Sean McAllister » Page 16

Author: Sean McAllister

Documentary Filmmaker from Hull, England, specialises in giving the voiceless a voice

Waiting For The Red Man

If Iraq was a pressure cooker waiting to explode then Japan is a pot of rice silently simmering away. Rarely does it over boil, life just simmers away.

Waiting for the red man to change to green can often seem like an eternity at pedestrian crossings in Japan. I am standing with an exhausted businessman whose eyes keep opening and closing. I look around the neon lights of Shinjuku and my mind drifts…

In this relative freedom I think of friends like Jill Carol kidnapped in Iraq, no news for months. I often think of her life now and mine here, relative luxury in comparison. Then I feel lucky. I get frustrated waiting for so long at these lights, they take forever. Sometimes I think about crossing on the red man…

I know that as a `gaijin` (foreigner) I can get away with it, but I don’t want to stand out. Japan has that effect on even me now. It is not a fear from the authorities punishing me more from the people around me. What will they think, or say.

It reminds me of Saddam`s Iraq, except there the fear was different.

But fear brings social order which brings safety as well. And I feel incredibly safe here. I remember feeling as safe in Saddam’s Iraq. No one would ever touch me. The only time they did was when I was wandering through a market without my government minders, I’d walked ahead alone. Suddenly I was surrounded by a threatening gang who wanted to know who I was and what I was doing. My minders were quick on the scene, as soon as the gang knew I was `authorized` they were friendly. I found it touching that people care for their country and their land.

A couple of years later a friend did a crazy walk into Saddam’s Iraq following an ancient trail from Istanbul to Baghdad to Syria. He walked over the border from Turkey into Iraq. Rural Iraqi’s never knew who he was, kept thinking he was an American pilot shot down. This was during relative peace in the years between the attacks on Iraq. Rural Iraqi’s would run up and attack him. He had caught a bad disease and was on deaths doorstep. He was saved by other Iraqi’s who became his friends. They housed him, fed him and saved his life. He wrote to me the other day saying the very same people who he is still friends with had been arrested for insurgent attacks against the American occupiers. Funny, when I think of insurgents I think of the time I was stopped in the market and the time my friend was stopped walking into Iraq ~ the same people gave my friend a place to stay and saved his life.

I’m itching to cross the road but still the little man is red. The crowd builds and patiently, obediently waits and waits… as if a race is to begin. The man next to me can hardly stay awake. I look at the faces of people around and wonder what they are thinking. I wonder sometimes if they are thinking. If they have the time to think. They are all dressed in the uniform black suits shirts and ties marching around the streets on aimless missions of work, following duties so dutiful and orderly like economic soldiers of work.

15 years after the bubble burst there is a wariness amongst the Japanese. This is a country finally coming out of recession, but with scares. I met a businessman the other day, who was nearly made homeless when the bubble burst. He seems jaded today. I visited his own company who make a special brand of sake. He was showing me around his offices where hundreds of people work. He is faced with streamlining his company and has to loose 100 employees by the end of March. It reminds me of what happened in Britain in the 1980`s. full time jobs are being replaced by part time jobs in Japan.

A bell chimes in the office; it is like a chime from an old grandfather clock. The businessman tells me it is the end of the day ~ but no one is leaving. I ask him why. He laughs looking into the vast office. “They are scared, peer pressure… they don’t want to be the first one to leave… fearing what the others will say”. They all carrying on working waiting for the first one to leave. Is this why the Japanese work so many hours?

It is now nightfall at the pedestrian crossing, 10pm and businessmen are heading home. Have they all been waiting for the first one to leave? Like we are all waiting for the red man to change to green. The road clears, the crowd gets ready to cross.

It feels like it has taken forever. In my mind I have been to Iraq and back but what about the others. I look to the tired Japanese businessman standing next to me, the red man has changed to green but the businessman is fast asleep standing on his feet at the pedestrian crossing.

Biotic Food and the Unsung Hero

I was drinking with a Japanese friend, Mie in an Irish bar last night. I love watching the Japanese eat fish and chips and drink pints of Guinness. The eager young girls are on the look-out for Western guys, the Western guys on the look-out for Japanese girls. Mie had read my blog last week about the homeless salary men in San Ya district of Tokyo. It made her cry, it made her think of her life growing up in Japan and the many things she’d done against her will, in order to fit in.

I enjoy talking with both Mie and Mayumi (the production assistant). Both women are looking for their place in modern Japan – but as they change and grow as individuals – this rigid society is dragging its feet to follow them. There are technological advancements here each day, but cultural ones come slow. Modern Japan is still governed by tradition deeply rooted in the feudal past. But I don’t think Japan can really move ahead until women are accepted as equal. Something the fat old men in power find hard to accept, but things are changing. They can certainly down their pints in the Irish bar.

I said goodbye to Mie at Shinjuku station. I was starving and had forgotten to eat. Most restaurants close at 11pm in Tokyo. Crazy. You can drink until 5am but no food after 11! I head to the hotel, pushing my way trough crowds of people avoiding the temptation of entering another bar. Then I get a call from Mayumi the production assistant, she is in tears about the production. Some of the other European film makers do not want to work with her company and she feels responsible. I tell her not to worry and that she is wonderful. She works so hard and does her best. Japan is so demanding in so many ways that we in the West do not appreciate. I’m beginning to sense the pressures of living here now.

For a moment I sense I’m finally ‘becoming Japanese’.

Then a woman jumps out of a bar and beckons me inside. I signal to the woman to wait. Mayumi is still crying on the phone. The woman is waving, I’m smiling, Mayumi crying. I know I should just go home, but now I have stopped, I’m looking at the bar. I’m consoling Mayumi on the phone. She starts to feel better. I invite her to join me for a drink. She tells me she cannot. She is staying with her friend tonight who she is worried about. “She been suicidal and I need to watch her”. God damn it, another example of this high pressured existence. In a country with over 30,000 suicides last year, I guess you have to be careful.

Ten minutes later I’m ‘Lost in my own Translation’ in a bar with Bourbon in one hand and my head in the other.

The next day I’m woken by the rain. Outside I see a homeless man sitting on the pavement; he has chopsticks in one hand and a dirty plastic bag of food below. He is looking mystified at the policeman who stands above him. In a forceful but polite way the policeman is trying to move the man on. I walk past, hurriedly, hungry for my lunch, and into a plush micro biotic cafe. £6 sees me right with a ‘raw lunch’ of I don’t know what. But it felt healthy. As I leave I look into the beauty salon opposite. I catch a glimpse of a couple of girls partially visible through a half opened door. I stop and watch them for a moment. A seductive moment created by the place, time, partial visibility, or maybe just the micro biotic food. For a moment I cannot move.

I love to stare in Japan, just like the Japanese do when they are abroad.

Then I glide out through the luxury automated doors. They are as clean as the pavement outside and as the buildings around. As clean and perfect as the skin on the face of the woman who works at the micro biotic restaurant. She looks so perfect and happy she makes me feel happy even when I’m sad. Or maybe that’s the micro biotic food. I don’t know.

But today is Sunday, I feel aimless and it is raining.

I pull out my 100 Yen umbrella and join a sea of 100 Yen umbrellas that fill the pavement. I see a homeless man cowering under his 100 Yen umbrella. I notice a Chanel carrier bag over his shoulder. Without thinking I follow him, we are both hiding under our umbrellas. He stops at rubbish bins to look through them. Then he continues. Today my life in Japan feels as aimless as his. What is remarkable is he doesn’t realize he is the hippest homeless man in Japan today. I take a couple of secret photos, not meaning to steal from him, or to invade his privacy.

Because for me he is the unsung hero of my film today and I always want to remember him.

Toilets of the 21st Century

I refused to write about the heated toilet seats and the bottom sprayer because it was too much of a Japanese cliché. The kind of Japanese story we always read about, some amazing piece technology that seems crazy to us and makes the Japanese look weird.

But that changed a couple of nights ago when I was out. I’m not sure where I was as we were having a drink or two, but in the course of the evening I went for a pee. I don’t look twice at the heated toilet seat anymore. All the buttons for back spray and front spray, bidet etc, wires to the seat to keep it warm, they no longer amaze me. I just try not to miss the bowl fearing some electrical shock in a nasty place. But this time I lift the seat preparing an accurate aim to see a blue neon light illuminating the bowl. It is incredible! I knew I had to write about it just to remember it. Shame I never had my camera to photograph it – a real piece of toilet history.

I’ve been seriously tempted to try the back shower spray again. It’s just that the last time I tried it I got a face wash by mistake. After finishing, I decided to have a go and touch a button to the side of the seat. I heard a motor bringing forward the sprayer. It is a nerve racking moment before a fierce force of water accurately hits the spot. I found myself screaming then giggling then screaming again before leaping off the toilet and getting a face wash from the spray. Since then I have shy’d away from the bum spray but each day I look at the sophisticated piece of technology lying dormant in my bathroom. I know I pay more to have this marvel in my room which makes me even more intent on trying it again.

It is only matter of time before I confront my fear of technology and start having a regular bum spray on the Japanese toilet of the 21st century.

The Beauty Box in Starbucks

Tokyo was heaving with people. I was tired of all the pushing and shoving. I was late for a meeting with Ryota the producer at NHK television here in Japan. I finally made it to Starbucks where I was meeting him and I joined a long queue for coffee.

I hate the idea of supporting Starbucks but I love the coffee, especially here in Japan. Something about being in this bland place takes me out of Japan. I really need to leave sometimes, it gets so intense. Sometimes I find myself frustrated with the crowds, and worse still the noise from huge screens that invade my privacy with garbage adverts… and then young girls pushing free tissues wrapped in more advertisements… there is no escape. At these times I look up to the sky for the peace I know I can rely on in one of the many beautiful panoramic bars on the 50th floor of a hotel. I glide up, leaving it all behind and look down on it, like a god in the sky sipping on a gin and tonic. Pure bliss.

But today I’m standing in a Starbucks queue. I get myself a latte head up stairs looking for a seat. There is nothing on the first floor and before I know it I’m on the 5th floor, out of breath with half my coffee down my shirt. I find what looks like a vacant seat but there is a beauty box on it and a stroppy looking Japanese woman in her early 20`s guarding it. She is filing another girls nails. I move over indicating I need the seat, I am out of breath, with a heavy bag on one arm and coffee all over me.

The woman looks shocked by my intervention and indicates that the chair is not free. “What?” I scream. The woman looks away and carries on filing her friend’s nails. I look around for support but in this country of non-confrontation everyone else ignores the scene. I look over to a western gaijin (foreigner) guy sat at the next table. He has observed the scene, smiling he pulls off his walkman and shuffles up on his seat to invites me to sit with him. I’m still in shock. He is smiling; I sit with him, “what was that all about..? He smiles, “this is Japan mate, don’t even start to question why!”

Later Ryota arrives. He squeezes on our seat, there are now 3 of us crammed into this tight space as the woman continues filing her friends nails. We are all looking at the box on the chair but no one will confront the woman. I continue cursing her. Ryota tries making sense of the scene explaining that when the Japanese sit at a table they see all the chairs at it as their possession.

I’m exchanging angry stares with the woman. Finally she gets up and leaves…

Suddenly the manager is at our table demanding that we apologize to the woman who has complained about my cursing.

“Why… why…..why?” I ask, at which point the gaigin (foreigner) starts to laugh, gets up and leaves.

New York

I was warned that after spending a month in Japan, I would feel like a goldfish in a bowl and need to come up for air. It’s beginning to feel like that time of the month and I made an opportunity to escape.

I had a screening of Liberace in New York and I needed time to reflect on this film and whether or not to make a film at all in Japan.

I’m still asking myself is this the place i wanna be? sometimes it hurts real bad but then there are good times, mostly in the evening. God damn it, I keep meaning to give up drinking. I woke again at 3pm, went to bed at 5am this morning, it was only Sunday night. What happened to my catholic upbringing?

Anyway New York was the chance to take me away. I met with someone I’d never met before, (a friend of a friend) and made a very close friend by the end of my 3 days in New York. Me and Murat were like Turkish brothers, I appreciated his hospitality a lot, but by the end of the 3 days he said he’d partied enough for the year, and I was only just beginning, like a goldfish that had jumped from the bowl.

The screenings went well (as always in New York). I love New Yorkers. I wanted to make the decision to leave Japan and never return… but god damn it, I was missing the place! and more-so the food, New York used to be a food paradise but it now seemed awful when compared to Japan. Even for me as a vegetarian, this place (Japan) really is the food capital of the world. They make better French food then the French, better bread, pastry, coffee, ice cream, cakes..

Oh god my weight, I never took up karate, it felt too much of a cliché, and I was scared of being bruised at my delicate age. So i intended to go to the gym, I even got a map of the nearest park to jog, but instead I’m waking late watching my belly grow bigger on great food and no exercise.

So I was kind of excited to be returning to Japan, then it started to snow in New York. Oh my god, it snowed. I took a cab to the airport but we lost the airport! nowhere to be seen. It was New York’s 2nd heaviest snow storm. 2 feet of snow, we were guided by a passing car to the airport finally. The flight was delayed 10 hours until the evening. Fortunately I’d upgraded with air miles and had a business class seat, so I was in the lounge. I watched the machines hard at work removing the snow on the runway, but just as they moved it more snow would come. It seemed never ending.

Then half an hour before we were due to fly the flight was canceled. We were shipped to a terrible hotel, had a terrible meal, terrible breakfast and ferried back to the airport the next day where I found I’d been downgraded to economy class because the flight was full – but given 3 seats to myself to sleep on, and access to the drinks bar up front. Some comfort.

I arrived back in Japan more exhausted then when I left, my relaxing weekend ended with more stress than a month in Japan. Now I’m sat here feeling like leaving but knowing I’m staying still looking for something to relate to, something to call my film.