Far East Cynic

But again it is Ja matte ne.

This has been a great week-so great. Saturday we went to Oedo Onsen and had dinner and a soak. Its kind of a neat thing. You go and pay your fee, change into a Yukata, then you walk around a center place with little eating and drinking stalls. You have an arm-band on and if you want to buy a beer or any thing you just have them scan the arm band. Clever little system-you don’t feel you are spending any money-and before you know it, you have racked up a bill of 4000 yen or so. ( That’s on top of the 2160 yen per person to get in and get your Yukata).

When ready-ladies go to their side and the men go to theirs. You enter a second locker room, get naked and go into the bath. Its a great feeling. There is an indoor bath, a sauna, jet bath and an outdoor bath. All deserve a soak or two. Then its get shaved, shampooed and dressed and back out to the general area in your Yukata. Relax for a while with a beer or two and some food-then repeat the bath again. Its great.

Got up this morning, went for a run over to Roppongi Hills and back to Hiro-o. Temperature was great and lots of folks were out walking to and fro. The run over to Roppongi Hills is also and up and down run-which is some pretty good exercise.

Then back, shower, pack and get on the bus. The dream is suddenly all over-and its time to start the voyage back to drudgery Hicksville.

But, the bills are not going to pay themselves you know-and I still got work to eat. So its back home-with a new insight into my goal.

Ja matte ne. Soro soro nihon ni kaerimasu!

Ganbare Skippy-san ( DO YOUR BEST!)

Oh, somewhere in this favored land the sun is shining bright,
The band is playing somewhere, and somewhere hearts are light,
And somewhere men are laughing, and little children shout;
But there is no joy in Teabaggerville — mighty Rushboy did not get his way.

Its the last weekend of March-and hordes of people who could care less about Lex’s feelings about health care- are descending on the Fragrant Harbor for the annual right of spring. Once again-circumstances and fate have deemed that I should miss it.

Which is a shame. This year it ought to be extra good entertainment given the fact that an American Navy Carrier Battle group is supposed to be in town.

Crazed expat rugby fans mixed up in Wanchai with US Navy Sailors? That ought to be fun to watch. The good news is the Sailors probably won’t be able to get tickets. Or be able to stay up as late as the Rugby fans in Neptunes.

Shame-they could be seeing this:

Better than being here-right now.

A new book about the Australian soldiers who participated in the occupation of Japan sounds quite interesting-and may also require a little fact checking with E@L:

Local women were discouraged from taking up with the soldiers by authorities who “warned that if they consorted with the Australians, they would give birth to kangaroos.” Many apparently took their chances due to destitute circumstances and the shortage of Japanese men.

No wonder he gets so many books read on vacation!

A  female co-worker was over in our little corner of cubeville a couple of days ago. She asked me “why are you so obsessed with Asia?  What’s so great about it? I was in Korea once and I hated it!” ( I make no secret of my passion to return to Asia.)

“Where did you go?”

“Seoul and Osan”.

” And you couldn’t find anything good to do in Seoul? Clearly you were not going to the right places.”

” Well how about you-what is it you like about it so much?”

The conversation went on for some time-since she was female, I had to dance around the number 1 reason(s)-the women-and point out to her innocuous things like the excitement, good transportation,  places to see, the hustle and bustle. And finally I gave her the reason that always seems to baffle the unaware, of which there are lot of Alabama:

“Because when you are there as a Gaijin man-you are unique. And that is worth any amount of being in Alabama.”

It went over her head-just as I expected it to. ” Well there is lots to do here in Alabama!”

“Maybe-but its all relative, now isn’t it? There’s a lot of things I want to do that I can’t do in Alabama-and there are things I can do here. But here the mudane things are just mundane and there they were not. Get it? No, I didn’t think you would.”

I think I will go back and show her this quote from Lola.  It ought to really set her head on fire:

There are two types of people-those who understand and those who don’t. Those who understand Lola’s frustration can smile and shake their heads knowingly. Those who don’t understand-never will.

And so it is with this little overseas sojurn of mine. I’ve enjoyed being back on the oversease circuit more than I can possible share-especially since every day here has beat the stuffing out ten days back in Shopping Mall USA. But the bills don’t pay themselves-and I’ve got bills to pay.

Will be out of comms till Monday. Have a great  weekend! I know I will not be in good humor till I’m done with a long series of flights and airplane changes.

Need to rummage through my things for that bottle of asprin now……………….

I used to love taking the train to Narita. I hated being tied to the bus schedule-although when I first met the S.O., I would stay at her apartment over in Chiba and then catch the bus the next day when I had to make a business trip. It only took 25 minutes instead of the usual 2.0 hours.

Now there is a New Narita Express!

If you are really in a hurry-there is another option.

I am saddened, but not one bit suprised, by this. Courtesy of Hemlock:

As I shut the window and turn up the air-conditioning, the two Filipino elves let themselves in.  They are carrying various provisions essential at this time of year, from bug spray to Pimms, as per instructions left under a refrigerator magnet a few days ago.  After dumping them in the living room, the pair move on to the kitchen and unwrap a bag of mysterious herbs, which they are soon grinding up with a mortar and pestle.  A few minutes later, they are squeezing the pungent white juice from this mixture into a small bowl.  Out comes a small box full of sharp bamboo needles.  The elves patiently dip the needles into the poison and leave them to dry for a few minutes.  They then put them back in the box, which they strap to a six foot-long, thin canvas bag containing a blowpipe.

Someone is in big trouble, and he is Labour and Welfare Secretary Matthew Cheung, whose sad duty it is to announce that Hong Kong’s forthcoming minimum wage will not apply to dark-skinned foreigners who toil 14 hours a day, six days a week, washing, cleaning, nursing and picking up for the Big Lychee’s middle-class families for under US$500 a month. 

He doesn’t use this exact phraseology.  He calls them ‘live-in domestic workers’.  In other words, he is not discriminating – the new law will not apply to local live-in house servants either.  But when was the last time anyone saw one of those women in their black pyjama pants and long ponytail, shopping in the market or escorting kids to school?  I think the Museum of History in Kowloon has some grainy film footage of one.  After much panicky searching for some other non-foreign category of worker to exclude from this wage protection, relieved officials have come up with student interns.

Now I have to admit, that if I were ever fortunate enough to be able to live in Hong Kong-and employed with the right salary, I would probably have myself a live in maid too-especially when the government was explicitly committed to preserving my "right" to exploit the inability of any Filipino governement to do anything about the poverty in their home country that drives these women to work in these conditions.

And, it would probably make it not as much fun to visit Hong Kong as well, if when I visited, I was no longer to perform acts of kindness and charity in pursuit of augmenting their lifestyle on Sunday afternoons.

Nonetheless, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck-its probably is discrimination a duck. Not to worry though-the Hong Kong government has a clever dodge to make all on the up and up:

This is important, because somewhere along the line Hong Kong has acquired laws against racial discrimination, and certain well-meaning do-gooder troublemakers have been itching to get the courts to decide whether separate treatment for domestic helpers is racist. 

The repercussions could be interesting.  If the yet-to-be-decided minimum wage were HK$25 an hour, a domestic helper could be looking at a 150% pay rise.  If enforced, which obviously it wouldn’t be, many families would send their maids back to poverty in the Philippines or Indonesia, and the wife would go from full-time to part-time paid work and pick up the domestic chores.  Everyone gets poorer.

(Under the Government’s nightmare scenario, the courts would also rule that maids with more than seven years’ employment here are eligible for permanent residency, though our bureaucrats are confident that they have the relevant loopholes plugged.  God forbid that our 95% Chinese population be diluted with happy, hard-working, reasonably educated, brown people who can speak better English.)

Still, the prospect of doubled pay is too tempting to think critically about, so domestic helpers will be marching on 1 July and gunning for Matthew Cheung.  They are likely to be disappointed.  The interns will come to the rescue to prove that the legislation is colour-blind.  Anyway, judges hire maids too, and unlike the Company Gwailo at S-Meg Holdings they dare not infringe the law by hiring other people’s helpers on a cheaper and more practical part-time basis.  At – in my case – a minimum-wage-multiplying HK$50 an hour.

Over to you , Gloria, for comment. ( Sound of crickets chirping ensues…..).

Could be-for Expat at Large.

He knows better than to have one in Singapore-call the President there a socialist and you get to have a room without a view at Changi Prison.

Besides, its all the damn Prime Minister’s fault:

E@L’s days as a beer-slurping, overly-lush-golf-course playing, high-cash-flow, tax-dodging, Philippino-village-supporting, neo-colonial sex-tourist days might be drawing to a dramatic and abrupt close…

Hasty and superficial reading of some missives from a bunch of genuine hard-line, right-winger, tax-dodging, wine-swilling good buddies of his are a bit scary.

Those bastard, commie, lefto, pinko, moralistic, anti-fair-go-ripping-off-the-3rd-world socialists in the Australian Socialissimo (Che/Mao) Rudd Government are allegedly ramping things up to make us Expats (sending shitloads of cash home, supporting the economy) pay our Australian tax equivalence for monies earned overseas, even though we live our life entirely overseas…

Just like those poor Yankee bastards have to do, even to the point of their school fee reimbursements and their meager housing allowances for those villas on Napier Rd.

Like there is something wrong with being a neo colonial sex tourist.  Heck, I dream of that just about every night as I cry myself to sleep here in Shopping Mall.

Behind the humor there is a serious issue. Even before Obama became President, his predecessor allowed into law a change to the tax code which caused American expats to have to consider their housing and other allowances as income. Had I taken a job in Korea as I was close to doing ( and may still yet do), it would have jacked my taxes.

Since I get a retirement pay from the government they would be sure to catch me if I tried to skip.

Did you know the IRS has an office in Tokyo?

Back in the day-shuttling from work to Tokyo for Japanese class-one of my favorite things to see upon rolling into the Black Lion pub in Meguro, was to pick up the latest edition of Japanzine. ( The Black Lion was right around the corner from my Japanese class-thus it was popular with me. Good beer and lots of people to meet.)

Early in the decade it used to run the comic strip, Charisma Man:

It was pretty funny because it played on stereo-types-the lusty western man who can’t score at home,  but gets laid like a big dog in Japan. And Western women living in the country seemed to really take exception to a bit of harmless fun:

I didn’t know it at the time, but I’d just had my first experience with a classic “charisma man” type of foreign male. This is the type of guy who lacks sufficient social skills and emotional maturity in his home culture that he would have a lot of difficulty cultivating a romantic relationship with a woman in his home country, but cross-cultural differences allow him to form relationships in Japan. His “foreignness” explains his awkwardness and lack of grace in a manner which allows Japanese women to forgive him. They can’t tell the difference between someone who doesn’t conform to their cultural expectations because he doesn’t know how to and someone who is an oafish dork. Also, Japanese people value tolerance and “enduring” hardship silently as a part of their culture so the women feel that part of being in a relationship is accepting the rough patches in their mates to a far greater extent than foreign women do. Previously, I talked about how Japanese women also generally have different expectations of a mate and that’s part of the situation as well.

Most western guys dismissed the criticism-after all, they were the ones getting laid. However like all stereo-types there was the occasional grain of truth. On both sides:

But it seems to be that disparity that bugs our foreign sisters so much. All is fair in love and war, unless your ugly, in which case it is cheating. That seems to be at the root of the sentiment. I also hear a lot of “guys come over here and get arrogant.” I can hear the vitriol in women’s words when they say it. I also recently read a woman blogger’s send up of “charisma men,” in which she seemed to think that these guys completely lack in all social graces and dis other foreigners in favor of hanging out with J girls. A type of guy I have yet to encounter here.

I keep hearing about these terribly awkward and rude guys, but I never meet them (it admittedly could be a factor of where I live: inaka(Skippy-san note-this means rural)). All the guys that I know that are dating J girls seem pretty nice and normal to me. So I am wondering where all the sour grapes come from. I hate to say it, but I think it’s a racist and jealous thing. And that is going to hurt some feelings, but some people really need to take the time and reflect on why they would be bothered by an interracial relationship. I hear words like “yellow fever” and I cringe, because while I think fetishists exist in small numbers in all demographics, I don’t think but a tiny portion of guys target specific races to date, and this term only exists out of hatred.

There are guys that use the J girls’ tendency to jump into relationships to their advantage. But it happens back home too; they’re called players and some are so proficient in America that they tutor other guys for money. So being a sleazy guy has nothing to do with Japan. Sleazy guys may end up here, but I think they are rare enough that the usual anti white/Japanese sentiments are still oddly numerous and shrill . It’s a bias that some girls carry, like a chip on their shoulder.

While it is true that more guys end up working in Asia, more women end up working in Europe for the exact same reason; they find the opposite sex particularly attractive in that reason. They perceive their prospects of romance to be on a higher scale. But, since it is most likely an Occidental-Occidental relationship that women will end up with in Europe, there is no discussion on the possibility of their “failed lives” back home.

And besides-the comic was pretty funny.

The Hong Kong Sevens are underway.

And I’m not there. One of these days……….

Sigh.

It has raised the bar too high for a certain part of the population.

H/T to E @ L!

Not even I could pull a bar tab this big. Especially at the Old China Hand. However, according to Hemlock-someone did:

Now that’s a pretty big bar bill-even at 7.76 HKD to the US Dollar.  There has to be a story behind it and there was:

Super Happy Hour has just begun, and the Hong Kong Association of Gwailos Married to Southeast Asian Women of Humble Origins decide to decamp to the notorious bar zone.  In the interests of anthropology, I agree to go too, and after a 10-minute taxi ride find myself in a place that is crowded, noisy, smoky and, above all, dark.  As the eyes adjust, the true gruesomeness becomes apparent.  You would not want lighting in here. A genetic engineering experiment that went wrong sits in a gloomy corner, shoveling ketchup-drenched Cornish pasty and chips into his mouth with bare, bulging fingers.  At the next table, a fat middle-aged Filipino woman with a slightly fetching mother-of-three demeanour nuzzles up to a dozing man who could be her father except he’s white.  At the bar sit a pair of very large and exuberant African prostitutes, a young guy who – according to Ken as he points him out and I turn to stare – attacks people if he thinks they are looking at him, and a menopausal divorcee school librarian who I am told sometimes livens things up by falling off her stool. At the other end, a small mob of Southeast Asian women – charitable average age 30-something – dance while being pawed by surprisingly sprightly, flabby white men who are well past groping, not to say retirement, age.  What did the inventor of Viagra think he was doing? (Except where otherwise specified, all the above are British.  But does that need to be said?)

Truth in advertising-I’ve logged a few hours in the OCH, but mostly as a "warm up stop" before moving on to Jaffe Road where the big game can be found. And now-here in Shopping Mall USA, I do find myself missing it so. But I have to admit-I’m smarter about my bar money. Most times anyway……… These guys are in a league unto themselves.

Looking for some excitement that cannot be found here in Shopping Mall.

International travel-passports, planes, trains, tickets, lounges, beers, sweet talking your way into business class, bags, lines at immigration-the thrill of opening a hotel door in a new city. I did love it so…………

Its one reason why I am jealous of e @ L, he has one of those great jobs like I used to have that took him all over the world. I want one of those again!

So posting may be light, but for the next 10 days or so-this blog becomes a travelogue. Pix included. Tomorrow-Shopping Mall to Munich-via DC. We’ll see where we sit and how the bags make it.

Till then sleep tight.

Would that we had a suite on one of these!

Evidently, stocks are not the only thing that is down these days. It would seem times are tough for gold-diggers too:

Haruna Hiraki pokes at the melting ice cubes with a perfect fingernail and frowns. She has never had to make a ginger ale last this long. It is 9.30pm, she is in an outfit that cost two months’ salary and nobody has yet bought her a proper drink.

“Another 10 minutes, then we’ll go?” pleads her friend Etsuko Shirasu, 25, from across the bar table.

“Waste of time. I told you this place was finished. Lehman, Goldman: they’ve all been sacked or gone back to America,” says Haruna, 25.

It is Thursday night and Roppongi romance – or at least, the calculated brand of romance that used to be the currency in this Tokyo bar – is at death’s door. Heartland, with its low lights and brushed-steel tables, has made its name as a favourite with the financial great and good and the occasional Japanese celebrity. In the warm months drinkers spill out on to the street. However, the bar that once boomed with British brokers, Australian traders, American hedge-fund managers and those Japanese women who would love them has fallen eerily silent. More damningly, says Heartland veteran and former Roppongi barmaid Eriko Masabuchi, it has gone “image down”.

The well-rehearsed choreography of girls coming in from the suburbs in their finery, tasting the good life, then snagging an investment banker to prolong the party, is yesterday’s dance. An entire segment of downtown Tokyo, which rose to fame and fortune with the 2003-07 bull market, has now been spectacularly snuffed out by the crash.

From the moment it opened in 2003 until just a few weeks ago, Heartland used to be the throbbing soul of the huge, glittering Roppongi Hills development. Everything that the investment banks, luxury apartments and high-end boutiques represented was nightly squeezed into that small space in one corner of the complex boisterous with money and ambition.

Sigh-twas once the opposite. A sojourn in Roppongi was like going to a well stocked fishing pond-you still had to know how to cast a line-but the number of fish in the pool made the odds of getting a strike pretty good. Or at least they were until I went and met the S.O. and screwed up the local fishing program. ( I met her in an entirely different, and accidental, way.)

The really sad part is ……how are they going to pay for those Coach bags now?

Out of pocket for the next couple of days. Work is very busy and at night-I’m in the middle of writing a “mission statement” for myself: to remind of me of my goal to be where I want to be before the sun dawns on my birthday in 2010. ( God willing). I’m going to frame it and put it over my desk here to remind me of my goal. The election last night reminded me its time to jump start that process. If others can do it why can’t I?

Plus Spike wrote something the other night that struck a chord with me-I’ve been gone too long from it:

Yet none of this stuff is attractive to me on anything other than a “once or twice a year for a few days is nice” basis. This is a good life I suppose for a family man or a hermit, someone who doesn’t need or want to go out at will for a bit of excitement. I can live without a dozen varieties of Reese’s Peanut Butter cups a lot more easily than I can live without Wanchai, Lan Kwai Fong or Soho right now.

Ja ne…………..