The Misadventures of José Faxner

Have a load of this:

So I cut my hair some time ago. This is what I look like now (or like, two weeks ago, anyway):

Judging from people’s reactions, I guess no-one in Japan has seen a mohawk before. Of course, I had expected the occasional double-take, and customary compliments - if you cut or dye your hair, wear new clothes, or, well, do anything to look different, it’s かっこいい (kakkoii, “cool”). However nothing could prepare me for the reactions that I would get - as I walked into the cafeteria, people… applauded. Like, seriously, shouting and wooing, and applauding. It was quite surreal. I mean, I like to think I’ve done a few applause-worthy things in my life but somehow this doesn’t seem like it’d be one of them. Apart from feeling somewhat awkard I sure didn’t mind it though… the whole thing just seemed pretty funny.

I like my new hairstyle though, and seemingly, so does other people. For what it’s worth, I suppose if being a freakishly tall foreigner didn’t make me stand out in a crowd, this at least will. Granted, Akita probably isn’t at the cutting edge as far as subcultures (or simply weird looking people) go, but I’m still amazed at how big a deal it seems to be. Whenever I meet someone for the first time, I’d say probably a good 70% start off with “so what’s up with the hair?” or some variant thereof (the other 30% being mostly even split up between “Why did you come to Japan” and “How tall are you” (185cm, for the record), and with a dash of “What kind of woman do you like”).

That last one might sound like a joke, but seemingly it’s considered perfectly normal introductory chit-chat in Japan; or at least when talking to foreigners. I really don’t know if they ask expecting to hear something absolutely outrageous, or if it’s just considered one of those things you have to know about someone before you know where you have them. Either way the question has a tendency to always just leave me completely stumped… And when asked by a group of Jr. high school girls (like it was today), the reply is gonna be awkward no matter what it is.

Wow. Wooow. I had such a fantastic day! People would come up to me all day, congratulating me - how so many people were able to find out that it was my birthday, I’m not entirely sure (I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it) - but it was great nonetheless.

In the evening, we went to some sort of Flamenco show which was entertaining, if a bit artsy at times. I don’t know if I would call myself a fan of Flamenco, or any kind of dance for that matter, but watching physical performances is always fun, so I guess I had a good time. Once we got back to campus, the ever-partying guys from Taiwan and Hong Kong insisted that we’d do something, so we went out to the outskirts of campus to do some drinking and just have a good time. I hadn’t expected any kind of celebration really; I figured we’d just have fun like any other Friday night, but I as it turned out, I was dead wrong. The guys did all kinds of cool stuff for me, including the following:

• Sang for me in Swedish
• Sang for me in English
• Sang for me in Chinese
• Got me some cellphone accessories
• Got me some Japanese pastry (in lack of a proper cake)

But undoubtedly, the best part was Atsushi giving a speech… in Swedish!! I was not only thoroughly impressed with his Swedish (of course he did it all phonetically, but it was still damn impressive), but I was really moved as well. No friend of mine ever did something like this for me on my birthday, and this guy I’ve barely known for a few weeks! I get all teary-eyed just talking about it.

I’m so happy right now. This was my best birthday in years.

As I mentioned, yesterday, we went on a field trip with the school. All of the new international students, as well as some of the Japanese students went for a bus trip to a couple of interesting places in the vicinity of the school.
We were so many people (around 110 or so), so we had to take two buses. For the first (and last) destination of the trip, the buses split up; our group first went to a sake brewery. I’d expected some sort of big factory or something, but it turned out to be a rather inconspicuous, Japanese style house. Once we got inside, we were divided into two smaller groups, and while the others were given a tour of the premises, my group were treated to some of the apparently famous Akita sake. As any friend of mine could tell you, I’m not really a big fan of alcohol… but this actually wasn’t bad! The flavour kind of reminded me of white wine, but I definitely liked this better than most white wines I’ve ever tried. As we were drinking the sake, we had some time to look around a bit. There were a couple of these really cool classic Japanese style rooms with the tatami mats, low tables and sliding doors and everything. I don’t know what they’re used for, but they sure looked nice.

Eventually we were let into the actual brewery part of the building, for the grand tour. We were shown all these rooms, machines and other stuff, and were given explanations on how sake is made. In all honesty I hardly remember anything of what we we’re told, so if you’re dying to know how sake is made, go look it up on Wikipedia or something. The tour was fun though, as we got to see all kinds of neat stuff, as well as get yet another taste of Japanese hospitality; as we went into the brewery, we were asked to take off our shoes, and wear slippers. When we went to the second floor we had to put on another pair of slippers. Now, get this - during the two minutes we spent in the room on the second floor, someone actually went and turned all of our slippers around, so we could just step into them. Simply amazing. As Wei Wei put it: “If this was back in Germany, the shoes would’ve been stolen!”
After that impressive showing, we went to some kind of mall or something to have lunch. I was really hungry at this point, and was somewhat discouraged to see what we were being served: two onigiri (おにぎり, rice balls). Onigiri can be pretty nice, but these left a little to be desired. One of them had a salmon and sesame filling, which could’ve been really nice had it not been sitting in a bus for half a day. The other one though, had umeboshi (梅干, pickled plum), and can only be described as vile. The situation wasn’t improved by the fact that I had (perhaps naïvely) assumed the onigiri didn’t have any filling, only to take a big bite out of it and dig my teeth into this horrifyingly foul thing in the middle. I’d tried nattou, an infamously hard-to-appreciate Japanese food, earlier, and while I didn’t like it - the umeboshi was even worse. Still, I was starved, so I somehow endured and ate the whole thing.
After that pitiful excuse for a lunch, we went to Kanmanji Temple (蚶満寺). It was a really beautiful place, with all kinds of cool buildings, buddhas, wildlife, and a bunch of cute cats to boot. Some people even prayed, or made wishes or something, but I didn’t want to risk offending anyone by being the stupid gaijin who does it all wrong, so I just went around and took some photos instead.

Next stop was Mt. Chokai (鳥海山). Supposedly the view is great, but due to the weather, we didn’t really get to see that much at all. That didn’t stop us from having a good time, though. The souvenir shop had these awful, gaudy - and of course hilarous - tourist t-shirts… Naturally we had to get some. I was unfortunately unable to change on the spot, but you can see Carl’s awesome “KISAKATA TRIATHRON IN AKITA” t-shirt, at least. The greatness didn’t end there, though, as the place had some wicked vintage arcade machines as well. Sadly none of them were running (whether they were not working or simply disconnected I’m not really sure), but they were still really cool to see.

The journey continued as we went to the coast of the Japan Sea, to the place of “16 Buddhas”, where some priest had a bunch of Buddha sculptures carved into the cliffside a 150 or so years ago. The place was really cool, and I actually really enjoyed the smell of the ocean. It’s something I haven’t experienced in a long time, so it was really nice. Somehow the smell of ocean just feels like “summer” to me.
After taking a bunch of photos and generally just messing around by the Buddhas for a while, we departed for the final destination for the trip; Shirase Kinenkan (白瀬記念館), a memorial hall and museum dedicated to Shirase Nobu and the Japanese Antarctic Expedition of 1911-12. We started off with a movie about the history of antarctica (entierly in Japanese, of course), of which I couldn’t really understand anything. That was followed up with another film showing auroras. It would’ve been nice, if it weren’t for the fact that it was projected onto the ceiling, and I was sitting in the front row, meaning I had to bend over backwards to see anything. Once the film finished, we were free to wander about the museum for about half an hour… but in all honesty it was really neither that big or interesting. One thing that was really fun though, was that we found a display telling about a member of the expedition called Tsuchiya Tomoji (土屋 友治)… who almost shares his name with my friend Tsuchiya Tomomi (土屋 友美)! Turns out they’re both from Yamagata prefecture as well. Tomomi seemed a little spooked by it, but I think she managed to see the fun in it like the rest of us.

About an hour’s bus ride later, we were finally back to campus, to have some long awaited dinner. It’d been a very long and tiring day (possibly not too much unlike this post), but of course a very fun and interesting one as well. I really hope I’ll be able to back to Mt. Chokai later in the fall, as it’s supposed to be very beautiful once the leaves start turning red.

In case you missed the previous entry, you can check out all of my photos from my field trip HERE.