6-16-03

Heya!

Well here it is…Father’s Day (or it was when I started this). Looking at my list of people who are regular recipients of this message, really the only dad out there (or the only one who I know of *looks suspiciously at all the guys on the list except my younger brothers who damn sure better not have any kids I do or do not know about*) is my own. So to my fantastic dad who I love, respect, and miss terribly – Happy Fathers Day! But having said that, I’m also sending some happy Fathers Day vibes to Sarah, who has been both dad and mom to her kids for all of these years.

So I finally found a Catholic Church that does English masses. I was aware that a few existed in the area, but actually finding one was more of a challenge than I thought it would be. But this morning, directions in hand, I sent off quite early to find the noon English mass at St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Chiyoda-ku (that’s one of those little districts in Tokyo). I forgot to wear my watch (Ellen, do NOT freak out, but yes, I’ve taken to wearing a watch here in Tokyo. I’m even *EARLY* for things.) so I wasn’t sure exactly what time I’d arrived, but a Japanese mass was already in progress, and having never been to a mass in anything but English, I stayed. [To the non-Catholics in the audience, you might get bored here or not get it at all. Sorry.] After a few minutes or so, an elderly Japanese man brought me an English pamphlet that contained an English guide to the service. It was kind of him, and I truly appreciated the hospitality. I started listening to what was going on and was trying to figure out where in the mass they were. After listening to what was going on, I realized that I was listening to the congregation recite the profession of faith, and I sort of whispered the English along. I’ve always loved that part of mass, and I look forward to it every time I go. To my honest surprise, I was deeply affected by the fact that thousands of miles from home, in the middle of a Buddhist country, in a room of people of a different race whose language I can neither speak nor understand, I was participating in a profession of our most deeply held beliefs. I could feel tears come to my eyes. I was emotional. I was moved. I was also wrong. We reached the end of the prayer, the priest spoke for a minute, we sat, and the lector came forward and started the first reading. Yeah, I think I got all teary over the penitential rite, which is no where near as nifty. Oh well.

When it came time for the sign of peace, I don’t know why I was surprised, but instead of shaking hands, they bowed to one another. Which made me look retarded sticking my hand out in time to have it bowed to. The bowing was weird looking, but totally in tune with the culture. The choir was quite talented, and a treasure of the church itself was a wonderful pipe organ. At the end of mass, there was very little of that thing where people try to “sneak out the back” after communion but before the announcements. I guess since almost everyone takes public transportation, there’s no scramble to get out of the parking lot before the line forms. In fact, people not only waited for the priest to process out. They stayed through the whole last song and then waited for a jaunty organ tune to march themselves out in a pretty orderly fashion. 

I stayed for the English mass as well. It was pretty much a regular mass. A really cool thing they did at the start of mass was to ask people ahead of time not to eat or drink or feed their children snacks in mass. They also got completely stern about cell phones. I also liked that in addition of telling everyone who the priest would be, they also gave the names of the alterservers, lectors and Eucharistic ministers. I thought it was nice to recognize the lay ministers in that way. The priest was a native Spanish speaker who spoke pretty good, but heavily accented English. The communion wafers tasted exactly like rice cakes and were very, very crispy. I realize that I’m supposed to be having other thoughts when receiving the body of Christ, but I know you Catholics out there will forgive the less-than-spiritual analyses. The only two things that weirded me out came in the homily. Due to it being Trinity Sunday, the priest was trying to convey how lucky Christians are to have the concept of the Trinity. And he specifically said things about both Muslims and Jews and their singular views of God that made me squirm. I’d just never heard a priest specifically criticize another faith before. Then the priest was trying to convey the idea that although our parents are responsible for generating our physical form, God is responsible for creating the uniqueness of our souls. Problem is that the priest spent waaaaaaaay too much time focusing on the physical acts our parents engaged in to generate said physical forms. He even mentioned all of the occurrences of our parents’ “creationary acts” that didn’t result in pregnancy. Ick and ewwww and Shut Up.

There were very few white people at the mass, which was sort of a disappointment. It’s always good to see familiar-looking faces. I’m not being racist, really, I have plenty of ethnic friends ;-) But until you’ve experienced being the only one of your race in any given situation for long periods of time, you cannot fully appreciate how nice it is to see a face that looks like yours. Most of the people at the English mass are just people who don’t speak Japanese and understand English better than any of the other options. At the time I didn’t know it, but a huge part of the English-mass congregation is Filipino. Remember that, it will come in handy later. There was a white woman who looked like she was in her late 20s or early 30s sitting in the pews a few rows ahead of me, and I was determined to catch up to after mass…which I did. Even though we chatted for 45 minutes and I know she’s Australian, I’ve totally forgotten her name. But we had a great talk and she told me what she knows about the parish and gave tips for living in Japan. I think we had a white woman bonding moment, and I’ll look for her at mass next week. After we talked, she asked me if I’d seen the “shops” outside. I spent quite some time looking around the church area in between masses, and all I saw was a small shop that sold Catholic religious items – that’s not “shops” in my book. Seeing my confused expression, she said “you know, the Filipinos?” I still didn’t get the picture, so she told me we’d go “DVD shopping.”

We left the main church courtyard, and to my shock and pleasant surprise, the street directly in front of the church had been transformed into a mini-bazaar. The Filipinos had set up food stands, little booths selling clothing, and all sorts of little tables selling stuff. The nice Australian chick guided me to end of the block where there was a man selling DVDs for 700 yen each or three DVDs for 2000 ($17.80). I looked at the selection, and it was pretty good: The Ring, The Two Towers, About A Boy, Treasure Planet, Chicago, The Recruit, Two Week’s Notice, etc. Now keep in mind that The Two Towers isn’t on DVD anywhere legally; Chicago just released in Japanese theaters; Two Week’s Notice and Treasure Planet haven’t even opened in theaters here. Bottom line – not legal. It was just very, very amusing that you can go to mass, enjoy a Filipino smackerel, and then buy yourself some bootlegs all in one short block.

Anyway, after mass, I took the subway to Shinjuku, which is the main business district of Tokyo. I headed down to the skyscraper district to walk around. I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building where they have two observation towers that are free to the public, and took the south tower elevator to the 45th floor. Despite the thick haze and clouds that limited the view to only a few miles, it was spectacular. City as far as the eye could see. Huge green swaths of parks and street after street of buildings and high rises. There is nothing like it in Florida. In Florida, we only have cities that like to pretend to be important. After being here and visiting London  (which I don’t think holds a candle to Tokyo) I can tell you that from a city perspective, Florida doesn’t have shit. Miami is the closest thing we have, but it’s still not close. I always thought I hated big cities. After visiting Chicago and D.C., I think I started to change my mind a bit, but now I know that’s not true and was due to the fact that I’d spent much time in one. I don’t think I’d even want to live in a place this big (and 12 million is BIG), and I certainly wouldn’t want to raise my kids here. But cities like this have so much to offer if you’re willing to figure out how to get what you’re looking for out of them. And seeing the city spread out like that just reminded me how lucky I am to get to savor this place in this way. The haze prevented me from seeing Mt. Fuji, which, on a clearer day, is supposedly quite a sight over the city.

After leaving the tower, I stopped at an am/pm (that’s a convenience store) for a sandwich and a dietCoke. Japanese convenience stores have awesome pre-made sandwiches that are yummy and not scary at all. My favorite is the pack that contains half a tuna and half an egg salad on white (with the crusts cut off!) For only $1.70, you can get a really good sandwich on the go. Japanese dietCoke (and the stuff in London as well) uses a different kind of artificial sweetener that is a zillion, million times better than aspartame (NutraSweet) or saccharine. It almost tastes like real Coke….good stuff to be sure. So I took my sandwich back up to the street level (in Shinjuku, there’s the level the subway is on that has the tunnels and some shops, a level above that of shops, restaurants and walkways, and then street level) and sat in a plaza in front of a large mirrored skyscraper. There I ate my sandwich, read The Hours and watched some funny shit. 

The funny shit in question was a group of young Japanese men using the mirrored side of the building as a practice area for their carefully choreographed boy band dances moves. I’m serious, they had a whole routine worked out with the arm movements and choppy dance steps and the silly head jerks. Sort of Backstreet Boys meets N’SYNC meets umm, something Asian and not cool. The best part was that there were only three of them dancing, but you could tell that they usually have at least two other guys in their group because they’d left holes in their “formations” for them. I guess the only thing left to say about that is HEE.

On the way home I saw a very thin teenage transvestite who was also probably mentally ill judging from the amount of talking to himself he did. He had a lot of hair on his back, which I could see because he was wearing one of those backless shirts that just ties in the back. The shirt was also split up the middle in the front up to where breasts would be if, you know, he had any. Instead he had temporary tattoos around his nipples. He was wearing light blue, glitter eyeshadow and glitter lotion on his shoulders and arms. The skirt was fairly short and he had glittery, white strappy, glittery heels. He carried a cute little purse and a larger flowered bag. During the train ride, he pulled everything except the kitchen sink out of that bag. He also had a pink punch ball (you know, those rubber balloons/ball things on an elastic string to make it bounce back to you) that he occasionally played with. I’ll tell you one thing – I’ll take a mentally ill transvestite over drunk, Japanese salarymen any day of the week.

OK, that is all. Nothing left to see here. Move along.

Love,

MaryGail