What can you see from your window?

Every week when I work in Shinjuku, I find it fills me with a certain kind of rage. I spend the day by going to Iidabashi for my 2 hour Japanese lesson, and follow that up by going directly to work. A full day, which leaves me satisfied but somewhat fatigued. And the masses, inside and out, do something to the natural state of the human mind. The people's mentalities and the general coldness to everyone they don't know in this kind of big city really strikes a darkness of the heart I'd never experienced before my time in Japan.

I can't assume whoever is reading this knows anything about these places, so allow me to explain: Shinjuku is home to the busiest train station in the world, and a veritable center of the megalopolis known as Tokyo. It's busy, always. Walking through there means becoming part of a mess of people moving in every conceivable direction; pure organized chaos. When I get off work nigh on 9:30, the drunken businessmen vibe is in full effect as well. And it all just piles up. Perhaps listening to grind metal isn't helping the situation, but it feels so appropriate to the madness hidden behind the neon beauty of the city.

Suffice it to say living as close as I do to any city feels like a temporary thing. It couldn't last, it would drive anyone with a soul crazy, I think.

...that's a dark start isn't it? Kind of prose-y though. My attempt at a description of the feeling of walking through the streets of Shinjuku, even if it only happens 2 or 3 times a week, thank god. It feels like a little piece of my soul is stripped away every time I cross those anonymous masses, being scratched and clawed at by the empty aura of the stone metropolis, struggling to-

Yea that's enough of that.

**

Last Sunday was one of the best days I've had in a while. I did the following things:

11-1pm. Listening practice test for the upcoming JLPT (11 DAYS AWAY) with a nice Spanish girl named Lydia. Got a 50%, which is around my average. Hey, listening to Japanese is tough! Thankfully this is a smaller portion of the overall test grade than the other parts I do better at.

1-4. Special 3 hour band practice, busted ass to get there on time (through the dark torrents of Shinjuku once again) Fun practice, they always are. Laughed and wrote and played and replayed and corrected and played again and felt exhausted and poured it all into the instrument. Yea.

5-7. Did the language exchange thing with Kana (friend/bassist) and did surprisingly well with Japanese grammar points. I can feel the pieces falling into place.

8ish. Arrived in Shibuya - the trendiest, most over-glorified crowded sack of amorphous blobs of people (which deserves its own post) I've ever seen - went to see my student Toshi's band play. He had given me a free ticket so I thought what the hell, it'd be rude not to go! I was pretty wrecked at this point, but managed to find the venue which I realized I had visited last year. Despite this, It is a bit of a tuck away building on an imaginary "street," above a Harley Davidson shop on a seedy-looking corner.

I had timed it to come just in time for Toshi's band, the "Super Sonic Monkeys," since I knew it would be an all day fest of amateur bands which I could not sit through. Although when I arrived, the act finishing up was quite entertaining. Some lady in her 40s/50s in go-go boots and white vinyl doing a ridiculous dance alongside to a male-backed ensemble of beardless ZZ TOP wannabes in trench coats and Leapord jackets with a fairly cute Japanese girl as a singer. The guitarists were doing all kinds of lewd rock moves. There was a saxophonist too, but everything jumbled together and didn't sound particularly good. Visually 10/10, musically 4/10. Wish I had my camera for that one!

Super Sonic Monkeys were pretty good for a band that does popular covers. The did the whole guitarist/bassist harmony thing quite well, covering Blink 182 and Green Day and the like. They even had a fan club, a gaggle of girls which I thought was pretty amusing. Am I playing the wrong kind of music? (don't answer that)

After the show the whole group - groupies, friends, band and myself - went to an Izakaya (Japanese-style restaurant/bar) they had reserved. Really brilliant, as them there U.K. people like to say. I had a lot of fun. And besides meeting some new friends - who said they want to "go go to Ben's Live!" - I realized that my Japanese hasn't improved at all.

It has TRANSCENDED.

I have had my head buried so deep in difficult everything that I didn't even realize my comprehension of daily conversation (and ability to communicate) has soared since the last time I'd attended this kind of social event with a bunch of Japanese people, maybe a few months prior. I communicated smoothly with several people almost no problem. It felt good. I can't do the whole night justice, let me just finish with saying it was fun.

The next day I took a much needed rest, studied and watched Apocalypse Now! for the first time. The Redux version in fact, over 3 hours long. Heck of a movie, I like the specks of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad that the director mixed in with a Vietnam-themed war movie. And I find myself saying "the horror... the HORROR" whenever the opportunity arises.

**

One more thing. This English teaching shtick. I realized in college that the beauty of studying English - despite its lacking somewhat in the practicality department, at least in my case and in the States - was that a good command of language can be universally applied to almost any field. If you are well spoken, or well written, this bleeds into so many different careers and facets of human life. My job now, it's not glamorous, it can be redundant, but I'm always working with real people. Talking with people one inevitably forms connections with them, of interest, curiosity, disdain, friendship, warmth, familiarity, etc. etc. I am able to learn so much from them, it has become an enduring strategy of mine to find something interesting in even the most ordinary or seemingly-dull persona. I can learn about Japan, or the culture, or get an unfair look at what this person's life is like while at the same time doing what I do very effectively. It is in fact my job to ask questions that border on personally intrusive ("Do you live alone?" is listed as an opening discussion question in certain books). The empowerment of it all gets some people drunk, I think. I want to believe I take full advantage of this position by gleaning what I can, while of course doing my job to the utmost of my ability and helping those who truly want to improve. Not everyone takes this kind of job that seriously, but I can't help it. I'm an all or nothing type. If I don't give a shit, I don't give a shit, but if I care at all, it's like I yanked the cork out of the Hooker Dam once I get involved. So I put my heart into it, and sometimes I get really amazing, intangible things back.

Or the occasional - but slowly becoming weekly - bag of delicious potato-salad bread, raisin loaf and other sundry bakery items from Junko. You are like my provisional Japanese Mom, THANK YOU ALTHOUGH YOU WILL NEVER READ THIS.

This clunkily segues into my last bit, the title. It comes from one sleepy new student's attempt to be creative today. In response to "Ask about my apartment," she asked me: "What can you see from your window?" I said I can see snoopy and woodstock in a window from my window, and several other buildings, but that's pretty much it. However, in the cogs of this thing we call a brain, this question struck me as so deep, so unintentionally profound and deep. How much does my viewpoint control my perspective? Where does the vision stop and the imagination begin?

What can you see from your window?