Four and a half stories

At the request of our Mr. Wallmark, I'm brushing the dust off a few of the pieces I wrote during the time I spent living in Japan (2003-2005), and republishing them here for what I hope will be the amusement (and perhaps illumination) of all. Here is the first of these dispatches, written about the second month of my two-year stay in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Four and a Half Stories
a dispatch from late-summer Japan

In Japanese, the days of the week are named sun, moon, fire, water, tree, gold, soil. I love this little list for its completeness and simplicity, and the way all necessary things are included. Lately, it seems that these beautifully-named days have been passing at an alarming rate, and suddenly there is far too much to retell about my little transplanted life here to do it all justice.

So here are four and a half stories, selected somewhat randomly, from among the hours that have made up my recent days.

One

The new school term began on the first of September. My four-day-a-week job is at Kinpo Junior High School, which houses about 200 students in grades 7 -9. All of the kids study English, and my job is to help the three English teachers in whatever ways we can collectively come up with. My first week consisted of giving a self-introduction lesson (complete with a game of hot potato to determine who would be unlucky enough to have to ask me a question) a total of nine mind-numbing times. Mr. Tao, head of the English department, had asked me to introduce myself in Easy English, and then “please explain your country and culture.” Time allotted for this feat: ten minutes.

Here is my explanation: my country is very big. And not very old. People from many places have come to live there. So our culture is pieced together like a quilt, from small bits of other places, which we now claim as our own. Yes, it’s true—my country is the opposite of this country in most ways. Which is probably why I am here now.

Of course, this last part remains unsaid.

After being treated to this insight, the eighth and ninth graders each stood up in turn to practice their “nicetomeetyou, my name is mumblemumble” on me. I shook each outstretched hand in turn, wondering all the while how I will EVER be able to remember all these kids’ names.

In one ninth grade class, though, there is a boy who was too shy to manage even this tiniest of English speeches. He would or could not look me in the eye, and after a long, awkward silence, Mr. Tao came over to rescue us from each other. “I’m sorry,” he said. “He is just so nervous.” The boy sank back into his chair and stared hard at his desktop for the rest of the hour, one leg crossed gracefully over the other. When I pass him in the hall now, he resolutely stares at my shoes or out the window. His desire for me not to speak to him is so strong that it needs no translation. I wonder if I will ever win him over.

Two

A few weeks ago, I was invited to go with the school PTA on their group outing to see some scenery and pick Asian pears. (Of course, they’re called Japanese pears here.) It was a lovely slow day of watching Kagoshima prefecture go by outside the bus window—rice fields tucked into the small flat spaces between sheltering hills, everything an amazingly lush damp green.

The orchard’s owners slip a paper bag around each pear when it is still small, to keep out the bugs and ensure that it grows perfectly. When you pick them, therefore, it is blindly, feeling the shape of the hidden fruit through the bag, looking for the biggest (which promise to be sweetest).

Late that night, I sat on my couch with a bowl and a knife and a cold pear, peeling the skin off in long brown strips and watching the sumo wrestling tournament on TV. Asian pears in Asia. What more reason do we need to travel, really?

Two and a half

Earlier that day, the PTA’s chartered bus carried us up a winding mountain road. We slowed once to pass a group of people laden with backpacks and walking sticks, hiking up to the top.

We looked at them, thinking of the wet, heavy heat outside. “Wow. Badass.”
They looked at us, thinking of the air-conditioned ease inside. “Wow. Cheaters.”

Three

The newly arrived English teachers of the prefecture were sent to the woods for a week of Japanese language training camp earlier this month. We spent the mornings memorizing nouns and practicing dialogues, the afternoons learning about the tea ceremony and local Kagoshima history, and the evenings emptying the beer vending machine and amusing ourselves in whatever ways we could invent. Which took the form of a New Zealand table rugby tournament, a toga party, and one truly epic game of charades.

Late Thursday afternoon, Mike, Leon, and I went for a ride on three of the training center’s rusty bikes. It had been raining all day, and the sky still hung grey and low above us. We quickly ran out of bike trail, and rather than take on the impossible hills of the highway, rode huge lazy circles around each other in an empty parking lot, relishing the no-longer-taken-for-granted fluency of English.

Next door to the training center where we were staying, there is a small museum. When we rode past, we noticed that the lights were on and there were people inside, so we decided to investigate. Inside, the single display room was full of clothing and musical instruments and toys from all over Asia. And best of all, there were signs inviting you to play. So we happily banged away on the xylophones of four countries, played cymbals and pipes and Indonesian tiddly-winks.

One of the museum staff came over with a clipboard and asked us to write down our names for their guestbook. She asked where we were from. So in our variously-accented Japanese, Mike said, “New Zealand,” and Leon said, “I’m English,” and I said “America, Oregon state.”

The woman, who had been smiling and excited, suddenly became somber. She said something I could not understand, bowed to us, and turned to go. It was September 11, and she, standing in the center of a room full of toys, was expressing her condolences to me, on behalf of my entire country. After a week of being part of a majority again, happily anonymous among all the other English teachers’ round eyes and pale faces, I had become a symbol again. Something much larger than myself.

We rode back to dinner, the bikes’ tires humming softly over the wet pavement.

Four

At the end of the first week of the school term, the staff of the Board of Education invited me to go bowling with them. Sadly, I failed to impress anyone with my superior American bowling skills. (Someone asked, “Have you ever done this before?”)

Our games were over, and I was watching the last few groups to finish their frames when Chazono-san (Mr. Chazono) came up to me. He’s the one at the Board of Education who is neither my supervisor nor my boss, but the one who is in charge of helping the foreigner buy a car and pay her phone bill because he’s the one who speaks the most English. Which is not a lot. But he’s already vastly better than he was on the day I arrived—necessity breeds fluency. He’s been studying a little book of English idioms with my help, and that evening at the bowling alley he appeared next to me and asked very seriously, “Are we having a ball?” Which made both of us laugh until our sides ached.

Someone asked me recently what the best thing about Japan is so far. And that’s the story I told. I was out with a group of colleagues who I enjoy, and someone proved that my presence here has helped him learn something. And we understood each other, if only for a moment. And then we laughed really hard.

That’s the best thing.