Trevor: What is your reason for being in Japan?
Achim: I came over because I was really interested in the Japanese culture. Then I went to bed one day and I woke up about four years later and I am still here.
Adrien: Well basically I met my wife in America, and that is more or less the end of the story. And I also always wanted to learn another language, and I've always been interested in Japanese, so that's it.
Adam: I got married in America, and when my wife got pregnant and wanted to have a baby, we came out here to have the baby close to her family and I haven't found a good enough reason to go home yet.
Jason: Escape is part of it. I've always been interested in Japanese culture and as a kid, when we moved to Los Angeles, it was my form of escaping family problems and escaping teenage angst in general, throwing all of my concentration into this completely different culture that was so very opposite to my kind of ghetto-fabulous, West Coast, Los Angeles upbringing. I just knew I wanted to try living in Japan, because I associated, everything that was happy and nice, rainbows and ponies, with being over here.
Trevor: I came over here because I was looking for a job. I found a job teaching English in a newspaper in LA, applied for the job, got the job and I was on an airplane a month later. No special interest in Japan, didn't know a damn thing about it.
Trevor: What do you think are the best characteristics of living in Japan or Nagoya.
Achim: Safety. I think Japan is still one of those countries where you can go shopping, and you can leave your groceries on your bike and go into a store and when you come out of that store they're still gonna' be on your bike.
Jason: Where do you live? Once when I lived in Osaka, my buddy went into a Family Mart for about twenty seconds, just long enough to buy an onigiri or something. And we had gone used CD shopping earlier... When we came out the bike was still there, even the plastic bag was there, but the CDs were gone. G-A-W-N.
Achim: I've never heard anything like that in Nagoya
Adrien: One time I had my french toast stolen out of my bike.
Achim: I guess they were hungry.
Adrien: I was biking around and I had a bite of some crappy french toast, and I left it in my basket. When I came back it was gone.
Adam: I had my dignity stolen once.
Jason: You didn't have any dignity to take.
Achim: The other thing I like about Japan is that at least on the surface, people here still really respect each other. I mean in the sense that the customer service is unmatched in the world.
Trevor: I completely disagree. I think the customer service here sort of sucks. I mean after we order our food here, count how many times she comes over and asks us if everything is okay. That is part of customer service?
Adam: That might be cultural though.
Trevor. But that's what we are talking about, culture.
Adrien: In my area [in America] if you go to a grocery store, they treat you like a pariah at the counter, if they even make eye contact you're impressed. But here they at least say something. My convenience store they are always smiling and bubbly, even if its three o'clock at night. Its like “irashaimase!”
Jason: I have to agree with the customer service thing, that impressed me. In the States you go to McDonald's or Kentucky Fried Chicken and they might run out of hamburgers or chicken. Its happened to me many times. It's on the menu and I say “yes, I'd like a quarter pounder with cheese,” and they say “well, we don't have any quarter pounders.” “Okay, well can I just get a double cheeseburger?” and they are like “well we don't do that either.” and its like, "well why is it on the damn menu?"
Trevor: That's in the states?
Jason: That's in the states.
Trevor: Y'all are living in different states. That has never, ever happened to me, but it happens constantly to me here. Convenience stores, restaurants, McDonald's, I have never been to any place in America where they ran out of anything.
Jason: You've never been to Popeye's Chicken where they were like “I'm sorry, we don't have anymore chicken.”?
Trevor: No dude. What?! What are you talking about? *truth is, I never ate Popeye's much back home --pub. *that's 'cause you ain't really black.--ed.
Jason: Wow.....Just wow!
Adrien: I was realizing something the other day when I was in the convenience store. I'm always super nice to the folks, you know I try to talk to them, but no one will ever talk to you in a convenience store.
Adam: They keep an appearance of having good service and stuff but they don't actually, probably give a shit.
Trevor: I don't think its good service at all
Achim: I disagree with that
Adrien: No one is ever genuinely nice
Achim: I think they are if you get to know them. If you go to the same convenience store over and over again they are super nice.
Trevor: Do you guys think its easy to assimilate in Japan?
Adam: I think its impossible.
Jason: It's totally impossible.
Achim: You can become comfortable in the culture, but you will never be accepted as a complete equal.
Adam: You will always be considered a foreigner. There are good and bad aspects to being a foreigner but that will never go away.
Trevor: What's different about Nagoya now than when you first arrived here?
Achim: Before the Expo you would walk down the street in Sakae and maybe once a week you would see another foreigner like yourself. Now you walk down the street and everyday you see ten or twenty.
Trevor: What do you think is accountable for so many more foreigners coming to Nagoya?
Achim: I think specifically Nagoya was exposed to the international scene more after the expo.
Adrien: Another thing about Nagoya is that the center of Toyota's international business is now Midland Square.
Trevor: If you had to say Nagoya has a certain characteristic, for example Tokyo is cosmopolitan, busy, crowded, what adjectives would you use to describe Nagoya?
Adam: I think Nagoya is like that youth pastor that everyone knew that tried to act really cool and hip, but actually had really old conservative ideas in his head.
Jason: I think so too.
Adrien: If I were to use an analogy I might say rusty gears. They move slowly.
Jason: I would say 'perpetrator-ville.' or 'faker-ton' or 'pseudo-town.'
Trevor: Nobody said anything positive. What makes you stay?
Jason: It's where my job is.
Adam: Actually I really like Nagoya.
Achim: I think Nagoya is one of the easiest places for foreigners to live. Its not too big, its not to small, its centrally located
Adam: Nagoya is calm compared to other places.
Jason: Well I have had the experience of living in both Tokyo and Osaka, and now Nagoya. I will say Nagoya is certainly the easiest city to live in in terms of getting around and saving money. When you live in a metropolis like Tokyo, you may get lost in the shuffle. You spend a lot of time and money just trying to go from one place to the next. Here in Nagoya, its big enough so that it is more than just a bump in the road for concerts to stop at. Secondly, there are actually enough gaijin here doing something to make a difference and have an active nightlife or put some cultural diversity on the map. And third, if you get pissed-off, you can jump on the train and be in either Tokyo or Osaka in two or three hours.
Trevor: What would you consider to be the pinnacle of your success here in Japan?
Everyone: RAN Magazine.
Trevor: What would you like to see RAN develop into?
Achim: Its a positive force to try and bring the art community in Nagoya together.
Adam: I want it to be something that gets people's asses in gear, I want RAN Magazine to be the magazine that makes people realize that there are things to do in this city other than just going to The Hub every fucking weekend. We all have different skills, almost nobody who is in Japan decided “I want to come here and be an English teacher.” You know we all trained in school to do something different. I want us to find ways to use our skills and abilities and things we like to do, and not be pigeon-holed.
Adrien: RAN needs to send the message that you can be a foreigner in this country and not just a teacher.
Adam: There is a glass ceiling here that we don't have to obey. We can create opportunities for ourselves. Nagoya is knowable and its doable. If you say “yeah I know Tokyo,” that's like saying “yeah I know the internet.” There is too much to process. But with Nagoya, you can carve a niche for yourself and say this is where I belong and this is what I do.
Trevor: Where do you see Nagoya in five years? Ten years from now?
Jason: I've only been here [in Nagoya] for one year, but I have seen Nagoya seem to struggle to be bigger than it is. Its gonna take change on both sides. I see the universities for example, trying to get their stuff in gear. Aichi University and Meijo University have their international programs, and I also see the companies that are based here like Toyota, even some of the smaller companies are trying to put some diversity and international programs on the list. What's gonna have to change is the random, everyday, Nagoya person that was born here and lives somewhere like Midori-ku and rarely sees anybody foreign.
Achim: If you take Nagoya four years ago and compare it to Nagoya now, you see more change.
Trevor: What does the term Gaijin Superstar mean to you? Does it sound positive or negative?
Adam: It doesn't sound positive to me. I think of somebody like Mr. Big or something like that. I think of somebody who made it here and didn't make it at home.
Achim: I think gaijin superstar to me has a positive meaning. A Gaijin Superstar is somebody who comes over here, who creates a niche for themselves and who does what they do without making apologies, without trying to fit in. I mean they fit-in enough that they don't offend anybody or anything like that, but the point where they are comfortable with who they are living in this place.
Jason: When we first brought-up the title gaijin superstar the first image that popped into my mind was Jero. This is somebody who came over here, and obviously he wanted to sing ever since he was a kid and he decided, “my grandmother taught me these enka songs, I am gonna see if I can do that over in Japan.” and maybe it was a novelty at first but now he's respected.
Adrien: I gotta tell you something that occurred to me. I came to Japan and I started learning the language and I thought I should adapt to the ideas and to the way people understand things, and after a while I found, using the language is fine but I found these cultural, social hindrances that they have themselves locked-into. I found it so oppressive, so one day I just said “fuck it. I'm American, I'm just gonna be American, but I will use the language. Even in the language though, there are little things meant to tie you in and lock you down.
Achim: I would say Japanese society is very compartmentalized even in it's language. The first part to learning a culture is learning their language because the very mechanics of that language were forged by the social issues of that time while that culture was being born.
Adam: Modern Japan is a really new country.
Trevor: Would you say Japan is experiencing a kind of identity crisis?
Adam: They were in isolation for hundreds of years, and even now it's slow going.
Trevor: Would you say there are any countries that have an easier time assimilating to Japanese culture?
Achim: Being German I have to say, I know the cultures are very similar as far as punctuality is concerned, and they way they think about things.
Trevor: I am still having a really hard time acclimating myself to Japanese culture. Coming from New York City with the ridiculous diversity there and everyone screaming at the top of their lungs to make their place in the world. You know, it's a stifling society and some people don't want to be stifled forever and I am one of those people.
Adam: But Japan is safe, and the fact that Japan is safe has absolutely nothing to do police, or the legal system. It has to do with that whole mentality of never going against the flow. There are no rubbish bins on the street but there is also no litter on the street, for example.
Trevor: The stuff that I don't dig is the stuff that on a broader basis is what keeps us here.
Jason: What do you think you should work on to make life easier in Japan?
Achim: Learn the language.
Trevor: I am still learning and trying my best to be more Japanese I guess. One of the reasons I got divorced is because I was so tied to the person that New York city created, that my wife didn't want to fuck with that dude after a while. Learning the language is more mechanical, but the other stuff is more internal, spiritual and psychological, and that is what I am trying to do.
Achim: That is one of the great points about living here is you can really find out who you are inside.
Jason: You know, this is the part of the world where I found out exactly who I really am. Some people get here and right away they are like, “aww man, 'F' this place.” but I was the exact opposite. People kept telling me, “you're just in your honeymoon period. After about two or three months you're gonna crash.” It took me like two years to crash, and the thing that finally made me crash was something so simple. It was the fact that I couldn't get any Taco Bell. I walked into a place that had tacos and there was mayonnaise on my taco, and I lost it. Don't get so ingrained in this culture that you forget what it is that you liked about your own culture and always have something that you can take with you that's a little bit of home.
Achim: I think my advice for somebody coming over here is don't get trapped into the negativity. Go out of your comfort zone and really try to explore the country, explore the people and really try to find yourself and your own opinions instead of having those opinions forced on you by others.
Jason: You are here to get away from whatever kept you complacent at home right? You've got this explorer mentality and the explorer's life is tough. You're over here so you need to toughen up a little bit.
Adam: It's really frustrating to hang-out with Japanese people who don't speak any English but that is the best thing you can do. You work with what you've got – you've got a little bit of Japanese, they have a little bit of English, you get drunk and start saying what you know how to say, and you start communicating as human to human without worrying about anything else.
Trevor: If you could go back in your history and do something differently since your arrival in Japan, what would you do differently?
Adam: I would have gone and checked out all the clubs and live houses I wanted to go to.
Trevor: I would go back and learn the language. I'd start learning the language upon first arrival, and I would travel more.
Achim: If you force yourself to step-out, on your day off or something, just force yourself to get on the train, it changes your whole perspective on Japan.
Jason: What I would do differently is not concentrate so much on the small stuff. I would like to just go back in time and tell myself to lighten-up.
Trevor: Do you think Nagoya is a romantic city?
Jason: Huh?!...No!
Achim: Not really. There are romantic places but you have to look hard to find them.
Adam: Every once in a while, and nobody knows why it happens, but every once in a while out of the blue, a scene occurs. Like a scene forms itself and nobody can explain it. It becomes a focal point, and for some reason everybody there just turns on, and connects to that even though nobody knows why. Potentially Nagoya could do that.
Achim: There is so much potential here.
Trevor: Abso-fucking-lutely.
Jason: Nagoya doesn't have any identity yet.
Adam: Nagoya hasn't been put on the map yet.
Trevor: There are so many people who can do so many diverse things who want something to happen.
Achim: I think that is our mission. We are at the forefront of Nagoya. I think we can really bring people together here and make them realize what you are talking about.
Adam: There is no formula, it's different every time. There is no saying who or what the catalyst will be, but it could be a magazine.
Jason: Just hyping it up, eh?
Trevor: Final comments?
Adam: Get off your ass Nagoya. Get off your ass and go out and do something cool.
Achim: Find your identity. Find out who you are and make your voice heard.
Jason: Don't hate, innovate. As far as RAN is concerned if you think you can do something better don't hate on it or us, but put out your own thing and make it better than us.
Trevor: Do something interesting and think "community."
Adrien: Don't be afraid to ask.
Jason: Use your own brain.
Achim: Stop separating and start uniting.
Jason: Everyone get in gear, get coordinated, lets synchronize our thoughts and our minds and lets go in the same direction.
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