Aaaaaaand scene.

Aaron + Michael Go To Japan: Sayonara Nihon, Hello America from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

Happy one year anniversary or so! It’s true, friends. One year ago, Aaron and I were in Japan, freshly graduated, and poised for adventure! We were soaking in the rays and enjoying our days. Then it all came crashing down. Crashing, crashing, crashing into the bosoms of reality.

Back in America, we found little time to edit video, blog, or even eat. Life eked on. I started a new blog here in Japan for my JET experience, which I have barely kept up with despite people really liking what I write. What a fool, I am!

What can I say? Life catches up to you quick. Plus, once you get a lady in the life, it takes up a lot of time. In a good way, of course. So good, in fact, that I’m marrying the fair maiden. Aaron got on with his life too, winning the ASC award for best cinematographer to set foot on earth. After that, he realized he hates movies and loves to be a man! So he joined the army.

As of four days ago (or so) Aaron graduated from boot camp with crazy honors and is now somewhere near the rank of General. As a present for his efforts, I decided to take two days off of work to put together the last “Aaron + Michael Go to Japan” video. However, it took me four days to complete. Aaron finished his last video sometime in April this year, and asked me to get on task!

I, of course, was too busy figuring out how to propose to Katie. And being a nervous wreck, I’ve found, takes up a lot of time. So no go there. After proposing, life was filled with the usual teaching of punks and the new planning of a wedding. THAT alone is a full-time job.

But now, the circle is complete! With this last video, our adventures in Japan have been fully compiled (all the interesting bits anyway), and set on the Internet for all eternity, or until vimeo goes bankrupt.

So, I do apologize for the extreme lateness, but if there was ever a good late date to post this video, it would be now. Because on this very day (July 20) of last year would be when the events of this video took place.

And it was good for me, I think. Not very many people get to take two days off of work and pore over footage of their lives one year ago. It’s made me pretty introspective over the past few days, causing me to lie on my back and ask the big questions, like, “Why does a developed nation like Japan still cover its floors with straw?” and “If the tatami (straw mats) itch me so much, why am I still on my back?”

Watching the footage has made me reflect on my attitude toward Japan as it was one year ago. I’ve lived here ten days shy of a year now, and my perspectives have almost completely changed. But watching videos of young, innocent, beardless Michael made me feel the warmth I used to feel about Japan.

Not that I don’t love living here, but it’s not some magical land anymore. It’s not all that different or special, I suppose. I go to the store and they sell squid jerky. Of course! I would never wear shoes in the house if you paid me. The billboard at the train station says, “Get refresh!” Why thank you, I’ll take two refreshes please.

My Japanese is utter crap, but at certain times, I’ve surprised myself with an automatic response or two. So it’s not a surprising or mysterious land. It’s just home. It’s loved and disliked in much the same way I love and dislike my own country.

But watching that footage has reminded me of the real special place Japan holds in my heart. It’s easy to get bogged down with commonplacery of a familiar thing and forget why it was so special (like that dog you used to love). Seeing last year’s Michael love Japan in such a different way helped me to remember the little things I do love and the reasons I fell in love with Japan in the first place.

And it also made me miss my friend, Aaron. We had such a spectacular time on that trip and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was my second time in Japan, and though people in our group (falsely) looked to me for Japan answers, I really didn’t know hardly anything. Aaron and I experienced Japan on much the same level, yet at the same time I was able to show him things I had loved and discovered, which was a very unique experience.

Now that I’m engaged to Katie and Aaron is engaged to America, it’s so clear how different our chosen paths are. He’s a valued friend and I hope our paths continue to cross despite my suckiness at emailing people. Last year, I was certain I would be packing to go home right now and joining with Aaron to venture forth in filmtown, but now that path is all but decimated.

In years past, a fear would have gripped me at this point. The fear of drifting far apart from Aaron, and indeed all my other friends, and wondering where the years went. But this is the twenty-first century! Screw that mess. We gots facebook.

To sum it all up, cheers to Japan and cheers to Aaron. And cheers to me for getting married! “Aaron is a solid dude!” as my fiancée would say, and I second that. Everybody toast Aaron wherever you may be. Because how else can you expect him to protect you when the enemy invades? Trust me. If zombie Nazis have me cornered in my kitchen, I’m fully confident that the door will be kicked in by Sgt. Aaron Dunson, M.D. And we’ll kill those zombies together.

And cheers to you for reading and watching. The ordeal is finally over. If you’re still with us, I commend you. Your reward is our hard work (Sorry, I’m poor). Always remember to love those familiar things, because there’s something that made you like them in first place. And love Aaron, no matter what.

Congratulations, Aaron! We kind of like you. (But I love you).

Sincerely,
-Michael























Look at that man! Stud of the week!

A Dinosaur Story

WHAT THE HHHHHHHHHHHHH?! How long has it been now? A week? A month? A year?? Well, not quite a year but in all seriousness, it will be a year in about three months. It’s kind of crazy how time flies. We never really intended to let it go this long but things happen, I suppose. I know it’s been an unending whirlwind for me since I last posted on this ancient blog. After I left K-SEP, I came back to Japan on JET, started teaching, failed at teaching, learned some Japanese, got a girlfriend, had Christmas, ate Christmas, broke a bike, broke a washing machine, bought a jillion figurines, filed some taxes (sort of), and barely ate anything. In that space was surprisingly little time to write or edit video.

As for Aaron I’m not sure what he was up to in America town, but I’m pretty sure he joined the Navy.

Anyway, in between his preparations for swabbing the deck and dressing like Gene Kelly, Aaron found time to edit the next to the last video from our “Aaron + Michael Make Out with Japan” video series. In it, we explore many things. I won’t tell you what they are because then I’d be like the guy who told you Bruce Willis was a ghost back when anyone gave two craps about M. Night Shamalmalan.

But I digress. The point being here, Aaron slapped this dearie together in an effort to shame me into editing together the last video, which I have all the footage for. So, to make sure I don’t come off as a lazy bum, I have to one-up ol’ laughing boy with the final video for fear of being accused of ruining the video series. As Aaron knows, fear works on me pretty well.

So I leave you to our video; the next to the last of the greatest video series in human history. Or at least on vimeo. Seriously, no one posts on that site. Piece!

-Michael

Aaron + Michael Go To Japan 8: One More Time, Japan Style from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

Japan: The Musical

JapanTheMusical from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

A new video! We're hoping to wrap this up some time soon. I'm going back to Japan in the morning, so no work from me. Sorry.

The second to the last of the beginning of the end

Aaron + Michael Go to Japan: The Kite Factory from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

Good goodness! Where to begin? It’s been so long since I last wrote. As of now, K-SEP 2008 is done, finished, and put in its grave. It was a wonderful beautiful trip, which I will never forget. But don’t let me get ahead of myself. First we have to cover everything else.

To begin, I have to give a big shout out to shabushabu, which took place some time before we went to Shibuya. It’s basically a Japanese restaurant where you order five plates of raw meet and boil them in a big pot at your table. It was a lot of fun and a lot of food. Thankfully, Jaimie was there to walk us through, otherwise I think we all might have just started eating the raw meat, thinking it’s cultural or something. Peter ate at least forty-five pounds of meat and then slept for two days.

After Shinjuku, Aaron and I were beat down, but I’m afraid that was just too bad. We had an Olympic Center to go to, so we packed our things and headed for the buses on Monday morning. We got on the bus, but I don’t really remember anything past that because I fell asleep. I awoke in Yoyogi and we all filed off into the Olympic center.

For those of you that don’t know, Tokyo hosted the Olympics at some point in the sixties and built a huge center for all the athletes to live in while they participated in the world games. Of course after the Olympics ended, Tokyo had buyer’s remorse and started renting out the space to businesses and organizations that needed space to do things and exist in. Really. You can rent that place for anything. It’s mostly business conferences and seminars, but I honestly don’t see why you can’t have your birthday party there. Their cafeteria is pretty good too.

The three days in the Olympic center were pretty much the same as in Kasukabe, except that now we worked thrice as hard. My class continued drawing and I continued to film them to get the footage I needed for the presentation video. The boys all finished their projects the first day here, as I expected. The boys all took the project and did the exact amount of work expected of them and nothing more. Both girl groups, however, had asked me if they could do two full color pages each. I said yes, of course, so the extra time was for them.

I spent the extra days actually teaching cartooning techniques to the boys. They were pretty enthralled by it, and I could see their drawing styles improving right away. I also had the supreme enjoyment of getting Japanese kids to act weird in public. For the video, I put together a class intro and made each person do something bizarre, like pretending to ride an elevator or jumping out of a broom closet or punching a brick wall. Some were reluctant, but most of them were surprisingly willing to embarrass themselves in front of the businessmen walking around.

As night of the first day rolled around, it was time for a shower. We had been told before that this was no ordinary showering experience, but I didn’t really believe it until I tried it for myself. There was an actual bathhouse on the campus where we did our washing. You have to shower, soap, and rinse all before you get in the tub. The tub water is not changed and is only for soaking in. Thus, you must be perfectly clean. Oh, and also, you have to be naked in front of everybody. At first, I was kind of unsettled by this and didn’t want to wash. “I can go for three days without washing. It’ll be fine.” But of course, my dislike for uncleanliness outweighed my dislike for my own public nudity. So I got in, showered, and soaked. You have a tiny baby towel to wrap around you when you walk around, and you put it on your head when you soak. As I sat a-soakin’ in the heat, I realized how it all works. I didn’t want to see anyone’s weiner and they didn’t want to see mine. So you just stop worrying and relax. I did, and it was nice.

The second day we taught and taught, and during our break time we took the kids to nearby Yoyogi park. It had fountains and flowers and grass! And that’s about it. But still it was fun. Five of my kids went. We joined some other groups in a game of tag, in which I got tagged during the first two seconds of play. The grass in the park was laced with large stones that will gladly roll under your feet and slip you up if you run too fast. My fear of looking stupid combined with my fear of breaking my ankle again kept me from running too fast. Also, I’m out of shape. So after about ten minutes of running, I gave up and pretended to be a zombie. That way I could chase the kids on my own my time while saying “brains” and “Muir es vivir” a la RE4. They got a kick out of that. I just got tired.

The Olympic center was a lot of fun, but I’m not sure what else there is to say. So I won’t say anything. Next!

Back in Kasukabe, we were preparing ourselves for our final presentations. Everyone was hard at work editing and collecting materials. Except for Bippo. He spent the whole time renaming my computer files to “Michael’s pictures of dudes” and “Michael’s basket of dumb ideas.”

On Thursday, Aaron and I began our class time with ESL exercises as always. We had a lot of presentation preparation to do with the kids, so we just threw out what we had left. And it turns out all we had left was a worksheet I had made about American holidays. This was most certainly a poor combination of MS Word and Google images, but the kids didn’t know the difference, so we handed it out. Now, most people would use normal holidays like Easter and Valentine’s Day, but I figure we should really American it up a little. So I threw in some Labor Day and Columbus Day and other confusing favorites. Not to mention, I picked the most ridiculous pictures for each holiday.

We gave the worksheet, the kids finished, and we began grading papers. Aaron hadn’t seen the worksheet before, so as he struggled to explain Columbus Day and looked at the stupid picture of Leprechauns I put on the page, he started laughing. “These kids are so confused!” he said. I started laughing too. “I know!” I said. “Where did you get this stupid picture…(laughing)…of a baby…(laughing harder)…dressed as a pumpkin?!” We really started laughing now. “Google images! It was the first one that came up!” The kids started laughing too, but they weren’t sure why. Aaron and I stood in front of thirty students and did nothing but laugh for a solid four minutes. We tried to stop, Lord knows we did, but it was downhill guffaw train with no brakes. The kids all laughed too, but probably more because we looked like a couple of idiots yukking it up for no reason at all. And maybe that was the case.

That day was bittersweet. It was our last time in the classroom, and all our kids finished their projects that day. We still had two more days, but we would never teach them again. One of my girls gave me a manga we had been talking about. She said she had two, so I didn’t feel as bad.

That night was a night of laborious labor. We had presentations that next day and a ton of raw footage. Both Aaron and Peter had video projects, and I was simply cutting a video of the kids’ comics dubbed over with their voice acting. Even so, I had to edit the intros and I did a good amount of title card trickery to spice it up a bit. Anything to make sure their comics were received well.

I won’t get into the boring details, but I started editing at 4:00pm and finished at 3:00am. Yeah. I can’t really complain though because we all stayed up pretty late. Aaron stayed up until 5:00am.

Needless to say, the next day all the K-SEP teachers were exhausted, but energized with the excitement of showing their presentations. There were great photo presentations, plays, and several videos. Even though I taught cartooning, I opted to do a video because standing on stage and reading comics to an audience doesn’t go over very well. I should know. I did it last year. But my video this year was great, I think. I’m not sure the students got it, because it may have been too weird. I used a lot of the multi-colored title cards with weird music that I’ve been using in the vlogs. But I’m incredibly happy with it, and how often does that happen?

The next day was the closing ceremony, but I think that and the rest of our adventures should be saved for a following blog. A vlog is coming, as we still have at least fifty minutes of footage.

-Michael

Working Ourselves to Desu

Aaron + Michael Go to Japan: Days 3-5 from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

Dear all,

Okay,okay, okay, okay, okay, okay…okay. I suck. We start a blog. I write every day for two days and then disappear. Where did he go? What happened? I’m sure at this point you’ve gone on with your lives and stopped asking these questions. But despite this, I am marching onward and blogging away whether anyone reads or not. It’s healthy for me. A writing exercise, if you will. Just because I’ve run off to teach in Japan for a year or seven doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten my true calling. I am a writer, and write I shall! Not for you, or the people, or even for myself. But merely because I’m bored.

So what has happened since I stopped blogging? Well, the other two Americans arrived, Peter and Michelle. Peter is the brother of Lauren, who did K-SEP last year. Lauren was supposed to come this year, but she decided she hates Japan. It’s fine, because Peter is super cool and we all get along really well. Michelle is Lauren’s childhood friend from childhood, and she really likes to laugh. Well, I don’t know if she likes it or not because it seems spontaneous, but she certainly does it a lot. All in all, the American troupe of four is pretty dang cool.

The first night they were here, we all went back to Ueno just because we had nowhere else to go. The next day the seven or eight Canadians arrived. There’s a lot of them and they don’t talk to us that much, but I’m pretty sure their names are Zach, Michael, Seobahn, Alissa, Krista, Masha, Stephanie, and Bippo. I like all of them except Bippo. He’s always pulling down my pants and honking my nose and making me smell flowers that actually shoot cologne in my eyes. What a jerk.

The next day, the four Americans met up with Will, Jesse, Naoko for a day of Tokyo driftin’ unlike they have anything they’ve seen before (Except for me. I saw it last year. Snotty-snot-snot.) The Canadians went on a guided tour and ended up as slave labor for a few hours. The rest of us went through Harajuku and Yoyogi Park, where we saw middle-aged men dressed as fifties greasers doing the twist. It was pretty awesome. We got all of it on video, so it will be on our next vlog once we get five consecutive hours to edit. After that, we returned to Akiba, where I found the coolest Mario encyclopedia, and bought it of course.

But that was the end of the carefree fun, because the next day we began teaching. Seriously though, the teaching has been great this year. My class is full of great kids, all who are wonderful artists. I gave them their assignment and they’re all almost finished. Last year, we were down to the wire, so I got them all started early. Now it seems I may have gotten them started too early, so I’ve been doing a few subtle things to slow them down. Setting their assignments on fire seems to be working pretty well. Also, I’ve hired a professional burglar to steal their supplies while they’re not looking. They never know what hit ‘em!

I was walking to the Kasukabe station one night to meet Jesse, Naoko, and Wendy for dinner, and I was late (as usual), so I was booking it quick. The weird thing about the Kasukabe Station area is that the evening time brings a million jillion birds who fly and screech overhead as you walk toward the station. They fight in swarms and make a loud, loud ruckus the whole time. And of course, just as I’m late and power walking like a geriatric at the mall, a big old birdie plop lands straight on my hand. “No way. This is not happening. No way!” I ran toward a lady handing out cards for a restaurant, hoping for a bathroom I could use. “Toire, sumimasen.” I said. She just looked at me. I didn’t want shove my poop-covered hand in her face, so I politely tried to pull her attention down to my hand. “Etto…tori…” (tori means bird by the way). Silence followed. “Hai! Tori!” She said pointing to the sky. “Iie, iie. Sumimasen. Tori…tori…uuuuhh…” I looked down at my hand. Her eyes followed. “Ah!” She said finally noticing my trouble. She ushered me downstairs where I was sure I would get to use a sink. “Chotto matte,” she said and went into her place of employ. She returned with a tissue. And a small one at that. I wiped off the splatter as best I could, and asked for more with primitive grunts and asking, “more, more?” as if she knew what I meant. She gave me another tissue, which did the trick, but left my hand unwashed. She smiled all the while. “Bad luck,” I said as she nodded in firm agreement.

For days and days we taught with no break, but finally last Friday we got to go to an Izakaya with the teaching staff. It was wonderful fun. We had food and drinks and really got to know our superiors. Naoki (another teacher) and I pretended like we were gorillas and Aaron ate some octopus. It was great. Afterwards we went to Karaoke, where we sang such favorites as Ghostbusters, Don’t Stop Me Now, and Pop Star. I must say I had a ton of fun.

After that it was a day of teaching, which involved watching High School Musical with the kids. As most of you know, I love gut-wrenchingly horrible movies. But this one was really really painful to watch, which made it all the more enjoyable for me. If you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on some top-notch unintentional hilarity on par with Robocop 3.

The day after that, the four Americans met Jesse, Will, and Swinky (Jesse and Will’s roommate from Kenya [she’s super cool]) at the Kasukabe Matsuri. A matsuri is a festival, by the by. We saw some cool Taiko drumming, Mikoshi-shaking, and game swindling. Yes, the Japanese swindle children out of money with carnival games just as well as we do. It was an amazing sight.

Aaron and I bid farewell to the group from there and headed out on our capsule hotel adventure in Shibuya. We didn’t have a plan, or really any idea where to find a capsule hotel but it couldn’t be that hard, right?

On the train to Shibuya, a middle school girl fell asleep on my shoulder, which was really awkward. I didn’t want to wake her up and make her feel weird, but I also didn’t want her sleeping on my shoulder. Aaron took a picture of it with his film camera, so I hope it comes out okay. When the train came to a stop, I used the momentum to nudge her over to her friend’s shoulder and crisis averted.

In Shibuya, Aaron and I walked the streets like a couple of bummy gaijin, and it was pretty fun.

After walking around for a while, we decided it was time to find a capsule hotel. It was about 1:55am when we began asking people. When we asked where we could find a “capuseru hoteru,” Japanese people just gave us funny looks. Of course, foreigners knew what we meant and gave us directions that always led back to prostitute alley, and there was no way we were staying anywhere near that place. So Aaron and I began the long process of finding an internet café, looking up a capsule hotel address, finding a police box, asking the policeman for directions, walking, getting lost, and finally finding the capsule hotel.

We have footage of the capsule hotel, so I want go into detail. Mostly I’ll just say I was really underwhelmed. I guess I just read so much about capsule hotels and knew what to expect so I got into the capsule and just sort of thought, “Well, here I am. It’s like being in a tent made of hard plastic. Goodnight.” Plus we got in the capsules at around 4:00am. I was way too tired to care.

The next day brought an unshowered Shinjuku trip. I didn’t mind, because I didn’t come to Japan to waste time in a shower. I’ve got places to be and kids to teach. So we walked all up and down Shinjuku shopping our little hearts out. By the time we got home it was 5:00pm. Needless to say, Aaron and I spent the rest of the night just chillin’ with Peter and watching movies.

We are now in the dorms at the Olympic center with the kids. I’ll cover everything that led up to that in the next blog. The video for Days 3-5 covers stuff I didn’t talk about, and future videos will also cover stuff I didn’t mention. So look forward to that, because I definitely like editing when I have the time.

I love you all and hope to see you in my dreams (unless you’re some sort of monster. In that case, stay out of my dreams.)

-Michael

Akihabara Video Blogs part one and two

*EDIT* The videos are now fixed. So long YouTube!


Aaron + Michael: Akihabara pt. 1 from Joe Smith on Vimeo.


Aaron + Michael: Akihabara pt. 2 from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

As for writing, I've got nothing. I'm tired and nobody reads them anyway. The other K-SEP kids arrived. The end.
-Michael

*EDIT* Okay, okay. I'll write. It turns out people were watching. Sorry for being a poor sport. I'll hopefully get some time soon.

Ueno and Declaring Our Independence

*EDIT* The video is now fixed. No more stuttery slideshows!

But first, a tour of our apartment...


Aaron + Michael: Apartment Tour from Joe Smith on Vimeo.

Today was a late, late start due to the editing we did. I mean, we saw the morning news come on when we went to bed. So yeah, we woke up around 1:00pm. It took us long enough to get ready, so by the time we got out the door, it was maybe 1:45. We decided to go to the store and get some stuff we needed for the apartment and general living. That was, in as much as we bought more delicious Japanese drinks.

About that time, we decided it was time to get out and about. Ueno was an obvious choice due to the free park it offered and that it was free. We got on the train, rode for forty-five minutes.

While at the train station, Aaron and I split up because he was hungry and I had to use the bathroom. (I used the squatty toilet, just so know. Fun experience.) After Aaron bought his food, he sat down next to a homeless guy and started eating. From across the station, he saw two policemen eyeing him hard and fast, which is odd because Japanese people don’t seem to eye us ever (especially in the eyes). They came over and bowed slightly, then just kept staring. Aaron stared back, then ate some more of his rice ball. They spewed a long string of Japanese. Aaron just looked at them. “I…don’t know Japanese,” he said. “Rice…okay?” They asked. Aaron nodded. “Okay,” he said. There was a nice long silence. “What country?” they asked. “United States,” Aaron said. “Okay,” they said and walked away. A few seconds later, the homeless guy burst into talk. He talked and blabbed and yammered in Japanese while Aaron just sat there in silence. He offered Aaron a flask of whiskey. “No, no. Arigato,” said Aaron. The homeless guy left and about that time I came back.

We arrived Ueno park around dusk. It was nice and very peaceful. Aaron and I barely said anything to each other just because it was so serene. We saw a temple, a fountain, and some unsanitary bathrooms. The coolest thing I saw though, was a little halfpipe on the side of the street. It was cool because in every Tony Hawk game there’s little halfpipes on the side of walls and streets, and every time I see that, I think, “No city in the world has random halfpipes in its architecture.” Well, Japan, you amaze me yet again.

It was getting dark and the park was about closed, so Aaron and I headed to what I call the “Flashy Alley District.” I don’t really know what it’s called, but it was a series of alleyways with a lot of flashing signs and pachinko parlors. We walked and walked and walked. Aaron has video of it, which should be up eventually. We ended up eating in a cool little eatery, where I had Japanese fried chicken of some kind. Never had it before, but it was good.

When we got bored of Ueno, we gave Will a call and met him and Jesse in Sengendai. It being July 4th and all, we decided to celebrate our hatred for Great Britain by shooting off convenience store fireworks. It was pretty fun. We had spinners, rope spinners, flying bugs, sparklers, and bottle rockets. The bottle rockets were my favorite mostly because they’re illegal in North Carolina and I haven’t been able to play with them since I was ten. I was about to set off three bottle rockets at once when a homeless guy told us he was trying to sleep. Too bad. My firework fantasy must be saved for another day.

The rest of the night was watching Will play Metal Gear Solid 4 on his PS3. To you non-gamers, that may sound boring, but the MGS series is incredibly fun to watch someone play. Also, we played GTA IV, which I had wanted to get my hands on for quite some time.

On the way home, we saw some skater kids, the first I have seen in Japan, skating in a parking lot. We watched them skate and taped them a little before running to catch the last train home. While buying our tickers, we passed many drunk people, one who invited us to go drinking with him. We declined and said we needed to sleep. “Don’t think so,” he said. “You need drink, drunk, get ----ed up.” We declined again and left. The train home was packed at 1:00am, mostly with drunk people. The whole car smelled of alcohol. Getting off at Kasukabe, it was funny to see everyone stumbling out of the station. It was like being surrounded by zombies, except they wanted to sleep more than eat your brains.

So tiredy descends on my eyes, as it is quite late. I have to get up early because the two other K-SEP kids join us tomorrow. See you then.

-Michael