secret sect of fishermen samurai who once inhabited the then-bustling fishing town of Furubira on the Shakotan peninsula. She is the only operative who was born in Japan and the only operative who, in a pinch, could probably pass for a Japanese national. Exactly why the team would prioritize including a cultural infiltrator is unclear, but as they have planned for every other eventuality, you can be sure they had a good reason for appointing her to the job.

Know the Points 2: Erimo

Next up, the second goal on our Four Points Tour of Hokkaido:

Distance from Sapporo: 214km

Distance from previous Point (Matsumae): 509km

When Heather and I ran into a friend and fellow ALT from the Erimo area in sweaty, sweaty Aomori during the Nebuta festival, he was slowly dissolving into a puddle inside his black jeans and black T-Shirt. We asked him if he hadn't lost it, going out in such an outfit when those of us in shorts and linen shirts were already baking in the Aomori heat. He explained that he couldn't help it, that he'd spent the last year out near Erimo, and as the temperature never rose above 20 Celsius and the clouds and fog seldom lifted, he had no use for summer wear.

Stories like that made me falter momentarily, wondering if Erimo would be worth hitting on the four points tour. Consulting Wikipedia on the subject, it had but the following to say about Cape Erimo:

Hot and cold fronts meet nearby of the cape thus creating a dense mist which covers the cape for more than 100 days a year. Wind blows here with the speed of 10 m/s for almost 300 days a year. Every year more than 400,000 tourists visit Cape Erimo.

I mean, with piss-poor weather like that, what did those 400,000 tourists see in the the place, and what was the point of making our way all the way down to that southernly arrowhead of land tapering out into the Pacific.

Then Mark mentioned that he'd read about the famous cliffsides of Erimo, and how among all those mists you could peer down from those cliffs upon herds of seals seeking refuge on the rocks. He spoke of winds so tangible in their ever-presence that the people of Erimo had erected museums to venerate the breezes, to archive their long-past blowings.

And all of a sudden it started sounding like it might be the best destination on our trip.

Distance to next Point (Shiretoko): 358km

Know the Points 1: Matsumae

This is the first in a series of posts aimed at profiling the different destinations that we hope to hit on our Four Points Tour at the end of September. This post deals with the first point of the four points tour:

Distance from Sapporo: ~350km

Matsumae is located at the extreme south-western tip of our island, and neighbouring Cape Shirakami holds the title of most southernly point in all of Hokkaido. Though all of us on the Four Points Tour have been as far south as the port city of Hakkodate, none of us have ever made it as far south as Matsumae.

With Hokkaido having been officially assumed as a territory of Japan only roughly 140 years ago, our island lacks a number of the hallmarks of older Japanese culture, such as expansive wooden temples, ancient shrines, and Edo-era castles. That is we lack such things everywhere other than Matsumae, which is known for being home to the only Edo-era castle in Hokkaido. When the flowering cherry blossom front finally reaches Hokkaido in the late spring, tourists flock to the castle at Matsumae to take in its gardens full of sakura.

...or at least that's what everyone tells me about Matsumae, and the meager English wikipedia article on the town has little more to comment on other than its population of close to 10,000 souls.

I'll be sure to tell you more about it once I've been there.

Distance to next Point (Erimo): 509km

The Four Points Tour Mk2: Four Points RETURNS!

…or Rebooted, or Reloaded, or Re-energized. Or some other REhash permutation that Yahtzee may have touched on here. Whatever we’re calling it, the Four Points Tour is back and going strong. If you were keeping up last year, you may have heard my mad blather about wanting to drag Mark and Lindsay around Hokkaido on a road trip meant to circumnavigate the island. Fortunately, I’ve still got a map kicking around:

View Larger Map

That’s about 2,200km of coastal road. It was madness last year when we planned to do it in the nine days of vacation we managed to rangle out of the Japanese National Holiday known as Silver Week. Unfortunately, the car I was meant to be getting from my predecessor in Furubira turned out to be a junker, and we were forced to scrap the Four Points Tour along with the car, resorting to the far-more-modest, rental-car-enabled Substantial Yet Notably Diminished (Due to Logistical Concerns of Space and Time) Two Point Five Points Tour of Fun.

She was a good roadtrip, taking us to previously-unexplored corners of the island like Onuma, Hakodate, Wakkanai, Rishiri, and Tomamae. However, the promise of what could have been lingered in Mark, Lindsay, and I like a hungry void (okay, so maybe it only lingered in me like a hungry void).
It wanted adventure, space, and the open road.
It wanted to explore the far-flung corners of our new home.
It wanted ridiculously spicy, volcano-ring chips and delicious Seicomart fried chicken.

Now, with Silver Week once again approaching, and with the open road around this island lying before us, more pregnant with possibility than any strip of asphalt has the right to be, The Four Points Tour has been REBORN! Watch this space for more information on how we intend to bring this island to its knees with the mother of all road trips!

Or, you know, something a little less highfalutin’.

Modern Myths: ロボト (Robots)

It’s a fact that scarcely gets mentioned outside of Japan: that all the museums in this place are stocked with robots.

Where in other countries there should be historical dress and obsolescent bits of the industrial age, in Japan there are robots. Sculptures of robots, and paintings of robots, and miniatures of robots, and man-sized, geometric-armour-puzzles of robots bristling with potent, needle-like projections that can only be weapons from the future.

There are bulbous, iron, fallout-suit robots for man and dog, complete with photosynthetic modules holding actual plants, made to carry the fire of life through black times. There are textbook, cardboard-box-and-stovepipe robots, with broad, television-like faces that are only so many generations removed from their furniture ancestors. There are actual furniture robots—chair and record-player, sound-system robots—things that look like husks that were captured and had their guts ripped out to house our much-less-clever technologies. There are steampunk, post-carrier robots with incandescent eyes, and there are shinning, crowned robots who are little more than industrial-age collections of cogs and levers. There are girl robots with long green hair, and boy robots that look like distended, extraterestrial cyborg impressions of man. There are little baby robots with polyester dresses, white plastic skin, and blank, black, staring eyes.

There are pictures of robots you remember from when you were small.

There are prototypes of robots who will render you obsolete.

In the children’s wing, in the community gallery, there is a broad circle of wooden stools, and on each stands a testament to one of the many robots who have already colonized our minds through anime: who’ve been garrisoning off small parts of the Japanese souls since those souls were young. In the community gallery, young people are encouraged to familiarize themselves with practical robots, helping them to navigate mazes and further build their artificial intelligences. In the community gallery, broad sheets of paper cover the walls, and the children are encouraged to draw their own robots. With the ingeniousness of the young, they attack the blanks with pencil crayons, filling the spaces with diabolical creation.

And when the lights in the gallery dim at the end of the day, and all of the children are ushered out into the sweaty Aomori night, the technicians and the engineers take down those doodles from the walls. They study the pencil-crayon schematics and scan them into their complex computers. They birth the next generations of robots from the dreams of babes.

More.

Kaerimashita

After days of travel that started at Toronto Pearson on Thursday July 29^th at 13:00, I finally got back home to Furubira at 16:00 today, after sojourns in humid Tokyo hostels and on the floor of Maggie’s wind-swept apartment in Sapporo. The clouds that had been grey and ominous from Otaru through to just past Yoichi are riven in blue and white as my bus passes through that high, narrow tunnel and down into the rocky, coastal roads of the Shakotan peninsula. Having heard tales of flooding in Furubira while I was away from Mark, I half expect to come back upon my town as a ruin.

As I pass through the last tunnel, I find it to be anything but. It is the same sun-and-clouded, tree-choked-mountains-of-green place that I left. The only evidence of the torrential rains of last Thursday lingers in the spindly and still-green trees up-ended in the shallows where the Furubira river empties into the Sea of Japan.

I climb the stairs to my apartment for the first time in three weeks to find that some of me has gone out of it. In my absence, it has settled back to the dusty smell of tatami mats and sunshine that I remember so keenly from when I first arrived here a few days shy of a year ago. It is a smell that was once tinged with the anxiety of finally being on my own in this distant land. However, now the same smell comforts me. It is a smell of the relatively clear spaces in this apartment—a smell of traditional, tiled shower rooms and warm, astroturfed sun rooms. It is a smell of golden light through sheer curtains and of vague tinkling from unseen wind chimes.

And that smell makes me sane, on this Sunday end to my long adventure home—when all of my emotional history screams that I should be mourning the end of a vacation; mourning another year away from all that is familiar and Canadian.

But I don’t.

And I’m not.

And I’m wondering if it has to do with the overwhelming sense of right I felt when I walked off flight AC001 and into Tokyo Narita for the second time this year, this time very much without the support of dozens of other Toronto JETs. I wonder if it has to do with how all of my consternation over training my way into sweaty Tokyo and finding my hostel fell away, only to be replaced by a profound and irrational love for the Japanese people—by a strong desire that I never knew I had to be back home with them.