Confessions of a Grade School Role Model

While I've been busy working like a, er, Japanese employee and (so far) vainly chasing Internet providers, Arudou Debito has been continuing his long fight against foreigner discrimination in Hokkaido. Sure he's battling the tip of an iceberg, but it's an interesting story. You can read more about it at his site, or here.

No matter what kind of day you're having, wearing a T-shirt that says, "Say it Love, Sister! We are not corn for ourselves!" will make it better. I should know.

I passed my driving test today!! Apparently getting it on the second try is pretty good, the other test-takers in my group were there for the fourth or fifth time. Foreigners sit and take the test separately from Japanese, at a different time of day, although as no translating or special assistance takes place, I'm not sure of the point.

There are three sections on the Japanese driving test: written, vision, and the driving course. The written portion is easy, the most difficult part is wading through the somewhat broken English of the questions. The vision test holds an extra non-physical challenge for foreigners: one looks at variously positioned "C's" through a viewfinder, and reports in which direction the opening of the circle is pointing. I could see the letters fine, but it was difficult remembering under those circumstances the Japanese words for "up," "down," "left," and "right."

The rest of the test experience is a bureaucratic parody. One waits in a given section of the lobby, on certain benches, and waits for some sort of discreet signal to approach the front desk, usually in the form of a questioning meeting of eyes of other test-takers who may or may not have heard something. At the desk, you listen to a long, blurry monologue in quick formal Japanese, and present every document of identification known to you, and a few others especially obtained for the occasion, plus copies. Then you sit down. Then you do this a few more times, sometimes trekking to a different building, always returning to the same bench immediately afterwards. In one building you are issued a paper affixed with what looks like postage stamps, each stamp costing $10 or $15, paid as you go. Sometimes you go all the way to one building just to get a rubber inkstamp, and then return again. Finally, you are ushered out to the bleachers.

At one end of the driving course is a set of bleachers, like the ones I used to watch my friends smoke cigarettes under during high school pep rallies. This is where test-takers wait their turn to drive the course. A car pulls up to the bleachers, a man with a clipboard steps out and yells a butchered foreign name, and two at a time, they drive the course. First you sit in the backseat while the person before you takes their test, then someone else is behind you while you take yours. Everyone else watches from the bleachers, silently, like morbid witnesses at a surgery or an electrocution. Dozens of anxious, bored eyes scan each face that emerges from the driver's side door, searching for signs of triumph, defeat, or enlightenment. No one really speaks. Then we go back and wait again for the results. It takes forever, everyone watching the door anxiously, or with doom. You have now been in this room, on and off, for nearly four hours.

Finally, a few, very few names are called, and those few leave the room, never to be seen again. The rest, the majority, stay on and wait to make another date, and fantasize about what glories met their triumphant counterparts. Today, I finally got to see. Turns out it was just another bureaucratic process. But a damned welcome one. Hooray!!!

Extending the middle finger has no connotations whatsoever in Japan. In some instances, it means something like "older brother" when one is indicating by the thumb a father, the pinkie his mistress or the baby, the index finger a mother, etc. But it's still perfectly acceptable to wave your middle finger wildly right under someone's nose, especially if you're talking about family. Which leads to some funny situations, especially at kindergarten.

"Fingerplays" are a popular kindergarten time-killer, and the teachers seem to know hundreds of them. The teacher sits in front of the class, sings some funny repetitious little song, and makes hand gestures to go with the lyrics, and the children follow as best they can. I should have seen it coming when she started a song about each member of a family trying to get in a bathtub in her other hand, finding the water too hot, and squealing and running inside her palm. First everyone stuck up their thumbs for the father, then mother tried the tub. Listening to Japanese all day makes me zone out a bit sometimes, and I was staring dully out the window by the time I noticed 40 kindergarteners giving their smiling teacher the bird. I really need to always carry a camera.

I can understand spoken Japanese reasonably well, but my speaking ability is miserable. Generally I understand what someone wants of me, I just can't communicate my answer. I feel like one of those cinematic coma patients who can hear everything their tearful relatives are saying, but tragically they can't signal a response, if only they could just blink their eyelids or wiggle a toe for "yes"...! Sometimes I picture the late '80s Metallica video for "One." If only a waving pinkie finger could be universally understood to mean, "I know you're talking about me, now stop it." I'm a language teacher, I could just start the movement myself. Others, please feel free to join me.

Still lacking a car, I've lately been learning certain other useful skills. No new skill comes easily here, but these are to a longish-term resident in Japan second in usefulness only to chopsticks: using public transportation, and riding a bicycle while holding an umbrella. Neither of these things are nearly as simple as they ought to be, but I've put off learning them far too long, and necessity has finally won.

Japan is a windy, rainy country, and a bike ride with an umbrella can be tricky. Uniformed schoolboys do it with cool nonchalant ease, old women pull it off with the grace of years, but my first time out got me only cramped wrists from battling windthrusts caught in my umbrella, a bicycle bell-shaped wound on my hand from over-gripping for balance, and futilely-soaked clothing after all. The ride back home was a little better, but I'm viewing my driver's license test retake on Wednesday with new desperation, especially after seeing this week's weather forecast.

Bike riding is fun for me as slow, sunny recreation, or even stress-releasing rockhopping rides over fast back country roads, but carless, if the weather's bad, I would really prefer to go on foot. Unfortunately, I don't live in one of those cool Japanese cities with subways. My bus ride to work involves catching an infrequent one from a stop half a kilometer away, a ride in the opposite direction from my destination, a transfer downtown after a lengthy wait, and a second bus which takes me back in the direction of my home, then finally another 10 minute walk up a busy street, all while carrying bagfuls of flashcards and toys, small children I know yelling my name from passing cars as I go. When I arrive, it's recess, and the children want to know why I'm too winded to chase them, and why I have such deep red bagstrap-shaped marks on my shoulders. I want to tell them to start studying NOW for their driving tests.

Bus riding is a complicated skill too, one which should ideally be tackled in steps, if at all possible. Finding out and remembering the name of the area you're going to is an admirable conquest, but it's not enough, you must also know which Chinese character represents it. You've got to find a bus stop, my advice: they're usually hidden behind bushes or in alleys, look there first. Find the Chinese character of your destination from among the hundreds written on the sign at the stop, or guess which alternate one might lead to one of the transfer points that will eventually get you there. Sometimes darts are useful for this, but make sure no one's too near when you start throwing them. Be sure to jump out of the bush your bus stop is in before the bus comes by so the driver will see you.

Get on at the back, get off at the front. It's no use standing in the doorway and asking the bus driver if he's going your way, because he won't be sitting there. Find the number on the ticket you should have known to grab when you got on, to find the distance ridden you must pay for when you go. Listen carefully for the name of your stop among the constant chattering of advertisements and event announcements from the P.A. Make sure you know exactly which stop to ring for, because the one after it won't be for several miles. And be sure to buy yourself the treat of your choice if you actually get to your destination, because by god, you deserve it.

Now go study for your driver's test.

I've been thinking a lot about Japanese English lately, as it's mostly the only type I encounter. One of the more common Japanese English phrases is "Let's enjoy _____." Let's enjoy happy fun bowling, let's enjoy the shopping, let's enjoy a delicious fruits, like that. No one ever says things like this in native English, so I've wondered how the phrase came about in Japan. The most obvious explanation would be a direct translation of the equivalent Japanese into English.

There's another explanation though, perhaps. Japan is, to an American college graduate of Generation X for instance, shockingly devoid of irony and sarcasm. Japan is very earnest, which is partly why it can feel so surreal. At times I feel I've stepped onto the set of a corny 50s musical, the neat, matching unselfconscious uniforms, the genuine enthusiasm, the honest-to-god unfeigned perkiness. It has the air of someone about to be sarcastic or kitschy, and I keep expecting that sly rolling-of-eyes, but no one ever gives it. I've seen after-gig punk rock bands become thrilled to gather in someone's living room for a night of stone-cold sober video bowling, on more than one occasion. Japanese don't do karaoke out of self-mocking irony, but they do take singing lessons.

"Let's enjoy _____" may not be an awkwardly phrased pseudo-English statement after all, but a perfectly phrased Japanese sentiment. People here really do seem to enjoy doing things together, on cue, and decisively. I've learned to do my eye-rolling at home, and even then just to stay in practice. The genuine enthusiasm-thing is really growing on me.

Having no car and no Internet and living at least an hour from anyone you know sure can make you feel far from home.

The news last night consisted only of repeated showings of grainy video of three blindfolded Japanese civilians being held hostage in Iraq: one man and one woman both in their early 30s, and one man of only 18. These three will be killed in three days if Japan does not pull its "self-defense" troops out of Iraq. So far, Japan is saying troops will remain where they are. America officially of course is praising Japan's "courage." For myself, I anticipate increasingly aggressive questions about politics from relative strangers in local bars, none of which am I in any position or mood to answer. Being socially shamed for the color of your passport makes you feel pretty far from home too.

The use of space in Japan impresses me. Japan has a population roughly half of America's, on an island the size of California, by some accounts only 11% of which is habitable. Every inch then of this precious space is used. With the exception of the northernmost frigid island of Hokkaido, every inch of Japan that can be useful is, and there is none of the empty transition space so often found in America. Just exactly where the parking lot ends is where the rice field begins. Above the corner shop, a family dwelling. Below the train station, a shopping mall. At the edge of the cemetery, a playground.

This makes for fascinating train rides. Throughout the country, it is difficult to count even very quickly to ten looking out the window without the scenery changing drastically. 1,2,3,4, rice field, 1,2,3, construction site, 1,2, Buddhist temple, 1,2,3,4, forest, 1,2,3,shopping mall, 1,2,3,4,5, neighborhood. Every inch is something, and rarely seems to have any relation to the thing next to it.

I spent a lot of time on trains this last week, from Osaka to Nagoya to Gifu to Takayama to Nara to Kyoto. My mom was here too short a time to comfortably fit the itinerary I've been building for her in my mind for the past two years, but we made an admirable dent in it.

I'm now staying at a cheap guesthouse in central Kyoto, which also makes an admirable use of space. No inch is wasted in the dormitory room I'm using, where 12 women sleep as motionlessly as possible in a tatami room laid mattress to mattress, with no room for even a footpath once everyone is in bed. I had to leave my backpack in a hallway last night, as I am taller than the average Japanese guest, and my length required the entire mattress lest someone have to sleep on the soles of my feet.

Staying in the cheaper part of town makes it more difficult to find dinner after dark. How was I to know that neither the "Chinese Restaurant" nor the "Thai Cafe" served any actual food? It took me a moment to understand the expression of a passing businessman when I took a pink folded paper "menu" from a box outside the heavily-curtained door, but once I glanced over the offerings, it made perfect sense. Let's just say none of the "entrees" really appealed to me, and they were generally beyond my dinner budget range anyway.

I spent yesterday at Himeji-jo, a spectacular castle made almost inconceivable by the cherry blossoms. It is difficult to express the sight of a park full of Japanese cherry blossoms to someone who has never seen them, there just aren't words. Everything from eye-level to the furthest reaches of sight are pillowed in an ephemeral pinkish-greyish-white, and it's impossible to feel quite fully awake for all the dreamlike-ness.

Tomorrow I must return home to wilting neglected plants and a dead Internet connection and a failed driving test and lesson plans and work, but today is sunny and breezy and dreamy, with the promise of unknown temples and unexplored lanes, cherry blossoms and parasols, losing and then finding myself again, over and over and over.