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Floating Papers on the Sea of Japanby Keith FenskeJuly and August 2000Copyright (c) 2000 by Keith Fenske. All rights reserved. |
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These children attend another school that could not afford to have their own full-time teacher so they hired us to teach the equivalent of half-time. This other school has its own policies and I can not arbitrarily change them. One of the most important factors is the friendship between the school owners, the students, and their families. Scaring the students or using strong punishment are both unacceptable because scared students don't learn and angry students quit. The changes to the classroom routine must be done in a way that seems natural and normal.
The method is called a "social contract". Before each student enters the classroom, one at a time, they receive the following speech in both English and Japanese: "This room is an English classroom. Kono heya wa Eigo no kurasu desu. I am an English teacher. Watashi wa Eigo no sensei desu. In this room, we study English. Kono heya dewa, Eigo no benkyo o shimasu. We do not play. Asobimasen. [Name], what are you? [Name]-chan wa nani desu ka. Are you an English student? Eigo no seito desu ka." The required answer is "yes" (hai). The student is then allowed to enter the classroom and to sit.
By stating the obvious and making the students explicitly agree, the idea that the classroom is under the teacher's control is reinforced each week until all students respect the classroom as an English class. The speech gets abbreviated in the following weeks. The punishment for not cooperating is simple and effective in Japan: being sent out of the room. Fear of being excluded from the group is sufficiently strong enough that few students will choose that alternative.
Tuesday, July 4th. Heavy rains today suspended train service south to Yonezawa. I waited at the station until any train would get me to my class 30 minutes late; then I returned to the office and we cancelled the class by telephone. I will teach longer classes for the next three weeks to make up for the lost time.
In Japan, most new trains are electric with wide-gauge rails because the wider track is necessary for faster shinkansen (bullet) trains. Older trains are diesel with narrow-gauge rails. During heavy rain, all trains are slower but, for some reason, the Yonezawa line stops completely.
Friday, July 7th. I bought a yukata or summer kimono today for Jenise the Niece who is about nine years old. I bought an adult size (160 cm). What a strange idea: buy an adult size for a child. Children's sizes are 130 cm, 140 cm, and 150 cm tall. Adult sizes are on sale (Y3900 or US$36); children's sizes are not (Y8900 or US$83). In adult sizes, the kimono can be bought separately; in children's sizes it is packaged with a pre-tied obi and plastic geta. Adult sizes for yukatas are "free size", the Japanese expression meaning "one size fits all", and so have seams that are designed to be altered. Since a yukata is wrapped around the body, the width is rarely a problem. The length must be altered, and the sleeves may need to be shortened. Today, Jenise is 4'4" (132 cm) tall. She won't be that height for long: her father is 6' (183 cm) tall. She will wear the kimono infrequently over the next few years. Hence, the adult size is better and, for the moment, she can fold up the bottom.
I also bought an obi, the big belt/sash that wraps around the body three or four times and gets tied into a huge bow in the back. The Mimatsu kimono shop kindly gave me printed obi instructions ... in Japanese. The diagrams seem clear enough.... I will include those in the package to Canada. I won't buy the geta, or wooden clogs, because they are too heavy and I don't know the correct size anyway. The package will cost a fortune to mail: Y2085 or US$19. At least this time, the contents are worth more than the postage, unlike some other presents I have sent in the past.
My boss says (with a smile) that I am a mean uncle because many Japanese women can't tie their own obi. This is a game, from afar, and Jenise will have fun playing even if she later chooses to wear a simpler belt.
Saturday, July 8th. A typhoon on the east coast of Japan is giving us steady rain with little wind. Walking in the rain with an umbrella pulled close makes distances disappear and time lose meaning. Your vision and thoughts are reduced to things nearby.
After being woken up again by my noisy neighbor(s), the building manager arranged a casual meeting in my apartment. This was the first time that I have met my neighbor or the manager face to face. The meeting was interesting for several reasons. First, it was all in Japanese with an occasional word of English. Second, my neighbor lied several times including insisting that nobody else had been in his apartment this morning, when I heard at least two male voices talking loudly starting at one o'clock, a male voice leave around 3:30 AM by crawling over the balcony railing, and the conversation cease around 5:30 AM when female steps went to the front door. He was slightly more honest about the drum machine, which he said wasn't his but belonged to a friend who visited. The third and most interesting reason was that nobody believed anything that was said at this meeting, since the neighbor had already broken his promise three times and was too young to be reliable or responsible. The real meeting will be later when the building manager talks to the boy's father. The manager had previously talked to the boy's mother but that is not considered sufficient.
If the problem continues, then I will have the opportunity of moving -- not the boy. I am not happy with this for several reasons: (1) I am not causing the problem; (2) other than my neighbor, I like my apartment; (3) moving costs time and money; and (4) there is no guarantee that a new apartment will be any better. The manager now admits that the tenants on the other side moved out because of the noise; they are leaving the apartment empty for three weeks, rather than live there, even though they have paid rent to the middle of July.
Note the following differences from American norms. It's easier to arrange my move (possibly at the building manager's expense) than it is to evict a problem tenant. The boy lives in his own apartment, but responsibility for his actions rests with his father. (His father probably signed the lease.) This whole incident is worth reporting simply to contrast it with America where we would have felt justified in calling the police. By working through proper channels (that is, the building manager), I have assisted in the boy's social education but done nothing to help me regain six weeks of lost sleep. To totally confuse my neighbor, I later invited him in writing (a hiragana note on his door) for dinner at the Korean restaurant on Sunday night. There was no response. It matters little -- my peace offer was genuine but limited to this one time only.
An apologetic or cooperative person would have gone for dinner even if they hated Korean food. I was willing to pay for and to sit through an unpleasant meal if that would settle this dispute. A polite person would have replied to the invitation. In a gesture of contempt, my neighbor and a friend made a big show of leaving his apartment five minutes before the suggested time. They found slamming his hallway door several times to be very amusing. I never knew that closing a door could generate so much laughter. (Sarcasm meets metaphor.) We are not dealing with mature individuals here. Unfortunately, they are not alone. Good social graces only occur when there is obvious and immediate punishment for behaving poorly. Warnings of delayed punishment are ignored because they are not in the "here and now". Suffering through (listening to) the warnings simply becomes the price for engaging in poor behavior.
Walking away from my apartment to McDonald's, I see that many of the "Hello Kitty" dolls remain unsold, mostly the male dolls called "Dear Daniel". Daniel was introduced a year or two ago as a boyfriend for "Hello Kitty". The Sanrio company stated that the two would be packaged separately and would never appear together. This was (of course) in the interest of increasing sales. Well, sell the two as separate halves of a wedding package in McDonald's throughout Japan ... and they still can't get rid of "Dear Daniel" dolls! There are boxes and boxes of the unwanted boyfriend. Bye-bye Dear Daniel, hello Hello Kitty.
Down the street, Denkodo reorganized their electronics mega store as "Comp City" with Macintosh and Windows/PC computer products and hand phones. They obviously knew where the most profitable parts of their old business were! The selection is good, including components and supplies.
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Monday, July 10th. My wild boys accepted the social contract as a new start to their classroom routine. Always one to make educational use out of even the most unpleasant tasks, I note that these boys are learning the alphabet and sounds, so having each student read the romaji part of the speech for the next student is a perfectly reasonable exercise. (Romaji is Japanese written in the English alphabet.) The most obnoxious boy, the one who actually forced this situation, has been "sick" for the last two weeks. Knowing that he was previously excused from the class for refusing to stand with his nose against the wall (the strongest form of in-class punishment that we allow), he can guess what will happen to him the next time.
Wednesday, July 12th. It's ten o'clock on Wednesday night. You are in Tendo station. Heavy rain has stopped train service in some directions. The final three trains of the day have failed to arrive: two regular trains (costing Y230) and one shinkansen (costing Y960). The final bus to Yamagata was over an hour and a half ago. Do you continue waiting in the hope that there will be one more train to collect people who otherwise have no way of going home? Or do you get a refund on your train ticket, walk outside to the line of waiting taxis, and take the Y5010 (US$47) taxi ride home? The taxi driver was not familiar with my address since he was from Tendo, but I was able to describe in Japanese that I live on the southwest corner of Kajo Park. With a few "hidari ni" (go left) and "migi ni" (go right), we found my apartment and I thanked him. When I tried to give him the last Y10 of the fare, he just laughed and said no, that's okay. This one taxi fare probably made his night. (My school will pay me back.)
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Monday, July 17th. I love my air conditioner. I love my air conditioner. Oh, by the way. Did I tell you? I love my air conditioner.
Tuesday, July 18th. Yesterday was too hot to handle. Today's weather? More heavy rain with a flood warning for the entire region.
Wednesday, July 19th. I told my boss that I want to move. The noise problem has persisted for too long. We had another meeting with the apartment building manager, this time at the school with my bosses, and without my neighbor. The manager has a new requirement before he will consider evicting my neighbor: the manager must personally witness the noise problem. Since the manager lives elsewhere and won't consider sleeping in the empty apartment on the other side, his idea is that I should be a watchdog and that we should call him when the problem occurs. Maybe he will come; maybe he won't. Maybe my neighbor will still be bad when the manager arrives; maybe he won't. At the beginning, this would have been a reasonable approach; however, suddenly announcing a new requirement after seven weeks of frustration smells like another delaying tactic to avoid taking action. I don't like the way that all responsibility for this situation keeps getting pushed back onto me. The people who moved (from the apartment on the other side) probably knew that this would happen, and found it easier to move than to complain.
Faith F. asks why it is so difficult for us to move. There are two reasons. The first involves money. Renting an apartment in Japan requires an advance payment of "key money" which looks like a deposit but never seems to work out that way. (Not getting your deposit money back when you move out is a common problem.) The better the apartment, the higher the key money. (Some property management companies earn more from the investment of key money than they do from monthly rental payments.) At my accommodation level, we will lose three months' rent every time we change apartments. That is in addition to regular costs such as cleaning, disconnecting and reconnecting utilities, and the physical moving of furniture and belongings.
The second reason why moving is difficult is people. I keep saying "building manager" because that is the closest word to what we have in America or Canada. He also acts as a leasing and rental agent for other properties, including those where my bosses live. If we don't resolve the noise problem by acting through the building manager, we will damage my bosses' relationship with him in other matters.
The story on my neighbor also keeps changing. Now he's not a music student; he's a high school dropout who has a part-time or irregular job at the front desk of a hotel. That goes a long way in explaining his poor choices.
Saturday, July 22nd. It is time for me to be humble. Without telling anyone, the building manager did sleep in the empty apartment. He was woken up at 4:30 AM by my neighbor and a friend playing mah-jongg. He did order my neighbor to move. Ironically, that was one of my neighbor's quieter nights. In the end, my neighbor gets evicted not for his noise but for lying to the building manager about not meeting with his friends in the apartment at night.
Now I am very tempted to go back and change my previous nasty comments about the building manager ... but that would be like editing history. This whole journal would become meaningless if I constantly revised my opinions after the fact.
Monday, July 24th. Hot and sunny. Yesterday's temperature was over 37 degrees Celsius (98 degrees Fahrenheit) with the usual high humidity. People in Tokyo were told to stay home unless they were prepared for the heat. The weird part for me is using an air conditioner during a thunderstorm. Back home, storms are always cold.
Wednesday, July 26th. Will the 5:27 train come if your watch stops ticking and the time stays at 3:41? The first jewelry shop in Tendo was big and fancy but couldn't admit that they didn't have the right battery until after they spent ten minutes trying every battery of a similar size. The second shop was small but replaced the battery and reset the time in less than a minute. Better service definitely comes from the smaller shops. Our local Watanabe Hardware store is a favorite among the tradespeople and has been very helpful to me too.
Friday, July 28th. Hot and sunny on the way to Tsuruoka; hot and sunny on the way home. I felt like an idiot wearing my jacket, so I left it at home before returning to work. You guessed it: the skies turned grey and the rain hasn't stopped yet.
My Tendo Shokyu adult students organized a dinner and drinking party after class at a restaurant. Good food, cold beer, and conversation in English and Japanese. Thank you for the party, Akio, Hiroyuki, Keiko, Miyuki, Takako, Toru, Yuichi -- and the biggest organizer of all, Hitoshi! Fortunately, I wasn't driving the train home, so I didn't have to worry about Japan's strict laws against drinking and driving.
Saturday, July 29th. Today was moving day for my noisy neighbor. He did not go quietly. As he went in and out, he slammed his door, each time louder and stronger. This is the first time I have seen my balcony doors shake ... and they are on the opposite end of the apartment. The performance was amazing for two reasons. First, he was doing this in front of his parents, who were helping him move. Did his parents not find anything wrong with his actions? After all, numerous similar noise problems are the reason he was evicted. Second, such violence would normally rip the door off its hinges.
Sunday, July 30th. When the owner of Miura Photo Studio invites you to take pictures of the Yonezawa Hanabi Matsuri (fireworks festival), you go. He had a real camera, a Pentax 6x7cm ("roku-nana"). I had my Canon 35mm. Finding parking was an adventure. We parked downtown and took a taxi to the festival site. He concentrated mostly on the fireworks with some crowd in the foreground. I liked the crowd with its food tents, so I kept the crowd exposure constant with a variable amount of fireworks. I finished my film about 15 minutes before the end of the show. He finished his film a few minutes later. Neither of us wanted to stay for the grand finale: better to leave before the crowd started moving. I can't even estimate how many people were there. It's a long, wide river valley. The last festival in the spring was on a rainy day and had a reported 60,000 people. Today the weather was perfect and lots of people were wearing summer kimonos.
Doug F. asks if everything I write is real, or if I am simply an excellent writer of fiction. With the exception of obviously humorous articles such as the guest editorial following, yes, everything is true. My words are generally understated because it's hard to describe some situations to a person who is not here. As a stranger (foreigner) in Japan, I am more acutely aware of my surroundings than native Japanese people who accept these situations as normal. To be fair, I'm sure that the same happens when they visit my country. In time, my perceptions will become duller so it is important for me to write before I forget what it is that strikes me as so interesting. My older writings already seem like another person, and my older photographs seem commonplace. However, I'm very glad that I have them because I can't go back and relive the freshness of being a new arrival. I'll leave that to...
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Here I am with my new friend, Mr. Bunny. He doesn't talk much but he has a big smile. I am teaching him how to speak Raconian. |
| Here I am with a bottle of Japanese sake and Keith's special cup. I could drink more if the cup were bigger. |  |
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Here I am playing "totem pole" with Pikachu. Be careful where you sit! |
| Here I am on a big bag of squirrel food. I haven't found the squirrel yet. |  |
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Here I am after a successful trip into Keith's pockets while he was napping. |
| Here I am in prison after Keith caught me reading a copy of Tanuki Weekly magazine. I liked the pictures.... |  |
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Here I am on a Tamron rocket ship ready to blast off into outer space. Keith said something about buying me a free one-way ticket. Is that a good deal? |
| Here I am discovering the source of an awful smell: Keith's socks! I put a line of socks going towards the washing machine. Do you think he will take the hint and wash them? |  |
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Here I am finding salvation* in a tube of mizumushi cream. That's a pun: "salve" means "cream". I like big words: they are almost as big as I am. |
What can I tell you about Keith? He doesn't eat much rice. When he buys those bento dishes from Ban Ban Ya, he eats only about half of the rice ... and he puts the rest in the garbage! You could feed a full-sized raccoon on the rice that he throws away, or a medium-sized dog, or a small-sized girlfriend. There is a lot of juice in the fridge. I tried all the flavors -- burp! There was a monster next door; it made terrible noises at night and slept in the daytime.
(After seeing the above, Peter J. says that I obviously have too much spare time. I blame it on the rainy season. Going outside can be about as much fun as ... winter in Edmonton!)
Now back to our regular programming...Help Wanted: English-to-Japanese translator for these "Floating Papers" web pages. No pay. Little fame. Some HTML. Apply in person or by e-mail.
Tuesday, August 1st. What better way to start the month than with a party? The school staff had to listen to me whine and complain about my noisy neighbor for two months. It was time to do something nice for them. In honor of my departed neighbor, I hosted a lunch party. I did this in a traditional Japanese way: I asked my boss what she wanted to eat; I told the secretary to order it; I paid and helped clean up. And there are Snoopy dolls for me to buy at McDonald's....
Friday, August 4th. I delivered a bottle of sake and a thank-you note in person to the building manager's real estate office. The choice of sake was guided by my student, Mr. Okushima, who works for Dewazakura Sake Brewery.
Early reviews of my July notes show that Petiracco is more entertaining as a writer than I am. Should I turn this whole web page over to the animals? Don't say yes because then I'll feel sad!
Saturday, August 5th. Today my shower was hotter than normal. When I checked the thermostat, it had reset to the recommended 42 degrees Celsius instead of my preferred 39 degrees. Sometime in the last two days, the power failed long enough to affect the digital thermostat. (Each apartment in my building has a small "on demand" electric heater. There is no central hot water tank.) This is the first noticeable power failure since I came here, which makes the electrical power supply more stable than in Canada. I'm typing this during another thunderstorm, and electrical plugs have only two prongs with no ground wire....
Normally, it's the digital clocks that get interrupted first. I don't have one. My alarm clock is a battery-powered travel clock that uses only one AA-sized battery per year -- very reliable until the day the battery dies, like my watch did last week! I wonder when the clock's turn will be?
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Sunday, August 6th. I went to the Hanagasa parade again. While I was sitting on the curb waiting, a woman started arranging bamboo mats on the sidewalk and was very pushy in inviting me to sit on one of the mats. This is not as generous as it may sound. The mats are used to reserve space. By getting me to sit on the corner of a mat, she grabbed an extra square meter of space for her friends who arrived later. The funny part was at the end of the parade. Barely five seconds after the parade ended, they started to pick up the mats. I was busy putting my camera into its bag and didn't pay much attention until one of the women literally tried to pull the mat out from underneath me! She didn't say anything first, not even a polite "sumimasen" or "excuse me", and she seemed unhappy that I had been taking up space on their mats!
Don't believe all the published reports of crowd sizes. According to the August "What's Happening in Yamagata?" newsletter published by the Yamagata City International Friendship Association: "Every year, over 1,000,000 people come to view Yamagata's famous parade on Nanoka-machi [street]!" Hum. I think an editor should have checked his figures before publication. Even if one million people came equally over three days, that's still more than 300,000 people per day, which is larger than the population of Yamagata. The residents aren't going to watch the same parade three times every year, and the buses, trains, and roadways don't have enough capacity for a sudden doubling of the population. The parade route is about two kilometers (2000 meters) long. There would be 150 people per linear meter of sidewalk. From what I saw, the most crowded places had maybe 10 people per meter. The "million people" figure quoted in the newsletter had an extra zero and even then was based on an inflated estimate.
Monday, August 7th. The cicadas love this weather. You know, the insects that make buzzing sounds like an electrical transformer. This is especially funny when they rest on power poles instead of their usual trees! There may be more than one variety here. I often see ones with 2 cm (one inch) bodies; a few nights ago, I saw a larger 5 cm insect with the same body shape. This was at night when they are less active. It was large enough that I could see the joints in its legs clearly. When I prodded it, it made the same sound as a cicada so it must be from the same insect family. That would explain the small "bird" that buzzed my head one night while I was walking home: it wasn't a bird at all, but a big cicada!
Wednesday, August 9th. I shouldn't have said that about power failures. My words were so strong that they caused a complete loss of power in Sagae for thirty minutes this afternoon. Sheet lightning flashed across the sky with multiple lightning strikes to the ground. Rolling thunder followed. Heavy rain had water droplets so big that they looked like balls. You find out how good of a conversational English teacher you are when the classroom is dark....
Friday, August 11th. How do you know when the rainy season ends? The warm rains throughout the day change into cold rain in the afternoon, with a decrease in the overall humidity. (And I was starting to like the smell of dried sweat....)
Sunday, August 13th. Aterazawa Station in Oe Town to the northwest is truly the end of the line. After you get off the train, the only train you can take is the next train going back to where you came from (Yamagata). This leaves two cities with direct trains that I haven't visited. One is Fukushima to the south. That train goes once in the afternoon and once in the evening. (The normal routine is to change trains in Yonezawa.) The other is Tokyo on the mini shinkansen called "Tsubasa" ("Wing"). That's Y10,160 (US$93) for a one-way ticket so it helps to have a real reason for going to Tokyo, not just day tripping.
Tuesday, August 15th. Ow! Are my dogs ever tired! (My feet hurt.) Yesterday I walked to the Yamagata fireworks show. It was a lot farther than it looked. The map should have one of those little warnings that say "not drawn to scale". Walking for an hour and a half at 29 degrees Celsius (84 degrees Fahrenheit) was made bearable by a light breeze and drier air than a month ago. As with the Yonezawa fireworks, I can't estimate the size of the crowd. There were at least 200 policemen directing traffic. Cars were not allowed to stop near the site, and bicycles were not allowed in the main viewing areas. Bicycle parking was provided by the entrances but people with cars were told to stay home or take the shuttle buses. Unplanned, Mr. Miura arrived an hour later. Once again, despite the size of the festival area, we both decided that there was only one good place to take pictures from. He rode his bicycle home; I walked. Tomorrow is Oishida Town, reputed to be the best and most traditional of all the fireworks displays in this area.
If you ask a Japanese person what time it is, they will often look at their hand phone. Why carry a watch when your hand phone has an accurate clock built in? With Japan's small size and large population, the cellular phone network has excellent coverage.
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Halfway through the show, I had to leave for the train station. I caught glimpses of the fireworks as I walked along the street and as I stood outside the train station. Oishida station is unusual in that the roof of the station is actually a sitting gallery facing ... the fireworks! A huge crowd formed at the station with the same idea: to catch the last train home at 9:11 PM. I didn't see how all of those people would fit on one train. It didn't help that the train was 13 minutes late. I was worried about not getting on the train; however, there was standing room for all of us without any pushing or shoving, except for the teenagers who didn't think that they should have to wait in line like everyone else.
Thursday, August 17th. After three days of excursions (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday), I should relax for the last day of my O-Bon summer holidays. I will: (1) go to the photo store to pick up three rolls of pictures and drop off two more rolls of film; (2) go to the hardware store to buy some glue to fix the toe of my shoe; (3) go to the comfort of our air conditioned office to sort through the pictures and answer my e-mail; and (4) buy pizza from Strawberry Cones for supper. After all, today is Thursday and Thursday is pizza day, even if I'm not in Tsuruoka! Strawberry Cones (a Japanese company with a broken internet home page) makes better pizza than Pizza Hut (an American company with a boring home page). I eat at Pizza Hut in Tsuruoka mostly as a reward after a long, 2-hour bus ride, and as something to do to kill two hours before my company class.
The plan to eat pizza was later cancelled by an upset stomach.
Friday, August 18th. I have walked many miles in my light hiking shoes since November. It was a race to see which part would wear out first. The shoelaces were always in poor shape. The right toe was opening up. The eventual winner was the right sole: the entire bottom of the shoe split open because the tread was worn out. Temporarily, I plugged the hole with one of those toxic chemical glues that comes with danger labels such as "Caution: may cause death. Avoid contact. Use only in well-ventilated places away from people, animals, or other living organisms." Okay, so I exaggerate. Still, with the amount of glue that I pumped into the shoe, the fumes were too strong for inside the apartment and the shoe spent the night on the balcony. There were no spiders near the shoe when I picked it up this morning.
Vitamin drinks are very popular in Japan. They come in little brown bottles of 100 mL (3.4 fl.oz.). According to the advertisements, drinking just one of these bottles will renew your energy and allow you to climb mountains. Hum. Look again. Vitamins take days or weeks to benefit a healthy body. The fast-acting ingredient is 50 mg of caffeine! Truth-in-advertising laws in North America would prohibit such drinks from being sold, along with numerous cures for baldness. It's strange being in a country that advertises some products so much when you know that no similar products have ever been able to prove a therapeutic effect in America or Europe.
Saturday, August 19th. New shoes. I went to Takeda Sports again, a Japanese company with stores in 33 cities, a big radio advertising budget, and no known corporate home page! I wasn't too happy with the last pair of shoes (made by Mizuno). I think Mizuno has a quality control problem -- the left shoe was better made than the right shoe -- so I bought a different brand name this time (Hawkins Traveller). The shoes that I liked best were on sale at 50% off because the only remaining size was 27.0 cm: a few sizes too big. My second choice had display shoes in size 24.5EEE (US 6.5), which fit. I checked the display shoes for defects, found none, bought them, laced them up, and donated my old shoes to Takeda's garbage. My new shoes aren't light hiking shoes; they're light brown walking shoes. That's right: oxfords, an old man's shoes. They are easier to take off and put on when I visit company locations. With my old hiking shoes, I had to sit down to put on my shoes.
Now if I could only clear the haze in my head that comes from four days of stomach troubles....
The clubs and restaurants in the Ekimae district sponsored a Caribbean carnival near our school. It was about as accurate as a Japanese restaurant in small-town America. Like any other parade in Japan, first there was a mikoshi (Japanese portable shrine) carried on the shoulders of many people. Then 30 or 40 odori (Japanese folk) dancers and drummers, both male and female. Then a small group of nine samba (Brazilian-style) dancers with four drummers. The samba dancers were all female wearing pretty feathered costumes. The Japanese audience liked the strutting walk and the exposed skin, but none of the dancers were Japanese: they were all foreigners recruited from the local area. This bothered me. If some of the dancers had been Japanese, then I would have accepted this as a genuine Caribbean-style parade open to all participants. However, by putting foreigners on display, it had the same feeling as watching animals in a zoo. This is so far from the spirit of the Caribbean or the carnival in Rio de Janeiro where some might say that the entire city of Rio turns into a zoo!
Sunday, August 20th. I survived another children's party. The theme was "Having Fun Playing Games in English". Three teachers from our school, about 30 students, parents, and assorted younger brothers and sisters attended. Organized confusion would be the best description. Planned activities were for two hours in the morning, half an hour for lunch, and an hour before and after for getting ready and cleaning up. All went well, mostly due to the efforts of my other boss who acted as emcee. Tomorrow I will teach a regular class to the same students.
Monday, August 21st. You know, with the rainy season finished and my apartment quiet enough to sleep in, Japan is a nice place to be! And, this is the summer festival season with more events than I can possibly attend.
Being a foreigner in Japan has its advantages. For example, I can go into the fast food restaurants and buy the children's toys. Many months ago, Lotteria had Pikachu coin banks. (Pikachu is the first character in the Pokemon game and trading cards. Lotteria is a Japanese-Korean burger chain with a corporate home page only in Korean.) I went to Lotteria for lunch with one of my adult students. I ordered the Pikachu set and received my toy. When my student tried to order the same set, she was told, "This is for children." With me standing there with my Pikachu, we started laughing. The manager saw the humor in the situation and gave my student the toy. For the next month, I ordered Pikachu every time I ate at Lotteria. Most went to Japanese adults who were too embarrassed to order their own.
Wednesday, August 23rd. I cleaned up the gravel walkway between our apartment and the fence around the parking lot. I thought that I might as well since I was putting out a blue bag of garbage: metals, hard plastics, and composite material such as broken household appliances. Mostly I picked up rusting pieces of metal that had been there for a long, long time: nuts, bolts, wire, several curtain hooks, etc. The apartment building does have a crew that comes once a week to clean the common areas. They've uprooted weeds in the gravel walkway and picked up regular garbage such as papers, but for some reason, they never touched the bits of construction debris that were in the same place! Maybe they only have red garbage bags....
To explain a Japanese attitude, I will use a gate as an example. There is a gate between the front of our apartment building and the back where the power meters and LP gas cylinders are. The gate should be kept closed, mostly for safety reasons. Only one person normally goes through this gate: a tenant who parks his motorcycle in the back. He never closes the gate. Even if the gate is closed when he goes to get his motorcycle, he never closes the gate afterwards. Now, if someone closes the gate for him, then his reasoning is that he doesn't have to close the gate because someone else will do it. (That is, it's someone else's job.) If nobody closes the gate, then that means it's okay to leave the gate open. Either way, his inactivity is justified. Should you suggest that he close the gate, he may comply simply to avoid confrontation with you. However, his own personal reasoning has already told him that there is nothing wrong with what he is doing.
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I'm wondering if a similar reasoning applies to my neighbors whose apartment doors slam shut. Since they slam exactly the same way each time, the cause must be the door closing mechanism (which, ironically, was intended to prevent this noise). The neighbors aren't making the noise (directly); the door mechanism is. Hence, they don't feel responsible even if the noise is a result of their going in and out. They can't be unaware of the problem since doors are loud because they are closing too quickly, which also means that doors are probably hitting people on the back of the legs as they close. More perplexing is why my neighbors don't do something to correct the problem. I can only guess that they don't know that the doors can be adjusted. Even if they are unfamiliar with tools, they could ask for help. Not knowing that the problem can be corrected, and not feeling responsible for the noise itself, allows the slamming to continue indefinitely.
On the way to school, I stopped at the office of one of my students who runs a sales business. (Ponta also writes a horse racing web page, but it keeps moving, so I'm not sure that I can provide a link here.) He was having a problem with his Windows PC computer: unexplained freezing. Does this sound familiar? The solution certainly is. As I have done so many times on so many other Windows computers, I rebuilt the Windows registry. A small thing on my part in return for all the lunches that Ponta pays for.
Friday, August 25th. The end of summer: sunny, warm days. The air is drier and cooler, only 29 degrees today at noon. Gone are the painfully hot days of 37 and 38 degrees. In the evening, my apartment is comfortable with the balcony doors open. I still have to use the air conditioning at night, however, because my apartment is on the ground floor and the balcony faces the parking lot. (Sleeping with the balcony doors open would be stupid even in Japan.) The rain is less frequent, maybe once a week.
This morning for breakfast, I ate an ice cream cone. Hey, when you're on a road trip (Tsuruoka) at six o'clock in the morning, you eat whatever your stomach will accept.
There was a surprise waiting at the office: our school leased a new color laser printer. For someone with a background in desktop publishing, that's tempting. I wonder how long I can resist playing with the new toy: a couple days, or a couple hours?
Saturday, August 26th. I must be turning Japanese: I ate leftover bento for breakfast today. The truth is, I was sick. No, not from the bento! First I was sick, then I ate the bento. I woke up at 10:30, didn't feel like getting up, and ate the bento because it involved no more effort than opening the fridge and finding a pair of chopsticks. I aired out my futon, lay down on the floor for a short nap, and woke up again at 5:30 PM. (After sleeping on a futon for a year, napping on the floor is easy but my shoulders feel like they are dislocated.) This time I forced myself to cook a real supper of spaghetti, and to go for a walk to the grocery store and the park, just so that I wouldn't have to admit that I spent an entire day inside my apartment. I must congratulate my body for getting sick on my day off so as to not inconvenience my employers.... There's nothing quite so miserable as being sick and alone in a foreign country.
Peter J. asks how big my apartment is. The answer: seven tatami mats. You're welcome. I'm sure that answers the question. Yes, that really is the official size of my apartment. The living area is 2.82 meters (9.3 feet) wide and 4.04 meters (13.3 feet) long, with a floor space of 11.4 square meters (124 square feet). The whole apartment including kitchen, bathroom, and closet space is 2.82 meters wide and 7.16 meters (23.5 feet) long, for a total area of 20.2 square meters (218 square feet). From the size, you can see that if my neighbors are being noisy, there is simply nowhere that I can move my bed to get away from the noise.
(A "tatami" is a straw matting used as a floor covering in a traditional Japanese home. The size of one tatami mat is half of a "tsubo". A tsubo is another traditional measurement of about 180 cm by 180 cm, which is very close to 6 feet by 6 feet and defined to be 3.954 square yards. Thus, one tatami mat is 90 cm by 180 cm, or 3 feet by 6 feet, the approximate floor space needed for one sleeping person.)
Sunday, August 27th. Well, this is the month that was. No raccoon jokes, unless you look for one that's really hard to find.
This journal has exceeded 60 pages as counted by my word processor. I never expected to write so much about such trivia. I mean, do you really find it interesting that my local grocery store was repainted bright yellow, breaking with Japanese tradition of bland greys and browns for all buildings? A house of any other color would stand out in this neighborhood, and people don't like to be seen to be different. For stores, different has become good: it attracts attention and customers.
Of course, people still like to feel that they are unique. The joke is that Japanese young people express their individualism in exactly the same ways! The group mentality (acceptance by peers) is still very strong even when attempting to distinguish themselves from a larger group. The most disturbing for me are the kids who copy from American (movie?) culture without realizing that some of those lifestyles (attitudes) would get them killed in five minutes in East-Central Los Angeles.
I may take a break from writing this journal. I am not happy with the content and I feel like I am repeating myself. Production of a web page is very time-consuming. The original intention was to use the journal as a substitute for writing letters; however, with several exceptions, the communication has become one-way.
Copyright (c) 2000 by Keith Fenske. All rights reserved.
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