The cast of characters here at Shikoku is colorful. My closest friend so far has been Hideki, the young man from the Office of International Programs who was assigned to help me acclimate. He has taught me to make yakisoba and Japanese-style curry and provided entrée to the school’s touch rugby team. On weekend evenings Hideki and I get together and debate about what movie to watch: I want to watch Japanese movies, he wants to watch American. I’ve also become close with Okada sensai, the head of the OIP office, who is as warm and gracious a host as one could ask for. She is cut out perfectly for her work, never letting a conversation lag even in her second language. It has been said that embarrassment is contagious so we all have an interest in avoiding it; this is especially true in Japan. Okada sensai is thankfully magnanimous when faced with potential embarrassments. When we eat together she studiously ignores my awkward deployment of chopsticks, even when I resort to pulling apart chicken wings with my fingers American-style. The office next to my own is occupied by Tanaka sensai, a Blake scholar and martial arts expert who coaches the school’s kendo team. Tanaka is sixty five but looks forty five, with a full head of jet black hair and a naughty glimmer in his eye. Charismatic to the point of being almost certifiable, Tanaka likes to humbly remind newcomers of his age and then challenge them to grab his wrist (the tighter you hold on the more it will hurt). He brought me out for dinner and drinks (a lot of both) and I eventually found myself eating raw horse meat and other unmentionables.
Then there is Nagao sensai, a Shakespearean who joined Shikoku’s faculty after reaching the retirement age of 63 in his previous post at prestigious Hokkaido University. Nagao has a keen sense of humor that is shot through with Anglo-American influences even as it turns back upon his own culture and upon himself. His laughter focuses on two principle objects: the physical pratfall, and the momentary social death of collective embarrassment. For the latter he turns to the late-19th century British humorist Jerome K. Jerome. “A German Comic Song,” Nagao’s favorite set-piece from Jerome’s classic Three Men in a Boat, tells of British partygoers who are led to believe that the dirge sung by a visiting German musician is actually a comic song; in short it’s a tale about the risks of laughing without knowing what one’s laughing at. “Japanese people do that a lot,” Nagao tells me. He notes how when he recites English classics by Sterne or Swift in the classroom, his less fluent students often laugh in a rhythm that follows his own laughter rather than anything in the book. Nagao admits to having carried on the same pretense while studying at Cambridge in his younger days, before he’d mastered English. The fear of having one’s polite reactions exposed as false—or worse, as utterly impolite—seems to loom large in the Japanese psyche. It points to the possibility that their sacred social rules to behave politely and to avoid embarrassment might run headlong into one another.
The other primary source of Nagao’s laughter is physical comedy, and for this he resorts to Chaplin. He takes particular pleasure in the factory scene from Modern Times where Chaplin is rigged up with a feeding machine in lieu of a lunch hour, which Nagao takes as an allegory for the creeping domination of workers and bodies via scientific management. “We laugh every time a person gives us the impression of being a thing,” wrote Henri Bergson (whose philosophy happens to be the expertise of Taniguchi sensai, a young professor who earned her Ph.D. at the nation’s top university in Tokyo and who occupies the office directly below Nagao’s). The Chaplin factory scene is iconic in the U.S. and has been imitated endlessly, most famously in the role-switching episode of “I Love Lucy,” where Lucille Ball and Vivian Vance hopelessly try to keep up their wrapping duties on a candy factory’s assembly line. Nor can it fail to resonate in Japan’s service economy, where “bowing machines” are used to train department store employees to bend their bodies to the exact number of degrees when bowing.
The behavior of consumers can seem as regimented as that of the workers who serve them, yet it’s hard to complain about such regimentation when one is so patently benefiting from it. Saginaw really seems to get the better part of its sister-city deal with Tokushima. To take one instance, we don’t have a decent bakery at home, yet here in a culture that I’d always assumed got its carb fix from rice and noodles, there are several excellent bakeries with all manner of breads and pastries. It’s striking just how smoothly the gears of consumption turn here; it must be awfully hard being a Marxist in Japan. This can get a little oppressive, as they seem to emulate and even surpass us nowadays in terms of compulsory consumerism. Japan has a sort of potlatch mentality to begin with; there is definitely status in who can spend the most on himself and others (which presents a challenge to my own deeply ingrained propensity for freeloading). As this mentality dovetails with a more modern brand of consumer-driven hyper-capitalism, the result is a pervasive pushiness to eat, drink, and spend more than the next guy. The other night after eight or so hours of imbibing and engorging I headed home in a taxi with Tanaka sensai and he proposed a stop at the ramen shop. I am usually the first to jump at a 2 am snack but I politely refused, fearing it would put me over the edge. “But you are American!” he protested, as if this endowed me with superhuman powers of expenditure.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
photo
The view from my office window with the bridge and Tokushima city in the distance. The guest house is barely visible, the closest in the row of houses on the right.
week 1
When I told a much younger colleague I was going to Japan she suggested I should keep a blog. Those who know me are well aware how easy it is for me to write, the words just shoot right out of my fingertips (not). But it does seem like a good way to update people and to keep a record of my impressions. Don’t hold it against me if it is unpolished and seldom updated.
I flew out of Michigan last Sunday and arrived here in Tokushima on Tuesday. We were stuck on the airplane in Detroit for four hours before taking off. Evidently a gasket on one of the air conditioners was leaking and a replacement part had to be flown in from Minneapolis. The loquacious pilot gave us constant updates, always giving the impression that our departure was just a few minutes away. When we finally left I spent the twelve hour flight wondering if I’d make my connection from Tokyo to Osaka. As it happened we missed it by just a few minutes. Some nice young ladies gathered all the Osaka passengers as we deplaned and whisked us to another gate, where a small plane was brought in for us within the hour. Detroit and Tokyo: there’s a study in contrasts. As compensation for our troubles we were given $10 vouchers , which bought me precisely three pieces of salmon at the airport sushi bar.
I stayed at the airport hotel in Osaka overnight. The highlight here was the “washlet,” a toilet with built in seat warmer and bidet (apparently something like 40 percent of Japanese homes have them). I took the bus to Tokushima in the morning and was greeted at the bus station by Okada sensai, head of the Office of International Programs, and Rob Luxton, a Canadian who teaches English here. We went out for lunch – I had oyako-don, which translates to parent and child bowl, chicken and raw egg over rice, along with a bowl of udon noodles. Then I was shown to the guest house. It’s a charming little place with a living room, kitchen, dining room, small office, and two bedrooms upstairs. In real estate ads here the size of rooms is measured in tatami mats (which measure about 3 x 6 feet). The living room is 9 1/2 mats, the dining room is six mats, the master bedroom is six mats and the other bedroom is 4 1/2.
We stopped by the OIP office, where I was introduced to Junko, my contact here before arriving, and Hideki, a sharp and courteous young man who I was told would be my “slave.” I was then shown to my office. I will be housed in the English department. To one side of me is Tanaka sensai, a William Blake expert, and to the other is Nagao sensai, a Shakespeare expert and fan of Charlie Chaplin. My office overlooks the Yoshino River and the Yoshinogawa Bridge and, across the bridge, the city of Tokushima.
Hideki and I have already spent a lot of time together. He has shown me around the neighborhood: there are some restaurants and bars around the university, and a little farther afield the Fuji Grand plaza, a supermarket and mall. Among the shops is a youth-oriented, faux-hipster place (along the lines of Spencer’s Gifts or maybe Hot Topic in the U.S.) called the Village Vanguard. Evidently it is a big chain – when I explained to Hideki that the name came from a 70-year-old jazz club in New York he was amused. My kids will happy to know that the Fuji Grand food court houses a KFC, McDonalds, Haagan-Daz, and Mister Donut.
Okada sensai was good enough to bring me out for food and drinks downtown on my second evening here. She introduced me to her friend, a nurse who I am hoping will be able to give Amy a tour of a Japanese hospital when she arrives. We also made plans that in early May, Okada sensai’s friend and her husband would bring me to the Osamu Tezuka museum in Kobe (creator of Astro Boy and Gigantor, here called Tetsujin 28-go). I also met the higher-ups last week: President Fukuoka and Chairman Satoh, each of whom I gave an SVSU desk set and a copy of my karaoke book.
There is a shed with two bicycles by my guest house. Over the weekend I rode to the Fuji Grand to buy groceries and ventured across the river and into the city a couple of times. For whatever reason I was led to believe this area was a backwater before arriving. I was mistaken: it is a nice-sized city, small enough to navigate very easily by bicycle but large enough to accommodate a great variety of food, shopping, and nightlife.
I am already settling into a pleasant routine here. I have tried my hand at Japanese cooking a couple of times with Hideki’s guidance. I bought a nice pair of brown velour shoes with no laces, the better to slip off and on when entering the house. I’m getting used to taking a shower while sitting on a stool and separating my garbage into 17 categories. I get to watch Japanese baseball games in the evening and American games in the morning. The TV networks here broadcast U.S. games in which Japanese players are playing. U.S. baseball is the reference point for renown and excellence. The attitude was brought home to me when Nagao sensai came into my office and glanced at a newspaper on my desk with a picture on the front page of Baltimore Orioles hurler Koji Uehara pitching to the Yankees’ Hideki Matsui. He got very excited then let out a disappointed laugh when he realized it was the Daily Yomiuri, an English-language Japanese paper, and not some American paper that I had brought with me. The notion that a faceoff between these former Yomiuri Giants teammates would be front page news in the States was wishful thinking on his part. (I have endeared myself to Nagao with my Columbia English degree and full year of Shakespeare. I’ve already clocked several hours in his office talking about this and that and enjoying the wafting smoke of his pipe.)
Cycling through Tokushima, I find myself succumbing to nostalgia that’s tinged with a little sadness. The city has an ethos akin to a long-ago America I barely remember, confident and vibrant yet also humble and workaday. Yesterday I explored Sogo, the chic eight-floor department store located across from the train station along Tokushima’s bustling central square. The salesgirls bow and chant “irassahimase” as you walk through the door. It reminds me of the effortless glamour of America’s old downtowns, of what Hudson’s in Detroit must once have been like, or even Sullivan’s near my old hometown in Liberty, New York. At the sushi bar Hideki and his girlfriend brought me to, the piped-in music consisted of 60s-era standards by B-list nightclub acts. Little plates of sushi came around on a conveyor belt. We took what we wanted and the waitress later surveyed the empty, color-coded plates piled in front of us to tally our check. It was as ingeniously “Fordist” and efficiently gratifying a meal as I’ve had in some time. To a Westerner Japan’s cities can seem pleasantly reposed in a time warp of high modernism and infinite optimism.
Right now my big challenge is to keep my euphoria in check and do the things I have to do. I still have about 50 papers to grade from back in Michigan and I’m finding it awfully hard to concentrate on them. And of course I also want to put my best foot forward in classes here. I have only had one class so far. Predictably, the students didn’t volunteer much. When my entreaties of “Do you understand?” were met with silence, it was hard to know if they didn’t understand or if they were just afraid of me. I am getting some good advice from others here on dealing with the students. Hopefully I’ll be able to report more success on that front soon.
I flew out of Michigan last Sunday and arrived here in Tokushima on Tuesday. We were stuck on the airplane in Detroit for four hours before taking off. Evidently a gasket on one of the air conditioners was leaking and a replacement part had to be flown in from Minneapolis. The loquacious pilot gave us constant updates, always giving the impression that our departure was just a few minutes away. When we finally left I spent the twelve hour flight wondering if I’d make my connection from Tokyo to Osaka. As it happened we missed it by just a few minutes. Some nice young ladies gathered all the Osaka passengers as we deplaned and whisked us to another gate, where a small plane was brought in for us within the hour. Detroit and Tokyo: there’s a study in contrasts. As compensation for our troubles we were given $10 vouchers , which bought me precisely three pieces of salmon at the airport sushi bar.
I stayed at the airport hotel in Osaka overnight. The highlight here was the “washlet,” a toilet with built in seat warmer and bidet (apparently something like 40 percent of Japanese homes have them). I took the bus to Tokushima in the morning and was greeted at the bus station by Okada sensai, head of the Office of International Programs, and Rob Luxton, a Canadian who teaches English here. We went out for lunch – I had oyako-don, which translates to parent and child bowl, chicken and raw egg over rice, along with a bowl of udon noodles. Then I was shown to the guest house. It’s a charming little place with a living room, kitchen, dining room, small office, and two bedrooms upstairs. In real estate ads here the size of rooms is measured in tatami mats (which measure about 3 x 6 feet). The living room is 9 1/2 mats, the dining room is six mats, the master bedroom is six mats and the other bedroom is 4 1/2.
We stopped by the OIP office, where I was introduced to Junko, my contact here before arriving, and Hideki, a sharp and courteous young man who I was told would be my “slave.” I was then shown to my office. I will be housed in the English department. To one side of me is Tanaka sensai, a William Blake expert, and to the other is Nagao sensai, a Shakespeare expert and fan of Charlie Chaplin. My office overlooks the Yoshino River and the Yoshinogawa Bridge and, across the bridge, the city of Tokushima.
Hideki and I have already spent a lot of time together. He has shown me around the neighborhood: there are some restaurants and bars around the university, and a little farther afield the Fuji Grand plaza, a supermarket and mall. Among the shops is a youth-oriented, faux-hipster place (along the lines of Spencer’s Gifts or maybe Hot Topic in the U.S.) called the Village Vanguard. Evidently it is a big chain – when I explained to Hideki that the name came from a 70-year-old jazz club in New York he was amused. My kids will happy to know that the Fuji Grand food court houses a KFC, McDonalds, Haagan-Daz, and Mister Donut.
Okada sensai was good enough to bring me out for food and drinks downtown on my second evening here. She introduced me to her friend, a nurse who I am hoping will be able to give Amy a tour of a Japanese hospital when she arrives. We also made plans that in early May, Okada sensai’s friend and her husband would bring me to the Osamu Tezuka museum in Kobe (creator of Astro Boy and Gigantor, here called Tetsujin 28-go). I also met the higher-ups last week: President Fukuoka and Chairman Satoh, each of whom I gave an SVSU desk set and a copy of my karaoke book.
There is a shed with two bicycles by my guest house. Over the weekend I rode to the Fuji Grand to buy groceries and ventured across the river and into the city a couple of times. For whatever reason I was led to believe this area was a backwater before arriving. I was mistaken: it is a nice-sized city, small enough to navigate very easily by bicycle but large enough to accommodate a great variety of food, shopping, and nightlife.
I am already settling into a pleasant routine here. I have tried my hand at Japanese cooking a couple of times with Hideki’s guidance. I bought a nice pair of brown velour shoes with no laces, the better to slip off and on when entering the house. I’m getting used to taking a shower while sitting on a stool and separating my garbage into 17 categories. I get to watch Japanese baseball games in the evening and American games in the morning. The TV networks here broadcast U.S. games in which Japanese players are playing. U.S. baseball is the reference point for renown and excellence. The attitude was brought home to me when Nagao sensai came into my office and glanced at a newspaper on my desk with a picture on the front page of Baltimore Orioles hurler Koji Uehara pitching to the Yankees’ Hideki Matsui. He got very excited then let out a disappointed laugh when he realized it was the Daily Yomiuri, an English-language Japanese paper, and not some American paper that I had brought with me. The notion that a faceoff between these former Yomiuri Giants teammates would be front page news in the States was wishful thinking on his part. (I have endeared myself to Nagao with my Columbia English degree and full year of Shakespeare. I’ve already clocked several hours in his office talking about this and that and enjoying the wafting smoke of his pipe.)
Cycling through Tokushima, I find myself succumbing to nostalgia that’s tinged with a little sadness. The city has an ethos akin to a long-ago America I barely remember, confident and vibrant yet also humble and workaday. Yesterday I explored Sogo, the chic eight-floor department store located across from the train station along Tokushima’s bustling central square. The salesgirls bow and chant “irassahimase” as you walk through the door. It reminds me of the effortless glamour of America’s old downtowns, of what Hudson’s in Detroit must once have been like, or even Sullivan’s near my old hometown in Liberty, New York. At the sushi bar Hideki and his girlfriend brought me to, the piped-in music consisted of 60s-era standards by B-list nightclub acts. Little plates of sushi came around on a conveyor belt. We took what we wanted and the waitress later surveyed the empty, color-coded plates piled in front of us to tally our check. It was as ingeniously “Fordist” and efficiently gratifying a meal as I’ve had in some time. To a Westerner Japan’s cities can seem pleasantly reposed in a time warp of high modernism and infinite optimism.
Right now my big challenge is to keep my euphoria in check and do the things I have to do. I still have about 50 papers to grade from back in Michigan and I’m finding it awfully hard to concentrate on them. And of course I also want to put my best foot forward in classes here. I have only had one class so far. Predictably, the students didn’t volunteer much. When my entreaties of “Do you understand?” were met with silence, it was hard to know if they didn’t understand or if they were just afraid of me. I am getting some good advice from others here on dealing with the students. Hopefully I’ll be able to report more success on that front soon.
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