Young GOCers

What did you do yesterday?

Yesterday I had the day off. I cleaned my dirty apartment and took a nap. I listened to music and read.

After my lazy Friday afternoon, I prepared to go out. I ate Korean food at a restaurant, about 30 seconds from my train station. I rode the train .6 km to the next train stop. There I met my Japanese English-teaching coworker, along with her friend. We went to go see her husband play jazz. They played good sets but short sets. Afterwards I was led to the piano, where I played one of my songs, which was actually unamenable to jamming with her bassist husband. Following this, I went to a Latin bar I know.

I met some GOCers there. Young GOCers. What better people can you meet? They were two college ladies and one male escort, all early twenties, dressed up in black formal wear. The girls were college students doing the Semester at Sea study abroad program, and he worked on their `cruise` ship.

Truthfully, their manners embarrassed me. The English speaking Moroccan bartender, with whom I am pretty friendly, was nice enough to pour these tourists shots. They took the first one, and after that　they became immediately became very suspicious of some hidden cost. Their mood quickly soured. After they paid for their beers but not the free shots, he poured them each another shot, and despite the free first shot, they were not polite enough to drink.

Indeed the mood soured due to the male of the trio wishing to leave. It was too bad. We lingered on for 30 minutes or more, there and outside, but most of it was just negotiations on their departure. I offered to take them to Karaoke -- what is more Japanese than that? But they chose bedtime instead. It was alot of fun, though, talking to them, even though they really wanted to leave. We got in some brief, but charged and enjoyable `chit chat.` It was good to see GOCers. I don`t remember when I last saw a GOCer my age, let alone talk to one.

If some of you are wondering why I am in Japan for three years, one year short of the amount time I was at Umass, here is part of the answer. I want Japan to be a major story line in the narrative that is my life. Perhaps I watch too much TV, but for while I`ve thought of the individual venture of living as like a movie, or at least a book. It is filled with plot lines and sub-plots, characters appearing and disappearing, themes occuring, submerging, and reappearing way down the road. 1 year is nothing, that is tourism, not living in the country. 2 years is good, but it still straddles between a stretch of tourism and a major life occurrence. Obviously, I missed GOCers tonight, and that was no secret between me and the college students. (I miss college, too, and while we are at it, I miss young people.) However, in my forlornness, the GOC brohim sarcastically commented, `3 years? Good luck with that!` implying that, since I like GOCers, it is a dumb idea to be staying here.

Sometimes, I have the same sentiment. Well, more than sometimes. I wonder if spending my early twenties in a place where I have few good friends, and only slightly more who understand me is a good idea. Isn`t your early twenties supposed to be blur? And if not shouldn`t you at least be setting out on the path towards your thirties and beyond?

Well, definitely no on the latter. 21 is too young to start the real world, Im sorry. If all I did in life was school and then job, then too bad for me. That said, however, the jeopardy staying in Japan puts my supreme goal of becoming a physicist in does worry me. However, that is a long topic that I may venture into another time. In any case, I wanted to come to Japan since I saw Colin Thames`s Macross Plus VHS tapes, and am living out that desire.

Ultimately, I cannot take the hedonist or at least complacent viewpoint that it is better to live an easy life than a hard life. (Japan is the easy life, I hear you say. And yes, I do not lack any material necessities.) Such a view, as came from a man who spends his early twenties working on a college cruise ship, I will not personally value because it comes from a different value set. Perhaps he values skimming the surface of the world, tasting a little bit from each country`s pot, perhaps he values a long party. I value immersing myself in this one particular country because for some reason, I find strong affinity with it. Therefore, I give up pleasure now, in order to attain satisfaction and enjoyment from creating the 3 year narrative arc that of Japan.

Let me discuss more about these GOCers. I was mostly talking with one girl, because the other two people were fairly hostile until the very end. Nevertheless we had a good time. I enjoyed our GOC banter. GOCers are more subtle than one imagines. Funny they did not pick up my hints that they should drink those shots. Well, they probably did. Yes the GOCers were definitely rude. GOCers are rude to other cultures. We think we are kings of the world, largely because everyone acts like we are. If the rest of the world chose not to speak English to us while we were abroad, perhaps we from the GOC would be more humble. But GOCer to GOCer, things are different. We keep our emotions cool, and rarely get heated unless we mean it. We are welcoming to strangers, but always keep an shield of indifference. We are also direct, and the best dialogues usually involve at one side the communicating the impolite truth to the other while the other side eagerly recepts. And if the street is two ways, all the better. Perhaps it is the GOC mixture of frankness and politness that makes us unique. And, with regards to our friendliness, is it a surprise that a nation of imigrants would be welcoming to strangers?

Yes, living in Japan, it is a fact -- The GOC is more welcoming to strangers than other countries. I am making no claims more than this. Take Japan for existence. Japanese are very welcoming to friends, and strangers can become friends, but to strangers they are not as welcoming.

I saw some young GOCers and enjoyed myself, although regretted seeing them leave early. As long as I become a physicist, everything will have worked out for the best in the end. I miss The GOC, and am looking forward to a good New Years party, hopefully with a lot of young strangers at one of my good friend`s houses.

In the meantime, I have still to finish this plot line here in Japan. Among the remaining things I wish to do: visit the other main islands of Japan, and get a Japanese girlfriend. Hopefully the latter will be gotten shortly. Although, as I said before, I don`t hang out with a lot of young people. However, in the next two weeks, I should be going to one or two restaurant parties. I`m looking forward to this. The last one was the event of the season, and moreover, I met a girl with whom I went on about 4 dates. (She wasn`t my type.) So I`m hoping for good things at the next ones. 　Travelling to Kyushu, Hokkaido, and Okinawa is not too difficult.

Signing off, from an internet cafe.

Me