Monday, Jul. 28, 2003 - 5:29 am
Um... I'm sorry.
This relationship just isn't working for me.
I'm at www.dailypreciousness.org now. So change that bookmark.
I'm going to a party next week. It's for recent college grads who are going to Japan, just like I did in '95. So this is as good a time as any to reflect on my time in JET.
Flashback to 1985.
He's wrapped in black polyester, hot as blazes in the summer afternoon sunlight, and utterly convinced that if he could just think like the tree he's hiding in, he would be completely invisible in this game of hide-and-seek. Not so. He is found by his friend, David. But the 13-year old ninja warrior doesn't give up.
He's convinced he'll disappear someday.
That teenager was me. And that memory came tumbling back into my mind today while packing my bags. I was inventorying socks while I brainstormed on what I could say at my jiko-shokai (self-introductory speech).
I was tossing about the idea of explaining how much I love Japan (at least all I have read about it), and the teenage sense memory came to mind. Dismissing the idea, I asked, "How could I explain that?"
Those layers of polyester were ridiculously hot. I stored the ninja costume in a little sky-blue suitcase that had travel stickers on it. "Paris, France" printed in bold scarlet letters with the Eiffel Tower in the background and "Thailand" with a great elephant, its trunk raised. The stickers were various shapes and sizes, from all around the world. When Bugs Bunny threw a baseball around the world, it came back with the very same stickers. You know the ones.
That sticker-covered box housed my ninja costume: a garment from a land of which I had only the vaguest of perceptions. My stereotypes of Japan were cliche: tongue-red temples, fierce warriors, music in minor cat-gut keys and raw fish for food. Sony, Panasonic and Toyota rounded out my impression.
In high school, I found myself re-thinking that vague concept during Japanese class. We learned language and culture. Those studies helped fill the cultural gaps.
Later, I applied to and received a job offer for the JET (Japan Exchange and Teaching) program. Now, after a series of coincidences and serendipities, I find myself a bridegroom. I shall marry this new country. Married, in the sense that its life and mine will be inextricably linked. I will wed her in ten days. I have until then to do some emotional packing. Before I know it, I'm at the pre-departure meeting
In New Orleans.
The hotel room just outside the airport is flowery. Flowers bedeck the curtains, flourish on the spreads, bloom over the wallpaper. I'm surprised my allergies aren't acting up. B97 announces it's the radio station for people who don't like radio -- makes perfect sense to me.
I'm resting, eyeing the clock now and again, flipping channels. I am enjoying five minutes of the marshmallow [actually power] puff girls, an absurdly funny Japanese-imitation cartoon. With a start, I realize that it's nearly time for me to be in the lobby.
I slap on a shirt and tie and breeze down the hall to the lobby. The hotel corridor makes for an odd racetrack. And I'm a strange sprinter in my dress pants and tie. After a quick circle of the lobby, I notice a flock of people chaffing it up in a large semi-circle, all dressed in jackets and their Sunday best. Their Sunday best!
I wrap around a second time to see if they're JETs (my fellow English teachers). They are, and I curse myself for not wearing a jacket. I remember a month ago when I called her about this function. "What is the dress code for the pre-departure orientation?"
"Caszh!" The lady from the consulate told me "caszh!" This I took as meaning casual. I did the connotative math in my head. Umm... Yes, Caszh does equal casual. What else could it be? Did she mean cashmere? I don't own any! Then, ever so calmly, I catch an elevator to the room. Once on my floor, my pace speeds up and I can hear my pulse in my ears. I break into a sprint. "Calm down, Jeffrey," I assure myself. "You'll be fine. Key in the door, door opens up, now quick, change!" I quick-changed into a jacket.
I walk up and ask if "this is the JET circle." Yes, indeed it is. It gets easy from here on out. The people are very friendly. They're mostly white guys in jackets. This frustrates me until I realize I am part of that category. The curse of the white male "majority." Ah, to follow the heard and be one of them at the same time. "But to be heard I must have a voice," chimed the inner monologue.
We load up, cattle-style into a bus and are led to the New Orleans Japanese Counsel's house. Lillian, a girl I met and chatted with at the first information session many months ago in October, sat next to me on the bus. We talk about Italy in the summertime. She'd studied there for a year.
To travel, to journey as a true citizen of the world: I am about to join these ranks, I remind myself. Lillian describes the city, its cathedrals, its history. Its history, now her history.
Her wandering memories and my meandering hopes to wander meet gently and without envy, as we pass a huge sign near the New Orleans expressway. I see the cow-shaped sign spinning slowly as the traffic filters past.
A friend once told me that it was a talisman: a bovine sage. If the head points in your direction as you pass, then good luck will follow. If the shank gives you the shove-off, it's to the butcher for you. Rather unimpressively, I got the shank. "Bad omen," I thought.
I meet other travelers from around the state and region. One, Scott, is from Oklahoma. That seems like a long distance to travel. I suppose it's worth it. Scott is tall and sinewy with dark curls that fall carelessly over a pronounced brow. He sounds like he's from Oklahoma, with a clipped, nasal accent.
We arrive at the head honcho's house. It's large, but unimpressive. There is some official speechmaking, then former JETs speak. The first guy is a little nervous, but helpful. He shares several horror stories. One horror story involves a homophobic anecdote, which was met with respect by the audience, but sounded a little frightening to me.
The second alumnus, Eric, downplayed the idea that gay JETs have a difficult time. "Just remember to be discreet, no matter what you do, whether you're a man holding another man's hand or a man holding a woman's hand. It's not done in pubic."
Eric, a youthful 30-something, was in the program for a year. Nostalgic about his time in country, Eric seems to wish for a return to Japonica. He's teaching French in Lake Charles now.
After the speeches, Eric and I spoke and ate tempura together. We traded meishi (business cards) and discussed the intricacies of remaining true to oneself while in a foreign country. He told me that instead of trading in his social life, he discovered a bountiful new one there, which previously had been a hope-beyond-hope for me. What a relief! He and I spoke for most of the next hour and he offered me a ride back to the hotel. We parted after he gave me a gentle hug and said our sayonaras.
In the hotel room I find a going away present on my pillow: a Japanese dictionary and phrase. Daddy's present. "What a sweetie," I think, as I flip through it, taking off my shoes and massaging my temples.
The schmoozing had gotten to me. And the two screwdrivers at the party couldn't have helped. Oh well, all in the line of duty.
Whoppers and ATMs were the evening affairs that marked the close of my business day. Taking a short cut, Daddy got lost and we took a very round-about way back to the hotel room.
The Jamaican lady at Burger King announces over the drive-thru speaker that I can have my shake in a "Poke-a-Ho" cup, but soon realize she meant "Pocahontas." I didn't correct her. She was a foreigner. And I soon would be.
I sleep soundly, smelling fresh green tea and hearing a ringing bell in my slumber. I wake early, with a combination stomach: half nervousness and half giddy anticipation. Trying to focus on the latter, I prepare my bags and
The journey begins.
I've had a great number of "firsts" during my week and a half here.
Thursday: My first attempt at ordering food at a restaurant -- it was a tragic affair, to say the least, but not everything about it was disappointing. The food was excellent.
What really dampened my spirits was the fact that I couldn't read a single item on the menu. Even the prices were written in kanji (Chinese characters) instead of the usual Arabic numerals.
This was a bit of a communicative roadblock. It was also embarrassing because it was my first time ordering food at a restaurant -- an exercise in futility.
It was a comedy in three-acts: phrasebook thumbing, befuddlement and eventually pointing and grunting. (Jeffrey, the grunting monoglot!) I let one of my dinner companions order while I was trying to decipher the mysterious kanji. Eventually, I accepted my defeat, muttering "me too." My Tokyo roommate, Scott, had studied at Harvard, so I deferred to him. We had similar tastes, luckily.
Friday was my first ride on the shinkansen (bullet train). Zoom! That's the best word to describe the sensation. A pillow of air cushions the ride and is only intermittently interrupted by the click-clack of a guidance track. Every five minutes, an electronic melody is heard as a train attendant young woman strolls by pushing a cart of cold drinks, boxed lunches, and aisu curemu (I got the vanira flavored ice cream). On the way, I got to know Lei Lynn from the other L.A., Kirelley from Australia, Trelawney from Boston, Eve from Vancouver, Spencer from Scotland, Claire from Yorkshire and Ruth from New York. They're all JETs in Wakayama, my new home-prefecture.
Our conversations were peppered with regionalisms and comments about our various dialects. (Unfortunately, I wasn't able to convince them of the superiority of my own, though I did try.) There were about three dozen of us at the prefectural orientation.
It was there that I met Larry, my predecessor. Stocky and bug-eyed, Larry Clark wore small wire rimmed glasses and fingered his left suspender strap unconsciously. With the other hand, he fanned himself with a Donald Duck fan.
He smiled and greeted me with a mid-western accent. We talked for a good hour in the hotel Tokyu lobby. He had nothing but praise for his coworkers, Japanese teachers of English (JTEs) and students. "You're gonna love it," he assured me. "It's a real home, not a city that doesn't care. You will belong to Koyasan and it will belong to you."
Saturday morning I met my supervisor, my jichoo. He's about 45 years. He has big features a prominent mole that I had to stare at for a while and an ear-to-ear grin. Larry told me he was good-natured and a little paternal, which seems to be true. He took us to lunch while we were still in Wakayama-shi, the prefectural capital. Aisu koohee (iced coffee) cooled us off while I used my beginner's Japanese to tell him how pleased I was about the job. Unfortunately, my best Japanese is also my only Japanese, so we spoke only in sporadic, simple sentences. "You're a handsome boy -- very, very clever!" He encouraged me. "The Japanese you know is good," he added. He pointed to a rolled up newsletter in his hand. He gave it to me, pointing to my passport photo. They had written a story about me in the town newspaper! "You face bettaa than youa picture," he smiled. "Anything looks better than that picture," I thought to myself.
I had the typical passport photo, done in the neo-terrorist style. My face snarled and every bad feature had been photographically (perhaps digitally) enhanced. I was one mean character, in that picture. And it was printed in the town newspaper! Yikes.
Sunday I had my grand tour of the place. You could go to two temples every week for a year and still have a few left over. They're on every corner. You can't take more than five steps in any direction before having to take off your shoes to go into a temple. They actually outnumber the convenience stores a hundred to one.
I've decided that there aren't actually any stores other than the convenient kind. No supermarkets or wholesale clubs, no malls or all-in-one shops. "Shopping is always an adventure in Koyasan," Larry told me, with a wry grin. "You'll always be surprised by what you'll find or what you'll miss. Food isn't carried unless it's in season and selling well."
Well, selling myself was the order of the day Monday. It was my first day at work, so I dressed for success. Too bad the weather wasn't cooperative. I swigged from my water bottle. The temperatures were balmy, but at least there was a breeze.
I trekked up my hills, out of my valley, into town. The terrain will take some getting used to. This flatlander's quads have been complaining adamantly. By the time school begins, I should be making these grades with ease.
I got to work early -- about 20 minutes early. All the lights were off and I walked around until the workers started filtering in. The symbol of the building is a little mountain with a star on it.
If it were red and gold instead of green and gold, it would definitely look communist. Interestingly enough, all the OLs (office ladies) wear little uniforms with the symbol on it They resemble airline attendants that are slightly out of their element.
The superintendent of schools greeted me warmly and we exchanged cards. I examined it studiously, nodding, as is the custom. I offered my little gift of Tabasco, saying, "It is just a token, but (please accept it anyway)." He bowed and smiled, showing me the little liver spots on the top of his head. "Sank you... vedy muchi," he replied in endearingly bad English.
After a brief, standard conversation about Louisiana (Is it hot there? Yes, very. Is it humid? Yes, very.), my boss entered and greeted me. I had studied the night before about how to greet him. "Thank you for the other day," I told him. "Oh, it was nothing," he replied.
The day before, he had picked up Larry for his exodus from Koyasan. It was an odd ceremony. They all joked with him about his year here and his exploits, which were described vividly and humorously in intricate, polysyllabic words that I didn't understand. All I got was "Larry always was a blah-blah-blah. Yes, he's really a blah-blah. Do you remember the time when he blah-blah-blah? Ha ha ha! That was so blah."
By the third day, I'd already mastered the "I have no idea what you're saying but I'll just offer a non-committal nod and grin" look. I knew I'd be using it for another few months (or years!).
There were manly handshakes, some more joking and a few moistened eyes before he departed. Then jisho and some guys from around the office went to a coffeehouse for some conversation (read: body language, broken bits of both languages and grunting). Jisho again complimented me on my appearance -- "You're much taller than Larry -- more American.
One of the guys from the office said my picture was a little scary and that he was glad to see that I looked more like myself in person. "Yes, I look much more like myself in person," I attempted in Japanese. They laughed, whether it was directed at the joke or my Japanese, I'm not sure.
Anyway, I was escorted around town and my boss made official introductions. It was actually kind of fun, because every time I bowed, an entire office of people would have to return the bow. I quickly got the hang of the game. I would bow nine or ten times in the span of 45 seconds. It was like greetings aerobics. (Feel the burn!) "It (our friendship) has begun. I beg that you treat me kindly," I spouted off in a respectful recitation of the stock "nice to meet you" phraseology. It's quite a mouthful, too. I'm glad I had practiced it while wrapping presents last night: "Hajime mashte; dohzoh yoroshku-onegai-shimasu!"
After the above skit was acted out 7 or 8 times, we went for a quick lunch. Jisho knew the restaurant owner, who was apparently fascinated (or confused) about American geography. He gesticulated the states' placements, querying me on "New Mekishiko here, Tekusas here, Ruuisiana here?" I assured him that yes, that's the way it was. Then we talked about baseball and Nomo, the Japanese pitcher for the Dodgers.
Back to the office. Waiting for me on my desk was a card from home, a magazine and a box full of food I'd shipped only fifteen days before. I spent the rest of the day practicing my writing. (I don't want to be illiterate for 50 more weeks!)
My belly is full. I am sated and satisfied.
I just finished eating my first meal in my new home. What was on the menu? I'm not really sure, to be honest. I've become functionally illiterate over the past week. You see, most everything around me is written in kanji, or Chinese characters. It's a little annoying not being able to read anything. But I'm making out okay.
My meal consisted of eggs and onions, rice and some kind of mix that was left in the kitchen. The package of mix, which was wrapped up tighter than a Christmas gift, was incomprehensible except for instructions on mixing it with rice. Not completely sure the dish would be edible, I took a chance and prepared it anyway.
The tasty leap of fate filled my belly and assured me I wasn't completely helpless after all.
My kitchen is a real laboratory. Ingredients of all shapes, sizes, smells and textures are on a shelf above the refrigerator. Larry, my predecessor, was quite the gourmet. Luckily for me, he decided to leave all of his foodstuffs at the house for me.
The house is comfortable. It's a bedroom, living room and kitchen/bathroom plus toilet room. It sits at the base of a small hill, in a tiny suburban pocket charmingly dubbed uguisudani (nightingale valley).
The town of Koyasan is actually on a little knobb-topped mountain. "High Rice Field Mountain" is its translation. Dozens of fir-and cedar-topped hills surround the town, which is blessed with breezy 70-degree weather even in July and August.
The town boasts a heap o' temples. It is said that if you were to stack up all the chopsticks used in the orient, you still wouldn't have the amount of wood needed to construct all of the 110 temples in Koyasan. Actually, I just made that up but it sounds convincing because it's probably true...
One thing I can assure you... I never thought I'd experience such scenic serenity and pastoral peacefulness as I did in just one day touring around the town. It is truly breathtaking in its unaffected beauty.
Larry took three new JETs and me on a mini-temple tour. It took 3 hours and that was the highly abbreviated version ? just to see some of the highlights. I took a few pictures, but I want to wait 'til October when the leaves turn to take any more. A handful of the trees, mostly Japanese maples, have started to flare up in reds and oranges. But those few plants managed to upstage the flame-colored tori (gates) and temple grounds with their hue.
That night Larry and I went to see the Hanabi (fireworks) town fair. It's a little celebration, mainly for children. This was the perfect opportunity to meet many of the people I will work with when the school year begins.
Larry-san introduced me to everyone from the toothless (though not purple-haired) school lunch lady to the spectacle-wearing leader of the local boy scout troop. I also partook of the many tokens of appreciation that parents, children and fellow teachers bestowed upon me. I accepted free Asahi (a regional brand of beer), udon (some flavorless, vulgar substance I've not yet been able to identify), bam-bams (brightly decorated balloon toys that are handmade) and goldfish.
The goldfish weren't actually gifts. Larry got a ticket for me to try to catch them from a small tank. A dozen children gathered around the tank, scooping up bug eyed gobi (goldfish) with these little paddles. The trick was to snare the little suckers before the rice paper on the scoop dissolved. When it did, your turn was over and you had to pay about a dollar for another chance. I managed 4 the first time and snared 8 the next try. I decided not to go for a third attempt because I didn't want to worry with more than a small school of pets. Perhaps it was best I quit and joined Larry, who was chaffing with a boisterous boy of about 15. Iyesu, who is about as tall as me, got a real kick out of throwing popcorn in my mouth. After he grew tired of that, he began sticking a toy shark to my forehead with a suction cup. A crowd of 'cool' kids gathered, enjoying the new game, which could have been called, "make suction cup marks on the oblivious gaijin's (foreigner's) head."
Iyesu and the other kids seemed to like it, and I was practicing my cajoling words on him. It was a blast
The fireworks were spectacular. Whether it was the thrill of being in a new place with new people or the aftereffects of Asahi beer, the display was impressive.
I wonder if the fireworks here might be of a different grade than the ones back home. Their fire codes might be different, or perhaps they've worked out a deal with China to keep the good stuff here in the East and ship the second-rate duds to the states. Who knows?
Walking back to the house after the fair, I glance back over my shoulder at the fair. There's a golden glow of incandescent bulbs shining under colorful tents. Silhouettes of newly made acquaintances make parting gestures. Children's giddy screams intermingle with the cackling of old women. One of the old women, taking careful little steps down the hill behind me, wears a black robe that reminds me of a certain 13-year-old boy's black ninja costume. "This is the opposite of disappearing," I thought.
