Geeks bearing gifts

Japanese guys are geeks.　　Let`s just start with that.　

I`m a geek, and always have been, I grew up amongst geeks for years, and I was not the least geeky of them.  So, It`s not like I`m putting these guys down.  I`m just stating a fact.

Second, bear with me because anyone who knows me (which, as always, you`re reading this, so you`re almost certainly such a person, I mean who are we kidding?) knows that I rarely think about guys much less talk or much less write about them.  But this kind of hits you in the face over here.

That steely-eyed, non-geeky look

Third, don`t start saying, oh come on, this is such a generality.  You can`t say this.  I can, and I`ll back it up with some facts.  There are almost no ungeeky Japanese guys, and most of those are fictional.  Rare nongeek Japanese guys are Mr. Miyagi (who`s not all THAT ungeeky, really), any character played by Ken Watanabe, and, I guess, to be fair, probably Ken Watanabe.  And recollect that all but one of the people I just mentioned are fictional.  So I rest my case on that score.

There are several types of Geeky Japanese guys. 

L-to-R descending order of geekiness

The accidentally geekiest of them all are the guys who are trying so hard to look cool.  I saw a guy yesterday walking along Shijo Dori with a Mickey Dolenz haircut.  That never even worked on Mickey Dolenz, and believe me, it`s certainly not an improvement when moved to a Japanese guy`s head.  There are a few of these guys, and they should just give up, IMHO.

Hey, new haircuts worked for the Beatles!

Second, and probably philosophically close to the first group, are the Bad Boys.  In this case when I use the term "bad boys" I`m limiting to actual males (I`ll use the term differently in my next post).  The Bad Boys want to be Bad, but after all, this is Japan, you know? How bad is it going to get?  I saw some guys on the train the other day who you would DEFINITELY steer clear of after a certain hour of the evening on the Bronx line of the NY subway.  They got on the train looking scary.  One of them presently said to the other, for some reason, "Let`s move to the next car."  So they started to go over there and they realized it was a "women only" car, and looked at each other and said the Japanese equivalent of "Rats!  We can`t go into that car! It`s against the rule!"  Now suddenly, though doubtless they`re Bad Boys here in Japan, suddenly they`re the kind of guy who, in the U.S. at least, you`d leave alone with the baby sitter while you were out for the evening to make sure she`s paying proper attention to your kids.  They`re Bad Boy geeks.

Next come the run of Japanese guys.  I`m talking about "guys" of course meaning males from the age of, what, 2 1/2 on.  Three, tops, if the DNA is right.

They`re geeks.  They may be sweet geeks, in fact I rather imagine that most of them are.  Nonetheless, they`re geeks, all of them.  By the age of 21 they could all of them pass as chemical engineers.  In fact, I`m convinced in my heart that almost all of them are chemical engineers. And when I say chemical engineers, I mean it.  These are chemical engineers the like of which make the average American chemical engineer look like he`s been playing alto sax in a smoky nightclub on the south side of Chicago since he was 5.  I`m looking for Ken Watanabe to play a chemical engineer in his next movie.

Last, there are the guys who are geeks in Japan.  I know you think you know geeks.  I`m sure you remember that guy in your seventh grade class (the worst, because every guy who ever lived was a geek in seventh grade), who was so geeky that he named his pets after Superman characters, that guy.  That guy would not even be recognized among the geeks here.  These guys are pros.  They redefine the geek scale.  And they`re barely even noticed here.  As usual, they`re often seen with the hottest girl on the street.

 `My time grows short,' observed the Spirit.  The guardian of Computer A is doing its job.  So, more next time, possibly tomorrow.

Anyway, as I said, I have nothing against geeks.  Guys generally scratch their heads, all over the world, to see the ultra-hot chicks hanging with the ulta-geeky geeks.  But as we grew older, sooner or later, we realized that these hot chicks were often kind of lucky to get them.   Or so I imagine sometimes.

Anyway, still looking for rain.  It rained a few drops today but if this is the "rainy season" then climate change is for real.  Yeah, I know.