I'll relate a story that actually occurred before I went to Japan, but it's fun nonetheless.
Between my junior and senior years of college, after studying Japanese in college for a year, I posted a flyer seeking a Japanese language exchange partner at Yaohan (now Mitsuwa), Japanese shopping center in Edgewater, New Jersey. A woman named Noriko answered my ad. During that summer, we got together periodically to exchange Japanese and English language pointers.
One day, Noriko and her roommate, who was also Japanese, invited me to their apartment for dinner. To eat with, they gave me warebashi, those disposable bamboo chopsticks, still attached to each other at one end, that you have to break apart to use. (Although this sounds tacky -- you wouldn't give your guest a plastic fork in the US -- it's actually common in Japan, because it's considered more polite to give someone unused chopsticks, as opposed to the ones you've been sticking in your mouth for a couple of years.)
I pulled apart the chopsticks and then started rubbing them together to remove splinters, as I had seen some Asian American friends do at school. As I rubbed, I asked Noriko, in as good Japanese as I could muster at the time, "Please tell me if I ever do anything considered rude in Japan."
Noriko and her roommate looked at each other and then Noriko pointed to my splinter-removing technique. "That's rude," she said. I felt like a dope.
Moral of the Story: Don't assume that Asian Americans know any more about Japanese etiquette than you do, just because they're Asian American.
Etiquette Note: One of my pet peeves is people who treat chopsticks like toys. You don't play with your knife and fork at the table, do you? If you want to practice drumming, get some drumsticks. Treat chopsticks like you would tableware: leave them on the table if you're not using them to eat. Doing otherwise is considered extremely rude.
My Other Chopstick-Related Pet Peeve: People who insist on using chopsticks in Asian restaurants because it's "more authentic" that way, even though they can't use them properly. Most of these people hold the chopsticks near the bottom, like a pencil. But chopsticks operate more like scissors. Imagine if you decided that, rather than using the handles, you would use the scissors by holding them near the tips of the blades. You'd lose the advantage of the lever-and-fulcrum principle on which chopsticks depend. You'd also look rather silly.
Even a fork works on the same principle. If you hold a fork down by the tines, like a four-year old, it doesn't work so well, does it? That's why adults hold forks at the other end.
Get your hands as far away from the business end of the chopsticks as possible and you'll have much more control and grabbing power. If you ever get Chinese take-out and they give you those disposable chopsticks in the red paper cover with the chopsticks instructions on the back, read the directions! They distill 5,000 years of chopsticks know-how into three easy steps. Chopsticks work much better as shown in the diagram. Trust me.
My Japanese friends are always amazed at my chopstickery. (Like the Japanese language itself, gaijin are presumed to be inherently incapable of learning to use chopsticks properly -- probably because most gaijin hold chopsticks like pencils.) They always want to know: How did you learn to use chopsticks so well? The answer: China House, Foster Village Shopping Center, Bergenfield, New Jersey, circa 1978.
I followed the instructions on the place mats.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
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.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
One Whiskey, One Sake, and One Beer
Although I am trying to write chronologically, occasionally I remember things out of order and have to skip around in time. We return to my summer as a Canon intern.
In the middle of my summer at Canon, the entire company shut down for two weeks. I freaked out, because no one had warned me about the shut down, and I would not get paid during the break. When I got done freaking out, I decided to focus on what I would do during the break. One of my dorm-mates from Fujigaoka Dormitory, Shige-san, suggested that I come stay with him at his house in Kyoto for a few days. It sounded like a great idea, so I took him up on it.
Shige's family lived in the northern part of Kyoto, which (as I learned many years later from my wife, who is also from Kyoto) is dominated by old families, some with old money, who consider themselves the real Kyotoites and look down on people from the rest of Kyoto. There is a good chance that Shige's family had both an old name and old money, as they owned the second-largest distributor of tea-ceremony goods in Japan, and Shige and I stayed in their "extra" house, which was basically used as a crash pad for their sons when they were back in town. (During my stay in Kyoto, Shige took me to his parents' shop, where he showed me the single most expensive item -- a three-inch long curved piece of bamboo, used as a scoop for powdered green tea, which sold for I don't remember how many thousands of dollars.)
On my first night in Kyoto, Shige's parents took us to a very beautiful kaiseki restaurant. (Kaiseki is Japanese haute cuisine, the food served in the exquisitely arranged bite-sized portions one sees in travel magazine articles about Japanese food.) Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name or location of the restaurant, for I would love to go there again, but I do recall that it was down a small alleyway of polished paving stones lined by bamboo and lit with foot lights, and that inside, there was a small stream running along one wall of our room, under glass, and lit. It was absolutely over-the-top tasteful and understated, if you know what I mean.
I don't remember the restaurant's name or location because of what happened next: I drank a lot. Not enough to be sick or embarrass myself, but enough that my memories of that night 18 years ago are hazy.
We sat down at a low table on the tatami mats next to the little stream, me across from Shige's father, Shige across from his mother. A middle-aged, kimino-clad woman came in, and Shige's father ordered beer. Japanese have a custom of starting with beer because it is perceived as "lighter" than liquor and thus not such a shock to the system; it's warm-up booze. (However, this custom violates the rule I learned in college: Liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor, never sicker. And I saw a lot of sickened people in Japan.)
We had some food, we talked as much as my Japanese would allow about the U.S., Harvard, my impressions of Japan, etc., and then, Shige's father asked me, "Nihonshu ha, suki desu ka?" ("Do you like sake?) We were already drinking beer, and the question sounded rhetorical to me, so I said I did. The kimono-clad waitress reappeared. (I guess Shige's father had buzzed her.) He said something to her. Moments later, she returned with a bottle of sake and several glasses. Now I had two glasses before me, one beer and one sake.
In Japan, it is rude to allow your guest's glass to become empty. So, whenever I drank a sip of either beer or sake, someone would fill up my cup. Because I was raised never to leave food over, every time they filled my cup, I drank it. Then they filled it again. I did not realize that the way to get them to stop filling the cup was to leave it full. (Saying no did not work, because it's actually polite in Japan to refuse what's being offered to you a couple of times, and they merely thought I had good manners.)
After some more food, Shige's father asked me, "Howisskee ha, suki desu ka?" ("Do you like whiskey?") Having learned nothing from the sake question, I said yes (even thought it was not really even true), and soon a bottle of whiskey appeared, along with glasses for the whole party. Now, the table before me was beginning to resemble that John Lee Hooker song -- one whiskey, one sake, and one beer -- and each time I sipped from one glass, it was filled up again.
I don't remember further details about the evening, except that the meal was delicious, I had a great time, Shige's parents were very nice people, and the restaurant itself was one of this most beautiful I have ever been to. But the story has a post-script. Shige's father probably asked me about whiskey to be polite. As an American, I was expected to like whiskey -- just like Americans in the movies -- even though no one I knew at the time drank it (except for my friend Paul O'Brien). I thought of whiskey as an old-fashioned old man's drink. Over the years, many Japanese, like Shige's father, would insist that I drink whiskey with them like a real American, to the point that I developed a taste for it, which I still have.
It's ironic that I had to go to Japan to become a whiskey-drinker.
In the middle of my summer at Canon, the entire company shut down for two weeks. I freaked out, because no one had warned me about the shut down, and I would not get paid during the break. When I got done freaking out, I decided to focus on what I would do during the break. One of my dorm-mates from Fujigaoka Dormitory, Shige-san, suggested that I come stay with him at his house in Kyoto for a few days. It sounded like a great idea, so I took him up on it.
Shige's family lived in the northern part of Kyoto, which (as I learned many years later from my wife, who is also from Kyoto) is dominated by old families, some with old money, who consider themselves the real Kyotoites and look down on people from the rest of Kyoto. There is a good chance that Shige's family had both an old name and old money, as they owned the second-largest distributor of tea-ceremony goods in Japan, and Shige and I stayed in their "extra" house, which was basically used as a crash pad for their sons when they were back in town. (During my stay in Kyoto, Shige took me to his parents' shop, where he showed me the single most expensive item -- a three-inch long curved piece of bamboo, used as a scoop for powdered green tea, which sold for I don't remember how many thousands of dollars.)
On my first night in Kyoto, Shige's parents took us to a very beautiful kaiseki restaurant. (Kaiseki is Japanese haute cuisine, the food served in the exquisitely arranged bite-sized portions one sees in travel magazine articles about Japanese food.) Unfortunately, I cannot remember the name or location of the restaurant, for I would love to go there again, but I do recall that it was down a small alleyway of polished paving stones lined by bamboo and lit with foot lights, and that inside, there was a small stream running along one wall of our room, under glass, and lit. It was absolutely over-the-top tasteful and understated, if you know what I mean.
I don't remember the restaurant's name or location because of what happened next: I drank a lot. Not enough to be sick or embarrass myself, but enough that my memories of that night 18 years ago are hazy.
We sat down at a low table on the tatami mats next to the little stream, me across from Shige's father, Shige across from his mother. A middle-aged, kimino-clad woman came in, and Shige's father ordered beer. Japanese have a custom of starting with beer because it is perceived as "lighter" than liquor and thus not such a shock to the system; it's warm-up booze. (However, this custom violates the rule I learned in college: Liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor, never sicker. And I saw a lot of sickened people in Japan.)
We had some food, we talked as much as my Japanese would allow about the U.S., Harvard, my impressions of Japan, etc., and then, Shige's father asked me, "Nihonshu ha, suki desu ka?" ("Do you like sake?) We were already drinking beer, and the question sounded rhetorical to me, so I said I did. The kimono-clad waitress reappeared. (I guess Shige's father had buzzed her.) He said something to her. Moments later, she returned with a bottle of sake and several glasses. Now I had two glasses before me, one beer and one sake.
In Japan, it is rude to allow your guest's glass to become empty. So, whenever I drank a sip of either beer or sake, someone would fill up my cup. Because I was raised never to leave food over, every time they filled my cup, I drank it. Then they filled it again. I did not realize that the way to get them to stop filling the cup was to leave it full. (Saying no did not work, because it's actually polite in Japan to refuse what's being offered to you a couple of times, and they merely thought I had good manners.)
After some more food, Shige's father asked me, "Howisskee ha, suki desu ka?" ("Do you like whiskey?") Having learned nothing from the sake question, I said yes (even thought it was not really even true), and soon a bottle of whiskey appeared, along with glasses for the whole party. Now, the table before me was beginning to resemble that John Lee Hooker song -- one whiskey, one sake, and one beer -- and each time I sipped from one glass, it was filled up again.
I don't remember further details about the evening, except that the meal was delicious, I had a great time, Shige's parents were very nice people, and the restaurant itself was one of this most beautiful I have ever been to. But the story has a post-script. Shige's father probably asked me about whiskey to be polite. As an American, I was expected to like whiskey -- just like Americans in the movies -- even though no one I knew at the time drank it (except for my friend Paul O'Brien). I thought of whiskey as an old-fashioned old man's drink. Over the years, many Japanese, like Shige's father, would insist that I drink whiskey with them like a real American, to the point that I developed a taste for it, which I still have.
It's ironic that I had to go to Japan to become a whiskey-drinker.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
The Curry Shop Girl
After my home-stay went awry, I moved into the Canon dormitory managed by Oshikawa-san and his wife in Musashi-Nitta, in Ohta-ku, Tokyo.
Musashi-Nitta was a working-class neighborhood in the southeastern part of Tokyo, near the Tama River, which separates Tokyo from Kawasaki City. Tokyo lacks zoning laws, and Musashi-Nitta featured a diverse mixture of land uses, ranging from houses to shops (concentrated in the business district near the station) to small factories doing piece-work for Japan's big companies. There were even a few rice paddies scattered in the neighborhood near the Tama River, existing on some of the world's most expensive real estate due to extremely farmer-friendly tax policies. (I always wondered if people would eat the rice if they knew it came from a field next to a car-parts manufacturer, but they probably never knew where it came from.)
Like most neighborhoods in Japan, Musashi-Nitta featured a shotengai (shopping district) near the station, consisting of a street sloping downward in the direction of the river, demarcated at both ends with a gate reading Musashi-Nitta Shotengai. The shotengai featured a couple of convenience stores, a supermarket, a home electronics-goods store, a store where could buy household items like linens, pots and pans, and even small furniture items, and a few restaurants and "snacks" -- the Japanese name for a kind of local bar with a very small number of seats, very personalized service, and a reputation for looking askance at new people. The shotengai always had some kind of seasonal decorations hanging from the telephone poles -- pink plastic cherry blossoms in the spring, red and yellow plastic leaves in the fall -- that added some color to the drab grey exteriors of the neighborhood shops. The shotengai lay directly on my route from Musashi-Nitta station to Oshikawa-san's dormitory, so I would traverse it twice a day.
One of the restaurants was a curry-rice shop, occupying a location toward the bottom of the street at the Y where two streets came together. The shop was run by a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who was a year or two older than me. After a while, I started going there a couple of times a week. I was usually the only customer there, and it was a good chance to practice my Japanese.
The daughter always seemed sort of shy and sad, and I figured that being trapped in a curry shop in Musashi-Nitta with her mother was not exactly the kind of life she wished for, but it was nice being able to talk to someone during dinner. She would pepper me with questions about the U.S. and I would try my best to answer in my still-halting Japanese. She always seemed happy to see me when I came in, and I thought I had made a new friend.
I guess she had bigger ideas than that. She suggested that we go out one Saturday afternoon, and I accepted, thinking it was harmless. I don't remember where we went, but the next day, she showed up at my dormitory with a present for me. It was then I realized that she was interested in more than just friendship. I am not cynical about her motives, but I am sure that part of her interest resulted from the fact that the possibility of dating a gaijin (and Musashi-Nitta was not exactly the kind of place where you met a lot of them) offered her an exciting escape from life in the curry shop.
Although I was not happy to be put in this position and didn't want to hurt her feelings, I knew it would be crueler to lead her on, so I told her, as best I could, that I was only interested in a friendship. She burst into tears, which needless to say, only made me feel worse.
I pried myself away from her and went back to my room. I stopped going to the curry shop after that, and always walked by very quickly from that point onwards, hoping that I would not run into her, which I never did again.
Musashi-Nitta was a working-class neighborhood in the southeastern part of Tokyo, near the Tama River, which separates Tokyo from Kawasaki City. Tokyo lacks zoning laws, and Musashi-Nitta featured a diverse mixture of land uses, ranging from houses to shops (concentrated in the business district near the station) to small factories doing piece-work for Japan's big companies. There were even a few rice paddies scattered in the neighborhood near the Tama River, existing on some of the world's most expensive real estate due to extremely farmer-friendly tax policies. (I always wondered if people would eat the rice if they knew it came from a field next to a car-parts manufacturer, but they probably never knew where it came from.)
Like most neighborhoods in Japan, Musashi-Nitta featured a shotengai (shopping district) near the station, consisting of a street sloping downward in the direction of the river, demarcated at both ends with a gate reading Musashi-Nitta Shotengai. The shotengai featured a couple of convenience stores, a supermarket, a home electronics-goods store, a store where could buy household items like linens, pots and pans, and even small furniture items, and a few restaurants and "snacks" -- the Japanese name for a kind of local bar with a very small number of seats, very personalized service, and a reputation for looking askance at new people. The shotengai always had some kind of seasonal decorations hanging from the telephone poles -- pink plastic cherry blossoms in the spring, red and yellow plastic leaves in the fall -- that added some color to the drab grey exteriors of the neighborhood shops. The shotengai lay directly on my route from Musashi-Nitta station to Oshikawa-san's dormitory, so I would traverse it twice a day.
One of the restaurants was a curry-rice shop, occupying a location toward the bottom of the street at the Y where two streets came together. The shop was run by a middle-aged woman and her daughter, who was a year or two older than me. After a while, I started going there a couple of times a week. I was usually the only customer there, and it was a good chance to practice my Japanese.
The daughter always seemed sort of shy and sad, and I figured that being trapped in a curry shop in Musashi-Nitta with her mother was not exactly the kind of life she wished for, but it was nice being able to talk to someone during dinner. She would pepper me with questions about the U.S. and I would try my best to answer in my still-halting Japanese. She always seemed happy to see me when I came in, and I thought I had made a new friend.
I guess she had bigger ideas than that. She suggested that we go out one Saturday afternoon, and I accepted, thinking it was harmless. I don't remember where we went, but the next day, she showed up at my dormitory with a present for me. It was then I realized that she was interested in more than just friendship. I am not cynical about her motives, but I am sure that part of her interest resulted from the fact that the possibility of dating a gaijin (and Musashi-Nitta was not exactly the kind of place where you met a lot of them) offered her an exciting escape from life in the curry shop.
Although I was not happy to be put in this position and didn't want to hurt her feelings, I knew it would be crueler to lead her on, so I told her, as best I could, that I was only interested in a friendship. She burst into tears, which needless to say, only made me feel worse.
I pried myself away from her and went back to my room. I stopped going to the curry shop after that, and always walked by very quickly from that point onwards, hoping that I would not run into her, which I never did again.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Unrelated Japan Photo #9
Outside Kamakura, Japan, 2006.
Does anyone know the name of this temple? You can see it from the Enoden, on your way from Kamakura to Fujisawa.
Added 9/11/09: It's Ryuko-ji, a Nichiren Buddhist temple, founded in 1137, where Nichiren is said to have been executed.
Cleaning Ladies in the Men's Room
One of life's little differences in Japan was that, every once in a while, you'd be standing at a urinal in an office building bathroom, and the next thing you know -- there's a little old lady in a uniform cleaning the bathroom around you.
The first time this happened to me, I was at Canon. I was standing there, absent-mindedly doing my thing, when all of a sudden, a woman walked in and began to clean the urinal next to me. I was so surprised, it nearly caused me to miss.
Over the years, I saw enough cleaning ladies in men's bathrooms, gym locker rooms, etc., that I got used to it. I came to realize that, unlike Americans, Japanese don't sexualize nudity unnecessarily. Nudity is sexual when people are having sex; at other times, it's just an absence of clothing. Men and women bathed naked together in public baths before prudish Victorian-era westerners arrived and told them to cut it out if they wanted to be considered "civilized" and not get colonized for their "own good." Even though there are only a few places -- mostly in rural outposts -- where men and women can still enjoy the public baths together, it's still very common for couples to bathe together in private baths at an onsen (without it being foreplay -- don't think of the heart-shaped bubble bath from old Love Boat episodes!), and Japanese parents often bathe with their children at home, at least until the children reach puberty. It's not considered sexual, it's considered essential for families to feel close to one another.
Nonsexualized nudity. It's so . . . civilized.
The first time this happened to me, I was at Canon. I was standing there, absent-mindedly doing my thing, when all of a sudden, a woman walked in and began to clean the urinal next to me. I was so surprised, it nearly caused me to miss.
Over the years, I saw enough cleaning ladies in men's bathrooms, gym locker rooms, etc., that I got used to it. I came to realize that, unlike Americans, Japanese don't sexualize nudity unnecessarily. Nudity is sexual when people are having sex; at other times, it's just an absence of clothing. Men and women bathed naked together in public baths before prudish Victorian-era westerners arrived and told them to cut it out if they wanted to be considered "civilized" and not get colonized for their "own good." Even though there are only a few places -- mostly in rural outposts -- where men and women can still enjoy the public baths together, it's still very common for couples to bathe together in private baths at an onsen (without it being foreplay -- don't think of the heart-shaped bubble bath from old Love Boat episodes!), and Japanese parents often bathe with their children at home, at least until the children reach puberty. It's not considered sexual, it's considered essential for families to feel close to one another.
Nonsexualized nudity. It's so . . . civilized.
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