culture shock

So the Japanese cultural experience just got real. I stayed with a local family for the weekend. Dinner the first night was a huge affair. The husband and wife, the wife's co-worker (American), two kids, the neighbor, the neighbor's aunt and uncle, somebody's grandmother, and somebody's relative visiting from the South Dakota. So there's maybe 11 of us, 3 Americans. After dinner, the 12 year old girl Midori pulls out the violin and plays the Star Bangled Banner. I'm looking around like maybe I should stand up and salute at this point.

After dinner, the guy asks me if I want to take a shower. So he says they put some towels in my room. I go grab one and commence bathing. As I'm drying off, I start thinking this towel is really big. Like it's probably bigger than any towel I've ever used in my life. Now this confuses me a little, because I was expecting things to be smaller than in the U.S., not bigger, but whatever. So then after the shower the guy is like let me show you how to setup the futon bed. He's unfolding the mattresses and he's like, “hey, where's the blanket?”. Ah... um... about that. It appears I've used a blanket as a towel. The next day I made sure to ask if I really had a towel.

Now the first morning, I'm up at some godforsaken hour in the morning (the sun comes up at like 4:30 am and apparently they are not as strong believers in curtains as I am). Anywho, it's just me and the 10 year old boy awake at this point. Now, the parents speak pretty good English, but the 10 year old boy speaks maybe 100 words in English, and I speak maybe 100 words in Japanese. They are not the same 100 words. We try to carry on a conversation but its pretty rough. Eventually he starts to show me his toys (little spinning tops, godzilla dolls, etc.) Finally, he pulls out the Go set (traditional Chinese/Korean/Japanese game, little black and white stones. It's like the oriental equivalent of chess). Now I can actually play Go, although I don't think I'm all that good. So we start to play and I wipe the board with him. I'm feeling kind of bad about beating a 10 year old boy. The next game we play I give him a 2 stone handicap, still beat him. Then a 4 stone handicap and I still beat him. Later his sister comes down and starts talking to him as we're playing. I don't really understand a word they're saying, but I imagine it was probably “What the hell, this crazy white bastard plays Go?”, “Yeah and he's beating the pants off me!” “Holy crap”.

Now, for food, I was going with the “When in Rome” strategy. I was prepared to eat anything. I ended up eating pancakes with chopsticks. And by pancakes I mean squid, shrimp, cabbage and bacon pancakes. With soy sauce on top. They also offered me some mayoannise to go with it, but I drew the line there... Walking around, we did see McDonald's, which I expected. And then KFC, which I wasn't expecting but I could believe. And then, in downtown Tokyo, a Denny's. Seriously? Denny's?

We did some sight seeing in Tokyo. The “Japlish” was amusing. I saw a store called “Nudy Boy”. On a lamp post nearby there was a large sign stating “No Smorking”, which I could understand, but also “No tout”, which I have no idea what that means. Also a sign on a display “dose no touch, please”. 

Finally, we saw a few temples (Buddhism) and shrines (Shinto). The one we went to was called Daibutsu. I'm pretty sure that this translates as “Huge-Ass Buddha”. Not quite statue of liberty size, but still pretty damn big for a Buddha.