Cainz Home adventures

Cainz Home (as romanized on the sign...but pronounced "Ka-een-zu Ho-mu") was a one-stop type of home store that I found out about shortly after learning to drive in the Japanese style (oh...that story will HAVE to be the next blog entry!). The only one in 吾妻郡 "Agatsuma County" was in the town of Agatsuma, that which neighbored my own Nakanojo. I would go to the larger grocery store there as my first stop in my Saturday morning routine and then, as a matter of making a simple loop instead of retracing my tracks, stop in at Cainz Home to see if there was anything new to buy.

I usually arrived before a great deal of people showed up, which was nice in that I did not therefore have to endure the endless stares of a clientele that had obviously had minimal exposure to 外人 (there will be a test at the end of all the 漢字 kanji characters you are learning, by the way. I put them in this way, 1. because it's good review for me, and 2. because, for me, the characters really have meaning--even if they do not mean anything for you, they are like mini-drawings of what I am expressing, mini pictographs in a way.) and who believed that the 外人 could never pick up Japanese, since it was deemed close to impossible by the Japanese that they ever grasp English.

In the midst of this silent existence, one morning while strolling through Cainz Home within my first couple of months living in 中之条町 I turned a corner where I had been looking at bath towels and there was a young child, perhaps 3 or 4 years old, in the middle of the aisle.

I looked at the young one and smiled.

The child was petrified, and ran with a blood-curdling SCREAM back to the safety of its mother's legs.

Embarassed, the mother averted eye contact in a way that I was to learn that the Japanese could do extremely well and bowed as she backed her way out of that uncomfortable situation.

Not a single word was exchanged, yet a thousand were understood. This child had obviously never before seen a foreigner, let alone a 5 foot 9 inch, tall, big 'fawn'-haired white girl and that violently disrupted this youngster's comfort zone. The mother, for that matter, had probably never beheld such a sight either, especially while shopping in the Bed and Bath aisle of Cainz Home. What struck me was that there was not even a すみません...sumimasen "excuse me" ever uttered in the exchange. This lack of 'apology' (for lack of a better term) in a highly and yet needlessly apologtic culture was odd to me, as if I had been the one who was out of place and thus did not merit the consideration of such words.

Many visit foreign countries and are there for a bit, sense some degree of utopia in that which is so different from our own seemingly mundane existence and, as human tendency runs, we are enamored with the place. Living in a country and especially the aquiring a high degree of proficiency in the language permits more transcendence of the boundaries between native and non-native. One begins to see not only the endless positives of new and previously unexplored territories but also starts to tame this utopic sense with the harsh realities that this country is just like any other in that it has its secrets, its corruption, its dark side, its negatives. I am here neither to expose all that is so wonderful about Japan nor exploit all the horrible sides of the equation. Both negative and positive contributed greatly to what I consider to be a rather well-balanced and fair perspective on Japanese society in my little rural town in the three years in the mid 1990s that I happened upon 中之条町. With all the good and all the bad, this town became like a second home to me. Over the course of this series of Japan entries, I hope to show a little of both...the good and the bad, the humorous and the serious, the moral and the corrupt...not to make judgment but rather to acknowledge the humanity, the reality of life in Japan according to my insignificant perspective.