72 THRASHER
the Japanese had to offer.
Program number one involved a veritable Noah's Ark of the
animal kingdom-all dressed up in elaborate constumes and
put into demeaning, human-like positions. In the short span of
an hour of prime-time programming, I not only witnessed an
elephant washing a car, but one very unfortunate monkey put
through a decathlon of human sporting events. Waterskiing,
windsurfing, snowboarding-this monkey did it all.
Nevermind the fact that he was chained to the waterskis and
that he seemed to be in a near state of panic when he was, for
the grand finale, forced into a tiny monkey-sized scuba outfit
and manually propelled around the ocean floor.
The follow-up programming involved a team of spirited
young men in karate outfits who went through the studio
audience and selected young women in short skirts who
were then Judo-flipped onto mats at a speed and angle so
Clockwise from above:
The Sake Master gets wild in the
streets with the elusive switch
crooked grind. Kanten Russell
blasts past a hazardous metal
spike on a cold Tokyo night.
Dave Mayhew slices through a
frontside bluntslide transfer to
fakie and can say happy birth-
day in Japanese.
the camera's lens could not only see up their skirts, but
could, at the most intense moment, freeze the action so
their panties could be analyzed and given a score by a
panel of oddball judges.
This was then followed by a dubbed episode of
Knight Rider, but you get the idea. It is the Japanese,
not the Mexicans, who are the true kings of the
entertainment world!
There are truly a lot of interesting things about Japan,
but one of the less obvious ones to me was that it is popu-
lated primarily by Japanese people. I know this sounds
ridiculous, but for some reason I was surprised how few
non-Japanese people there were. I had never been in a
place where I was the only one of my kind, ethnically, I
mean. On the first few days, I was constantly fighting off
the urge to, when I would see another Anglo, yell out to
him, or go up for a high five and say, "Hey, I'm not
Japanese either!" This impulse diminished, luckily, and I
was content to ignore other whiteys or, at the very least, be
happy to just give them a knowing glance upon passing.
Did you know they drive on the left side of the road in
Japan? I sure didn't. I thought that was just England. The
cars have the wheels on the right side, as well. I learned,
however, that, despite the positioning of the wheel, the
ナセナ
pedals and gears are organized just as they are on cars in
the US, i.e. everything is not completely switch.
Talking about the toilets in foreign countries is a sure sign
of immaturity, but let me try and explain the dynamics of
the Japanese shitter. Not only did I encounter electrically
heated toilet seats and bidets (ask your French teacher)
but also the more perplexing sunken toilet. You walk into
the stall, and instead of a conventional chair-style com-
mode, you have what appears to be a laid-back urinal that
sits flush in the floor. I assumed this was just some kind of
low pisser until I spied a toilet paper roll mount on the
wall. This is when I discovered the ugly truth about the
squatting toilet.
"But do you have to take your pants all the way off?" I
asked our host, June. "No, no, you just squat."
Americans, with the exception of toddlers and catchers,
do not, as a rule, do much squatting. The Japanese not only
squat to take care of number two, but in other points of
their life as well. As we milled around the streets of Japan,
it was not uncommon to see grown men squatting, reading
books, squatting in a group, talking, and even, in one sight-
ing, well into what appeared to be a squatting nap. I tried to
squat (not on the squat toilet, mind you), and found that it
was not only uncomfortable, but that I would eventually fall
act U