In Japan, the smallest bill (1000 yen) is roughly equivalent to 10 US dollars.  That took awhile to get used to.  A ‘coin’ worth five dollars?  Something smaller than a quarter with a value four times larger?

I was already broke (in any currency), so you can imagine the anguish I felt  whenever I stuck a bill into a ticket machine at the train station and watched it spit out a ticket and a handful of coins.  My change was literally *change*.  Sure, I wasn’t being robbed; all those coins equaled about 8 US dollars, or so.  But in my head, coins were still second-tier money, couch cushion money, shallow-dish-by-the-front-door money.  A buddy of mine worded it perfectly:  “A second ago, I had 10 dollars.  Now I have change for a dollar”.

But when I finally did make the adjustment, I began to see the difference as a major opportunity. As I started to respect the coins for their actual worth, I mixed this new perception with my old American habits and discovered a great way to save.  Being so accustomed to dumping the contents of my pockets into a jar upon returning home, I simply continued that habit here.  Only now, instead of that handful equaling maybe a pack of gum or a weekday newspaper, that collection of 50 and 100 yen coins equaled a round-trip ride on the Tokyo Metro or a steamy bowl of gyudon.  And if a golden five double-oh was in there, well then, I’ve got enough for a magazine or maybe even that new 12-inch single I wanted to buy (yeah, I still buy vinyl).

Suddenly, I found myself regularly dropping the equivalent of 5 or 6 dollars into the tray when I came home.  Eventually, I started to separate them; the silver ones I primarily use as the laundry stash (200 yen to wash and 200 to dry- expensive!!), sometimes swiping a few for the occasional trip to the arcade. The 500s, meanwhile, are my proverbial shoebox under the mattress.  Some dedicated saving of these and you can have a few hundred bucks in a relatively short amount of time…  I’ve heard of people taking vacations on the 500 yen coins they’ve saved.

As for me, I’m not saving for anything in particular.  For now, my stash gives me a small degree of comfort whenever I find myself being less-than-mature with my paper money…

photo credit: Goran Zec

This is week 2 of my new Japanese language class.  It’s something of a blast from the past…  Waking up with the whining “I don’t *wanna* go to school” voice in your head (and expression on your face), procrastinating on your homework, cliques and crews, and even a class crush (but hands off- she’s married with children, like nearly everyone else I share the class with).

Until today, there was only one other dude in the class with me- he and I the only ones with jobs.  Everyone else is a housewife, who most likely came to Japan with their husbands when his job transferred him.  Most of the students are from other parts of Asia: China, Korea, the Philippines; one reps Columbia, one’s from France (also a Hip Hop producer- word up), and our newest classmate is from Iran.  That just leaves me and one other American.

This experience is bringing two things to my attention…

1. How good (or bad, depending on how you see it) we, as Americans, have it in regards to global communication.

For example: today I’m sitting in between Mr. France and Mrs. super-cute Korea (hands off!).  Whenever I get confused, one of them leans over and gives me the extra info I need to catch up …in *English*.  I certainly appreciate the help, but it’s a trip when two people from two different parts of the world can communicate with you with ease in their *2nd* language (yours), while working on their 3rd.  It’s so convenient to be an American.  Shoot, I’ve been doing just fine here with my limited Japanese skill, as it is- I don’t even NEED to take this class, in terms of basic living in Japan; English is so prevalent.  It’s no wonder myself and Mrs. America are probably the slowest amongst our group.  Americans can be lazy and still get by; everyone *else* has to work to keep up.  At least for now…

2. Learning a second language takes faith.  Faith in your dictionary, faith in study websites, faith in your friends and acquaintances.  Faith that what they’re all telling you is the truth.

I’m learning gradually, but when I’m communicating (especially in class), there’s this underlying feeling that I really don’t know *what* I’m saying and I just hope that the words I’m using really mean what I’ve been told they mean.  On a surface level, when you grow up in a culture, you know the rules because you have enough experience to know that ‘this’ is what people do/say is ‘this’ situation.  When you come into another culture and learn that culture’s language, it feels like you’re just taking everyone’s word for it.  Of course, it gradually wears off- some words/phrases I’ve been using for a while, I use with confidence.  But the newer stuff I use with a bit of apprehension; it takes a few real-world uses without someone looking at me strangely or bursting into laughter for me to add it to the ’safe’ category.

But on a larger scale, it’s all relative anyway, right?  ‘XZY’ only means what it does because we say so- there’s no real Absolute in terms of language, which is exactly why so many languages can exist in the first place.  Americans say ‘apple’, Japanese say ‘りんご’.  But the object we’re all referring to is the same.

“What’s in a name?  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” -Shakespeare

photo credit: chiszeo

I recently had a conversation with a friend of mine via e-mail. We grew up together in Chicago, but he now lives in New York and I’m out here. He was telling me about how he feels frustrated at how difficult it’s become to meet up with friends. Responsibilities of adulthood (and for some, parenthood) make things much more complicated than they once were to simply get together and hang out.

He asked me about how friends are fitting into my life at this point and his question triggered an epiphany of sorts; it gave me the missing piece of a puzzle that’s been in my head without me even being aware of it. Despite all of the cool people I have the privilege of knowing here in Tokyo, the fact is that this city makes it difficult to get close to them.

In a lot of ways, Tokyo is just like any other major metropolis: busy, crowded and sprawling. You face the same difficulties of coordinating schedules and dealing with long drives/train rides to see someone that you would deal with anywhere else. But what sets Tokyo apart from the others are the possibilities for what you can do once you and your friends finally meet…

When I lived in Chicago, many times I’d spend the day chilling at my friend’s place, half-heartedly playing something on X-Box, surfing the web or watching a DVD over some pizza. Usually, we did this to occupy ourselves while we tried to come up with something better to do. Of course, we rarely ever did, which meant we often spent the whole day doing our ‘in the meantime’ activity. From time to time, this would really frustrate me, but the truth is that doing “nothing” was, in fact, “something” if your good friends were around. The trash talk, jokes and all the friendly banter that only comes when you’re with real peeps was the glue that held all the ‘nothing’ we were doing together and created something genuine and fun.

But there’s a crucial ingredient that, more times than not, you’d need for situations like this to unfold:

Space.

Space is not something Tokyo has a lot of. In fact, it’s kinda famous for NOT having it. It’s certainly been my experience and I’m guessing it’s the same for most people: when you meet your friends, you’re meeting at a restaurant or a bar/club or in the park or in front of such-and-such train station. Almost never at someone’s home.

Because land is so scarce here, most modest apartments give you the basics- enough room for you to live and do your daily stuff, but not much more. Some people just barely have enough space for *themselves* in their apartment. So when it comes to hanging with friends, going elsewhere is automatic. And unfortunately, that crucial space deficiency makes it difficult for friendships to cross a certain point. The same point I had reached when I was lounging on my friend’s futon, munching on french fries. When you’ve got someone in your crib, relaxing as if they were in their own home, your friendship has a type of ‘warmness’ to it (for lack of a better word). It’s something like family. And because it’s so less likely to visit someone’s home here, that warmness/closeness is missing. And up until my friend in NY asked me for my thoughts, I didn’t realize that that’s a big reason why I feel lonely even tho I have a lot of great friends here.

I miss doing nothing.