June 2007 Archives

Two quite stories about baby marine life. The first is what I'm calling the "Jesus Shark." Somehow a shark got knocked up in a tank with only female sharks, and as sharks only mate with their own species of sharks no one knows how this happened. We must watch out as the sharks have now got one up on us.

The other is a very cute, and odd, video of a giant Manta Ray giving birth in a Japanese aquarium. The first ever to happen in a fish tank. I really hope I get to see one of these in Fiji this summer. Not the birth. A Manta Ray. Seeing one give birth in person would be really odd. Watch the video. Those things come out big.

Oooo... three new Japanese "Mac vs PC" ads. For those of us who don't speak the 日本語 very well, here is a subtitled version of one of the new ads. You can find all the new set of Japanese Mac ads subtitled thanks to this wonder person on youtube.

Oddly enough, the PC looks and acts like 95% of the male office workers I know. Really. You could learn a lot about Japanese culture by watching all these ads. (Weirdly a lot of people are commenting on how cute they find these two. Oh Japan, even your men are super cute.)

Japan has the honor of being the country with the fastest home internet connections in the world. Or so says this USA Today article. While people in America have on average a 1.97 Megabit connection Japan has a 61 Megabit connection. The truth is Japan has had this fast honor for a long time and its easy to see why. Japan is only the size of California and has a population of 120 million people, most in a highly urban environment. This means that its a lot easier to lay the network as opposed to say laying a network for South Dakota where about 75% of the population lives in the ass end of nowhere. The sad thing is that even in very urban environments, say Milwaukee, Wisconsin for instance, you only see a max speed of somewhere between 2 and 3 megabits through cable or DSL. I would know, my parents live there and I was annoyed by the speed. For instance my speed in Japan is nowhere near the 61 Megabits the article states. According to these figures on speedtest.net I'm about a 7 Megabit download speed on average.

However my ISP on average, according to speedtest.net, is around 11 Megabits. Which means a lot of people are getting a much much better speed. I honestly don't know WHY I'd need a speed that fast, but it would be nice to know I have it available to me.

Anyways, I just wanted to say how surprised that even in urban areas the US is lacking in internet connections. I guess all those federal dollars we gave to the communication industry to install those fiber lines ten years ago paid off well for the people. Then again, its not like the average citizen has a choice for their connections. You usually have only ONE choice in a city, and you're at the mercy of its pricing and its service. Thank goodness I live in Japan where I have at least two choices to pick from, and where those choices are super duper awesome fast or just "fast enough for you."

I've been too busy lately to play my Nintendo DS. The little guy comes with me often, but now has mainly become an electronic dictionary in my day to day life. But I have a problem right now. I'm saving money for my summer vacation to Fiji and for a new laptop, yet I really want to buy a couple of new DS games that are coming out in Japan. The first is the new Zelda game, "Phantom Hourglass." The game is classic Zelda all around and features beautiful cell shading like we saw on the Game Cube Zelda "Wind Waker." But the best part is that the entire game is touch based. Ok, in the past I've hated the games that were all touch based. Hated may not have been a harsh enough word. "Mario 3 on 3 Basketball" has controls that were too difficult to use, and on the harder modes the keypad was a much better choice. "Starfox Command" had rather flaky controls. Most of the time your ship wobbled back and forth all the time, and the whole 'touch to fly' thing seemed rather gimmicky anyways. Luckily all the reviews of the new Zelda have shown that someone has finally found a way to make the touch system fun and easy to use. Just watch the video and see what crazy things Link does with the touch pad.

The only reason I don't have a copy now is that I'm afraid of all the Japanese. I'll probably order the English version when it comes out in the US.

The other game I'm super pumped about is the Taiko no Tatsujin DS drum game. If you're not familiar with the whole taiko drum thing, heres a break down. A few years back Japan got into a massive obsession with rhythm games. The big one to hit the us was Dance Dance Revolution which had kids dancing their butts off in arcades across America. Back in Japan there were plenty of variations on the rhythm scene. One being traditional Japanese taiko drums set to modern pop music. This game even made it to the Playstation and the Gamecube in the form of little drums that you plug in. Now a version is out for the little Nintendo DS using the touch pad as the drum. It even comes with two little stylus to use. Now instead of scratches all over your DS touch pad we can look forward to just putting holes in it.

I'm totally down with drums.

I found this BBC documentary on the Hiroshima Bombing to be very good. Its worth a watch and is only ten minutes long. As someone who lives in Hiroshima Prefecture and often goes to Hiroshima City I'm often left thinking about this event. Especially as I'm an American. Its interesting to see reactions from Japanese people as I walk around the peace park. Some people want to speak to you, especially if they find out you're an American. Some are angry, some are sad. The first weekend I was living in Hiroshima I went to city to see the 60th Anniversary of the bombing. While there I met an old man who was alive and living in the area when the bomb went off. He lost several family members in the blast. He was very nice and just wanted to talk to the group of Americans I was with. He said that the reason he learned English as a young man was so he could speak to people about what he experienced. After experiencing such a war its no wonder Japan has taken a pacifist stance for the last 70 years.

More people should visit Hiroshima. Especially young Americans.

For a long time I've wondered if there is somewhere, someone, who can help my Asian friends. Now it appears as if there is such a place. Go now, before its too late. There's HOPE for change.

And yes, I did shamelessly take this image from gigglesugar.com. But in my own defense, I was trying to spread the message of hope to my Japanese friends and coworkers. So many Asians. So little time. Must spread the word to so many, many children. (I think this is the answer to a commonly asked question I get. "What can I do to get as tall as you Josh sensei." Usually I just say "eat your veggies," but now it seems there is a much better solution out there.)

Sometimes I find myself in a toy story. I know, hard to believe. Sometimes these things happen, and while I'm there I figure I might as well look around. Maybe even buy things. But the best part about a Japanese toy store are the wonderfully sexy toys. As always, I find myself wondering how randomly perverted Japan is. These toys have got me wondering again. Whats with Japanese people and bananas? Moreover, whats with the obsession with girls and bananas? If you are not disturbed by these pictures, you might be Japanese.

The best part is these toys (models, figurines, whatever) were right next to the cool Batman figures that I may or may not now have a complete set of sitting on my book shelf. What? Batman is cool!

But in all honestly I'm just a bit bitter. My favorite second hand video game store/ discount action figure store has gone all perverted on me. Before around 10% of the store was dedicated to randomly perverted computer video games, 60% was models and action figures, and 30% was second hand video games. Now I find that about 75% of the store is sectioned off (as in an 18 or older section) for perverted computer game! Gone are the rows and rows of really cheap Gundams and figurines! Why have you done this?!?!? Why oh why!?! Men of Japan! Stop playing these perverted computer games and cups of instant ramen! Go out and find real women! They're better in the long run and will probably make you dinner ever now and then!

Two different videos from this past week in Japan.

The first is a crazy DDR playing man in Fukuyama. Watch his crazy great skills and his really randomly weird hair flipping. He's just that good. No really. He was hitting like 98% on it. He is crazy good.

The second is of a nice sing along of my friends and I after eating a lot of tacos. Yes. Tacos and singing. Though mostly bad lip syncing.

Yes, thats how crazy my week is.

I spent the day home from work (sick if you must know) and spent it being very productive. Which means I watched bad sci-fi for most of it while eating a bag of dried mangos. So after watching the movie I came up with a nice top five list.

Top Five Reasons Starship Troops is Great

5) Giant Alien Bugs
Do you really need a reason besides this? Giant bugs. Space marines. This concept worked before in Aliens 2 and works here as well. Giant alien bugs don't need a reason, don't need character development, don't need motive. Best of all you can blow them away with all sorts of weapons and people don't get ticked off about it.

4) Co-ed Showers
For some reason everyone in the future has gotten over their sexual moral issues and just hang out together in the shower. This is why we get a nice character development scene that just happens to take place while everyone is showering. Clearly these people were not picked for their acting skills.

3) Basic Training is a Bitch
While going through the Basic Training bit of the movie we are treated to not one but TWO counts of Drill Instructor abuse. The first time a recruit has his arm broken (as in bone coming out of the skin) and the second time a recruit questions the necessity of learning knife throwing. Big mistake.

2) Bugs In Your Brain
So the bugs learn by sucking out people's brains. Right. So while this plot device seems weak, if not completely silly, it also looks great. Which is probably why someone thought it up. "How can we have a guy getting his brain sucked out... hmmm...."

1) Doogie Howser is a frickin Physic Nazi
First I was thrilled to have out favorite underage M.D. in this movie. The funny sidekick wise crackin buddy to our main man. That is until you find out he's physic. And later on you find out that somehow Nazis uniform designers have taken over the military. Oh, and while he's been off at the "super fun military school" he's become a total bad ass. "I make decisions every day that send hundreds of people to their deaths. Wake up boys and girls, we're in this for the species."

On that same note, here are my top 5 top 6 reasons why this movie sucked balls.

6) They Raped the Book
Here we have an epic science fiction masterpiece about a war between man and super intelligent bugs. Thats right, in the book the bugs were clearly in charge with super high tech weapons. Humans countered them by building super high tech soldiers wearing super high teach mechanical suits of armor. Oh, and they used lots of nukes. Its a damn good book and clearly the people who wrote the script for this movie spent all of five minutes looking it over before deciding to add in a Nazi Physic Doogie Howser.

5) Really Bad Actors
Every young main actor in this movie was chosen for one reason alone (besides Doogie, he was chosen because no expects him to be an evil Space Nazi with Physic powers), the fact they look good naked. You can tell because it only takes thirty minutes before the writers craft a wonderful shower scene for the audience, in case they were thinking about getting up to buy some popcorn. The other reason you can tell is because the emotional acting range of each of the actors ranges from dully amused to dully angry. The two pictures below give you 100% proof as to how the lead female rolls were cast.

(Yes kids, that Christmas from "The World is Not Enough." Everyone's favorite Bond movie. You can tell why she got both jobs.)

4) Space Football
For some reason our main man Johnny is the captain of his football team. His Space Football team. Ok, so they didn't call it Space Football in the movie but as soon as you saw them jumping around the field you knew someone had given it that name in the script. It reminds of of really old bad Sci-Fi where everything becomes super futuristic by adding the word Space in front of it. Is it candy? No, its SPACE CANDY! Is it corn? No, its SPACE CORN! Give me a break. The worst thing of all is that our hero uses these Space Football moves to win fight after fight against the bugs. Thats right, giant bugs are out done by Space Football.

3) Our Hero Is A Rich Idiot Jock
Lets look at our hero Johnny. First off, he's good looking and has a small emotional range thats clearly defined by how much chin he's showing off. Second, he's an idiot. We find out his math final scores from high school are 35%, which hurts because his girlfriend got a nice 97%. Oww.

Third, we find out he's rich. Really rich. If you didn't notice the grand piano in his nice house, the guys at boot camp keep reminding you of this by calling him 'rich guy'. Even they realize how lame he is. Forth, we find out that even though he's reallllly dumb he got into Harvard. Maybe in the far future Harvard has really lowered its standards, or maybe he's just that rich. Fifth, the ladies all love him. Not only does he have one hot girlfriend in high school, he also has a hot friend who is willing to die just to get some Johnny action. If only he had the emotional range to care. (Seeing as how certain elections have gone in recent years... no wonder people relate to this guy...)

2) The Bugs Are Smarter Than The People
Yes, those darn bugs show off that they're 100 times smarter than the humans. Lets look at the list. First off the bugs hurl an asteroid across the galaxy and hit Earth. Not just any point on Earth, the capital city. Seriously. Across the entire damned Galaxy. They even point this out to us in the first minute of the film. This is the reason people go to 'war' with the bugs, yet everyone thinks they are completely dumb. Hmm... I guess no one thought about HOW they were able to move an asteroid across several thousand light years...

As we move along we find out that the bugs have evolved certain bugs to shoot giant balls of plasma into space (its how they move those asteroids). These giant plasma balls also seem great at knocking apart the entire human space fleet. Yet as the fleet is being fired on, and destroyed, everyone is highly confused at how the bugs are able to blow up their space ships.

So we have hoard of giant bugs against a bunch of pumped up marines with guns. Hmm.... wouldn't you maybe send... I don't know... some tanks along? Or maybe some big guns? The humans can travel across the Galaxy, guilt robotic arms for people, and apparently can breed super hot and emotionless youngsters, but they can't build something better to fight against the bugs? No wonder they get their butts killed by the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS in the first major battle. You know thats why in the book they have guys in super mecha armor killing bugs. Sigh... maybe if the director had finished the book (Oh he didn't, go look for yourself) he would have given us a better movie. You almost feel like maybe you should be cheering for the bugs. Clearly they're on the top of their game.

1) Starship Troopers 2
Not only did the second film have nothing to do with the first, it also had no clue. You can tell by the fact that it reuses old footage from the first film and that it went directly to DVD. Its bad kids. No amount of co-ed shower scenes could ever save this film from itself.

Number 1 thing I couldn't decide which category to put in: The Propaganda.
"Would you like to know more." Think of it as a futuristic 1940's totalitarian propaganda that comes up every so often to move the film along. While it shows whats become of the world in the near future its also really really insulting and annoying. Little kids with guns. Little kids squishing bugs under their shoes. No wonder Doogie Howser is a Nazi in the near future. I think that it was intended on be satire, but it comes off horribly. You get a D for effort there boys.

So the real question is, is this movie totally awesome or totally horrible.

For some reason it took a year for me to finish up this video about my trip to Vietnam. Yeah. Almost an entire year. I guess I mostly got lazy and forgot about it along the way. So there you have it. In 10 minutes my entire week in Vietnam, a wonderful country a I hope to visit again soon. If not for the food then surely for the diving. Ok, it'll probably be for the food...

Did you watch it to the end? Theres a special surprise....

So the reason I got thinking about my forgotten Vietnam video was that I finally redid my Vidlog blog. Before I started using youtube for all my videos I had them hosted on a friend's server. Sadly that server went up in flames and thus I lost all my videos, which is why I moved everything over to youtube. I had a bit of free time today and I went through and edited and updated the entire vidblog. I'll try and post the videos I make on there as well as on this blog (and youtube) in the future.

I was thinking about my week and trying to figure out what the weirdest part way. Early Sunday I settled on a moment Tuesday afternoon when I was ridding back to work and saw an old man peeing in a parking lot. On a busy shopping street. A block away from city hall. Two blocks from the station. Oh Japan. How you love public urination.

But no, this was not the weirdest thing I saw all week. That would be what I saw Sunday night around 9. I was ridding back from a private English lesson and on a dimly lit street passed an old man. He was waving a flash light around, carrying a scooter helmet, and had his pants and undies down around his ankles. I was quite surprised by how fast he was moving even with his pants down. I rode off the sidewalk and into the street, fearing that he may have a full bladder or get a bit friendly with his flashlight.

A couple blocks down I stopped at a grocery store to pick up some milk and juice for breakfast. I paid for my items and was exiting the store when Mr. Ankles happened to walk in. He was still waving his flashlight around as he entered the store. I moved out of the way and outside. I stood in the parking lot watching him walk down the veggie isle waving that flashlight, still clutching that scooter helmet. I decided that I should warn someone about him as the ladies at the registers seemed to not notice the pantless man in their store.

Now my Japanese sucks, but I know enough to express the fact that there is an old man in veggie section without pants on. My conversation went like this:

Me: Excuse me. Over there, near the veggies, there is an old man. He has no pants.
Old Cashier Lady: No, the pork curry is in isle 4.
I got a coupon for pork curry when I bought my milk. She thinks I'm asking about it.
Me: No, not curry. Old man. Over there. No pants.
I point at my pants. Make pants down motion.
Old Lady: The curry is over there.
She points across the store and looks confused.
I turn to the young lady at the register.
Me: Old man. He has no pants on. Come with me.
I motion for her to follow me.
Young Lady: ......
Confused looks all around.

I decide that I've given it my best shot and turn around to leave, when Mr. Ankles pops out of isle 2 and starts walking past the front registers. I turn to the two ladies and point at Mr. Ankles. He's still waving around that flash light. The ladies at the front stare at me, and continue to look confused. Not about him. About me.

So I leave. And from the parking lot I can still see Mr. Ankles inside the store. Walking up and down the isles. As the store employees and customers continue to either not notice him, or just ignore him. So the weirdest part of my week was when people in a grocery store were more confused by me than by a man with no pants in the veggie section. I really wish I would have has my camera with me.

Pot. Hemp. Cannabis. Marijuana. Mary Jane. Wacky Weed. No matter what you call it, its illegal in Japan. Though you wouldn't know it by looking around. You see Cannabis and Reggae culture is currently an "in" fashion, which is why I see kids with Cannabis and Marijuana leaf note bags and pencil cases every day. While on a trip to a local shopping center today I happened to snap these fun pictures of fun filled Cannabis things you can buy.

Cannabis Tape? A pencil case for your kids?

How about these many flavors of hemp air fresheners? Or the incense?

Clearly ever car needs on of these hanging from the rear view mirror.

Yes, those are Jamaicans smoking joints. More fun filled incense.

The best part is no one seems to know what Cannabis (or its many names) really is. Teachers. Parents. Store owners. No one, except the really devious kids at school who like flaunting it. I'd love to see some exchange students going to the US with their Japanese school gear and then try explaining the whole situation to the school administrators. Oh the humor of cross cultural miscommunication.

The irony of it all is that most Japanese people would probably benefit greatly from smoking some of the real stuff on a regular basis.

Wow. Sukiyaki Western Django. Its a western. With cowboys. Indians. Samurai. All played by Japanese people. Speaking English. Holy crap. I saw this trailer a couple weeks ago, and grabbed this promotional flyer the other night. I may cry while watching this film.

You don't believe me? Waaaaa? Just watch the two trailers. Yes. These is the real trailers that you can see in the theater in Japan. Yes. Thats English they're speaking. Yes. That was a samurai you saw. Yes. It is bad ass. Yes. That guy did just pull out a machine gun.

It appears as if its all in English as well, which is a bonus for me, as I am horrible at Japanese. Listen for the line about "and balls to match." Seriously. There are tears in my eyes.

I'll be there opening night. Holy Crap.

The malls in Japan are just like the malls back in America. Except filled with Japanese people and raw fish. They also contain the random oddities that amuse us JETs to no end. Like this copy of ねこカマラ, or Cat Camera if you can't read Japanese. You uncultured swine you. I love any magazine that contains nothing but cat pictures, guides to taking pictures of your cats, and lengthy articles by people who take pictures of their cats and submit them to magazines. I almost bought it, but was still too freaked out by the penis enlargement adverts in the back of several PC magazines. (Do we not get enough of those as SPAM in our e-mail boxes?)

I was also quite thrilled by this display of kiwis outside the mall grocery store. As with any good promotional display you really need two things to catch the eyes of the public. The first to be an attractive woman eating your product. The second being a plush doll who looks like he's inviting you to eat his little plush brains out. Seriously. Ewwww.

That evening my merry group of friends and I went to a second mall where we saw a movie. Now the movie was all fine and dandy (so much so that its completely unrelated and uninteresting compared to the rest of what I'll be talking about and thus I won't even tell you the name of the film I saw!) but several things at the theater caught my eye. The funniest thing of the evening, which got all us foreigners laughing our asses off in the theater, was the trailer for Die Hard 4.0. The trailer wasn't funny at all, it was the intro to the trailer. As introduced by Bruce Willis. Who was speaking rather funny Japanese and didn't look too thrilled to be there. Oh Bruce.... (Oddly none of the Japanese people in the theater were laughing...)

Oh Japan. You and your malls. If only they were over run by hoards of really polite zombies. suuuumiiiimaaaaaseeeennnn....

Cheese. We all love it. Its many tastes. Smells. Colors. Could there be a more better food than cheese? In Japan you learn to love cheese even more, as the cheese you do find here is either bad, expensive, or really bad and expensive. When my parents came and visited a couple of months ago they brought along a "fun" package of cheese from the airport. That cheese sat in my kitchen for month. Mocking me. Tempting. Talking to me. "Eat us Josh. We taste so good. Join us. We're from Wisconsiiiiiiin...." Clearly the cheese had to be eaten soon. That and I should stop reading Stephen King books before going to bed. This is why I had a wine and cheese party. Though in all reality, do you ever need an excuse to eat cheese while drinking several types of wine?

And in case you wondered about what JETs do on a Friday night in Japan, the answer is simple. They watch an Australian dance around to the song "Down Under" and later watch an awkward Japanese man dance to "Crazy Train."

My life is kind of awesome when you think about it.

I love Japan. Its a country that has the most random reasons to celebrate. Its as if at some point everyone stopped questioning the reason behind festivals. Clam festival? Sure! Do you enjoy doing the Yasa dance? Lets have a festival! Its as if Japan really wanted to constantly have parties, yet just needed some random excuse for it. Like last weekend. When I went to Hiroshima City to see some friends and ended up in the middle of the Yukata Festival. The Yukata is just traditional summer wear, a very casual kimono. Try to envision the city of Milwaukee having a massive summer festival in honor of shorts and t-shirts. The best part is the vast majority of Japanese people don't even own a yukata and would have no reason to wear one. I think these days the Yukata festival is an excuse for young girls to dress up in fancy (Hello Kitty themed) yukatas. You don't see many guys running around in them. Though you do see some guys go crazy with the face paint.

I took some video of the traditional Japanese wheel chair dance. Marvel at its wonder and grace.

The main reason I went down was to see some friends and some shopping. Its just so hard to find decent spices and canned soup in town! That and I have a strange new addiction to dried mangos. Curse you Philippines! The night included some fun foods and enjoyable karaoke.

Just my luck. I book a week trip to Fiji for the end of July, and suddenly there are brand new Macbook Pros. How unlucky. Now I have to wait until August before I can buy one! I just can't wait to blow a full months pay... (and look at nice underwater Fiji pictures on it!)

Culture shock is real. Culture shock kind of sucks. Especially in Japan, which is one hell of a place to suffer culture shock as anyone on the JET program can tell you. But one thing no one tells you about is how weird the reverse culture shock is. Going back to the West after a year or two in Japan is something thats unusually tough for people (been there once, will be there again soon). Which is weird, because after about 6 months in Japan the general conversation amongst any group of ALTs is how much the hate Japan, their job, their life. But as soon as they go home they start complaining about how much they miss the wonderful world of Japan. Some of this is legit, some of it is complete bullshit. Like this complete idiot, who apparently learned nothing during his time in Japan. To summarize his blog entry, he went back to Australia and was completely shocked that a guy in a store didn't give me a proper robotic Japanese style hello. You see, in Japan, when you enter a store or place of business you're usually bombared by at least one (if not several) people yelling "Irraishaimase." Which means "Welcome to our store."

When I went into a shop in Japan for the first time, everyone looked at me, smiled, and almost shouted : "Irraishaimase!". I was a bit confused, and had no idea how to appropriately respond, so I simply nodded my head, smiled awkwardly and proceeded with my purchase. I later asked a Japanese person what "Irraishaimase" means. He said : "It is for when you go into a shop. The shop people are welcoming you. If they do not welcome you, it is very rude in Japanese culture, because you are the customer. You don't even need to respond, because you are the customer!" He explained.

At first you may be surprised and even happy about hearing this. Until you've been around for more than a week and find that hearing five employees yelling this phrase in an annoyingly screechy store voice every time someone enters the store is about as rewarding as hearing a cat being killed by rats. The worst I've ever seen it was at an import store next to the train station in Fukuyama. Five employees working around the store would sound off "Irrsishaimase" every damned time someone walked in the door. Which ended up being them yelling it out every thirty seconds. I was almost happy they shut down the store (I miss its food goodness) because I was afraid that somehow the employees in the store would infect the people walking by, and soon the entire town would start chanting it. But some people....

I suddenly realised my throat was dry. Mount Franklins water!! My favourite brand of bottled water. I looked left and right, and quickly located a convenience store. I walked over, and entered the shop. Behind the counter was an Indian guy, looking busy with his work. I walk into the shop, plant my feet down, and look at the Indian. He looks up at me for a moment, and then returns to his work. I remain frozen in place, staring at him. He continues work for a few more seconds until his eyes flick up, and he sees that I am still there, staring at him. I'm excited, but also very tired since I didn't sleep much on the flight, but on some level I dimly realise that I am waiting for him to say "Irraishaimase." I continue to stare. He drops the papers he had in his hands, and looks over to me. He opens his mouth to speak. My eyebrows rise in anticipation. "What the fuck are you looking at?" He says, in a thick Indian accent. "I... er... what, the... what?" I stutter back. "Are you going to buy something? Or do I need to call security!" He continued, enunciating the word security with a sharp poke of his finger. He leaned back, waiting for my response. "Oh, right, yes, I'm sorry. Mount Franklins water please. I apologise." I shake my head to try to rattle out the fog, and hand him over some Australian money I had already converted. He looks at me like I crawled out of a drainpipe, hands me my chance, and doesn't even say "thank you". I was stunned for 30 minutes after this interaction. For the first time in my life, I had experienced the elusive "reverse-culture shock".

You see, you didn't experience "reverse-culture shock." You experienced your own idiocy. If you didn't realize that Japanese people saying "Irraishaimase" was as meaningful as a bell mounted on a door and has everything to do with "putting on a face" in public and nothing to do with friendliness, then you clearly were not paying attention for the year you were over there. If all you took away from Japan was an appreciation for a robotic response from people at stores you really didn't try too hard to understand or experience Japan. Plus, who the hell actually waits for someone to greet them when entering a store? Clearly you did crawl out of the drainpipe. Except that drainpipe you live in is your own idiocy.

Yes, that was mean. But I knew people like him while I was in college. It made me wonder why people came over to Japan (anime, Asian fetish, sushi) if all they were going to do is cling to a vision of Japan that doesn't even exist. (I'm talking to you geeky white dude who was more Japanese than any of the Japanese students there.)