Both Japanese people and my friends in other countries often comment that “you love Japan”. At this point it’s not possible for me to either refute or comply with this assessment, and perhaps it never will be. Let me just impart the polar opposites of my experience, what I love and what I hate about Japan. Like a giant iceberg that spans the seas, only arising at one home and another, this is only the tip, and the majority of how I feel lies somewhere beneath the surface. If global warming continues as planned, they’ll be visible soon enough. The following diatribe is intended to be both serious and not, as this represents my experience, so please do not be offended. Let me start with what I hate.

I hate ignorance. I would say that I hate racism but honestly I don’t think Japanese people are on the whole racist. I hate the fact that in the second largest economy, in a vastly modern and globalized country I still get stared at for looking different. I hate that the immigration policies are institutionally racist. I hate having to explain that I do not love Bush, and war, and guns. I hate being asked what American culture is, and getting surprised looks when I say I don’t know anymore (if I ever did). I hate group think, where ten people must be consulted before answering the question “how are you?”, students are forced to march like soldiers, girls at the clubs dance in synchronized patterns and most of all that someone older always knows what’s best. I hate the neighborhood P.A. system, waking everyone up at the ass-crack of dawn with news of someone dying and playing a stupid, out of tune and completely not-cute song every night at 6pm. I hate Big Brother.

I hate the Japanese education system that stifles creativity, character development and personal achievement and puts every focus into making human beings into cogs for a machine that no longer works. I hate the fact that my students didn’t learn a damn thing this year and that after a minimum of 6 years English education plus cram school most Japanese people can’t speak English. I hate that there is actually debate about whether English should be used in the English classroom.

I hate that Japanese people are so damn good at everything. I hate salary men, stony faces, boring business suits, aggressive 4-foot-tall grannies, and OLs. I hate the fact that all I needed to get this job was a college degree and that most foreigners here can’t speak a damn word of Japanese besides “beer” and “love hotel” (“beeru” and “rabu hoteru”). I hate that foreigners are pigeon-holed into about 4 types – student, English teacher, gypsy/criminal or banker and are welcomed just so long as they promise to leave. I hate being busy like an ant, scurrying around with ten million other ants doing ten million pointless tasks even when I’m supposed to be “on vacation”, and I hate the fact that “the job” is infinitely more important than the family.

I hate absent fathers who spend 12 hours a day at work and string out their families with useless trinkets and status symbols turning them into consumer junkies while he’s off drinking with girls his daughter’s age and not feeling a damn bit ashamed. I hate the housewives who sit around and take that abuse while spoiling their sons rotten. I hate their sons’ mullets and white moccasins. I hate their daughters’ pigeon toes, helpless demeanor and purposely crooked teeth. I hate underage prostitution, vastly under-reported incidences of rape and domestic abuse, and the use of abortion as birth control. I hate the tall, blue eyed Mormon missionaries in their white shirts who wear bicycle helmets and thrust their beliefs onto a culture far older and more developed than theirs.

I hate Japan’s love of paperwork and resistance to this new invention called a “computer”. I hate shopping and sightseeing and cameras and peace signs. I hate that smoking is the number one cause of death, followed by suicide. I hate the fact that everyone is what they wear. I hate Disney and J-Pop and pachinko. I hate being so far away from the one I love that she left me. I hate being told that I look like Tom Cruise when clearly I look like David Beckham. I hate the lack of any variety in Japanese beer. I hate fermented beans, most Japanese sweets and the fact that meat is in EVERYTHING. I hate that being a vegetarian means I just like vegetables a lot. I hate the lack of foreign food restaurants and the lack of actual non-smoking sections. I hate that they put mayonnaise on everything.

I hate the legal system that has a 99% conviction rate and would put a foreign kid in jail for months for stealing hair wax. I hate being told that my Japanese is flippin’ amazing and that my chopstick skills are even better. I hate that even people who know I’ve spent two years here are amazed at my flippin’ spectacular chopstick skills. I hate disposable chopsticks. I hate that people are surprised I can eat sushi, tofu, white rice, and pickled plums. I hate the fact that Japanese climbers put bolts into all their routes. I hate Japanese new age cults, new age music, and new age art. I hate the lack of house insulation, international ATMs and the complete non-usage of credit cards. I hate that transportation is so expensive. I hate the power lines stretched across every mountain range in sight and the concrete walls damming up the middle of nowhere. I hate Japanese TV. And finally, I hate Engrish and the adaptation of other cultures based entirely on their face value or television image.

Breathe. What I love:

I love Japanese TV commercials, especially the ones that have absolutely nothing to do with what they’re selling. I also love Japanese game shows. I love the Japanese ingenuity that has made it possible to live in such an earthquake-prone country. I LOVE the shinkansen. I love that it’s so safe many people carry around hundreds, even thousands of dollars in cash. I love the energy saving initiatives the government has taken to curb carbon dioxide emissions and the country’s willingness to adopt “cool biz”. I love Okinawan folk music, Butoh, killer-cute bears, Miyazaki films and Beat Takeshi. I love that in Japanese climbing gyms the routes are set for people an average of 20 cm shorter than me.

I love it when people flip out because I’m a man, living alone, that actually cooks. I love it even more when they eat my awesome food and recognize. I love using beautiful (reusable) chopsticks and eating every last grain of rice. I love being able to speak Japanese, make jokes in Japanese and even sometimes dream in Japanese. I love that the police do not abuse their powers, are basically not allowed to shoot their guns, and always ride around with their lights flashing (making it easy to avoid speed traps).

I love Japanese food, from vegan Buddhist to octopus balls to green tea corn flakes. I love green tea ice cream. I love that thinking about food in a political way blows peoples’ minds. I love funky Japanese vegetables, tofu and fruits. I love that Japanese draft beer always has the perfect amount of head on it. I love that I was recently told I don’t look like a foreigner anymore. I love that the one I love, for however short a period, saw and shared my life here. I love the video games, purikura and karaoke. I love how stylish everyone dresses.

I love picture-taking smiles, cell phone cameras and convenience stores. I love the cell phones. I love that there is religious freedom and a secular government. I love Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. I love the simplicity of adolescent life and the fact that children play every day. I love that inviting someone to do something translates into “shall we go play?” I love that the majority of Japanese people are healthy and live long lives. I love shamelessly flashy, sexy, young adults and innocent, geeky, computer nerds. I love that it’s ok to have crooked teeth, slurp your noodles, shoot off fireworks and drink alcohol on the street. I love Kyoto. I love seeing stupidly-in-love couples.

I love being busy, active and productive and I love that in this land of high technology I’m still WAY better at computers than most Japanese. I love public transportation, signs written in English and that every sidewalk in the country has guide bumps for blind people. I love that being a minority has taught me about pigeon-holing foreigners and other forms of discrimination that occur in the US and all countries. I love being in a foreign country. I love that I can get a well paying job in a foreign country without being able to speak the language. I love that everyone is required to learn a foreign language for at least 6 years.

I love the Asian glow, businessmen passed out in the gutter with their cell phones still up to their ear, and no ID checks, bag searches, or pat-downs at clubs. I love community gardening. I love that the constitution forbids aggressive action by the military, that guns are virtually outlawed, and that Japan gives away a lot of money in foreign aid. I love the Kyoto Protocol. I love Japanese skateboarders and kids break dancing in front of department store windows at 3am. I love Japanese tattoos, tricked-out Japanese cars, trucks, motorcycles and scooters and I love Japanese gadgets. I love that for such a small country there are countless local specialties in food, language, culture and sights. And most of all, I love that on an individual basis I have been shown a profound amount of interest, kindness, warmth and friendship.

Sometimes life just sucks like that.

Maybe we could even see it coming, see that dark oil slick on the road ready to help you lay that bike down hard, and we choose to disregard it, deny it’s existence for the chance to bask in sunny bliss just a little bit longer.  Maybe of all the valid and invalid emotions you feel at these times, from anger and sadness to anxiety and regret, the most overreaching one is a feeling of naiveté or inadequacy about your self-imposed inability to foresee this consequence.  I mean, if things are going so well, of course there’s going to be a repercussion.  Things change, people change, things are too good to be true, and shouldn’t you know by now that karma works both ways?  You were never perfect (who’d want to be?), but now some of those screw-ups are coming around to bite you in the ass.  It’s inevitable and it’s only ourselves we should truly blame for forgetting that fruit can be bitter, dogs can bite, roses can prick.  For those who’ve forgotten there’ll be a whole section of Hallmark Cards at the local pharmacy to sum up our emotions into convenient limericks and pithy adages to remind us that we’re not alone in our loneliness.

This one goes out to Jaime who said I shouldn’t write a depressed emo blog.