As I have stated several times previously in this column (including in the header), I live in Japan. But thus far, I probably haven’t given you a particularly good idea of the place. Sure, there are plenty of images out there concerning Japan: the gleaming metropolis of Tokyo, the ethereal beauty and stately grace of ancient shrines and temples, even giant monster movies and photos of wartime destruction. While my experience certainly involves some of these things, it’s difficult to encapsulate my entire experience briefly… because I live in Osaka. Osaka, you see, is not what would be defined as “typical” or “ordinary” in Japan. In many ways, it’s its own animal, and over the course of these columns, I’m probably going to have to stop and explain to you many times that what’s true here does not always hold for all of Japan. So please bear with me as I attempt to introduce the place where I live…
First, the basics: Osaka is the center of Japan’s second-largest metropolitan area (the largest, whose name the people here speak with a sort of dismissive tone, is Tokyo). The city itself is home to 2.6 million people and the workplace of a million more, while the entire metropolitan region (including the nearby cities of Kobe and Kyoto) is upwards of 18 million, or roughly one-seventh of the entire Japanese population. I guess what I’m trying to say is, there’s no shortage of people.
Osaka also has its own particular character compared to other places in Japan, which could be summed up in a few general areas. The first is its commercial bent. Going back to the period of the Tokugawa Shogunate (which is 1600-1868; I apologize in advance if I sometimes forget to explain certain things that are common knowledge here), Osaka was home to lots and lots of merchants, while many of the samurai and the feudal lords they protected were off in Edo (modern-day Tokyo). This gave the merchant townspeople pretty much free reign to do what they do best, and this entrepreneurial spirit lives on in the present day. No matter where in the city you go, you’re bound to run into a covered shopping arcade (or several), and even in areas of the city which have been extensively redeveloped with high-rises, this is only to make way for – you guessed it – more places where you can buy stuff. One of Osaka’s most famous sights, the row of restaurants and stores along the Dotonbori canal, is chiefly recognizable by its billboards: larger than life, they tower over the heads of shoppers, illuminated in neon or featuring elaborate figures like moving crabs or running men. There’s even an old joke that says people in Osaka don’t greet each other with “hello,” but “how’s business?”. It may only be a joke, but it certainly has a ring of truth to it.
The next thing that sets Osaka apart is its casual feel. This may not seem like a big deal back in America, where casual dress and demeanor have become something of an institution (I am convinced that at this rate, one day we Americans will wear suits as an act of rebellion against stifling informality), but in a country which considers proper decorum a virtue and always knowing one’s place a necessity, Osaka is shockingly relaxed. This doesn’t exactly put it on the same level as the US, mind you – I only recently stopped having to wear a suit and tie to work – but in Japan, this is a big deal. For one thing, when you speak to other people, you’re supposed to either use their professional title, or apply an honorific suffix to their name such as “–san” or “–sensei” to show you respect them. Calling someone by their name alone (known as “yobisute”) indicates either that you’re very close to them, or that you have nothing but contempt for them. But in Osaka, this rule is a lot less rigid: here, when someone you barely know drops the “–san” from the end of your name, they’re (probably) not trying to start a fight – they just want to be friendly. This is partly why people from Osaka are seen as being “rude” or “improper” elsewhere in Japan, but that’s really not the case. They just don’t care quite so much about being “proper” all the time.
The third big aspect of Osaka is its, er, grittiness. While it’s supposedly a lot better than it was, Osaka is a (relatively) grimy, industrial port, especially when you compare it to more cosmopolitan locales like Tokyo and nearby Kobe. Things are more functional than elegant, the trains aren’t as fancy, and a haze hangs over the city in a way I haven’t seen elsewhere in my (admittedly somewhat limited) travels across Japan. In my mind, this helps contribute somewhat to a real down-to-earth, lived-in kind of feel, but it also means that Osaka has a reputation in Japan as “dirty”, “dangerous”, “unsavory”, “poor”, “overrun by the mafia”, et cetera. I don’t really think this is entirely fair, but it is certainly true that Osaka lags behind other parts of Japan in terms of measures such as income, unemployment, academic performance, and the like. The prefecture is also deeply in debt, which isn’t helped by its current governor, who seems determined to steer the ship even further aground by cutting funding for things like education first and foremost. (Japan has various and sundry areas of bureaucratic bloat, but the school system in Osaka is under-funded as it is.) This leads me to the last major area of Osaka…
And that is, of course, the food. But unfortunately, to adequately cover the cuisine of the city known as the “Nation’s Kitchen”, it’s going to take me a lot more space to describe even one of the many things you can eat here in full. But, what makes me especially happy is that people in Osaka are statistically much more likely than those from other parts of Japan to share in my distaste for natto – gooey, rank-smelling fermented soybeans that I avoid like the plague. They’re marketed as a health food, but if that’s what it takes to be healthy, I’d prefer some form of painful medical treatment instead.
Of course, even this description doesn’t fully do justice to the place where I live. After all, there are still plenty of shrines and temples, and ancient burial mounds, and tons of mass transportation, and then there’s the aforementioned food, and— and—… hmm. Well, I suppose at the very least, I won’t be wanting for future subjects. Until then, I hope you’ll find this all-too-brief portrait of Osaka mildly entertaining, if entirely inadequate. Till next time…
28 May 2008
21 May 2008
Nothing says “Japan” like donuts and coffee
There’s something about being abroad that, despite its many novelties, also spurs the expatriate to find that “piece of home” where he can be temporarily back inside a zone of familiarity and comfort. For me, this involves regular pilgrimages to none other than the venerable American institution of Mister Donut.
Now, there are probably many of you who haven’t heard of Mister Donut (as I had not until I came to Japan). To make a long story short, Mister Donut was a rival and erstwhile sibling to the now-ubiquitous Dunkin’ Donuts juggernaut: both franchises were founded in Massachusetts, in the mid-Fifties, by brothers-in-law who went their separate ways (probably in a heated argument over what kind goes the best with coffee). Though both prospered for a while and expanded greatly, in the end, the mustachioed “Mister Donut” chef was unable to compete with the “It’s time to make the donuts” guy, and the chain was bought outright by Dunkin’ in the early 1990s. Most former Mister Donut locations in the US are now either Dunkin’ Donuts or simply gone (only nine now-independent shops, scattered across the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest, retain the name). But here in Japan, this is plainly not the case. Mister Donut is to Japan what Dunkin’ Donuts is back home: it’s everywhere, and nobody (not Krispy Kreme, and most certainly not Dunkin’) can touch it. It’s especially commonplace in front of train stations, where there is always a plentiful market of hungry commuters ready for a bite to eat. For almost any other fast food megafranchise, I would see this as lamentable, but even I can’t begrudge donuts and coffee at one of the few places in Japan that realizes curry was never intended by nature as a potential filling. To that alone, I must tip my proverbial hat.
What makes Mister Donut in Japan even more interesting is the extent to which it emphasizes its American roots. They have every right to do so, of course, but considering the franchise’s situation back in its home country, it smacks of foreign branding. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term, you’ve doubtless come across it: it exists in everything from the ersatz-Scandinavian ice cream Häagen-Dazs — straight from the fjords of New Jersey — to beer companies’ use of famous European brewing-regions’ names in their domestic brands. (In just one outstanding display of incomprehensibility, the Budweis, Czech Republic-based Budvar brewery isn’t even allowed to call its product “Budweiser” in the US, thanks to a lawsuit from St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch). In England, some electronics companies even went so far as to give themselves Japanese names, in order to compete in the market. Why they do it, of course, comes down to getting the product to sell, based on the perceived qualities of the place they are impersonating. But whether the company is legitimately non-domestic or just wants to sound that way, there’s no denying that our unconscious associations of certain places with particular desirable (or undesirable) attributes helps color our buying habits.
And that helps explain why foreign branding is so big in Japan. Among Japanese, so the reasoning goes, Japan tends to get linked with things like tradition and familiarity, so to get a product to stand out, companies will invariably use something foreign to give it appeal. This doesn’t really hit home until you’re standing on a train, looking up at the ads, and it suddenly occurs to you that most of the products have English(-ish) names, and over half the models are Westerners. In Japan, foreign branding has practically become just branding, period. This puts Mister Donut into an interesting position, since they can legitimately claim American origins, and they certainly don’t ignore this opportunity. Shops advertise prominently, “Founded 1955, Boston, Massachusetts,” and (somewhat more ambitiously), “world’s best coffee and fresh donuts.” Both slogans are, of course, in English. Using the English language in advertising isn’t new in itself, but here, it’s only a start: One potentially baffling (to foreigners) aspect of Mister Donut’s American branding is how it can justify serving Chinese food alongside its donuts in some stores. The chain gets around this, however, by referring to these sub-stores as “Mister Yumcha – San Francisco Chinatown”, linking it back to the franchise’s American roots in truly inspired fashion. (You’d think Japanese customers would be more comfortable with slightly more “authentic” Chinese food, but I guess “America” trumps that notion when it comes to foreign appeal.)
The “American” motif continues inside, where English-language songs from the Sixties to the present, but none in Japanese, can be heard over the speakers. A few may even be so new that I hadn’t heard them before coming to Japan; I can tell this because I can usually comfortably ignore them without that twinge of annoyance that develops from hearing something on the radio a few (thousand) too many times. But the real clincher in terms of “American-ness” is that Mister Donut is the only place I’ve encountered in Japan thus far that offers free coffee refills. This fact alone makes it an ideal place for me to sit and read a book or study Japanese, without feeling obligated to order something else or vacate my spot for another customer. Pair this with one of those “old-fashioned” donuts that soaks up the coffee like a sponge, and it’s just about perfect. It may not always be the best thing for me to be putting such massive amounts of caffeine into my body at what is typically already a late hour, but it helps make this time my most productive of the day, providing inspiration for (among other things) the column you are reading now. (I am also deeply indebted to Bill Bryson and his book I’m a Stranger Here Myself, which I read mostly at Mister Donut.)
What really gets me, though, is that there’s really no need for all the “American” posturing. In spite of all that, it ends up feeling like it just belongs, as a sort of “friendly corner store” down the street. It’s a piece of home-away-from-home, but it doesn’t feel away from anywhere. That’s comforting to me, somehow… but maybe that’s just the American in me talking.
Now, there are probably many of you who haven’t heard of Mister Donut (as I had not until I came to Japan). To make a long story short, Mister Donut was a rival and erstwhile sibling to the now-ubiquitous Dunkin’ Donuts juggernaut: both franchises were founded in Massachusetts, in the mid-Fifties, by brothers-in-law who went their separate ways (probably in a heated argument over what kind goes the best with coffee). Though both prospered for a while and expanded greatly, in the end, the mustachioed “Mister Donut” chef was unable to compete with the “It’s time to make the donuts” guy, and the chain was bought outright by Dunkin’ in the early 1990s. Most former Mister Donut locations in the US are now either Dunkin’ Donuts or simply gone (only nine now-independent shops, scattered across the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest, retain the name). But here in Japan, this is plainly not the case. Mister Donut is to Japan what Dunkin’ Donuts is back home: it’s everywhere, and nobody (not Krispy Kreme, and most certainly not Dunkin’) can touch it. It’s especially commonplace in front of train stations, where there is always a plentiful market of hungry commuters ready for a bite to eat. For almost any other fast food megafranchise, I would see this as lamentable, but even I can’t begrudge donuts and coffee at one of the few places in Japan that realizes curry was never intended by nature as a potential filling. To that alone, I must tip my proverbial hat.
What makes Mister Donut in Japan even more interesting is the extent to which it emphasizes its American roots. They have every right to do so, of course, but considering the franchise’s situation back in its home country, it smacks of foreign branding. Even if you’re unfamiliar with the term, you’ve doubtless come across it: it exists in everything from the ersatz-Scandinavian ice cream Häagen-Dazs — straight from the fjords of New Jersey — to beer companies’ use of famous European brewing-regions’ names in their domestic brands. (In just one outstanding display of incomprehensibility, the Budweis, Czech Republic-based Budvar brewery isn’t even allowed to call its product “Budweiser” in the US, thanks to a lawsuit from St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch). In England, some electronics companies even went so far as to give themselves Japanese names, in order to compete in the market. Why they do it, of course, comes down to getting the product to sell, based on the perceived qualities of the place they are impersonating. But whether the company is legitimately non-domestic or just wants to sound that way, there’s no denying that our unconscious associations of certain places with particular desirable (or undesirable) attributes helps color our buying habits.
And that helps explain why foreign branding is so big in Japan. Among Japanese, so the reasoning goes, Japan tends to get linked with things like tradition and familiarity, so to get a product to stand out, companies will invariably use something foreign to give it appeal. This doesn’t really hit home until you’re standing on a train, looking up at the ads, and it suddenly occurs to you that most of the products have English(-ish) names, and over half the models are Westerners. In Japan, foreign branding has practically become just branding, period. This puts Mister Donut into an interesting position, since they can legitimately claim American origins, and they certainly don’t ignore this opportunity. Shops advertise prominently, “Founded 1955, Boston, Massachusetts,” and (somewhat more ambitiously), “world’s best coffee and fresh donuts.” Both slogans are, of course, in English. Using the English language in advertising isn’t new in itself, but here, it’s only a start: One potentially baffling (to foreigners) aspect of Mister Donut’s American branding is how it can justify serving Chinese food alongside its donuts in some stores. The chain gets around this, however, by referring to these sub-stores as “Mister Yumcha – San Francisco Chinatown”, linking it back to the franchise’s American roots in truly inspired fashion. (You’d think Japanese customers would be more comfortable with slightly more “authentic” Chinese food, but I guess “America” trumps that notion when it comes to foreign appeal.)
The “American” motif continues inside, where English-language songs from the Sixties to the present, but none in Japanese, can be heard over the speakers. A few may even be so new that I hadn’t heard them before coming to Japan; I can tell this because I can usually comfortably ignore them without that twinge of annoyance that develops from hearing something on the radio a few (thousand) too many times. But the real clincher in terms of “American-ness” is that Mister Donut is the only place I’ve encountered in Japan thus far that offers free coffee refills. This fact alone makes it an ideal place for me to sit and read a book or study Japanese, without feeling obligated to order something else or vacate my spot for another customer. Pair this with one of those “old-fashioned” donuts that soaks up the coffee like a sponge, and it’s just about perfect. It may not always be the best thing for me to be putting such massive amounts of caffeine into my body at what is typically already a late hour, but it helps make this time my most productive of the day, providing inspiration for (among other things) the column you are reading now. (I am also deeply indebted to Bill Bryson and his book I’m a Stranger Here Myself, which I read mostly at Mister Donut.)
What really gets me, though, is that there’s really no need for all the “American” posturing. In spite of all that, it ends up feeling like it just belongs, as a sort of “friendly corner store” down the street. It’s a piece of home-away-from-home, but it doesn’t feel away from anywhere. That’s comforting to me, somehow… but maybe that’s just the American in me talking.
14 May 2008
An Introduction
I am terrible at beginnings. This is a problem that plagued me back in my school days, and even all the way through college (where I submitted my senior thesis just barely by the deadline, held up not by the research or conclusions, but how to introduce the damned thing). I am also by no means professionally trained as a writer, a fact which no doubt will show in how I tend to ramble on about things. It is thus with much trepidation that I attempt to explain, without too much needless exposition, the life I lead at present. You see, since September of 2007, I have been living in Japan, and that’s a hell of a thing to start out with.
I suppose, looking back, that I first encountered the idea of “Japan” in the third grade at Guardino Elementary in Clayton. At the time, of course, it was little more than a vague idea: I did some obligatory research on the National Diet, listened to someone who had studied abroad there without retaining too much of what I heard, tried green tea and thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever attempted to ingest in all of my eight years. But something resonated with me, I think, and six or seven years later I was at it again, this time trying to teach myself Japanese.
I’m not exactly sure why I started doing that, but it probably had something to do with my innate drive to look for a challenge (even if it’s admittedly well over my head), as well as the TV I was watching at the time. I was coming of age just as Dragonball Z was reaching its peak of popularity on TV in the US, and as much as I enjoyed the show, I was annoyed by changes to the plot being made to pass muster with censors. Now, in my book this is something you simply don’t do, irate soccer moms or religious fundamentalists notwithstanding. So, in a fine display of my fifteen-year-old sensibilities, I decided then and there that I would learn Japanese so I wouldn’t have to deal with the English version at all.
The most surprising thing is probably that I actually stuck with it: my resolution to be able to watch Japanese TV without subtitles or other intermediaries turned first into a fascination for the language itself, then the culture, and when I got to college I found myself taking classes for real, eventually minoring in the subject. And so, in January of 2006, I was off to Japan for the first time, to study in Kyoto for a semester.
The fact that I’m writing this column probably gives you an idea of the impression it left on me, but for the amazing experience it was, I also had to deal with some profoundly negative aspects. Yes, Kyoto is an absolutely beautiful city, with a rich history and plenty of places to explore. My Japanese also improved by leaps and bounds in the space of a few months. But I also had to deal with an elderly, very traditional host family that didn’t really seem to take to me, or my penchant for getting lost in unfamiliar places just because I could. And then there was the relationship: an extremely serious, long-term romantic entanglement that had me longing for home and baffled at her indifference to me when we were so far apart. When that finally imploded (a story that could easily fill up quite a few of these columns, if I were to tell it in full), it left me miserable and very bitter for a number of months afterward. Yet in spite of all of that, I was profoundly moved by the place I found myself in and the people I met. Whatever lingering bitterness I had was quickly subsumed by a desire to go back. In some way, Japan had become a part of me; now I had to make it my own. So, in September 2007, I packed up my bags and headed for Osaka, determined to do just that.
My life since then has been one full of adventures (and sometimes misadventures), cultural faux pas, and discoveries both big and small. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s certainly never been boring. In this column, I will do my best to catalogue my more memorable experiences, and reflections on living in a foreign country. I’ll also do my best to convey what everyday life in Japan is like, when so much of what we hear about it in America is filtered through popular culture or the history books. At any rate, it is my hope that this column will become something of a regular feature, but I am the first to admit that this is an incredibly daunting prospect. I have no doubt that there are plenty of things to write about (I have a few ideas floating about already), but 52 weeks in a year is an awfully large number. I’ll see what I can do. But as for the next column, how about one that goes well with a nice cup of coffee and some donuts?
I suppose, looking back, that I first encountered the idea of “Japan” in the third grade at Guardino Elementary in Clayton. At the time, of course, it was little more than a vague idea: I did some obligatory research on the National Diet, listened to someone who had studied abroad there without retaining too much of what I heard, tried green tea and thought it was the most disgusting thing I had ever attempted to ingest in all of my eight years. But something resonated with me, I think, and six or seven years later I was at it again, this time trying to teach myself Japanese.
I’m not exactly sure why I started doing that, but it probably had something to do with my innate drive to look for a challenge (even if it’s admittedly well over my head), as well as the TV I was watching at the time. I was coming of age just as Dragonball Z was reaching its peak of popularity on TV in the US, and as much as I enjoyed the show, I was annoyed by changes to the plot being made to pass muster with censors. Now, in my book this is something you simply don’t do, irate soccer moms or religious fundamentalists notwithstanding. So, in a fine display of my fifteen-year-old sensibilities, I decided then and there that I would learn Japanese so I wouldn’t have to deal with the English version at all.
The most surprising thing is probably that I actually stuck with it: my resolution to be able to watch Japanese TV without subtitles or other intermediaries turned first into a fascination for the language itself, then the culture, and when I got to college I found myself taking classes for real, eventually minoring in the subject. And so, in January of 2006, I was off to Japan for the first time, to study in Kyoto for a semester.
The fact that I’m writing this column probably gives you an idea of the impression it left on me, but for the amazing experience it was, I also had to deal with some profoundly negative aspects. Yes, Kyoto is an absolutely beautiful city, with a rich history and plenty of places to explore. My Japanese also improved by leaps and bounds in the space of a few months. But I also had to deal with an elderly, very traditional host family that didn’t really seem to take to me, or my penchant for getting lost in unfamiliar places just because I could. And then there was the relationship: an extremely serious, long-term romantic entanglement that had me longing for home and baffled at her indifference to me when we were so far apart. When that finally imploded (a story that could easily fill up quite a few of these columns, if I were to tell it in full), it left me miserable and very bitter for a number of months afterward. Yet in spite of all of that, I was profoundly moved by the place I found myself in and the people I met. Whatever lingering bitterness I had was quickly subsumed by a desire to go back. In some way, Japan had become a part of me; now I had to make it my own. So, in September 2007, I packed up my bags and headed for Osaka, determined to do just that.
My life since then has been one full of adventures (and sometimes misadventures), cultural faux pas, and discoveries both big and small. It hasn’t always been easy, but it’s certainly never been boring. In this column, I will do my best to catalogue my more memorable experiences, and reflections on living in a foreign country. I’ll also do my best to convey what everyday life in Japan is like, when so much of what we hear about it in America is filtered through popular culture or the history books. At any rate, it is my hope that this column will become something of a regular feature, but I am the first to admit that this is an incredibly daunting prospect. I have no doubt that there are plenty of things to write about (I have a few ideas floating about already), but 52 weeks in a year is an awfully large number. I’ll see what I can do. But as for the next column, how about one that goes well with a nice cup of coffee and some donuts?
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