RSS / Atom

English twitter: @kidethnic

KID ETHNIC IS WRITTEN BY:

saleem reshamwla
who is fresh of the boat (that circled the globe).

He makes crazy stuff:

Zombie Rap Videos, Truly Strange Geographic Education Flicks, Micro-Documentaries About Chinese Cell Phone Markets...

kidethnic@gmail.com

日本語のtwitter: @masalasoccer

ALSO BY KID ETHNIC:

Twitter
I twitter infrequently. But hope we can stay friends.

100JapaneseThings
A collaborative site to help folks (and each other) find Japanese stuff.

The Annual Kid Ethnic Valentine
Because I love you so much.

The Whiteboard Videos
Music+Whiteboard Markers+Friends=Good ways to spend weekends

SEAWEED BREAKFAST
A collection of stories about Japan written while part of the National Geographic Glimpse Correspondents' Training Program.

The Alpaca Song
I wrote and recorded this for you. Because you <em>need</em> a song about alpacas, don&#8217;t you?

RSS / Atom

Subscribe with Bloglines

Japanese Houses Hate Halfie's Head · 1 October 04

picture of me standing in my doorframe

5 quick and painful facts:

1) The average Japanese male is around 5 and a half feet tall.
2) Japanese people construct their houses for Japanese people.
3) I live in a Japanese house.
4) I am 5’11” on a tall day.
5) Wearing your shoes on tatami (a sort of Japanese bamboo carpet) is extremely uncool.

Monday afternoon, I biked home from school to grab some food and get some papers.

Ate some rice, gathered my things, and put on my shoes. Tied one of my massive (by Japanese standards) Vans hi-tops. Realized that I had left some papers on the tatami in my living room.

(I don’t like tying and untying my shoes.)

Hopped back into my living room on my left sock, careful to keep my gigantic dirty shoe off the tatami.

(I am a good hopper.)

Grabbed my papers, and with a might rotating hop, I twisted back toward my apartment hallway.

All of which would have been no problem in my apartment in New York.

Note that in the above photo, I am standing in one of my doorway. Note that I’m not jumping in the picture, nor am I using any tricky angles. Note the distance between my head and the top of the doorframe.

Mid-hop, the right side of my head nailed the doorframe, and my world disappeared for a bit.

I lay on the floor for a long, long time. I kept thinking, “I just need a little nap” then, “no, Saleem, don’t pass out, don’t pass out.” My vision blurred at the edges, like just before a flashback in an 80’s sitcom.

I stayed awake, and I after awhile even stood up. But I swerved an awful lot on my bike ride back to school, and I think I’m a lot stupider now.

So, my apologies if this week’s posts have been incoherent. Please blame my house.

| Permanent link to this

* * *

  1. you rock! I hope you plan to make a book out of these stories. I am laughing my *$#@ off. And I just made Jessie listen to “Alpaca”. She loves it. She thinks you should go on tour and she’d totally be a groupie. Me too.

    Hey, are you interested in doing some corespondence journalism for Seventeen? We need someone to interview young guys (15-20) and take their picture digitally for our famous guys talk section. Let me know. email me at work. cjkirby@hearst.com
    ciao!
    carli
    — Carli    2662 days ago    #

|