Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The year 2000 started well. I was an ecstatic little boy graduating from elementary school in provincial Japan. Finally, I was joining the “big boys” at the middle school across the street, donning the cool uniforms that I observed in pure envy for the past six years. Change was afoot, and I was so ready to embrace it. Instead, the change was much more radical than I had ever imagined. Instead of moving across the street, father came home one day and notified us that our whole family is moving to the USA, thousands of miles away.

Chiba city is a decidedly underrated city in an underrated prefecture. Tokyoites find little reason to make the trip to the prefecture beyond the use of Narita airport, even though Chiba prefecture is right next door and the trip to the center of Chiba city can be done in less than an hour. That lack of firsthand experience with Chiba causes Tokyoites to have acquired a distinct misconception of the city with nearly a million residents just to their east. Tokyoites perceive Chiba city as lacking in basic amenities that make life comfortable, and that Chiba residents need to head to Tokyo for any sort of proper entertainment.

Almost as soon as I asked for quotes, my phone was buzzing with inquiries from half a dozen moving companies, big and small, national and local. Many immediately wanted to visit my apartment to see how much stuff needs to be moved to the new apartment, and to give a quote in person. The fastest visit happened within 30 minutes of my initial inquiries for a quote. The salesmen (and yes, they were all men) proved to be relentless even in the days after, sending follow-up emails and newsletters, just in case they did not manage to leave a good impression on the initial phone call.

Variety shows are a genre to itself in Japanese TV. Comedians, actors, and other TV personalities get together on-stage, crack jokes, watch videos, and talk about their life experiences. Sometimes, these personalities are sent to various restaurants, shops, and other locations, where they interact with locals, shop, eat, and talk so that the audience get to know the personalities, learn some new knowledge, and find out about new destinations to hang out on the weekends in their hometowns and faraway cities. Sometimes, the shows are cringeworthy and xenophobic , but they continue to thrive and evolve.

For decades, Japan has been living a convenient fiction. The country accepted hundreds of thousands of low- and semi-skilled workers, giving them fixed contracts renewable only for a set number of times and prohibiting them from bringing with them family members from their home countries, in a bid to convince a mostly ethnically homogenous general public that they are only temporary guest workers who will leave when their work is finished. The policy marks them as "separate and unequal" from more skilled white-collar workers, who can bring dependents and eventually become permanent residents or citizens.