Things Needed to Ride on South Lamar
(Especially during Rush Hour)

1. Nerves of Steel
2. Either deafness or a willingness to pretend not to hear when motherly pedestrians hiss through their teeth "Too dangerous!" as you ride by.
3. A bike you absolutely can count on.
4. Good health insurance.
5. If you have dependents, good life insurance.
6. Did I mention nerves of steel?
7. An almost 6th sense about where the cars behind you are, since turning around to look could be fatal, and you probably won't have time to check your mirror (if you have one).
8. A certain "devil may care" type of attitude.
9. One of the following: (a) a thrill-seeking personality, (b) a strong sense of necessity (e.g. "my car is broken down and I need to get to the drug store"), (c) an addiction to the ensuing sense of euphoria when you emerge victorious.
10. Did I mention nerves of steel?

This entry is brought to you by, Jet Lag

I've been deeply surprised by the lack of culture shock I feel in Japan. It may be just due to the fact that I'm in Tokyo, which is a major metropolis, and perhaps all huge cosmopolitan cities share certain traits. I don't know. It's true that I do stand out a bit here. And I do feel a certain unconscious and perhaps unjustified affinity with other non-Asian-looking people I see here (in the back of our minds, are we all thinking "I bet that person speaks English..."? Probably not- I'm sure not every foreigner in Tokyo does. But I would venture I'm not the only one thinking it, which is proven by the fact that we gaijin will spontaneously start talking to each other in English, each in the assumption or hope that the other party will understand.)

I was really worried about the food over here, and afraid that I wouldn't want to eat anything, but now I'm thinking I should be more worried about whether or not I'm going to gain a few pounds over here. I suppose it's true that I've been limited somewhat- there are a lot of restaurants I won't go to because they don't have pictures outside or English on the menu. But there are so many other choices that do- it's really not a problem.

Riding the metro trains in Tokyo is just like riding them anywhere else. They have their own different ticketing systems, but it's not unlike navigating the public transit systems of NYC or Paris. Fortunately, most of the signage includes Romaji, in addition to the Japanese script and Kanji. Of course, there's always the fail-safe trick of counting how many stops have been made and getting off at teh appropriate time, which always works, even if you can't read the signs or understand the announcements.

Walking around the city, a certain silence comes over me, an awareness that I'm not sharing in all that's taking part around me. But it's not unlike walking around a city in America by myself. Whether I understand everything that's being said or not, I'm never a part of everything going on around me. And whenever I'm by myself walking around somewhere, a certain silence falls over me.

Like every time I've been overseas, I'm always surprised by the fact that not everyone automatically knows I'm American. So far only one person has asked me if I was. I've spoken in English to locals, Australians, Europeans and an African. I've done a lot of smiling and sort of half-nodding in a non-committal way to things said to me in Japanese. There is a lot that you can communicate using gestures, facial expressions and the like. I have to say, though, if you only were to know one language well, English is probably a good one to know.

I'll try to write another entry (probably tomorrow at some ungodly hour of the morning, if this jet lag doesn't subside) about the Japanese penchant for wasting ridiculous amounts of packaging (the stereotype is 100% true).

Now if I can just remember which of these buttons on the Blogger page is "publish..." (they look a tad different in Japanese...)
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