Of Logistics and Race

Sorry for the lack of updates! It's been a busy week or so. But, sorry to disappoint those of you who were starting to hope, I am in fact still much alive and kicking, and will continue to saturate your RSS feeds and email alerts with my drivel. So, to fill you in on the basics...

1) I have decided to recontract. So assuming my BOE doesn't think I suck rocks and refuse to take me back, I will be signing my soul away for another year here in Crazyland.

2) I have received my materials for my CLAIR (Council of Local Authorities for International Relations) correspondence course in Japanese. Those of you who attended college with me are invited to make your own inferences about how dutifully my studies are progressing thus far.

3) I have five days off in a row in mid-November. Those with ideas for destinations, offers of hospitality, or interest in coming along are encouraged to pipe up.

4) I have now experienced an enkai. It came as a double header last weekend and certainly merits deeper exploration of its cultural and interpersonal significance.

5) I threw a Halloween party for 253 kids at my elementary school this week and I think I can safely say it was a success. I am never again writing 253 hiragana nametags by hand, attaching them 253 gift bags, each of which I had to holepunch to attach the tag, and stuffing all 253 bags by hand with candy. Never. Again. At least the kids had fun, and I think the staff really appreciated it too.

6) This week I had Monday off, 1 of my classes cancelled on Tuesday, and spent my elementary school teaching time handing out candy. On Wednesday, one of my classes was cancelled and I was excused from one because they were doing translation. Today, my elementary school cancelled so I spent the day sitting at my computer on chat, except for 45 minutes when I was invited to a class party to eat cake and play Bingo. I know it sounds like bull pucky but please believe you when I tell you that my job actually is kind of stressful. Really. Just not in the workload sense.

So for the real meat of this post, I'm going to talk about something that's pretty controversial, pretty loaded and - in the West - a pretty universally accepted truth.

I'm going to talk about racism in Japan.

In the West, we more or less take racism in Japan for granted. I remember once or twice a Japanese person in the States told me that Japan is not a racist country. I remember also how hard I worked to keep from busting out laughing because I thought they were nuts. Amazingly, now that I live here, I am going to make an assertion that - especially given that I elicit stares everywhere I go and people come up to me in the grocery store and peer into my basket to see what I'm buying, and children follow me down the street in awe - seems crazy. I am telling you straight up that, at least when it comes to Westerners like myself, the Japanese are not racist. I can't speak for their attitudes towards, say, Koreans, not having experienced being a Korean person in Japan. But as a Caucasian American, the Japanese are not racist.

Racism, I think, carries heavy implications about hate, or beliefs about inferior intellect, or similar bigotry. I think what the West mistakes for racism in the Japanese is none of these things. We are simply a multicultural, multiethnic society by nature. We are used to "different" - linguistically, racially, culturally, religiously, everything. We see it every day. We have seminars on it at work.

Japan isn't racist. It simply lacks a concept of "different".

The staring isn't because they think I am inferior or worthless or that they hate me. They stare because I am DIFFERENT. And different doesn't happen here. In a country so thoroughly homogenous, the notion of diversity is, pardon my slight pun here, foreign. And when it is thrust upon them, the Japanese react, unsurprisingly, with insular behavior, shyness, and an inward-turning reaction that is easily mistaken for discrimination. In reality, I think it is a natural enough human response in a society that pretty thoroughly lacks a concept of, much less exposure to, diversity. If you saw someone in the US walking butt naked down the middle of the freeway wearing a clown wig, you'd stare. You're not being discriminatory; it's just a completely alien appearance and you are reacting to something unforseen and for which you lack a learned appropriate response. So you manifest the natural, basic human reaction of surprise and curiosity. And while I am probably not quite as crazy as someone walking naked down the interstate in clown accessories, I am just as unexpected in the 99.99% homogenous society into which I have gaijin stomped over the last few months.

So, ironically enough, this gaijin, who is regularly reminded just how alien she is here, finds herself defending the Japanese. They are not racist - they simply lack a comprehension of diversity, which is not the same thing.

The Un-Imperial Island

One of the most shocking things to me about moving to Japan was discovering just exactly how isolated and insular this country is. I went to France this past summer; France was another country. Then in July I landed in Tokyo, and Tokyo was another planet. A few days later I stepped off a plane in Akita...and forget different country, forget different planet...Akita is at least an entirely different galaxy, if not a different universe. Japan itself is a virtually monolingual, almost 100% homogenous population. As an island, particularly as a small island separated from its nearest continental neighbors by an entire sea (the Sea of Japan), its total homogeny is virtually unique on the planet. In the United States, most people speak English, but you will frequently overhear conversations in restaurants, on buses, or from passerby on cellphones or with friends, in numerous other languages. In Japan, if you hear anything other than Japanese, your head snaps around. Furthermore, Japanese citizens are almost to a one ethnically Japanese. This is because citizenship of children is based on the citizenship of the parents...not on birth within Japan's borders. So, if your parents are not Japanese citizens, you may have been born in Japan, lived your whole life here, speak nothing but Japanese...and still have to carry an alien registration card with you at all times.

Japan's inward tendencies have a long history - and have many visible modern repercussions. For example, the Japanese language is probably the only natural language in the world that comes close to the clean, logical patterns of artificial languages. While Japanese is undeniably an intricate and challenging language to learn, it is shockingly logical - and notably free of irregular conjugations. The entire language has ONLY two irregular verbs, and they are irregular each according to their own set of rules, in every conjugation. The language is formulaic almost to the point of being mathematical in its constructions. Why? My only conclusion is that Japan's isolation prevented other languages from "mixing" with Japanese - thus minimizing the irregularities that linguistic interchange (think English, with its mixed Latin and Germanic roots, and regular interaction with other continental European languages like French, Spanish, German, Dutch, etc) introduces to less isolated languages and countries. Japan's island location prevented easy linguistic crossover, and even its interactions with countries like China were tightly regulated. Only specially chosen Japanese emissaries visited other nations, and emissaries from other countries to Japan were tightly controlled - they were not allowed to mingle freely, being supervised by government officials at all times and effectively quarantined from normal Japan. They saw only the Japan that Japanese officials chose to show them, and were permitted no free interaction with the nation's people, language, economy or anything else. This degree of control over foreign influences meant Japan borrowed much (think kanji, the Chinese characters that form such a challenging and integral part of written Japanese), but had firm control over how those influences were introduced. Thus, Japan managed to remain purely Japanese even as she incorporated to some degree select foreign influences.

This leads to the next great mystery about Japan; why did she ever become more than a hunter-gatherer society? The emergence of an advanced society in Japan is a great puzzle. Most societies evolved either in response to food pressure or to pressure from competing groups. Japan has an abundance of huntable and gatherable foods - fish, seaweed, nuts, roots, wild fruits and vegetables, small game, birds - in quantities more than sufficient to sustain the populations of that kind of society. It has adequate space, also, for such populations. It has materials such as reeds and bamboo for shelter and basic tools. With no neighboring societies to pressure them, why did Japan's effectively homogenous people ever move past the level of sophistication seen in societies like Alaskan natives or African communities? While sophisticated, these groups would certainly not be considered to have attained the degree of development reflected by Japanese agricultural, military, architectural and governmental technologies, techniques and infrastructures. Why did Japan ever become an advanced modern society? To me this is a great mystery.

Furthermore, Japan has never, in the true sense of the word, displayed colonial or imperial tendencies. Even in World War II, Japan was not imperial. She did not seek to relocate her own people outside her borders - rather, she sought to exploit other groups to benefit Japan...where, naturally, all Japanese people would still live. This oddly anti-imperial, anti-expansionist philosophy reflects the deep-seated introversion of Japanese society that I think foreigners often mistake for xenophobia or racism. While in some sense perhaps it is, I think its roots are fundamentally different than the way the Western world might perceive them.

That said all these factors combine to make Japan a marvel of unique (and often incomprehensible!) cultural, artistic, spiritual and philosophical traditions...and it certainly makes for an experience being an outsider living in a cultural that is not only fiercely introverted, but also populated almost exclusively with the in-crowd. I sometimes feel as if I am window-shopping through life but all the store doors are locked and I don't have the key. The views sure are spectacular though...

Now You See Me...

Or more like, you didn't. You may have noticed that I was AWOL for a good portion of this week. This is because I spent two days at the JET Mid-Year Conference in Tenno, stayed over Saturday night in Akita City, and spent part of Saturday and most of Sunday in Odate and the Hachimantai area. I took a trip up to the Hachimantai Forest to see the leaves changing for fall, as well to see famous Lake Towada. The fall colors were truly amazing - the hills looked like the sponge paintings I used to do as a kid. Thanks to Wil and Michael for being such great hosts during my northerly weekend sojourn!

The JET Mid-Year Conference was a pretty valuable experience for me; despite getting horrendously and epically lost on the way there (sorry, Pete, Wil), I thought having both ALTs and JTEs (Assistant Language Teachers and Japanese Teachers of English, for those not in the know) at the conference was particularly helpful. Mixed sessions discussing each side's concerns and problems about team teaching really gave me some insight into the things I find frustrating about my job, and other sessions gave good ideas for lesson plans or activities that lend themselves well to team teaching. One of my favorite JTEs, Ayako Sasaki, was also in attendance, so I think she and I both have some valuable takeaways to discuss that will make us a more effective teaching team. I'm looking forward to making some changes at the office!

After the conference ended, I went to Akita City and spent a fun night out with some friends there. The next morning, my generous host was departing for Sendai to play cricket, so I turned north to Odate to impose upon the hospitality of yet another fantastic JET! I visited Hachimantai Forest and saw Lake Towada. Then, I returned to Odate, where I spent a delightful evening with friends (one known and some new!) at a fusion izakaya called Muu. The group at the table next to us was a boisterous bunch of Japanese people, and we proceeded to have a magic trick exchange with them. Apparently lit cigarettes are considered appropriate props by Japanese magicians.

All in all, a very exciting week, and one filled with lots of travels, new friends, and new sights. I know this post is basically just a trip report, but I promise a meatier update in the next few days. Also, I have my first enkai coming up this week (two, in fact! eep!) as well as my school festival for Yuri Junior - so I anticipate a lot of interesting material in the near future.

I Have A Hobby, Translated

In Japan, everyone has a shumi, or hobby. They may consider this a standard part of a self-introduction, sharing one's hobbies. What they don't mention is that when they say "My hobby is...", it roughly translates to "I have been doing this since the first thirty seconds after I emerged from the womb and could probably be world-ranked in it if I wasn't so busy working the clerk counter at Lawson Station". In all honesty, Japanese people take the word "hobby" very seriously. Sure, in the US a lot of people are really good at their hobbies and take them seriously...but Japan just brings the whole thing into a new realm. They do hobbies in a way that only the Japanese possibly could.

I think part of the reason for this is that it is so important in the Japanese psyche to belong to a group, and to define your world in communally comprehensible terms. When you start a hobby, like playing an instrument, joining the art club, or joining a sports team, you'll automatically become a member of that group because hobbies are usually done communally, not solo. It gives you a built-in and socially acceptable community to belong to. Moreover, it says something about your personal identity when you tell someone if you have chosen to devote your soul to soccer instead of painting. It helps you establish your position in the community and your personal identity - without breaking the mold, rocking the boat, or singling yourself out, which are all cardinal sins in Japanese society. Japanese schoolchildren abhor being made to do anything alone, like standing up and speaking to a group, or playing a game to try and win for oneself. If you try to make your students play a game, for example, nobody will win if they're playing as individuals. They'll all brainpool and help each other out so as not to have anyone stand out. If you put them in teams of two or more, though, the competition gets FIERCE! Like I'm talking yelling, pounding on tables to encourage teammates, the whole shebang. But this is because in that case, you're playing for your TEAM - not yourself. Being singled out, for positive OR negative reasons, is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a Japanese person. For this reason, Japanese students do almost everything in pairs or teams, and will only do anything solo if given no choice - and then they will do it as quickly, crappily and reluctantly as possible just to get out of the spotlight. By contrast, when working for a common goal, Japanese people would rather die than fail or mess up.

Which brings us to the band concert played by my Yuri Junior High kids this weekend! Like any Japanese person with a hobby, my kids play their instruments at a more or less professional level. They also, in honor of Halloween, proceeded to do this wearing such accoutrements as cat ears, gigantic sparkly hairbows, and headbands adorned with plushie ghosts, pumpkins and so on. The conductor, in fact, entered by running full tilt into the gym wearing a cape, Mickey Mouse hands (the big puffy white gloves), and a huge yellow sequined bow tie. At one point during the show, two girls left the stage and ran around the gym shouting gleefully and flinging handfuls of candy into the audience, shouting something in katakana that I think was intended to be "Happy Halloween". Those of you familiar with Japanese accents can imagine how comprehensible that was... Amazingly, these events were trumped by a random middle school boy's abrupt appearance during one song, waving a plastic sword, as well as various episodes involving lots of Japanese chattering, waving of a cutout of a hand doing janken (rock-paper-scissors), and the random distribution of small prizes. Japanese school band concerts are definitely a little different than American ones...Not to mention that my school band concerts were gallantly suffered through by all attendees, and these kids could probably sell out shows in most cities in the states...

It Never Lives Up to the Hype

You'll all be glad to know that I am quite safe and sound, due mostly to the fact that Melor ended up amounting to little more than a glorified and slightly breezy rainstorm. Now, if I hadn't gone and dropped tons of money on setting up an emergency kit, the gods would no doubt have laughed in my face and proceeded to blow my roof off. That said, my first typhoon "experience" turned out to be dramatically less than noteworthy. We now return to our regularly scheduled programming, which usually consists of me sitting at a school desk doing nothing for approximately six hours a day.

The Leprechaun Was Insufficient: Japan Brings Greater Insanity Via Typhoon Melor

Yes, I know it's late and I should be sleeping. But the roar of the first gusts of wind and the clattering of the first driven drops of rain on my windows woke me up, and at the moment there's no calming my nerves. You see, normally I'm not quite so finicky about the weather...but tonight's a little different.

Apparently Japan's last performance review asserted that it was not bringing adequate insanity to my life. Enter Typhoon Melor. Melor, which has at least weakened considerably since its original classification as a Category 5 Super Typhoon, is nonetheless bearing down on the Land of the Rising Sun, and according to current forecasts has its sights set cheerily on Akita once it's done ravaging Tokyo like Godzilla on Viagra. OK, you say, slow down two ticks there girly. What's going on? Well, as you may or may not know already, it's currently typhoon season here in Crazyland. Normally, this would mean approximately jack diddly to me, because Akita is so far north that most of these storms, just like most people, decide it's not worth their bother and give up somewhere slightly north of Tokyo. Not Melor. (Melor, by the way, is the Malay word for "jasmine". What a cute moniker for a 357-mile-wide swatch of rotating tropical storm doom.) This puppy seems absolutely determined to make the trek out here to the rice paddies. In fact, current forecasts are leaning towards the possibility that Melor may ride the pineapple current north in the Sea of Japan, dragging its violent, and recently Japan-Sea-recharged, eye wall right over my house.

Melor is set to cause storm surges upwards of 10 feet in a lot of places, packs plenty of windy punch (and I don't mean it's full of hot air...), and could dump as much as 50 centimeters or more of rain within a twenty-four hour period. Let's just say I could be seriously wet by tomorrow evening, and that isn't a sexual innuendo.

What do I know about typhoons? A lot more now that I did this morning, before I figured out I was about to be caught in one. Another interesting sidenote; the human brain is a funny thing. I'd been skimming news stories about the tropical storm activity wreaking havoc in the Philippines, etc, but in my head somehow this still registered as a Problem On the Other Side of the Planet. It never occurred to me that storm activity raping Manila and Luzon might mean I should check my weather forecast. Next time I'll know better. And won't have to wait until my JTEs ask me if I'm aware that I'm about to be swallowed by a gigantic tropical storm.

So how does one prepare for a typhoon? Well, this being my first time, it's largely guesswork for me. I went shopping and bought lots of bottled water, canned food and dry goods, flashlights, spare batteries, and a radio, just in case the storm knocks out power or other infrastructure. I'll be making sure to crack a couple windows during the storm, to ensure I don't create a vacuum in my house. Hopefully, Melor changes course, or moves north overland instead of over the sea, both possibilities that would reduce the storm's severity for me. I'll be leaving school early tomorrow, if I go in at all, to ensure I'm not driving once Melor hits Akita.

Stay tuned; hopefully my power and internet will remain functional. If not, don't be alarmed if I disappear for a while - either way, keep watching for further updates about my first typhoon experience! Unless I die when Melor sucks the roof off my house and spirits me away to the Japanese version of Oz, which is probably a lot like Hayao Miyazaki's alternate dimension in Spirited Away. Only with Munchkins. And Glinda, I hope. I always wanted to be Glinda when I was a kid.

When Japanese Leprechauns Attack: Seaweed, Squid, Banana Crepes and the Mystery Bag o' Beans

Yesterday, I was minding my own business, working hard as usual (by that I mean 'surfing the internet' for roughly 6 of the 8 hours in my workday), when I was unexpectedly interrupted by a wizened little Japanese guy who looked about six centuries old and sported eyebrows that were pure white and bore a genuinely disconcerting resemblance to gigantic toothbrushes. This bizarre elfin creature proceeded to force upon me (with utmost courtesy, of course) a small tin of seaweed soaked in soy sauce. I was apparently expected to consume said seaweed, and although slimy oceanic plant material generally doesn't find its way into my diet until after 12:00 noon, good manners more or less dictated that I accept his offer.

The really peculiar thing about this was, this man does not work in my office. He was circulating with a tray of tins of goopy seaweed, serving them to everyone in the teachers' room, and nobody seemed to find this odd...but I had most definitely never seen this man before. Does he work at my school?! I later looked up to discover that this odd little man had done one better than just serving up seaweed - he had co-opted the sitting area by the copier and set up an entire seaweed shop, and was busily hawking his wares to any teacher fool enough to walk near him. Unfortunately, his merchandise was not restricted to seaweed; my olfactory spidey sense shortly informed me that this old goon was also dealing in dried squid, which stank up the entire office in short order. So here we were, with a total stranger parked in our tea corner selling dried sea animals and wet sea plants, sporting eyebrows out of a Pixar movie, and suffocating in the diverse and pungent aromas emanating from his makeshift storefront.

I was the only one who seemed to find this strange.

Shrugging, as I often do in Japan, I moved on without pondering the mystery too much further. In short order, however, when I returned to my desk from doing a few quick errands, more Japanese magic had occurred. There sat upon my desk a plate, a fork, and a heap of banana, whipped cream, crepe and chocolate. What?! Leprechauns with seaweed, and now mysteriously appearing crepes?! If I were in any country other than Japan, I probably would have suspected the crepe to be laced with something that would render me helpless and/or insensate and compliant for transport to the sex trade in Thailand. Since this is Japan, though, drugs were unlikely in my unexpected dessert. Nevertheless, I eyed it suspiciously.

'HOMU-MAKINGU!' shouted a voice disconcertingly close to my ear. I turned to see one of the OLs (office ladies) beaming proudly at me for her use of English - and standing about six centimeters away from me. Japanese and American notions of 'personal space', I have found, differ dramatically. The OL (sweet, wonderful woman that she is, despite yesterday's close-encounters Engrish sneak attack) proceeded to explain in Japanese that the home ec (they call it homemaking) class had made crepes, and wanted me to try their work. Well, at least it was a little more appetizing than a glob of seaweed soaking in fermented soy bean juice. It actually tasted pretty good, and I'm not usually much of a fan of banana OR chocolate, so I guess the kids are doing pretty good work in that home ec class of theirs.

But my day was yet to get slightly more peculiar. The stream of unexpected foodstuffs had not yet run dry - and believe it or not, the combination of foods showered upon me was about to get a little bit stranger. I was typing away, not paying much attention, when suddenly somebody sneak attacked me with a bag of beans. The beans plopped onto my desk, and when I looked behind me, none of the three people standing there idly chatting took responsibility for this unexpected delivery of legumes. I was not the only one so blessed; my seatmate across the desk also received such a parcel, and the two of us were equally confused. Apparently sometimes Japan confounds even its own natives.

A Trip to Hottai Falls!

This weekend, I went to see Hottai Falls, the tallest waterfall in Akita Prefecture. Getting there was quite an adventure! Armed only with a less-than-detailed map of the general vicinity, some verbal instructions from one of my JTEs, and the intermediate language skills of a couple of bumbling gaijin, a friend and I set off to find the waterfall.

During a stop to get gas in case we got horribly lost (a scenario I deemed reasonably likely...) my traveling companion managed to ask our gas attendants for some more detailed directions. Good on ya! The map and instructions we received were immensely helpful - and one guy even flagged traffic for us to make it easier to hang our right turn back onto the road! So sweet. :-)

Hottai Falls, which as I said is the tallest waterfall in Akita Prefecture, is gorgeous. There is a small restaurant, serving homemade noodles, fish grilled over open charcoal, nabe (hot pot or stew), and a variety of convenience foods like chips, candies, corn dogs, or the option we went with for our snack - sweet potatoes in sesame syrup! The restaurant looks over a large lawn leading to the bridge and short hike up to view the falls. Many elderly people were sitting on the lawn painting pictures of the falls.

It was very beautiful there, and I intend to return later this month for the Hottai Autumn Colors Festival, when the fall leaves will be in full swing and locals will be celebrating with a barbecue bash. Stay tuned!

To see Hottai Falls and the trip thereto, check out the slide show!