Life in Japan #3: The Blundering Gaijin

The first thing I did after moving into my apartment was ruin a perfectly good roll of toilet paper. After using the bathroom for the first time, I rested a new roll on top of the tank beneath a conspicuous-looking faucet that turned on automatically when I flushed, soaking the roll beyond any comfortable use.



My toilet, which the Japanese usually keep separate from their bathing facilities for sanitary reasons. The faucet on top is actually a convenient way to quickly rinse your hands after answering nature’s call without having to run over to the adjacent bathroom.

Japan is filled with things like this that don’t function the way I’m accustomed, and thus turn even the most routine tasks into elaborate adventures. Is that slot on the subway ticket machine for inserting coins or for dumping out change? I had to push a button to open the door to the restaurant, but will it close again automatically? Where does the fabric softener go in my washing machine? Is this really flour I’m buying? And how the hell do I work this fucking rice cooker?

The rice cooker has only has three buttons, but it took nearly a week of delayed meals before I figured out how to use it properly. “It’s easy,” no fewer than three separate individuals told me while glorifying the advent of this labor-saving device. “All you do is press the button and wait a few minutes!”

The problem was that no one told me which of the three buttons to press. On my first attempt I mashed all of them at rotating intervals until it seemed like something began to happen inside, though after an hour I began to suspect that I had made a mistake. Or was it supposed to take this long? (No one had mentioned a specific cooking time.) My second and third attempts consisted of me trying different buttons, waiting a few minutes, then worrying that I’d pressed the wrong one and trying another. I got the rice to cook once but immediately forgot which button I’d pressed, and the next night I had to repeat the entire guessing process. After this I was a lot more careful about writing down the procedures for everything from the ATM to the water heater.



My apartment’s kitchenette. Note the damp roll of toilet paper next to the coffee mug.

Every day I face new challenges fueled by my cultural ineptitude and my inability to speak the language—challenges that are merely routine for the millions of Japanese who live here. Since nothing makes me feel more awkward than having my failures out in full view of a judgmental world, it’s no wonder I feel like the blundering gaijin who can’t do anything right.

Other shameful adventures experienced by yours truly include:

- In which Ian accidentally opens the package containing Katie’s old futon that he finds outside his new apartment, then has to converse with the Japanese delivery man who comes to take it away.
- In which Ian variably wakes up in cold or hot sweats because he’s accidentally pressed the Auto Timer button on his AC unit.
- In which Ian goes to wildly elaborate lengths to avoid being the only one in the teacher’s room in case the phone rings and he has to answer it in poorly pronounced Japanese
- In which Ian attempts to purchase a ten year-old Soul Flower Union CD at a J-POP record store.
- In which Ian goes out to eat with his foreign co-worker; and after forty-five minutes of not getting his fried rice, isn’t sure whether the waiter forgot the order or the food just isn’t coming.

These things happen so often that I don’t even notice them anymore, and I’ve gotten used to making elaborate preparations for tasks as simple as mailing a letter or ordering the aforementioned Soul Flower Union CD from Amazon. But for all my complaints, figuring out how to function here on even the simplest of terms gives me a wonderful sense of satisfaction that was far more difficult to come by at home.

A Saint Patrick's Day Celebration

Inside the teacher's room at Kriasho Kofu at the end of the workday.

Eileen: You're Irish, right?
Me: Yeah, mostly.
Eileen: Happy Saint Patrick's Day!
Me: Is that today? I thought it was the fourteenth. I've been busy trying to learn my Japanese holidays.
Eileen: No, it's the seventeenth. They're having a big celebration at The Vault if you're interested.
Me: Nah, not on a worknight. Besides, I'm not that Irish.
Eileen: But you're wearing green today.
Me (glancing down and realizing that I am indeed wearing a green tie): Oh, so I am. I didn't even realize.
Eileen: Maybe it was subconscious.
Me (shrugs): Maybe.

So, in the spirit of this spring holiday season, I'd like to wish you all a Happy Vernal Equinox Day! I'll enjoy a paid day off far more than a night packed into a bar filled with overpriced Guinness and people in sideways Irish caps.

Consumer Culture

I found my copy of Andrew Hurley’s Diners, Bowling Alleys, and Trailer Parks at the town dump last October and almost listed it for sale on Amazon for five dollars before deciding that it might be worth keeping. Last week when I finally got around to reading it, I did not regret my decision.

Hurley traces these three American institutions from their origins as working-class benchmarks tied to inner-city immigration to their explosions into the new middle-class consumer market after World War II; where they epitomized America’s newfound obsessions with family values, excessive spending, and a mass migration to suburbia. American diners at the turn of the century, for instance, mostly operated in factory districts and were places where working men could get away from their wives over a cheap meal and a cup of coffee. By the 1950’s, diners were rapidly opening in the new suburbia where they catered to busy homemakers who craved a break from their meal preparation duties. The bowling alley and the trailer park experienced similar makeovers before they too were left behind in a changing consumer market. What I enjoyed most about this book was Hurley’s examples of just how many traditional American values were shaped by companies out to capture the massive amounts of money flowing through the middle-class in the ‘50s. Own your own home, buy your wife a new washing machine, join a bowling league: be an American.

The book is fairly easy reading (while never crossing into dense social science dissertation territory), and the subject matter is close enough to home that most readers should have no trouble getting through it. The pace drags at times when Hurley succumbs to the researcher’s temptation to insert every last oddball, offbeat, or even remotely interesting tidbit of information into his book (a vice I noticed because I fall victim to it quite often), but the overarching theme makes it worth getting through these sections.

I highly recommend this book if you can find a copy in your library, or decide to purchase one on Amazon for five dollars.

Life in Japan #2: Kofu

My parents bought me a new camera for Christmas, and though I always preferred to describe a scene with words, I’ve been snapping photos like mad since I’ve been here (except when I forget my camera, which happens often). I feel less inclined to take photographs in America because from any point of view in a given city there are a hundred—no, a thousand—things that we’ve seen before and make no firm impression on our consciousness: a concrete sidewalk, a gray brick wall, a passerby’s jacket, a gas station’s faded pumps, and so on. But here in Japan everything is different and draws my attention at every turn, for my senses have not yet adjusted to the onslaught of unfamiliar stimulation here.



Downtown Kofu’s main drag, which I refer to in my head (and occasionally when talking to others) as Main Street, even though it has a real name I do not know. The storefronts on the left house several restaurants, while Lawson’s is one of many convenience store chains here. Also note the NOVA sign on the upper right building.



The train station, figurehead of downtown, which also houses ECLAN department store. (To draw in the confused traveler market, the signs for all of the major department stores here are written in the Roman alphabet.) Check out the tiny Japanese cars on the street here. Because of its historical ties with mining and jewelry-making, Kofu is known as the Crystal City, though the diamond seen in the center is probably just an advertisement for a jewelry store.



Lord Shingen Takeda, whose statue watches over the park next to the station. Shingen was a 16th century warlord who ruled over Kofu and the surrounding Yamanashi area, and though he seems a relatively obscure figurehead in Japanese history, he is something of a local hero on the level of Franklin Pierce for the people of New Hampshire.



Main Street again, seen from one of the pedestrian bridge crossings that seem to exist primarily for tourists to climb and take pictures from. The clocktower building used to house a prominent watchmaker that has since gone out of business, Miki tells me, though it now it merely stands apart as one of several older Western-style buildings mixed in with the cityscape.



Another view from the pedestrian bridge, this time looking south. The city is surrounded by mountains on all sides. And yes, they drive on the other side of the road here to further confuse me.



A familiar face at last.



This is the path I walk to and from work every day. On the right is Maizuru Castle Park, an old battlement that’s been restored with new bathrooms resembling historical shrines, one of which has a homeless person living inside. The park is really cool, and I’ll post more pictures later.



This is the Tokyo Gas company’s storage tank across from the park. The brightly-colored logo on the side is actually a mountain and a bird, though sadly a work crew came and painted the tank a solid brown color earlier this week. I live in the blue apartment building on the right.



One of Kofu’s back alleys. Possibly an entertainment district that’s deserted during the day.



Even the bricks are different here!


I’ll post a larger album on Facebook later this week if anyone’s interested. The massive storage capacities of today’s digital cameras makes it far too easy to bury those few worthwhile shots amidst a thousand other pictures of the same scene from different angles; and though this online photo posting thing is still new to me I’ll try to keep it relatively succinct.

Life in Japan #1: My Job

In the Japanese office in which I work there are eight people of whom I am afraid. Each of those eight people is afraid of twelve people in addition to the other seven, for a total of one hundred and four people who are afraid of or feared by at least one other person...

Ha, ha, just kidding. I work for the Kriasho Corporation, a chain of eikaiwa, (English conversation schools) with 300 branches across Japan where adults and children come in once or twice a week for a fifty minute English lesson. Kriasho schools employ both Japanese and native English speaking teachers, with most of their classes taught solely in English. The corporation prints its own textbooks and trains its own teachers. Most schools average about four hundred students and are open from noon to nine PM, with classes ranging from private lessons to group lessons capped at twelve. Foreign teachers are not required to know Japanese and work thirty-six hour weeks while teaching anywhere from twenty-four to twenty-eight lessons per week.

My school is in Kofu, a small city about two hours west of Tokyo, on the fifth floor of this building:



It’s the one front with the HOTEL sign mounted on top. The smaller building to the right is a pachinko parlor that I have not yet dared to enter, and the bigger building to the left is Yamako Department store across the square from the train station (not pictured).

As you may be able to tell from the picture, Kriasho Kofu, like most things in Japan, is quite small. Outside the main lobby are eight classrooms, each about half the size of a Bennington single, and a teacher’s room crammed with lesson materials and office equipment. You can view pictures on the website , though be warned that it’s in Japanese. (The fourth tab from the left is the Staff page, which is helpful for when I can’t remember my coworkers’ names.) The staff includes a manager, an assistant manager, two full-time Japanese teachers, five part-time Japanese teachers, and one other native English speaking teacher.

Kriasho Kofu’s size extends to its student population as well. One hundred seventy adults and twenty-six kids attend Kofu school, about half the size of the other Kriasho East Japan schools my training mates are teaching at. Most of my classes are only one or two students, and my largest so far has been five. (This has made it much easier to get settled in.) I teach classes ranging from low-intermediate to advanced, plus one advanced class for middle-school students, two elementary school classes, and one preschool class. I have met many people and remembered few names.

The Kriasho East Japan Corporation handbook also specifically prohibits me from releasing any information on my blog, personal website, or social networking page regarding Kriasho business practices or personal student information; as well as any words or pictures that depict the company, its staff members, or students in a potentially offensive, embarrassing, or otherwise negative way. (I’d quote that section of the manual here, but I’m not allowed to reproduce that either, in whole or in part.) The consequences for such infractions include suspensions, pay cuts, immediate dismissals, or worse: a talking-to.

(“They can’t deport you though,” Marcel explained as we sipped eight-hundred yen glasses of draft beer at the foreigner bar in Omiya made up to look like a British pub where Japanese businessmen gathered after a long week of work and cigarette-smoking Brits chatted idly on high stools. “That’s one power they don’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

“South Korea’s much lot stricter,” Marcel said with all the experience of his two years teaching there. “Working visas are given under sponsorship of a Korean company, and are only good for one year. If they fire you, or if you get caught taking private lessons as a violation of your employment, you lose your visa and they can deport you. But in Japan, the rules are different. Our entry visas are good for three years regardless of whether you’re employed. That’s why so many teachers were able to stay when NOVA went under. If we quit or lose our jobs, we can just find someplace else to teach.”)

Because of this blogging rule, I probably won’t be talking much about work here and will instead focus on other aspects of my adventures in Japan. Any anecdotes that do make it into this blog will be heavily obfuscated, with all names changed or blanked out as with my tutoring and substitute teaching entries—because now what I post online could have far more serious consequences than just the crazy cigarette-smoking Amber waiting to accost me in the shadows outside Commons.

Here are some other resources if you’d like to read further:

Kriasho's Recruiting page
Kriasho Kofu’s website (for all the skimmers)
Jobs in Japan – Choosing a school
Just some article I found

Upheaval

Approximately 65.5 million years ago at the end of the Mesozoic Era a fiery comet struck the earth’s surface provoking environmental changes so monumental that not even the mightiest of dinosaur species survived.

In 49 BC, Julius Caesar consolidated control of the Roman Republic and used his status to reduce the voices of those opposed to him and assume veto power over the Senate, gradually assuming the role of dictator. This precedent of singular control would remain as the Empire reigned, declined, and eventually fell.

On June 28th, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated, triggering the war that would end all wars and forever change the face of Europe and the world.

On the evening of May 6th, 1937, the German airship LZ 129 Hindenburg crashed near Manchester, New Jersey when the flammable hydrogen inside caught fire and exploded. The accident was seen by millions of theatergoers, and overnight the publicity ended the pursuit of airship technology.

On February 17th, at approximately 4:15 PM Japan Standard time, I signed a contract for my first cell phone. It’s a sleek gold color, and the woman behind the counter kindly switched the language to English. Now I just have to figure out how to use it.

Overstimulated

When last we checked, our hero was preparing to climb aboard a plane to escape the emptiness of his post-college life in New Hampshire—leaving his friends, his family, and his Nabokov collection behind—to teach English in Japan in hope of fulfilling his craving for adventure, finally attaining independence, paying back his student loans, and padding his resume to make himself more attractive to potential employers back in the States.

There’s a lot to see here—not so much at the Seminar House, where the trainers all speak English and we’re surrounded by textbooks and Western-style office furniture all day long; but outside in Omiya where I venture out with the others. The streets are full of activity all day and night; a flurry of sights and sounds that overwhelm the senses and leave me feeling dizzy and stupefied after too much stimulation. There are tall buildings that rise up near the train station, hung with banners and flashing neon lights that beam advertisements all across the city. There are brick and concrete apartments in a rainbow of whites, grays, browns, blacks and brick patterns that give the streets a distinct otherworldly feeling. There are strange road signs whose meanings (aside from the universal blue P) I cannot decipher, pointing the way to frantic drivers in their Toyotas, Hondas, Nissans, and the occasional Volkswagon. There are signs—everywhere signs—read horizontally, vertically, and in cartoonish half circles. There are the alleys and the side streets, the suburban blocks and the overpasses, the zig-zag intersections crossing every which way, and the narrow one-ways where cars squeeze between one another and bike-riders of all ages reign supreme; convenience stores and vegetable markets and electronics stores and hair salons with outrageous prices posted outside the windows next to restaurants with plastic food replicas in glass cases alongside tiny luncheon houses with long counters where businessmen and young people sit alone munching noodles with pachinko parlors on every street that draw my eyes with their colored lights and loud noises (for everything in Japan seems to flash, flash, FLASH! turning the streets into epilepsy-inducing spectacles that would put even the most spectacular American laser light shows to shame) and there are arcades too in the red (pink?) light district where the strippers dressed in skintight outfits stand outside calling out to the Japanese businessmen on their night out and still more posters list the girls promoting promises of pleasure inside and other shops that must sell sex next to the famed Love Hotels that charge by the hour and now all of us are getting wierded out and it’s time to turn around back past the wooden-doored bars and the karaoke rooms one that Shirley says is good cheap but expensive after eleven for people who really live the night life here back to the station where the taxis wait in a massive square the McDonalds pictures show sandwiches that haven’t been dressed up by crews to make them look their best oh no for everything here exists in a random jumble of activity that makes my head spin and sometimes I have to look down at the yellow line they’ve installed to help the blind people walk just like the different lengths of the yen that’s easy to convert all you do is pretend theyre pennies times ten single yen coins are useless and light like a ticket token at funspot which looks like an antique machine shop compared to the rows of games here street fighter 4 horse racing photo booths drum games like in lost in translation but people here sit slumped over their machines smoking endless cigarettes the smoke so thick go and get some air tom says the men here all get sucked into their games leaving women unfulfilled take advantage hard to say so many of them everywhere walking strolling talking looking vivacious welldressed smiling highcheeked brighteyed staring everyone staring at us gaijin trying to hide it not just girls longhair some dyed blond funny idea for a style do they so admire the west that they desire to emulate us so many ways even writing everywhere jumps out not like kanji my mind skips over makes no sense but kana try to read looks like —shujin tsuma— kamari—no—— that’s too much for now have to leave this night life behind because Im tired and I think I need to lie down.