Is it really almost officially Fall already? Having just glanced at my calendar, I was practically dumbfounded to discover that next week is the autumnal equinox. I really shouldn’t be surprised – after all, I’ve been aware of the date through test application deadlines, siblings’ birthdays and the like, but somehow it still seems surreal. The weather might have something to do with that: when it’s not pouring buckets thanks to the latest typhoon remnant to make a glancing blow on Japan, it’s still unseasonably hot. It still feel like it’s mid-summer, even if it’s after Labor Day back home… and even if it’s cooler here than it was the same time last year.
But with mid-September comes two holidays that I get to celebrate – or at least, get the day off. These are Respect-for-the-Aged Day (the third Monday of September), and the Equinox itself (September 23). And really, who can argue with a paid day off from work? Actually, these vacation days are a reminder that before long it will be winter, and with it, I should really use my New Year’s vacation time this December to go somewhere interesting. I already have my eye on a few places, and they all have one thing in common.
As I’ve mentioned previously, Japan is a volcanic island chain on the Pacific Ring of Fire. This means, among other things, that it experiences fairly major earthquakes relatively often. It also has its share of volcanoes, both extinct and not-so-much. But the third implication of all this seismic and volcanic activity, I heartily approve of: the hot springs, or onsen. From the earliest Japanese records over 1500 years ago, people here were already using them to bathe with regularity, and there were numerous locations with reputations for their therapeutic qualities, doing brisk business no matter what the state of politics in the land might be. (Amusingly, European traders during the Renaissance seemed to look down on the fact that Japanese people bathed daily. I can only imagine that Europe during this time was not a very pleasant-smelling place.)
Now, I’ve always been one for a hot bath, but I admit that I was slow to catch on to the benefits of this lifestyle, for one particular reason: being naked in public. Japanese hot springs are communal baths, which means you’re sharing it with people you may or may not know. This was a problem, because I am an American, and Americans in general tend to be quite squeamish about nudity (witness, for example, the various controversies over “wardrobe malfunctions”, and the covering-up of statues’ breasts in the US Capitol at various times). I’m over that now, and I’m glad, because a hot-spring bath is one of the most sublimely relaxing experiences you can have, and the perfect remedy to a hectic lifestyle.
The quintessential hot spring bath in Japan is one taken at a ryokan (traditional inn). These traditional inns are usually located out in the country, in a scenic spot, and conveniently right on top of a source of geothermal energy. Typically, you arrive at the inn at mid-afternoon, where you are shown to your room. The room is decorated in traditional style, with woven-grass tatami mats and futons to sleep on (which are laid out for you by the staff at bedtime). You change into a special bathrobe (yukata), which you can (and are expected to) walk around the building and surrounding area in. And then you go take a bath. Really, the activities at a ryokan, when they don’t involve gorging yourself on a multi-course kaiseki banquet of regional specialties (included in the room fee), is to spend your time in the bath. Like I said: pure relaxation.
The kind of hot-spring baths I really like are rotenburo, or outdoor baths. While simply having a tub out-of-doors certainly qualifies, the best places actually use thermal pools (or basins sculpted to look like such), perfectly blending in with the surrounding landscape. Here, you can sit in the bath and listen to the wind rustle through the trees, admire the view, and really commune with nature. It’s especially fun to luxuriate in one of these baths in winter, when you can have a cool breeze (or maybe even some snowfall) as the perfect counterpoint to the 100+ Fahrenheit waters. Indoor baths are fine too, of course: the kind made from fragrant wood, though difficult to maintain, are traditional and great for soaking in. I just like the outdoor ones better.
Of course, for those who don’t have the time (or the money) to spend at one of these fantastic locations, there’s always the local sento (public bath). Back before individual Japanese residences had their own baths, people in a given community would bathe together at the public baths, catching up with each other and exchanging gossip over a hot soak. The name implies that you can go to one of these places for a single sen (1/100 of a yen… which became only slightly worthless at the end of the War), and even today, they’re usually only a couple hundred yen, which is still a fair bargain. I don’t mind going to these places, but as you might guess from the somewhat outmoded lifestyle they represent, most of truly local places are half a century old (or more) and showing their age, while their clientele seems to almost exclusively consist of men in their 70s and older (the same age bracket that seems to always try and strike up conversations with me whenever I’m trying to bathe in peace). The places that are usurping their role in the domain of “ordinary” public baths are the “Super sento”, destinations that are equal parts themed baths and water park. The main one I’ve been to in these parts is Spa World in Osaka, which combines two different themed baths (“Europe” and “Asia”, which switch between men and women each month), along with a standard pool area on the roof, with slides, hot tubs, and the like. The “theme park” aesthetic kind of takes away from the authentic charm of the older public baths, but it isn’t quite as uncomfortable as being the odd one out in a room full of regulars. Plus, all the different bathing areas (modeled after various countries in Europe and Asia) are something I can appreciate, so it’s not all bad.
So, if you should ever find yourself in Japan, I heartily recommend that you, too, try going for a dip in an onsen. Think of it not as an indulgence so much as a cultural experience with over a thousand years of history. Just be sure to wash yourself off before you get in the tub, because they don’t take kindly to dirtying up the bathwater with soap. The bath is solely for soaking; showers are located nearby to wash with. It’s something I always make sure to remind my friends about if they come with me, because if they made for the tub without washing, I’d have to stop them bodily, and that would get really awkward.
17 September 2008
10 September 2008
The narrow road I walk
It’s now the second week of September, but it appears someone’s forgotten to tell the weather here in Osaka: days are still sweltering and incredibly humid, while at night the heavens open and a regular downpour thwarts my attempts at getting my laundry to dry by the following morning. When I was a kid, there were times when I wanted the summer never to end… but this is not exactly how I envisioned it. Far from being an extension of summer fun, the heat only really manages to make autumn somewhat more unpleasant as I go about my job and daily life. Who knew?
Now, then… I believe I’ve previously brought up the subject of earthquakes quite a bit, and my coping with their rather alarmingly frequent rate of occurrence here in Japan. But for all the worry I have over whether The Big One might come tomorrow, there is a far more real threat to my daily existence than any measly earthquake. That would be the roads.
Roadways in Japan tend to be a very fickle thing. There are places you can go in this country which are crisscrossed by modern elevated expressways, with multiple lanes, and even major routes that, while not particularly pedestrian friendly, still provide ample space for the vehicles on them. Then, there are the streets. The old, designed-when-the-city-was-still-a-village spaces that seem to revel in seeing precisely how small they can get while drivers attempt to negotiate them.
As it happens, most of the streets in older residential areas, such as the one where I now live, were not designed with road vehicles in mind. In fact, even horses were rarely a concern, as most people of the farming and merchant classes got around on foot. Consequently, you have what were once medieval pedestrian paths, now accommodating not only two lanes of traffic, but pedestrians, cyclists going both directions, scooters darting in and out of the car lanes, and cars parked on the edge of the street for lack of a better place to put them. The one saving grace of the road I travel to work each day is that there is a pair of traffic lights regulating the flow of cars in the (truly harrowing) most narrow section, but that’s not saying much.
All that wouldn’t be too bad, of course, if not for the fact that there are also very few sidewalks. Again, as many of these old streets came into being as places to walk, not much consideration was given to where the pedestrians would go once the main area was taken up by horseless carriages. On the newer roads, and on the major thoroughfares of big cities like Osaka, you get spacious sidewalks with ample room to walk (if not maneuver around all the people), but on streets like this one, you’re lucky if you get a line in the pavement… not that it means much when you’re dodging oncoming traffic edging over into your space as it is. I’m just lucky that they at least cover the storm drains in this town; in some places I’ve been, they’re just a foot-wide concrete trench on either side of the road, which another American I know actually labeled “foreigner traps”. Bike-rider beware.
With all these things working against me, I’m frankly surprised that I haven’t actually been hit by a car. In places like this, you can only imagine that it’s a matter of time, and I’ve been extra careful just to avoid tempting fate. I’ve already had cars brush up entirely too close to me for me to be comfortable with, and the drivers not even slowing down to notice just how many millimeters they came from knocking me to the pavement.
I suppose I’m lucky in at least one respect: many of the more popular models here are of a special sub-subcompact class called “Kei-cars”, which get special tax breaks for their space-saving and fuel efficiency (they also helped keep foreign competition at bay while the Japanese economy was still regaining its footing after the war). These cars are perfectly suited to the tight spaces of Japanese city streets, and to me they offer something of a relief because I get the sense that if they did hit me, they’d be the one sustaining damage. Not that I’d like to test that hypothesis, of course. And anyway, what concerns me more are the lumbering behemoths (at least in comparison) that automakers here have been churning out to satisfy Japan’s increasingly Westernized tastes, high gas prices and narrow roads notwithstanding. There are (thankfully) no SUVs here as far as I’ve seen, but I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into any of the minivans or large-type station wagons that emulate them, which always seem to come barreling down the street at speeds far greater than what I’d consider “reasonable” or “safe”. Just keep me as far away from those monstrosities as possible.
Perhaps surprisingly, the one thing that hasn’t bothered me too much about the roads here is the direction of the traffic. Japan, like Great Britain and former British colonies apart from North America, drives on the left. (It was never a British colony; supposedly the direction of traffic here had something to do with existing Samurai etiquette that just happened to parallel British practice, but I don’t know if that’s actually true.) I adapted quickly to looking right first when crossing the street, in spite of some of my compatriots’ blunders, and have no trouble anticipating the direction an oncoming vehicle will be moving in. The British ALTs in my city tell me that my speedy adjustment is because driving on the left is “nature’s way”, but maybe I’m just easily adaptable. At any rate, I’m sure I’d feel different if I were behind the steering wheel of a car instead of on foot or riding my bike. One thing’s for sure, though: I will never complain about narrow roads back home, ever again.
Now, then… I believe I’ve previously brought up the subject of earthquakes quite a bit, and my coping with their rather alarmingly frequent rate of occurrence here in Japan. But for all the worry I have over whether The Big One might come tomorrow, there is a far more real threat to my daily existence than any measly earthquake. That would be the roads.
Roadways in Japan tend to be a very fickle thing. There are places you can go in this country which are crisscrossed by modern elevated expressways, with multiple lanes, and even major routes that, while not particularly pedestrian friendly, still provide ample space for the vehicles on them. Then, there are the streets. The old, designed-when-the-city-was-still-a-village spaces that seem to revel in seeing precisely how small they can get while drivers attempt to negotiate them.
As it happens, most of the streets in older residential areas, such as the one where I now live, were not designed with road vehicles in mind. In fact, even horses were rarely a concern, as most people of the farming and merchant classes got around on foot. Consequently, you have what were once medieval pedestrian paths, now accommodating not only two lanes of traffic, but pedestrians, cyclists going both directions, scooters darting in and out of the car lanes, and cars parked on the edge of the street for lack of a better place to put them. The one saving grace of the road I travel to work each day is that there is a pair of traffic lights regulating the flow of cars in the (truly harrowing) most narrow section, but that’s not saying much.
All that wouldn’t be too bad, of course, if not for the fact that there are also very few sidewalks. Again, as many of these old streets came into being as places to walk, not much consideration was given to where the pedestrians would go once the main area was taken up by horseless carriages. On the newer roads, and on the major thoroughfares of big cities like Osaka, you get spacious sidewalks with ample room to walk (if not maneuver around all the people), but on streets like this one, you’re lucky if you get a line in the pavement… not that it means much when you’re dodging oncoming traffic edging over into your space as it is. I’m just lucky that they at least cover the storm drains in this town; in some places I’ve been, they’re just a foot-wide concrete trench on either side of the road, which another American I know actually labeled “foreigner traps”. Bike-rider beware.
With all these things working against me, I’m frankly surprised that I haven’t actually been hit by a car. In places like this, you can only imagine that it’s a matter of time, and I’ve been extra careful just to avoid tempting fate. I’ve already had cars brush up entirely too close to me for me to be comfortable with, and the drivers not even slowing down to notice just how many millimeters they came from knocking me to the pavement.
I suppose I’m lucky in at least one respect: many of the more popular models here are of a special sub-subcompact class called “Kei-cars”, which get special tax breaks for their space-saving and fuel efficiency (they also helped keep foreign competition at bay while the Japanese economy was still regaining its footing after the war). These cars are perfectly suited to the tight spaces of Japanese city streets, and to me they offer something of a relief because I get the sense that if they did hit me, they’d be the one sustaining damage. Not that I’d like to test that hypothesis, of course. And anyway, what concerns me more are the lumbering behemoths (at least in comparison) that automakers here have been churning out to satisfy Japan’s increasingly Westernized tastes, high gas prices and narrow roads notwithstanding. There are (thankfully) no SUVs here as far as I’ve seen, but I certainly wouldn’t want to bump into any of the minivans or large-type station wagons that emulate them, which always seem to come barreling down the street at speeds far greater than what I’d consider “reasonable” or “safe”. Just keep me as far away from those monstrosities as possible.
Perhaps surprisingly, the one thing that hasn’t bothered me too much about the roads here is the direction of the traffic. Japan, like Great Britain and former British colonies apart from North America, drives on the left. (It was never a British colony; supposedly the direction of traffic here had something to do with existing Samurai etiquette that just happened to parallel British practice, but I don’t know if that’s actually true.) I adapted quickly to looking right first when crossing the street, in spite of some of my compatriots’ blunders, and have no trouble anticipating the direction an oncoming vehicle will be moving in. The British ALTs in my city tell me that my speedy adjustment is because driving on the left is “nature’s way”, but maybe I’m just easily adaptable. At any rate, I’m sure I’d feel different if I were behind the steering wheel of a car instead of on foot or riding my bike. One thing’s for sure, though: I will never complain about narrow roads back home, ever again.
03 September 2008
Life updates
By the time you are reading this article, it will officially be September. And with it, for me, will be the start of classes at my school – although as I’ve said before, the kids never really went away. The construction on the part of the school building being brought up to modern earthquake-resistance standards is nearly done (and with it the constant jackhammering I’d grown so used to), but they still have to rebuild the entryways that they previously demolished. (Apparently a big concrete overhang is a bit of a risk In an earthquake. Who knew?)
It’s also very wet here. Again. This time, it’s not so much the season, as it is a dogged low-pressure system that’s been sitting over central Japan, and dumping enough rain there to actually shut down the trains running through Shizuoka Prefecture for a while last week. Osaka’s only seeing a little bit of it, but it means that my laundry is once again drying indoors, contributing to the overall humidity of my room. Ah, the joys of domestic life.
In addition, being September means that it’s also time for me to get my visa renewed. My original work visa when I came to Japan was only for a single year, and I arrived in the country on September 5, 2007. So last week, I paid a visit to the local immigration office (actually out in the port district of Osaka proper) to get my paperwork straightened out. They stamped my passport and told me to come back in several weeks when I receive a postcard from them. Seeing as how I have a job with a city government and plenty of Japanese skills, there shouldn’t be any reason for them to deny me a three-year extension to my current visa. Nevertheless, when you go into the office and witness the near-chaos of people lined up, waiting for their number to be called, and dealing with desk clerks in a language that they only partially understand… well, you get the distinct sensation that you could make the wrong impression on an underpaid government worker who’s already having a Very Bad Day and end up deported. I’ve got my fingers crossed on that one.
And, following up on last week’s article, my application for the Japanese test in December is in the mail and I have begun preparing. This is a somewhat more… humbling experience than I had originally hoped. While my overall reading ability for passages of text is quite good, I’ve discovered that my knowledge of Chinese characters is a bit more contextual than I’d like. You see, the thing about Chinese characters is that, due to their distinctive shape, you can learn to recognize them fairly easily, especially when they appear in combination with certain other characters to form specific words. Unfortunately, can lead to a very frustrating situation where you know what a character looks like, but either you can’t identify it when it’s by itself, or you can picture it in your head but you can’t reproduce it on paper because you’ve never actually learned to write it. This latter situation is a major affliction in Japan these days, since the advent of word processors means that people write less, and sometimes find themselves staring at a piece of paper trying to conjure up a form they know, but can’t remember how to write. In short, I basically need to nail down my slightly floating character knowledge, and actually commit them to my active literacy skills rather than just passive reading. I’ve got three months and counting…
At the same time, I’m having to deal with a bit of a change of venue for my work. While I’ll be at my current school until the end of this month, after that I’ll be headed to a separate junior high school within the same city. It’s part of the way this city’s system works, in that instead of having assistant English teachers go between two schools all year, they have them attend one school for the first half and the other school for the second half. As a result, I will soon be having to re-acclimate myself to an all-new workplace, with 600 or so new student names to remember. On the bright side, it may provide me even more opportunities to confuse students as to my true Japanese ability. (I have students at my current school convinced I speak only just enough to make myself understood. There are a great many things I have heard which they no doubt thought I would not comprehend. It’s a lot of fun, really.)
At any rate, as long as I continue to survive the rain, the flood of Chinese characters to memorize, and the onslaught of a new school term (and school!), I should be here yet again next week, with a slightly more interesting topic. Wish me luck.
It’s also very wet here. Again. This time, it’s not so much the season, as it is a dogged low-pressure system that’s been sitting over central Japan, and dumping enough rain there to actually shut down the trains running through Shizuoka Prefecture for a while last week. Osaka’s only seeing a little bit of it, but it means that my laundry is once again drying indoors, contributing to the overall humidity of my room. Ah, the joys of domestic life.
In addition, being September means that it’s also time for me to get my visa renewed. My original work visa when I came to Japan was only for a single year, and I arrived in the country on September 5, 2007. So last week, I paid a visit to the local immigration office (actually out in the port district of Osaka proper) to get my paperwork straightened out. They stamped my passport and told me to come back in several weeks when I receive a postcard from them. Seeing as how I have a job with a city government and plenty of Japanese skills, there shouldn’t be any reason for them to deny me a three-year extension to my current visa. Nevertheless, when you go into the office and witness the near-chaos of people lined up, waiting for their number to be called, and dealing with desk clerks in a language that they only partially understand… well, you get the distinct sensation that you could make the wrong impression on an underpaid government worker who’s already having a Very Bad Day and end up deported. I’ve got my fingers crossed on that one.
And, following up on last week’s article, my application for the Japanese test in December is in the mail and I have begun preparing. This is a somewhat more… humbling experience than I had originally hoped. While my overall reading ability for passages of text is quite good, I’ve discovered that my knowledge of Chinese characters is a bit more contextual than I’d like. You see, the thing about Chinese characters is that, due to their distinctive shape, you can learn to recognize them fairly easily, especially when they appear in combination with certain other characters to form specific words. Unfortunately, can lead to a very frustrating situation where you know what a character looks like, but either you can’t identify it when it’s by itself, or you can picture it in your head but you can’t reproduce it on paper because you’ve never actually learned to write it. This latter situation is a major affliction in Japan these days, since the advent of word processors means that people write less, and sometimes find themselves staring at a piece of paper trying to conjure up a form they know, but can’t remember how to write. In short, I basically need to nail down my slightly floating character knowledge, and actually commit them to my active literacy skills rather than just passive reading. I’ve got three months and counting…
At the same time, I’m having to deal with a bit of a change of venue for my work. While I’ll be at my current school until the end of this month, after that I’ll be headed to a separate junior high school within the same city. It’s part of the way this city’s system works, in that instead of having assistant English teachers go between two schools all year, they have them attend one school for the first half and the other school for the second half. As a result, I will soon be having to re-acclimate myself to an all-new workplace, with 600 or so new student names to remember. On the bright side, it may provide me even more opportunities to confuse students as to my true Japanese ability. (I have students at my current school convinced I speak only just enough to make myself understood. There are a great many things I have heard which they no doubt thought I would not comprehend. It’s a lot of fun, really.)
At any rate, as long as I continue to survive the rain, the flood of Chinese characters to memorize, and the onslaught of a new school term (and school!), I should be here yet again next week, with a slightly more interesting topic. Wish me luck.
27 August 2008
Gaining literacy, one square block at a time
It’s that time of year again: time for me to try desperately not to psyche myself out while I fill out the form. This form represents the first step towards being officially recognized as competent in the Japanese language (and thus able to function in capacities other than “language teacher”), and as such, I am quite anxious about the exam that it entails. That exam is the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, and after I got a respectable passing score on last year’s Level 2 outing, I’ve decided to commit myself to mastering the language to the point so I can pass Level 1. Basically, that means three frantic months of preparation while I desperately try to keep in my head everything that I’ve learned over the past five and a half years, plus a big heaping spoonful of Chinese characters on top of that.
Ah, Chinese characters. I think I may have mentioned them before, but there really are few things quite the same as them. Imagine, instead of having a set of several dozen letters that (at least loosely) represent particular sounds in sequence, that you have several thousand distinct squarish blocks that all mean something, and you have to know what sound each one makes before you ever set eyes on the page. That is only the beginning of the absolutely convoluted, maddening spiral of kanji in Japanese.
Chinese characters, as you might suspect, got their start in China sometime earlier than 3200 years ago. The inscriptions found from that period, on bronze vessels and on animal bones used for divination, already meet the qualifications for “written language” at this time (rather than “pretty symbols”), however pictorial they were. And while modern Chinese characters are extremely simplified and standardized compared to those earlier writings, their history goes back far enough to make them technically the oldest writing system in continual use. Of course, China, with its age and prestige, just had to go and give other countries ideas, and so it was that around the 5th Century AD, the Chinese writing system (along with Buddhism) gained a permanent foothold in Japan.
Japan at the time had no written form, and at least initially, it stayed that way; anything that was important enough to be written down was written in proper Chinese. But then, sometime in the 7th Century or so, someone got the bright idea to start using Chinese characters for their sound value (meaning? what meaning?) to convey Japanese as-is. This Manyogana (named for the poetry collection that made it famous) was just a stepping stone to what became two full-fledged phonetic alphabets: one started, ironically, by Buddhist monks as a guide to making sense of pure Chinese, and the other by the increasingly-cursive handwriting in the private correspondence of courtiers in Kyoto.
Over the centuries, these three distinct forms of writing melded together into one big unwieldy system of conveying Japanese on the page. The end result is that for the kanji alone, you have multiple readings, made up of: one (or two) based on the original Chinese reading; one (or several, or a lot) based on the meaning of the character but read as a native Japanese word; and really weird, idiosyncratic usages that bear absolutely no relationship to the character used, when it shows up in certain combinations. As you can imagine, all this results in one big headache. Or rather, about 2,000 headaches, since that’s how many Chinese characters I’m supposed to know. At least I’m only being tested on how to read the things, since my handwriting is bad enough with Latin letters, let alone other writing systems.
It’s not really a hopeless situation, though: I mean, I already have a fairly substantial number of characters (over 1000, for last year’s test) underneath my belt, and being exposed to the language every single day, there’s plenty of characters I recognize, but simply haven’t developed a conscious knowledge of their meaning yet. And while there are some completely baffling ones out there, the vast majority of characters can be split into a “general meaning” portion, and another portion that crops up in multiple other characters and has some relationship to the (Chinese reading’s) sound. Because of this, the more characters you know, the easier it becomes to learn more. But I’m convinced there’s got to be some kind of limit to this after a while, and I’m always worried about running into it before I’m satisfied with the extent of my literacy.
Of course, Chinese characters are by no means the full extent of the Japanese writing system, nor do they represent the entirety of really weird choices made in the history of the language. For one thing, there’s tons of grammar on this year’s test that (as far as I am aware) never comes up apart from in works of literature. I mean, I can understand an author wanting to sound erudite, but few works of modern English literature are written like Shakespeare, aside from Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the early 1600s. So having to learn specific patterns I know I will never personally use in my everyday conversation (except to sound really weird) is just another one of those Japanese language quirks I can add to the pile.
Overall, learning Japanese has been and remains an enjoyable, if sometimes perplexing experience for me, but things like this can feel just a bit overwhelming at times. But of course, only half-understanding a block of solid text is much more frustrating than not understanding any and ignoring it completely, so I must press on. It may be cold comfort, but I can at least take some solace in the fact that the Japanese writing system as it currently stands is actually the postwar simplified version. Pity the ones made to learn it before then…
Ah, Chinese characters. I think I may have mentioned them before, but there really are few things quite the same as them. Imagine, instead of having a set of several dozen letters that (at least loosely) represent particular sounds in sequence, that you have several thousand distinct squarish blocks that all mean something, and you have to know what sound each one makes before you ever set eyes on the page. That is only the beginning of the absolutely convoluted, maddening spiral of kanji in Japanese.
Chinese characters, as you might suspect, got their start in China sometime earlier than 3200 years ago. The inscriptions found from that period, on bronze vessels and on animal bones used for divination, already meet the qualifications for “written language” at this time (rather than “pretty symbols”), however pictorial they were. And while modern Chinese characters are extremely simplified and standardized compared to those earlier writings, their history goes back far enough to make them technically the oldest writing system in continual use. Of course, China, with its age and prestige, just had to go and give other countries ideas, and so it was that around the 5th Century AD, the Chinese writing system (along with Buddhism) gained a permanent foothold in Japan.
Japan at the time had no written form, and at least initially, it stayed that way; anything that was important enough to be written down was written in proper Chinese. But then, sometime in the 7th Century or so, someone got the bright idea to start using Chinese characters for their sound value (meaning? what meaning?) to convey Japanese as-is. This Manyogana (named for the poetry collection that made it famous) was just a stepping stone to what became two full-fledged phonetic alphabets: one started, ironically, by Buddhist monks as a guide to making sense of pure Chinese, and the other by the increasingly-cursive handwriting in the private correspondence of courtiers in Kyoto.
Over the centuries, these three distinct forms of writing melded together into one big unwieldy system of conveying Japanese on the page. The end result is that for the kanji alone, you have multiple readings, made up of: one (or two) based on the original Chinese reading; one (or several, or a lot) based on the meaning of the character but read as a native Japanese word; and really weird, idiosyncratic usages that bear absolutely no relationship to the character used, when it shows up in certain combinations. As you can imagine, all this results in one big headache. Or rather, about 2,000 headaches, since that’s how many Chinese characters I’m supposed to know. At least I’m only being tested on how to read the things, since my handwriting is bad enough with Latin letters, let alone other writing systems.
It’s not really a hopeless situation, though: I mean, I already have a fairly substantial number of characters (over 1000, for last year’s test) underneath my belt, and being exposed to the language every single day, there’s plenty of characters I recognize, but simply haven’t developed a conscious knowledge of their meaning yet. And while there are some completely baffling ones out there, the vast majority of characters can be split into a “general meaning” portion, and another portion that crops up in multiple other characters and has some relationship to the (Chinese reading’s) sound. Because of this, the more characters you know, the easier it becomes to learn more. But I’m convinced there’s got to be some kind of limit to this after a while, and I’m always worried about running into it before I’m satisfied with the extent of my literacy.
Of course, Chinese characters are by no means the full extent of the Japanese writing system, nor do they represent the entirety of really weird choices made in the history of the language. For one thing, there’s tons of grammar on this year’s test that (as far as I am aware) never comes up apart from in works of literature. I mean, I can understand an author wanting to sound erudite, but few works of modern English literature are written like Shakespeare, aside from Shakespeare and his contemporaries in the early 1600s. So having to learn specific patterns I know I will never personally use in my everyday conversation (except to sound really weird) is just another one of those Japanese language quirks I can add to the pile.
Overall, learning Japanese has been and remains an enjoyable, if sometimes perplexing experience for me, but things like this can feel just a bit overwhelming at times. But of course, only half-understanding a block of solid text is much more frustrating than not understanding any and ignoring it completely, so I must press on. It may be cold comfort, but I can at least take some solace in the fact that the Japanese writing system as it currently stands is actually the postwar simplified version. Pity the ones made to learn it before then…
20 August 2008
Blowing smoke... the other way, if you please
As it nears the end of August, I am getting ready to celebrate an important milestone: the one-year anniversary of my coming to Japan. The past eleven-and-a-half months have been filled with all sorts of new experiences and unexpected misunderstandings – some of which I’ve already related in this column – and with any luck, things will continue on apace. But in spite of that, there are still some things that I really haven’t gotten used to here, and one of the big ones that really, really bugs me is the smoking.
Now, I don’t mean any disrespect to those of you out there who are part of “the habit”: after all, I have had many friends and relatives over the years who are or have been smokers. Even my own father, a doctor of all people, did so at one point. In spite of this, I have never understood the appeal of inhaling fumes containing many different chemicals that would be lethal on their own, in amounts just small enough to let you die of long-term health problems, like cancer and emphysema, instead. And then there’s the smoke itself. I can still vividly remember coming home from my summer job as a bus boy in a smoke-filled restaurant years ago, and hacking up soot. In those days, I kind of felt like my job and coal-mining had a lot in common, at least in terms of the health risks. (I had that wrong, though: actually, tobacco smoke is much deadlier in terms of actual deaths caused worldwide per year.)
These days, of course, a lot of that has changed: an increasingly health-conscious America has put ever-tighter restrictions on tobacco use, and in New York State in particular, not only are vending machines for cigarettes virtually gone (maybe by law, though I’m fuzzy on that), but smoking itself is also outlawed in public establishments. This is a far cry from even ten years ago in the US, and virtually alien to what things were like 50 years ago, but as they say, time marches on. Japan, on the other hand, is somewhat behind the curve.
For one thing, Japan, with the world’s highest concentration of vending machines per capita, also sells cigarettes in them. Said vending machines are usually out on the street, and when I came to Japan the first time two years ago, literally anyone could buy them. Japan does technically have age restrictions on the purchase of tobacco products, just as the US does, but that wouldn’t stop any intrepid youth from simply inserting a few coins and getting the brand they want. It was only this year that the makers finally instituted an age-check in the form of smart cards required to use them. Even with that, though, it’s still jarring to see them out in the open. But I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, since at times it also seems like everybody smokes.
Obviously, not everyone does, and I have a fairly large number of non-smoker friends (partly due to self-selection), but walking down the street, at times you’re liable to see practically every other person with a cigarette in hand, or the implements necessary to light up at a moment’s notice. It’s rather surreal, and made more bizarre by the fact that the usual Japanese consideration for the people around oneself seems to fly out the window the moment they light up. At least in my experience, people are quite careless in where they direct their smoke, which (as you might have guessed) tends to be in my direction.
And then there are the restaurants. As New York used to have prior to the blanket ban on smoking in public places, there is a smoking section and a non-smoking section. However, it would seem that the people who design these spaces are not well acquainted with why the division exists, because more often than not, sitting in the “non-smoking” section entails sitting next to a group of smokers who are in the “smoking” section… which is in the middle of the same room, with no physical barriers whatsoever. In other places, there may be a nominal partition, but its effectiveness at actually blocking the smoke is minimal, at best. At times, it even seems like smokers get first priority, as I’ve personally witnessed customers unable to get into the “smoking” area just light up in the “non-smoking” area where they decided to sit instead, and nobody said anything. On the other hand, that may just be because people don’t really like to “rock the boat” here, the end result being that “strictly prohibited” is more realistically read as “grudgingly tolerated”. It isn’t just due to money considerations that I dine out less often in Japan.
The single most bizarre thing for a country where so many people smoke, though, is that I have seen very few cigarette butts just lying around on the street. In fact, Japan tends not to have too much garbage lying about in general, and that’s in spite of the fact that there are relatively few trashcans to put it in. Generally, people just bring such refuse with them and throw it out when they find a proper receptacle, but it’s still jarring to see. Conscientiousness is good and all, but sometimes it just feels a tad… I don’t know… creepy. One thing I know for sure, though is that I am and will remain a non-smoker for the foreseeable future. Cigarette smoke just irritates me (and my lungs) too much.
Now, I don’t mean any disrespect to those of you out there who are part of “the habit”: after all, I have had many friends and relatives over the years who are or have been smokers. Even my own father, a doctor of all people, did so at one point. In spite of this, I have never understood the appeal of inhaling fumes containing many different chemicals that would be lethal on their own, in amounts just small enough to let you die of long-term health problems, like cancer and emphysema, instead. And then there’s the smoke itself. I can still vividly remember coming home from my summer job as a bus boy in a smoke-filled restaurant years ago, and hacking up soot. In those days, I kind of felt like my job and coal-mining had a lot in common, at least in terms of the health risks. (I had that wrong, though: actually, tobacco smoke is much deadlier in terms of actual deaths caused worldwide per year.)
These days, of course, a lot of that has changed: an increasingly health-conscious America has put ever-tighter restrictions on tobacco use, and in New York State in particular, not only are vending machines for cigarettes virtually gone (maybe by law, though I’m fuzzy on that), but smoking itself is also outlawed in public establishments. This is a far cry from even ten years ago in the US, and virtually alien to what things were like 50 years ago, but as they say, time marches on. Japan, on the other hand, is somewhat behind the curve.
For one thing, Japan, with the world’s highest concentration of vending machines per capita, also sells cigarettes in them. Said vending machines are usually out on the street, and when I came to Japan the first time two years ago, literally anyone could buy them. Japan does technically have age restrictions on the purchase of tobacco products, just as the US does, but that wouldn’t stop any intrepid youth from simply inserting a few coins and getting the brand they want. It was only this year that the makers finally instituted an age-check in the form of smart cards required to use them. Even with that, though, it’s still jarring to see them out in the open. But I suppose I shouldn’t be too surprised, since at times it also seems like everybody smokes.
Obviously, not everyone does, and I have a fairly large number of non-smoker friends (partly due to self-selection), but walking down the street, at times you’re liable to see practically every other person with a cigarette in hand, or the implements necessary to light up at a moment’s notice. It’s rather surreal, and made more bizarre by the fact that the usual Japanese consideration for the people around oneself seems to fly out the window the moment they light up. At least in my experience, people are quite careless in where they direct their smoke, which (as you might have guessed) tends to be in my direction.
And then there are the restaurants. As New York used to have prior to the blanket ban on smoking in public places, there is a smoking section and a non-smoking section. However, it would seem that the people who design these spaces are not well acquainted with why the division exists, because more often than not, sitting in the “non-smoking” section entails sitting next to a group of smokers who are in the “smoking” section… which is in the middle of the same room, with no physical barriers whatsoever. In other places, there may be a nominal partition, but its effectiveness at actually blocking the smoke is minimal, at best. At times, it even seems like smokers get first priority, as I’ve personally witnessed customers unable to get into the “smoking” area just light up in the “non-smoking” area where they decided to sit instead, and nobody said anything. On the other hand, that may just be because people don’t really like to “rock the boat” here, the end result being that “strictly prohibited” is more realistically read as “grudgingly tolerated”. It isn’t just due to money considerations that I dine out less often in Japan.
The single most bizarre thing for a country where so many people smoke, though, is that I have seen very few cigarette butts just lying around on the street. In fact, Japan tends not to have too much garbage lying about in general, and that’s in spite of the fact that there are relatively few trashcans to put it in. Generally, people just bring such refuse with them and throw it out when they find a proper receptacle, but it’s still jarring to see. Conscientiousness is good and all, but sometimes it just feels a tad… I don’t know… creepy. One thing I know for sure, though is that I am and will remain a non-smoker for the foreseeable future. Cigarette smoke just irritates me (and my lungs) too much.
13 August 2008
Working in an earthquake-prone school
Not too long ago, there was a fairly substantial earthquake up in Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, which I found out about first through worried friends and relatives. While it was quite far from me and caused relatively little in the way of property damage or human casualties, it did provide me with the jumping-off point for exploring the sometimes-unnerving reality of living in a country where earthquakes are a regular occurrence and entire cities occasionally leveled by them. I am still, as I was then, mostly unconcerned about my own particular lifestyle being affected by these quakes, but two things have occurred lately that are enough to give me pause.
The first is an aftershock in the same area hit by the earthquake from a few months ago. While it didn’t take any lives, it’s somewhat unnerving because this aftershock was actually stronger than the initial earthquake, and (as the TV show I was watching so helpfully stressed) would cause rather complete and catastrophic damage to pretty much any building not up to modern earthquake-resistant building codes. So, imagine my surprise when I read an article the next day, which in its cheerfully alarmist fashion, pointed out that most school buildings in Osaka prefecture were built between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, and that city and prefectural school boards had been dragging their heels about fixing the problem since at least the Kobe earthquake thirteen and a half years ago. So, as it turns out, the school I work in is not safe in the event of a major earthquake. Great.
Luckily, said exposé, coupled with still lingering images from the Chinese earthquakes earlier this year (where school buildings simply collapsed on top of the schoolchildren inside), seems to have motivated cities all around Osaka to actually do something about it. This includes, as luck would have it, my school. Well, sort of.
Matsubara is not a very large city compared to the other cities of Osaka Prefecture, but it still has seven junior high schools, fifteen elementary schools, and a few nursery schools run by the city board of education. As you can imagine, this means that bringing all of these schools up to modern earthquake resistance standards is quite the arduous (and expensive) undertaking. And between a chronically under-funded budget and not wanting to play favorites with any of the schools, this means that each school gets to have a bit of it brought up to code at a time.
In my case, this means that one particular section of the main school building has been spending the summer break getting its concrete superstructure reinforced by metal rods, having concrete overhangs taken down from above the first-floor entrances, and having lots and lots of holes dug and/or drilled into it in order to accomplish this. So, in spite of my relatively quiet summer break, it has actually been punctuated at regular intervals by the sound of jackhammering. (I know it’s for a good purpose and all, but could they try keeping it down a bit?) They also removed sections of floor at ground level, in order to reinforce that too. The final stage involves attaching a large number of angled reinforcing columns to the outside of the building, which turns the school into what looks kind of like a gigantic Erector set (y’know… like Legos, but metal plates with screws and gears and such), In short, that particular part of the school is a gigantic mess right now, and I wonder whether they’ll actually finish it in time for classes to start up again (back at my college, they certainly never did, though Japan prides itself on punctuality so I don’t really know).
Of course, the reinforcement method, while effective and (relatively) inexpensive, also has the upshot of making the reinforced structure slightly… unappealing from a visual standpoint. Since it is a standard Japanese-style junior high school, that’s not necessarily going to detract from its original appearance, but it’s certainly quite apparent, especially considering that the rest of the school has yet to undergo this transformation. But then again, I suppose that all things considered, a safe building is much more appealing in terms of survival, no matter what its particular looks happen to be. Not that these reinforcements will do me much good. The first part of the main building they’re doing at my school houses the home ec, science, and computer classrooms, none of which have much in common with my current job. They will eventually progress to the rest of the building, but who knows where I’ll be working by the time they finish everything… it could take years.
So, with all that going on in the midst of my summer vacation, I’m rather hoping that things calm down at least a little bit before classes start again. And hoping and praying that we don’t get any major earthquakes in Osaka while I’m teaching. I just need to remember my mantra, “I like hot springs. I like hot springs. I like hot springs” As long as Japan has those, I can put up (mostly) with the worries that seismic instability’s other, more negative aspects create. Now, where’d I leave that safety helmet…?
The first is an aftershock in the same area hit by the earthquake from a few months ago. While it didn’t take any lives, it’s somewhat unnerving because this aftershock was actually stronger than the initial earthquake, and (as the TV show I was watching so helpfully stressed) would cause rather complete and catastrophic damage to pretty much any building not up to modern earthquake-resistant building codes. So, imagine my surprise when I read an article the next day, which in its cheerfully alarmist fashion, pointed out that most school buildings in Osaka prefecture were built between the late 1940s and the early 1960s, and that city and prefectural school boards had been dragging their heels about fixing the problem since at least the Kobe earthquake thirteen and a half years ago. So, as it turns out, the school I work in is not safe in the event of a major earthquake. Great.
Luckily, said exposé, coupled with still lingering images from the Chinese earthquakes earlier this year (where school buildings simply collapsed on top of the schoolchildren inside), seems to have motivated cities all around Osaka to actually do something about it. This includes, as luck would have it, my school. Well, sort of.
Matsubara is not a very large city compared to the other cities of Osaka Prefecture, but it still has seven junior high schools, fifteen elementary schools, and a few nursery schools run by the city board of education. As you can imagine, this means that bringing all of these schools up to modern earthquake resistance standards is quite the arduous (and expensive) undertaking. And between a chronically under-funded budget and not wanting to play favorites with any of the schools, this means that each school gets to have a bit of it brought up to code at a time.
In my case, this means that one particular section of the main school building has been spending the summer break getting its concrete superstructure reinforced by metal rods, having concrete overhangs taken down from above the first-floor entrances, and having lots and lots of holes dug and/or drilled into it in order to accomplish this. So, in spite of my relatively quiet summer break, it has actually been punctuated at regular intervals by the sound of jackhammering. (I know it’s for a good purpose and all, but could they try keeping it down a bit?) They also removed sections of floor at ground level, in order to reinforce that too. The final stage involves attaching a large number of angled reinforcing columns to the outside of the building, which turns the school into what looks kind of like a gigantic Erector set (y’know… like Legos, but metal plates with screws and gears and such), In short, that particular part of the school is a gigantic mess right now, and I wonder whether they’ll actually finish it in time for classes to start up again (back at my college, they certainly never did, though Japan prides itself on punctuality so I don’t really know).
Of course, the reinforcement method, while effective and (relatively) inexpensive, also has the upshot of making the reinforced structure slightly… unappealing from a visual standpoint. Since it is a standard Japanese-style junior high school, that’s not necessarily going to detract from its original appearance, but it’s certainly quite apparent, especially considering that the rest of the school has yet to undergo this transformation. But then again, I suppose that all things considered, a safe building is much more appealing in terms of survival, no matter what its particular looks happen to be. Not that these reinforcements will do me much good. The first part of the main building they’re doing at my school houses the home ec, science, and computer classrooms, none of which have much in common with my current job. They will eventually progress to the rest of the building, but who knows where I’ll be working by the time they finish everything… it could take years.
So, with all that going on in the midst of my summer vacation, I’m rather hoping that things calm down at least a little bit before classes start again. And hoping and praying that we don’t get any major earthquakes in Osaka while I’m teaching. I just need to remember my mantra, “I like hot springs. I like hot springs. I like hot springs” As long as Japan has those, I can put up (mostly) with the worries that seismic instability’s other, more negative aspects create. Now, where’d I leave that safety helmet…?
06 August 2008
Summer vacation?
August is just about here in Osaka, and with it, the students are now in the middle of their summer vacation. In fact, they have been since the middle of July. With it, is a conspicuous lack of classes, and what you’d think would be a conspicuous lack of students. But perhaps I should really be saying summer “vacation”, because, you see… the students are still here.
Summer vacation in Japan is not a time of unmitigated relaxation and fun-having the way that most of us Americans are used to. Instead, it seems that the Japanese philosophy is that through hard work, you can overcome such frivolous things as “fun” and “idleness.” During the summer break, club activities continue straight through, and Japanese students (who are basically all expected to belong to one club or another) are made to attend on days their club is in session, which is at least once a week. And if that weren’t bad enough, there are also several mandatory assembly days where the entire student body must come in to be harangued for several hours about not giving in to the temptations to have a good time, and being always studious and upright. (I wish I was exaggerating as much as you think I am.)
And that’s not all. One of the hallmarks of summer vacation for Japanese students is the homework. Not content with simply making kids come to school during what (to me) is a sacred time of relaxation and fun, teachers (at the behest of the Ministry of Education) also saddle them with large amounts of work for them to complete over the course of the break. On the one hand, I can see the logic in this: the academic year starts in April and ends in March, so the students will still be learning the same material when they get back, and this will help keep their skills sharp for their return. On the other hand, it does take away quite a bit from the supposedly “carefree” nature of summer, and there are plenty of students who wait until the very last week of vacation to do it all, thereby negating much of the value it’s intended to have.
Between the clubs, mandatory assembly days, and piles of homework, the summer break for Japanese students is a far cry from what most of us are familiar with. But what do the Japanese students think? When I told the kids that not only do American students have nearly twice as long for summer vacation, but they also have no homework, I got a range of reactions from disbelief to outright envy. Poor things. But believe it or not, their, their situation is actually better than Japanese children a generation ago had it: up until the early part of this decade, students had a mandatory half-day on Saturdays during the year, and even more school-related activity during summer “vacation”. Not that it gives them any less of a raw deal now, of course.
As for me, I’m still coming into the school pretty much every day, in spite of the lack of classes. Instead, my time is taken up by reading, studying Japanese, working on various English-related projects, and walking around, engaging students in conversation. (Sample conversation: “Hi, [name]. How are you?” “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” “I’m hot.” “Me too.”) Because of this, it’s not quite as boring as I expected it to be, though I certainly still have a bit more free time during my work hours than I’m quite sure what to do with. I do have some vacation time though, and as a matter of fact, I’ll be headed to Tokyo this weekend (or last weekend when you read this) to meet up with a friend and do some sightseeing. I’m looking forward to that, as well as having a justification to ride the Shinkansen there. After all, the journey is half the fun, right?
P.S. An update on my cicada situation – I believe I wrote in my article two weeks ago that cicadas were “entirely harmless” to humans. As it turns out, this is not the case. I found this out when I got beaned by one while riding my bike to school. They may not look like much, but those things pack a wallop, and they seem incapable of flying in a straight line. Luckily, I don’t think it left a mark. That’d be quite the bruise to explain…
Summer vacation in Japan is not a time of unmitigated relaxation and fun-having the way that most of us Americans are used to. Instead, it seems that the Japanese philosophy is that through hard work, you can overcome such frivolous things as “fun” and “idleness.” During the summer break, club activities continue straight through, and Japanese students (who are basically all expected to belong to one club or another) are made to attend on days their club is in session, which is at least once a week. And if that weren’t bad enough, there are also several mandatory assembly days where the entire student body must come in to be harangued for several hours about not giving in to the temptations to have a good time, and being always studious and upright. (I wish I was exaggerating as much as you think I am.)
And that’s not all. One of the hallmarks of summer vacation for Japanese students is the homework. Not content with simply making kids come to school during what (to me) is a sacred time of relaxation and fun, teachers (at the behest of the Ministry of Education) also saddle them with large amounts of work for them to complete over the course of the break. On the one hand, I can see the logic in this: the academic year starts in April and ends in March, so the students will still be learning the same material when they get back, and this will help keep their skills sharp for their return. On the other hand, it does take away quite a bit from the supposedly “carefree” nature of summer, and there are plenty of students who wait until the very last week of vacation to do it all, thereby negating much of the value it’s intended to have.
Between the clubs, mandatory assembly days, and piles of homework, the summer break for Japanese students is a far cry from what most of us are familiar with. But what do the Japanese students think? When I told the kids that not only do American students have nearly twice as long for summer vacation, but they also have no homework, I got a range of reactions from disbelief to outright envy. Poor things. But believe it or not, their, their situation is actually better than Japanese children a generation ago had it: up until the early part of this decade, students had a mandatory half-day on Saturdays during the year, and even more school-related activity during summer “vacation”. Not that it gives them any less of a raw deal now, of course.
As for me, I’m still coming into the school pretty much every day, in spite of the lack of classes. Instead, my time is taken up by reading, studying Japanese, working on various English-related projects, and walking around, engaging students in conversation. (Sample conversation: “Hi, [name]. How are you?” “I’m fine, thank you, and you?” “I’m hot.” “Me too.”) Because of this, it’s not quite as boring as I expected it to be, though I certainly still have a bit more free time during my work hours than I’m quite sure what to do with. I do have some vacation time though, and as a matter of fact, I’ll be headed to Tokyo this weekend (or last weekend when you read this) to meet up with a friend and do some sightseeing. I’m looking forward to that, as well as having a justification to ride the Shinkansen there. After all, the journey is half the fun, right?
P.S. An update on my cicada situation – I believe I wrote in my article two weeks ago that cicadas were “entirely harmless” to humans. As it turns out, this is not the case. I found this out when I got beaned by one while riding my bike to school. They may not look like much, but those things pack a wallop, and they seem incapable of flying in a straight line. Luckily, I don’t think it left a mark. That’d be quite the bruise to explain…
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