Will Miss #496 - furoshiki

A personalized furoshiki, given to me by a student as a goodbye gift. The paper is instructions on how to tie this beautiful cloth.

I remember watching cartoons when I was a kid which showed a hobo walking around with his bindle tied to a stick. The hobo, as someone who lacked funds, used this little folded up bit of cloth to carry his possessions. This was back in the days before we could buy cheap backpacks and there were plastic bags being tossed in our faces every time we made a purchase. 

A furoshiki, is an elegant form of a bindle, though it is usually used to wrap and carry boxes (especially bento) or as a lovely gift-wrappings. I received two sets of personalized chopsticks from what must have been expensive shops wrapped in furoshik, as well as a furoshiki with my name on it in Japanese and I'm grateful for these memorable items. These were my last experiences in Japan with these bits of cloth, but my first ones came when office ladies at my former company would use these to carry their lunches, though more often than not, people just opted for a plastic bag. On those rare occasions that I did see these, they reminded me that Japanese culture was once not only thrifty, but also that there were these ways of doing things which were beautifully executed and taught through generations. They did this not only for special things like gifts, but also just for their own daily use. It reflected how old and developed Japanese culture is as well as their well-known attention to detail.

I'll miss seeing furoshiki, both as wrapping as in gift stores, but especially because of what their use said about Japanese culture.

Won't Miss #496 - fixation on blue eyes

Surely, the tears of angels fall from blue eyes.

I had many discussions with students about their preconceptions regarding Western people, and, to them, "Western" (occidental), meant "white". It meant not only white, but mostly blue-eyed white people. In fact, I was told on more than one occasion that they believed most of us have blue eyes. I learned a long time ago when I studied basic genetics in junior high school that blue eyes are recessive and therefore less likely to be present. The ever handy Wikipedia says 33.8% of the U.S. population has blue eyes. That's certainly a lot more than the number of Japanese who do, but hardly a majority.

The incorrect notion that most occidental people have blue eyes isn't really something you can "blame" Japanese people for believing. After all, most T.V. shows have a stunning imbalance in terms of eye color. I've watched shows in which 80% of the cast are blue-eyed, and it is frequently the case that the main cast are blue-eyed. The thing that annoyed me in Japan was the fixation on blue eyes as something that is incredibly positive and worth noting. Students would tell me they wanted my eye color. Some actually preferred teachers because they had blue eyes and felt that they were getting a more "authentic" experience in learning if their teacher's appearance matched their stereotype.

Undoubtedly, I benefited from this fixation on blue eyes (and light hair), but it always made me feel objectified and uncomfortable. I think the worst part though was knowing that people who were dark-skinned, dark-eyed, and dark-haired were being rated lower in desirability for arbitrary reasons. This fixation made me acutely aware that I was given a benefit for something that I had nothing to do with, and I won't miss it.

Will Miss #495 - volume control (personal)

I'm not saying everyone can control their personal volume. 

I'm a person who likes order. In fact, one of my pleasures in life is the sort of anal retentive organization that makes the Felix Ungers of the world "squee" with delight and the Oscar Madisons scoff with disdain. I enjoy knowing where things are enough to invest energy in setting up a special place for them and placing them in it in a highly logical and tidy fashion. You might see where the focus on orderliness in Japan was attractive to my ilk.

While I did appreciate the order in Japan, I didn't realize the deep extent to which I'd become comforted by the predictability it provided until I came back home and was exposed to more "chaotic" behavior. For instance, it's not unusual in America for people to be shouting things at each other on streets or in stores as if they were in their personal space trying to get the attention of family members. The yelling is not in anger in most cases, but just being loud without respect to the people around them or the public circumstances. In Japan, people did shout at times, but mainly as a part of work. You didn't tend to just have random people yelling at each other at random times. There is a sense of propriety in general (but not always) and people aren't so randomly loud.

At the moment, at least, as part of my reverse culture shock, I find it disconcerting and not a little stressful when people are yelling at each other in the streets. I miss the way in which Japanese people, who could be noisy, but not necessarily because of loudness or shouting, would keep their personal volume nobs turned down relative to people in America.

Won't Miss #495 - "worn" = "dirty"

Yes, this is a real place in Tokyo (in Hamadayama). I don't know what it was all about, but the elaborate garbage placement nearly made it a work of art. 

I have a real ambivalence about the way things worked in Tokyo in terms of the constant renewal and the waste associated with it versus the pristine sense of things being clean and new. Since coming back to America, I have been struck by how profoundly grubby things seem at times, even when they are actually technically "clean". Stores, even large, modern ones, in particular can sometimes shock me with the wear and tear on their structures which make them appear rundown. In Tokyo, customers generally felt uncomfortable with any sort of visible wear such as cracks, chips in paint, age-based yellowing. Anything that resembled age-related loss of quality was generally kept to a bare minimum. Most things felt pretty fresh and relatively new, if not actually "new". It didn't hurt that cleaning was done thoroughly, not simply "regularly".

All of that being said, I couldn't help but believe that it was immensely wasteful to refurbish or replace things simply because they were worn in appearance yet did not have diminished utility. In this day and age of concern about resources and the environment, it felt like an immense indulgence to a particular aesthetic to be replacing things that were perfectly functional, but superficially somewhat unpleasant.

My students used to tell me that they didn't like certain things like their old clothes, bags, or apartments because they were "dirty", but what they almost always meant was that they looked worn or used. I won't miss the waste associated with this mentality.

Random Memories #11

The scanner really picks up the tiny bits of dust embedded in the grooves. What looks so dirty and dull here looks very shiny, gold and clean in person.

One of the things which is clear from my memory books from 1988-89 is that Japan was a different place at that time. The positive effects of the economic bubble were still intact and a lot of things were more elaborate than they were after it burst. The item above is a reflection of good times. This is a plastic gold coin which was given away by Kentucky Fried Chicken. I believe you could have figured out who issued it without my saying that.

The "50" on it does not refer to the number of years they've been in business in Japan. This is supposed to emulate the Japanese 50-yen coin and this could be used to get 50 yen off of your meal at the shops. It's called a "thank you coin" and the date of issue is written on the back as 9-3-62. I wonder if people who don't know about Japanese calendars may misinterpret the date on it as September 3, 1962 and wonder if that is the year KFC started in Japan (they actually started in 1970 in Kobe). This date corresponds to the 62nd year of the Showa Emperor, which is 1987 by the Roman calendar that we use. That nearly pinpoints when my future husband obtained this little bit of memorabilia.

I wonder if one took this to a KFC in Tokyo and offered it over if they'd take 50 yen off your purchase as there is no expiration date on the coin (see comments - the date given is the expiration!). That being said, I wouldn't want to give it up. While it may be worthless, it is likely the last time KFC Japan would squander money on such a discount token. These days, they'd simply offer paper coupons or internet coupons rather than spend so much these types of things. It's not only a cool way to play "heads or tails", but a memento of better economic days.

Will Miss #494 - herbal "nodo ame"

Image pilfered from Kanro's web site.

The notions of too much or too little of anything are culturally relative. In Japan, they always served me too much rice by my estimations. They gave me too little protein. The medicine was too weak and the coffee was often like tar. Before undies are wadded at that coffee comment, I should say that I like strong coffee like Italian espresso, but what passed for strong coffee in Japan tasted like the stuff at the bottom of a diner pot after it had been sitting on the hot plate all day.

Given my recent post about medicine being too weak for my gaijin physique, it may come as a surprise that some "medicine" was actually stronger in Japan than it seems to be in the U.S. That is what the Japanese call "nodo ame" (のど飴) and what we might call "throat lozenges or drops". As a teacher who taught in air conditioned settings very often, I frequently needed a little relief and my "go to" option in Japan was Kanro's sugar-free lozenges (pictured above). There were a plethora of really obnoxious tasting herbal cough drops in Japan and it took me awhile to get used to them, but they were very effective. Upon returning home, I've found that nothing comes close to these. What is more, the drops are individually wrapped in sealed packages and don't get gummy and sticky over time. I've found that the twist wrappers on American drops (or just loosely-packed ones) absorb moisture and get icky surprisingly quickly.

It's a small thing, but I really miss the Japanese herbal cough drops and how effective and well-packaged they were.

As an added note, I've found the closest thing to the Japanese ones that I have found are Ricola original drops. They're not quite as good, but still better than most American stuff.

Won't Miss #494 - being hung up on (a lot)

Wrong numbers are a fact of life in any country. The main difference between getting a call from someone who is confused or dials incorrectly in Japan as compared to the U.S. is that, if you answer in English, and I always did because that was the language I expected my callers to speak, you will more often than not be immediately hung up on. This isn't just because you are speaking English as salespeople (and NTT, damn their souls to a purgatory in which someone tries to sell them something they want and then never follows through, is the worst) will start blabbing on in Japanese even if you have the audacity to say "hello". It is because people think it is okay to be rude to foreigners or because they are so shocked that they panic and slam the phone down (perhaps they fear gaijin cooties being transmitted through the phone lines). Seriously though, I got very tired of people who mistakenly called me and didn't have the courtesy to say, "I'm sorry" (gomennasai/ ごめんなさい) or "I made a mistake" (shitsurei shimashita/失礼しました｡) before disconnecting. The worst ones would not only call and hang up on me, but then they'd do it again with the same mistaken number and hang up once more without a word.

I won't miss wrong callers simply hanging up on me without so much as an "I'm sorry."

Will Miss - #493 drinking soup from a bowl

Since coming to America, my husband has refused to eat soup with a spoon. This is the result of having been "spoiled" by the Japanese custom of conveniently tipping the bowl up to ones mouth and taking a slurp. Though I have no problem at all with his doing this at home, I feel a little strange about the possibility of doing it in public. I'm going to blame the Europeans for creating nonsensical rules about soup rather than following the more pragmatic way of the Japanese (and likely other parts of Asia). As someone who is actually better with chopsticks than a spoon (I often manage to spill things on my shirt), it would save me a few stains to just up-end the bowl.

The Japanese way of drinking soup from the bowl rather than precariously ladling it up to our mouths with a spoon makes a good deal of sense, and I'll miss living in a culture in which this is considered correct manners.

Won't Miss #493 - castella

Castella is a kind of sticky, coarse-textured cake which is somewhat sweet and has no strong flavor. It is often sold in blocks or rectangular wedges and can be found pretty much everywhere in Tokyo including 100-yen shops that carry food, convenience stores, markets and tony department stores. Not only can you get this low quality cake pretty much anywhere, but it is frequently used as a base for a variety of other foods including rusks and filled whoopie-pie-style sandwiches. While no one ever force fed me castella, I was given plenty of it either in the office I worked in as a souvenir or as a gift because the assumption was that I'd love it because most everybody does in Japan (hence the reason it's sold all over the place). While it certainly is no blight on the food landscape, it's really not very good sponge cake. It's fatty, sticky, and somehow too dry all at the same time with insufficiently strong flavoring (like, oh, say, vanilla) to make much of an impact. It's like the mutant offspring of a loaf of Wonder Bread and a yellow sponge cake from a Betty Crocker mix. 

I won't miss being given or gifted castella, and having to pretend that I liked it in order to protect people's feelings. 

Random Memories #10

Click any image to see a larger one.

For a good portion of my young adult life, the postal service was of incredible importance to me. At the age of 17, I had 19 pen pals. At 22, I was in a relationship with one, albeit not one of the 19 that I had known since I was 17. No, I fell in love with him within several months of having first heard from him. When lightning strikes, it hits hard and fast.

The mailbox was like a surprise factory for me. I'd open the box sometimes and find letters, cards or packages. In the pre-internet days, it was a delight to find such things at random intervals. I'm not sure if people younger than me can begin to understand the delights of personal correspondence in the box considering the way in which the immediacy of mail, chatting, and voice talking over the internet has changed how we view communication. People had to address me in a structured and purposeful manner. They didn't so much casually include me in some little detail or generalized mailing. They had to organize, customize, and personalize what they said and how they said it. It was truly a delight and I'm sure my practice at that age informs my love of writing now.

Since I carried on a long-distance relationship between Pennsylvania and Japan, I spent a lot of time at the post office, not to mention a lot of money. On the Japan side, my then-boyfriend (now husband) was paying even more than I was, though oddly his rates went down by the time he left and my rates went up. In 1988 or '89, he picked up some plastic sheets from the post office that showed the stamps that were on sale at the time. These types of things were not being given away by the time I left Japan and are rather different than the ones that were posted in the post office to show new stamp issues. First of all, current stamp displays were paper and these are plastic and I'm not sure if they can be taken by the public (I never saw stacks of them to be taken). Second, and most interestingly, these old ones have advertisements for businesses across the bottom. Clearly, there was a time when the post office's advertising was sponsored by businesses and it was likely abandoned by the merchants as Japan's economic downturn turned into a  two decade slump. My guess is that giving out plastic sheets of new stamp designs would be prohibitively expensive without the economic assistance of other companies.

In case you don't know how the postal service works, here is an illustrated story. I'm sure that thousands of mystified Japanese were immensely gratified to understand the complex mechanisms which caused mail to be moved from point A to point B.

At the time that I got these, I didn't understand any Japanese, of course, but now I know that NTT (Japan's equivalent of AT&T), a discount store, and a school are among the advertisers. My boyfriend sent these mainly so that I could see the nice Japanese stamp designs. Rather ironically, even though we were in communication for approximately a year and exchanged hundreds of pieces of mail (and not one was lost!), I don't have many of the actual stamps because most of the packages came with metered postage rather than stamps, but that's okay because I'm not really a stamp collector. These plastic sheets are their own bit of history, and far more durable than real stamps to boot.

Will Miss #492 - my illusions about America

One of the reasons that I do this blog is that I want to show a more fully rounded perspective about life in Japan. Of course, that perspective is always subjective, but I am at least trying to find a balance by talking about the positives as well as the negatives. For many years in Japan, I also tried to be balanced about how I viewed America. One could never have accused me of being overly positive, but I did often feel that many perspectives on the U.S. were overly negative, especially as they came from an ethnocentric viewpoint. Of course, people who weren't from the U.S. would hate the food. They weren't used to it. Of course, they'd think that the overly familiar and casual way that service people deal with you was not polite enough. It isn't their way in their country. Of course they'd feel we were loud and too expressive when they are usually reserved and passive. That doesn't make one way "good" and the other "bad", just different.

In the end though, there were things about America that I either remembered wrong or have changed since I stopped living here 23 years ago. In Japan, I was often treated as a resource rather than a person. People wanted to use me for free English practice, to learn about a foreign culture, or as a token foreign friend. I did not expect to feel as though I was being "used" in the same way upon returning home, but I frankly feel that people regard me similarly here for different reasons. Perhaps it is the focus on "networking" or the consumerist culture, but I often feel that people mainly look at me as a resource or as a potential customer here as well. There was an illusion that I held about American people and culture and that people valued one another for the "right" reasons. I was able to maintain that only because I was living in Japan and removed from the reality.

The illusions I had about American people and culture were comforting and helped counterbalance some of the negative experiences I had in Japan, and I miss them.

Won't Miss #492 - competitiveness about "correct" English

Before coming to Japan and encountering people from many other English-speaking countries, I never gave a second thought as to whether one type of English was "true" English. After working around people from England, New Zealand, Australia, and Canada, I've come to realize that there is an attitude of competitiveness about which type of English is "correct". To me, "colour" and "color" are simply two ways of spelling the same word, not grounds for arguments about linguistic origins and which is "right" or "wrong" (as both are in respective dictionaries for each region's English), but you'd be surprised how it can set off a battle among more territorial English speakers. A big part of the reason this becomes an issue in Japan is that most Japanese people are taught American English, and this sticks in non-American craws. Personally, I teach from British-based as well as American-based texts and teach my students that all of it is correct English, but this is not a sentiment that is shared by all other foreigners.

I won't miss this petty competitiveness about what sort of English is the best or "correct".