T. Seifman Profile picture
Sep 20, 2020 15 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I don't know how unbelievable this is, but I do believe I've had multiple encounters with Yakuza.

Whatever we might imagine, in reality, they of course had no reason to give me any trouble, or to force/allow me to get involved in anything, so they just left me alone...
So, that's not a particularly exciting story 😅

I have another story which I might have told on Twitter before, about just serendipity and thank god for good luck, and the kindness of others.
During my very first trip to Japan, I visited Miyajima, the tiny shrine island near Hiroshima famous for its big red torii out in the water.

flickr.com/photos/toranos…
Due to a typhoon, they canceled all boats back to the Hiroshima "mainland." Thankfully, some other fellow English-speaking tourists also stuck on the island let me follow along with them as they (with much better Japanese skills) secured us somewhere to stay that night.
I was afraid that otherwise I might have to end up sleeping outdoors, in the rain, with the deer.

Fortunately, though, not only did I get to sleep indoors, but the typhoon also was not bad at all, where we were.
Now, getting into the heart of the story. I caught the first boat out of Miyajima the next morning, as I had a pre-booked bus ticket to go to Matsue to meet up with my sensei, my Japanese-language teacher from my uni back in the States.
I got on the bus, showed the driver my ticket, asked him if it was the right bus, and he just sort of waved me on without really looking at it. When the bus pulled away 2-3 mins early, I got a little nervous - things in Japan are typically super punctual, right on-time.
I watched nervously as highway signs showed place-names indicating we were going west. Matsue is more or less due north from Hiroshima.
But I figured, maybe we were just going a bit west before we turned north. I don't know the route. What do I know?
Finally, three hours later, we come to Masuda. Last stop. Completely totally the wrong destination. Not where I was supposed to be. I showed the driver my ticket again, complained to him in whatever tiny bit of Japanese I could muster.
IIRC he was pretty annoyed with me, but thankfully took it upon himself to help me out. Walked with me to the train station, helped me figure out that there was a train leaving in just a few minutes from Masuda to Matsue, and it cost almost exactly all the ¥ left in my wallet.
So, that's serendipitous "you might not believe it but it's actually true" point #1. Even though I was way out in totally the wrong part of Japan, there was a train from where I was to where I needed to be, leaving right then. And I had the money for it.
Arrived in Matsue three or four hours late. My cellphone was dead, and I'd foolishly left the charger in Tokyo. Completely didn't have it with me. Looking back on it now, I wonder why I didn't just try to buy, or borrow, another charger. Well, I also didn't have any money on me.
With my phone dead, I couldn't even look up my Sensei's number, let alone actually call her to tell her what happened. No one at the station knew of her leaving any sort of message for me .... and when they looked her up in the phone book for me, they couldn't find her.
Finally, I still to this day don't know how, suddenly one of the station staff had her on the phone!! Did he somehow manage to call her? I'm pretty sure she said she wasn't the one who called them... So, this is "you might think it's fake but it's true" point #2.
Of course my sensei was very annoyed, and worried about me. And she had every right to be. This sort of thing happens when you're just a wee college kid. But thank god it all worked out in the end.

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More from @toranosukev

May 11, 2022
Feeling helpless and hopeless today, and very much on the verge of tears.

This coming Monday, May 15, marks the 50th anniversary of Okinawa's "reversion" to Japanese governance, i.e. the end of the formal American Occupation of Okinawa.
The Tokyo International Forum is one of several places holding exhibits in connection with this history.

(This one up only until Monday)

t-i-forum.co.jp/en/event/
For fifty years, Okinawans have been protesting, in great numbers, in numerous forms and venues, and yet the military bases are still there. The toxic spills, the plane crashes, the occupation of Okinawan land, the devastation of the environment, the countless incidents of SA.
Read 17 tweets
May 11, 2022
Very interesting. Living here in Japan for the last few years, I've begun to think more and more about how, even when we know dictionary definitions, and are fluent enough to get by well, there is still so much that can be so elusive as to the connotations or nuances of words...
Mishima Kitan here informs us that when women / fem-presenting people use boku 僕 as their first-person pronoun ("I"), it can be read as butch, queer, trans, and/or as cringe, as someone who is too influenced by pop culture and/or trying too hard to create a persona for themself.
I never thought it had this connotation, this sense. To me, if I heard a woman use "boku," I would have simply thought they were being a little strong, a little independent. Giving off a slightly boyish, assertive, feminist energy, in a good way.
Read 7 tweets
May 11, 2022
Thanks to Simon @B4Btv for letting me know about this exhibit at the Japan Newspaper Museum 日本新聞博物館!

Fascinating to see some of these photos, and to learn more about the events of Okinawa's 1972 "reversion" to Japanese administration.
While the museum did not allow photos in the main portion of the exhibit space, it was mostly just reproductions anyway - so, if I take the time to go to NDL and look up the microfilm, I can see (and get a printout copy of!) these very same materials anyway.
One thing that was particularly interesting, though not surprising, was to see just how straightforwardly stated many of the headlines were. And, also, to see what they were juxtaposed with.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 6, 2021
@Docstockk Others have surely answered already, but I'll add to the pack. (1) Read around. A very quick Google search will reveal plenty of pages explaining that, yes, generally it does mean "I'm fine with either." Why? Well, I'll speak for myself, and give two reasons.
@Docstockk First, because "they" is a neutral pronoun. It applies to everyone. "Someone lost their wallet." "I wonder who they are." Second, because some people don't feel 100% fully comfortable with the social constructs of "a man" or "a woman" and want to express that.
@Docstockk Some people feel that being called "they" instead of he or she helps reinforce their own feeling that they are being seen as a person first, an individual, and not first and foremost as representative of a social category - man or woman.
Read 6 tweets
Dec 6, 2021
Visited Tobu World Square yesterday - a theme park near Nikko featuring models of famous buildings from around the world. Kind of cheesy, I guess, but kind of cool. My main purpose in going, ofc, was my interest in seeing their new model of Sui gusuku (Shuri castle).
Very much looking forward to visiting Shuri again. We'll see when that ends up happening.
Some sites of modern Japan: the Tokyo National Museum, Akasaka Palace, Imperial Hotel (Frank Lloyd Wright), and Tokyo Station.
Read 14 tweets
Nov 14, 2021
I don't know about "extreme," but:

The quiet, unspoken, pressure to embody gender norms, to try to fit in and seem like a typical, "normal" guy/man/bro/dude, even when, who knows, maybe all the other guys are also pretending or self-policing in the same way, to fit in with you.
Even when you know the guys and they'd probably be totally cool with you being a diff sort of guy to them, I'm always sort of curious, how many of them aren't actually that sort of guy either? We all just sort of play along to try to fit in, but maybe *all* of us are pretending?
If only we could all drop the act all at once. I'm sure there's a movie/TV reference I could reference here, but I'm blanking. But surely, there's one where everyone is standing around, brewskis in hand, talking about football, and then everyone sort of eyes one another and then
Read 4 tweets

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