Hair Dye

I'm thinking of maybe dying my hair again, so I decided to check out the selection of products at one of the big shopping centers. Most of the stuff was aimed at various fashion niches that I don't fully understand, but the two most curious where the following.


If you're a girl, maybe you might want to look like a little doll with large round eyes and a huge head. Well, if that's your situation, here's the product for you. This package is the lightest of the light. The color is called mega-mega bleach (メガメガブリーチ) . You know, 'cause it's like mega.


If you're a dude and you're into the doll look, you're out of luck. On the other hand, maybe you want to look like some guy from a manga. Check out these, yahoos. Those shades of brown were more or less as difficult to distinguish between in the store as they are in the photo.

A 3Rensho mountain bike

Check it out! A San Renshou mountain bike (three straight victories, 三連勝). Maybe you're thinking, "Ah, that frame was probably made for a road bike and then somehow outfitted with those MB components."


But take a look at the clearance and the pegs for caliper breaks. It was definitely made as a mountain bike frame.

The Osaka History Museum (大阪歴史博物館)

The other day I met a guy named KSK riding a purple Vivalo on the quad of the Osaka History Museum near my place. KSK keeps a blog on some aspects of the bike scene in Osaka. Both liking purple bikes, we naturally hit it off and he told me to come by on Tuesday, when a bunch of guys hang out on the quad and practice tricks.


Actually, I'd seen them before, but the few times I had tried going by was no one there. Also, since I didn't know anyone, and my Japanese is such shit, I felt a bit weird about just showing up. But I had gotten by fine meeting KSK in Japanese, he invited me and then my other friend Ryouzou wrote me that he was also going.

It turned out to be cool. Everyone was chill, my Japanese was good enough to talk about bikes and make conversation about basic stuff, and I did my first weelie. Out of about 50 times getting the bike fully riding on one wheel, I was only stay up for about 10 feet at best. On the bright side, I also didn't fall down. Not that night.

Springtime in Japan

The thing to do in the spring in Japan is to go drink in a park somewhere and enjoy the return of the warm weather. This is called flower viewing (hanami, 花見), because the cherry trees (sakura, 桜) are in full blossom, and probably because this sounds more sophisticated than just coming straight out and saying that you're going to go sit in a park and get drunk.


Everyone has parties and sits on ubiquitous blue tarps and drinks all afternoon. On the weekends, they drink on the tarps all day. The company hanami parties start in the afternoon, so in order to get a good spot for viewing the sakura they send out a junior guy to sit on a tarp all day and wait for everyone else to show up. From what I could see, these guys don't do much drinking on their own.


Some friends and I went to Arashi-yama (嵐山), where I went in the fall to see the leaves change colors in the outskirts of Kyoto. Again it was absurdly busy, but we hiked in a short distance and suddenly it was very quite and absurdly beautiful. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.



This next one looks like something out of a movie, but when we were walking back, this dude just sitting there fishing in the early twilight. You can see where the old Japanese painters got their ideas.


When we got back to Osaka, it was just as loud and dirty as ever. When we were hanging out in Ame-mura (アメ村), I got a picture of this thing. I have no idea what it's called, but you can see it's like a cross between a transformer and a lowrider.

Critical Mass 3

When I got home after eighteen hours of traveling, just as I was getting my mail out of my mail out of my mailbox, Maisie called to ask if I was coming to the mass.

I was long passed exhaustion but since they were riding by my place, I figured I would join the ride for a bit. It was a small group again with a few different riders.

After I joined them, we rode around Osaka Castle. It was good to see everyone and kind of jarring to be thrown back into Japanese with so little sleep. Since neither of us had eaten, Shoko and I dropped out to grab a bite. After dinner, Shoko went to rejoin them but I was too beat, so I went home and slept until 3:oo AM, when I mysteriously woke up and couldn't fall back asleep.

When I was out walking today, I got a different kind of welcome back to Japan. On Midosuji, there was a long procession of right-wing nationalists broadcasting hate speech on megaphones. There were cops lining the streets, watching them.


I said to my friend Yuka, who was getting lunch with me, "hey, it's those guys who don't like foreigners." She seemed to be totally oblivious to the situation, so I told her to listen to what they were saying. She listened for a bit, and then said, "Oh, that's really weird... I'm sorry."

Landing

So, I'm back in Vancouver for two weeks, to see friends and family, take care of some business and to obtain my official status as a Permanent Resident.


This is apparently called a Landing and, as you can imagine, the Immigration people take it pretty seriously, but they're also kind of excited about it. The girl who processed me at the first counter was originally from Pakistan and told me she still remembered her landing when she was a little girl. When she saw my immigrant visa, she said, "Oh wow, you're landing today. That's Awesome!"

In the back offices, there was were some complications because, of course, I had forgotten one of my forms. But, they guy who was dealing with it was pretty chill and he took care of everything. He was a young, cheerful Ismaili guy who kind of reminded me of Amyn, except his favorite line was, "Fair enough," which was his responce to everything. The conversation went something like this.

"That's a protected document. It's like really important for this whole process."

"I meant to bring it, and I had various lists and stacks of papers, but I just got back to Japan from Europe and I was really tired. I don't know what happened."

"Fair enough. But without that I'm not sure what I can do."

"Well, I don't know... somehow I forgot it. I'm not really sure what else I can do at this point."

"Fair enough. Do you have any idea where it is? Is there anyway you can get it?"

"I live alone in Japan, so... no there isn't."

"Fair enough. Well, I'll go talk to the guys in the back and we'll see what we can do."

It took a bit of time, but he got it all sorted out. Sitting around the back immigration room in Vancouver really brought out the difference between Canada and Japan, when it comes to foreigners. The room was full of people who were immigrating and since I didn't see anyone who was clearly Native, all of the Immigration Officers were immigrants or the decedents of immigrants. There was one guy who was pretty clearly Sikh, I knew my guy was Ismaili because we were talking about it, although she spoke Canadian English with no accent, the girl at the front counter was originally from Pakistan, and there were two Asian officers who still spoke with non-Canadian accents. Canada is a country of immigrants.

Japan, on the other hand, has a statistically negligible number of immigrants. In Japan, I have to have to carry my Foreigner Registration Card (gaikokujin-touroku-shoumeisho, 外国人登録証明書) with me at all times. This is just an identification card, but it clearly marks me as a foreigner. When I was a foreigner in Canada, on the other hand, I just carried my Canadian driver's licence. But it's a bit different, because, for one thing, you can use it to drive, and for another, it doesn't other you as a non-Canadian.

I have a friend in Japan who's of Korean decent. She was born in Japan and speaks no Korean, but only has a Korean passport, because Japan doesn't automatically grant citizenship under these circumstances. There are actually 600,000 ethnic Koreans, born and raised in Japan and excluded from the rights of citizenship. They are called the Zainichi Kankokujin (在日韓国人). In Japan, less than 1 percent of the population is made up of immigrants, and these are almost all people of Chinese and Korean decent who's families have been in Japan for generations. I asked my friend why she doesn't apply for citizenship and she said she just never really felt welcome. I guess I can see her point.

Briefly back in Osaka

I'm back in Osaka for one day before I fly to Vancouver.


The trip back was a typical airline fiasco. At the Charles de Gaulle Airport, I was told that I could not be issued a boarding pass for my connecting flight for some reason. As the Amsterdam Schiphol Airport is huge, and I had a fairly short layover, I realized this might be a problem and protested. The Air France attendant told me that it would be impossible to issue a connecting boarding pass at this time. I was assured with the utmost confidence that everything would be fine, that I would be met by an airline employee with my boarding pass when I got off the plane in Amsterdam. Of course, this didn't happen. Instead, in Amsterdam I was told that I would have to go to a transfer center to get my new boarding pass. As our plane was 15 minutes late, and many other plans had also been delayed, there was huge line. I took a number from the box and discovered that there were over 50 people in front of me. I went to talk to an employee, who told me to go directly to the gate. As the gate was on the opposite side of the airport I asked for a lift but was told this was impossible.

At this point I ran to the gate, and made it with 5 minutes to spare before take off. There was a security check, however, and the lady at the check told me that I was too late and it would not be possible for me to board the plane as I didn't have a boarding pass. I explained the situation, of which she was apparently already aware, and was told again that it was impossible to board the plane. I pointed out that that was absurd as the plane was right there at the end of the gate, that I could probably hit it with my bag. Then we had a discussion about the nature of impossibility.

I've noticed that the French and the Italians use the expression "it's impossible" with a range of meanings such as "it's not going to happen," "it's unlikely," "it's inconvenient for me," "bah (with a dismissive wave of the hand)," and maybe occasionally, "it's actually impossible." I don't know how the Dutch use the phrase, but none of them seem to understand that in English the expression "'it's impossible" is understood rather literally. Whatever the case, it was no use arguing with an airline attendant about such matters. I went back to the transfer station and took my place in the massive line.

Besides me was a Japanese girl, named Shiho, who had missed the same flight as me and had somehow been traveling around Europe although she could speak no language besides Japanese. I took the opportunity to brush up on my Japanese. When she was called up she asked me to help translate a bit and she was promptly issued two boarding passes for the next flight to Osaka, by way of Seoul.

When I was called up a bit later by a different attendant, I was told I would have to spend the night in Amsterdam. Normally, I would have gone for it, but I have to make my flight to Canada. I pointed out that they had just issued Shiho a ticket by way of Seoul. The attendant told me that this was because she was going to attend the death of a family member. I knew for a fact, however, that she had just quit her job and had taken the opportunity to come see her sister in Germany and travel around a bit.

I told the attendant so and asked her if the airline told them to lie to the customers. She stormed off in a huff and returned fifteen minutes later with one boarding pass and a piece of paper on which was written the information for a flight leaving Seoul after a four hour stopover on some no-name airline, for which, of course, she could not issue me a boarding pass. Again, I pointed out that there was a better option, and again she threw a small fit and eventually returned with the boarding pass. (I wonder what they pay these employees to take their jobs so personally.)

The most absurd thing is that when I eventually took those two earlier flights, there were a fair number of empty seats on each of them.