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Life in Japan — Question One

Recently there was a call in a local English newspaper for male foreigners living in Japan to share their experiences with the authors of an upcoming guide to living in Japan, to be written from a male perspective. In part because I thought it would make good blog fodder, I decided to participate. (As you can see if you’ve stopped by in the last two weeks, I’m in desperate need of some blog fodder. Actually, blog fodder time might be more accurate, as I seem to have none these last couple of weeks). So, the idea is that the authors will be asking via email one question per day for 30 days. Without further ado, here’s the first question, and my response:

What are the things that surprised you the most when you first came to Japan? What things do you wish you had known before coming?

Well, I had been to Japan twice before actually moving here, both as a tourist, although my second visit (last year) was for a month and was sort of a “dry run” at what living in Japan with my (at the time future) in-laws would be like. So I think there have been fewer surprises than there might have been otherwise.

That said, there were a few things that I was unprepared for or that surprised me.

First, the language. Frankly I was taken aback and how little my years of casual study of Japanese prepared me for the actuality of speaking the language with real live Japanese people! 🙂 This is the classic problem really that Japanese learners of English face, years of study but no natives to speak to, therefore they can’t speak one iota of the language. It was almost the same for me.

Now, one can survive quite comfortably in a city like Tokyo without ever learning the language, but if there is any personal inclination to stay here for a while, and do all the things that one does when actually living in a place, one feels the desire to make Japanese friends, discuss opinions and feelings, understand your neighbors, read the newspaper, etc., these are things that can’t be done with survival Japanese, or no Japanese.

Japan is not nearly as expensive as it’s made out to be, especially if one has moved here from an expensive American city, like I did having moved here from San Francisco. As a tourist, naturally the country is expensive. But in day to day living, if you’re a smart and disciplined shopper (or in my case, married to one who is), there’s no need to break the bank. Transportation is expensive (though most companies reimburse employees for commuting expenses), and so weekend getaways and exploring Japan can be prohibitively expensive. Eating out in Tokyo can be expensive, but there are plenty of places that are extremely reasonable or downright cheap.

Japan can be a fairly rigid country with respect to customs and traditions, and although this is changing, it is still very much of a conformist society where individuality is not looked upon very positively. I have found that people are very much “set in their ways”. While this in and of itself wasn’t surprising, my strong negative reactions to it have been surprising and something I wasn’t quite prepared for. Or rather, I thought I would adapt more easily to it than I have. I’m not sure there is anything I could have done beforehand to alleviate it.

Along these lines, I was surprised at the extent to which one stands out as a foreigner in this country, especially is one lives in the surburbs or away from the major cities. While seeing folks nearly fall off their bicycles as they turn around to stare at the foreigner in their midst is initially amusing, it grows tiring really fast. Recently another American moved into the neighborhood. Even before he had moved in, via neighborhood gossip passed on to my mother-in-law, I knew more about this guy than I had any right to know without having met him. I can only imagine what the entire neighborhood knows about me!

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Adjusting my Japanese reception

It may seem a crazy notion that living in Japan I feel the need to further surround myself with things Japanese, but this is the situation I feel I’m now in. Having had to seriously apply myself to learning Japanese these last couple of weeks, I now am slowly starting to feel things come together in ways they haven’t before. Sure enough, I have miles to go before I sleep, but the future is starting to be paved more in emeralds than it has been up to this point.

One problem I have had is that in general, I’m a poor listener. Not just with foreign languages, but in general I have a hard time concentrating on what’s being said to me (or around me) and my mind tends to wander, or skip over what it considers non-essential information. (Admittedly, we all do this to some extent, but perhaps I tend to think of more input as non-essential than others might). With foreign languages, I tend to let pass over my head or through one ear and out the other any words or phrases I haven’t heard before, only putting up the stop sign when a familiar face rears its head. (Sorry, I seem to mixing metaphors left and right). Eventually I hear certain words or phrases enough that either by context I derive meaning, or I ask someone (usually Naoko) to explain them to me.

Now that the grammar structures I’m learning are getting more complex and starting to incorporate plain forms to a greater extent (for lack of a more extensive grammatical explanation, lets just explain plain forms as non-polite or casual speech), almost overnight I’m starting to make greater sense of the conversations I hear around me on a daily basis, at home, at work, on television, and on the train.

(On another tangent, the trains and environs are an interesting microcosm of the different speech levels one gets exposed to in Japan. At one end of the extreme are the high school girls with their slang-inflected kitanai Japanese of which “maji” seems to comprise about 50% (roughly corresponding to “really?” or “for real!” depending on intonation). At the other end are the station conductors and train drivers whose announcements are in a humble customer-centered language that for the most part still escapes me. Unfortunately, those in the middle, the salarymen, office workers, housewives, who’s Japanese comes closest to what I can understand and desire to speak myself, are also the ones most likely to be concerned that their conversation might be intruding upon someone else’s aural space and therefore it’s usually at too low a volume for me to hear.)

So now I find myself yearning for even more sources of input, and turning to various media to help satisfy this urge. Of course television is a great at-hand resource, and cheap too, but for the most part the typical line-up of variety shows, food shows, or home-renovation shows is a bit beyond the pale of what I’m willing to tolerate. Dramas are probably best, but I have yet to find one that appeals to me during the time I have available to watch tv (admittedly I haven’t yet searched very hard for these).

Today, however, I borrowed a couple of videos from the library, and watched one of them this afternoon before heading off to work. Boy did it hit the spot of what I was looking for. It’s one of a series of films (about 15 have been made so far, I believe) called Tsuribaka nisshi (roughly “Diary of a Fishing Nut”), starring Toshiyuki Nishida as Hama-chan, a salaryman with an obsessive fishing habit. It wasn’t an unknown commodity, for I had seen one of these videos before on a bus tour. Basically it has all the requirements for me to watch it subtitle-less: a formulaic storyline (in a nutshell, Hama-chan would rather fish than work, and usually through some sub-plot love story involving one of his co-workers which leads to some type of conflict, connives a way to both fix the problem and sneak off to do some fishing) so that even when I don’t understand exactly what’s going on, I pretty much know how the story will end up; a great humorous funnyman in Nishida, whose various mannerisms and facial expressions are enough to send me tittering, and therefore make the whole thing eminently watchable. (I think it goes without saying that if these were American films, I wouldn’t be touching them with a 10-foot fishing pole). But perhaps the best thing about these films is that they’re a great way to be exposed to both casual and polite speech, and indeed much of the humor of the films is derived from this conflict. You see, the owner of Hama-chan’s construction company also happens to be a fishing nut, and outside of work, he and Hama-chan are best friends. But inside work, a strict heirachy is maintained, with the appropriate language that goes along with that heirarchy.

Today’s episode also happened to unexpectedly feature prominently Hama-chan’s wife’s pregancy and subsequent childbirth, so that was an added bonus (particularly funny — and understandable to me without Naoko’s explanation — was Hama-chan’s arguments pro and con for whether of not he and his wife should find out the gender of the fetus).

I also borrowed a video of one of Yasujiro Ozu’s later films that judging from the boxcover I haven’t seen yet, though I’m expecting that this will be considerably harder for me to understand, and that it will probably be more an exercise in analysing Ozu’s film style and techniques rather than a Japanese lesson. One of my benchmarks I’ve set for myself with respect to fluency in Japanese is being able to watch an Ozu or Kurosawa film in Japanese with no subtitles and being fulfilled with it as I would if I was watching it in translation. A long time from now I’m sure, but watching an Ozu now will give me a good idea of how far off that time will be.

My last media item from the library was a CD by Yosui Inoue, a singer recommended to me by my classmate. I was looking for the album of his with some famous song about umbrellas (something like “kasa ga nai…”) but they didn’t have it. Oh well, this one will fill in quite nicely. Stylistically all over the map, and again probably something that back home I wouldn’t give any attention to, but it will suit my language learning purposes perfectly. Actually, I want to start listening more to enka, which I’ve heard referred to occassionally as Japanese “blues” although musically it sounds nothing like blues music. I have a hard time describing it, but from what I gather, most of the songs are about loneliness or heartbreak (it appears to me that it’s a prerequisite to have namida (tears) in the lyrics somewhere), and the singing style is distinguished by a delayed vibrato and the use of melisma.

Naoko hates enka, and most of my students that I ask about it don’t like it either, which I think is a shame. I absolutely adore it, and fortunately so do my in-laws so I sometimes watch one of the few programs on tv that features enka, and listen as they sing along to these old, mournful songs. (These programs always have the lyrics on the screen, so they make a great way to practice Kanji recognition). I want to get into enka more, become familiar with some of the stars, some of the old standards, and now having discovered the library’s CD collection, am looking for a good place to start, so should you have any recommendations, please post a comment.

Lastly, on the productive skills front, Melissa of Nippon Daze, home to some wonderful writing about her time in Japan 10 years ago, has started a blog in Japanese to further advance her learning of the language. I’m officially jealous! But as I posted in a comment on her first entry, I think rather than start my own, I may start using her comments area as a place of writing practice for myself (with Melissa’s permission, and on topic, of course).

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Listen…do you hear the blowing of the darkness?

In my small night, alas
the wind has a rendezvous with the leaves of trees
In my small night rests the fear of ruin

Listen…
Do you hear the blowing of the darkness?
I look at this good luck like a stranger
I am accustomed to my hopelessness
Listen…
Do you hear the blowing of the darkness?

In the night now something is happening:
the moon is red and disturbed
and above this roof, which at any moment might fall,
the clouds like the crowds of mourners
seem to await the moment of rain

A moment
and after that nothing.
Behind this window the night is trembling,
and the earth
stands still in its course
Vague things lie behind this window,
you and I, uneasy

O you are green all over,
put your hands like a burning memory in my loving hands
and entrust your lips like a warm sense of life
to the caresses of loving lips
The wind will carry us away with it
The wind will carry us away.

This is a poem by Forugh Farrukhzad (1935-1967), one of Iran’s most beloved poets. Her poem gives the title to Iranian film director Abbas Kiarostami’s 1999 film The Wind Will Carry Us and it’s recitation by the main character of that film forms the crux of the movie.

I’ve come to this story a bit late, but I’ve just read the various reports that started circulating a few days ago about the world-renowned Kiarostami being denied a visa to enter the United States for this year’s New York Film Festival. Kiarostami, in my humble opinion the creator of some of the most sublime cinema of the last 15 years, was denied the visa under new stricter guidelines the Bush administration has created regarding the admittance of people from the “axis of evil” country Iran. (This comes at the same time that legendary Iranian pop singer Googoosh had to cancel concerts in California last week because she couldn’t get a visa to enter the country.)

That this action is entirely predictable and unsurprising is comment enough on the American short-sightedness that governs its bloated self-important “with us or against us” posturing. The irony here is plain for anyone who wants to see it: barring Kiarostami from entry is a vote for anti-reformist Iranian fundamentalism, not against it. Of course, Kiarostami’s political statement, his method of reform as it were, is one which would be lost on Bush and Co. anyway, for it is not one stilted in rhetoric but rather one steeped of poetry, of humanism, of difficult questions void of simple answers or dichotomies, of mysteries with no beginning or end, of morality too complicated to have room for the banalities of “good” or “evil”.

Kiarostami, and indeed all Iranian filmmakers, poets, artists, create their works of art under at times extreme censorship and repression, each finding their own way of expression within contricting limitations. Not to put to fine a point on it, but American artists would do well to observe how they’ve done it, and to take good notes, for this insight may come in handy in the near future.

The above poem was taken from A Brief Note on Forugh Farrukhzad’s Life, which features a short biography, a chronology of Farrukhzad’s life, as well as a few poems. For two good analyses of Kiarostami’s The Wind Will Carry Us, both as a film and as a political statement, see reviews by Jonathan Rosenbaum and David Walsh.