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Lost in Translation Part 1: Mysteries of Japan

It’s been a somewhat hectic season of travel that has taken me literally halfway around the world twice within one month. I feel like I should make a new game, akin to the famous “Around the World with Nelly Bly,” a board game from the late 19th Century about an actual female journalist who traveled around the world. Except my game would have the added twist that this woul be a game about the adventures of a game researcher.

I am writing from Tokyo Japan, less than two weeks after leaving Perth Australia. This is my first visit to an Asian country. Indeed it’s my first visit anywhere that is not a European country or one of its colonies. As my friends know, I have been endlessly fascinated with all the cultural blendings and nuances of European Colonialism. Yet when I was in Australia, I was, it sounds a bit snobbish to say, growing weary of the endless variations of European culture hybrids. Australia, including its people, was in many ways more like the U.S. than any other country I’ve been to, including Canada. Surprisingly, it actually bore a somewhat striking resemblance to L.A.

Tokyo is an entirely different creature. Yes, the Japanese have certainly absorbed and integrated U.S. culture, but they’ve also made it their own in interesting ways. Actually being here I feel more like I am seeing U.S. culture being colonized than the other way around. Walking around over the past week, at times I feel like I have landed on an entirely different planet. Unlike every other place I’ve traveled, I look completely different from everyone else (except of course the largely Scandinavian and Nordic populace of the conference I’m at.)

I’m here for DiGRA, or as I have renamed this instantiation, DiGLA, the Digital Games Research Association’s bi-annual conference. It is not insignificant that Tokyo is the site of the third DiGRA; Japan is a Mecca for gamers. My students who have come and lived here adore it. My nephew, who has never been here, taught himself Japanese out of his love of this nation’s games, Manga and Anime. Japan has special significance for my ilk. So in that sense, it’s quite an epiphany.

At the same time, when you go to a new country, in this case an entirely unfamiliar culture, I find that what generally captures your initial attention are the more mundane aspects of culture. Not the exciting, exotic, not the sensory nor aesthetic. But the common interfaces of everyday life. Such as lights switches, which in the case of Denmark for instance are outside of rooms. And bathing apparati, which in the case of England and Italy seldom include showers. My friend once called me from France with the brilliant business proposition that we open up a shop there selling shower curtains, an innovation, which had apparently not yet been introduced there. Upon arrival on a foreign shore, these are the things that truly fascinate and vex.

In Japan, I think all foreigners would agree…at least pretty much everyone I spoke with here did…it’s the toilets. The toilet facilities in general are curious and mysterious, but the actual toilet devices are the most wondrous and bizarre of all. To Americans, who are so prudish we can’t even say or write the word “toilet” but instead must resort to euphemisms like “rest room” or the older gendered variant “powder room,” the Japanese magnificent obsession with this device as an object of design…one might go so far as to say fetishism…sets the mind reeling. It also makes one wonder if perhaps the quality of the toilet experience is the hallmark of a highly advanced culture.

Japanese toilets, as anyone who has been here finds from the moment you disembark from your 10-20-hour flight, are marvels of high technology and interface design. Anyone interested in HCI should do an extensive study of them. I have included a few photos here just to give you the basic idea. The description below, I must qualify, naturally describes the experience in a female facility.

Your experience of the Japanese toilet begins often before you even take a seat. Many of them are equipped with an audio device that automatically activates when you enter the room. This device simulates the sound of a flushing toilet to cover any other unsavory sounds that might issue forth from your stall while you are interacting with the toilet. In anticipation of your response to the last two sentences, I need to assure you that this is not a joke. In fact, I have documented this to provide evidence. Here it is:

After you have recovered from being startled by this (and fortunately the first time I encountered it, I had already been forewarned), you are likely to experience surprise number 2. In many cases, the toilet begins to flush as soon as you sit on it. As if that weren’t enough, depending on the…quality of the establishment…the seat will also be warm, much warmer than the ordinary warmth produced by a prior occupant. Upscale establishments, a nice restaurant or hotel for instance, will have a particularly warm and cozy seat, so much so that you might be tempted to stay there all day.

If you are thus tempted to linger, you may then find your attention drawn to what might best be described as the toilet controller or console. These vary from toilet to toilet. Although this one is labeled in Japanese, the international symbol-style icons provide a fairly good indication of what each button does. I am not sure what the gradient control at bottom left is for—possibly a temperature control, or perhaps to regulate water flow.

Once you have completed whichever of these activities you feel is appropriate or necessary, you may arise, at which point, about half the time, the toilet will automatically flush on its own, avoiding the unsavory task of having to actually touch the handle. Too bad these other functions are not available in “hands-free” mode as well.

Some toilets also include some kind of discretionary aroma abatements method, although these tend to be far less developed, often consisting simply of a spray can of air freshener.

Once you have concluded these procedures, you will naturally expect to enjoy at the very least the standard ablutions afforded developed societies, e.g., the washing and drying of hands. This is perhaps the most baffling part of the entire experience. Why, we asked each other repeatedly, would the facility include soap and water, but no means to dry the hands. After about four days, we conjectured that maybe the substance we thought was soap was actually hand sanitizer that did not require rinsing. I tested this hypothesis and found that, in fact, this seemed to be correct in most cases, although every once in a while you would find it to be soap. However, a few questions remained unanswered. Why, in some cases, was there then a cloth towel, a single cloth towel (not the type that circulate through a machine for sanitizing), and one which had obviously been used by numerous other patrons. This seemed to fly in the face of the level of hygiene provided in the sanctified cubicles within. And, if the substance in the dispensers was simply hand sanitizer, why then, was a sink even necessary at all?

I will leave you to ponder these mysterious until my next post…

English as a Second Language: A Walk on the Wild Side

I finally had time in my busy schedule to go for a walk today. It was nice and quiet, and I noticed as I headed up the hill that there appear to be some rather affluent people living up here. Part way up the road, I began to hear the strains of a live jazz band down the hill. I also heard kids laughing, and discovered a pack of little kids riding a rope swing. The jazz music could be heard loud and clear from below. A fancy fete? A wedding perhaps? Who knows?

Haslemere is everything I imagined the English Countryside would be, based on my voracious childhood reading of the Bronte sisters and Frances Hodgson Burnett. The homes do not have street numbers, but rather names, often reminiscint of the place names dreamed up by Edward Gorey. There really are places with names that sound like “Stodgy Pudding,” or what have you. On my Sunday stroll, I discovered one whole cluster of houses that were all named Gray something or other. Since there was a large mansion of a house among them, I gathered they had all been part of one estate at one time. It reminded me of visting friends in Denmark who lived on a property that belonged to a castle. The only vestige of its feudal past was the requirement in their lease to join with the rest of the tentants of the fiefdom in cleaning the castle once a year (I don’t recall, but I think the date was Christmas Eve.) No-one had ever really done it, but it was just some contractual thing left over from the Middle Ages somehow.

Being a California girl, it always boggles my mind the ubiquitous sense of history. All around are houses that have been lived in for literally hundreds of years, crazy walls that bound the roads medieval merchants and, I imagine, soldiers onced traversed. It also amazes me that even though people have been around here so long, they have managed to maintain some semblance of countryside. Southern California is just a giant real estate development. People came there a hundred years ago because it was so beautiful, and then they stripped it of most of its beauty. Here, there is some innate appreciation for the landscape that has managed to prevail for centuries, perhaps sustained by a certain noblesse oblige.

Noblesse oblige notwithstanding, in my little jaunt up the hill, I actually encountered my first-ever example of the British version of what my sister calls “wheel estate.” Also known as “trailer trash.” Hmmm…I wonder what the British term would be—“road rubbish?” Well anyway, the term was particularly apt for this little specimen, which was completely crammed with it (rubbish I mean.) It was parked across the street from a house which I gathered to be that of the “eccentrics on the block,” since the grounds was equally strewn will all manner of detritis, including a few appliances—washers and such.

Given that I spend so much time in London, I find Haslemere to be somewhat disconcertingly monotonous, and by that I mean literally mono-tone, e.g., white (as opposed to dull.) Unlike London, which is a veritable melting pot of a post-colonial crazy salad (sorry about the mixed metaphors), Haslemere is just so English. I suppose that’s part of it’s charm. And with my naturally pale complexion and carrot top I just blend right in. But being as I’ve spent about a quarter of my life in New York and the rest in Los Angeles, I tend to get uncomfortable if everyone around is the same color as me.

Well I don’t have to fret too much about that, since I’m heading home tomorrow via Heathrow, which is about the most colorful place you can imagine.

I'll end with my favorite picture from this afternoon's stroll, which somehow captures two of my favorite things about Britain—the English sense of humor, and an obsession with instructional signage:

English as a Second Language: The Zen of Raspberries

Picking raspberries form David’s garden at Little Shalwyn has become my morning meditation here. One of the positive side effects of the incessant summer rain is that everything grows insanely fast here. Heading in to the raspberry portion of the garden involves diving into a dense bramble, usually damp, which seems to expand daily. From what I can tell, the back part of the raspberry bushes belongs pretty much to the birds, so depending on what time you decide to go in, there will be a bit of a scuffle as they quickly disperse. This just adds to the general sense of going into a wild zone.

Little Shalwyn is its own whole ecosystem really, and it’s easy to sort of find your niche within it, and get into a routine. For me, it starts with the morning cup of tea. The dollup of honey I drop in comes from the bees in David’s beehive. After the first cup, I generally go into the vegetable garden and tackle the raspberries, which I collect for my breakfast of muesli and “biopot,” also known as what the Brits call, phonetically spelled, “YAHggert” (if you haven’t guessed already, it’s yogurt). While en route to the raspberries, I get the chance to say good morning to the bees, and thank them for the wonderful honey. I won’t go into my bee fetish just now, but I do enjoy spending quality time with them as they earn their reputation for being busy.

The raspberry harvesting process generally begins, as mentioned above, with a kind of bird melee. As soon as they see you coming, there is this kind of whirling, whooshing noise from under the patch, and then they scatter every which way. Usually by the time I get there, they are all gone. This is my least favorite part of the task.

Because the bushes are so thick and green, the raspberries can be a bit difficult to find. Thankfully, Nature in all her Evolutioary Wonder had the good sense to color the raspberries bright reddish pink, which coincidentally(?) happens to be complimentary to the green leaves, if you go by the colorwheel. It’s not to hard to get into what I like to call “the raspberry zone,” which is sort of this sort of trance state where you are reaching for the plump, juicy raspberries in a sort of instinctual way—maybe the way the birds do, or the way the bees gravitate towards the flowers. But the thing is, in the end, you don't really pick the raspberries—it's more like they pick you. There are times when I have the distinct feeling they are hiding from me, but more often, I could swear they actually reach out and say “Pick me! Pick me! Pick me for your muesli or your crumble!” I don’t blame them. Raspberries that don’t get picked suffer a rather unpleasant fate. At best, they grow mouldy on the vine, which can’t be fun. At worst, they are ravaged by birds, who poop on, peck at and tear them limb from limb. No doubt if they had the choice, they’d rather meet their end nobly perched atop a pile of YAHggert and muesli, or in the bubbly molten sweetness of a fresh-out-of-the-oven crumble. But maybe I’m just projecting. :)

Today, since the weather was pretty nice, I also decided to put together some flower arrangements. Since my motto is, “If it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing,” I ended up making seven altogether. Some of them are really more leaf arrangements than flower arrangements. Sort of an early Fall theme, I guess, but the leaves around here are so amazing they rival the flowers. I also picked an enormous bowl of raspberries so Rob could make a delicious crumble. It's always nice when there's someone around the house who can bake. I now understand why the English have such a knack for recipes requiring overripe berries!

English as a Second Language: Little Shalwyn Revisited

For longtime (f)e-mail from abroad recipients, you will recall that two summers ago I spent the month of July at Little Shalwyn in Haslemere (see archives), the country home of David Furlow, Citizen of the World, who always seems to leave for Los Angeles as soon as I arrive. Coincidence? Hmm…

The day after I arrived, we got a visit from some of David’s friends with whom we enjoyed a lovely tea in the teahousre with scones, fresh-picked raspberries from David’s vegetable gardne, and clotted cream. Naturally, it was raining, but the teahouse was quite cozy and it was the perfect way to launch and English country holiday.

Next day, we once again enjoyed an expat 4th of July. This time, we had a barbecue which was…shall we say protracted…by the rain. But that was okay because when it was raining out, we could sit in the house and watch Wimbeldon…which was also protracted by the rain. The other notable event of the day was the World Cup, which was ultimately taken by Greece over Portugal. The Guardian captured it best in next day's headline.

To help facilitate the holiday, we had a visit from Peter, the pyromaniac biker, which is exactly what the occasion called for. Peter rode his motorbike (that’s “Queen’s English” for motorcycle) from Brighton in the rain with a small cache of fireworks on his backs. (We didn’t ask how they were acquired.) In addition, Peter became highly engaged in the rather entertaining pastime of trying to build a cooking fire in the rain. Fortunately, David keeps firewood in the basement, which is DRY. Therefore, there was dry wood. Peter was quite expert at everything having to do with burning things. He and David decided to build an open file and make coals from that. It was a good thing too, because we were all rather chilly sitting there in the damp orchard, so the fire was a big help with that.

It was delightful of them to embrace our national holiday with such enthusiasm, but the English always have to do things the hard way. “You know in America,” I pointed out, “we usually use a grill, and we actually just buy the coals instead of making them from scratch.”

One thing I enjoy about English summer is that the Sun always seems to come out just as it is going down. So we more or less waited all day for it to stop raining, which it did around dusk, which is quite late this time of year.

By the time we were eating ,it was dark and clear, but Peter and David had managed to make coals from the fire, and build a quite respectable double-grill, on which we were able to make a veritable feast.

About half those in attendance were American as per usual. Marc’s wife asked me at one point “What do you usually do for the 4th of July.” I thought for a moment. “Well, actually, I’m usually here on the 4th of July so…this is what I usually do!”

After dinner, David and Peter went onto the lawn and started the fireworks display. This provided a good test case for the pros and cons of digital cameras. On the one hand, they are much better for shooting nighttime scenes, and do especially well with neon and fires as such. On the other hand, the delay in shutter activation makes trying to photograph fireworks sort of like a really frustrating twitch game where you have to hit the target just so you and you never can. Here's one of the more successful shots.

Much later, after Peter, Marc & Co. and Lizbeth left, David lugged out the telescope and we were able to get incredible shots of the moon by placing our digital camera lenses into the viewer.

All in all, it was a delightful evening and a good time was had by all. In thinking about it, though, I'm struck with the irony of American Independence from Britain. The main news story of the week was that Tony Blair is under fire for pressuring British Intelligence to deliver trumped-up charges regarding Iraq's weapons of mass distruction. Since this is largely considered to be a case of pandering to pressure from the Bush administration, I think the feeling here is that, perhaps it’s time for England to be a little more independent of the United States.

English as a Second Language: Scenes from a Bus (Axis of Evil)

This trip I stayed with Mary and Sara at Tom’s “flat” in Hackney. This has been quite a bit different from the other trips, which seemed to be dominated by tube rides. Hackney is not accessible by tube, so we had to travel by bus. Although a much slower mode of transportation, it has the really outstanding feature of allowing one to get to know London a little better. In traveling this way, I was astounded by the revellation that I’ve spent the bulk of my time in London underground; as a result, I had no navigational bearings whatsoever. Not that I do now, but seeing the streets from the top of a double-decker bus provides quite a different cultural perspective than squished among the diversity of London inside a tiny overheated tube train, with nothing to look at but tired faces and “adverts.”

Tom’s neighborhood in Hackney is generally assessed to be “dodgy” by most people we talked to, and as a result, it’s completely free of tourists. However, I actually find the area quite charming, and totally different from either Little Shalwyn, the country house in Haslemere, or Pimlico, where I frequently stay with Susan. There is a wonderful little market kitty-corner from the flat which I knew about from coming to a party here on my last visit in July. I was actually not meant to go to the party (which was for Mary’s birthday), but in the end was able to do so since I missed my plane. Anyway, the shop is quite small, but according to Tom it has everything, which we have now found, through repeated visits, is entirely accurate. What I’ve found is that it seems to have exactly two of everything, which I think is how they manage to stay so well stocked with such a minimum of space. We managed to keep a steady supply of toilet tissue, bread, and HobNobs on-hand thanks to the little shop across the street.

Have I mentioned before how much I like HobNobs. There are several variations, and I can’t quite tell the difference between McVittie’s Digestives and Hobnots, which are described as “nobbly, oaty” digestive biscuits. With all the variations, they are quite divine…imagine a graham cracker but with a more…well “nobbly” texture, covered on one side with a layer of chocolate. Dark chocolate are my favorites of course, but milk chocolate will do in a pinch. I am crazy about these things, and generally stash a few in my suitcase when I came home. They are about the cheapest thing you can get in the UK, and you can get them at any corner market or petrol station, but they are really to die for. I first became addicted to then in Denmark, but have since discovered that they are a distinctly English invention. God love the English. They inveted HobNobs and America.

Now about the bus adventures. We Americans think of double decker buses as quaint and charming, but they turn out to be in fact quite practical in such an overly crowded and taffic saturated place like London. In my observations in the wild—the streets of London that is—I have found that double-decker buses often travel in packs—sometimes with people standing on both levels. It’s impossible to imagine what London would do without them.

I’ve learned some new things about Londontown from sitting atop the double-decker buses. One is that all the surveillance cameras are mounted on the second floors of buildings. The media artists I know talk a lot about the proliferation of surveillance cameras in London, and I’ve seen quite a few in my wanderings around town, but being on the second level of a double-decker bus one really gets a sense of how ubiquitous they are.

One thing that I found a bit baffling at first was that when you ask where to get off for thus and such a place, they always reply with a single street name, e.g., Tottenham Court Road, or what have you. But then I remembered that I had learned from my earlier driving excursion through London that no street here maintains the same name for more than three blocks; thus it’s perfectly fine to identify a location by a single street name, because it will be no more than three blocks from the nearest bus stop.

The other things I was able to see a lot more of from this vantage point were pubs, street names (barely visible from ground level in most cases) and graffitti. London is positively packed with pubs; most of them are ancient, and you can tell this by both the décor, and the dates of establishment. But the really amazing thing about them is the names. In my elevated travels I discovered The Bull & Mouth, The Old Crown, Dirty Dick’s, several Heads, both Queens’ and Kings’, and a number of different sorts of Pigs (and their heads, of course.)

The street names were my second source of amazement. There is a street near school named Lamb’s Conduit. I saw a street called Coptic. There are many streets with Bishop’s in the name, Leather Lane, Bread Street. But I think my very favorite was an extremely narrow street called Threadneedle, whose name was made the more poignant when squeezing through in a double-decker bus.

I once heard a radio commentator say that the best way to learn about the cultural zeitgeist in Italy was to read the graffiti. I think the same can be said of London. And if the graffiti is any indication, the war in Iraq is extremely unpopular. I saw various scrawlings on the topic, one in particular highlighting the “blood for oil” concept. But the one that really struck me, perhaps because it was inclusive of my own nation, was “We are the Axis of Evil.” Frankly, I’m inclined to agree. In this way, I feel solidarity with the Brits. I can greet them with “Hail, fellow Axis of Evil member well-met.”

I think an indication of the shape we are in overseas can be found in the downward spiral of the value of the dollar. Scanning through the Evening Standard a couple of days ago, I found this headline: “Two-dollar pound ten cents away.” …and a few days later… “Dropping dollar brings retail heaven.” Imagine, the article pointed out, instead of 2,400 quid for a Donna Karan leather jacket, you can pay mere 1,838. It’s definitely worth spending the $600. to hop on a plane across the pond to go shopping in New York, wouldn’t you say?

Until next time, Cheers (by the way, NOBODY here says Cheerio)!