One day, as I stood near the window of our office at Canon, overlooking the massive Tokyo prefectural government building next door, I thought I saw some large purplish shapes through the thick Tokyo summer haze on the western horizon. Were they mountains, or just darker clouds?
I asked a colleague, "Are those mountains?"
"Mountains?," she replied with a laugh. "There are no mountains out there!"
I could almost hear "silly!" at the end of her response.
Years later, when I played Sunday morning baseball in a men's league on the banks of the Tama River, I could sometimes see a pink, sunrise-lit Mount Fuji rising over the suburban Kawasaki skyline on the southwestern horizon, so far away that it appeared by optical illusion like a toy Fuji, only a foot or so high.
My Canon colleague had been wrong. There were mountains out there. I wondered if she saw them now. Without the summer smog trapped between us and the mountains by the Pacific breeze, from our vantage point in the westernmost tower of high-rise Tokyo we should have seen the majestic Japanese Alps of Nagano Prefecture over the Kanto Plain.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
Just Sauce
During my Canon internship, I was assigned to the Internal Communications Division, whose role was to disseminate news about Canon internally. We published a company magazine, as well as a monthly video program called "Video News." My task during the summer was to make an English version of the most recent Video News program into English, so that it could be disseminated for the first time to the overseas subsidiaries.
The Internal Communications Division shared a large room overlooking the Kanto Plain with a couple of other divisions. We had a pod of seven desks, with our division-head, Tamano-san, at its head. Tamano-san was a roundish, bespectacled, good-natured man in his early 40s with salt and pepper hair, who spoke pretty good English. Our other division members included Kakurai-san, Matsuura-san and Nakajima-san. Nakajima-san was a cameraman and video operator, so I worked with him most closely. Since he did not speak much English, it was a good chance for me to work on my Japanese. I did not get to practice much Japanese with Matsuura-san, who had lived in the United States as a child, but I did spent most of my summer trying to summon the courage to ask her out, which I never did. Kakurai-san, I later learned, had a reputation for hanging out at some of Tokyo's stranger sex clubs, though he seemed like a normal enough guy to me.
At the base of our pod of desks, at the other end from Tamano-san, were several cardboard boxes containing plastic bottles of brown liquid. No one ever took any of the bottles out; they just sat there all summer. All summer long, I wondered what they were. Finally, one day, I asked Tamano-san, what was in the bottles.
"Sauce," he said.
"What kind of sauce?," I asked.
"Just sauce," he responded.
"But what kind of sauce is it?," I persisted, thinking that maybe he had not understood me.
"It's not a kind of sauce," a bit flustered why I did not understand. "It's 'sauce'."
I gave up.
"Sauce," I later learned, is what Japanese use to refer to the brown demi-glace sauce used for tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) and other fried, breaded foods (but not tempura). Apparently, when it was introduced into Japan, where no sauces previously existed, demi-glace sauce became "sauce." And, because "sauce" was an English word, Tamano-san expected me to understand what it was.
After a very brief period of trying to come up with Japanese words for foreign concepts in the 19th century, they apparently gave up and began adopting foreign words to describe the new things they represented. Over time, Japanese appears to have lost its ability to generate new words, and now most new words seem to be foreign words or "Japanese" words made up of foreign words. Often, the new words are contractions or hybrids, but because they are based (mostly) on English, Japanese often think of them as English words and are surprised when Americans don't understand them.
Some examples are:
remocon -- remote control
arafo -- around forty (years old)
arafi -- around fifty
waapuro -- word processor
depaato -- department store
neeto -- (a person) Not in Employment Education or Training
Even in New York, the local Japanese community makes up contractions for local places, where the whole English name is just too tiring to say. My favorite of these is:
Gurasen -- Grand Central Station
The Internal Communications Division shared a large room overlooking the Kanto Plain with a couple of other divisions. We had a pod of seven desks, with our division-head, Tamano-san, at its head. Tamano-san was a roundish, bespectacled, good-natured man in his early 40s with salt and pepper hair, who spoke pretty good English. Our other division members included Kakurai-san, Matsuura-san and Nakajima-san. Nakajima-san was a cameraman and video operator, so I worked with him most closely. Since he did not speak much English, it was a good chance for me to work on my Japanese. I did not get to practice much Japanese with Matsuura-san, who had lived in the United States as a child, but I did spent most of my summer trying to summon the courage to ask her out, which I never did. Kakurai-san, I later learned, had a reputation for hanging out at some of Tokyo's stranger sex clubs, though he seemed like a normal enough guy to me.
At the base of our pod of desks, at the other end from Tamano-san, were several cardboard boxes containing plastic bottles of brown liquid. No one ever took any of the bottles out; they just sat there all summer. All summer long, I wondered what they were. Finally, one day, I asked Tamano-san, what was in the bottles.
"Sauce," he said.
"What kind of sauce?," I asked.
"Just sauce," he responded.
"But what kind of sauce is it?," I persisted, thinking that maybe he had not understood me.
"It's not a kind of sauce," a bit flustered why I did not understand. "It's 'sauce'."
I gave up.
"Sauce," I later learned, is what Japanese use to refer to the brown demi-glace sauce used for tonkatsu (fried pork cutlet) and other fried, breaded foods (but not tempura). Apparently, when it was introduced into Japan, where no sauces previously existed, demi-glace sauce became "sauce." And, because "sauce" was an English word, Tamano-san expected me to understand what it was.
After a very brief period of trying to come up with Japanese words for foreign concepts in the 19th century, they apparently gave up and began adopting foreign words to describe the new things they represented. Over time, Japanese appears to have lost its ability to generate new words, and now most new words seem to be foreign words or "Japanese" words made up of foreign words. Often, the new words are contractions or hybrids, but because they are based (mostly) on English, Japanese often think of them as English words and are surprised when Americans don't understand them.
Some examples are:
remocon -- remote control
arafo -- around forty (years old)
arafi -- around fifty
waapuro -- word processor
depaato -- department store
neeto -- (a person) Not in Employment Education or Training
Even in New York, the local Japanese community makes up contractions for local places, where the whole English name is just too tiring to say. My favorite of these is:
Gurasen -- Grand Central Station
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Yokohama Strep Throat Blues
One morning in July 1991, a couple of weeks after arriving in Japan, I woke up with a terrible case of strep.
I crawled down to the concierge desk to speak with Arai-san, the dorm manager at the Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1. He called Canon to report that I was sick and then made me go see the doctor down the street, who was Chinese and apparently spoke English.
I was surprised when I entered the doctor's office to find that, just as in a Japanese house, I had to remove my shoes. I took a pair of slippers from a cubby hole on the wall, put them on the raised office floor, stepped up into the slippers, and then put my shoes into the vacated cubby-hole. I then entered the waiting area, which was filled with old people.
The rap on Japanese medicine is that you wait for three hours for a three-minute visit. The practice is walk-in, so you don't get an appointment. You are just asked to come on a certain day. And wait.
Wait I did. It was several hours before I saw the doctor. With nothing to do, I studied the faces of the geriatric patients around me. Doctors in Japan see a sick patient every day or two until they are better, and Japanese often talk about "commuting" to the doctor when they are sick. In that first long wait, I got to know the other patients' faces well enough that I recognized many of them when I came back to the office over the next few days.
When I finally saw him, he did speak English, which he had learned in his native Taiwan. Three years later, when I was having a racing heartbeat and had to go to the hospital to get an electrocardiogram, I could handle it in Japanese, but at this point, my Japanese still was not up to a medical conversation, and the doctor being able to speak English was a great relief. He confirmed that I had strep and prescribed both penicillin and Chinese herbal medicine (kampo-yaku in Japanese), which was meant to be mixed with hot water and consumed like tea. He told me I had a very bad case and would be out of work for 10 days. Ten days!, I thought. My whole internship was only nine weeks long, minus the two week summer vacation.
Japanese doctors also sell the medicine they prescribe, which has led to accusations that they overprescribe medicine to increase their income. My colleague Ann Safir used to complain that a Japanese doctor would prescribe penicillin for a hangnail. The practice may have affected the way that Japanese think about being sick, because usually the first question my Japanese friends will ask when I say I have a cold is, "Are you taking medicine for it?" My wife Kaori is a big proponent of cold medicine, although my philosophy is to try to take as little medicine as possible.
When I got back to the dorm, Arai-san asked if I had been given Chinese medicine. When I said yes, he took the packets and sent me to my room. A few minutes later, he came up with a thermos full of hot medicine, some teacups and a bottle of honey. He warned me that the medicine tasted awful and that the honey to cut down on its bitterness. I was supposed to drink a thermos-full every day. I also had to take the penicillin, which like other medicine, is administered differently in Japan. Rather than a pill, the medicine comes in a one-dose package of powder. You take a mouthful of water, pour the powder into your mouth, and swallow. If you do it the opposite way -- powder, then water -- you not only taste the medicine in all its bitterness, but the powder sticks to the moist places in your mouth and the bitterness lingers on. I don't recommend taking it this way.
The next few days were awful. I had hot sweats, where I had to pull off all the sheets, followed by cold spells, when I had to put on sweats and pull the covers over my head. I slept pretty much constantly, except when I was drinking the Chinese medicine or eating food Arai-san's wife cooked for me. When I was awake, I had no television to watch or books to read. But, sometime in the midst of my ordeal, several of my colleagues traveled all the way to deepest Yokohama to pay me a visit after work, including several female colleagues, who were allowed into the living quarters of the dorm under the special circumstances -- i.e., me being a foreign intern. They brought me a copy of the Herald Tribune, which reported that there had been a coup against Gorbachev in Russia. I read every article and did the entire crossword puzzle.
Drinking the kampo-yaku for four days, even with the honey, was awful. But in combination with the penicillin, it really worked. Within four days, I was back on my feet and in the office. I've been a proponent of Chinese medicine ever since.
I crawled down to the concierge desk to speak with Arai-san, the dorm manager at the Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1. He called Canon to report that I was sick and then made me go see the doctor down the street, who was Chinese and apparently spoke English.
I was surprised when I entered the doctor's office to find that, just as in a Japanese house, I had to remove my shoes. I took a pair of slippers from a cubby hole on the wall, put them on the raised office floor, stepped up into the slippers, and then put my shoes into the vacated cubby-hole. I then entered the waiting area, which was filled with old people.
The rap on Japanese medicine is that you wait for three hours for a three-minute visit. The practice is walk-in, so you don't get an appointment. You are just asked to come on a certain day. And wait.
Wait I did. It was several hours before I saw the doctor. With nothing to do, I studied the faces of the geriatric patients around me. Doctors in Japan see a sick patient every day or two until they are better, and Japanese often talk about "commuting" to the doctor when they are sick. In that first long wait, I got to know the other patients' faces well enough that I recognized many of them when I came back to the office over the next few days.
When I finally saw him, he did speak English, which he had learned in his native Taiwan. Three years later, when I was having a racing heartbeat and had to go to the hospital to get an electrocardiogram, I could handle it in Japanese, but at this point, my Japanese still was not up to a medical conversation, and the doctor being able to speak English was a great relief. He confirmed that I had strep and prescribed both penicillin and Chinese herbal medicine (kampo-yaku in Japanese), which was meant to be mixed with hot water and consumed like tea. He told me I had a very bad case and would be out of work for 10 days. Ten days!, I thought. My whole internship was only nine weeks long, minus the two week summer vacation.
Japanese doctors also sell the medicine they prescribe, which has led to accusations that they overprescribe medicine to increase their income. My colleague Ann Safir used to complain that a Japanese doctor would prescribe penicillin for a hangnail. The practice may have affected the way that Japanese think about being sick, because usually the first question my Japanese friends will ask when I say I have a cold is, "Are you taking medicine for it?" My wife Kaori is a big proponent of cold medicine, although my philosophy is to try to take as little medicine as possible.
When I got back to the dorm, Arai-san asked if I had been given Chinese medicine. When I said yes, he took the packets and sent me to my room. A few minutes later, he came up with a thermos full of hot medicine, some teacups and a bottle of honey. He warned me that the medicine tasted awful and that the honey to cut down on its bitterness. I was supposed to drink a thermos-full every day. I also had to take the penicillin, which like other medicine, is administered differently in Japan. Rather than a pill, the medicine comes in a one-dose package of powder. You take a mouthful of water, pour the powder into your mouth, and swallow. If you do it the opposite way -- powder, then water -- you not only taste the medicine in all its bitterness, but the powder sticks to the moist places in your mouth and the bitterness lingers on. I don't recommend taking it this way.
The next few days were awful. I had hot sweats, where I had to pull off all the sheets, followed by cold spells, when I had to put on sweats and pull the covers over my head. I slept pretty much constantly, except when I was drinking the Chinese medicine or eating food Arai-san's wife cooked for me. When I was awake, I had no television to watch or books to read. But, sometime in the midst of my ordeal, several of my colleagues traveled all the way to deepest Yokohama to pay me a visit after work, including several female colleagues, who were allowed into the living quarters of the dorm under the special circumstances -- i.e., me being a foreign intern. They brought me a copy of the Herald Tribune, which reported that there had been a coup against Gorbachev in Russia. I read every article and did the entire crossword puzzle.
Drinking the kampo-yaku for four days, even with the honey, was awful. But in combination with the penicillin, it really worked. Within four days, I was back on my feet and in the office. I've been a proponent of Chinese medicine ever since.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
The Company Dorm
In the early 1990s, a perk of working for a large company like Canon was the company dormitory. Given the high cost of housing in Tokyo, dormitories were a great benefit, offering small but clean accommodations for a fraction of what an apartment would cost. Employees could live in a dorm while they were single, and many were eligible to move to subsidized family housing when they got married. The only disadvantage of the dorms was that, in return for their low price, they tended to be very far away.
During my time in Japan, I lived in two Canon dormitories, the Canon Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1 in deepest Yokohama, and the Mushashi-Nitta Dormitory in Ohta Ward, literally on the edge of Tokyo, near the Tamagawa River dividing Tokyo from Kawasaki. (More on Musashi-Nitta in a later post.)
A company dorm was usually overseen by a long-time company employee. A managership was a way of rewarding a valued employee who did not rise to senior management with a free apartment and a few additional years on the company payroll beyond the mandatory retirement age. The overseers of Fujigaoka No. 1 were Arai-san and his wife. Like many Japanese men in his late 40s or early 50s at the time, Arai-san stopped keeping up with popular fashions in the 1970s and favored tinted eyeglasses and shaggy hair. The Arais were extremely concerned about me adjusting to dorm life and made sure that the guys living there welcomed me too.
At the dorm's entrance, there was a concierge window where you could receive mail, pick up dry cleaning, and make pay phone calls in the days before cell phones. Next to the window was a board with a name plate for each person hanging on a hook according to room number. The red side meant you were out, the green side meant you were in, and you were supposed to turn it to the appropriate side when you came or left. I thought this was extremely paternalistic -- whose right is it for anyone to know where I am!, I thought -- but I eventually realized it was just practical. It saved the Arais the trouble of going all the way to your room when you got a phone call or had a guest, only to find that you were not there.
After flipping over your name plate, you turned left, into the shoe box area. Each person had their own box for keeping shoes and slippers in -- this being Japan where shoes were only worn outside and slippers were worn inside the dorm. Once you had changed your footwear, you stepped up from the genkan (entrance) into the dorm itself. For those of you who have never traveled to Japan but plan to go there someday, a step up is usually a signal that you need to take off your shoes, and the genkan is almost always a step or two lower than the floor of the house.
Most employees living in the dorm shared a room. As a foreign intern, I got a room to myself -- probably because Canon feared both that, as an American, I could not live in such a small room with someone else and that a Japanese employee would consider it a hardship to have to share such close quarters with an American, who was assumed not to speak Japanese and to have uncouth foreign habits. The dorm had no cafeteria, but it had a kitchen for us to use, along with a TV room. Each floor had a large common bathroom. Like a Japanese-style inn, the shower and o-furo (bath), a vital part of any Japanese living quarters, was on the first floor. The o-furo was communal, about two feet deep so that you could sit in it neck deep and soak, and the size of a small swimming pool. (I know from experienced that you can swim in some of these large o-furo, even though that's bad form.) My dorm-mates frequently invited me to join them in the o-furo after we'd been drinking together, but during my first months in Japan I was still not comfortable with the idea of sitting naked in a bathtub with a bunch of other men and always begged off. I eventually learned to love the o-furo and its relatives the sento (public bath) and onsen (hot spring bath) as much as the Japanese do. But it was several years in coming. Oh, think of all the o-furo time I missed!
During my time in Japan, I lived in two Canon dormitories, the Canon Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1 in deepest Yokohama, and the Mushashi-Nitta Dormitory in Ohta Ward, literally on the edge of Tokyo, near the Tamagawa River dividing Tokyo from Kawasaki. (More on Musashi-Nitta in a later post.)
A company dorm was usually overseen by a long-time company employee. A managership was a way of rewarding a valued employee who did not rise to senior management with a free apartment and a few additional years on the company payroll beyond the mandatory retirement age. The overseers of Fujigaoka No. 1 were Arai-san and his wife. Like many Japanese men in his late 40s or early 50s at the time, Arai-san stopped keeping up with popular fashions in the 1970s and favored tinted eyeglasses and shaggy hair. The Arais were extremely concerned about me adjusting to dorm life and made sure that the guys living there welcomed me too.
At the dorm's entrance, there was a concierge window where you could receive mail, pick up dry cleaning, and make pay phone calls in the days before cell phones. Next to the window was a board with a name plate for each person hanging on a hook according to room number. The red side meant you were out, the green side meant you were in, and you were supposed to turn it to the appropriate side when you came or left. I thought this was extremely paternalistic -- whose right is it for anyone to know where I am!, I thought -- but I eventually realized it was just practical. It saved the Arais the trouble of going all the way to your room when you got a phone call or had a guest, only to find that you were not there.
After flipping over your name plate, you turned left, into the shoe box area. Each person had their own box for keeping shoes and slippers in -- this being Japan where shoes were only worn outside and slippers were worn inside the dorm. Once you had changed your footwear, you stepped up from the genkan (entrance) into the dorm itself. For those of you who have never traveled to Japan but plan to go there someday, a step up is usually a signal that you need to take off your shoes, and the genkan is almost always a step or two lower than the floor of the house.
Most employees living in the dorm shared a room. As a foreign intern, I got a room to myself -- probably because Canon feared both that, as an American, I could not live in such a small room with someone else and that a Japanese employee would consider it a hardship to have to share such close quarters with an American, who was assumed not to speak Japanese and to have uncouth foreign habits. The dorm had no cafeteria, but it had a kitchen for us to use, along with a TV room. Each floor had a large common bathroom. Like a Japanese-style inn, the shower and o-furo (bath), a vital part of any Japanese living quarters, was on the first floor. The o-furo was communal, about two feet deep so that you could sit in it neck deep and soak, and the size of a small swimming pool. (I know from experienced that you can swim in some of these large o-furo, even though that's bad form.) My dorm-mates frequently invited me to join them in the o-furo after we'd been drinking together, but during my first months in Japan I was still not comfortable with the idea of sitting naked in a bathtub with a bunch of other men and always begged off. I eventually learned to love the o-furo and its relatives the sento (public bath) and onsen (hot spring bath) as much as the Japanese do. But it was several years in coming. Oh, think of all the o-furo time I missed!
The last thing to note about the dorm was the curfew. At 11:00 pm, the front gate closed and the door was locked. Again, having come from college dorms where I could come and go as I pleased, bring women into my room, etc., I thought a curfew was too paternalistic for grown men. However, I soon learned that the back door was unlocked all night. This was a perfect example of the Japanese concepts of honne (true feeling/intention) and tatemae (a person's facade). The front door -- the public face of the dorm -- was the tatemae that said everyone had to be home by 11:00 pm or suffer the consequences. The back door was the honne that recognized we were all adults.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
"Something you don't have in America"
I'm trying to keep my posts in more or less chronological order, but more episodes are occurring to me the more I write.
My first day as a Canon intern was July 1, 1991, a day spent on orientation. I reported at 9:30 a.m., as requested, and was taken to meet Hiroshi Matsumoto. Matsumoto-san was a lifetime Canon employee in his fifties, short, pot-bellied, with a grey suit and greying hair surrounding his round face. He wore a Canon lapel pin. He had worked all over the Canon system, including in the U.S., where he had perfected his English. Like the other madogiwa-zoku -- "the ones with desks near the window," the middle managers -- Matsumoto-san's lifetime of hard work had been rewarded not by promotion to the highest echelons of power, but instead by a kind of pre-retirement involving several years of collecting a big paycheck while performing easy work like affixing his seal to documents that came across his desk and welcoming foreign interns. After a lifetime of overtime, Matsumoto-san's job ended promptly when a chime signalled the end of the work day at 5:15 pm -- a chime the younger workers ignored and the madogiwa-zoku took as their signal to dip into the mini fridge in the corner for a beer.
Matsumoto-san grabbed my hand flaccidly, the handshake of a man who learned the custom as an adult, not one whose adolescence was gripped by the fear that a less-than-firm handshake would convey the wrong impression. We sat down opposite one another in the conference room, arranged like so many other "western style" meeting rooms I would see in Japan, with two small sofas facing each other across a low table. Like many Japanese men of his generation, Matsumoto-san's eyes never quite met mine as we talked, always fixing on a spot on my forehead or above my left shoulder.
A young woman came in wearing the blue uniform that was mandatory for female employees. Matsumoto-san said something to her that I did not catch and she left the room. We chatted about my background and his time in the U.S., and the woman returned, bearing a tray with two glasses full of ice cubes and dark liquid.
Matsumoto-san looked directly me in the eye for the first time. "This," he said with a smile, "is something you don't have in the United States. I never found it in all the time I lived there."
I looked down at the glass in front of me. It looked like iced coffee. But, with this introduction, it had to be something else.
"A Japanese invention," he said with pride. "Iced coffee."
I thought back to the iced coffee my dad used to make by the pitcher and drink from yellow plastic glasses in the summertime when I was a kid. It would not be the last time I heard someone in Japan take credit for an American invention. "What a great idea," I said, diplomatically. I settled back and let Matsumoto-san tell me all about Canon.
My first day as a Canon intern was July 1, 1991, a day spent on orientation. I reported at 9:30 a.m., as requested, and was taken to meet Hiroshi Matsumoto. Matsumoto-san was a lifetime Canon employee in his fifties, short, pot-bellied, with a grey suit and greying hair surrounding his round face. He wore a Canon lapel pin. He had worked all over the Canon system, including in the U.S., where he had perfected his English. Like the other madogiwa-zoku -- "the ones with desks near the window," the middle managers -- Matsumoto-san's lifetime of hard work had been rewarded not by promotion to the highest echelons of power, but instead by a kind of pre-retirement involving several years of collecting a big paycheck while performing easy work like affixing his seal to documents that came across his desk and welcoming foreign interns. After a lifetime of overtime, Matsumoto-san's job ended promptly when a chime signalled the end of the work day at 5:15 pm -- a chime the younger workers ignored and the madogiwa-zoku took as their signal to dip into the mini fridge in the corner for a beer.
Matsumoto-san grabbed my hand flaccidly, the handshake of a man who learned the custom as an adult, not one whose adolescence was gripped by the fear that a less-than-firm handshake would convey the wrong impression. We sat down opposite one another in the conference room, arranged like so many other "western style" meeting rooms I would see in Japan, with two small sofas facing each other across a low table. Like many Japanese men of his generation, Matsumoto-san's eyes never quite met mine as we talked, always fixing on a spot on my forehead or above my left shoulder.
A young woman came in wearing the blue uniform that was mandatory for female employees. Matsumoto-san said something to her that I did not catch and she left the room. We chatted about my background and his time in the U.S., and the woman returned, bearing a tray with two glasses full of ice cubes and dark liquid.
Matsumoto-san looked directly me in the eye for the first time. "This," he said with a smile, "is something you don't have in the United States. I never found it in all the time I lived there."
I looked down at the glass in front of me. It looked like iced coffee. But, with this introduction, it had to be something else.
"A Japanese invention," he said with pride. "Iced coffee."
I thought back to the iced coffee my dad used to make by the pitcher and drink from yellow plastic glasses in the summertime when I was a kid. It would not be the last time I heard someone in Japan take credit for an American invention. "What a great idea," I said, diplomatically. I settled back and let Matsumoto-san tell me all about Canon.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Toilet Slippers
I began looking for a job in Japan in January 1991, five months before graduating from college. Until December 1990, my post-college plan was to follow my long-distance girlfriend to her home state of Virginia, work for a year as a private school teacher, and then enroll in law school at UVA. This plan suddenly changed when she began seeing someone else -- although she claimed her new relationship was just for fun until I graduated -- and I needed something else to do. The U.S. economy was in the tank (Bush recession #1), and I felt a strong need to get as far as I could from Harvard and Virginia after graduation.
I had been studying Japanese with no particular purpose in mind for the last three semesters. I never thought I would actually go to Japan. But, after breaking up with my girlfriend, Japan suddenly seemed like the ideal place to go after graduation. I had always wanted to live abroad, I reasoned, and couldn't I make myself more employable by perfecting my Japanese (which, in my ignorance, I thought would take only a year)? After all, in those days, there were pages and pages of jobs listed in the New York Times classifieds for Japanese speakers. Sure, the Japanese economy had slowed down too, but it would soon be roaring back, wouldn't it?
Thus, on a cold and miserable Cambridge day in January 1991, I figured the Japanese for "I have broken up with my girlfriend and I want to work in Japan," blurted this out to my surprised Japanese instructor at the end of class, and forever changed the course of my life. The Japanese instructors eventually found me a summer internship at Canon, Inc. as part of the Japanese department's internship program, and also learned of a one-year copyediting job at Look Japan magazine that traditionally went to a new Harvard graduate each year. By the time I graduated in June, I actually had two jobs lined up, a summer internship starting in June, and a magazine editing gig starting in September. I also did my own job search before graduating and, before my summer internship had ended, I even had my post-Look Japan job already lined up.
The Japanese department's summer internship program was impressive. Over the years, the instructors had established relationships with a number of major Japanese corporations that were eager to associate themselves with Harvard's brand, and students who had two years of Japanese instruction and good grades in their Japanese classes were eligible to participate. Included in the program was a comprehensive day-long orientation in Japanese etiquette and culture. Harvard had a vested interest in maintaining these relationships from year-to-year, and the instructors were keen for their students to reflect well on the department with how well-versed they were in Japanese culture and etiquette. The instructors also hoped to prevent a student destroying a relationship with a major cultural gaffe. The etiquette instruction covered everything from the need to prepare a self-introduction speech for the first day of our internships to remembering not to blow our noses in front of other people, a very bad faux pas.
It was in this orientation that I first learned about slipper culture. I knew already that Japanese people went shoeless in the house because we had a Japanese neighbor when I was a kid. I did not know about the complicated slipper rules, such as the fact that one never wears slippers on tatami mats, because slippers chew up tatami. What made an even greater impression on me was the rule about wearing different slippers in the toilet and in the rest of the house. Because bathrooms are considered unclean, Japanese keep toilet slippers and house slippers separate, and you are supposed to change into the toilet slippers when you use the toilet and then back into your regular slippers when you leave. Japanese frequently point to foreigners wearing the toilet slippers outside the toilet not only for the humor of it, but also as an example of non-Japanese people's supposed inability to assimilate Japanese customs and etiquette.
I don't know why this custom exists, and anyone with a different view should correct me, but I have a two-part theory. First, Shinto religion deals heavily with cleanliness and uncleanliness. Before entering a Shinto shrine, you must ritually wash your hands and mouth to purify yourself to enter. Death, being unclean, is left to the Buddhists to handle, which is why there are no Shinto funerals. Women were historically banned from many Shinto shrines and other sacred places because menstruation was thought to make them unclean and thus unfit for sacred spaces. The same holds for the sumo dohyo, where women are still forbidden to tread. Since toilets are unclean places, the Shinto legacy requires that toilet cooties are kept in the toilet and not spread through the rest of the house.
The second reason is much more mundane. Traditional-style Japanese toilets are porcelain lined holes in the ground over which you must squat to do your thing. It is much easier to miss one of these toilets than a western one, and wastes can more easily get onto shoes or places on the ground where you might tread on them and track them into the house. Thus, the Japanese toilet itself provided a practical reason for switching slippers at the toilet door and keeping the dirty toilet slippers in the toilet area. Even though most Japanese now use western-style toilets, the custom has become ingrained.
As a result, depending on the size of the toilet -- whether in a private home or in a dormitory or restaurant -- one or several pairs of rubber or plastic slippers are left in the toilet for everyone to use. (Apparently, Japanese people are afraid of the cooties on the bottom of the slippers, but not afraid of the cooties on the inside of the slippers from other people wearing them.)
In the etiquette lesson, I somehow missed the fact that toilet slippers were provided for common use and that people did not need to carry around their own personal pair of toilet slippers. When shopping for the things I would need in Japan, I duly bought two pairs, in different colors so I could distinguish them. When I decided to get ready for bed on my first night in the Canon Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1, I slipped on my burgundy house slippers for the walk down the hall and grabbed my black toilet slippers along with my toiletries. I arrived at the toilet door, slipped off my house slippers and placed them alongside the other slippers there, put on my toilet slippers, slid open the sliding glass door and was about to step in when I saw . . . a dozen pairs of identical green vinyl toilet slippers inside the door for all to use and a couple of young men standing at urinals wearing those same green vinyl slippers. I experienced an "Oh, now I get it ..." moment as I recalled the etiquette lesson. Totally embarrassed, I quickly shut the door, high-tailed it back to my room, and put my "toilet" slippers away. I then returned to the toilet, slipped on the green plastic slippers, and hoped that no one had noticed. My "toilet" slippers remained in the back of a closet until they eventually became my replacement "house" slippers.
I had been studying Japanese with no particular purpose in mind for the last three semesters. I never thought I would actually go to Japan. But, after breaking up with my girlfriend, Japan suddenly seemed like the ideal place to go after graduation. I had always wanted to live abroad, I reasoned, and couldn't I make myself more employable by perfecting my Japanese (which, in my ignorance, I thought would take only a year)? After all, in those days, there were pages and pages of jobs listed in the New York Times classifieds for Japanese speakers. Sure, the Japanese economy had slowed down too, but it would soon be roaring back, wouldn't it?
Thus, on a cold and miserable Cambridge day in January 1991, I figured the Japanese for "I have broken up with my girlfriend and I want to work in Japan," blurted this out to my surprised Japanese instructor at the end of class, and forever changed the course of my life. The Japanese instructors eventually found me a summer internship at Canon, Inc. as part of the Japanese department's internship program, and also learned of a one-year copyediting job at Look Japan magazine that traditionally went to a new Harvard graduate each year. By the time I graduated in June, I actually had two jobs lined up, a summer internship starting in June, and a magazine editing gig starting in September. I also did my own job search before graduating and, before my summer internship had ended, I even had my post-Look Japan job already lined up.
The Japanese department's summer internship program was impressive. Over the years, the instructors had established relationships with a number of major Japanese corporations that were eager to associate themselves with Harvard's brand, and students who had two years of Japanese instruction and good grades in their Japanese classes were eligible to participate. Included in the program was a comprehensive day-long orientation in Japanese etiquette and culture. Harvard had a vested interest in maintaining these relationships from year-to-year, and the instructors were keen for their students to reflect well on the department with how well-versed they were in Japanese culture and etiquette. The instructors also hoped to prevent a student destroying a relationship with a major cultural gaffe. The etiquette instruction covered everything from the need to prepare a self-introduction speech for the first day of our internships to remembering not to blow our noses in front of other people, a very bad faux pas.
It was in this orientation that I first learned about slipper culture. I knew already that Japanese people went shoeless in the house because we had a Japanese neighbor when I was a kid. I did not know about the complicated slipper rules, such as the fact that one never wears slippers on tatami mats, because slippers chew up tatami. What made an even greater impression on me was the rule about wearing different slippers in the toilet and in the rest of the house. Because bathrooms are considered unclean, Japanese keep toilet slippers and house slippers separate, and you are supposed to change into the toilet slippers when you use the toilet and then back into your regular slippers when you leave. Japanese frequently point to foreigners wearing the toilet slippers outside the toilet not only for the humor of it, but also as an example of non-Japanese people's supposed inability to assimilate Japanese customs and etiquette.
I don't know why this custom exists, and anyone with a different view should correct me, but I have a two-part theory. First, Shinto religion deals heavily with cleanliness and uncleanliness. Before entering a Shinto shrine, you must ritually wash your hands and mouth to purify yourself to enter. Death, being unclean, is left to the Buddhists to handle, which is why there are no Shinto funerals. Women were historically banned from many Shinto shrines and other sacred places because menstruation was thought to make them unclean and thus unfit for sacred spaces. The same holds for the sumo dohyo, where women are still forbidden to tread. Since toilets are unclean places, the Shinto legacy requires that toilet cooties are kept in the toilet and not spread through the rest of the house.
The second reason is much more mundane. Traditional-style Japanese toilets are porcelain lined holes in the ground over which you must squat to do your thing. It is much easier to miss one of these toilets than a western one, and wastes can more easily get onto shoes or places on the ground where you might tread on them and track them into the house. Thus, the Japanese toilet itself provided a practical reason for switching slippers at the toilet door and keeping the dirty toilet slippers in the toilet area. Even though most Japanese now use western-style toilets, the custom has become ingrained.
As a result, depending on the size of the toilet -- whether in a private home or in a dormitory or restaurant -- one or several pairs of rubber or plastic slippers are left in the toilet for everyone to use. (Apparently, Japanese people are afraid of the cooties on the bottom of the slippers, but not afraid of the cooties on the inside of the slippers from other people wearing them.)
In the etiquette lesson, I somehow missed the fact that toilet slippers were provided for common use and that people did not need to carry around their own personal pair of toilet slippers. When shopping for the things I would need in Japan, I duly bought two pairs, in different colors so I could distinguish them. When I decided to get ready for bed on my first night in the Canon Fujigaoka Dormitory No. 1, I slipped on my burgundy house slippers for the walk down the hall and grabbed my black toilet slippers along with my toiletries. I arrived at the toilet door, slipped off my house slippers and placed them alongside the other slippers there, put on my toilet slippers, slid open the sliding glass door and was about to step in when I saw . . . a dozen pairs of identical green vinyl toilet slippers inside the door for all to use and a couple of young men standing at urinals wearing those same green vinyl slippers. I experienced an "Oh, now I get it ..." moment as I recalled the etiquette lesson. Totally embarrassed, I quickly shut the door, high-tailed it back to my room, and put my "toilet" slippers away. I then returned to the toilet, slipped on the green plastic slippers, and hoped that no one had noticed. My "toilet" slippers remained in the back of a closet until they eventually became my replacement "house" slippers.
Back blogging soon
I was away this weekend in Vermont, attending the funeral of the daughter of an old and close family friend. I will be back blogging about Japan tonight or tomorrow.
Friday, June 19, 2009
"Wow, white people really ARE white!"
One evening, on the interminable train ride back to deepest Yokohama after another day as a Canon intern, I noticed an attractive young woman standing by the door looking at me. She was remarkable not just because she was attractive, but especially because she did not turn away and avoid eye contact when I looked at her. Lingering eye-contact with a strange member of the opposite sex was not common in Tokyo and this was the first time I had ever experienced it.
When the train was approaching Fujigaoka Station, I decided to venture closer and see what happened. She did not shy away. Instead, she asked me a one-word question, "Fujigaoka?" I responded: "Fujigaoka." Then I asked her, "Fujigaoka?," and she answered "Aobadai," the name of the next station.
I responded in Japanese, "That's too bad." Her eyes widened. "You speak Japanese?" I told her I did. The train pulled into Fujigaoka Station and the doors opened. I stepped off. So did she.
I suggested that we go to the only place that Fujigaoka had to offer, Mr. Donut. We walked across the square from the station, got our coffees, and found an isolated table on the second floor to sit and talk. She told me her name was Emu, she was 19, and I was the first foreigner she had ever spoken to.
In Japanese, the word for "caucasian" is hakujin, literally meaning "white person." Growing up in the American racial milieu, I had never thought of white people as being actually white, any more than I thought of black people being black or Asian people being yellow. These were all descriptive shortcuts in my mind. But as Emu and I were getting to know each other at the Fujigaoka Mr. Donut, she looked down at my hand and suddenly exclaimed, "Hontou ni shiroinda!" -- "Wow, [white people] really ARE white!" -- as if she had never really believed it to be true, but now the indisputable facts were staring her in the face.
I could have been offended, but I didn't care what she called me. I was already smitten.
On the next Saturday, we had a date, in Shibuya. The date was going amazingly well until, late in the afternoon, in a coffee shop ironically named "Emu," I asked a question I never should have asked: Did she have a boyfriend?
I asked this question because, just before coming to Japan, I had suffered a terrible heartbreak. My long-distance girlfriend had become involved with a male "friend" -- who had pursued her aggressively from the start knowing she had a boyfriend. I had watched all this happen, in slow-motion, at long-distance, powerless to do anything about it. And, yet, I stuck around and watched it happen.
I did not actually suspect that Emu had a boyfriend. I was just covering the bases. Given my recent experience, I wanted to clear any doubts from my mind before I got in any deeper. And when she told me she did, I was shocked -- actually heartbroken, even though I'd only known her for a couple of days. I asked where he was, and she told me he was away at tennis camp. Still angry at my ex-girlfriend (for whom Emu was now a stand-in), and feeling a misplaced need to protect her boyfriend (who was now a stand-in for me), I launched into a lecture about how she shouldn't go around giving men the wrong impression that she was available when she wasn't . . . .
A week later, I called Emu, still hoping I could see her. She answered the phone, but pretended to be her sister and said she wasn't home. I asked her to tell "Emu" to call me when she got in, but I never heard from her again. I am sure that I had hurt and completely embarassed her with my unsolicited and unnecessary criticism.
Of course, I eventually realized how badly I had screwed up. She was probably genuinely interested, and who knows how serious she really was with her boyfriend? Plus, many Japanese women, particularly at that age, considered themselves free agents until marriage and were always looking for someone better-looking, more fun, richer, sexier until they found "the one." Had I kept my mouth shut -- even after learning about the boyfriend -- he might have become history. During my first three-year stay in Japan, I dated several other women, but I never met another one like Emu.
(Good thing, too, as it turned out. Hi, Honey! I love you!)
When the train was approaching Fujigaoka Station, I decided to venture closer and see what happened. She did not shy away. Instead, she asked me a one-word question, "Fujigaoka?" I responded: "Fujigaoka." Then I asked her, "Fujigaoka?," and she answered "Aobadai," the name of the next station.
I responded in Japanese, "That's too bad." Her eyes widened. "You speak Japanese?" I told her I did. The train pulled into Fujigaoka Station and the doors opened. I stepped off. So did she.
I suggested that we go to the only place that Fujigaoka had to offer, Mr. Donut. We walked across the square from the station, got our coffees, and found an isolated table on the second floor to sit and talk. She told me her name was Emu, she was 19, and I was the first foreigner she had ever spoken to.
In Japanese, the word for "caucasian" is hakujin, literally meaning "white person." Growing up in the American racial milieu, I had never thought of white people as being actually white, any more than I thought of black people being black or Asian people being yellow. These were all descriptive shortcuts in my mind. But as Emu and I were getting to know each other at the Fujigaoka Mr. Donut, she looked down at my hand and suddenly exclaimed, "Hontou ni shiroinda!" -- "Wow, [white people] really ARE white!" -- as if she had never really believed it to be true, but now the indisputable facts were staring her in the face.
I could have been offended, but I didn't care what she called me. I was already smitten.
On the next Saturday, we had a date, in Shibuya. The date was going amazingly well until, late in the afternoon, in a coffee shop ironically named "Emu," I asked a question I never should have asked: Did she have a boyfriend?
I asked this question because, just before coming to Japan, I had suffered a terrible heartbreak. My long-distance girlfriend had become involved with a male "friend" -- who had pursued her aggressively from the start knowing she had a boyfriend. I had watched all this happen, in slow-motion, at long-distance, powerless to do anything about it. And, yet, I stuck around and watched it happen.
I did not actually suspect that Emu had a boyfriend. I was just covering the bases. Given my recent experience, I wanted to clear any doubts from my mind before I got in any deeper. And when she told me she did, I was shocked -- actually heartbroken, even though I'd only known her for a couple of days. I asked where he was, and she told me he was away at tennis camp. Still angry at my ex-girlfriend (for whom Emu was now a stand-in), and feeling a misplaced need to protect her boyfriend (who was now a stand-in for me), I launched into a lecture about how she shouldn't go around giving men the wrong impression that she was available when she wasn't . . . .
A week later, I called Emu, still hoping I could see her. She answered the phone, but pretended to be her sister and said she wasn't home. I asked her to tell "Emu" to call me when she got in, but I never heard from her again. I am sure that I had hurt and completely embarassed her with my unsolicited and unnecessary criticism.
Of course, I eventually realized how badly I had screwed up. She was probably genuinely interested, and who knows how serious she really was with her boyfriend? Plus, many Japanese women, particularly at that age, considered themselves free agents until marriage and were always looking for someone better-looking, more fun, richer, sexier until they found "the one." Had I kept my mouth shut -- even after learning about the boyfriend -- he might have become history. During my first three-year stay in Japan, I dated several other women, but I never met another one like Emu.
(Good thing, too, as it turned out. Hi, Honey! I love you!)
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Not on the Menu
The Japanese are world-famous for their service. But, in Japan, good service does not mean that the customer is always right. It means offering the prescribed service very quickly, efficiently, and well. "Off the menu" requests, however, create near havoc. Only newly arrived foreigners and Japanese who have lived abroad for too long don't know enough to stick to the menu.
My colleague Tracey first went to Japan as a model in the late 1980s. At some point during her stay, she went to Almond in Roppongi, and ordered an "iced coffee" from the menu. A while later, the waitress brought her back what Americans and Japanese understand as iced coffee -- cold coffee over ice. According to Tracey -- although I have never verified this with my Aussie friends -- in her native Queensland, iced coffee is hot black coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it, and this confection, she explained to the waitress, was what she wanted.
"It's not on the menu," she was informed.
"But, I see you have coffee on the menu, and you also have vanilla ice cream on the menu," Tracey noted, "so please bring me coffee with vanilla ice cream in it and charge me for both."
"I can't do that. It's not on the menu."
"Okay," Tracey continued. "I'd like a cup of hot coffee and a dish of vanilla ice cream, please."
"No."
"Why not?" Tracey asked. "They're on the menu."
"Because I know what you're going to do with them."
An exasperated Tracey asked to see the manager. She explained her desire for an Australian iced coffee, the injustice of being forbidden from ordering coffee and ice cream from the menu, and the fact that how she choose to consume them was no one's business but her own.
Finally, in a face-saving measure for all concerned, a compromise was reached. Tracey was permitted to order coffee and vanilla ice cream, but she was to make sure that no other customer saw her combine them, and she was to promise never to order coffee and ice cream at Almond again.
Lest you think that this was an isolated incident, in the early 1990s, Miyamoto Misao, an American-trained Japanese psychologist known for his books making fun of the bureaucrats in Japan's Department of Health, where he had worked, told a similar story about his attempt to order a glass of white wine at a famous hotel bar. The bartender told him that white wine was only available by the bottle. However, the observant Mr. Miyamoto spied an open bottle of white wine behind the bar and asked if he could have a glass from it. No, the bartender told him, that bottle was only for making the cocktail Kir (white wine and creme de cassis). Well, Miyamoto replied, I'd like a Kir, hold the creme de cassis. Impossible, he was told: if you get one, everyone else will want one. Once again, the manager was called to broker a compromise. Miyamoto was permitted to buy a glass of white wine this time, but instructed never to expect that kind of service again.
My colleague Tracey first went to Japan as a model in the late 1980s. At some point during her stay, she went to Almond in Roppongi, and ordered an "iced coffee" from the menu. A while later, the waitress brought her back what Americans and Japanese understand as iced coffee -- cold coffee over ice. According to Tracey -- although I have never verified this with my Aussie friends -- in her native Queensland, iced coffee is hot black coffee with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in it, and this confection, she explained to the waitress, was what she wanted.
"It's not on the menu," she was informed.
"But, I see you have coffee on the menu, and you also have vanilla ice cream on the menu," Tracey noted, "so please bring me coffee with vanilla ice cream in it and charge me for both."
"I can't do that. It's not on the menu."
"Okay," Tracey continued. "I'd like a cup of hot coffee and a dish of vanilla ice cream, please."
"No."
"Why not?" Tracey asked. "They're on the menu."
"Because I know what you're going to do with them."
An exasperated Tracey asked to see the manager. She explained her desire for an Australian iced coffee, the injustice of being forbidden from ordering coffee and ice cream from the menu, and the fact that how she choose to consume them was no one's business but her own.
Finally, in a face-saving measure for all concerned, a compromise was reached. Tracey was permitted to order coffee and vanilla ice cream, but she was to make sure that no other customer saw her combine them, and she was to promise never to order coffee and ice cream at Almond again.
Lest you think that this was an isolated incident, in the early 1990s, Miyamoto Misao, an American-trained Japanese psychologist known for his books making fun of the bureaucrats in Japan's Department of Health, where he had worked, told a similar story about his attempt to order a glass of white wine at a famous hotel bar. The bartender told him that white wine was only available by the bottle. However, the observant Mr. Miyamoto spied an open bottle of white wine behind the bar and asked if he could have a glass from it. No, the bartender told him, that bottle was only for making the cocktail Kir (white wine and creme de cassis). Well, Miyamoto replied, I'd like a Kir, hold the creme de cassis. Impossible, he was told: if you get one, everyone else will want one. Once again, the manager was called to broker a compromise. Miyamoto was permitted to buy a glass of white wine this time, but instructed never to expect that kind of service again.
"Please Don't Throw Up on Me . . ."
After another summer evening spent drinking with friends after work, I boarded the Denentoshi Line bound for the nether reaches of suburban Yokohama and found it empty. An empty train in Tokyo is a rare occurrence, happening only early on weekend mornings, and during the magical hour between the salaryman's mass post-drinking exodus to the suburbs around 10:00 p.m. and the jammed-packed last train around midnight. I sat down on the plush seat (yes, subway seats in Japan have cushions made of velour!), relishing the rare opportunity to sit on the train.
A salaryman boarded behind me. He was probably in his late-40s or early 50s, carried a briefcase in one hand and had the look of a man mired in middle management until retirement. Despite having an entire subway car minus one seat of possible places to arrange himself for his long ride home, he made a beeline for me, grabbed the strap hanging above my seat with his free hand, bent over, and began studying me from inches away.
The guy was puh-lastered, and clearly all his inhibitions had long since abandoned him. Maybe he was not as quite as drunk as the salaryman I had recently seen planted face-down in a Shibuya gutter with only one shoe on, but he was about as drunk as I had ever seen anyone who was still vertical. As the train departed the station its motion caused him to weave and wobble above me as he tried to stay upright holding onto the strap one-handed. When the train bent into a curve, he lost his balance and literally pirouetted on one leg, spinning completely around, while still hanging onto the strap. There was no point moving seats, because it was clear he was determined to follow me, so I decided to wait until we reached the next station, where I could switch cars.
As I watched the man twisting and spinning above me, the plastic strap creaking each time his weight shifted in response to the train's motion, I could think only one thing: Please don't throw up on me.
Believe me, when a very drunken and overly curious man hangs inches above your head by a flimsy subway strap, a few seconds is a very long time. The ride to the next station felt interminable. When the train finally pulled in, I quickly got up, leaving my bemused admirer slurring something to me that I could not understand, and went two cars down so he could not follow.
And that was how I avoided a second vomit-related incident on the Tokyo subway.
A salaryman boarded behind me. He was probably in his late-40s or early 50s, carried a briefcase in one hand and had the look of a man mired in middle management until retirement. Despite having an entire subway car minus one seat of possible places to arrange himself for his long ride home, he made a beeline for me, grabbed the strap hanging above my seat with his free hand, bent over, and began studying me from inches away.
The guy was puh-lastered, and clearly all his inhibitions had long since abandoned him. Maybe he was not as quite as drunk as the salaryman I had recently seen planted face-down in a Shibuya gutter with only one shoe on, but he was about as drunk as I had ever seen anyone who was still vertical. As the train departed the station its motion caused him to weave and wobble above me as he tried to stay upright holding onto the strap one-handed. When the train bent into a curve, he lost his balance and literally pirouetted on one leg, spinning completely around, while still hanging onto the strap. There was no point moving seats, because it was clear he was determined to follow me, so I decided to wait until we reached the next station, where I could switch cars.
As I watched the man twisting and spinning above me, the plastic strap creaking each time his weight shifted in response to the train's motion, I could think only one thing: Please don't throw up on me.
Believe me, when a very drunken and overly curious man hangs inches above your head by a flimsy subway strap, a few seconds is a very long time. The ride to the next station felt interminable. When the train finally pulled in, I quickly got up, leaving my bemused admirer slurring something to me that I could not understand, and went two cars down so he could not follow.
And that was how I avoided a second vomit-related incident on the Tokyo subway.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Way Too Polite For My Own Good
In July 1991, I attended Canon's annual summer office party, held on the rooftop beer garden at the Odakyu Department Store in Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo.
A few weeks into my internship, I had already gained a reputation for being able to hold my liquor -- a skill whose social importance in Japan should not be underestimated. Even though some Asians -- like my father-in-law -- apparently cannot produce the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, leaving them unable to drink booze, drinking plays a very large part in Japanese social life, and "strong" drinkers, as they are called, are held in high esteem. Although being able to hold your liquor may be a virtue in some circles in the US, our history of religiously-inspired opposition to alcohol consumption has made alcohol use somewhat less than universally acceptable, and before I went to Japan I thought that calling someone a "big" drinker carried a veiled accusation of alcoholism. But alcohol use does not have a stigma in Japan, and people like my father-in-law are somewhat ashamed -- or at least very inconvenienced -- by being unable to drink. Being labeled a "strong" drinker in Japan always struck me as a bit ironic, since I had always considered myself a lightweight, notwithstanding that I was a founding member of a drinking society in my senior year at Harvard -- a fact that only enhanced my drinking cred in Japan.
My colleagues entered me into the beer chugging contest, which I learned when my name was called over the PA. I duly won the first round, which meant that I had to participate in the second round. But, while waiting for the second round to start, I drank liberal amounts of sake along with my colleagues, so that by the second round, I had a pretty good buzz going. To this day, I still believe that I finished my beer the fastest of anyone in the second round, but in my state, I forgot to raise the glass over my head to prove it. I did not get to proceed to the third and final round, which was probably just as well. I did not stop from drinking more sake, however.
At 9:00 p.m. sharp, the party ended. Because all Japanese restaurant reservations last exactly two hours, all Japanese parties do, too, although an after-party, the nijikai (literally, the "second gathering"), usually follows. When someone asked if anyone knew a place to go for the nijikai, I -- who had been there only for a matter of weeks at this point -- piped up that I knew the perfect place, a German-style beer hall near Shinjuku Station. No one else knew it, so I led the way.
Upon arriving at the beer hall, I immediately ordered an enormous tankard. But, I was already feeling a but queasy and, after drinking a quarter of it, I felt even moreso. When one of the women whose dorm was on the same train line as mine announced that she was leaving, I decided to go, too. We bid the others farewell, walked the short distance to Shinjuku Station, and boarded the Yamanote Line for Shibuya Station. The side-to-side swaying of the train hurtling down the tracks toward the first stop, Yoyogi Station, made me feel even worse, and shortly after the train departed from Yoyogi, I knew that I would not be able to keep the contents of my stomach where they were. Somewhere between Yoyogi and Harajuku Station, it started coming up.
Being terribly embarrassed about throwing up on a train in such a nice, clean and orderly country like Japan, I did the only thing I could think to do: I cupped my hands and threw up into them. Then I rode the rest of the way between Yoyogi and Harajuku with a stinking pint beer, sake, chicken, squid, crackers, cheese, bile, stomach acid and god-knows-what-else in my cupped hands. In the days when foreigners were still relatively rare in Tokyo, I must have been quite the amazing sight: a white gaijin sitting on the train, with puke all over his white dress shirt, holding a pint of puke in his hands. I waited until we reached Harajuku Station, got off the train, threw the vomit onto the tracks, and wiped my hands on some discarded newspaper.
My colleague, who was very worried about me, got off the train too, got me some water, and waited with me for a half-hour or so until I was able to board the train to Shibuya Station. But after arriving, I knew I could never survive the hour-long trip on the Denentoshi Line back to distant Fujigaoka, Yokohama, plus the fifteen-minute up-the-hill-and-down-again walk to my dormitory. I borrowed some money from my colleague and found a taxi. I am sure that this was the driver's worst nightmare -- a drunk gaijin covered in already vomit who was likely to throw up again in his cab -- but I was already in the cab by the time he realized this, so he was out of luck. Fortunately, I did not throw up in the cab, but I did have to ask the driver to pull over once so I could throw up again, which I think he appreciated. Not all hairy barbarians are actually barbaric. The ride also cost me about $100.
The irony of being afraid to vomit on the train was that, as any Japan-hand will tell you, people in Tokyo throw up on the train all the time, without much embarassment at all -- a natural consequence of Japan being such a hard-drinking country. Riding on a commuter line to the suburbs at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., when the salarymen are heading home after drinking with their colleagues, there are so many drunks on the trains that the problem becomes how to avoid getting puked on. Subway platforms are covered in vomit late at night. But, by morning, it's all been cleaned up, so you'd never know it was there -- unlike New York, where people throw up in public less frequently but the vomit can feed roaches and rats for days before someone with the power or will to do anything about it notices its existence.
I drank too much on many more occasions during my years in Japan. But I learned not to enter any more beer-chugging contests, not to mix beer and sake, and to drink within walking distance of home whenever possible.
A few weeks into my internship, I had already gained a reputation for being able to hold my liquor -- a skill whose social importance in Japan should not be underestimated. Even though some Asians -- like my father-in-law -- apparently cannot produce the enzyme that metabolizes alcohol, leaving them unable to drink booze, drinking plays a very large part in Japanese social life, and "strong" drinkers, as they are called, are held in high esteem. Although being able to hold your liquor may be a virtue in some circles in the US, our history of religiously-inspired opposition to alcohol consumption has made alcohol use somewhat less than universally acceptable, and before I went to Japan I thought that calling someone a "big" drinker carried a veiled accusation of alcoholism. But alcohol use does not have a stigma in Japan, and people like my father-in-law are somewhat ashamed -- or at least very inconvenienced -- by being unable to drink. Being labeled a "strong" drinker in Japan always struck me as a bit ironic, since I had always considered myself a lightweight, notwithstanding that I was a founding member of a drinking society in my senior year at Harvard -- a fact that only enhanced my drinking cred in Japan.
My colleagues entered me into the beer chugging contest, which I learned when my name was called over the PA. I duly won the first round, which meant that I had to participate in the second round. But, while waiting for the second round to start, I drank liberal amounts of sake along with my colleagues, so that by the second round, I had a pretty good buzz going. To this day, I still believe that I finished my beer the fastest of anyone in the second round, but in my state, I forgot to raise the glass over my head to prove it. I did not get to proceed to the third and final round, which was probably just as well. I did not stop from drinking more sake, however.
At 9:00 p.m. sharp, the party ended. Because all Japanese restaurant reservations last exactly two hours, all Japanese parties do, too, although an after-party, the nijikai (literally, the "second gathering"), usually follows. When someone asked if anyone knew a place to go for the nijikai, I -- who had been there only for a matter of weeks at this point -- piped up that I knew the perfect place, a German-style beer hall near Shinjuku Station. No one else knew it, so I led the way.
Upon arriving at the beer hall, I immediately ordered an enormous tankard. But, I was already feeling a but queasy and, after drinking a quarter of it, I felt even moreso. When one of the women whose dorm was on the same train line as mine announced that she was leaving, I decided to go, too. We bid the others farewell, walked the short distance to Shinjuku Station, and boarded the Yamanote Line for Shibuya Station. The side-to-side swaying of the train hurtling down the tracks toward the first stop, Yoyogi Station, made me feel even worse, and shortly after the train departed from Yoyogi, I knew that I would not be able to keep the contents of my stomach where they were. Somewhere between Yoyogi and Harajuku Station, it started coming up.
Being terribly embarrassed about throwing up on a train in such a nice, clean and orderly country like Japan, I did the only thing I could think to do: I cupped my hands and threw up into them. Then I rode the rest of the way between Yoyogi and Harajuku with a stinking pint beer, sake, chicken, squid, crackers, cheese, bile, stomach acid and god-knows-what-else in my cupped hands. In the days when foreigners were still relatively rare in Tokyo, I must have been quite the amazing sight: a white gaijin sitting on the train, with puke all over his white dress shirt, holding a pint of puke in his hands. I waited until we reached Harajuku Station, got off the train, threw the vomit onto the tracks, and wiped my hands on some discarded newspaper.
My colleague, who was very worried about me, got off the train too, got me some water, and waited with me for a half-hour or so until I was able to board the train to Shibuya Station. But after arriving, I knew I could never survive the hour-long trip on the Denentoshi Line back to distant Fujigaoka, Yokohama, plus the fifteen-minute up-the-hill-and-down-again walk to my dormitory. I borrowed some money from my colleague and found a taxi. I am sure that this was the driver's worst nightmare -- a drunk gaijin covered in already vomit who was likely to throw up again in his cab -- but I was already in the cab by the time he realized this, so he was out of luck. Fortunately, I did not throw up in the cab, but I did have to ask the driver to pull over once so I could throw up again, which I think he appreciated. Not all hairy barbarians are actually barbaric. The ride also cost me about $100.
The irony of being afraid to vomit on the train was that, as any Japan-hand will tell you, people in Tokyo throw up on the train all the time, without much embarassment at all -- a natural consequence of Japan being such a hard-drinking country. Riding on a commuter line to the suburbs at 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., when the salarymen are heading home after drinking with their colleagues, there are so many drunks on the trains that the problem becomes how to avoid getting puked on. Subway platforms are covered in vomit late at night. But, by morning, it's all been cleaned up, so you'd never know it was there -- unlike New York, where people throw up in public less frequently but the vomit can feed roaches and rats for days before someone with the power or will to do anything about it notices its existence.
I drank too much on many more occasions during my years in Japan. But I learned not to enter any more beer-chugging contests, not to mix beer and sake, and to drink within walking distance of home whenever possible.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
The Suit Jacket Swap
In the early 1990s, when I worked in Tokyo, it was still required for men to wear suit jackets to the office, even in summertime. However, as I soon learned, "to the office" literally meant "to the office." Unless one's office was close enough to the subway to avoid becoming drenched in sweat on the walk from one to the other, suit jackets were carried on the train, put on shortly before arriving at the office, and taken off immediately upon arriving at work. They were not worn during the day unless there was a very important meeting. Jackets were then put on before leaving the office at night, and taken off as soon as one achieved a safe distance from the company.
A Girl Behind Every Telephone Pole
On my third day after arriving in Japan, and my first day on the job, my Canon orienter, Koshiba-san, guided me to my Canon dormitory in the nether reaches of suburban Yokohama. The ride required us to walk from Nishi-Shinjuku to Shinjuku Station, board the Yamanote Line for Shibuya Station, and then board the Denentoshi Line for Fujigaoka Station, almost at the end of the line. Altogether, it was an hour and fifteen minutes from station to station. Once we arrived at Fujigaoka, whose main attraction was a Mr. Donut in front of the station, we had to walk fifteen minutes to the dormitory, up and down a hill -- meaning that my commute in the stifling July and August heat would literally be uphill both ways. I also later found that, although my sweat-soaked shirt would dry off on the hour-plus train ride, by the time I walked through the stifling tunnel leading from Shinjuku Station to the Canon headquarters, I would be utterly soaked again.
After settling in at the dorm and meeting the dormitory master, Arai-san, I walked Koshiba-san back to Fujigaoka Station. Although it's common to see non-Japanese throughout Japan these days, even in remoter suburbs like Fujigaoka, in 1991, seeing other foreigners even in a crowded place like Shibuya was a notable event. In Fujigaoka, we were unknown, particularly to one little girl. As I walked back from the station, I noticed an elementary-schooler walking a few steps ahead of me, wearing her little sailor-suit school uniform and gigantic leather "randoseru" bookbag. She must have heard my footsteps, for she turned around to see who was behind her and, upon seeing a foreigner, took off running down the street as fast as her legs could carry her. Puzzled, I kept walking. A few minutes later, I found her hiding behind a telephone pole, waiting for me to pass. I couldn't tell whether she just wanted another look, or whether she was simply making sure that it was safe to continue on home.
I never did see another foreigner in Fujigaoka during that entire summer.
After settling in at the dorm and meeting the dormitory master, Arai-san, I walked Koshiba-san back to Fujigaoka Station. Although it's common to see non-Japanese throughout Japan these days, even in remoter suburbs like Fujigaoka, in 1991, seeing other foreigners even in a crowded place like Shibuya was a notable event. In Fujigaoka, we were unknown, particularly to one little girl. As I walked back from the station, I noticed an elementary-schooler walking a few steps ahead of me, wearing her little sailor-suit school uniform and gigantic leather "randoseru" bookbag. She must have heard my footsteps, for she turned around to see who was behind her and, upon seeing a foreigner, took off running down the street as fast as her legs could carry her. Puzzled, I kept walking. A few minutes later, I found her hiding behind a telephone pole, waiting for me to pass. I couldn't tell whether she just wanted another look, or whether she was simply making sure that it was safe to continue on home.
I never did see another foreigner in Fujigaoka during that entire summer.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
My Date With Cho-san
In the summer of 1991, I had my first job in Japan and my first "real" job anywhere -- a paid summer internship at Canon, Inc., at its then-headquarters in Shinjuku, Tokyo. This was in the early post-Bubble days, when everyone thought the recession would be short and the Bubble would be back any day now. Canon was still spending money on prestige interns -- current students and recent graduates from top universities around the world, who gave Canon the ability to brag about its interns from Harvard and the Sorbonne. There were seven or eight of us that summer. I still have the pictures, but I have forgotten the names. A guy from Texas; a Japanese woman who had grown up in Paris; some others I do not recall.
In addition to us interns, Canon had a lone foreign employee at its corporate headquarters, a Canadian whom I will call him Gary -- not to protect him, but just because I cannot remember his name either. I don't remember what exactly Gary did, but it was one of those typical gaijin jobs that involved correcting English correspondence or giving English lessons to corporate execs. It must have been something like that because Gary spoke almost no Japanese.
At some point during my summer at Canon, Gary told me about his friend Cho-san. Gary and Cho-san had shared a hospital room when Gary had his appendix removed, and had become friends, even though Cho-san's English was about as good as Gary's Japanese. Cho-san had invited Gary to go to his bar sometime, and Gary had been meaning to go, but had never got around to it. He suggested that we invite a couple of girls from Canon and check out Cho-san's place, which was located in Shinjuku Ni-chome.
We arrived on the appointed evening and found an empty bar, except for a man and a woman, whom Cho-san proceeded to ignore for the rest of the evening as he attended to us. Cho-san set us up with Tokyo's then-official drink, whiskey-and-water, and spent the rest of the evening sitting at our table, fixing us drinks and chatting, hostess-style. I had been pursuing one of the women who joined us, a Canon employee name Yayoi-san, pretty much since I had arrived at Canon, but I was getting the distinct impression from her that she had invited her friend Kaori along to be my consolation prize. Being 22 and easy, I shifted my attention to Kaori over the course of the evening, and she eventually became my first Japanese girlfriend.
Several weeks later, my internship was over, I had moved on to a new job, and I was dating Kaori. Cho-san telephoned me out of the blue. He had been invited to a party at the U.S. Embassy, and since he did not speak English, he wanted to know if I would come with him to translate. It was a strange request from someone I had met only once in basically a business setting, but I had no plans that night, and he sounded desperate, so I reluctantly agreed.
The party turned out to be on the Embassy grounds but was not any kind of official function. This was obvious because, as soon as I showed up, the American population at the party reached single digits. Not only that, Cho-san seemed to know everyone there. He began introducing me to friends, who kept telling him, "Cho-san, your friend is so handsome." Throughout the evening, people kept coming over and telling Cho-san (but not me), how handsome I was.
Although this should have registered with me, it did not. Being a gaijin in Japan, I was told I was handsome practically on a daily basis, and women at Canon used to make up reasons to come to my division to get a look at the foreign guy. By the time I went out with Cho-san that night, my head had swelled to such enormous dimensions that it's a wonder my neck could still support the thing. I did think it was a little strange that people seemed to be congratulating Cho-san on my "handsomeness," but, you know, Japan is a strange country, I thought, and just kept drinking the free beer.
After a couple of hours, I had reached the limits of my Japanese ability, and the party mercifully ended. Cho-san prevailed upon me to get just one more drink at his friend's bar in Roppongi, nearby the Embassy. I wanted to go home, but he insisted. The bar was up a couple of flights of stairs in a small building in the midst of a maze of back streets from which I would never be able to find my way out. The bar was what Japanese call a "snack," a small, intimate, and usually very expensive bar whose attraction is the personalized service customers get from the host or hostess. We entered the bar and the hostess, recognizing Cho-san, exclaimed in excitement that it had been ten years since they had seen each other. She beckoned us to prime corner seats at the end of the bar, and after we were introduced, she, too, congratulated Cho-san on how handsome I was.
Cho-san left me at the bar to talk to another customer he knew, and the hostess, a beautiful woman around 40, posted herself at my end of the bar and began peppering me with questions about where I was from, how long I had been in Japan, how I met Cho-san. As I talked with her, I noticed how animated she was, how unusually "big" her movements were, for Japanese women in those days (and still to some extent now) were usually more "dainty" than she was, for lack of a better word. It was attractive to me, and though she was clearly too old for me, I found myself wishing I could meet a younger version of her. Then, for no reason at all, the thought flashed into my mind, "Did she used to be a man?"
No sooner had I dismissed the thought as utterly ridiculous than the hostess stated matter-of-factly, "You know, I used to be a man." Pointing to her face, she said, "I had this fixed." "And these," she said, cupping her breasts. And, demurely covering her pelvic area with crossed hands as if I had walked in on her while she was undressing, she smiled at me and said: "Of course I had this fixed, too!"
Suddenly, the entire evening made sense. As I would later learn, Shinjuku Ni-chome was Tokyo's gay nightclub district, and even though the only customers in Cho-san's bar the night we met were a man and a woman (at least I think she was a woman!), he ran a gay bar. It's possible that Gary didn't even know. And Cho-san probably thought, by virtue of my presence in his bar, that I was gay. There was a reason why all of Cho-san's friends kept telling him how handsome I was.
Shortly thereafter, we left the bar. It was late, and I really needed to get home to get some sleep for work the next day. We took a taxi to the nearest subway station. I did not say anything to Cho-san, but it must have dawned on him that he was mistaken about me, and he apologized for having come on so strong. He left me at the train station, and my one and only date with a man came to an end.
In addition to us interns, Canon had a lone foreign employee at its corporate headquarters, a Canadian whom I will call him Gary -- not to protect him, but just because I cannot remember his name either. I don't remember what exactly Gary did, but it was one of those typical gaijin jobs that involved correcting English correspondence or giving English lessons to corporate execs. It must have been something like that because Gary spoke almost no Japanese.
At some point during my summer at Canon, Gary told me about his friend Cho-san. Gary and Cho-san had shared a hospital room when Gary had his appendix removed, and had become friends, even though Cho-san's English was about as good as Gary's Japanese. Cho-san had invited Gary to go to his bar sometime, and Gary had been meaning to go, but had never got around to it. He suggested that we invite a couple of girls from Canon and check out Cho-san's place, which was located in Shinjuku Ni-chome.
We arrived on the appointed evening and found an empty bar, except for a man and a woman, whom Cho-san proceeded to ignore for the rest of the evening as he attended to us. Cho-san set us up with Tokyo's then-official drink, whiskey-and-water, and spent the rest of the evening sitting at our table, fixing us drinks and chatting, hostess-style. I had been pursuing one of the women who joined us, a Canon employee name Yayoi-san, pretty much since I had arrived at Canon, but I was getting the distinct impression from her that she had invited her friend Kaori along to be my consolation prize. Being 22 and easy, I shifted my attention to Kaori over the course of the evening, and she eventually became my first Japanese girlfriend.
Several weeks later, my internship was over, I had moved on to a new job, and I was dating Kaori. Cho-san telephoned me out of the blue. He had been invited to a party at the U.S. Embassy, and since he did not speak English, he wanted to know if I would come with him to translate. It was a strange request from someone I had met only once in basically a business setting, but I had no plans that night, and he sounded desperate, so I reluctantly agreed.
The party turned out to be on the Embassy grounds but was not any kind of official function. This was obvious because, as soon as I showed up, the American population at the party reached single digits. Not only that, Cho-san seemed to know everyone there. He began introducing me to friends, who kept telling him, "Cho-san, your friend is so handsome." Throughout the evening, people kept coming over and telling Cho-san (but not me), how handsome I was.
Although this should have registered with me, it did not. Being a gaijin in Japan, I was told I was handsome practically on a daily basis, and women at Canon used to make up reasons to come to my division to get a look at the foreign guy. By the time I went out with Cho-san that night, my head had swelled to such enormous dimensions that it's a wonder my neck could still support the thing. I did think it was a little strange that people seemed to be congratulating Cho-san on my "handsomeness," but, you know, Japan is a strange country, I thought, and just kept drinking the free beer.
After a couple of hours, I had reached the limits of my Japanese ability, and the party mercifully ended. Cho-san prevailed upon me to get just one more drink at his friend's bar in Roppongi, nearby the Embassy. I wanted to go home, but he insisted. The bar was up a couple of flights of stairs in a small building in the midst of a maze of back streets from which I would never be able to find my way out. The bar was what Japanese call a "snack," a small, intimate, and usually very expensive bar whose attraction is the personalized service customers get from the host or hostess. We entered the bar and the hostess, recognizing Cho-san, exclaimed in excitement that it had been ten years since they had seen each other. She beckoned us to prime corner seats at the end of the bar, and after we were introduced, she, too, congratulated Cho-san on how handsome I was.
Cho-san left me at the bar to talk to another customer he knew, and the hostess, a beautiful woman around 40, posted herself at my end of the bar and began peppering me with questions about where I was from, how long I had been in Japan, how I met Cho-san. As I talked with her, I noticed how animated she was, how unusually "big" her movements were, for Japanese women in those days (and still to some extent now) were usually more "dainty" than she was, for lack of a better word. It was attractive to me, and though she was clearly too old for me, I found myself wishing I could meet a younger version of her. Then, for no reason at all, the thought flashed into my mind, "Did she used to be a man?"
No sooner had I dismissed the thought as utterly ridiculous than the hostess stated matter-of-factly, "You know, I used to be a man." Pointing to her face, she said, "I had this fixed." "And these," she said, cupping her breasts. And, demurely covering her pelvic area with crossed hands as if I had walked in on her while she was undressing, she smiled at me and said: "Of course I had this fixed, too!"
Suddenly, the entire evening made sense. As I would later learn, Shinjuku Ni-chome was Tokyo's gay nightclub district, and even though the only customers in Cho-san's bar the night we met were a man and a woman (at least I think she was a woman!), he ran a gay bar. It's possible that Gary didn't even know. And Cho-san probably thought, by virtue of my presence in his bar, that I was gay. There was a reason why all of Cho-san's friends kept telling him how handsome I was.
Shortly thereafter, we left the bar. It was late, and I really needed to get home to get some sleep for work the next day. We took a taxi to the nearest subway station. I did not say anything to Cho-san, but it must have dawned on him that he was mistaken about me, and he apologized for having come on so strong. He left me at the train station, and my one and only date with a man came to an end.
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