Tom Vs. the Volcano

I threw on my pack, waxed my Mohawk, adjusted my suspenders and started trudging up Japan's largest pile of hot black rocks. It took four hours of marching through volcanic sands to reach an elevation above the clouds...with four hours left to the summit. Most of the climb is monotonous, steady, and tiresome but the end result is a feeling and a view of unparalleled magnificence. From the symmetry to the pacing, this mountain represents the Japanese lifestyle.

An American individualist at heart, I bypassed the last station that offered lodging and warmth and camped on my own at the mountain's apex. I pushed to the summit just before sundown. The gale force winds were whipping me into the red rocks around the last hundred meters before the crate's edge. I felt a vendetta against me as the cold, altitude, and bursts of air tempered my spirits into steel and stone. It isn't the most physically challenging ascent but the mind is on a thin cable after seven and a half hours of high altitude desert hiking.

As I was pitching my tent under the twilight shadows of the tori gate, two twinkling headlamps slowly approached my site. A Japanese man and an Indonesian had also made the summit in one day but had not checked the hotel closings at this particular site. I offered them a place to sleep with me in my little tent and they gratefully accepted. It was about an hour later, when I was on a call of nature, that I realized the far side of the crater had an lodge. I told the two and they were on their way after a five minute bout of gratitude. I, once again the proud fool, chose to stick it out in the cold and wind atop this igneous demon.


The night that ensued was a hallucination at best. After I ran out of bottled oxygen and the altitude sickness took strong hold over my malnourished and sleepless brain, the torrents of wind tore my mind into vast audio and emotional fantasies. At one point I was shouting orders to my crewmates to "MAN THE STARBOARD BASTION! HOIST THE REAR JIB! HOLD MEN! HOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooolllld!" as I lashed the two-pound tent to boulders and held the support beams in frame with my arms and legs extended. I slept zero as the dragons maw of Fuji blasted terrifying balls of air against my teflon home. I spent the night sitting erect rubbing feeling into my feet and legs between wrestling matched with the wind. And then the unexpected came...morning.

The sunrise cut the layer of nimbus clouds from the wispy cirrus above and painted the bleak darkness of night with a new hope of returning to sanity. Slowly, the surrounding regions began to glow as the sun painted details across the landscape. Lakes and foothills emerged out of the darkness and I was finally aware of my own presence atop Japan's highest altar. I didn't know what I had achieved until I looked out from the highest peak over the altitude I had conquered and watched the darkness and cold of my evenings torment recede into the warm pink-orange of the sun.

The decent was an elation. I ran down a mountain, my fatigued calves jumping forward in bounds down a slope of pebbles and dust. It took eight hours to summit and two hours to return to the base of the mountain. Every postcard, every decor in a cheesy sushi restaurant, every overpriced dorm-room poster of Fuji will bring me back to the relief and respect I felt during that descent.


I was met at the base by a grandmotherly woman making mushroom tea in a wood cabin. She helped me fold my clothes and repack my tent, gave me a cup of tea, and endured my broken Japanese recounting of the trip. I wanted to tell her and to have her understand what a goat that mountain was.

A Day In The Park

I once again have the reigns on the chaos that accompanies international living. My contract is finished, my apartment is clean and I am all set for a three week romp through the western provinces. Now, a bit of back logging:

Weirdness has a heart, a buzzing hive of pink punks and ukulele gangs. The "park" is more like a chaotic talent show with sword fights, break dancers, a-rhythmic clapping parties, and swing danging greasers littering the otherwise pristine greenery. A "Where's Waldo" shirt and a red Mohawk fit in perfectly. The park is a place where youth parades recklessness and passion. It was overwhelming how much random culture was pouring out into the atmosphere of Tokyo's Yoyogi park; NYC has a thing or two to learn.



The difference in expression between an adolescent/young adult Japanese and an adult is as clear cut a distinction as water and ice. The condensation of the free spirited youth into business suit wearing office workers occurs overnight. The Japanese treat the phases of their life like the change in their seasons; the change is abrupt and extreme. One of my students who commonly wears neon tights, random charms and sports multicolored hair showed up to class with straight black hair, a gray suit and a plain white bag because she got a job. That's the end and they know it, and I think they like it!


Until they reach that endpoint, the city has no shortage of kitch boutiques selling everything from authentic American civil war flags to Bob Seger vintage concert t-shirts to decorate the scattered identities of Tokyo's 20-somethings. I got some red suspenders and a black leather steel-studded wristband. My friend bought a t-shirt out of a giant plastic tube. We enjoyed our eccentric purchases over a cup of Bolivian coffee in a French cafe called the "Snob's Heart". Until I lived in this city, I never fully realized the extent of comfort the completely random offers my soul.

In The Thick Of It

Time has locked itself into the expressway of routine; I hadn't even noticed that nearly a month has passed since the last entry. I'd be lying if I said not a lot happened but I am not far enough removed from it to make a clear judgment on the full significance.

The power of culture shock moves silently, like the angel of death, seeping into the crumbling old self image and killing it at the very core. The stages of this phenomenon are startlingly accurate: there is the honeymoon phase where everything is in a golden hue, the negotiating phase where sacrifices are noticed and positives and negatives are weighed against one another, then there is the adjustment phase in which a person either assimilates completely (10% of expatriates), rejects completely (60%) or creates a self-selected mixture of virtues (or vices) and shuffles oneself into a new being (30%). Of course, in the spirit of this whole experiment, I aim and hope to be in that golden 30. My self transformation has been rocky at times, however, and I have faced large waves of cultural hardship over the last month and reacted in...interesting ways.


Most of my gripes are so small they seem like banalities, but the deep irritation they cause me is like red to a bull. I cant stand the rotating air conditioners on the subways...every time it blows on my head I snap and punch through a window. People swing their umbrellas when they walk and block large sections of thoroughfare... rage. The word for "welcome" is so spleen-splittingly annoying it makes me want to scurry up a chalkboard with my fingernails. It is the small things. It is also the small things that I love: smiling carrots, Engrish misprints, My hometown printed on plastic cups, pink haired freaks, monks on the metro, people passing out standing up, the little-old-lady-bikes everyone rides around; These are the elements that make and break me.




Most of the last month has been daily life: shopping, commuting, and working.

Work is by far the most interesting of these three. The general level of fear in my classes is quite funny. My students are afraid of the sun, afraid of pig flu, afraid of mistakes, afraid of train doors, afraid of the mohawked American maniac that forces them to imitate mowing the lawn and shoots them dead with his fingers when he has had a long day.

My contact with my students (aged 18-24) is enlightening. I have learned a lot about culture and picked up some common Japanese. The students are strange, by and large, and have some awkward quirks that can only be described as perversions. The interactions in class are priceless. A few of my favorite moments:


A: I want to touch golden-haired girl's hips on the train...how should I?
B: Swiftly

I am God; sorry for making you so unlucky

A: I have cuts all over my wrists
B: stop doing that

A: will you loan me 10,000 yen?
B: for what?
A: long vision glasses (aka binoculars)
B: for what?
A: ...never ask, never tell

A: please forgive me
B: why?
A: for this mess I've made in your wife

A: What did you do this weekend
B: I went skiing with no shirt
A: What was the brand of the shirt you wore not?

A: You stole my girlfriend!
B: We can share! Hotels will be cheaper!

Turtles commonly support turtles(what?)

Ahhh.....I yearn for that life...(about my life)

A: my girlfriend left me...what do you suggest I do?
B: I suggest you cry

The interior of animals makes me sad

I want to be a cat. Do you mind?

(I walked into this one)...and then the poor homeless woman, her son, and their dreams starved to death in the dark alley rubbish bin...

And my personal favorite:

It is a bad idea to come (onto*) on a crying girl

Yes my friend, yes it is.

I am moving on, however, as much as I love the psycho-queerness of the 20 something veterinarians to be. My new job, starting in August, will be teaching little kiddos. I am going to be moving into the mountains to a town that boasts the cleanest water in the country, majestic ski slopes, hiking trails and untouched forests. It will be a welcomed change from the polluted and dark metro mind-clogging mess of Tokyo commuting.


I will be taking a three week traveling holiday to some far regions of the island major sites and will surely have more to write. thanks for the patience.

Yours newly,



Thomas