Category: experiences

When I visited my soroban teacher the other day to finish the paperwork for my visa, a woman passed by and wanted information about the school because she was planning to enroll her children. She discussed matters with sensei, and after she had her questions answered to her satisfaction, she left – and we went back to our papers.

Before I left however, sensei told me that he was a bit annoyed with the woman. The very first thing she had said was – upon seeing me: “Oh, I thought this was a soroban school and not an English conversation class…” Sensei didn’t respond to that, but he told me that it seems that he was not allowed to have foreign friends, according to that woman.

There are lots of stereotypes around in Asia when it comes to Western foreigners:

1. You are a tourist who can’t speak the language. Mostly this is indeed the case, so I can’t blame them – as long as they don’t try to cheat you because of that (which has happened to me once or twice…) If they understand that you live here, then
2. You have to be (a really rich) American. Admittedly, I am exploiting this particular one to some extent, whenever I have a bad day and I’m not as polite as I could be – I claim to be American… Anyway, the one and only thing you can possibly do in Asia is
3. You are working as an English teacher. Once when I was walking down the street in Korea, a man cycling towards me stopped, quickly jumped down from his bike and almost yelled at me: “You’re English teacher?” “No”, I replied simply, moved further on my way – and left him seriously baffled.

A similar encounter went thus: “You’re a tourist?” – “NO.” – “Ah, you’re an English teacher?!” – “NO.” – “Ah, you are here with your husband!?” – “NO.” At which point the poor woman did not have any imagination left and chose to give up entirely.

I fully understand that stereotypes and prejudices can be useful, and that they are often correct: Most foreigners here are indeed American, most women my age indeed have a husband and children. But, if you keep on hearing the same silly questions and comments over and over again, and if people place a label on you without even trying otherwise, it does start to grate on your nerves sooner or later…

The other day, I went out to dinner with a few people. It was a bar-restaurant mixture; we ordered a large number of various skewered dishes, but the place left me with the impression that it was more a bar than a restaurant, as all the skewers were quite small. We had skewered fish and other seafood, yakitori, beef, lots of vegetables (one of us was a vegetarian), and even some gingko nuts which are always fun to eat (and really taste like nuts).

There was some hilarity about the latter, because we tried to explain to one of our Japanese friends that those things were called gingko nuts and he understood ginko, which means bank in Japanese…

Anyway, we were carefully instructed by the waiter as to how the food would taste best. Some skewers were best without anything, others called for a dip in soy sauce, and yet others – the meaty ones – required only salt and pepper. The Japanese next to me pointed towards the side of the table, said there were salt and pepper and finished his sentence with ii desu. I thanked him, put the salt onto my skewers and then returned it to the spot (he was eating something else at that time). At this point, the friend opposite of me – a foreigner who has been living in Japan for a long time – smiled and said: “He said ii desu – he didn’t just point out the salt, he wanted you to pass it to him!”

So, literally, ii desu means it is good, as ii means good, which means it can also be simply translated as “okay”. But, it’s not quite so simple, of course – ii desu (similar to okay) can be used both in the affirmative and the negative. For example, if you go to a supermarket, the cashier will ask you whether you want a furuko, a plastic bag, and the standard answer to this is ii desu – but you can use it whether you want one or not. The intonation and possible hand gestures (I always make them) carry more meaning than the words in this case. Mostly, when speaking eye to eye, you will be understood this way, thank goodness. However, my friend told this little story about when he was texting another friend of his, asking him whether he would come someplace in the weekend. The – texted – response was ii desu, but nobody showed up in the designated spot at the designated time. My friend made a quick phone call as to the whereabouts of the other person, and the answer was a surprised “But I told you that I wouldn’t come…”

ii desu – probably the shortest and easiest way to be misunderstood in Japan…

Last weekend I went to Nara, an old, pre-Kyoto capital of Japan, not far from Kyoto. No, I did not go there for sightseeing, but to train Aikido. Endo shihan, an 8th dan, one of the top Aikido teachers held a seminar in Nara, and one of my friends invited me to go there, so…

This is not my first of Endo’s seminars, but he always knows to give a new spin to his training. This time he started out asking “Why are you here? What do you expect?” just to scold us not to come with fixed ideas, but to empty our minds and to come to the training with an open heart to see what new things we could learn. There were plenty of familiar faces – Aikido is a long-term commitment, so you’ll see the same people over and over again after a while – and some new ones as well.

I did not train at all last year, for various reasons – for one, I had an exceptional teacher in Germany and did not want to spoil my experience there – but it was nice to come back so to speak. I have met somebody who is teaching not too far from Kyoto, so I’ll check out his dojo soon. Today I’m a bit tired and my wrists are still sore (lots of grabbing techniques), but I have no bruises or muscle aches, which is quite surprising after spending the winter rather sedentary on my futon wrapped in blankets…

I survived the two hours training on Saturday quite well, and in the evening there was the traditional party. I have been to several seminars he holds in his own dojo in Saku, and the parties there are always fun – first the food, then entertainment where everybody has to sing or to tell a story. In Nara it was a bit different, it still started out with the food, but then, for the last hour or so, it felt like half of the participants were invited to give talks… No more eating – at least no more getting up for more – limited drinking, limited talking, only listening to rather random people… I could understand a word here and there, but mostly it was quite boring as nobody in my immediate vicinity bothered to translate at least the jokes. At least many of the Japanese looked rather bored as well, so I probably did not miss anything important.

Anyway, the party, held in a hotel, was timebombed and over after three hours (quite long, actually), and I did not go to what is called nijikai – second round, which is usually followed by a third round and tends to end in a karaoke bar… All in all, however, I had a pleasant weekend, the training was great, it was nice to see some friends again, but next time I’ll try to get out of the party when the speeches start.

Going for lunch is a great thing. Besides satisfying your hunger, you have a break in your day in which you have time to relax a little and to chat with your friends or colleagues about anything – hopefully distinctly unrelated to work. In short, lunch break is fun.

Unless you have to do it on your own. Then there is always a bit of awkwardness involved starting with the basic decision: do you eat on your desk or do you go out after all? If you choose the latter, you may end up in a crowded restaurant where you may be asked to share your table with another stranger, equally left alone during mealtime. And we all know what that will lead to: awkwardly forced conversations about awkwardly irrelevant topics – mostly weather related – until one or both are saved by the arrival of the food. A usually relaxing lunch break has turned into an awkwardly quick exercise in food intake.

It has long been overdue that somebody came up with a solution for all that awkwardness, and the people who designed (one of) the cafeterias at Kyoto University did an excellent job. Check this out: Those tables are for six people each, but the board, conveniently placed at eye level, will prevent anyone sitting there from seeing the person opposite. And, as many people like to look at the person to whom they talk (unless when talking on the phone, but there it is often about who sees you while you are loudly yelling for attention into your mobile), this board relieves everybody from making awkward conversations. What an ingenious little contraption!

Next thing you know, they will install little screens right there, so you can surf the internet while you’re eating… But then, you could probably just eat at your computer anyway.

Disclaimer: Those are the only few tables in the whole cafeteria thus equipped. All other tables are of the usual, inviting social awkwardness interaction, types.

I am meeting several people at the moment, partly to teach, and partly to be taught myself.

First, there are my German – Japanese exchange classes with a young man who seems very Japanese on the surface, but who is everything but, once you look a bit deeper. Besides his mother tongue he speaks three European languages: English, Italian, and French, all of them very well indeed, and now he is endeavouring to study German. His German is already so much better than my Japanese I have to admit, so I am always a bit worried I may take too much advantage of his time, and most of all, of his patience. So far, we are each writing a very short story, just a few sentences, which the other one then corrects, and then we’ll talk a little afterwards. I still have the feeling I cannot talk, so I have to force myself not to switch to German, or English. I have had some very interesting conversations with him already, and he is teaching me lots of interesting pieces of Japanese culture I may have heard of, but never understood.

Then there is a lovely woman who wants me to teach her German, well, actually she was asking me to teach her Austrian. How do you teach a language that is only spoken? We have agreed that I’ll teach her “proper” German for now, because otherwise the Germans will not understand her at all if she starts speaking Austrian dialect. She has been to Austria before, so she knows some of the words that are only used in Austria. However, I think she only spoke to educated people either in English or to those who were able to speak “proper” German, because when I tried to teach her how to say a few common phrases in dialect, she could hardly believe it was indeed so far from the written word. I guess it may be a good compromise at this point to see that she can understand dialect, rather than speak it herself. As she is doing research on tourism and agriculture, we are reading and translating some of the papers she is using for her work, and in turn, I also learn a lot about Austria I have not known before. She is putting in a lot of energy, and in a sense we have a similar type of studying: We both hate making mistakes…

Finally, my youngest student is a 17 year old boy, the son of a friend of mine. He is what the Japanese call a “half”, half Japanese, half Canadian, and he is lovely albeit a bit shy. He grew up in Kyoto, and although his spoken English is just fine, his mother is a bit worried about his English reading and writing skills, as he had little exposure to the language here in Japan. He is mostly interested in computer games and sports, so I will try to find some reading material that touches those interests and is also age appropriate. As a return I have requested that he’ll teach me how to write nice Kanji. I can write the Hiragana and Katakana, but I scrawl like a five year old (no offense to five year old Japanese kids here!) and there must be a way to learn those properly. The goal is not to become a master calligrapher, but to be able to write like an adult.

I’ve always enjoyed learning something new. Doing this is not always easy, but it’s nice to have something you know that you can trade for something you don’t know…

Remember the job interview I had two weeks ago? Well, I finally got a response today.

They love me.

Okay okay, accounting for my friend being overly nice, let’s state that they like my background, they like my potential, they like what I can do (I’ve made suggestions as to solve two of their current problems), and they even like me as a person (I know, nerds are easily charmed). That’s great, isn’t it? Well, almost.

I still don’t have a job.
They cannot afford me.

The problem is not that my demands are so high, the problem is immigration. Immigration law in Japan gives a certain threshold any foreign worker has to earn to get a work visa. As you have to be a university graduate to get a work visa in Japan, this threshold is quite high (at the moment it’s 250.000 YEN per month, although I’m not sure if this is before or after taxes) so they can protect their own work force. Unfortunately, the company is a tiny startup and already during our interview the CEO told me that they are cutting costs wherever they can (for example, they don’t have an office, but all of them telework from home). Essentially they could hire me and risk losing the company, so, they did the only smart thing…

Almost.

Right now I’m feeling very old and rejected and desperate. I have a glass of wine and a bar of chocolate next to me – and I guess I’ll need more than that…

I need a hug.

Today was a rather busy day: It started at 11 with a language exchange (German – Japanese) that took some two hours. Then I went to the post office and afterwards I decided, because it was so nice and warm, to buy some decent sushi and go and have a very belated hanami (some cherry trees still have blossoms) at one of the temples nearby, and do some work there. It was a very pleasant day, and although I did not spend that much time outside, I returned home with a face quite fitting the red Tshirt I wore…

Anyway, on the way from the post office to the sushi shop there is a primary school. I pass by it regularly, the building is on one side of a small road and the sporting grounds (essentially a large dirt field) on the other. During the week the road is usually closed for traffic and there are always kids darting across.

Today, although the road was closed, there was nobody to be seen, even the school house itself – many windows stood open – was unusually quiet. Suddenly, loud music was played, somebody had turned on the speakers all over the school grounds. I was startled by the abruptness of the music, but nothing else happened, nobody else paid any attention, there were no kids running to school after lunch break, no teachers assembling outside for a picture underneath the cherry tree… I sat down and listened for a while, but, equally sudden as it started, it stopped mid bar. I am still wondering why the music was played to begin with – and who would play, at 1:30 pm, “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” …

I went to my favourite cafe in town the other day. I like going there, the staff are very friendly, they have delicious icecream and hot chocolate, and although the cafe is very centrally located on Teramachi, it is surprisingly quiet. So, I don’t feel bad if I stay there for a couple of hours and write, sipping on a hot chocolate or the free water that is provided. I avoid going there in the weekends though, they are very busy then and I don’t want to take up space without bringing them good business – after all, I prefer them to remain open…

Anyway, when I’m not totallly absorbed in my writing, I like to watch the other customers. It’s mostly a young crowd, often groups of girls, but also couples, all of them hip and well styled and equipped with the latest in fashion and gadgetry. What I noticed is that often, the girls – and sometimes even the couples – while sitting next to each other, don’t talk to each other but stare into their smartphones instead. Sometimes they laugh and then show each other what’s going on on their screen, but mainly it is a solitary activity.

Honestly, if I went out to see a friend, staring at my mobile phone would be the last thing I would want to do. If we were to meet someplace and he whipped out his phone and tuned out, I’d be deadly offended and would probably leave. Of course, I don’t even have a mobile phone, so that’s easy for me to say, but it can’t just be me who is finding this type of behaviour at least somewhat irritating. Or am I simply getting old?