In a couple of years

I’ve been in Japan for 2 years (and something something days); or, as the Japanese would say, “It has become my third year.” This sounds strange in English, but perfectly fine in Japanese. Such is the headache of a direct translation. And as I learn more of the language, I’m having increasing trouble reconciling it with English.

So ends the yearly update on my life in Japan.

Unrelated, I went to Tokyo last week. It was fantastic. It’s about the size of your imagination multiplied by ten. My only regret was not going there for a longer time, or more often in the past.

What were the highlights? If you ran into me on the street and I had about fifteen seconds to answer, I’d list all the obvious things: Tokyo Tower, Meiji Jingu Shrine, shopping, food, the random Pikachu festival that took me unawares, the fact that a Cookie Time café exists in Tokyo but not in New Zealand, and so on. The trains were also fascinating: the jingles that tell you when the next one’s arriving, the arrows that inform you exactly which side of the stairwell you should walk on when going up or down, and the phenomenon of a hundred and ten people crammed into a car yet remaining perfectly silent, staring into their phones.

The Pikachu that took me unawares. Unsurprisingly, Pikachu was far more popular than Eevee, the other star of the festival.

I might list the lowlights, like the heat, or losing my ICOCA card with 3000-ish yen on it – that’s a lot of train rides! But shou ga nai (it can’t be helped). I bought a new card and deigned not to deposit quite so much yen into it. This was smarter.

But a list like this is superficial. It’s like ingredients in a recipe: predictable and almost meaningless.

The actual highlight was when I stumbled upon a Manuka honey store in the Red Brick Warehouse. Manuka honey is produced from bees that pollinate the New Zealand Manuka bush. It's known for its medicinal properties as much as its steep price. In the store, a clerk saw me scrutinising the photos of New Zealand’s countryside (feat. photobombing sheep). My friend told the clerk that I’m from New Zealand. His eyes beamed, he let out a surprised “Hehhh? Sou desu ka?” (What? Really?), whipped out his phone and proceeded to show me pictures from his work trip to New Zealand last year. He told me he loves the place, was surprised by its perfectly straight roads amidst farmlands, and that he enjoyed the six-hour drive from Christchurch to Nelson, where the company has its home base. He said he’s a Star Alliance gold member, loves Air New Zealand and said he’d visit again if only he were able to take annual leave. He told me that if I ever want to live in Tokyo, I’m welcome to work at his store. I said, “great!”

One of the views from Tokyo Tower.

He’s the second person I met that day who’d visited NZ and loved it. The first was a junior high school teacher who quit due to the lack of time off and is now a counsellor for students wanting to study abroad. She said she fell in love with NZ when, while teaching, she went there for a few weeks to work in a small school. Now, even though she’s used to life in Tokyo, she much prefers the town of three thousand residents in which she stayed, the same region where I was born. She’s going there again next month.

It was great to visit this red brick warehouse. The shops there have such bizarre and fascinating things, like pieces of fake bread to stick over your light switch, and plastic animals with which to accessorise your iPhone charger. Not to mention, the ricotta hot cakes and wagyu beef burger were among the best pancakes and burger I’ve ever had. But nothing can replace the people I happened to meet and the conversations we happened to have. These alone made the whole experience far more memorable and, in hindsight, worthwhile.

The bread is landscape, thus so is this photo.

A few other jots regarding Tokyo:

      -        The frequency of people shorter than me increased a thousand-fold

      -        The frequency of foreigners increased a thousand-fold

      -        I was anonymous

This third factor was one of the main motivators to do a bit of sightseeing in the first place, to leave Gotsu for a bit. See, in the past year, my anonymity in this small town has dwindled to approximately zero. And it’s surprisingly unsettling. Other than at school or private events, I feel a lot of pressure whenever I enter the public space. The daily reality of “people staring” seems to be the main cause of this, but there’s also parents of students who say nothing when I greet them, or certain teachers who at times ignore me entirely. It makes me wonder what they’re thinking – if they’re just tired and don’t have the time, or if it’s something else. And while I manage to shrug off just enough self-consciousness to do everything I need to do, it remains with me a lot of the time, primarily if I’m by myself. I already know why this is: a group provides a source of belonging, which is something all of us, whether we know it or not, seek out. This belonging that’s felt in a group immunises me to the ‘judgements’, but only lasts as long as we’re together. Then, when I’m alone again, I feel ‘singled out’, in a way, by dint of all the staring.

I’m laughing to myself as I type this, because writing it all down makes it seem a bit silly and over-dramatic. Perhaps this process of writing could become a more reliable means of immunisation.

I’m emboldened when I think of others I’ve talked to who share the same feelings, including Japanese teachers I highly respect. I thought they were invincible, yet their own self-confidence is similarly sapped when they feel (regardless if those feelings reflect reality) the cold-eye judgements of those around them. In the least, I’m far from the only one, which makes it all a little bit more OK.

There are a lot of factors involved in these experiences. One of these is that Japanese people tend to keep a straight face a lot more often than western people. Contrarily, westerners both frown and smile on a far more frequent basis. When two familiar faces meet eyes, the thing to do is smile, but in Japan, the thing to do is nothing at all. The straight face is immoveable. Not always, but often.

This expressionlessness is entirely normal here, mind you, meaning that it’s no proper reason for me to infer that the person to whom that face belongs is thinking something negative. Yet, for whatever reason, my emotions and my intellect are at odds.

So as with a year ago, when all of this was a little less intense (because I was less -nonymous), I’m aware that this is entirely my problem and not the rest of Gotsu’s. But, as I’ve learned, it’s an issue that many people in the same situation face.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s nice to see famliar faces. People whom I’ve met properly and whose names I know are always a delight to meet whether it’s planned or by chance. They’re friendly and talkative, and just this week one of them invited me to a barbecue that they were having the same evening.

There’s also Seiji the chiropractor, who gave me watermelon when I last visited, and, a while before that, boar meat. Seiji likes to hunt, you see. And his new assistant used to be an English teacher, so is able to convey those medical terms I don’t understand. They make a fantastic team, though I do feel a bit bad for the customers to whom he doesn’t give random gifts.

There’s also Takatsuno Elementary School, the best school I’ve ever known. Some of the teachers have decided that Wednesdays and Thursdays – the days I go to that school – are ‘English day’, and try their best to communicate with each other in English whether I’m present or not. They never get very far, but it’s not about how far they get.

The kids are also beyond amazing. I always tell people that before coming to Japan I never really liked children. Now? Well, let’s just say that I’ve never undergone so great a character shift. I gave the fifth graders summer holiday homework, and they all said “Thank you!” with bright eyes and grins on their faces, and without a single teacher prompting them. I was dumbfounded, and elated.

Coming to this school never fails to lift my spirits. The teachers with their warm smiles, who laugh at each other’s futile attempts at English and my often okashii (strange) display of Japanese, invoke a warm atmosphere that makes you feel right at home. They and the students remind me that there’s a lot to be grateful for.

And at the end of the day, with all the flat faces, the strange looks and random gifts, perhaps that’s the greatest immunisation of all. Gratitude.