Confessions of a Grade School Role Model

A quote from a story on Abu Ghraib at CBS News' site:

"The elixir of power, the elixir of believing that you're helping the CIA, for God's sake, when you're from a small town in Virginia, that's intoxicating,” says [Sgt. Chip Frederick's attorney Gary] Myers. “And so, good guys sometimes do things believing that they are being of assistance and helping people they view as important."

It's interesting what happens to this quote if you replace the words "CIA" and "Virginia" with, say, German equivalents circa 1933, and then while you're still feeling that anger, quickly re-replace with "America." I remember how self-righteous history students can get during the 1940s chapter when the "but how could the people just let that happen?" question inevitably comes up. I remember how every member of the class would either shake their head in disbelief and say, "If I were there, I would never have gone along with it," or would say nothing and only look very thoughtful and sad. Whether you take this quote as the genuine naivety of a hapless government pawn, or as an example of the twisted blame-shifting characteristic of modern American culture, either way, it's horrifying.

I attended an arts recital on Saturday at a cultural center in Nagoya, where mostly old ladies gathered to hear other old ladies play traditional instruments and sing atunal hymns and perform strange slow dances with fans. The performers were of varying talent, but mostly it was very interesting. During a song by one of the lesser skilled players, I chanced to look around the audience, where I noticed a middle-aged woman two rows ahead, playing air shamisen. I'm used to seeing air guitar, sure. I guess I'd just never thought about how any instrument could be played imaginarily in the air.

Japanese daily life is often controlled by sound cues. Bells on a huge PA system somewhere in the persimmon orchards near my apartment tell unseen distant employees when to begin and cease their workdays. Stores play "Auld Lange Syne" as a warning they will soon close. Electronic children's lullabies accompany pedestrians through crosswalks. Chimes awaken sleeping train passengers at important stops. And a kindergarten classroom is practically a stage musical.

An adult student of mine a few years ago was interviewing for a job as a kindergarten teacher, and I can't remember how long I laughed when she told me she had to take a piano test. Playing the piano is as much part of a Japanese kindergarten teacher's repertoire as erasing crayon marks, wiping noses, and locating dry pants, and after starting my current job, I quickly saw why.

Every morning, the Japanese kindergarten teacher begins her day at the piano. She may have no desk, but presides over her charges from the piano bench. The children issue in from schoolbuses and put up their bags and uniform jackets and hats. A few chords from the piano tell them to sit down. Another few chords tell them to turn their chairs toward the front of the classroom, and yet another to stand up in unison. A few introductory notes begins their Morning Greeting Song with its synchronous bowing and gesturing, and the closing notes signal to be seated. The Class Helper Song tells three children chosen the previous day to go to the front of the class, and upon hearing the piano's command, they introduce themselves and bow to the class. In unison, the class greets them and tells them to do their best, and the chosen three respond in unison that they will. Piano keys tell them to sit down again, and they sit just as their classmates do, unanimously with their feet forward and their hands either flat on their laps or held behind their backs, however the piano has instructed. Nearly 15 minutes into class, the teacher has yet to speak; her piano has done all the talking.

In the fall, children prepare for their winter music performance. Before and after they sing, they learn to bow in unison, the cue again given by the piano. I spend the first part of my weekdays at two different kindergartens, and I was at the first one on the day the second one began practicing their bows. One afternoon I was sitting in the auditorium floor watching five-year old classes practice filing on and off stage and bowing, and when the teacher at the piano played the cue for the children on stage to bow, I, without even thinking, stood up. It was a completely automatic and impulsive response; this school's bowing cue was very similar to the other school's standing cue, and I was so conditioned I stood without thinking.

The extent of my conditioning scared me, I hadn't even realized it had happened. I take some pride in what I think of as my natural rebelliousness, and even the hint of mental conditioning makes me resentful. Sure it was a tiny thing, I stood to the cue of a piano, but the idea! It makes sense particularly in my circumstances: not always understanding words, I rely greatly on other cues -- gestures, facial expressions, visual associations, tones, inferences, common sense, yet I was still appalled to be so easily moved into unthinking action. And it wasn't even the right one! Although given my rebellious bent, maybe that was good...

It makes me wonder about the extent of the conditioning in Japanese culture at large. I imagine the possibilities of a piano and a behemoth-sized amplified sound system. Would it be possible to make the entire population of Japan sit down facing the same direction at once? Would the ground shake? How many would wait for the cue to stand up again? Would I be among them?

There was a hot debate at the four-year olds' lunch table today about whether the average person has 9 or 10 fingers. The controversy arose when it was realized that the 9-fingers theorist had failed to count the finger he was using to count with, on discovery of which the disagreement was peacefully resolved.

Listening to this argument made me realize how many pieces of knowledge, once learned, are quickly taken for granted. How we come into the world knowing nothing, really really nothing, and move on from there. And most urgently, it made me think about what it's been like living in Japan.

The Japanese teachers I work with probably think I'm a little spacey, a little slow, and often very tired. I probably have a dazed look on my face a lot, and I'm sure they find I have a hard time paying attention very long and my mind is often very far away. But I doubt they understand what it is to live with your thumb perpetually dog-earing your mental dictionary, checking your conduct against your inner cultural encyclopedia, and all the while maintaining good humor as the inveterate butt of jokes. They probably don't appreciate that it takes a lot of energy to live in a foreign culture, and that it tires me. Nothing is easy, and there is no going home after a long day of work and relaxing with a few mindless chores; these chores take tremendous energy, energy which my commonsense tells me is ridiculous to have to expend.

I used to find washing my car relaxing: spray it down with the garden hose, wax on, wax off. Now, washing my car involves unscrambling daunting kanji menus at the automat while impatient sedans glare from behind me in line. I can't read the directions on the easy instant food, so I instead spend a lot of time cooking unfamiliar vegetables in indecipherable bottled sauces for one, the slow way. I pay more at full-service gas stations to spare myself the frustration of the Japanese menus at the self-serve pump, and even then, just when I think I've got the order of questions they usually ask me figured out and how to answer them, they still sometimes throw me for a loop. When I eat out, I usually order the same thing, because it's the one on the menu I can read, and can comprehend as a viable food. Everything I do seems to makes me tired.

The obvious thing to do, I suppose, short of giving up and moving away, would be to study more Japanese. The easier thing though is to tell myself more excuses why I don't. Frankly, after a full work day of hearing it, reading it, and attempting to speak it, the last thing I feel like doing is going home and beating my head against the language barrier for yet another hour, and usually I just lay where I fall on the living room floor and watch the latest straight-to-video from Hollywood, savoring every poorly-acted morsel of English. When I do motivate myself to open a textbook, I become frustrated that even though I've just spent an hour memorizing it, it could be years before I get the chance to use my new phrase, "Is this elevator working?" on a real person.

For the record, here it is anyway: Kono erabeta ugoitemasuka?

That really didn't make me feel that much better.

A couple favorite moments at kindergarten:

1) A five year old boy runs at me in the hallway, and stops abruptly a few feet away. He's in my afterschool English class, where we've just been studying nature words: "tree, " "flower," "rock," etc.

He points at me and says very deliberately in English, "Tree." He points with similar deliberation at himself, and, also in English says, "Monkey."

Then he runs and jumps up on me, arms around my neck, legs around my waist, hops back down, and scampers away, leaving me standing alone, quite stunned.

2) A three year old boy at lunchtime is eating with chopsticks. Most three year olds aren't so good yet with chopsticks and use spoons, but this one is really trying. He somehow breaks the tip off a chopstick while eating. He stares at the broken end very calmly, his eyes signal some kind of resolution, and he chomps down on the other chopstick, breaking its end off too. He looks up at me satisfied and says in Japanese, "Same," gesturing at the now-matching pair, and continues eating.

Japan seems to think differently about food. As an American, to me food should smell good, look good, taste good, be enjoyable, and hopefully be covered in cheese. Japan seems to have this weird hangup about "nutrition" and "health" though, and it often gets in the way of my culinary enjoyment.

Take natto, for instance, but only metaphorically. Don't actually eat it. There's no pretty, euphemistic way to describe rotting soybeans, slimy in their decomposition, and smelly like a Satanic fart, and it seems to be Japanese people's favorite food to taunt Westerners with. Stay in Japan even a few days, and someone's bound to hit you with, "Do you like Japanese food?", to which you'll obligingly and optimistically gush, "Yes!". Then they'll smile conspiratorially and say, "Do you like... hee hee... sneeeeer... natto?!" just so they can watch you screw up your face and make a gagging noise while they laugh. And then, as if it's part of some mandatory national anthemic recitation, they'll always say, "But it's healthy!!"

Japanese people excuse a lot of otherwise assetless foods by saying, "It's healthy!" To me, this always sounds like, "Yeah, but she's got a great personality!" I received a box of small assorted crackers from someone a few weeks ago, gifts of food are common, and part of the assortment included crackers topped with tiny whole fish, heads and all, a common food here I always find deeply disturbing. I gave them to a Japanese friend yesterday, I asked if he liked them, and he said, "Yeah, they have lots of calcium!" I tried to reason with him, "Yeah, but... heads. Sorry, but eyes trumps calcium. Cheese doesn't have eyes. I like cheese." He just laughed and popped a fish head between his teeth. Sure he'll probably live forever, but at least I don't have to eat any fish heads.

Judging from some of the google searches that lead people to this site, and a bit of commonsense intuition on my own part, there is a widespread fetish among English speakers for Japanese onsen bathing. And why not? The idea of dozens of naked Japanese women soaping up and bathing together in a big steamy communal pool has a certain obvious allure. And the rotemburo, the open-outdoors version of the onsen, even more so. That must be why each of the three times I've visited a rotemburo, I've seen a lone man with a camera hiding in the nearby bushes.

The reality of the rotemburo probably doesn't hold up though. There is no age limit or hipness-scrutinizing bouncer at the rotemburo, and the majority of the bathers appear to be there to ease their old age-pains or take a relaxing afternoon off away from the grandchildren. For instance, at the rotemburo I visited this past week, the only photo the man in the bushes could have gotten would be a grouping of particularly flabby 70-somethings, and me, well underwater, giving him the bird.