It soon became clear why I was able to hook on with the Wakakusa team just by asking. We were very bad. Half the team was over forty, the right fielder looked as if he had never played a game of baseball before (because, as it turned out, he hadn't), the third baseman (one of the better players) never bothered to go to bed the night before the games, and each week we struggled to put nine players on the field. I don't recall winning any games in the year and a half I played for Wakakusa, but this was a familiar feeling for me, having been on an 0-17 team during my senior year of high school.
But playing for Wakakusa was fun and full of adventure.
Often, the fun started the night before. Saturday nights were usually spent drinking with friends, though I imposed a midnight curfew on myself to make sure I had at least four hours of sleep before the alarm rang at 4;30 am. However, during the warm months, at about 2:30 am each week, I would be awakened by the bosozoku -- the "speed tribes" -- teenage motorcycle gangsters who would cruise the streets of Tokyo, blocking traffic, gunning their engines, and generally irritating everyone within earshot. Bosozuku were the minor leagues for the yakuza gangs, and they didn't care who they pissed off. The cops were scared of them and did nothing about them, just happy to see them pass off into the next police box's district. But, the bosozoku were nothing if not punctual, and they followed the same circuit each week, which brought them to the intersection of Yamanote Road and Inokashira Road, perhaps 100 meters from my apartment, where they would stop and gun their engines for several minutes, at precisely the same time each Sunday morning. Each week, upon being awakened, I would lie in my futon fuming and fantasizing of revenge: spreading nails and broken glass across the intersection, or of stretching piano wire at neck height between the pillars of the pedestrian bridge crossing the intersection. I'd fall back to sleep to the comforting thought of bosozoku bloodily wiping out as their tires shredded or slicing their own heads off on piano wire they couldn't see in the dark.
As the first gaijin in the league, I became a local celebrity. Word about me spread throughout the league, and members of the other team would often introduce themselves before the game. They all knew my name, and it was very disconcerting. As I warmed up, I'd hear them talking about me:
He's got a good arm.
Can he hit?
Look! He does have a big ass, just like the major leaguers.
I started out as our team's catcher, forming a battery with Umezawa-san (or "Ume-san"), a sidearmer who like most Japanese pitchers threw mostly breaking stuff but could also get a surprising amount of zip on the fastball for a 47 year-old sushi chef. Even though catching had been hell on my knees since the tenth grade, when I had to give it up, I enjoyed catching more than any other position. It allowed me to see the whole field, to be involved in every play, to be in control of the game, and to talk to the batters and the umpire. On one particularly bright Sunday morning, the rising sun bore directly at the batter's box from center field. At "balls in!" the umpire and I stood behind the plate, shielding our eyes as we waited for the first batter. "Sure is bright out," I said. After a pause the umpire hesitantly responded, "Oh, is that so?," as if this was new information that he wasn't sure how to address.
Later, I replayed the exchange in my head. All I had said was, "Mabushii desu ne . . ." ("Sure is bright out"). Why had he answered, "Oh, is that so?" when it was obviously so bright out? And what was he so sheepish about? Only much later did I realize I had made an ever so small, and ever so important error. I'd replaced the "bu" in mabushii with "zu." So, I had told the umpire, out of the blue, "Mazushiii desu ne . . ." ("You know, I am very poor. [I don't have any money].") No wonder he had responded the way he did.
After a few weeks, my knees were aching beyond my capacity to endure it any longer, and I told my manager that I could not catch any more. He asked if I could pitch, and I told him I had pitched in high school. I should have known better, because saying you played high school baseball has an entirely different meaning in Japan. Rather than shabby uniforms and games no one attends, high school baseball conjures up images of the nationally televised national high school baseball championship, known informally as "Koshien," after the famous field on which it the final games are played, the hallowed home field of the Hanshin Tigers. Koshien is a single-elimination tournament played by teams from all over the country before capacity crowds. The final is often an epic extra-inning marathon in which both starting pitchers -- who have started every game of the tournament -- throw goose eggs at the other side for 16 innings. Many players, like Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui, go directly from Koshien to Japan Professional Baseball. So, when one says, "I played high school baseball" in Japan, people are impressed.
My manager told me I was starting that morning. At least for that game, he was onto something. The slightly smaller Japanese baseball made it much easier for me to throw a curveball, and for six innings, I throw no-hit ball. We lost in the seventh (we played seven inning games) when I walked a batter and then, with two outs, the batter hit a routine pop fly to our right fielder, who, playing as if he'd never played the game before (because he hadn't), dropped it and then kicked it into foul territory, allowing the only run of the game to score. But my manager was beaming with the thought that he now improved the team's chances considerably. In future games, though, my pitching did not live up to the early promise. A player on another team told me I had a good fastball, but I was telegraphing when I was going to throw the curve.
That did not stop me from making two all-star game appearances during my time on the team. Wakakusa's manager managed our division's all-star team both years, and he selected me both times. I always assumed that it was because I was the league's only gaijin, but I enjoyed playing in the games nevertheless. The first year, I played right field, and made a nice play to double a runner off first base on a line drive that I had to run some distance to catch. The second year, I started the game as pitcher and, against the best players from the other division, got lit up like a string of red plastic chili lights. It was a very, very long night. But, these games were in the evening, under the lights at a good university baseball field, and a lot of my friends came to see me play.
Playing baseball was one of the best experiences I had in Japan. I got to meet real salt-of-the-earth, every day Japanese people, who were more fun and easy-going than most of the people in the button-down places I worked, where everyone had graduated from Tokyo University and took himself very seriously. I made some good friends, particularly Ume-san, whose sushi shop I used to visit even after I stopped playing for the team. And, I hit my first home run since Little League -- a dinger into the Tama River on the fly that I knew was gone the minute I made contact.
Showing posts with label Japanese Language Ability. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japanese Language Ability. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Monday, August 17, 2009
Why I Learned Japanese
People often ask me, why I decided to learn Japanese. Well . . .
I went to college at the height of the Bubble Economy, when Americans fears of a Japanese takeover were fanned by the Japanese purchasing ever signature building in New York City, and the New York Times had three or four pages of classified want ads desperately seeking people who could speak even the tiniest bit of Japanese. All around me at Harvard, people were studying Japanese, hoping to cash in on the Japanese wave.
One of those people was my girlfriend, Joanne. Between our sophomore and junior years of college, Joanne got a summer job in Okayama through the Japanese department's internship program. During that summer, she would write me letters telling me how much she loved Japan and how she would be going back there after college to work before going to business school. During that summer, I had a crummy job back in New Jersey, none of my high school friends were around, I had absolutely nothing to do, and I convinced myself that Joanne was The Girl, even though we had actually broken up just before the summer break.
By that time, I already knew that I wanted to work for a while after college, and I had always wanted to live abroad. Given my newly discovered desire to follow Joanne to the ends of the earth, I thought to myself, "I'll go to Japan with Joanne." Having made that decision, I thought I had better start cracking on the Japanese studies.
Of course, a couple of months after I started studying Japanese, Joanne and I broke up. But I kept studying Japanese, because I found it fascinating. It was utterly different than the French and Latin I had studied before. I was also kind of tickled at the idea of learning a language that few Americans could speak.
When it came time to graduate, I still wanted to work rather than head straight to graduate school. But, it was 1991 -- the midst of the first Bush recession -- and not even Harvard grads were getting jobs. I decided to try my luck in Japan, and began applying for jobs before graduation, eventually landing the Canon internship and the Look Japan editing job before I even left the U.S.
As it happened, in 1990, Germany reunified and Joanne dropped Japanese like a hot potato and started studying German. I ran into her years later in New York -- ironically, at a Japanese restaurant -- and she told me she had never returned to Japan after that internship. I wound up with a lifelong interest in Japan and a Japanese wife because of Joanne, and Joanne never did anything with her Japanese interests. Funny how life works out.
I went to college at the height of the Bubble Economy, when Americans fears of a Japanese takeover were fanned by the Japanese purchasing ever signature building in New York City, and the New York Times had three or four pages of classified want ads desperately seeking people who could speak even the tiniest bit of Japanese. All around me at Harvard, people were studying Japanese, hoping to cash in on the Japanese wave.
One of those people was my girlfriend, Joanne. Between our sophomore and junior years of college, Joanne got a summer job in Okayama through the Japanese department's internship program. During that summer, she would write me letters telling me how much she loved Japan and how she would be going back there after college to work before going to business school. During that summer, I had a crummy job back in New Jersey, none of my high school friends were around, I had absolutely nothing to do, and I convinced myself that Joanne was The Girl, even though we had actually broken up just before the summer break.
By that time, I already knew that I wanted to work for a while after college, and I had always wanted to live abroad. Given my newly discovered desire to follow Joanne to the ends of the earth, I thought to myself, "I'll go to Japan with Joanne." Having made that decision, I thought I had better start cracking on the Japanese studies.
Of course, a couple of months after I started studying Japanese, Joanne and I broke up. But I kept studying Japanese, because I found it fascinating. It was utterly different than the French and Latin I had studied before. I was also kind of tickled at the idea of learning a language that few Americans could speak.
When it came time to graduate, I still wanted to work rather than head straight to graduate school. But, it was 1991 -- the midst of the first Bush recession -- and not even Harvard grads were getting jobs. I decided to try my luck in Japan, and began applying for jobs before graduation, eventually landing the Canon internship and the Look Japan editing job before I even left the U.S.
As it happened, in 1990, Germany reunified and Joanne dropped Japanese like a hot potato and started studying German. I ran into her years later in New York -- ironically, at a Japanese restaurant -- and she told me she had never returned to Japan after that internship. I wound up with a lifelong interest in Japan and a Japanese wife because of Joanne, and Joanne never did anything with her Japanese interests. Funny how life works out.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Gaijin Insecurities: The Japanese Language Proficiency Pecking Order
At the same touch-football game where I met Dave S., I also encountered a strange gaijin phenomenon for the first time: insecure gaijin who speak Japanese to each other to reassure themselves that their Japanese is better than the other guy's.
Back in 1991, the number of (Caucasian) foreigners who could speak decent Japanese was small. Rather than correctly attribute this to a general lack of interest in learning Japanese among non-Japanese, many Japanese, acting on a misguided national or ethnic pride, convinced themselves that Japanese blood was somehow required to learn Japanese. (Which is why I was frequently asked if I was part-Japanese.) Moreover, because the Japanese education system emphasizes reading and writing over speaking in foreign-language education, leaving most Japanese unable to speak English despite six years of mandatory English education (and more for those with college degrees), many believe that mastering a foreign language is not possible for people of normal intelligence.
These factors led many Japanese to believe that gaijin who could string together a sentence or two of Japanese were absolute Einsteins. And they fawningly told those gaijin so. After hearing this enough, many gaijin who spoke a little Japanese started to believe it.
However, a Japanese-speaking foreigner was no longer special if he wasn't the only one. Another foreigner was always a potential threat to one's ego, hence the need to learn where one stood in the Japanese-ability pecking order -- whether one could continue feeling superior to yet another gaijin who could not get past konnichiwa or would have to go home and sulk because someone else's Japanese was better.
After the game, as Dave and I prepared to head to "Oh, God!," I noticed two of the Yalies packing up their things. Their Japanese girlfriends were there, and they were each speaking Japanese to them. As each tried to make sure that the other knew he could also speak good Japanese, their voices grew louder and louder, until they both gave up the pretense and started speaking Japanese to each other, each trying to show that he was higher on the Japanese-ability scale.
I thought this was exceedingly silly. For me, speaking Japanese to another English speaker outside a classroom always had an "ick" factor to it. But it was not long before I started encountering people who wanted to reassure themselves that my Japanese wasn't as good as theirs by speaking Japanese to me. My icky feeling would instantly kick in. I'd answer their question in English and refuse to be sucked into their little self-affirmation game.
Even leaving Japan does not cure many ex-gaijin of their need to salve their egos by proving to themselves that they are the still the most specialist gaijin of all. It's still common for people I first meet, upon finding out that we both lived in Japan, to start speaking Japanese to see whether they are entitled to feel superior or must suck up to me.
Only two exceptions existed to my rule against speaking Japanese with another gaijin. One was when we were with a Japanese person who spoke no English. Then it was just a matter of courtesy and necessity and didn't give me the willies. The other was the rarer occasion where Japanese was actually our common language. For example, in 1991, I took Japanese lessons at a school that prepared foreigners for entrance into college. Most of the students were from Korea, and a few were from southeast Asia and the Middle East. Japanese was our common language.
You should have seen the faces of the people on the street when they saw us walking through Shibuya speaking Japanese to each other after class . . . .
Back in 1991, the number of (Caucasian) foreigners who could speak decent Japanese was small. Rather than correctly attribute this to a general lack of interest in learning Japanese among non-Japanese, many Japanese, acting on a misguided national or ethnic pride, convinced themselves that Japanese blood was somehow required to learn Japanese. (Which is why I was frequently asked if I was part-Japanese.) Moreover, because the Japanese education system emphasizes reading and writing over speaking in foreign-language education, leaving most Japanese unable to speak English despite six years of mandatory English education (and more for those with college degrees), many believe that mastering a foreign language is not possible for people of normal intelligence.
These factors led many Japanese to believe that gaijin who could string together a sentence or two of Japanese were absolute Einsteins. And they fawningly told those gaijin so. After hearing this enough, many gaijin who spoke a little Japanese started to believe it.
However, a Japanese-speaking foreigner was no longer special if he wasn't the only one. Another foreigner was always a potential threat to one's ego, hence the need to learn where one stood in the Japanese-ability pecking order -- whether one could continue feeling superior to yet another gaijin who could not get past konnichiwa or would have to go home and sulk because someone else's Japanese was better.
After the game, as Dave and I prepared to head to "Oh, God!," I noticed two of the Yalies packing up their things. Their Japanese girlfriends were there, and they were each speaking Japanese to them. As each tried to make sure that the other knew he could also speak good Japanese, their voices grew louder and louder, until they both gave up the pretense and started speaking Japanese to each other, each trying to show that he was higher on the Japanese-ability scale.
I thought this was exceedingly silly. For me, speaking Japanese to another English speaker outside a classroom always had an "ick" factor to it. But it was not long before I started encountering people who wanted to reassure themselves that my Japanese wasn't as good as theirs by speaking Japanese to me. My icky feeling would instantly kick in. I'd answer their question in English and refuse to be sucked into their little self-affirmation game.
Even leaving Japan does not cure many ex-gaijin of their need to salve their egos by proving to themselves that they are the still the most specialist gaijin of all. It's still common for people I first meet, upon finding out that we both lived in Japan, to start speaking Japanese to see whether they are entitled to feel superior or must suck up to me.
Only two exceptions existed to my rule against speaking Japanese with another gaijin. One was when we were with a Japanese person who spoke no English. Then it was just a matter of courtesy and necessity and didn't give me the willies. The other was the rarer occasion where Japanese was actually our common language. For example, in 1991, I took Japanese lessons at a school that prepared foreigners for entrance into college. Most of the students were from Korea, and a few were from southeast Asia and the Middle East. Japanese was our common language.
You should have seen the faces of the people on the street when they saw us walking through Shibuya speaking Japanese to each other after class . . . .
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