An exciting Expo-dition (sorry)
It's Golden Week here, three national holidays which fortuitously fall on consecutive days, and Row and I took advantage of the break and a friend's kind offer of a bed and a meal to go to the Aichi World Expo in Nagoya. I vaguely remember going to the 1988 Expo in Brisbane - all I can dredge up is a couple of people looking uncomfortably ethnic in traditional Mongolian dress under the Australian sun. I had no real plan to go to the Expo, but Y (a lovely Japanese guy from our hostel) suggested it, as his family lived nearby. But getting there alone nearly killed me; I was doing my best to be young and reckless by kissing Kiyono right up until the last possible moment I could leave to catch the last monorail to catch the last train back to Hirakata to snatch three hours sleep before the first train to Nagoya left around 5 am. Sadly, young and reckless is not so far off young and stupid and I missed the last monorail. This was a bad thing. This was a very bad thing. I couldn't wait till the first train because then I'd miss the connecting one and we had tickets for the Expo on Wednesday. So it was taxi time, a bad, bad time in Japan. If you measure what you spend in hours worked, as I sometimes like to do when wondering whether to buy something, a taxi in Japan is an agonising affair. I'm broke anyhow, as a result of trying to keep up with Kiyono's high life with a scant supply of funds (why isn't childcare and dancing to the Wiggles as valuable as flirting with businessmen? I ask you) and I had about 8000 yen (maybe 90 bucks) to last me until payday, a week away. Yes, taxis in Japan are cool - the back door automatically opens and shuts and the driver wears white gloves. But the driver also dispenses free tissues with which to console oneself as one (one? forgive me) hands over 5000 yen (4 hours of work) for a 15 minute trip home. It was a gripping and horrific experience - I was literally on the edge of my seat, watching my money shrink by the second. Eventually, I realised I wasn't going to make it home, so I attempted some Japanese and told the driver that I didn't have enough money so he should let me out here for (sigh) the long, long walk home through a foreign city. He stopped the taxi, looked at the bedraggled gaijin in his back seat, shook his head and drove me the rest of the way home anyway.
Then I slept a little before catching 9 (nine!) trains to Nagoya in an effort to save cash by using the child ticket method; for once, it failed miserably and we were caught outside the Expo and forced to pay a whopping great wad of cash to meet the real price that Adults who Earn Money have to pay. Fuck me. Not even playing the stupid gaijin card saved us. Then we got into the Expo, discovered that 150,000 other people had the same idea and that the queues for the popular exhibits were at least three kilometres long (I shit you not) and that families had set up encampments in the queues and were busily having lunch/writing their wills/cultivating heatstroke. Row, Y and I decided that popular was out and Central Asia was in, so we enjoyed the delights of the Kazakhstani and Turkmenistani pavilions, both of which seemed to be using the Expo as a means to seek foreign capital (cheap labour! oil! corrupt former Soviet politicians!) and also had the Biggest Rock Salt Crystal in the world, which would look nice in Northern Queensland next to the Big Fucking Banana and the Fucking Enormous Coconut, Cunt. Next, we skulked into the Australian pavilion but were spotted immediately and forced to speak 'Strayan before the staff let us sit down and watch how Australia presents itself to the world. I have to say, it was one of the better pavilions we saw. The room was full of vertical screens which gave a Brief Overview of Oz. There were obligatory shots of kangaroos jumping and multiculturalism (black and white and yellow people reading and listening to music and mowing lawns and Living in Harmony) and the Great Barrier Reef - they know what Japanese tourists like - and sport, of course, but they didn't belabor the point. We're the best in the world. We're the new Aryan race of superhuman superfish but we channel our super-aggression into sport. Get used to us winning. But the show was quick, snappy and sumptously designed and we left feeling a wee bit proud. While an Expo is meant to be an exhibition of nations, the UN in miniature minus bureaucracy, in reality it's a fierce competition.
Anyway, I can't say I enjoyed the Expo much at all, but I did get to see and pet some robots. There were guard robots and nurse robots and receptionist robots and childcare robots (my job is not safe, not safe at all and here I am asking for a raise!) But being Japan, all the robots were rounded and cute, even the guard robots; flashing lights and smooth, pattable curves. The techology is proceeding pretty quickly and it was a little disconcerting when I realised that one of the robots was looking at me - if I moved away, its eye-cameras would track me to my new location.
Sleeplessness, thousands of people and the hot spring sun all contributed to me feeling terrible about my time here. I wanted to quit this place - too hard, too hard - and go back to Australia where the living is easy. Squashed up in an Expo train, my legs were screaming for relief but every time I shifted position, I elicited a grunt from a random piece of flesh nearby.
Then we made it to Y's house, where we were welcomed as family, fed, made a fuss of, introduced to dogs/babies/grandmothers playing the shamisen (Japanese stringed instrument), bedded down, woken with sausage and eggs, shown the family shrine, taken to a pottery exhibition where we made a rice bowl while throngs of rural Japanese goggled at us before having tasteful presents of cups and teapots showered upon us by Y's parents before being driven an hour through wonderous scenery - it's rice planting season here and the farmers toil against a backdrop of mountains clad in spring foliage - to a more convienient city to catch a train, before we were filled with expensive sushi and sent off with a wave. I have never, ever encountered such generosity, such total giving. Our thank-you's and presents of small cakes and a stupid kangaroo keyring were rather inadequate.
It seems as if every touristy thing I do here is mundane and serves only as the pretext that lets me meet people and come into their lives for a little while.
----
Pome for idiot gaijin
Hey idiot gaijin,
Why waste your time and money procuring an orgasm
Enveloped in someone else's flesh
When it's not so much better than
The orgasms you manage at home, on your own
You can see the type I'm writing about, in their own words:
'The perfect man has a German car, American money, and a Japanese wife'
Here they are, all of them.
---
It's Golden Week here, three national holidays which fortuitously fall on consecutive days, and Row and I took advantage of the break and a friend's kind offer of a bed and a meal to go to the Aichi World Expo in Nagoya. I vaguely remember going to the 1988 Expo in Brisbane - all I can dredge up is a couple of people looking uncomfortably ethnic in traditional Mongolian dress under the Australian sun. I had no real plan to go to the Expo, but Y (a lovely Japanese guy from our hostel) suggested it, as his family lived nearby. But getting there alone nearly killed me; I was doing my best to be young and reckless by kissing Kiyono right up until the last possible moment I could leave to catch the last monorail to catch the last train back to Hirakata to snatch three hours sleep before the first train to Nagoya left around 5 am. Sadly, young and reckless is not so far off young and stupid and I missed the last monorail. This was a bad thing. This was a very bad thing. I couldn't wait till the first train because then I'd miss the connecting one and we had tickets for the Expo on Wednesday. So it was taxi time, a bad, bad time in Japan. If you measure what you spend in hours worked, as I sometimes like to do when wondering whether to buy something, a taxi in Japan is an agonising affair. I'm broke anyhow, as a result of trying to keep up with Kiyono's high life with a scant supply of funds (why isn't childcare and dancing to the Wiggles as valuable as flirting with businessmen? I ask you) and I had about 8000 yen (maybe 90 bucks) to last me until payday, a week away. Yes, taxis in Japan are cool - the back door automatically opens and shuts and the driver wears white gloves. But the driver also dispenses free tissues with which to console oneself as one (one? forgive me) hands over 5000 yen (4 hours of work) for a 15 minute trip home. It was a gripping and horrific experience - I was literally on the edge of my seat, watching my money shrink by the second. Eventually, I realised I wasn't going to make it home, so I attempted some Japanese and told the driver that I didn't have enough money so he should let me out here for (sigh) the long, long walk home through a foreign city. He stopped the taxi, looked at the bedraggled gaijin in his back seat, shook his head and drove me the rest of the way home anyway.
Then I slept a little before catching 9 (nine!) trains to Nagoya in an effort to save cash by using the child ticket method; for once, it failed miserably and we were caught outside the Expo and forced to pay a whopping great wad of cash to meet the real price that Adults who Earn Money have to pay. Fuck me. Not even playing the stupid gaijin card saved us. Then we got into the Expo, discovered that 150,000 other people had the same idea and that the queues for the popular exhibits were at least three kilometres long (I shit you not) and that families had set up encampments in the queues and were busily having lunch/writing their wills/cultivating heatstroke. Row, Y and I decided that popular was out and Central Asia was in, so we enjoyed the delights of the Kazakhstani and Turkmenistani pavilions, both of which seemed to be using the Expo as a means to seek foreign capital (cheap labour! oil! corrupt former Soviet politicians!) and also had the Biggest Rock Salt Crystal in the world, which would look nice in Northern Queensland next to the Big Fucking Banana and the Fucking Enormous Coconut, Cunt. Next, we skulked into the Australian pavilion but were spotted immediately and forced to speak 'Strayan before the staff let us sit down and watch how Australia presents itself to the world. I have to say, it was one of the better pavilions we saw. The room was full of vertical screens which gave a Brief Overview of Oz. There were obligatory shots of kangaroos jumping and multiculturalism (black and white and yellow people reading and listening to music and mowing lawns and Living in Harmony) and the Great Barrier Reef - they know what Japanese tourists like - and sport, of course, but they didn't belabor the point. We're the best in the world. We're the new Aryan race of superhuman superfish but we channel our super-aggression into sport. Get used to us winning. But the show was quick, snappy and sumptously designed and we left feeling a wee bit proud. While an Expo is meant to be an exhibition of nations, the UN in miniature minus bureaucracy, in reality it's a fierce competition.
Anyway, I can't say I enjoyed the Expo much at all, but I did get to see and pet some robots. There were guard robots and nurse robots and receptionist robots and childcare robots (my job is not safe, not safe at all and here I am asking for a raise!) But being Japan, all the robots were rounded and cute, even the guard robots; flashing lights and smooth, pattable curves. The techology is proceeding pretty quickly and it was a little disconcerting when I realised that one of the robots was looking at me - if I moved away, its eye-cameras would track me to my new location.
Sleeplessness, thousands of people and the hot spring sun all contributed to me feeling terrible about my time here. I wanted to quit this place - too hard, too hard - and go back to Australia where the living is easy. Squashed up in an Expo train, my legs were screaming for relief but every time I shifted position, I elicited a grunt from a random piece of flesh nearby.
Then we made it to Y's house, where we were welcomed as family, fed, made a fuss of, introduced to dogs/babies/grandmothers playing the shamisen (Japanese stringed instrument), bedded down, woken with sausage and eggs, shown the family shrine, taken to a pottery exhibition where we made a rice bowl while throngs of rural Japanese goggled at us before having tasteful presents of cups and teapots showered upon us by Y's parents before being driven an hour through wonderous scenery - it's rice planting season here and the farmers toil against a backdrop of mountains clad in spring foliage - to a more convienient city to catch a train, before we were filled with expensive sushi and sent off with a wave. I have never, ever encountered such generosity, such total giving. Our thank-you's and presents of small cakes and a stupid kangaroo keyring were rather inadequate.
It seems as if every touristy thing I do here is mundane and serves only as the pretext that lets me meet people and come into their lives for a little while.
----
Pome for idiot gaijin
Hey idiot gaijin,
Why waste your time and money procuring an orgasm
Enveloped in someone else's flesh
When it's not so much better than
The orgasms you manage at home, on your own
You can see the type I'm writing about, in their own words:
'The perfect man has a German car, American money, and a Japanese wife'
Here they are, all of them.
---
posted by Doug @ 5/08/2005 04:51:00 pm
<< Home