Listen to the Rain

There was a hashtag about gaijin confessions on Friday on twitter. My favorite is probably "Also told someone I wanted to buy a human instead of a carrot once" (Carrot is 人参 ninjin, human is 人間 ningen), but there's a lot of good stuff collected here.

It made me think of my own #gaijinconfessions, so here's a few of them:

• To this day, my breakfast is miso soup, rice, salmon, and pickles while sitting on the floor at a low table. This despite that most of our students ate "bread and milk" for breakfast, including the kimono shop owner who met his wife through a 仲人 (nakōdo, "marriage broker").
  
• I also took the trash out at night, because there's no way I was getting up at 8 a.m. on Saturday just to get the trash out by 8:30.
  
• Japanese cheese is garbage and we happily paid $20 a pound for good cheese at the import foods store.
  
• The first winter I was there I survived mostly off canned chicken soup from the Foreign Buyer's Club because we hadn't quite gotten used to proper shopping for our 3/4th size fridge yet.
  
• We spent a week in Singapore in and I thought everyone was unconscionably rude because I was used to a Japanese level of service.
  
• I got used to being able to talk about anything I wanted and would happy tell off-color stories secure that people around me almost certainly couldn't understand me.
  
• Even though I'm American, I actually don't own a gun or eat hamburgers every day.
  
• My favorite onigiri is the kimchi-ume one I bought while we were in Ōsaka for schoolpsychnerd to take the GRE. It was only sold in Ōsaka and the Japanese people we told about it thought we were making it up.
  
• I was never sure whether to use Japanese or English with staff in Indian restaurants.
  
• I once boarded a bus twice with the same ticket after I forgot my laptop. I disembarked and took the light rail back into Hiroshima, retrieved my laptop from the ramen shop, and got on the next bus on the same line using my same ticket. The attendant looked at me nervously, wondering why a gaijin was going to Innoshima, and I flashed the ticket and walked on. Saved me ¥4000.

(Bullet = dodged)

Background: Aya-sensei and I are reading 世界の中心で愛を叫ぶ and got to a part where Sakutarō is being an idiot. He's angry at Aki because the other boys in his class are bullying him for spending time with her, so he writes in to a Christmas Eve radio show with a song request, talking about how they were going to play Romeo and Juliet in the Culture Festival (true) but she got sick with leukemia (false) and is probably listening from her hospital bed (false). Aki confronts him the next day, and says that she doesn't mind if he talks about her, but there are people out there who are really suffering and she hates it when people are mean to them.

This led to a discussion about how Aki is the ideal stereotype of Japanese womanhood (大和撫子 in Japanese): soft-spoken, self-effacing, beautiful, courteous, caring, with long black hair. Aya-sensei mentioned the pressure that Japanese women are under to conform to this ideal and how she--being raised in America--feels like a lumbering barbarian (not her exact words) when she's around other Japanese women.

Then she asked me if I liked that kind of personality.


I managed to deflect a bit by talking about schoolpsychnerd, who has a lot of those traits. She's softer-spoken (except when advocating for students under her care), loves cooking for people, likes cute things, tends to think of others, dresses more feminine, and probably most importantly for the purposes of the question, Aya-sensei has met her. So we talked a bit about schoolpsychnerd, and then the conversation moved on.

But I realize that that's actually kind of a reasonable accomplishment--I extracted myself from a conversational land mine in another language. I mean, it wasn't really a trap, but it was structured as one, and I avoided it. Points to me!

Walking Path
This is shown from pretty near our house. If you turn the view around and go down the road a ways, you'll be able to see it on the left. And you should probably turn the view around at least a bit, because this section of road's pictures were taken in fall and the trees are great. The momiji especially are spectacular.

This is the road that schoolpsychnerd and I would always walk on when we went for walks. We'd go forward a ways, then turn right along the river for a short distance, then turn right again and walk down what was called the "old road." Considering that Chiyoda has a festival that dates back 500 years (which I'll write about in a later tour post), it makes me wonder if the old road has been there for centuries and the paved version we'd walk on is only its most recent incarnation.

Forest Shrine
I'm partially including this for the fall colors, but also as an example of the little shrines we'd stumble on when walking around town. There were at least three of them within a mile of our house--one of them is just down the road from the brewery, if you want to go back to Part I and look around--and there are probably half-a-dozen others around there that we missed. Japanese people are pretty famously irreligious, but I think a lot of that is just a different understanding of religion than the usual Western attitude. Nearly everyone I knew went to a local shrine on New Year's Eve, but they'd never characterize it as a religious thing. it was just part of being Japanese. Which is the traditional understanding of religion, really--the idea that religion is somehow separable from culture is mostly a modern conceit.

If you turn right and click down the road to the bridge, you can see the water-filled depression in the road that collapsed during a heavy rainstorm. We also caught two students necking under the bridge at one point, but we didn't say anything and just walked on by. Teachers in Japan and somewhat expected to police their students behavior when they're out and about, but neither of us bothered with that.

The Koyamas' House
The Koyamas were one of the families who came to the neighborhood English class we taught. I've written about their younger son Kazuo before here, but their elder son Naoyuki is the one who brought us the katana that's currently resting above our mantle and who once came by our house and asked if we wanted to go firefly-gazing. Relatively early on, schoolpsychnerd and I walked by the house when the Koyamas were having a barbeque outside, and they beckoned us over and invited us to sit and eat with them. It was moments like that that really make me remember Chiyoda fondly.

We also did our part for tolerance, since Mrs. Koyama told us that before she had interacted with us during the class, she had been kind of scared of foreigners, but after meeting us she wasn't scared anymore.

Forest Path
Sadly the Google van didn't go down that path, because we'd walk down there a lot. Just around the corner there is a grove of bamboo, and then a few family grave sites, and then a set of weathered stone steps leading up to a shrine of Hachiman that we'd frequently stop at. One of the first times we went there, we ran into the shrine keeper and had a brief conversation, but every other time we went it was deserted. Sadly, I don't have a clean picture of the entrance or the shrine itself. You're always a terrible tourist where you live.

Stonecarver's House
At least, I have to assume it's a stonecarver's house with a display like that outside. A lot of what's there were graves, but there's also plenty of stone lanterns and just lawn statues like the owls right at the bottom of the image.

The reason I included this image can be seen if you zoom in a bit and look behind the stone table, just to the left of the two Hotei statues. schoolpsychnerd and I always used to think of this as the gravecarver's house, and every time we would see that, we were happy that it wasn't somewhere out there decorating a child's grave. I realize now that it was intended as a lawn ornament, which makes me a lot happier.

Creepy Shrine
Most of our tiny mountain town fit the good stereotypes of a small town. We had neighbors invite us over for barbeque and to the local festivals, bring us vegetables and rice during harvest season, buy us drinks when they saw us in local bars, all of that. They also talked about our house being creepy and looked into our basket when we went shopping, but on the whole, I think the good outweighed the bad by a lot.

Sometimes, though, there were scenes straight out of Fatal Frame. The stairway in our house was one, with narrow, steep wooden steps with no railing and a single bulb at the top. The entrance to this shrine was another. During full daylight it wasn't so bad, though even then the layout was a bit creepy. Those steps led up through the trees to an empty clearing of grass and dirt, and then there were more stairs at the far end that led up to the actual shrine. But if the sun was even a bit obscured...well, you get the picture there. At actual night? We usually crossed the road to avoid the darkness that seemed to spill almost palpably down the stairs. If there were J-Horror ghosts anywhere in Chiyoda, they lived at that shrine.

The shrine was maintained by the neighborhood who had twice-yearly cleanings, and our friends the Kaminakas mentioned that they had taken a turn at cleaning it in one of the pre-class English "what have you done since last class?" discussions we instituted. I remember being surprised at that at the time, because he hadn't been killed by murderous ghosts. If you've lived in the country for a long time--and in Japan, "the country" has basically no streetlights"--you're probably used to that kind of darkness around, though.

So, about a week ago, Kaminaka-san asked my help in performing a trick (well, loosely-defined) on his neighborhood. I was to impersonate a US ambassadorial aide with a message from President Obama.

Now, I've lived here for almost two and a half years. I'm pretty sure everyone knows who schoolpsychnerd and I are, even if they might not know anything else about us, so I knew that they wouldn't actually believe the ruse. Nonetheless, I dressed up in a suit to keep the illusion at least partially intact and, it being a party, they played along with the speech. Here it is, if you want to read it:

私はアメリカ大使館から来ました、ピットブライアンです。
オバマ大統領からのメッセージありますので、お伝えします。

いつかいちの皆さん、 明けましておめでとうございます。
私が今年希望する事は、
第一に、かくへいきのない平和な世界です。
第二に、アメリカ経済の立て直しです。
第三に、日本と仲良くする事です。
最後に、いつかいちじちかいのますますの発展です。
皆様の幸せと健康を祈ります。

アメリカ大統領、バラ久オバマ

Translation:

I come from the American Embassy. My name is Brian Pitt.
I have a message from President Obama, which I will now read to you.

"People of Itsukaichi [the neighborhood whose New Year's Party this was], Happy New Year.
I have the following hopes for this year:
First, for a peaceful world without nuclear weapons.
Second, for the rebuilding of the American economy.
Third, to bring about closer relations with Japan.
And finally, for the continued development of the Itsukaichi Neighborhood Council.
I wish for all of your good health and happiness.

-Barack Obama, President of America."

The speech went pretty much as I expected it would (I ended up getting complimented on my pronunciation, actually), and then I was given a seat and a bentō and chatted with people for a bit. The most interesting chat was with the 79-year-old man who told me about his daughter living in New Orleans when Katrina hit and how he had skied as a hobby for the past 70 years. He even mentioned one of the teachers who used to work at Chiyoda high school as a good person to go to if I ever wanted to learn how to ski (since I had told him I had never been).

He also asked me if liked living in Japan. Well, literally he asked me how was the Japanese lifestyle, but I knew what he meant. And I said yes, I really liked it, and that schoolpsychnerd and I planned to return when she was done with grad school. And as I said that, I thought: "you know, that's right. I really do like living here." In fact, I'd say that in terms of places I've lived (not people who live there necessarily--I miss you all dearly), Japan is my favorite. I'm not sure I can point to any single reason why, but I can definitely say that on the balance, it's true.

Anyway, moving back is a long-term goal. We'll see how well it works out.

I was also invited to a middle-school children's class at the community center on Saturdays, but I wasn't able to understand exactly what kind of class it was. I wouldn't really feel comfortable going until I knew that. I can ask Kaminaka-san, I guess.

About an hour after I arrived at the party, I judged that I had spent sufficient time at the Itsukaichi New Year's party and told them that I had to get going, since the Yaenishi Tondo festival was the same day. I walked a couple of kilometers over to the festival and arrived late (that's three years in a row I've missed them lighting the bonfire (T_T) ), and was promptly loaded down with food and sake.

The most memorable part was when one of the Tondo organizers gave a brief speech, and then asked schoolpsychnerd and I to give a speech as well. So I gave a brief line about how everyone was incredibly kind to us, and schoolpsychnerd did the same, and then we saw that Santa Miki was crying, and that made schoolpsychnerd cry, and everyone said aww when I gave her a hug.

But, the bigger thing is the reaction in general--someone cried because we're leaving. I know we've been here for years, but we keep a lot to ourselves and don't speak Japanese as well as we should. While we live here, I don't really know that people actually view us as part of the community. Or, at least, I didn't know until today. I guess I shouldn't be too surprised: schoolpsychnerd is the teacher at the local high school (and two others beyond that), and both of us teach English lessons to children and adults. We spend a lot of time in Chiyoda because we're both here--unlike a lot of JETs or other ALTs, we don't need to go elsewhere to avoid loneliness to maintain a support network, so people see us around a lot (well, they see schoolpsychnerd a lot. I'm kind of a cave-dwelling troll). That's going to make leaving even harder than it already was.

It doesn't really have anything to do with living in Japan, per se, it's more living in a rural area. My friends in Hiroshima proper don't get their neighbors bringing them excess vegetables or rice or treats when they're sick, and I know those sorts of things happen in rural American areas. When we lived in an apartment building in America, we didn't know the names of any of our neighbors. We assumed one family was Indian, because we could frequently smell them cooking curry, but they might have just really liked curry. We knew one family had young children, because schoolpsychnerd saw them coming home. But that's it. Here, though, people know us. Even if we're members of a different culture, and sometimes have problems communicating, this is our home.

That's a nice feeling.

So, as I'm sure people noticed, I didn't have the internet for three weeks.

What happened was, apparently we never paid the first NTT bill we received when we first got here back in 2008. After a while, NTT noticed and called us to tell us we had a late bill. Okay, fair cop, that was our fault. The part that annoys me is that that when we said we had paid (because we paid every other bill), they checked their records every time, saw we had paid the bill the previous month, and said, "Oh, we're sorry, you are correct." Then, they just shut out internet off. The first couple guys we talked to thought it was some sort of technical error on their end, and it wasn't for a couple days that we found out what the real problem was.

The reason it took three weeks is because NTT is a monopoly. They're required to approve any internet connection before an ISP can actually connect you with the tubes, and because of that they take their sweet time in doing it. After three weeks, they didn't even send anyone to our house. They just flipped the "on" switch back at their headquarters to start the electrons flowing again. *sigh*

Well, at least we have internet again now. And I managed to reset the wireless router even though it was all in Japanese, with the aid of what little Japanese I know and Rikaichan to fill in the gaps. (^_^)

I'm taking a short break from working on my NaNo, though I do have a few chapters still to post. I'll do that pretty soon.

Hitting "Detect Location" had Tokyo pop up. Japan is small and crowded, but not that small.

Yesterday, on the way home from work, the train stopped at the Atomic Bomb Dome Park. There were a few other foreigners on the tram (Kiwis, by their accents), and one of them realized almost too late that we came to her stop. She got up and frantically rushed around until her friend directed her to an exit. Unfortunately, it was an exit without an attendant, which means she left without paying. Several of the Japanese people on the train watched her as she ran out with obvious disapproval in her eyes, and my first thought was, "You idiot, now what will they think of us?"

Then I kind of stopped, because after all, what "us" is there? I'm not one to greet random foreigners on the street or try to talk to them, because shared non-Japaneseness isn't really a useful starting point for a conversation. Plus, just because they look like me doesn't mean they are similar--they could be Americans, yes, but maybe they're Russian, or Polish, or Italian, etc. But, in Japanese, we're both 外人 (gaijin).

You may hear that this means foreigner, but that's not strictly true. Foreigner is 外国人. Even when overseas, Japanese people will still use gaijin to talk about the people around them, because its real meaning is more like "someone who is not Japanese." And if you want a one-word version, the kanji translate as "outsider."

Worried about the actions of others because they might reflect on how the majority sees me. It's an interesting perspective, coming from a town that's probably ~85%+ WASP. Not a moment of satori, at least for me, but I think most Americans should try living in a place where they're the minority for a while. They might learn something about our own society.

For dinner tonight, schoolpsychnerd and I went to the ramen stand near one of the pachinko parlors nearby. It looked empty when we got there, but the door was open, so we went in and I asked (in Japanese) if they were open. The old man said they were, and then spouted off a string of Japanese so quickly that I had no idea of anything he said. We went through a lot of confusion before we finally got it across that we didn't actually speak that much, and then we ordered our ramen, which came with a shōyu broth base and was amazing.

About halfway through our meal, he brought over a "presento"--a little knick-knack that lit up blue and red when you pressed a button (I suspect he thought schoolpsychnerd was younger than she actually is :-p ). He asked us if we had been to the pachinko parlor, and I said no. When schoolpsychnerd said no, he said something that we think was, "Of course not, women don't play pachinko." He then asked us if we had pachinko parlors in the states, and we said no, and then he asked if we had karaoke, which we said we did. He then mentioned that it was good we knew some Japanese and that he knew he talked incredibly fast, but his English was limited to ABC's.

Note that this may be incorrect. Like I said, he talked incredibly fast so we could only pick up maybe 1 word in 3, and most of those we didn't know. I knew he mentioned he talked fast, because he said 速い hayai (quickly) and brought out a manga from the bookstand to demonstrate that reading was easier because you could go over it multiple times. At least, I think so. Well, he and the other customers sitting around chewing the fat seemed happy to see us, anyway. And it was damn good ramen.

Also, I have an interview. The time is yet to be determined.