From an email to Nicole...
Tokyo is tough.  I'm actually having a pretty hard time.  I've been trying to figure out why.  

I can't read anything, but I couldn't in Thailand either.  (Though there is even less Romanic signage.)

I can't talk to anyone, but I couldn't in Laos either.  (Though there is even less spoken English.)

I don't can't find anything and the streets don't have names, but it was like that in Kuala Lumpur too.

It's deleriously expensive, but who cares?  I'd resigned myself to spending the big bucks in order to see Japan, so it's not a surpirse.  I'm ok with it.

It's all of these things put together, but...  It's not really that at all.

It's really that when you talk about pretty much any city, you can't get too hard before you start saying "Westernized."  That's kinda because that's what cities are.  If you live in one, you work either an officy kinda job, or one that supports that kind of job.  If you live on the 11th floor of an appartment in a 10x12 room, you aren't farming, you aren't making things by hand, you aren't raising animals.  You're doing the stuff that came out of our Industrial Revolution and its aftermath.  Stuff that was invented in America.  So it feels Western, and comes with Starbucks and McDonalds.  And everyone still sees us doing it better than everyone else, so they want it to be -more- Western, more like the thing we're doing, because it's working.

So you show up and be a big white guy in most places in Asia, and even if you make a total fool of yourself, as long as you're trying, people don't really mind.  Because you're the one from some kind of a "goal culture."  Sometimes it almost feels like they're taking notes...  You may have just totally shattered a local social moor, but unintentionally you just showed them that -that's- how it's done in America.

Except in Japan. 

Japan may have been shaped by the same forces of industrialization, but they did it on their own, by themselves.  So the ways that they've come up with aren't borrowed from ours, they aren't like ours.  They're Japanese.

And there is a way to do everything.

I've been handing people money to pay for stuff.  I now just realized that's probably rude.  There are little trays you put the money in, and they use the same tray to hand you your change.

I didn't slurp my ramen last night (I don't know how!) and I think that may have been rude.

I don't think I'm bowing right.

I don't know how to pronounce "thank you."

I don't have anyone to ask.

More to the point, I spent the night in a capsule hotel last night.  There's a particular way you do this, in stages.  Shoes, shoe locker, bags in bag locker, then the capsule.  I was dead sick, but I think I did ok.  I couldn't wear the bathroom slippers (didn't come close to fitting) and got some looks.  This morning, I had no idea how to shower.  There aren't any in the bathroom.  Eventually, I found the spa, and I just froze.  A bunch of guys were there, but they were in the tub.  Were they naked?  In trunks?  I couldn't tell.  Either way, if I made a mistake, it would be a huge gaff.  And I got the feeling that rather than being a funny white guy goof, it would be insulting.

Capsule hotels aren't there to give gajin something to giggle about back home.  They're for salary men who drink late and miss the train.  They have free toothbrushes and sell dress shirts.  And being so close to other guys in a slightly embarasing situation, you do things right.  You do them respectfully. 

If you know how.

I almost left without bathing, then figured that would be ridiculous.

I decided to wait until after 9am so it'd be pretty empty and I wouldn't be in the way.  Then I realized I didn't know what to do.  Finally, I waited around and watched someone else do each thing I wanted to do, trying not to look like I was watching, and then tried to mirror them.

For the record, yeah, everyone wanders around naked. 

I did ok.  After I got in the tub, the other guy who'd been in left quickly, and with a bit more observation I realized that you're supposed to shower both -before- and after you get in.  Of course. 

I don't care if people see me naked.  I don't care if I look like a dumbass.  I do care if I make people uncomfortable, offend people, in their own country.

I do care if I make white folks look like a bunch of rude oafs.  I've seen two other gajin since I left the airport.  No others in the capsul hotel.  If I screw up, there aren't a bunch of other Americans around to counter my bad example.

It's a lot of presure.

Like in Contra or Mega Man where the bosses have these elaborate attack patterns that have to be learned, memorized, and preformed flawlessly.  Except that I'm doing my damndest to get it on the first try.

It's confusing, invigorating, facinating.  I'm not unhappy.  I'm just constantly processing.  Trying to solve it all, figure it out.  Trying to beat the game.

On the up side, the cybercafe I found serves free ice cream.  That's pretty great.