I apologize for the rather mundane title this week, but the fact of the matter is that I’m at a bit of an impasse regarding my laundry. I have just washed as big a load as my undersized washer will allow, only to discover that the weather has shifted into torrential-downpour mode, with no signs of letting up in the near future. This is a problem.
Perhaps I should explain. First, the month of June is set aside in Japan for the rainy season, or tsuyu. (The name itself is a picturesque visual metaphor using the characters for “plum” and “rain”, but maybe that’s because “month of perpetual moist gloom” seemed a bit too dreary.) For the better part of the month, there is rain at some point during the day. And if it doesn’t rain, it’s generally overcast and threatening rain, or more rarely, sunny but scorching hot and with 100% humidity. Also, when it rains, it doesn’t seem to hold anything back. Since I tend to misplace my umbrella with alarming frequency, this has likewise meant more days than I’d like to admit where I have ended up soaked through, courtesy of a well-timed cloudburst. I would suspect that this is just another example of nature not being particularly fond of me as a person, if not for the fact that people around me seem to treat it as perfectly normal. That’s fair enough, and even I’m making do for the most part, except that…
I don’t have a clothes dryer. To be honest, that’s pretty much the norm here. In a country where space is a premium and resources are expensive, clothes dryers are seen as luxury items that require both the room to put them and the funds to pay for the electric bills they incur. Consequently, only families, or the relatively well-off individual (or at any rate, not me) actually have one. Instead, most people (including me) hang their laundry out to dry on the balcony of their apartment, airing their drawers for all to see. Since everybody does it, though, it’s not considered the least bit embarrassing to do. Even so, I still find the idea incredibly novel.
You see, I grew up in a house in America which had a clothes dryer as part of a pair. In my childhood, I saw washer and dryer as inseparable, two halves of a whole, yin and yang, and other dualistic metaphors. We washed our clothes in the washer, and when they were done washing, we put them in the dryer to dry. This was the natural and true state of affairs for the Universe, and I could scarcely conceive of it any other way.
Now, even in my childhood, I was aware of other people I knew at least sometimes hanging up their laundry to dry, and I even helped in this endeavor. But somehow, it never occurred to me that I would ever do this with my own clothes. Looking back, I suppose this was the inevitable result of both of my parents working, and my sister and myself being out of the house for most of the day. Knowing what North Country weather can be like, hanging laundry outside would more likely than not end up with us coming back to find the laundry quite a bit less dry than we had left it. But at any rate, the end result is that my time in Japan is really my first experience with drying clothes by air.
And that brings me to the conundrum with which I started this column. I now have a massive pile of clean, but extremely damp, clothing items, and the place where I was going to hang them all up looks rather like the deck of an oceangoing vessel in the middle of a gale. This is especially a problem, because I have work tomorrow and, as usual, have neglected to wash my things until I really, absolutely need more clean clothes. I suppose I’ll just have to spread them around the apartment in ridiculous fashion in the hopes that they’ll be dry enough in the morning to use, but one way or another, it’ll work out. I’m used to doing things counterintuitively by now.
Still, maybe I ought to take a cue from my students at the junior high school where I work. In response to the incessant weather of late, they’ve fallen back on what is apparently an ancient standby, the teru teru bozu (roughly, “sunshine monk”). This is a simple figure made in the same fashion as a tissue paper “ghost”, often decorated with the same silly face as is drawn on Japanese scarecrows. Simply hang this talisman in the window, and you’ll have sunny weather before you know it. Or at least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. I have no empirical studies available examining its effectiveness, but at this point, I’m willing to try pretty much anything in order to get my laundry to dry, so here goes nothing. At the very least, I won’t be having too much of this problem once the Japanese summer officially hits… then I’ll be needing to figure out how to keep myself dry. But that, I’m afraid, is a story for another column.
25 June 2008
18 June 2008
Living in an earthquake-prone country
We interrupt your regularly scheduled column to bring you a very special episode of “Life in Japan.” This has less to do with anything relating directly to me in the past week, and is more to reassure everyone back home that, despite what they may have heard, reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. But I’m getting ahead of myself… so let’s start from the beginning.
From what I understand, there was an earthquake here in Japan this past Saturday. In fact, it was a relatively strong one, with a magnitude of 6.8 or 7.2, depending on the source. I know this, because relatives and friends immediately started contacting me that evening (just as they were all waking up back in the other hemisphere) to make sure I was OK. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have found out until the next day.
I apologize if I sound somewhat unimpressed by all the fuss, but the thing is, earthquakes aren’t exactly all that rare an occurrence here in Japan. While really strong earthquakes do come along every few years, and have the potential to do a lot of damage if they strike in the right place (such as the Kobe earthquake in 1995), it’s really just par for the course here. Japan, you see, is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region characterized by frequent seismic (and volcanic) activity. As a result of multiple oceanic and continental plates scraping against each other in the ultimate low-speed collision (a few centimeters a year, give or take), Japan experiences up to 1500 low-intensity earthquakes per year, with really major ones coming up a few times each century. (The biggest ones by far in the past 100 years were the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 which devastated Tokyo, and the aforementioned Kobe Earthquake in 1995.)
Japan also has a number of (mostly dormant) volcanoes, which have substantial eruptions every millennium or so. All this might still make some people uneasy; I admit it does look kind of scary on paper. But of those 1000-odd quakes that Japan experiences each year, I have only felt a grand total of one. It was in October of last year, and took the form a low frequency rumble with a little vibration, which lasted all of about 30 seconds. Not quite the grand cataclysm I was expecting it to be, and frankly, I was slightly disappointed (not that that’s what my parents would want to hear). It was really quite anticlimactic.
I suppose that I really shouldn’t blame people back home for worrying about me. After all, the geography of foreign countries is not something given much focus (or at least paid much attention) in US schools…but then again, certain members of my family are liable to call us up in Clayton on a fairly regular basis to ask how we’re coping with the latest winter storm in Buffalo, so maybe it’s not the schools’ fault. Regardless, to give you a sense of the distance between me and Saturday’s earthquake, the epicenter was in Iwate Prefecture, which is about 240 miles north of Tokyo. I live in Osaka, which is about 250 miles west of Tokyo. I’m not quite sure if the Pythagorean Theorem is valid for figuring distances like this, but by my reckoning, that puts me somewhere between 350 and 400 miles away. In US terms, that’s roughly the same distance as it is between Clayton and Washington, D.C. So, I’m in no way particularly affected by the quake.
I think, though, that geographical concerns aside, the news media in the US has also helped paint the picture in a somewhat more disastrous light than absolutely necessary. I could spill much ink ranting about the various preoccupations of news outlets in the US (most of which seem to involve famous people doing very foolish things), but the exploitation of disaster seems to be up there in the top ten. And with the recent earthquakes in China that killed over 50,000 people and left millions of others homeless receding from its remarkably-short attention span, I can only assume that they were trying to draw as many parallels as possible in order to keep milking the situation. This is the only way I can explain headlines such as “Japan rescuers search for quake missing”, or “Japan earthquake death toll rises”. Neither of these is untrue, of course, but it’s somewhat less compelling when you read on and realize that the number of missing is one dozen, and the confirmed death toll is a whole ten people – including a man who died after fleeing in terror from his house and being hit by a passing truck. While I realize that it is no less a tragedy for these things, and it has gotten significant coverage within Japan as well, the effort – at least initially – to compare it to last month’s earthquake in Sichuan is completely laughable.
This is not to say, however, that I am completely at ease with being in a nation known for occasionally having its largest cities (which are among the largest cities on Earth) completely leveled. The statistical chances of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a seismic event are extremely low, but they are still higher than they would be back home. And while Japan has extensive building codes, which require structures to be able to withstand fairly strong earthquakes, I’m not too keen on being in one that isn’t up to snuff if a Big One comes. The people around me seem to take this relatively in stride, worrying more about ever-increasing gas prices, declining job benefits, and the periodic saber-rattling from North Korea. Guess that means I just need to adapt.
Of course, come to think of it, all this tectonic monkey business also has its perks: after all, it means that the country has tons of hot springs, which I am immensely fond of (and will probably devote a column to at some point). So, you know what? All things considered, living in an earthquake-prone country isn’t half bad.
From what I understand, there was an earthquake here in Japan this past Saturday. In fact, it was a relatively strong one, with a magnitude of 6.8 or 7.2, depending on the source. I know this, because relatives and friends immediately started contacting me that evening (just as they were all waking up back in the other hemisphere) to make sure I was OK. Otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have found out until the next day.
I apologize if I sound somewhat unimpressed by all the fuss, but the thing is, earthquakes aren’t exactly all that rare an occurrence here in Japan. While really strong earthquakes do come along every few years, and have the potential to do a lot of damage if they strike in the right place (such as the Kobe earthquake in 1995), it’s really just par for the course here. Japan, you see, is located along the Pacific Ring of Fire, a region characterized by frequent seismic (and volcanic) activity. As a result of multiple oceanic and continental plates scraping against each other in the ultimate low-speed collision (a few centimeters a year, give or take), Japan experiences up to 1500 low-intensity earthquakes per year, with really major ones coming up a few times each century. (The biggest ones by far in the past 100 years were the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 which devastated Tokyo, and the aforementioned Kobe Earthquake in 1995.)
Japan also has a number of (mostly dormant) volcanoes, which have substantial eruptions every millennium or so. All this might still make some people uneasy; I admit it does look kind of scary on paper. But of those 1000-odd quakes that Japan experiences each year, I have only felt a grand total of one. It was in October of last year, and took the form a low frequency rumble with a little vibration, which lasted all of about 30 seconds. Not quite the grand cataclysm I was expecting it to be, and frankly, I was slightly disappointed (not that that’s what my parents would want to hear). It was really quite anticlimactic.
I suppose that I really shouldn’t blame people back home for worrying about me. After all, the geography of foreign countries is not something given much focus (or at least paid much attention) in US schools…but then again, certain members of my family are liable to call us up in Clayton on a fairly regular basis to ask how we’re coping with the latest winter storm in Buffalo, so maybe it’s not the schools’ fault. Regardless, to give you a sense of the distance between me and Saturday’s earthquake, the epicenter was in Iwate Prefecture, which is about 240 miles north of Tokyo. I live in Osaka, which is about 250 miles west of Tokyo. I’m not quite sure if the Pythagorean Theorem is valid for figuring distances like this, but by my reckoning, that puts me somewhere between 350 and 400 miles away. In US terms, that’s roughly the same distance as it is between Clayton and Washington, D.C. So, I’m in no way particularly affected by the quake.
I think, though, that geographical concerns aside, the news media in the US has also helped paint the picture in a somewhat more disastrous light than absolutely necessary. I could spill much ink ranting about the various preoccupations of news outlets in the US (most of which seem to involve famous people doing very foolish things), but the exploitation of disaster seems to be up there in the top ten. And with the recent earthquakes in China that killed over 50,000 people and left millions of others homeless receding from its remarkably-short attention span, I can only assume that they were trying to draw as many parallels as possible in order to keep milking the situation. This is the only way I can explain headlines such as “Japan rescuers search for quake missing”, or “Japan earthquake death toll rises”. Neither of these is untrue, of course, but it’s somewhat less compelling when you read on and realize that the number of missing is one dozen, and the confirmed death toll is a whole ten people – including a man who died after fleeing in terror from his house and being hit by a passing truck. While I realize that it is no less a tragedy for these things, and it has gotten significant coverage within Japan as well, the effort – at least initially – to compare it to last month’s earthquake in Sichuan is completely laughable.
This is not to say, however, that I am completely at ease with being in a nation known for occasionally having its largest cities (which are among the largest cities on Earth) completely leveled. The statistical chances of me being in the wrong place at the wrong time during a seismic event are extremely low, but they are still higher than they would be back home. And while Japan has extensive building codes, which require structures to be able to withstand fairly strong earthquakes, I’m not too keen on being in one that isn’t up to snuff if a Big One comes. The people around me seem to take this relatively in stride, worrying more about ever-increasing gas prices, declining job benefits, and the periodic saber-rattling from North Korea. Guess that means I just need to adapt.
Of course, come to think of it, all this tectonic monkey business also has its perks: after all, it means that the country has tons of hot springs, which I am immensely fond of (and will probably devote a column to at some point). So, you know what? All things considered, living in an earthquake-prone country isn’t half bad.
11 June 2008
Taking the train
In my time in Japan, I’ve become something of a train nut. It’s been building for quite some time now: looking back, when I was a kid, my father would always be tinkering with his train layouts in his spare time, and he had (and maybe still does have) an impressive collection of tapes about trainspotting. Not the critically-acclaimed film about drug addiction, mind you, but the hobby of standing near railroad tracks and filming a train going by. Sometimes, these trains would be ridiculously long, and my father would sit there and watch as car after car passed by on screen. I never quite understood the appeal, but I didn’t mind too much all the train shows and exhibits he’d take me to, and after all these years, I guess his hobbies ended up instilling me with a latent appreciation for trains. I didn’t realize just how far I’d come, until a student labeled me a “train otaku” (an otaku is basically a hyper-geek of a specific hobby) after I gave him precise, unsolicited directions to a place he mentioned in passing that he’d like to visit. This is all a roundabout way of introducing my topic for this week, which is rail travel in Japan.
Those of you familiar with rail transportation as it exists in the US can be forgiven if you must momentarily suppress a shiver of revulsion. The heyday of railroads in the US can firmly be placed over 100 years ago, and its long decline has only been hastened by the advent of the automobile, as well as lack of upkeep in general on long-distance routes. (On a local note, there used to be a rail line into downtown Clayton, ending at a ferry terminal in what is now Frink Park. The track was disused for years before finally being removed in the ’60s.) It certainly doesn’t help the situation any that Amtrak, the government-run passenger service, is only slightly better than “abysmal”. Having few tracks of their own, they mostly run on freight lines, and when they’re behind schedule (i.e., all the time), it’s behind the freight trains they go. I won’t even get started on the safety record.
But here in Japan, things are quite different. The country in general has a very extensive rail network, which is no small feat for an archipelago that also happens to be covered by mountains. But aside from the impressive array of tunnels through solid rock and under bodies of water, the trains are also – for the most part – fast, safe, and reliably on time. (Japanese people tend to think of a train as “late” if it’s off the schedule by a couple of minutes; I’m just grateful it appears within the same hour as the listed time.) Osaka in particular is great for getting around by train: including the quasi-national Japan Rail (JR), there are some ten-ish operators and a plethora of lines to choose from in this prefecture alone. In fact (according to that bastion of trivia, Wikipedia), some 10 million people in the region use trains as their primary means of transportation, which is second in the world to (you guessed it) Tokyo.
Of course, Japan is better known for its high-speed trains, the Shinkansen (“Bullet Train” to the uninitiated). These trains move at phenomenally fast speeds, and will eventually form one grand arc across the spine of the island chain, from Sapporo to Kagoshima. Needless to say, this is primarily a means of intercity transportation – what with the “Super Express” surcharge and all – but I’m lucky enough to have ridden on it several times in the past. The experience is, in all honesty, quite mundane: although going through tunnels can be punishment on the eardrums, it’s rather like stepping off the platform in one city and stepping out onto another in a completely different part of the country. In a way, it doesn’t really allow you to take in the points in between in any meaningful fashion; they’re all a blur in the window. And that’s why, when I went to Tokyo for the New Year holiday, I took the regular train. It was, as it turns out, quite scenic, and I felt like I really got to see more of the country. It was also, as it turns out, 10 hours spent standing in uncomfortably crowded trains, versus two and a half with my own seat on the Shinkansen. Shizuoka Prefecture in particular was a form of torment, where the only regular trains were local ones, and the Shinkansen ran directly parallel, whooshing past every 15 minutes or so. All-in-all, while it was certainly an interesting trip, maybe next time I’ll just take the Shinkansen.
In spite of this long-distance experience, however, I am still quite fond of the trains within Osaka. I commuted using one for my first six months here, and I still make an effort to go to interesting places (or at least into the city) via rail every so often. In a way, the journey itself is part of the fun – even if people look at me funny when I can recite the train announcements verbatim. It’s probably far more enjoyment than I should be taking out of what is essentially a mass transit system, but I can’t help but feel a thrill when I learn that Hanshin Railway and Kintetsu Corporation will soon be operating through trains between Kobe and Nara via Osaka’s central rail hub at Namba. It’s a new route to explore, taking me through places I’ve never been (or at least, I haven’t seen from that particular vantage point). Does no one else find this exciting?
In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should at least mention that while riding Japanese trains is largely a painless experience, there are a number of issues that come up with rather unfortunate regularity: the number of “chikan” (molestation) incidents during peak hours, which has resulted in most railway lines adding “women-only” cars for particularly crowded periods; the general crowdedness of trains in general during rush hour; and the occasional decision of a beleaguered white-collar worker to slip the surly bonds of personal responsibility, and paint the tracks a shade of crimson (I feel kind of gross for writing that, but it’s sadly true).
Luckily, once again I can thank my lucky stars that I live in Osaka, because whatever problems might impact rail travel here, it’s worse in Tokyo. I suppose that’s inevitable considering Tokyo’s absolutely dizzying array of rail options, the number of people who use them, and the cascading effect a small delay on one line can have on precisely-timed transfers everywhere else, but at least Osaka doesn’t have people whose sole job it is to stuff more people into the train when it’s already full. That said, with my train obsession in full swing, there’s no way I’ll be able to stay away for too long, no matter where in the country I go.
Those of you familiar with rail transportation as it exists in the US can be forgiven if you must momentarily suppress a shiver of revulsion. The heyday of railroads in the US can firmly be placed over 100 years ago, and its long decline has only been hastened by the advent of the automobile, as well as lack of upkeep in general on long-distance routes. (On a local note, there used to be a rail line into downtown Clayton, ending at a ferry terminal in what is now Frink Park. The track was disused for years before finally being removed in the ’60s.) It certainly doesn’t help the situation any that Amtrak, the government-run passenger service, is only slightly better than “abysmal”. Having few tracks of their own, they mostly run on freight lines, and when they’re behind schedule (i.e., all the time), it’s behind the freight trains they go. I won’t even get started on the safety record.
But here in Japan, things are quite different. The country in general has a very extensive rail network, which is no small feat for an archipelago that also happens to be covered by mountains. But aside from the impressive array of tunnels through solid rock and under bodies of water, the trains are also – for the most part – fast, safe, and reliably on time. (Japanese people tend to think of a train as “late” if it’s off the schedule by a couple of minutes; I’m just grateful it appears within the same hour as the listed time.) Osaka in particular is great for getting around by train: including the quasi-national Japan Rail (JR), there are some ten-ish operators and a plethora of lines to choose from in this prefecture alone. In fact (according to that bastion of trivia, Wikipedia), some 10 million people in the region use trains as their primary means of transportation, which is second in the world to (you guessed it) Tokyo.
Of course, Japan is better known for its high-speed trains, the Shinkansen (“Bullet Train” to the uninitiated). These trains move at phenomenally fast speeds, and will eventually form one grand arc across the spine of the island chain, from Sapporo to Kagoshima. Needless to say, this is primarily a means of intercity transportation – what with the “Super Express” surcharge and all – but I’m lucky enough to have ridden on it several times in the past. The experience is, in all honesty, quite mundane: although going through tunnels can be punishment on the eardrums, it’s rather like stepping off the platform in one city and stepping out onto another in a completely different part of the country. In a way, it doesn’t really allow you to take in the points in between in any meaningful fashion; they’re all a blur in the window. And that’s why, when I went to Tokyo for the New Year holiday, I took the regular train. It was, as it turns out, quite scenic, and I felt like I really got to see more of the country. It was also, as it turns out, 10 hours spent standing in uncomfortably crowded trains, versus two and a half with my own seat on the Shinkansen. Shizuoka Prefecture in particular was a form of torment, where the only regular trains were local ones, and the Shinkansen ran directly parallel, whooshing past every 15 minutes or so. All-in-all, while it was certainly an interesting trip, maybe next time I’ll just take the Shinkansen.
In spite of this long-distance experience, however, I am still quite fond of the trains within Osaka. I commuted using one for my first six months here, and I still make an effort to go to interesting places (or at least into the city) via rail every so often. In a way, the journey itself is part of the fun – even if people look at me funny when I can recite the train announcements verbatim. It’s probably far more enjoyment than I should be taking out of what is essentially a mass transit system, but I can’t help but feel a thrill when I learn that Hanshin Railway and Kintetsu Corporation will soon be operating through trains between Kobe and Nara via Osaka’s central rail hub at Namba. It’s a new route to explore, taking me through places I’ve never been (or at least, I haven’t seen from that particular vantage point). Does no one else find this exciting?
In the interest of full disclosure, though, I should at least mention that while riding Japanese trains is largely a painless experience, there are a number of issues that come up with rather unfortunate regularity: the number of “chikan” (molestation) incidents during peak hours, which has resulted in most railway lines adding “women-only” cars for particularly crowded periods; the general crowdedness of trains in general during rush hour; and the occasional decision of a beleaguered white-collar worker to slip the surly bonds of personal responsibility, and paint the tracks a shade of crimson (I feel kind of gross for writing that, but it’s sadly true).
Luckily, once again I can thank my lucky stars that I live in Osaka, because whatever problems might impact rail travel here, it’s worse in Tokyo. I suppose that’s inevitable considering Tokyo’s absolutely dizzying array of rail options, the number of people who use them, and the cascading effect a small delay on one line can have on precisely-timed transfers everywhere else, but at least Osaka doesn’t have people whose sole job it is to stuff more people into the train when it’s already full. That said, with my train obsession in full swing, there’s no way I’ll be able to stay away for too long, no matter where in the country I go.
04 June 2008
Learning the language... again
Last week, I gave you something of an outline of where I live. Osaka is quite the interesting place to be, and not just because of variances from the established “norms” of Japanese society that can be found here. For me, one of the absolutely fascinating parts of living around Osaka is to have firsthand experience with a separate dialect of Japanese. No doubt, this is a result of my fascination with languages in general, and my studying of linguistics in college. If not for that, I might just find it a tad bit horrifying.
Picture if you will, a young man growing up in the North Country. We’ll call him “Bob”, because that’s my default name for hypothetical individuals (don’t ask). We North Country residents speak a fairly standard Northeastern US variety of English, with some Northern Cities Vowel Shift (noticeable particularly in words with a short “a”, which becomes something of an “ee-a” diphthong), and a tiny bit of Canadian Raising for some (if your “about” sounds roughly halfway between “a boat” and “a boot”, you belong to this group). All-in-all, it’s a pretty easy-to-understand dialect, which doesn’t stray very much from the generalized Midwestern accent that’s pictured as “Standard” American English. Now, imagine that this child of the North Country is an Anglophile, and is thus determined to spend time studying abroad (and maybe even living) in the UK. He applies himself earnestly to understanding the vagaries of the Queen’s English, learning about using the tubes for transport, driving a car with a boot and a windscreen on the left side of the road, and even taking a lift to one’s flat. And he’s all set to go… until the study-abroad program places him smack dab in the middle of Scotland.
Suddenly, all that studying is looking like it might have been for naught: the people around him speak something he is so completely unprepared for, that it might as well be a separate language altogether, and while people seem to understand him perfectly, relatively few seem willing to bring themselves down to his level just because he dinna ken any Scots. And so, with much resignation, he sets about learning the language… again… so as to be able to communicate effectively.
This encapsulates something along the lines of what I experienced in my first visit to Japan, back in 2006. While I had studied the language officially for two and a half years by then (and several years previous on my own), textbook Japanese only gets you so far in Osaka and Kyoto. Here, people have been happy speaking their own dialect for at least the entirety of Japan’s 1300-year recorded history (though it was the de facto standard for the first 500 years or so), and they see absolutely no reason to change that, just because some uptight politicians out in the eastern boonies (i.e., Tokyo) say so. And while the people I encountered understood full well what I was saying (since they learned Standard Japanese in school), that was no guarantee that I’d understand what they said back to me. Apparently, knowledge of a lingua franca does not necessarily mean that people actually feel obligated to use it. Combine this with the general assumption that my lack of understanding indicated incomprehension of Japanese as a whole, and you can see why I quickly made it my goal to learn to understand what the heck people were saying to me. (I’m particularly grateful for a little yellow book called Colloquial Kansai Japanese, which runs through the basics of the local idiom with tongue firmly in cheek.)
Armed with this knowledge upon my return to Japan, I have found that knowing the local dialect this time around really adds some profound enjoyment to living here in Osaka. Not only is it always good to understand what others are telling you, but people always seem to be pleased that I can communicate with them on their terms, in a far more natural style than the intentionally-artificial Tokyo Standard. It really makes you feel like a part of the place you’re in.
Of course, it’s not perfect: for one thing, while I’ve got a sense of the differences in vocabulary and grammar, I have a hard time with the intonation, which is substantially different from Tokyo Japanese. The result is that I sound like a Tokyo speaker trying really hard to be convincing in the dialect, and almost (but not quite) succeeding. Luckily, people seem to give me credit just for making the effort. The other thing, though, is that the dialect of Osaka is known throughout Japan as being the language of comedy. This is probably due to a number of things: its (relatively) relaxed approach to formality compared to Tokyo, the willingness of performers from Osaka to use their own dialect on stage, and (last but not least) the presence of the influential Yoshimoto Kogyo talent agency, based in downtown Osaka. And while I may not be pitch-perfect when I’m trying to speak the dialect, I’ve absorbed enough of its idiosyncrasies into my everyday speech that I unintentionally provoke laughter at times when I speak to people I know from Tokyo. I guess that’s something I’ll have to work on… though the people I stayed with in Tokyo helpfully assured me that “Osakans never learn to speak properly, no matter how long they stay here”. Such heartfelt encouragement…
By the way, this kind of thing is exactly why I have mixed feelings about the prospect of learning Chinese at any point. Being able to read the language is all well and good (as I can to a slight degree already, thanks to the use of Chinese characters in Japanese), but Standard Mandarin is only entirely useful when you’re in the northern part of the country. The varieties of Chinese spoken around places like Hong Kong and Shanghai are called “dialects”, but only by virtue of the fact that they all descend from the language of the Han Dynasty, spoken some 2000 years ago. This is in the same sense that French and Spanish are “dialects” of Latin (!), and they are about as distinct. That should give you some idea of why even I, with my love of a challenge, would hesitate to commit myself to it. In that respect, I guess I should be thankful for how “easy” I have it here in Japan.
Picture if you will, a young man growing up in the North Country. We’ll call him “Bob”, because that’s my default name for hypothetical individuals (don’t ask). We North Country residents speak a fairly standard Northeastern US variety of English, with some Northern Cities Vowel Shift (noticeable particularly in words with a short “a”, which becomes something of an “ee-a” diphthong), and a tiny bit of Canadian Raising for some (if your “about” sounds roughly halfway between “a boat” and “a boot”, you belong to this group). All-in-all, it’s a pretty easy-to-understand dialect, which doesn’t stray very much from the generalized Midwestern accent that’s pictured as “Standard” American English. Now, imagine that this child of the North Country is an Anglophile, and is thus determined to spend time studying abroad (and maybe even living) in the UK. He applies himself earnestly to understanding the vagaries of the Queen’s English, learning about using the tubes for transport, driving a car with a boot and a windscreen on the left side of the road, and even taking a lift to one’s flat. And he’s all set to go… until the study-abroad program places him smack dab in the middle of Scotland.
Suddenly, all that studying is looking like it might have been for naught: the people around him speak something he is so completely unprepared for, that it might as well be a separate language altogether, and while people seem to understand him perfectly, relatively few seem willing to bring themselves down to his level just because he dinna ken any Scots. And so, with much resignation, he sets about learning the language… again… so as to be able to communicate effectively.
This encapsulates something along the lines of what I experienced in my first visit to Japan, back in 2006. While I had studied the language officially for two and a half years by then (and several years previous on my own), textbook Japanese only gets you so far in Osaka and Kyoto. Here, people have been happy speaking their own dialect for at least the entirety of Japan’s 1300-year recorded history (though it was the de facto standard for the first 500 years or so), and they see absolutely no reason to change that, just because some uptight politicians out in the eastern boonies (i.e., Tokyo) say so. And while the people I encountered understood full well what I was saying (since they learned Standard Japanese in school), that was no guarantee that I’d understand what they said back to me. Apparently, knowledge of a lingua franca does not necessarily mean that people actually feel obligated to use it. Combine this with the general assumption that my lack of understanding indicated incomprehension of Japanese as a whole, and you can see why I quickly made it my goal to learn to understand what the heck people were saying to me. (I’m particularly grateful for a little yellow book called Colloquial Kansai Japanese, which runs through the basics of the local idiom with tongue firmly in cheek.)
Armed with this knowledge upon my return to Japan, I have found that knowing the local dialect this time around really adds some profound enjoyment to living here in Osaka. Not only is it always good to understand what others are telling you, but people always seem to be pleased that I can communicate with them on their terms, in a far more natural style than the intentionally-artificial Tokyo Standard. It really makes you feel like a part of the place you’re in.
Of course, it’s not perfect: for one thing, while I’ve got a sense of the differences in vocabulary and grammar, I have a hard time with the intonation, which is substantially different from Tokyo Japanese. The result is that I sound like a Tokyo speaker trying really hard to be convincing in the dialect, and almost (but not quite) succeeding. Luckily, people seem to give me credit just for making the effort. The other thing, though, is that the dialect of Osaka is known throughout Japan as being the language of comedy. This is probably due to a number of things: its (relatively) relaxed approach to formality compared to Tokyo, the willingness of performers from Osaka to use their own dialect on stage, and (last but not least) the presence of the influential Yoshimoto Kogyo talent agency, based in downtown Osaka. And while I may not be pitch-perfect when I’m trying to speak the dialect, I’ve absorbed enough of its idiosyncrasies into my everyday speech that I unintentionally provoke laughter at times when I speak to people I know from Tokyo. I guess that’s something I’ll have to work on… though the people I stayed with in Tokyo helpfully assured me that “Osakans never learn to speak properly, no matter how long they stay here”. Such heartfelt encouragement…
By the way, this kind of thing is exactly why I have mixed feelings about the prospect of learning Chinese at any point. Being able to read the language is all well and good (as I can to a slight degree already, thanks to the use of Chinese characters in Japanese), but Standard Mandarin is only entirely useful when you’re in the northern part of the country. The varieties of Chinese spoken around places like Hong Kong and Shanghai are called “dialects”, but only by virtue of the fact that they all descend from the language of the Han Dynasty, spoken some 2000 years ago. This is in the same sense that French and Spanish are “dialects” of Latin (!), and they are about as distinct. That should give you some idea of why even I, with my love of a challenge, would hesitate to commit myself to it. In that respect, I guess I should be thankful for how “easy” I have it here in Japan.
28 May 2008
I live in Osaka
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…
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…
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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