Pictures!

Finally got around to posting some pictures at Tabblo...

A Stroll Down Natsukashi Lane

 The Japanese have a great word: natsukashi.

Basically, it means "nostalgic" but there's a bit more to it than that. It's actually closer to a one-word summary of "Wow, this really takes me back".

Say, for example, you hear a song on the radio that, not only have you not heard for years, but you really associate with a certain memorable time in your life.  You could say "Oh my god, Lionel Richie's 'Dancing on the Ceiling'!  Natsukashi!" (Erm... hypothetical, of course.)

Anyway, I had myself a big ol' fat dose of natsukashi this weekend.

On Sunday, I went to the last day of the Seattle Cherry Blossom Festival & Japanese Cultural Festival.


It was at the Seattle Center, just under the Space Needle.  I parked nearby and, as I walked towards the festival, I passed the wall of the Experience Music Project/Science Fiction Museum.  In the window was a picture of Doc and Marty.  Having lived in Japan for nearly 4 years and having played Doc Brown at a theme park while I was there, I was forced to stop and take a picture.

As I was putting my camera away, I spotted a group of teenage Japanese girls who had just spotted me. Now, I don't know what it is - I must have a certain wakarimasen about me; an air of "yes, I speak Japanese and I'd love to take a picture of you" - but the girls started to approach me. (Perhaps all of my time overseas has just made me more receptive to the photographic needs of Asians.)

I smiled pleasantly as they advanced. One asked in English "Picture, OK?" while miming snapping a few shots with an invisible camera.  I replied in Japanese, "You'd like some pictures taken?  Of course, I'd be glad to."

The Japanese people make a sound when they're surprised.  It's an escalating "eeehhhhHHHH!!" that kind of sounds like a cross between Scooby-Doo and Tim Allen's impression of a guy in a SEARS.  After I spoke in (damn-near flawless) Japanese, the girls made this sound in unison. (And I felt the first real stabs of natsukashi in my gut.)

"You speak Japanese! Wonderful!"
"Yes, I do speak Japanese. But I'm really not that good at it. Thank you very much for noticing."

While that last line might sound sarcastic, it was actually meant to make me sound humble as well as belittle any efforts I had ever put into studying Japanese.  It was one of the first full phrases I learned in Japan.

I was handed several cameras and then the girls rushed back to pose for the pictures.  Each pose, each peace sign, took me back to all the countless Japanese people who'd ever done the same thing in the pictures taken by and taken with me.

I counted down each photo I took of the girls with a "Hai Chi-zu!", the Japanese version of "Say Cheese!"  The girls marvelled at this.

Once the pictures were done, one of the girls asked why I spoke Japanese so well.  This began a conversation I'd had so many times in the past that I could have acted out both parts.
"I used to live in Osaka."
"Wow! What were you doing in Osaka?"
"I worked there."
"Where did you work?"
"Universal Studios Japan."
"eeeeehhhhhhHHHHH! Wonderful!"

The girls finally asked if they could take pictures with me.  This wasn't a surprise at all.

Quick cultural note: In Japan, the locals just love getting pictures with random foreigners. My parents can attest to this. During their visit to Osaka, I took them to Kaiyukan, the aquarium in Tempozan.  It was inside there that schoolchildren would, instead of taking pictures of the gliding rays or the massive angelfish, actually get queued up to take pictures with the three of us.

In Japan, this...

Is more interesting than this...

I never could figure out their obsession with taking pictures of people they didn't know. I always tried to imagine them sharing their photo albums with friends and family:

"Here's Hiroko on the Ferris wheel. Here's Hiroko next to the crab tank. Here's Hiroko standing next to another completely random American tourist."

Maybe they trade the pictures like baseball cards?

"I'll give you a tall Aussie and a brown-haired American for a red-headed Scot."

"Deal!"

Anyway, I posed with each girl for a photo.  Everything we did reminded me of my job back in Japan:  The questions they asked.  The giggling at the responses.  The bowing and the broken English.  The feeling of being special enough to get my picture taken.

After the past several months of being anonymous, I can't tell you how nice it was to be noticed again.  They thanked me as they walked to whatever bus they needed to catch, but it was really me who was the most thankful.

The rest of the day went great as well.  I drank bottled green tea as I strolled the aisles between the different booths.  Each time I turned a corner, I'd catch another wave of natsukashi.  While the highlight of my day will forever be getting my picture taken with those girls, a close second was a choir of Japanese ladies' delightful half-Japanese, half-English version of Paul Anka's "Diana".

"Ohh... preeeease... staaaay by me... Diana"

Gotta love Japan.

UPDATE: More pictures here!

Happy White Day!

During my first week in Japan, as we newly-hired actors were being dragged all over Osaka to take care of some essentials - Alien Registration, opening bank accounts, locating the McDonald's - it was hard not to notice all of the signs advertising something called "White Day". I joked that it was about time we white people finally had our own day.

The reality was that, in Japan, Valentine's Day had somehow become a holiday where only the women give gifts to men.

Totally sweet, I know.

But there's a catch. In an effort to be fair and balanced (and incredibly opportunistic), the Japanese exploited their own, deeply-ingrained sense of obligation and established "White Day", a March 14th holiday where men had to buy gifts - usually much more expensive - for the women who bought them gifts the month before.

I asked around and heard several theories as to why it was called "White Day" (sadly, none of which involved the celebration of Caucasians).

First theory: Originally, men could only buy white chocolate for women. This was done to prevent them from just reusing some chocolates they'd received the month before.

Second theory: Originally, men could only buy chocolates in white boxes which were only sold just before White Day. This was done to prevent them from just reusing some chocolates they'd received the month before.

Third theory: Originally, men could only buy marshmallows for women. This was done to, well... you know. (I'm sensing a theme here.)

The reality seems to be a mix of the above. According to the always-correct Wikipedia...

White Day was first celebrated in 1978 in Japan. It was started by the National Confectionery Industry Association (全国飴菓子工業協同組合) as an "answer day" to Valentine's Day on the grounds that men should pay back the women who gave them chocolate and other gifts on Valentine's Day. In 1977 a Fukuoka-shi confectionery company, Ishimura Manseido (石村萬盛堂), had marketed marshmallows to men on March 14, calling it Marshmallow Day (マシュマロデー).^[3]

Soon thereafter, confectionery companies began marketing white chocolate. Now, men give both white and dark chocolate, as well as other edible and non-edible gifts, such as jewelry or objects of sentimental value, or white clothing like lingerie, to women from whom they received chocolate on Valentine's Day one month earlier. If the chocolate given to her was giri choco, the man as well may not be expressing actual romantic interest, but rather a social obligation.

And Japanese confectioners go to sleep in beds of money.

In somewhat unrelated news, five years ago today, I did my very first Doc Brown show.

Wow, has it really been that long?

(Special thanks to Melissa for the picture and to DJ for the smile.)

Universal, Hasbro team for films

Looks like my former employers are getting desperate for ideas...

Universal, Hasbro team for films

NEW YORK -- Universal Pictures and Hasbro announced Wednesday a six-year strategic partnership to produce at least four feature films based on some of Hasbro's best-known game and toy brands, including Monopoly, Candy Land, Clue, Ouija, Battleship, Magic, the Gathering and Stretch Armstrong.

But, then again:

"In a world of ups and downs...
Where power and money are more important than honor...
One man...
Will claw his way the top, knowing that, at any second...
He can lose it all...
With a toss of the dice.

From the director of Platoon and Natural Born Killers.
Universal Studios presents...

Oliver Stone's
Chutes and Ladders."

Taking To Snow Like A Fish To Waterskiing

This past weekend I went cross-country skiing with my Japanese tutor Yuka and her friend John, a man who likes to ice climb and do other sports that show he really isn't concerned about staying in one piece. Yuka invited me along because John has a habit of skiing too fast for her and she wanted someone to talk to. I assumed this meant she thought I'd be slow. She was right. We went to a place called The Summit at Snoqualmie in the Cascade Mountains just east of Seattle. Before I go on, can I just say how great it is having mountains within an hour of my place? Mountains with snow, no less! It's almost too much for my Florida brain to comprehend. ("What's with all of these piles of crunchy sand? Hold on, that's not sand... it's water. But like no water I've ever seen! It's all cold and... non-liquidy. I'm so confused! Somebody find me a coconut.") As you may have guessed, I've never cross-country skied before. Or skied at all for that matter. Actually, I did snowboard once, way back in 1995. (In Australia. In July.) And I really enjoyed it. It just felt more natural me. Snowboarding is very similar to surfing, a sport which I'd spent most of my life in Florida pretending to do.

It's easy to look cool when you're not moving.

But skiing is the opposite of natural. And I took to it with all the grace and style of a greased-up newborn giraffe trying to sprint across a frozen lake. Blindfolded. I was awful. My arms flailed, my knees bent in all sorts of unhealthy directions, I kept falling on my face. It was so embarrassing but, eventually, I got the skies on. We stuck to a lower trail thinking that perhaps, sooner or later, I'd get the hang of it and we could move on to bigger and better trails. Yeah, didn't happen. I knew I was doing poorly when I realized that even tiny, polite Yuka had left me behind. Course, I wasn't much in the conversation department seeing as I had to focus all of my mental energy on my feet and on not dying. John, was surprisingly willing to hang back and encourage me. But perhaps he was just enjoying the show. Eventually I told him he could catch up with Yuka. This gave me a chance to wallow in my own pity without an audience. As I struggled to keep moving forward without destroying my knees or tumbling off of a cliff, a guy who was around my age glided by me, ever-so-gracefully. "Wow... he's good," I thought. "He's probably been doing it for a while." I tried to impersonate the bobbing/weaving motion that propelled him along and promptly fell on my ass. A little while later, a guy in his... oh, I don't know... late-90s passed me. "What the...??," I thought, "How is that man standing, much less skiing?? OK, yeah... he's definitely been doing it for a while." As I fought with the embarrassment of being lapped by a near-centenarian, two 6-year-old girls zoomed by me. As they passed, I think one was calculating long-division without a calculator and the other was both chewing gum and patting her stomach. "...," I thought. Thinking my self-esteem could sink no lower, I was passed by - I kid you not - a special-ed class. "Oh come on!" Determined not to look stupid, I picked up the pace and tried to get into a rhythm. And promptly fell on my ass. One of the students who passed as I fell shouted back to me, "You can do it!" before going back to eating a crayon. I suppose cross-country skiing is fun once you get used to it. Especially when you don't have to concentrate on your feet or falling to your death. One thing's for sure, the view's a whole lot better.

Other people's view: My view:

Note the slight difference.

Despite the problems, I had a great time and I made it back in one piece. Sadly, my sunglasses did not. In 13 years, I've gone through 3 pairs of Arnette Catfish sunglasses. I bought my first pair the first time I went snowboarding. (In 1995. In Australia. In July.) They lasted several month before I somehow managed to run over them with my bike. (Still trying to figure that one out.) The second pair was lost in the confusion of my first day of training at the Hard Rock Cafe back in my bartending days. At least this pair was destroyed while I was doing something that sounds cool. Even if I didn't look it.

Rest in pieces.