Gozaimaaaaasu

So. Tokyo is actually a really fun city. I think if El Hombre and a couple of my bestest friends lived here, I would love living here. I would still hate a lot of things about it, but the things I love would outweigh the things I hate. But. El Hombre is not here, my closest friends are not here, my family is not here and thus...my heart is not here. Home is where the heart is, and my heart is in the bay area.

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This weekend I actually started to like Tokyo for the first time. I think in a way, I needed some one-on-one time with the city. It was comforting to have my brother and El Hombre here for my first couple weeks, but I think it also kept me more attached to the bay area and less open to Tokyo. Also, I think that in a subconscious effort to keep myself from missing home, I tried to fill all my free hours with stuff so that I wouldn't have time to be sad or miss home. If I wasn't working long hours, I would fill my free time with lunches and dinners and meetings with real estate agents and errands. But this weekend I spent Saturday afternoon walking through various areas - little neighborhood side streets, a park, a temple...and really, Tokyo is charming. It's quite amazing that one word I would use to describe this mega-metropolis is peaceful. I don't think any other city in the world with a population density similar to Tokyo can ever be described as peaceful, and yet Tokyo is, if you get away from the major hubs such as Shibuya crossing, Roppongi crossing, etc.

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The ex-pat community is interesting because I think ex-pats living abroad tend to be a lot more outgoing, friendly and open to meeting new people than they might be at home. So it's quite easy to make "friends" (which I put in quotes because it takes a lot more than a couple meetings or going out together for me to consider someone a real friend). I think I've already met in Tokyo the equivalent number of people I know in SF. However, I actually haven't met a lot of normal people. I don't know how to explain it and really you can't know what I mean until you come here and meet them yourself, but a lot of people here are not that normal, by which I mean well-adjusted, self-confident, not prick-like and genuine.

I've been introduced to a lot of Korean-Americans and Korean-Koreans so the unifying language is usually Korean (because some will speak Korean and English, others will speak Korean and Japanese, and some very gifted ones will speak all three fluently, but the one common language will generally be Korean) and I can say that although my Japanese hasn't improved much, my Korean is improving drastically.

One thing I noticed is that when you meet an ex-pat, the first thing they will ask you is: what do you do? (which I sense is code for: how much do you make?) Almost everyone I've met so far is either a banker or a lawyer. But when you meet a Korean ex-pat, the first thing they will ask you is: what year were you born? So they can determine whether they need to speak jondehmal (honorific language, used when speaking to someone older than you).

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My dad came to Tokyo last night for a business trip and brought me kimchi and banchan from Seoul and US magazine and an American keyboard from SF. It was like Christmas.

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I've traveled a lot but I think hands-down, Japanese people are the most "civilized" people I've ever seen. But also sadistic (based on the atrocities they committed on Koreans and Chinese, and their refusal to recognize such acts occurred), repressed and fake. Being as polite/civilized as the Japanese are requires fakeness to some degree because they are ALWAYS polite. You never know if they dislike something or someone because they never drop their smile or their politeness. Which is all very civilized of course, but also annoying in its un-genuineness.