MARS

i am sitting on a tatami mat, in front of a computer, on mars.

i arrived on mars in a hollowed out metal cigarette that hurtled through the air at barely subsonic speeds. about midway through the cigarette, someone had affixed long metal arms, mirror images of each other, that looked like very squat right triangles. there were noisemaking devices hanging from the metal arms (or at least i believe that is where the noise came from). these noisemakers sucked in air spat it back out again so fast that it was nearly impossible to sleep or think or do anything other than sit there like a fish in a straightjacket.

i was herded onto this thing in a number of elaborate facilities that seemed suited to the task of packing people into the cigarette, like little, blog-having shreds of tobacco. there were lines of us, all the same, all going one place or another. we were identified by scraps of paper, and we only knew that if we lost them, we might never go free. this is at least what we suspected, no one attempted to find out. this is not because they are cowards, but they are. the lines led to a machine or an attendent or both, and afterwards, poured out into numbered hallways, which led to more lines. more specific lines.

as a ritual to indicate that i had successfully passed through the machines and people and stamps and customs of this place, they tore one of my identifying slips of paper in half. gave me one half as a souvenir, and put me on the cigarette.

it is somewhat a propos that the above metaphor, which i now pronounce dead (cigs'll kill you, you know), was to a cigarette. because we were flying JETSTAR. we were flying JETSTAR from sydney and, in the one second that we turned on our TV in our room at the romantic TRAVELODGE, SYDNEY, we saw the CEO of JETSTAR explaining just why it was that the cockpit of one of their planes had set on fire. this caused the plane to land, fortunately, saving the lives of all involved. i would link to jetstar, or the travelodge, both of whom, i'm sure, have websites that will be shitty in just the right way to describe the experience that i had with them, but, even though mars appears to have a lot of technology (and far too many commas), i am sitting at THE SLOWEST FUCKING COMPUTER EVER.****

so jetstar flew us from syndey to cairns to tokyo-narita airport. we were held hostage on the plane and told that, if we wanted to eat, we were going to have to pay for any of a number of their well-branded, pre-packaged nourishment options. everyone cowtowed. some even payed for the little movie box that they were selling, too. it came on a cart and you set it on your tray table and it let you have in flight entertainment. i settled for sleeping off our last night in sydney, which i really will write about someday, and reading slaughterhouse-five. which was amazing. then the book was over, and i was sad. so it goes.

we arrived in tokyo and met jody and yuko 1, some of the college age kids that are attending to us. we were given rental cellphones to communicate, but the cellphones only had voice. turns out that every cellphone except for ours has an email address (so do the ones in the united states, but that is just a kludge--wikipedia--for sending a text message) and people--all people, not just the iphone cogniscenti--send tons of emails between their phones. the craziest thing about this email communication, other than the fact that it takes place in a fascinatingly undecipherable pictoral script the locals use called kanji, i think, is that my host mother at my homestay, who is not a teenage mother, can use it. and does use it. and doesn't think it's weird that she is using it. i do all of the thinking it is weird for her. she also can use the dvd player (when she can't find a button, she looks for it and tries to interpret the other, non-kanji, pictoral language that is inscribed on the player.*) and a digital camera without instruction. these people rock.

so jody and the first yuko (short yuko, as she calls herself--the other yuko is less short, said the jolly white giant) gave us our cellphones and put us on a bus to tokyo station. shohei, my host dad, says that tokyo station is the center of japan (he said it in that epic way that hackers say things in scifi books). i believe him.

outside tokyo station, we met mr. miyajima, whose name is just ever-so-slightly too close to mr. miyagi for me to trust myself when i get into that drunk, everything is a hilarious joke to everyone, including people who can get offended**, mode. we were all busy trying to be incredibly respectful and bowing at people, but not too much because that's what the guidebook says, and letting them initiate handshaking and all that. this show of being incredibly respectful is sort of bullshit, i think. they are not retarded aliens who will shoot you for doing anything wrong. *** the respect is bullshit not because respect is bullshit, but because the majority of the whiffs see the people that we encounter as meat computers executing a complex program that, on termination after successful (respectful) interaction, yields beer.

mr. miyagi (i'm going to hell, it's decided****) begins to speak. a hush immediately falls over the gratiutously respectful whiffs and the actually respectful japanese people. "ladies and gentlemen," he says. drum roll. "i'm drunk." he has three shopping bags filled with cans of beer with names that sound japanese. he hands them out to everyone (program terminated), smiling in that weathered old japanese way that seems like it should need no further explanation. there are no open container laws in japan. you have to smoke in imaginary boxes demarcated by red lines and posters that describe how to be respectful (something america needs), but you can just drink wherever. welcome to tokyo. the bar is open.

my host family's representative at tokyo station is shohei fueki. i was smiling a lot and trying to be very nice and enthusiastic. that made him sweat. he is a programmer for unisys, writes vb script. doesn't talk that much. his daughter, misato, says that he loves to talk after a few drinks. shohei, misato, and wife/mom junko (june co., not junk-o, LOL) live far outside tokyo at matsudo station. on the bus from the airport we were all given 5,000 yen and a suica card with the same amount on it for the trains. as i write, my suica is almost run down from the long treks into the city, but still, i have spent almost no money since my arrival here in tokyo. i would have had a chance to see shohei after a few drinks, i had bought him and his family a bottle of maker's mark at the duty-free. whiffenpoof joel pattison knocked down my bag after customs, though. hello tokyo, clean up my boozy mess.

junko smiles and likes it when i smile. her first question was whether i was hungry. we walked down the street to yoshinoya, japanese fast food restaurant. i got a beef bowl and put the nuclear pink colored ginger on it. that ginger is really good. in a sort of restraint typical of myself, after deciding that i liked the ginger, i put gobs and gobs of it all over all the food in my bowl. like five times more than junko. i also may have wolfed the food down and proven some stereotypes that at least europeans have of us americans.

we talked there and back at home. standard self introduction fare. she speaks very fast, but often goes back and corrects herself and makes little detours in muttered japanese. its surprisingly comprehensible, but there is 3:1 sentence spoken to sentence of delivered content ratio. misato was not back home yet, she just finished four years of school in the states and got in tomorow from them, yesterday from now. its day three in japan. junko showed me how to use the shower. you set the heat on an lcd display, turn it on, wait a few seconds and then take your shower. this is actually something that i had at least five childhood、 future technology related daydreams about. she showed me my bed, in a room that closes itself off with white panels, on a tatami mat, on a little cotton thing about two inches thick. it is really comfortable, but if you sleep on one side for a very long time, your ribs ache for a few minutes after you roll over.

the next day, we had a concert around fujisawa station. it was a monster beast concert. concert stuff started at 11 am and didn't end until 9. in the gaps between the concerts i read franny and zooey, the first salinger i've read. he really likes his books with just text on the cover. i really like the text inside the covers. he talks about the section all-star/section asshole phenomenon (is there a link to describe this?). he calls them section men.

we introduced ourselves in japanese at the concert, which induced a lot of handwringing and fear about how we were going to sound in japanese. this was contagious and i spent the show with a racing heart until i spoke. i read my japanese like an american game show host. my self-introduction was spizzwink(?) meme n-million that i have introduced to the whiffs. hello, my name is drew westphal and i hail from sunny, ojai valley california. i walk like a duck, look like a monkey, and all my friends laugh at me. rex is the best translator ever. i made a big show of clearing my throat before this and making strange noises. the audience seemed to like it.

i road the trains for a few hours to get to fujisawa. my bible was a crumpled sheet of paper with names of stations and times. i got lost and had to call jody on my cellphone. cellphones here don't ring. you just call. and wait. and then there is a voice. it seems more magic that way.

MARS. why is japan mars? take an apple and cut it up the american way. it ends up in wedges on a plate. the apple is life in a technologically developed, rich, internet-connected society. now take the apple and cut, core, dice, spiral, whatever it in a made for tv electric powered, toilet-seat warmed apple slicer. it ends up all cool looking on a plate. with lots of kanji and exclamation points. this is mars because everything is the same but all of the strata, all of the divisions, all of the ways that we have diced up the ingredients to live our cellphone calling, emailing, processed cheesefood eating lives are completely different. everything is here and nothing is the same. when i asked someone how the movie "lost in translation" was they asked me if i had been to japan. i hadn't, at the time. now, without seeing the movie, i can see what they mean, i think. i really want to watch that movie now.

mars vignettes (a sampler):

i went looking for an internet cafe so i wouldn't have to use this porno computer***** from hell, and spied through a door some people sitting in front of some matte black flat screens. i stood in front of the motion sensor on top of the door and the door didn't open. so i waved my hands at the door like a dumbass and everyone saw me. the waiter let me into the restaurant behind the door (you have to press a button and it slides open really fast with a star trek noise). the screens divided tables and were matte black, but there was only one pixel on each screen and it was only the one color i had already seen it being. i wanted to order internet and i ordered dumplings instead. my shit eating foreigner grin is also a dumpling eating foreigner grin.

being the tallest person on the subway.

not being able to read anything except things that are poorly translated. (link to engrish, a website with photos of bad translations)

going to a maid cafe with junko. we went into the tech district and walked around. first we went into a store, four stories, containing only models. like models of godzilla and power rangers, and godzilla. and a robotic cell phone with arms and legs called "phone braver 7". there were maids out on the street and they were advertising their maid cafes. its a cafe and everyone is dressed up in french maid haloween costumes and they wait on you. junko and i laughed and ate beef curry. maid cafe.... maid cafe. i haven't seen the used-women's-panties vending machine yet. but i'm buying some.

vending machines in the middle of nowhere. there was a vending machine in the middle of a field of grass yesterday.

the peace sign in every photo. i've resolved to do the spock sign every time someone in a photo i am in does the peace sign. at the after party for the fujisawa concert i did it and there was a flock of girls doing the spock sign by the end. they all titter like whoah.

does this place have street signs? i cannot tell.

everything that happened last night. more on that later. drew out.



what all those asterixes were about:

*seriously, american technophobes: devices have had eject and play buttons FOREVER. look at the device, assuming that it works by more than just MAGIC, and MAKE YOUR BEST GUESS AS TO HOW TO USE IT. for any of you whose computers i have fixed, this is all that i have done. that and had a computer as a friend for portions of high school. and other school altitudes.

**i am only offended by people who get offended.

***thing that yale has made me 1) believe exists, 2) be afraid of: the sudden anger of everyone that doesn't go to yale. somehow, now, in the outside world, i believe that there are all of these people, protocol obsessed, who--at the slightest slight--will become uncontrollably angry, unable to listen to reason, and will, somehow, kill me. the whiffenpoofs this year have made a tradition of running from these, and other, invisible monsters. as jamie warlick said, "those are the worst ones. you can never tell when they're going to get you."

****whatever, there will probably be much better conversation there. and i'm sure someone managed to bring their flask. we're talking all of the most fun, best deviants ever to have lived.

*****this computer is slow, i learned when i opened the tab to write this blog, because internet explorer (insert nearly any link to a website about this product and it will explain that internet explorer is worse for you than cigarettes--JETSTAR or other--and mcdonalds combined) has been used to watch a lot of porno. i don't know who has been watching the porno, since it wasn't me and it seems to involve men and women and some sites exclusively for just one of the above western-binary-opposition-dependent-categories (wikipedia: deconstruction, again. wikipedia: pretentious).