2002-05-01 - 9:15 p.m.
Monday marked nine months since I arrived in Japan -- three fourths of the way done, three more months to go. While I still often look around and feel that I my life here is totally surreal, things that were once incomprehensibly strange -- like grocery shopping -- are now totally routine and even comforting. I am happily over the worst of the culture shock, perhaps because little here shocks me anymore. The first three months were full of a culture shock of the predictable variety -- simple bewilderment at the unfamiliarity of it all, at my sudden and complete illiteracy and inability to communicate. After about five months an unexpected and more intense wave of culture shock hit. At that point, I fully grasped how much more I had to learn before my life would reach some kind of manageable normalcy. When imagined the seven months that lay before me, I saw an exhausting string of misunderstandings. I spent most of January wondering whether or not I would make it to spring.
In the middle of February, things started to change for the better. I went to the housewarming party of an American friend who had completed two years on JET and moved to Tokyo. Seeing her setting up her new apartment and new life with a big circle of friends, the decision to live in Japan after JET seemed understandable to me for the first time. A week later I was getting my hair cut when my stylist, an Australian who’s been in Japan for seven years, helped me put things in perspective. When I told her how long I’d been in Japan, she said, “Six months? Yeah, the first six months are rough. When I’d been here six months and I met people who’d been here for years, I’d think, ‘Are they CRAZY?’” I guess that secretly, I’d been thinking that too. It was reassuring to know that just because the first six months were rough, didn’t mean that I wasn’t “cut out for Japan.” Up until that point, I hadn’t allowed myself that. Though I’ve decided not to stay another year, I’m now confident that I could be happy and successful here if I did. I will not become fluent in Japanese or totally comfortable in the culture in the next three months, but I know I’ll take a few more steps in that direction.
Language is tricky. This I have learned. I have my good days and my bad days, and many just plain mediocre days in between. On a good day, I’ll successfully complete some transaction in Japanese, or make 20 minutes worth of small talk in the car with my boss. On the bad days, I’ll fail to understand the announcement about the train delay, make some mistake at the checkout line in the grocery store, or be embarrassingly unable to hold a conversation with someone. On the language front, most days are neither encouraging nor depressing, simply boring. On Sunday I went with Saori to a sushi party at her co-worker’s house. A couple of people could speak a little bit of English and had fun trying; I answered some simple questions in Japanese; but I spent the majority of time just sitting and not really understanding much of anything. At this point I can get the topic of conversation about 60% of the time, (Oh! They’re talking about X!) but not much beyond that, and certainly not enough to jump into the conversation. When Lela and I were worrying that our jobs next year might be as boring as our jobs this year, she pointed out that next year we’ll be able to talk to our co-workers. That will definitely be a plus.
While I now feel generally familiar with the way society flows here, nearly everyday I learn some little piece of cultural minutiae for which I previously had no context. Taking a walk in a residential area of Tokyo on Sunday, I noticed that there were one-liter bottles of water placed near the doorway or garden of nearly every house. Upon inquiry I was told that residents put out bottles to scare away stray cats -- the brightness of the refracted sunlight supposedly keeps them away. And believe it or not, the compliment I am given most frequently -- by students, teachers, and strangers at the grocery store -- is “kao chiichai,” “small face.” At my women-only welcome party last night, everyone was rolling over laughing when someone suggested that my face was “half size” of a certain male teacher’s face. Perhaps my favorite compliment was when Rena’s parents said that I looked like a “boiled egg” -- a reference again to my face. And just because the Japanese don’t have the context in which to understand vegetarianism doesn’t mean that they don’t have their own dietary categories. A person who doesn’t like hot foods -- as in temperature, like steaming ramen or coffee -- is called “nekko shita,” “cat’s tongue,” because cats don’t like hot foods. Saori was mystified when Lela and I tried to explain to her that we didn’t have an English name for this phenomenon. The longer I stay here the more the more little aspects of the culture are beginning to seem second nature to me. This is especially true in the workplace, perhaps because this is my first full-time, post-college job. The thought of showing up to my first day of work in New York without bearing a box of individually wrapped rice cakes for my co-workers just seems rude.
