From now on I’ll skip the details of the Kokusai Center meals or it would get repetitive. Be assured that I’ll keep having mostly everything from both “Japanese” and “Western”–style breakfeast, for am I not the official “why not both?” guy, on several levels?

I’m impressed by the packaging of Japanese washing detergent. The box opens and closes easily and comes with a measuring cup for several measures of water and clothing. My clothes have never seen a drier & I’m a bit wary of using it, but there didn’t seem to be any clotheslines so in they went. (Only later did I find the retractable line in the bathroom. It’s neat!)

I’m going to Den-den Town with Lázaro, me looking for the by now almost mythical used X100, him for something as simple as a power supply adapter. We can find our way around Rinkū Town and the station by now, but get confused about how to use our Center-provided ICOCA cards to buy tickets. Turns out you don’t—you just have to hover them over the gate; if you try to use them on the ticket machines, they’ll want to recharge the cards instead. At every little stumbling block like this I have to ask someone in Japanese, and it’s kind of rewarding, really, getting around on a foreign country.

We’re not sure on which train to take and end up on the local (futsū) line to Namba. The view is great. I’ve been outside Brazil once so I already knew how foreign cities are not nearly as vertical as ours—Ōsaka sprawls, mountains visible looming over the traditional-style roofs of low buildings. There’s a lot more antiquated, interesting, beautiful architecture than I thought. There’s a surprising amount of greenhouses and small agricultural fields, right in the middle of streets and residential areas. I see a field with new crops of something very bright green (like much of the trees in Rinkū Town, for that matter), even in this cloudy weather, and wonder if they’re rice paddies. I need that camera. A little after there come what are undoubtedly rice paddies, flooded and 田-like. The train stops for a long time in an station and many passengers switch to an express one, but we’re not sure if we can do that or if there would be extra fees or something. After long careful observation and studying the line maps, we do switch to express. Much better!

I’ve been taught to expect modern Japan to be just concrete gray… Instead there are interesting-looking crowded little streets passing by every other moment, and these charming stations with names like “Hagoromo” and “Takojizō” and “Sakai”—wait, the Sakai? You mean, this is the actual Sakai? I could just get off here and go see the ruins of Sen no Rikyū’s house? (Yes.) Other than us, there are zero foreigners onboard. Most people deliberately and carefully ignore us; many of the elderly or young stare guiltlessly. One Ōsakajin-looking old man plays with a stack of lottery tickets. The young people are very beautiful and fashionable, and fashion here is way more creative and interesting than anything we have at home. Lázaro wants to know why the schoolgirls are in uniform on a Saturday and I’m like dude, just look at those uniforms.

For the outsider, there’s something in this fashion that makes it seems unnaturally good, as if it was fake, as if your mind just can’t accept that this kind of utsukushisa can exist in this same boring old world, as if it’s a kind of cosplay. This is Kawabata’s “bonsai country” again, just like the model-like mountainscape and train stations, just like the the cafés I’d pass by later, every single one oozing such a dollhouse-like charm and style that, if I found one of those Disneyland, I’d say “pff, no real café would be like this”. We did try one of the cafés by the end of the day, tired and beaten, and I’d alternate between the feeling of unreality and the certainty that this actually existed, that it’s an actual café on a real street charging money to serve food and it’s the honest-to-Gods day job of these old ladies. It was weird. A salaryman smoked contently while playing with his dumbphone, and somehow I knew from his expression that he must be exchanging text messages with a romantic interest. Before leaving I ask okamisan for directions and she, who had so far adressed the strange customers with standard service keigo and a pinch of waryness, now changes attitude completely when talking to her friends, and though I’ve heard bits and pieces of Ōsaka-ben all over, this is the first time I witness the real thing, warm and flowing and full of singing high tones. It metaphorically brings tears to my linguist’s eyes, and it breaks my heart to see her correct herself back to hyōjungo.

But that was later. At Namba station we walked around the shops, and I visited both an Uniqlo and a Muji for the first time. There are quite a few neat clothing in my style and for great prices—linen shirts, slim dress pants, light blazers—so that I have to make a lot of effort to not buy anything. There’s a sign pointing to Den-den Town, but when we get out we find that the rainy season (tsuyu) has finally decided to show up—which is a blessing, because I’d much rather walk on the rain than under the blazing midday sun, but it does mean we have to buy umbrellas, and after going back and finding that the cool Muji ones are way too expensive, we end up buying the cheapest we can find. By now lunch seems like a good idea, and I’m attracted to the udon-ya below the bridge. I ask my favourite, tsukimi, and we manage to order and pay without major difficulties. I get an umeboshi-onigiri to reinforce the meal, praying it has no mayo in it. The major distinction from ordering udon back at home is the speed: everything is ready-made, and after being served the cooked noodles and other ingredients at a counter, the client adds the broth herself from a machine. The tea, too, comes from a machine—in fact there’s one in the Center’s cafeteria; they have are buttons for hot and cold water, “tea 1″ and “tea 2″. Even beer comes from a fancy, robotlike machine—this one coin-operated, though. Another difference is, again, the attention to detail in ambiance—even everyday notices are carefully painted on wooden signs with hand drawings, for example. But the major difference is that this is damn good udon dirt cheap. I can’t believe I’m eating so well for so little. I’d pay more than double of this for my daily university grub! Biting into the onigiri—no mayo—I discover entire new overtones of saltness, umami-ness, and, yes, sweetness in umeboshi, long a favourite of mine. It’s not the first time I rediscover a flavour in Japan. I feel like all those years of getting used to Japanese food was intended to prepare my tastes for this, and are now being richly rewarded. I feel throughly at home.

I’m suddenly self-conscious of the fact that I’ve been chatting loudly (perhaps a bit taken over by the atmosphere of the cheap street restaurant), when I realize the Korean girls by our side talk so low it doesn’t even qualify as “talking”, but as “murmuring”. But then I’m saved by a genuine Ōsaka ossan, not really fat but stocky, skin a burnt bronze, radiating energy, who eats his noodles in a flash and with plenty of loud slurping, drink the large mug of beer as if water, all the while laughing and talking loudly as if he’d just won the lottery.

Lázaro wants to know how I’d ask for directions and I say “dunno, man, perhaps something like: ano, sumimasen ga, den-den taun e ikitain desu ga…“. “Desu ga what?” “Just desu ga. Watch.” I try it on an officer and he promptly and helpfully explains that “Den-den Town” is the nickname of a large street and we can find it going straight over there. I thank him and say see? that’s an advantage of Japanese: most of the time you don’t have to say everything.

On the way I spot several game centers, which I pass by like an ex-alcoholic would walk by a liquor store, and many interesting small shops. One shopping arcade seems to specialize in houseware, and once more I’m surprised at how cheap are the (admittedly industrial) Japanese ceramics. A shame it would be so much trouble to carry luggage full of heavy cups and chawan… Soon the electronics stores start to pop up, and it’s the same story: The used stuff are much, much cheaper than anything you could find in Brazil, and I bow mentally to Lafcadio, because yes, if I give to temptation, I’ll go broke. I know where I’m buying my 3DS though… One store has a Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh on display, which I touch about two seconds before reading a warning saying “don’t touch this computer”, & in this way one more item of my youth comes to life: this time a piece of Serial Experiments Lain.

In Den-den properly (i.e. Nipponbashi 3-chōme) there are many stores dealing in used computers and parts, but few carry cameras. We find about four, and none has the X100 (I find a X10, a X20, some of the higher-end models). Lázaro buys an adapter kit but later we found out it’s the opposite of what he needed. As it happened to its spiritual brother Akihabara, it seems that the general tendency of commerce to move to large stores is turning Den-den Town from an electronics center into an otaku (“hobby”) center, and erotic drawings of anime girls stare at us every other store. There are plenty of maid cafés too, at outrageous prices, and many maids on the streets, way more bright and friendly than the typical Japanese on the street. Even then, most take care to ignore the tall gaijin, though a few of the more enterprising ones do approach us—I get a leaflet for a “game center” but it appears to be a specialized UFO-catcher place, not an actual videogame arcade. By the time we reach the end of the street stores are closing, and thus defeated, we take refuge in the aforementioned café (not a maid one!).

We’re tempted to go back via the nearby subway station, which must connect to the train line (somewhere…), but our feet are hurting less and we allow ourselves to get lost a little bit and walk back to Namba. We’re now a few streets west from 3-chōme, and the maid cafés here feel seedier, with the street girls following otaku and calling them oniisan, all living embodiments of cuteness. I wonder what they are like in daily life and how do they feel about this job. Every so often there’s a fascinating old building or food place. I stop by a backstreet-looking “used things” store but they scoff at my request with a kind of fierce pride—”digital cameras? nah, we don’t carry such new stuff”. Eventually, by chance, we stumble upon a shrine.

There’s a concrete tori’i and thick shimenawa, and I can’t read the first kanji of the shrine’s name. I pass the tori’i and the guarding lions and realize I’m being a great deal more reverential about this than an atheist is supposed to be. I timidly wash hands and rinse mouth, but totally forget the part about ringing the bell. The local divine messenger is the red stingray, and the ema-wishes seem to be the usual stuff—that grandpa get well soon, that such-and-such pass on X university, and so on. Later I investigate on the Internet and find that this was the Hirota Jinja, which enshrines Tsuki-sakaki-itsu-no-mitama-ama-sakaru-mukatsu-hime-no-mikoto, aka Ama-terasu-no-mikoto’s aratama, and is famous for protection against… hemorrhoids. Oh well. Not the most romantic first shrine to visit, perhaps, but that’s Shintō for you: always a most practical of religions.

I didn’t fill my backpack with consumer goodies, but I did return with the experience of Ōsaka, and cliché that this may sound, that’s a much more precious treasure to me.

⁂

I thought the rain would mean no sunset but the clouds gracefully open to the West enough to tinge the sea in pink. To the East, mists like wet cotton balls rest on the mountains.

At night, many students from several countries go to the beach, but we don’t do much of anything other than lighting some cheap fireworks. (Silhouettes can be seen around the area, starting better ones). The most pleasant experience is hearing a bit of the sweet Swahili of the beautiful Kenyan woman, as well as her delightful English accent (—without me saying a word on the subject, she actually praises my thick accent…) (except hers count as an official variant, since English is a native language in Kenya, whereas mine is just wrong).

For supper, I decided to try something different and ask for “Adobo”, described as a Philipin chicken soup. To my surprise it’s strongly acid with vinegar. The chicken itself is tasty, but I can’t bring myself to drink the broth, and not eating food always make me feel terribly guilty. I think of the Salad Uprising currently unfolding back in São Paulo, where the military police has arrested protesters for carrying vinegar (a defense against tear gas).

Experience may be a wonderful thing, but lying down back at home I’m still bothered by the lack of a camera. Investigating the Internet again, I find a way out. I’ve been trying to buy an used copy of a book, 日本の茶家, which I have long lusted for (and the other day I found it at ⅓ of the price on kosho). Today I finally got the seller’s reply. I had asked for credit card payment, but once again my Visa Travelmoney is rejected with “invalid number”—I think these are not good for Japanese online shopping. I’m forced to buy it with my regular credit card, which means the Brazilian government will take 6%+ tax. However! As I investigate payment methods, I discover the wonders of pay-on-delivery, which I recall is a service that the reception of the Center will handle. This is great. I write “used cameras” on a search engine, look for stores with this option, and an hour later I’ve ordered my X100 for less than 5 man yen, shipping included. It arrives by Tuesday. My days of not being able to photograph Japan properly are numbered!

I sleep with curtains open so as to welcome the morning light.

Breakfast today: gohan with crisp, soft, sweet, aromatic nori & more of those awesome pickled daikon, mackerel grilled in thick sauce, a fried egg, small and dark-yolked, salad, miso soup with cabbage leaves, nori, and fried batter, more of the superb yogurt, this time with kiwi syrup & candied pears (the bilingual sign said “PEAR なし” & for a good moment I thought there weren’t any pears), rice cereal with rich milk, happiness. Ah, do we see a pattern setting in? And—I never get fat, no matter what I eat, but we can see that the pattern in question is about to test the limits of that theory.

I didn’t see the sunrise today; oni-koroshi kept me on the bed up to seven AM. But today my interview is eleven o’clock so I don’t have to hurry. Students waiting for their time make small-talk in the nearest lounge, this time more naturally than yesterday. After a lot of my start-and-stop broken Japanese, a lot of kindness on the teacher’s part, and a test reading, I find I’m graded at level 4 (out of 5, 上級) which is more than a bit scary (and I signed up for all elective courses, natürlich…). The teacher tells me that I have good manners (reigi) and, though I’m aware that she’s being nice, I feel a bit proud, and say that perhaps it’s thanks to the tea ceremony training. Immediately I notice that I just boasted, which is of course an horrible breach of etiquette—you’re supposed to deny it when they praise you, not simply say “thank you” (and confirming that you have good reigi is like a reigi paradox).

We need to set up goals for self-evaluation after the two months & I have no idea how to quantify mine. I want to… read Japanese… better?

Lunch: Lamen with shredded carrot, corn, nori, green onions, and semi-raw red… fish, another kind of fish cooked and cold with spinach, broccoli with dried… er… fish? in tonkotsu sauce? and broccoli and green tea. Sorry! My fish vocabulary is way too primitive for this! It’s all delicious though.

After lunch, perhaps in divine retribution for bragging that my health so far is perfect, I start feeling too mellow. I lie down to rest, having two hours before the next activity, and it takes too long for me to realize that I’m probably dehidrated and should drink more water. I recall (not for the first time) living in Manaus, and how I’d often lose the high-noon hours simply sleeping away the heat, which is what I do now. At least I manage to set up the alarm clock; but when the time comes I find it very hard to get up, and end up arriving in the library five minutes late, in true Brazilian fashion. Ok, true Brazilian fashion would be 30 minutes…

I’ve been avoiding the library, the way one avoids the first kiss when one really likes this date. Fear of disappointment? As we’re guided through the collection, I’m suddenly conscious of the problema that I’ve been feeling instinctively. There’s too many interesting books. There’s too little time. Will I spend my time in Japan seeing the real Japan, or exploring books I wouldn’t find at home, scavenging them on used bookstores, and so on? It would take a lot of time to explore Japanese-language books properly. It also would take a lot of time to explore the city. It’s an impossible choice. I read one Haruki Murakami essay (with English aid), a kids-level booklet on Fuji, and bring four books to my room.

I find a book I’ve long wanted at kosho.ne.jp and try to buy there for the first time, but even now I still haven’t got the end seller’s confirmation email. The rooms sadly lack the notorious Japanese electronic toilet seats but I found out the first floor has one, and of course I can’t pass this opportunity of a cultural experience. It’s pleasant enough. Later I also decide to try the massage chair in the lobby. The machine noises are a bit embarassing but soon I pump the thing up to maximum strength and let it work on my back and neck. I start reading The tea ceremony and women’s empowerment in modern Japan but fall asleep again, and miss dinner time by exactly one minute. Oh well, that’s an excuse to try convenience store food if there ever was one.

The sun has set nondescriptely today, and even though I’m not going to the beach, I still have that feeling of elation. I’m cycling alone this time, and knowing myself, I take care to note the way back—I miss a street or two, predictably, but luckly the Kokusai Center is quite easy to find, with very obvious landmarks; just locate the huge Gate Tower with its ferry wheel, turn your back to it, and proceed until the very start of the very large airport bridge. I try 7-11 this time, and shop to the soundtrack of real true kombini music. After a while I realize I want to try more things than it’s humanly possible, and stop picking foodstuffs. I’m looking for hojicha or kukicha (good nighttime teas), and they have both, but only in tea bags, which is kind of against my personal religion. The only loose-leaf tea is 7-11′s own brand. A bit disappointed, I decide to try the Family Mart on the way back. Again no hoji or kuki, but at least there’s a decent-looking shincha (new-season) from Itō-en. I really want to try kombini junk food, and ask for one of the giant oily sausages on display, appropriately called Frank. They’re subtly different. That’s something I admire in sausages. They’re just each place’s leftover meat in a package, but apparently each place’s leftovers has its own local aromas. This one has a thick rubbery crust and a subtle spicy flavour. I also have a ham-and-fried-katsuo sandwich for good measure. After such light, healthy, traditional Japanese cuisine, I’m feeling bogged down, so that another of those 草大福 sweets feel refreshing.

I come home with a bag full of instant lamen, various snacks and other kombini-ppoi industrial foods. There’s an awareness that I’ve done nothing today but rest, sleep, and eat, like some kind of gluttonous monster. Feeling lonely and somewhat embarassed with myself, I’m eager to go out into the city tomorrow, my first free day in Japan.

The “orientation” takes the entire morning and is quite disorienting, tons of information and everyone sleep-deprived and whatnot. There are students, Australia and Canada, Taiwanese & Korean, a Belarusian and an Uzbek, quite a few Indonesians. Our seats are determined in advance but mine is in its usual place right in the front row, it must be my destiny. We join the third Brazilian student, Liliana, technically a native Portuguese citizen, meaning she didn’t get free air tickets—these are just for us third world nationals—and had to buy her own, meaning she came in earlier. She’s researching nikkei ceramics; I’ve met her before in São Paulo.

On the positive side, I’m not nearly as lost in the sea of Japanese language as I’d feared I’d be. I don’t feel scared or isolated at all; rather, dunno, in the warm embrace of a long-lost foster mother. On the negative side, I speak with the vocabulary of an elementary student, which is a huge blow to the ego. I need a lot of effort to let go of fancy words. I find to my surprised that, in Japanese, I’m actually slightly embarassed of talking in public, a completely novel feeling to me.

Most teachers speak in standard Japanese but there’s at least one that slips back into Kansai-ben occasionally—han-mai no anketto wa…. Speaking of dialects, I’m amused at our varieties of Portuguese: the sea is my rural Southern Brazilian [maɻ], Lázaros Northern Brazilian [max], and Liliana’s European [maɾ]—though that would pass for São Paulo speech, and she otherwise sounds like a perfect paulista anyway, with very little of the stereotypical Continental marks, only missing the most obscure of slangs.

Lunch: “Chinese-style” thin soup with vegetables and a sesame aroma, boiled mackerel with lotus roots, sliced bamboo shoots, and Japanese spinach, pickled salty cucumbers, a mix of shimeji and seafood, cool harusame with salad and a cherry, the best takoyaki I’ve ever had, sprinkled with plenty of katsuo flakes, green tea, and a perfect blueberry-and-strawberry cake. I must be dead for I am in heaven.

We eat quick because soon it’s the placement exams—very intimidating and exhausting; at the end of it the students look exhausted. The teachers then run some social activities and play and we chat a little.

For supper I go with udon, despite the heat, with an extra packet of nori, and peach-and-apple cake. The setting sun and the sea beckon us from the glass walls, and after refreshments Team Brazil takes some bicycles and set for a walk on the artificial Marble Beach, all white pebbles and port-city–like, with a view to the huge bridge and the airport and the sea. The bikes were weird, way too low and strange to control, but they have lights and bells and sturdy baskets, good for shopping. The nighttime temperature is very pleasant as we watch the sun disappear, the sky change from one hue to another, the crescent moon start to shine. I see Venus, bright and round, but I can’t find the Northern Star. Some dark-skinned Japanese boys are happily undressing but they’re way too young for me to get interested. A young couple to the side is sitting together silently and throwing pebbles on the sea, and I feel a tang of envy. We meet some of the other Kokusai Center students and greet them and chat with awkward, start-and-stop Japanese from all sides. I know there are tons of things to do but there’s a peace in my bones I haven’t felt in years.

⁂

Early in the morning we got a note at the front desk by Carla, a Brazilian researcher who has been here for some time already. We stumbled upon her by the bicycle racks; she offers her assistance with living in Japan, and I explain about my problems with buying used cameras in the Internet, and if she knows of a place nearby to find this kind of stuff. She tells me of a few stores and we exchange cards to discuss it later. I look around. I need that X100.

After leaving the beach we start cycling at random, probably from sheer excess energy and because the night is pleasant and moving about is pleasant and the country is pleasant, and walk around Rinkū Town Park by the sea. We’ve been told by the embarassed students that this is the highest-crime region of Japan and we should take care at night; but a typical Ōsaka number is 0.79 murders for each 100,000 people (2007), whereas São Paulo in the same year had 17.4—22 times as much—and that was a good year; a bad one reaches up to 69. Lázaro forgot his wallet in the cafeteria and it was quickly brought to him, probably the most “foreign” thing to happen to us. We stop by the kombini on return because we need some household stuff, and because we have the opportunity to buy stuff in a frigging kombini. I’ve always loved these oni-koroshi little carton boxes—they look like kid’s juice, with the straw and the drawings, but it’s “ogre-killer booze”—and here they’re much cheaper than the imported luxuries they are back at home. Umeshu, which I usually can’t afford to drink, cost as little as orange juice in São Paulo… I buy hair products with tsubaki oil and toothpaste with like 7 different medicinal herbs in it, and various kinds of industrial sweets and a homemade wagashi, a green something called 草大福, utterly delicious. I forget to buy tea, inexplicably.

Back at the room I watch like 20 minutes of trashy TV before the oni-koroshi kills me (I’m weak to alcohol). I think by now it’s safe to say that I’ve evaded jet lag altogether—if it isn’t a coincidence or strong placebo, the fasting method worked.

I’m taking most of these notes on a moleskine & it’s been a delight. The only problem is that the pages are flying like a wall calendar in a Looney Tunes cartoon, & I might have to buy more.

Reaching down we first see the yachts, colorful luminous fish sliding on the black waer, crowding and flowing together, sheltering unknown tasty debasements. Then a light haze over city lights, a tower of light, light avenues reaching for a port of light, a black rectangle of an inner lake lined by lights, blocks of blue houselights surrounded by thick serpents of orange roadlights brimming with moving headlights. One feels like the light-serpents are about to rise up and eat the plane.

They say Dubai is a city made of capitalism and slaves. But aren’t all of them? The clothes and electronics I’m bringing with me were all probably made by pratically slave labour… I won’t be an hypocrite—when I look at Dubai I feel like it would be delightful to be filthy rich, and burn all of it on empty pleasures in this fascinatingly blunt grandeur.

As expected, there’s some glamour in the airport—certain granite flooring flashes fabulously as one walks over them, jewelry vendors display huge sparkling things, a cascade of water shines in many colours. And yet, again as expected, it’s just an airport: Starbucks, Burger King, waiting. I’m with a fellow Brazilian student, Lázaro, whom the Japan Foundation booked in the same flights, and we pass the time talking about research and travel. These are harder than kanji, he says of the Arabic letters, & I say: not at all, they’re quite easy, actually, and brush up on the few I can remember—the definite article, al, seen everywhere, ال, L-A right-to-left, and the K which looks like a sharp C and here’s it in “McDonalds”, and I think we can deduce “Osaka”, أوساكا, A-K-A-S-O-?, I don’t know what’s up with the vertical bar at the start. I note it on the moleskine.

I don’t pay much attention to the airport, but I do notice two things. The first is that the Muslim-style women’s wear is very often fabulous; yes she’s tucked into a black robe, but it’s a velvety black, gold embroidery patterns all over neck and sleeves; here’s a veil floating softly to the ground, and when she turns, diamonds sparkle… I pick up a fallen leaflet for an Arabic-looking lady & she smiles perfectly under her tasteful vivid makeup under her gorgeous silks, and only then do I worry that I might have done some cultural faux pas, but she was already gone.

The other thing I notice is that all ads have Mandarin translations, and I can hear the language all about.

Three hours later, at departure time, it’s finally 8:00AM Japan time (3:00 local), meaning I can now eat. Looking forward to that Arabian main course with the lamb and spices—but no, this time the menu’s Japanese. It figures; almost all passengers are. Well, a donburi will be fine too…

We leave flying over another procession of yachts, some orange, some blue, like a cheap Hollywood flick, & glide far above the pitch-black ocean…

⁂

I must have been unable to hold it off any longer, and fell asleep. A flight attendant wakes me up for teriyaki right as we hit the line of the rising sun. So there you are. The sky is a deep azure fading into a pretty bright red, and I’m in the Orient. I eat, play some nethack, try to read, but just fall into a comfortable sleep. By the time I wake up we appear to have already passed India and now be above the endless plains and fields of China—I say “appear” because apparently the in-flight information system broke, and I have to guess; all I know is 1070 miles away, and (summing up some social courage to be the only person to open the window) bigness: mountains, hills, tiled fields, villages with many-coloured roofs. My eyes still have a lot more resolution than the flight camera, but they burn, so I close it again. Like the map system, I’m broken; in my imagination, the small scattered nimbi look like the spiraly ones from Oriental painting, but right now I want to sleep more than look at them. The monitor informs us that “duo wins celebrated photography prize”. Only this; there’s only headlines, and that was the whole of it; somewhere, somewhen, a celebrated photography prize was won by some duo. There are so many people in the world, and so many of them interesting. I love people. The Japanese passengers are all asleep even though it’s 15h in Japan, and I join them as China ends and the ocean starts, again hidden by endless cloudscapes.

At some point an Asian attendant asks what I want to drink & I say I’d like some [tɪː] and she confirms that I want green [tʰɪː]—damn! I always forget the aspiration. I kind of missed trying to get myself understood in English (and being horrible at it). Her nametag says “Vun”, in Roman and Arabic scripts.

⁂

I finish filling my customs and gaijin forms just as we reach the first sight of the Japanese coastline, half-veiled by creamy stratocumuli. Welp. This is it. I start breathing. Mountains. Sea. Sea by mountains. Sea ships trailing white streaks. Winding roads. Variatons on the kanji 田。 Lots of green. Mountains dotted with power-line towers, or with wind-power generators spinning. A couple mountains have been dug into hollowness to feed the cities, perhaps even providing raw material for these perfectly geometrical land extensions to Ōsaka. Down there millions of peopl eare singing Japanese songs, reading Japanese books, eating japanese cheeseburgers by trashy Japanese TV.

We cut through the wispy clouds that so impressed Hearn, as they hang in the air shining brightly under the summer sun. The mountains in the distance are whitened in layers just like sumi-e. The landing into Ōsaka should always be done during the day, for it would be a crime to have no light for these sights. The Japanese landscape is so bumpy and full of interest, as if put together with care. Kawabata was right on that point, it does feel like bonsai, this country, both the natural and human-made parts. The sea is dark silky blue, and always feels like a stone throw’s away, and if you let it glance on the side of your vision as you look for something, the meter-high pyramidal waves feel stopped in time, like a gelationous model.

An elderly couple forget a jacket; I give it back, and after a little chatting earns my first nihongo ga jōzu desu ne before even leaving the plane. I want to get these people speaking kansaiben! It will help if I learn to speak better.

Me and Lázaro help ech other struggle along the stream of hurdles. We make some mistakes but it helps that everything’s smart and clean and efficient (and small—elvish, indeed). If the U.S. felt like being inside a movie, Japan feels like going inside videogames. I buy a “salt and lichee” drink from a vending machine, inserting the light yen coins, and it feels just like in Persona or Ryū ga Gotoku. Mission objectives pop up in my head: Get to the Rinkū Town station; find the shuttle bus stop; prevent jet lag. (I’m tempted by a soba place in the station but the stomach won’t hear of it.) The night is just warm, not too overly hot, and it feels like one in five Japanese are wearing a panama hat too, making me feel fashionable—and a damn tourist, to be sure. Eventually we reach the Japan Foundati—the Kokusai Sentā, & the receptionism (perfectly polite and friendly, of course) tells us of our rooms and the orientation tomorrow.

The room is the typical Japanese approach to technology—high-speed Internet, but no wi-fi; on the one hand, the most powerful hot shower I’ve ever had, fancy air conditioning, an electronic safe, an induction heater to make tea; on the other hand, a… CD and cassete player. Plenty of shelves and actually quite spacious. The view from the huge, wall-sized glass window is a sight to behold: The long bridge over the sea to the left, the lighted-up low city, mountains in the distance, and the massive Rinku Gate Tower with its sidekick, the ferris wheel. I must buy a camera as soon as possible. First bad surprise: amazon.co.jp won’t take Visa Travelmoney, and even if they did, it seems used sales have no foreigner-friendly payment methods at all, and besides the one I found for ¥50,000 apparently was already sold. A new one is too expensive. Where can I get an used X100 for a good price? Gotta ask for help tomorrow.

When I went to the U.S. I was hit badly by the lag, and was sick in bed for three whole days. Here, so far I seem to be able to walk about without vomiting, which is a relief. Did the fasting trick work? Too early to tell. I play with the bath like a giggling little girl (showers in Brazil suck & we don’t even have baths), but I have trouble sleeping. I find myself awaken by 04:30, by which time the summer day is already clear. A short while later the sun rises with me—

Ohayō, Nippon.

Back at home people always seem to assume that a) I’ve been to Japan b) I’m fluent in Japanese c) I’m a professor and d) some kind of tea ceremony expert. I’m finally able to smile back to assumption a). Now to work on the other three…

⁂

I found a place called “sala de meditação/ecumenical center”. What even is this. The icon is a figure kneeling and praying, and the inside certainly isn’t fit for meditation (so the English name seems more apropos), but; it doesn’t look particularly religious either, unless this is a chapter of the Church of 90′s Near-Future Sci-fi. The pulpit looks like straight out of an electronica music video, and is encircled by soft square stool things. The place is completely empty and quiet, probably the only one in GRU, & I’m grateful for that. The only vaguely religious image is a framed picture of a compass rose. Is this a temple of the four direction gods?

I believe in respecting religion so I ask permission to whatever nonexistent entity might not be around, and sit down to write. I offer a silent prayer to the gods of atheism, to the absent gods of this empty space, to the direction gods and travel gods, in particular to the vagabond-wind god of Shiren the Wanderer, to the Arabian Airspace gods, to the please don’t let this absurd metal contraption fall from the sky gods, and of course to the fiercely territorial eight hundred myriad Gods of Japan. No one is around, hearing my silence. There are some tasteful dead varnished cut bamboo stems rising from the ground, and some thick cut-bamboo–like black tubes hanging from the ceiling. I leave the empty post-Bauhaus church of nothingness.

Damn! I forgot to pray to the Favourable Currency Exchange God. This is going to bite me later.

⁂

Waiting for set times, drinking coffee (I wouldn’t ever have caffeine at midnight, but in topsy-turvy land, Japan, it’s noon, and my stomach has been living on Japan time for a couple days), I’m still thinking about the church of steel tubes. Is that supposed to be a nondenominational praying room? Is that even possible? Can the House of the Christian God by morning serve as the House of Lord Ganesha by night? Won’t they fight? But of course this isn’t a House, of gods or men; it’s a port. It’s hard to write about airports, because everything’s already said; they’re this strangely international shared space, this interzone, a self-contained dimension for fast transport like the hyperspace of sci-fi, the obligatory token concessions to local culture only serving to accentuate this fact; they’re no-places, living in the queer gap between here and there—heterotopias; they’re real life’s loading screens. Is this why I love airports? People are bothered and bored by loading screens, but they just mean that you’re playing.

So naturally that room can’t ever be the House of the Christian God but only his temporary abode, his kariya, his waiting room. The heterotopia trumps belief; nothing will keep here. Of course he has to share it with all other Gods, and here he can’t do anything about it even if they dress funny, smell bad, behave immorally, speak in unintelligible languages here in my country—but this isn’t your country anymore: it’s an airport.

⁂

Boy do I love travel. I mean not only seeing new and interesting places, but the actual process of travel itself, every boring minute of waiting and pointless precaution and discomfort. I suppose I just love rituals, & this is all ritual, one after another. I’m quite sure that the future people from the year ten thousand will not see any significant difference between medieval traveling superstitions and ours. (Luckly my deodorant is just 90ml so I can bring it.)

⁂

And dear gods nighttime São Paulo from the sky.

It’s a cliché that people look like ants from above, but I don’t think most cliché-users realize how far this goes. From this point it’s hard to think of individuality; we’re transient, replaceable ants ever building the most complex ant labyrinths in the world, exceptf the ants are fireflies. It’s hard to look at the City and not feel the same kind of emergent collective intelligence we feel in anthills and beehives. This sprawling organism, ever reaching skywards, extending long tendrils to drink from rivers and gas pools and hydrelectrics and tiling fields to feed itself, and turning it all into concentrated negative entropy, into all kinds of information patterns… I look at the strange sigils drawn by homes and lampposts and moving vehicles and think of petroglyphs, except they’re photoglyphs. Why the insistence in light? Why do we, as a collective entity, struggle so much to undo the night? We don’t want to sleep. More properly, the anthill doesn’t want to sleep. The anthill wants to extend its tendrils everywhere, cover every surface with patterns, live and work and think and play forever.

And sometimes the anthill sends a few ants flying.

The Japan Foundation is sending me with Emirates, with is both delightfully proud of its Arabianess, & the most luxurious air company I’ve ever been to. I won’t bore the dear Readers describing every single luxury I drool on like the inakamon that I actually am, from the heated aromatic hand towels (reminiscent of mint and spices of the Orient) to the delicious halal food to the fact that I’m by the window & there’s no one in the next two chairs. It suffices to say that I feel like I’m sitting in a throne in the clouds. I’m a frigging mythological character. This is amazing.

Half-dazed by fasting and strange sleep patterns, I watch as we cross the Atlantic to meet the sunrise. I’m looking at a sea of golden iwashigumo—from above. I play with the plane’s entertainment, and watch a bit of Kurosawa, and I’m in the sky. I listen to Set the controls for the heart of the sun, in the sky. I eavesdrop someone chatting in Mandarin, in the sky.

People said 14.5 hours was a boring long flight. People. It’s a flight. I spend every single hour amazed.

As usual, the crew address me in English, even if they’re Brazilians. I’ve long learned to just roll with it. In touristic places like Manaus I’d sometimes even get someone approaching me casually in German or French.

⁂

So this is Mother, I keep thinking as we fly over daytime Africa. And: if we fell from here it would be certain death. And: it’s −42°C outside, how come there’s just a thin sheet of plasticlike material between me and outside? [There was actually three sheets.] And: I’m moving at more than mach 0.8?

Africa is being a cloudspotter’s delight. Way up there it’s a scarily dark gray layer, and cirri line the horizons. Down there, an endless procession of cumulunimbi in all possible shapes. They look different from above, and so… tridimensional. One thinks of a giant child playing with them as if with puffs of chantilly. Mother is intermittently visible through the empty spaces, hazily at this distance (the air is a blue syrup). She’s mostly green and shrubby around here, with cities growing from brown rivers. Sometimes I spot lentil clouds, streamers, unusual shapes. Sometimes everything’s obscured—or rather brightened—by an extra stratum in fluffy clear white.

⁂

Gargantuan kumo-no-mine cast huge dark round shadows on the parched brown desert as we fly away from the setting sun, East, East. Then the majestic Nile, supporting urbanity (in the form of al-Kharṭūm) as expected, but also an endless tapestry of agricultural rectangles of various shades, sometimes circles… It gets dark, and I can see stars outside, as if they were somehow communicating with the scattered photoglyphs of the undoubedly fascinating desert cities down there. There are shining artificial stars in the plane’s ceiling, quite beautiful—I get dizzy if I run my eyes over them—and in the proper constellations. The Northern constellations, of course, & out there, too, I’m for the second time in my life under a sky featuring the Northern Star. But this time I’m not following the road to the North. I think we crossed Eden a while ago, and I’m going far East of it.

(Posted from Dubai without revision.)

But it is perilous to look at them. Every time you dare to look, something obliges you to buy it—unless, as may often happen, the smiling vendor invites your inspection of so many varieties of one article, each specially and all unspeakably desirable, that you flee away out of mere terror at your own impulses. The shopkeeper never asks you to buy; but his wares are enchanted, and if you once begin buying you are lost. Cheapness means only a temptation to commit bankruptcy; for the resources of irresistible artistic cheapness are inexhaustible. The largest steamer that crosses the Pacific could not contain what you wish to purchase. For, although you may not, perhaps, confess the fact to yourself, what you really want to buy is not the contents of a shop; you want the shop and the shopkeeper, and streets of shops with their draperies and their inhabitants, the whole city and the bay and the mountains begirdling it, and Fujiyama‘s white witchery overhanging it in the speckless sky, all Japan, in very truth, with its magical trees and luminous atmosphere, with all its cities and towns and temples, and forty millions of the most lovable people in the universe.

When I read this for the first time, I thought: nothing could be further from my reality; Japan has turned capitalism up to 11, enjoyed its cheap supplier phase, and is now a luxury market. Among the immigrants & their children in Brazil, Japanese imports are held with almost religious reverence; everything made in Brazil, China, USA is automatically assumed to be of inferior quality, poorly-made, the bare minimum needed to be useable; some nikkei and japanophiles will gleefully buy expensive toothpicks, dish towels, socks, nose hair trimmers with shining eyes: it’s from Japan…

(Tea lady to me, once: Go on, take this [cardboard] box. It’s a damn good box, you know, such a shame to throw it away. It’s Japanese-made…)

(And it was a damn good cardboard box, mind you.)

I couldn’t save many reais so I’m going to Japan kind of broke. And the purchasing power of a middle-class Brazilian must be comparable to the average Japanese baito temp. Certainly I couldn’t be tempted by those mythical Japanese consumer goodies. As they say in Brazilian Portuguese, they’re just something that doesn’t belong to me.

But. Two things. First thing: Abe has deliberately plunged the yen, in a desperate attempt to get conservative Japanese to actually spend their money; 1 dollar went back to about 100yen, and 1 real, 50yen (though further problems with the real made it fall back to 45yen, of course, right before I’m exchanging my reais; but that’s still unusually favorable). Second thing: Buying things in Japan means no Brazilian tax. And Brazilian tax is expensive. Things 1 and 2 mean that my dream camera, the Fujifilm X100, is literally one third cheaper in Japan than here. 3DS, half as much. Japanese-able Kindle Paperwhite, 2.7 times cheaper. Tea ceremony and calligraphy supplies and kimono goods, incomparably cheaper and with orders of magnitude more variety. Used Japanese books without shipping? From unbuyably expensive to almost free.

(Well, the X100 was my dream camera until they made the X100S. I could live with the smaller sensor. I could live with the inferior focus. I could even, with difficulty, live knowing I have nonoptimized buttons; it’s just a matter of pretending that the X100 was still the only one available—I’d still want it. But they had to make the X100S the first digital camera with split focus. The very same split focus that I love in my Zenit. There’s no way I could not lust for that. Alas, the X100S is still too expensive—in fact, the existence of the X100S is probably why the X100 is now cheap enough for me to buy.)

So Hearn was right after all; I’m coming to Japan as if to a discount store, and if I’m not careful, I’ll leave it in debt… (Though some evil friends have suggested that it would be rational to get into some debt, since the interest still wouldn’t cost nearly as much as buying stuff at home…)

Obstetrician, let’s turn to the foreign country. No postnatal misfortunes. Pregnant lady, in Miyashiro bugs harshly weep in the darkness. In this, there’s no maternal education.

(see thread for details.)

I was once a huge Kitty fan. She was not just an icon of otakudom, but felt like the perfect fuck-you to patriarchal gender-roles, not to mention an emblem of irony. I had quite a few of those talismanic merchandise, mostly pirated of course (I was particularly proud of the “Hello Nietzsche” T-shirt with the moustache—lots of people used to parody and exploit her by making violent, grotesque, intellectual, or pornographic montages, not realizing that it was these very acts of deconstruction which constructed her cult, that she was, first and foremost, a meme, and memes need spreading—by whatever means). Though if you asked I’d of course say that she was overrated, and the really cool thing was this obscure cool character but I guess you probably never heard of her.

But, I’d be lying; Ms White was clearly the superior idol. I mean, just look at her. Barely even an ovoid with two triangles, and dots for eyes, and a token sign of conventional femininity. The mouth, the expressive organ, famously defined by its absence, leaving everything to imagination. Just a little pile of geometrical shapes, really, and yet somehow a distillation of whatever it is that we feel towards babies and kittens. A mind virus, seemingly about to take the world, to paint herself in all purchaseable surfaces of the consumeristic borderless world. 　I’ve seen her on t-shirts, lying like a Buddha on the fallen breasts of an aged rural labourer in the Day of the Dead; I’ve seen her naked under São Paulo viaducts, watching heavy traffic and homeless people; I’ve seen her in the backpacks of the next generation, in BDSM ball gags, in entire stores dedicated to her cult in the best richest malls of the best richest neighborhoods… Such sheer, unbounded power.

But that was then. Today, oh, poor Kitty White! Middle-aged and decadent, working as a novelty ambassadoor, certainly hired just for her celebrity status. I don’t know any better proof that otaku culture is dead than Cool Japan. When your characters are coöpted by old men in the governamental bureaucracy, you know everything even remotely cool about them isn’t even lukewarm anymore. She’s now lost in that terrible limbo that cultural objects fall into when they become bland, boring, corny, passé, but are not yet antiquated enough to earn retro value. She has just become—tragedy of tragedies!—uninteresting. Japan, too, is said to be in times of economic and spiritual malaise. And now that I’m going, after all those years, I’m welcomed by she herself. G’day to you, ma’m, thanks for the service.

⁂

Is there really no Otherness to be found in Japan?
Is this the first country to have a fictional character as an ambassador?
Is this the first country to have masked characters in government?
Is this the first country to bring to life a fictional idol as a hologram?
Is this the first country to pet software?
Is this the first country to date software?
Is it true that this is a people who would rather live with robot workers than scary foreigners?
Are robots less scary than foreigners? Is this a country where the possibility of real robots—of people undeniably made from stuff—doesn’t make anyone unsure about their their humanity?
When real artificial intelligence comes, will this be the first country to recognize them as sentient beings on equal footing?
Is any of this related to the fact that the eldest and most enduring of Japanese worldviews is animistic vitalism—the worship of life, a life to be found everywhere, in humans and animals and plants and rocks, in fictional characters (“gods”) and mountains and rivers and old umbrellas?
If an old umbrella can be alive, why not Tamagotchi?
In the fiftieth century, when the robot people think of their roots, will they honour Edo-era tea-serving clockwork robots as their predecessors?

The other day I wrote an utopia on twitter: “A society where all government agencies have a professional portraitist available, specialized in taking great photos for ID cards and such”. People would draw their documents when asked by some bureaucrat or another, and glance at themselves at their best, at art made from themselves, and think they’re beautiful, and smile… I have an U.S. visa, and a Japan visa. The quality of my picture in the Japanese one is way superior, high-contrast b&w cut into an oval white vignette; and the visa itself is full of tasteful, subdued cherry blossoms and paulownias against a pointillistic silhouette of Fuji. Is it unreasonable to expect Japan to be beautiful?

I don’t think it’s necessary, no. But if you’re the kind of person that benefits from this kind of thing, it can be beneficial. Sorry for being tautological =)

Suppose you were about to learn new swimming styles. Are you the kind of person who would go to the library and research on books about sports science as applied to swimming? If learning the guitar, do you brush up on music theory and try to understand the patterns of notes and chords in the fretboard? Before reading poetry, do you study about metrical forms and the history of styles? If you’re that kind of person, you might have fun studying some linguistics and then trying to apply it to the languages you learn. Once in a blue moon it might even be useful!

As for book recommendations, I think one of the most useful areas you can investigate is phonetics and phonology, the study of linguistic sounds. Spoken languages are made of sounds that you hear, and you decode writing into sort-of “mental sounds” as you read (assuming you’re not congenitally deaf). Unfortunately these two processes have complications:

1. Adult non-natives often fail to perceive and produce sounds in the new language (L2) that aren’t present in their mother tongue (L1).

Out of personal experience, I’m a supporter of the theory that this can be remedied by explicitly learning to notice the different sounds (Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis). That means you need to understand how you yourself produce linguistic sounds, so that you can adapt your vocal gestures to those of other languages.

To be able to do that, first of all, you have to learn the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). No, seriously, you need it. The Wikipedia articles are quite decent, and so is IPA’s own handbook. Wikipedia also has recordings for all sounds—and so does this interactive table. Some beginners think of IPA as a writing system, and try to learn to “read” it as a whole. This is a mistake. Think of it as a table of possible language sounds, classified on various dimensions (in the case of consonants, which are easier to introspect, there are three: place, manner, and voice). Once you understand how each dimension explains part of a gesture, the position of each symbol on the table becomes a recipe of how to produce it: do this with my tongue here, turn on voice, and… voilà! And, once you’re familiar with production, your perception improves, too.

If you’re familiar with language X, look at the Wikipedia article “Phonology of X”, and try to refer to the table and understand it by reproducing the sounds. (In the case of English, be sure to locate your own dialect/accent). Then try to understand the corresponding articles for the languages you’re learning. You don’t need to care about the rest of the table.

As you get familiar with the IPA, try to learn the basics of articulatory phonetics and phonology. Online articles are probably good enough to help with language learning, but if you like technical books and want to dig deeper, I benefited a lot from these:

• Catford is “The Vocal Apparatus: An User’s Manual”. It will teach you how to be conscious of your inner fleshly parts, and how to use them to produce any sound. Reading this book in public will make people think you’re crazy.
• Ladefoged’s World’s Languages is very cool reading comparing the sounds of a wide range of languages, and dispelling a few myths in the process. I like using it as a reference, looking up “my” languages in the index.
• Geoffrey S. Nathan is my personal pick on phonology. Despite the title, I think it does a great job of describing most major phonological approaches, not just the cognitive one (disclaimer: I’m more sympathetic to cognitive than generative). By the way, this book might or might not be easy to find online on Google.
• If and only if you like physics & is curious about how sounds even work, then Ladefoged on acoustics is an awesome little book, one of the clearest technical introductions I’ve ever read on any area.

2. It’s nontrivial to deduce the sounds from the writing (witness how much trouble computer people have with speech synthesis). All writing systems assume that you already know the language. Some assume just a little, like Finnish or Czech (and are therefore foreign-friendly); and some are basically unpredictable, like English and French; most are somewhere in-between. This is problematic because it’s generally much more convenient to get access to written materials.

The best solution to this is to make sure you get lots and lots and lots of exposure to the spoken language. If you can learn the spoken language before writing, so much the better (it’s how natives learn, after all).

If you’re curious about how writing systems work, I’d recommend Rogers as a first stop, but I think the Cree/Blackfoot sillabaries shouldn’t give you any trouble. Most writing sytems in current use are actually quite simple—Arabic or Korean may look intimidating, but once one sits down to actually investigate their mechanism, they can be acquired surprisingly fast! On the other hand, if you ever want to learn a truly complex writing system (Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Mayan, cuneiform etc.), I do believe the basics of writing systems theory would help a lot.

⁂

Message from empty-profile stranger: “Hi! do you two want to have a threesome?”
(Me) “Dunno, man, maybe? She’d have to know you better, you know, and me too, for that matter. Would you like to tell me more about yourself? What’s your story?”
No replies.

⁂

Message from empty-profile stranger: “Hi”
(Me) “Hello. How are things? Would you like to talk?”
“Yes.”
“Well, I’d like to know more about you. Would you like to tell me your story?”
“Ask anything” full stop.
Breathe. Count to ten.
“Ok. How would you describe your personality in words? What are your intellectual interests and/or passions in life? Do you like reading? If so, what are the last five titles you tried, did you like them, and why? What made you want to contact me? Do you have any fetishes, and if so, what are the ones you’re most fond of? Art, science, or both? What’s your opinion on the French revolutionary calendar? Coffe or tea? If you were a pagan, what god or goddess would you worship? Do you have more pictures?”
No replies.

⁂

I’m about to leave the country for two months.
(Wife) — It’s funny. I’ll actually feel less “single” when you’re away.
(Me) — Naturally; there will be no one to help with things and hold the fort with the children, so you’ll have little free time. You’ll have to keep telling the ‘cupid suitors that you can’t meet them right now…
— I can’t decide if I should enjoy my last weekend with you, or enjoy my last free weekend.
— Why not both? We could spend an entire day together, and I can stay at home the other day, preparing my stuff while you hit the city.
Warm smiley frubbles.

⁂

It’s funnier to talk about the flunks; but overall our experience with OKCupid has been surprisingly fruitful.

In Curitiba, The Japan Foundation was stickers on a book, but coming to São Paulo made it into a place—a library. It’s my favourite in the city, and there’s competition—my own university’s Japanese Studies library is delightful with its old dusty collection, and there’s no way you can beat the 2 million plus books spread through her other 44 themed libraries. But the Japan Foundation’s is just the perfect blend. It’s not very big, but it’s so concentrated that it’s epistemologically huge; certainly more than big enough to get lost in L-space. It has old books but also a constant influx of new books, and an equilibrium of Japanese and English languages, and interesting persons that excite my imagination but I can never approach, this being a library. And, and, perfect service, of course. I can’t help being amused by the automated telephone greeting:

[In Portuguese] You’ve called The Japan Foundation. Dial the desired extension, or wait a moment to talk to one of our operators.

[2-second pause]

[In Japanese] We humbly offer our gratitute for your esteemed continued support. We are The Japan Foundation. If it might please the honourable patron, do give us the pleasure of dialing the desired extension, or kindly wait but a moment for one of our lowly operators.

(Of course I’m pasticheing old-style mistranslations for hyperbole, but you get the idea.)

This place always bring to mind Murakami’s power-place library from Kafka on the Shore. Perhaps it’s the way it’s hidden in the second floor of a nondescript, intimidating commercial building, with zero concessions for the casual pedestrian, not even a simple sign. Perhaps it’s the atmosphere, its absolute silence, a thicker, gelatinous silence way stronger than the typical Brazilian library. Perhaps it’s this ambient vibe that somehow lends itself to concentration. One almost has the need of removing one’s shoes before stepping in, and perhaps bowing and washing the mouth too.

For the last two years I’ve developed a routine. It’s a good routine & it makes me quite joyous, in a Little-Prince-fox-ritual way. At the Japan Foundation São Paulo, one is allowed to borrow up to four books (plus some magazines and videos) for two weeks. One can also extend the loan for two weeks more, as long as no one has requested the books in the meantime. I go visit on a Saturday. I take the train, I eat something cheap on the way, I inform the reception’s security guard that I’m going to the library, I use the elevator’s mirror to adjust my looks, and I enter the library, feeling a little bit dirty for not removing my shoes. I let myself wander its shelves. I read until the very last minute, by which time I’ve chosen today’s four. Two weeks later, I call them for the loan extension—no one ever requests a book. Two Saturdays more & I do everything again & bring four different titles home, so that at any given moment my loans-shelf has exactly four Japan Foundation titles. It’s not always that I manage to read all of them. I always finish fiction, of course—not doing so would be impossible, it would be like eating while hungry then stopping while still hungry. But sometimes I lack the time-energy to explore technical or theoretical treatises in depth; I read a few choice chapters, guiltlessly, lightly, take some notes, then return them with a feeling of “we’ll meet again”.

It’s very rare that I actually don’t like a book. The one example I can think of is Wenceslau de Moraes—and I wanted to like Wenceslau, trust me, he’s “our” Lafcadio after all, one of my predecessors (heck, my hometown is named Wenceslau, though it’s a different Wenceslau—a politician, naturally, Brazil doesn’t go naming towns for literary fanciers). But Wenceslau’s condescension is just abhorrent. When I read his long diatribe on how every African and Asian country is dirty and disgusting except Japan, I actually felt nauseous. His holier-than-thou morality, his sordid Christianity, his creepy repressed attraction for the “musumes” are the epitome of everything that was ever wrong with Orientalism, and I hope that Said is whipping him forever in some burning Arabic hell. Wenceslau and Lafcadio have become kind of my bad and good models; nowhere in Wenceslau do we feel Lafcadio’s lightness of touch, his delicacy, his endless mellow love poured over everything like “the thick syrup that children adore”, his boundless respect and awe (one of Lafcadio’s most famous images are the country folk crowding over him everywhere, eager to touch his foreign clothes, to ask what are they called and how they’re made—the Japanese, this people that never write of “a flower” or “a cricket” or “a cloth” without specifying which flower, which cricket, cloth—but what not everyone realizes is that this is a mirror-image of Lafcadio himself, he’s a country bumpkin gawking and touching Japan’s clothes and asking how they’re made). Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if his acute sensibility isn’t related to the loving way that his prose lingers on the beauty of muscular kurumaya, of Akira the Buddhist student, of pretty naked cabin-boys… And yet I know it’s all fake, it’s all a carefully constructed mask, an “exquisite flight of fancy”—he too was lost, Japan was not even his first attempt at an adopted home, and he could be totally cruel and detestable as a live actual individual. How come Wenceslau’s meanness oozes through everything he writes, while Hearn’s never touches his creations? Whence comes this delicacy and charm? Who is the charming person? I feel that if one understands this, one understands literature.

When I was a teenager, I made the following utterly arbitrary decision: “I’m going to learn everything there is to learn about Japan”. Of course I knew even then that this is impossible, though I don’t think I truly realized the scope; you can’t even learn everything about your home village, or about your home neighborhood, or (at the risk of triteness, but) a grain of sand; to know everything about a grain of sand you’d have to know the entirety of geology, and to know geology you’d have to know everything about cosmology, i.e. everything about everything. But somehow the goal has stayed with me, & served me well; its arbitrariness pleases me now as it did then. They say that if one has no objectives all paths are correct; but if one has a broad, open-ended, impossible objective, then, thanks to the fractal nature of human creations, one has many more paths than one could possibly handle. I walk by these shelves, ogling the books with the lust of a depraved libertine walking through a harem. Each area shakes my sense of identity; I pass through the arts section and want to become an art historian, to know everything there is to know about 769: woodblocks, 728: calligraphy, 738: ceramics, to say “ah yes, the Shino glaze, there’s a subtle warm sensuality that once Kawabata drew on with a red stain that…”. But then there’s folklore and religion and myth and wouldn’t it be great to explore shrines and talk to shamans like Blacker and look, Ainu ritual, I must learn Ainu any of these days, and after a corner I pass through cinema, and I think of a certain pretty lady who’s in movie school and asked for recommendations of Japanese, & if I knew just a bit more, if I could suggest something really great and little-known and discuss at lenght on why it’s so great… Then I pass through my dearest, the literature section, and I feel a desire to learn more contemporary literature, which lasts two seconds before being overtaken by the desire to learn more about Nara literature, and drama, oh, I haven’t even started with Noh, and I pass through the poetry section and fancy myself a poet, all beaches at night and mysterious introspections, and I pass through the management advice and nihonjinron section and… OK, this one I just pass through.

But today the ritual is broken; today I walk home alone. While in there, I read Colloquial Kansai Japanese and Everything about Mount Fuji and Jarinko Chie and Yuba (just because); but going home, no four books for me, for in two weeks I’ll be in friggin’ Japan. I may be overusing the book/lover metaphor, but it does feel like parting from a sweetheart.

The actual sound—as nearly as human organs could imitate it or human letters record it—may be taken as something like Khlûl’-hloo, with the first syllable pronounced gutturally and very thickly. The ‘u’ is about like that in full; and the first syllable is not unlike klul in sound, since the ‘h’ represents the guttural thickness. The second syllable is not very well rendered—the ‘l’ sound being unrepresented.

Someone in Wikipedia interpreted this as

[ˈχɬʊl.ɬuː]

which I think is quite rad (though it makes me want an alternative spelling, Chllul’llû perhaps).

Inspired by this, here’s my attempt at « Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn »:

[ˈpʰ̩.ŋ̥ ɬuːj mgɬ̩ w.ˈnɑfh ˈχɬʊl.ɬuː r̥ ̩.ˈɬjɛh ˈʷgɑh.nɑg͜͜͜͜͜ ɬ fh.ˈtɑgⁿ]

Notice widespread devoicing, coarticulation, and consonantal nuclei.

Of course, these are all poor human approximations of the unfathomably horrifying unpronounceable sounds of an unholy alien tongue, so your guess is as good as mine.

Briefly, then: When I decided to move to humanities, I had detractors: unknown people who stalked me on various net-places & commented about how I’m superficial, irresponsible, and never finish anything (which is kind of true, hence the domain name). It was a weird feeling; like having the Repressive Voice of Society made flesh. Only much later did I realize they were probably acquaintances from workplaces, scared of their own apathy about meaningless code-monkery, desperately trying to deny the fact that they could leave too if they tried.

Anyway! I did leave, moved away, and was looking for a job, & at the time had the remains of hip hair, & interviews were being hard, so I shaved. At the end of the day I only ever got a job from public examinations (thanks Confucius!), which completely bypass the need for people approving of your appearance. So I said: Ok, now I’m starting my new university with no hair. I want the Monbushō scholarship. I won’t cut my hair until suceeding; the length of my hair heretofore is an accurate physical measure of my dedication towards this goal.

I had pined nonstop for the one-year “Japanese studies” program since 2005 (study Japanese literature and Japanese culture in Japanese in Japan, what’s there not to like?). By 2012 I was finally ready; and it was the last year I could ever apply, for I had grown older. But alas: by this time, I had made myself a family provider, & couldn’t afford not working for an entire year. What’s more—it was hard to admit, but I didn’t want the scholarship all that much anymore. I mean, it would be great for polishing my Japanese—but mostly for that; to be frank, the syllabus didn’t sound like it would challenge my academic skills all that much at this point. I call this the Buddhist Apsaras problem. Once a guy wanted to become a Buddhist, but he was very lustful, and couldn’t bring himself to stop sleeping around. So the Buddha showed him visions of delightful apsaras in Heaven, so much sexier than humans that all women now seemed like monkeys to him. He became a monk, and worked hard to reach Heaven with its celestial ladies. But, by the time he was Enlightened, his meditative practices had made him realize the emptiness of carnal pleasure, and he wasn’t interested anymore. I think the Buddha was kind of a dick here, but hey.

You love Jump manga and RPG games et cetera, so you start learning Japanese. One day you find it’s already good enough to understand everything in manga and games at this level: you’ve opened endless treasure troves of material that you always desired, beyond the language barrier; but by now you find you’ve outgrown that stuff; now you want to read adult things, but these are still too hard. Buddhist apsaras problem.

It was a lit teacher’s bluntness that made me admit it—”You’re wasting time in undergraduate school; become a grad student straight away, and there will be much better opportunities”. So I did, and there were. It felt like it should feel like betraying myself, but it didn’t. Was I giving up the firm goal? Do I never finish things? Were the trolls right? But I didn’t care anymore. I thought of this scene in Vagabond, where Musashi is fighting the kusari-gama sickle-and-chain genius, Shishido Baiken. The range of his weapon is too long; Musashi can’t find a way in; he’s backed into a corner. He must provoke an attack to get into his maai, but also somehow attack at the same time. He looks down at his swords; he draws the short one on his right hand; everyone’s flabbergasted; what is he doing? This is, in the manga version, the moment of the birth of Musashi’s distinctive Hyōhō Niten Ichi-ryū dual-wielding style. Suddenly Musashi knows that he has surpassed his father (also a fighter, and a towering figure); Musashi had always held a deep-seated grudge, but now it simply fades from his mind; his Freudian quest to prove himself is over; like a Nietzschean, he doesn’t need to forgive, because he forgets; the mangaka draws the father disappearing, disappearing, gone; he faces the present, the sickle and the chain.

Still, I’m going to Japan after all, so there definitely is that sense of closure & new beginning that (Ranma ½ taught me) should be marked by a haircut. It just feels right to cut my hair (besides, you never know what kami might have been listening to my old promise). I thought: this is a waste of good hair; it would be cool if I could sell it & get a few extra yen to buy books—and, more importantly, it would be very satisfying & poetic to know that my hair stayed in Japanese soil, and someone is wearing it. Do they buy hair in Japan? After looking around and asking Reddit, I couldn’t say for sure; but someone pointed that they accept donations. Would they accept brown gaijin hair? I emailed them, and yes they do! So I’m cutting it in Ōsaka, & donating. I hope there are cancer patients wanting to go a bit chapatsu!

And onwards to the next arbitrary big goal…

So Nerdy, dreamily, starts calling himself Nerudo Otakumoto, buys anything with an anime character painted on it, majors in Japanese, and eventually goes to Japan.

But what Nerdy didn’t know is that his people have it even worse in Japan. That’s why their fantasies could speak to him so deeply; because the Japanese geeks needed an escape even more than him; faced with a society known for “hammering the nail that sticks out”, they had to invent better worlds; that’s why visiting those worlds felt like therapy. Now Nerdy is expecting Tokyo-3 but he’ll only find its opposite, Really Existing Tokyo. It’s not just a disappointment, it’s the ultimate reality crash, as terrible as when the devout loses their religion; Nerdy becomes a bitter atheist, and spends the rest of his days posing as the veteran cynical gaijin who knows how bad it really goes, man.

⁂

Now that I’m finally going to Japan, the warnings people always say keep surfacing back. It’s not like that at all. You like tea ceremony and architecture and poetry, but that Japan doesn’t exist anymore; today it’s all gray buildings, business suits, beer and McDonalds. It’s just the same as any other place, you know. You can study everything at home anyway; Prof. X has two post-docs and has never even been there. I don’t want to sound negative but you’re bound to be so disappointed.

But I was McNerd ten years ago, and I’ve been courting Japan all this time, waiting for an opportunity. I know lots of people who’ve already been there (everyone except me, it feels like), and I’ve heard all possible tales of disappointment. And this is not how narratives work; if a character knows of a bad thing, and is prepared for it, it can’t actually happen. I know how to experience things, how to acquire new tastes and expand your mental horizons; you just need an spirit of adventure; expecting nothing, accepting everything, convinced that nothing is a right and everything is a gift; being open and impartial as the wide sea. However! As soon as I think this, the situation reverses; because “to expect nothing” really means to expect good things, and again, by narrative causality, this is bound to Tempt Destiny and crash in the concrete wall of reality. So I’m back to the starting point, and the whole thing plays again in my head, and again ever faster, in a dazzling recursive whirlwind; until my processing power overloads and the entire thing breaks down and I don’t know what to think anymore. I’m left with a tiny, quiet thought, or rather a background impulse that never fades: “I want to go to Japan”.

Fantasy is great and all but the interesting thing about reality is that, regardless of what’s going on in your mind, reality is always definitely there. Such unconcerned external stimuli are like spirits who take possession of you, who inject thoughts you’d never have on your own. That’s the true value of traveling, I think, and why I like moving so much (17 times so far). I’m quite anxious to subject my self to Really Existing Osaka, and the prospect of it makes this reality right now, which is undoubtedly here, nevertheless be tinged with a dreamy color; it’s the stage of Preparing to Depart; cities change completely depending on whether you’ve just arrived, is living, or is leaving. Sometimes I can evoke the memory of, say, Unknown São Paulo even though I’m already in Known São Paulo, and the superposition of the two is spooky. In Soon-to-be-Away São Paulo, by contrast, I am the spook, there and not there.

Incidentally, Osaka is, appropriately, a sister city to Sampa. (I still wonder what a sister city is good for, but narratively it doesn’t matter). It’s a shame they’re not perfectly antipodes in the globe—it’s almost there, but the point opposite to São Paulo lies in the Pacific Ocean a bit to the south. Reality has little sense of poetical adequacy… Still, it’s close enough that I can say I’m traveling to the furthest possible place (save if I went to the Moon); it’s the ultimate escapist trip. Again, it’s a shame that we can’t reach Japan by flying West; it would be so satisfying, going from the extreme West to the Far East by reaching for the setting sun… Yes, I know it makes a lot more sense to fly over land so as to be able to refuel or land in an emergency, but it’s still much less romantic. The layout of continents on Earth sucks. It looks like an RPG map where the designer didn’t bother to visualize the world as a globe and worked on a rectangle, so that there’s this huge area full of water next to the borders; west of here lies the End of the World & we can’t sail over it.

I’m technically leaving before the term is over, so I need to finish everything this month—to anticipate all finals, thesis chapters, dayjob tasks, all matters of family & money &c. This extra load leaves little time to dream.

.score, .karma, .userkarma, .rank, .upvotes, .downvotes { display: none; }

Here’s how it will look like:

There will still be upvote/downvote arrows, comment counts, and orangered envelopes—features that can be evil, but are useful for moderation, sorting, discussion &c. But there will be no imaginary Internet points to manipulate your psychology and keep you hooked. If you choose your sub-reddits well, reddit can even be productive!

This was inspired by how Slashdot, the pioneer in user moderation, used to hide the numeric value of people’s karma, “because otherwise it becomes a videogame”.