Japanese TV

omg Japanese TV is crazy. I never watched it at my own house, because I didn't have cable, and my screen was tiny, etc etc. Now I:m staying at my friend's house because I've had to pass the torch of my own apartment to my replacement in Morioka.

Today I was going to run a couple of errands but a storm started so I took a nap and now I'm just hanging around until I have to go out and meet someone. Last night I was watching the kids channel, and there was this funny little segment where guys dressed up as old men answer childrens' questions about the world. A little girl came on, a seventh grader, asking why there were two sexes. I couldn't understand everything, but the "old men" went on to an explanation about the gods creating two sexes so that people could find their match, or something, and that you are supposed to be attracted to the opposite sex. Then they pulled out a stuffed elephant and a porcelain pig with a huge hollow snout. They called the elephant Adam and the pig Eve. Whaaaat? Then the girl said that she only has girl friends and she thinks that boys are gross, so what's this about the sexes getting together? And the old men answered that she was at an awkward age and it was normal for her to feel that way as a seventh grader, but things would come in due time, and then it was over and they went to a game where some kids had to make kanji out of their bodies, and another team had to guess what the kanji was, kinda how like people on a stranded island spell out HELP with their bodies, but this was much harder because it didn't use Roman letters.

That reminds me, one of my friends who works at an English conversation school told me how in their library, they have this book in comic form telling how Japanese kids and Western kids are different. They had an example of a Japanese middle school student studying abroad in the West, and being surprised that middle schoolers get in fights over stealing each others' boyfriends, and stuff like that. I kinda have to agree, although I can't remember quite what it was like to be a middle school student, but just by my own observations Japanese middle school students are much more innocent than their Western counterparts. One middle school student asked me once if I had ever had a beer, and then acted shocked when I told him my answer, while in middle school I was trying to walk to class without trying to run into a gang fight, and the big drama was when people got caught doing drugs in class. But maybe those are extreme examples.

Ok, so then just now I was watching TV again, and there's a special on a park in Tokyo, and they introduced the little mom and pop shops surrounding it, and then they compared the park to Central Park. They had a little thing titled "If you want to be a New Yorker in Yoyogi Park," and it told you to use blankets instead of tarps to sit on, hold your beer with two fingers near the top, not with your whole hand near the bottom (?!), do yoga, bring a big dog, and sunbathe in a bikini. The audience reaction got a kick out of that last one. "Really? A bikini in public?! They do that?" It was hilarious.

Anyways, the rain has mostly stopped, but now I'm feeling so lazy. I've been inside mostly all day, but one of my errands was taking something back to the electronics store because it's broken and I need to use my warranty, but that sounds like such a hassle. Hrm...