I have 18 roommates

So I very recently moved into a new apartment, with lots of Japanese roommates.  It's a "share house" which is basically a college dorm for big people.  But I only moved in 1.5 days before I left Japan for the week I spent in the States, so I hadn't yet met most of the roomies very much.

But on the national holiday the day before Thanksgiving (no relation), many of the roomies decided to get bellig.  So I got home from class, passed out by 5 pm due to mega jetlag, and woke up around 10 or 11 pm to find a party in my house.  They shared the shochu (vodka, ish) and whiskey liberally, but basically everyone else had a fairly low alcohol tolerance so there were a lot of red faces.

Gaydar is culturally subjective.  In the states, I have surprisingly good gaydar.  If I can tell at all, I usually pick up on the 'mo vibe upon the first eye-contact when meeting someone new.  This is not necessarily true in Japan, in large part because much of the hip/fashionable clothing for young men would be effeminate--dare I say fabulous--by our standards.

Today's featured item of Japanese Goods with Questionably Translated Names: STRAIGHT TEA.  They did not have any GAY TEA in stock.

One of my housemates, Mochi, is cute as a button and flirtatious with anything that moves and basically a Japanese version of my college roommate Kelvin.  I had been wondering about him, but as the drinks kept pouring themselves the following happened:

Mochi: I want to study English so I can meet a good guy.  I just want Zak Efron to touch me.  I'd say "No Zak, no!" but really I would want it.
Erriot: Oh, so you're gay.
Mochi: Who told Erriot I was gay?!

Lolwut.  This was not the first loaded-with-gayness thing he said, but it was definitely the most unmistakable.

Added fun note, many of roommates go by vomit-inducingly cute nicknames.  Like, Okazaki Hiroyuki goes by Okapi.  His bestie Ogawa Chihiro goes by Ogachi.  I swear that Okapi and Ogachi are different evolved stages of the same pokemon.


For Thanksgiving itself,  it was my first time not with family.  Bummer.  But to deaden the pain by eating my feelings, I made an imitation of Sweet Potato Casserole to share with the roomies.  Japan does not have sweet potatoes, but this did not stop me.  I made do with Satsuma-imo, which are vaguely sweet-potato-ish.  But purple on the outside and yellow on the inside.

Also, explaining "Casserole" to people not from a culture inundated with casserole is surprisingly hard.  "Um... you can make it out of lots of things.  It can be tuna or it can have pasta.  But its a big thing you eat for dinner.  And its not a dessert food unless is sweet potato casserole, when it is."

Adventures in foreign medical systems

After a pretty full week, I had been looking forward to Saturday to catch up on work, sleep, and a party I had been assisting to coordinate in Tokyo.  This didn't happen when I woke up with what felt like strep throat.

First couple hours of the day I contemplated dragging myself to the drugstore a few blocks away for what I knew worked pretty well on sore throats.  I finally got the OTC stuff but it didn't seem to help as much as I had remembered, so I started looking up international clinics in the area, or places that at least would participate directly in the HTH insurance I'm receiving from Yale.  (Students of IUC are supposed to enroll in the Japanese national health insurance, which would have made this a lot easier.  But Yale pays extra for this service.  I'll get reimbursed eventually, but there'll be more paperwork)  But, all of these places were an hour + trip away, or closed on saturdays, so I was gonna call it quits.

It's hard enough when I'm healthy to call around in Japanese looking for a place, and then take the train and walk there and get lost for half an hour because the Japanese system of street addresses is useless and then navigate a bunch of unfamiliar bureaucratic procedures, so when I'm sick enough that getting out of bed is a challenge I wasn't really up to it.  Armed with the knowledge of webmd.com, I knew strep will go away on its own, and the antiobiotics suppress contagiousness and generally not the actual symptoms, so I was content to wait in my bed until it went away.

But my symptoms were getting worse, so I finally pushed through to find a clinic.  Interesting things different about the medical system here:

America's big on privacy and always has the waiting area cordoned off from the reception desk where patients discuss symptoms and payments with the nurse; that didn't seem to be a concern here.  I'm used to filling out a complete medical questionnaire about anything that has ever happened to anyone in my family when I go to a new clinic for the first time, but the only survey I did was about the current condition. 

I had heard that Japanese doctors tend to be brusque and efficient without much concern for bedside manner, and I guess that stereotype was confirmed but not necessarily in a bad way.  He looked at my throat and nose and very quickly decided it was "風邪”, a cold, and subscribed me antibiotics.  I asked if we should also do a strep test, since American doctors would usually do that as well, but he was confident that he'd prescribe the same things regardless of the test results and didn't feel the need.  I felt lucky that my japanese level was advanced to know things like tonsillitis (扁桃炎、literally "flat peach inferno") because he didn't try to explain anything beyond that.

Although I wonder if the usage of kaze is wider in Japanese than it is in English, because I know most colds are actually viral and prescription antibiotics have no effect.  And I definitely wouldn't call tonsils as large mine "the sniffles".  But, the prescription drugs seem to be helping at least.  Maybe the microorganisms responsible in Japan are more likely to be cold bacteria than cold viruses? 

Afterwards, trekked into Tokyo for my appointment to sign the contract and pick up the key (yay!) for my new apartment.  And then made it home through Tokyo rush hour commuter traffic, in the rain.  I am just rocking out at the unreasonably hard being-an-adult challenges this week.

Now just five days until I return to the states for interviews at the Boston Career Forum, partying at the Sigma Chi 25th Reunion, and reminding hahvahd how many dead goats they suck at The Game!

Unrelated: best unintentionally hilarious advertisement for a bar, TGIFridays.

Also unrelated: terrifying but delightful commercial for Dole bananas.

Work and sweat

This week is a break between first and second semesters, but its yet to be that restful.  Even when I thought I was done with all of it, I've had a surprising amount of resume/application/paperwork related stuff left over in preparation for next week's move.  Also discovered I need to open a bank account tomorrow, which is great considering tomorrow is a national holiday ("Culture Day!") and thus banks are closed.


Tonight was my first full-on Japanese interview, conducted via skype.  It was with Rakuten, one of the companies I would be more interested in and also felt I had a pretty decent chance at.  Right before the interview I had a sudden crisis come up with the new apartment that finished only minutes before the interview, so I was maybe a little flustered to begin with.  And then as soon as I turned on the skype video camera I realized I had forgotten to change into the dress shirt I had laid out and was instead still in my gym clothes.

Even after that I didn't feel it went that well, but I figure as much as anything I need experience in handling Japanese style interviews, so hopefully it will help me at later attempts.  Although I'm bummed I might have missed my shot with Rakuten.


Had another interview with an American company scheduled for late tonight, (11 pm is about the only reasonable time that overlaps with their business hours) but as I was waiting for their representative to appear on skype I received an email saying "double-booked your interview lolwut sorry".  Mrrrrrhhh.
More exciting stories: I had a conversation about dicks with the other guys in judo class.  I was so happy when I realized the guy was asking me whether Americans shave their pubes.  This is a cultural milestone in male bonding, and it means I have been accepted.

It did take me a while to realize that, though, as he was trying to phrase the question in very broken English, and from picking up "under" and "long" I assumed he was asking whether Americans wear longjohns, and I explained "they sometimes do when its really cold".  This answer to the pubes question elicited unexpected laughter.


Also had another great conversation with Train Friend, who previously offered that if he met a girl who wanted to date me he would let me know.  This time, as we transferred trains, I asked if he smelt something funny.  He calmly explained "it is the smell of girls".



In others news of bridging cultural differences, please allow yourself to be enriched by the cultural goodness of Ayaman Japan performing Poi Poi.