Potty Trained: What is that Noise?

Today I thought that maybe I should talk about the toilet experience here in Japan from a woman's perspective. No, don't run away yet. I'm not going to be gross. I'm just going to talk about the awkward noises that we make when we urinate. Yes, urinate. You read it right. Here in Japan, many women are embarrassed by the noise they make when they urinate. When females go to a public bathroom, it is normal to hear women flushing the toilet as they are urinating, so that people can't hear the noise. Because this practice consumes so much water, many toilets are equipped with a button that you can press that will make the flushing noise without actually flushing. Sometimes, it even makes other noises, such as birds chirping.

I know that this sounds strange to a foreigner's perspective. Believe me, when I first arrived in Japan, I had no idea why any woman would be embarrassed by the sound of their own urine. I mean if they were doing anything else that must be done in a bathroom, then maybe I could understand. However, why urinating?

Because I didn't want to stand out, I started flushing at school while I was urinating (oh what a waste of water) and pressing the noise button when I was in a public restroom. When you are a foreigner, you already stand out so much that you do anything to stand out less.

Anyway, after being here for 10 months, I have realized that I have fallen into the same embarrassment trap. It's still about fitting in, but to a big degree, I'm also getting really self-conscious about the noise too. I don't know when this happened. I just know that recently I went to a public restroom with a friend. It was only me and this other foreigner. I made myself not flush because what was the point. It was not like there was a Japanese woman to hear me. However, the whole time I was urinating, I was so self conscious about the sound, how loud it was and how strange it was that my friend could hear me. I have fallen into the same mind set that I would have joked about a year ago.

I truly believe that we can't understand something in another culture until we put ourselves into that culture. Sometimes, even when we do that, it's still difficult because we have not lived in it our entire lives and we have our own culture in the back of our minds. However, at least it makes it a bit easier to understand the people of that culture and why they do the things that they do.

Asian Idols: Business, Pop Culture & Some Catchy Tunes

I have a new song stuck in my head at all times of the day. The song is called Yue Lai Yue Ai (越來越愛) , or Loving You More and More by Fahrenheit.





Fahrenheit is a Taiwanese boy band. Each member of the band has his own season and temperature to coincide with the boy band name. No, I'm not making this up. lol. They are Taiwanese but they have done some songs in Japanese. I guess they want to be like BOA (Korean) or Arashi (Japanese), with huge success all over Asia.

I just found out about them because I was watching a really good Taiwanese drama (ToGetHer) and the opening and closing song is sung by them. Then, when I looked into it, I realized that the main actor in the drama, Jiro Wang, was one of the singers in the band. It's kind of like MatsuJun doing Hana Yori Dango with his band Arashi doing the theme songs. The same is true with the Korean version of Hana Yori Dango, except it's the actor that plays Rui Hanazawa's (Ji Hoo) character,Kim Hyun Joong, who is in the band SS501 .

Asian idol machines and pop culture is so interesting. They really know how to get a big pay off with an idol's 15 minutes of fame. They just squeeze these celebrities dry with movies, music, tv, modeling, products, ads etc. Once they are used goods and the new thing is here, the cycle begins again with the new talent. It's so much more intense than in the States. An idol in the States, like the 'NSYNC boys, are supposed to sing, but people don't expect them to act as well and do a million other things. In Asia, they are expected to have many preforming talents.
Man, I love pop culture. Sorry for the long useless blog. I just love this shit.


Anyway, to end this post, I'll put the music video for Fahrenheit's closing theme song to ToGetHer. It's called MoMo (默默) or Silently. The song is great and you can see scenes from the tv drama.









By the way, just FYI, when I was in Hong Kong (Golden Week vacation), I heard Utada's English album everywhere. I would go into stores and they would be playing it. I thought that was cool.

The Art of Karaoke

Before coming to Japan, I had never done karaoke in my life. That changed really quick since i got here. Karaoke is a great destresser and just a fun way to spend time with your friends. However, I also learned that there are rules to karaoke. Rules that I haven't been able to master since I've been here. No, it's not only singing into a mic. Karaoke is an art. If you are with a group of foreigners, we just end up singing all together. Put on a Queen song or heck Whitney's "Dance With Somebody" and everyone is up on their feet and singing as loud as they can, in not so perfect unison.

I learned that Japanese people do not do this. Oh no! Each person gets a verse, lines, chorus, whatever. Somehow, everyone knows when to sing and when to let the other person sing. If it's a huge group, it is not uncommon to see them pass the mic down so that everyone can get a chance to sing individually.

I witnessed these unspoken rules again this weekend when my friends and I went to a karaoke bar. We were 3 Americans, 1 Trinidadian, and 2 Japanese (1 we had just met that morning at the beach but that's a whole other story). Anyway, when we chose a song (Akon "Right Now Na Na Na"), we all sang out the lyrics so that even the bar down the hall could hear us. Oh boy, what a scene. Our 2 Japanese friends did not say anything, but they sure showed us how it was done.

Let me just remind you that one of them we met that morning, so those two had never actually talked until that night. Anyway, they agreed on a song (Exile of course) and then started singing. One would sing one verse, another would sing another, they would sing the chorus in perfect unison and well, it was karaoke magic. They later did a Japanese hip-hop song with the same ease and perfection. I was thoroughly impressed. Of course, us foreigners had to ruin it by singing out Whitney Houston to the dismay of everyone's ears.

ALTs have to go through so many different orientation workshops. Most of them are useless and quite truthfully, I don't remember 95 percent of what I was told. However, someone should do a karaoke orientation. It could fall under the topic Life in Japan. We should really learn so that we could stop embarrassing ourselves. lol.

Music Listening To At The Moment: Utada "Apple & Cinnamon"

If Only I was a Lesson Plan Whiz

Before going on vacation (Oh yeah I went on vacation which I'll write more about later) I made a lesson plan for this week. I tried to simplify, simplify and simplify it more, but it still seemed difficult. I decided to try it out today with the first class, who are considered an advanced class. Of course, they didn't really understand it. The teacher that I team taught with said she would take a look at it and figure out how she can make it more simple because she realized that I didn't know how to dumb it down anymore. She has so much work already, so I felt bad accepting her help, but I really didn't know what to do with it anymore. The other ALT that comes to this school on Mondays is going to do the same lesson next period and I'm a bit nervous about how it's going to go.