learning to drive the ミニカー

The foreign teacher preceding me in 中之条町 was an Australian girl, and previous to my arrival we had arranged that I would purchase her little white ミニカー minika- (minicar). Although Japan is renowned for its highly developed railway and mass transit system, one does not need to travel more than a couple of hours in any land direction out of 東京 Tokyo to find that the majority of the country, although served by rail lines, are inaccessable without a car. In 中之条町 the train arrived once an hour from the city going toward the end of the 吾妻線 Agatsuma line and once an hour going back in toward the city (前橋市と高崎市 the cities of Maebashi and Takasaki) that would permit transfer to other prefectures. Within the town itself, I had work responsibilities that took me to two different middle schools (one within walking distance, one a few miles away, through a tunnel, toward the end of the road that leads through 中之条 and ends in 四万温泉 Shima onsen, a hot spring resort area that is one of 中之条町's most boasted tourist attractions that lies at the base of the mountains separating 群馬県 Gunma and 新潟県 Niigata Prefectures. I also rotated around to various elementary schools for the token "外人 exposure", although I did succeed in teaching the upper-level students (grades 4-6) a decent amount of English; their levels were notably higher upon entry into middle school.

It was thus deemed necessary for the town's 外人 to have one's own transportation, thus a bit more independence. However, as most know, the Japanese drive on the wrong side of the street! (yes, I said that just to poke at a few of my dear readers) The 三菱ミニカー Mitsubishi minicar I drove was also, of course, manual transmission. Fortunately my father had taught me to drive on a stick, so that gave me no problems. In great relief, Papa-chan confided to me the immense frustration he had to endure in teaching my predecesor to drive stick...I can just picture him hopping down the narrow stretch of lane connecting my home with the main road, wondering if they were going to end up patas arriba in the rice paddy. In learning to drive stick, my father often just had me ride in the passenger seat and made me feel when he took his foot off the gas to disengage the clutch, and I would shift accordingly. Little did I know how well this would prepare me for driving in Japan...

Let's start with the obvious differences. They go on the left. We go on the right. The first few times you are a passenger in a car making a right turn across traffic it is enough to make your heart stop, naturally with your life flashing in front of your eyes, sure there was going to be a head-on collision. The driver sits, therefore, on the right and not on the left. The gear shift and emergency brake were in the center, at my left hand. Fortunately there was no difference in positioning the gas, brake and clutch pedals. The ワイパー(waipa-) "wiper" and the ウィンカー(winka-) "winker" (turn signal) were reversed, however; every single $%/&*! time I wanted to signal a turn during my first month at the Japanese wheel, I ended up with my windshield wipers on.

I decided to wait a month, until I had to start driving to school, to start driving. There was a market, albeit expensive, within walking distance from my home. The fact that it was a sharp uphill climb all the way back home didn't help much, but I could shop without driving when need be. Anyhow, I figured, I could observe a bit of the ways of the road, the unstated rules, etc. before I would actually endanger the entire driving public of 中之条 by maneuvering the streets.

Mike, my fellow 外人 teacher from New York who was new in the neighboring town already took the plunge, and one night toward the end of August invited me over to a gathering at his アパート(apa-to) apartment. Well...I figured...there is absolutely NOBODY on the road. I have my International License. My car is appropriately insured, 車検 in place for another year and a half...no problems. That evening would be the best to try this out.

I soon realized why there are so many mini-sized cars on the road. The lanes are really narrow, and some one-way lanes are for two-way traffic. Wow. So I get out of my little rice paddy-lined lane and take a deep breath: a real street. Now, what side of the street do I want to get on? How to I get to 吾妻町Agatsuma-machi? I got out and turned. Right. But across traffic. I was sure all of 中之条町 was peering out their windows to observe the 外人 trying to drive on their streets.

Just up to the school, to feel secure in what I'm doing. Yeah.

Wait. What's that?!

Sirens!

Ohmygosh, they're after me! I see lights!

How the hell do I pull over???? My instinct is to pull over to the right...but no, wait, that is across traffic here. Left. Go left. Left. They're going to GET ME!!! They know, someone must have informed...

Oh...

It's a 救急車 (kyukyu-sha) an ambulance.

At least it wasn't the cops.

Trembling, I put the car into gear and putted up the huge slope to the school, stopped in the parking lot and put my head down on the steering wheel. Is a party really worth all this stress?

Yeah, it is.

Strength. Valor. Think Samurai values. I can do this, for goodness sakes.

I made it, and was aptly rewarded for having the most colorful arrival story of the group.

My little ミニカー took me all over the region for half of my stay. I could somehow fit three other desperate skiers and all of our ski gear inside the car to hit the slopes. I think "desperate" was the operative idea. Even with winter and 中之条町 's snowy roads, my little ミニカー stuck to the street and gave me no problems; I never had to chain up.

I think that one of the most difficult parts of learning to drive in Japan was the return to the United States' roads. Wiper/winker difficulties. Yikes. It also took a very long time for me to, when turning onto a road with no oncoming traffic to assist me, figure out which side of the street I was to be driving on. This still occurs; albeit rare, I still have what I call an "oops...Japan moment."

Just warning you!

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.

ROAAAAAAAAAR!

Thank you, Chief Biscuit.



Shameless says : Those people I've given this award to are encouraged to post it on their own blogs; list three things they believe are necessary for good, powerful writing; and then pass the award on to the five blogs they want to honour, who in turn pass it on to five others, etc etc. Let's send a roar through the blogosphere! The image above can be copied and pasted onto other blogs. Also, a small size of the award for sidebars can be found over at the writing circle site.

The five blogs I hereby nominate, in no particular order, are:

1. The 4th Avenue Blues by Andrew. His candid storytelling, dialogue and postings involving photo and video are thought-provoking and powerful as he deals with life as a man with certain self-proclaimed issues. He spills his heart and people listen and help.

2. The Thoughts of a Frumpy Professor by PipeTobacco. He, lately, has been able to put powerful words to the loss of his dear mother just over 8 months ago, he exposes his soul in his desire to embrace the upcoming winter chill, and he makes his readers feel raw emotion through his words.

3. Sachiniti by Kaveetaa Kaul. Her writing on feminist issues in India, worldwide current events and moral issues raise questions and not only inform her readers but make her readers question ourselves.

4. No...this is Z's thing by Zirelda. She has a fun manner of storytelling her own life and describing Life as it occurs. Her quick wit shines in her words and the love she shows for her daughter is motivational.

5. She-Ra, Princess of ??? by She-Ra. Her often self-depricating and humorous way of illustrating motherhood and all its variances allows her readers to empathise with the feelings of the experience of what can be in many cases trial and error.

So there you have it!

Can I now say, "I am Lion-Woman, hear me ROOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAR"?

pot-pourri

In the course of my travels, I have beheld my fair share of toilets.

Some are decked out, all the bells and whistles (quite literally). Others, as those on the isle of Taquile of Lake Titicaca in Perú, are simple, guarded in the middle of the night by a cow just waiting to scare the living s**t out of you before you make it to the hole in the ground. In Thailand we had to flush the toilets with buckets of water; at least there was running water from which we could fill the buckets and we did not have to hike all the way to the nearest waterfall to fulfill this purpose.

My first time in Japan, the most adventurous excretory experiences I had ever had usually involved cutting down Christmas trees in the woods in Oregon, where sometimes we had the chance to create "yellow snow" and sometimes not, depending on the year. Heavily jet-lagged after a fourteen-hour flight from Oregon to Narita, the first day in my new environs found me at Nikko National Park, a park renowned for being the center of the Tokugawa shogunate.

Of course, nature will call following a ramen lunch during which I learned that slurping one's noodles is, indeed, art form in that it is almost impossible to not get the juicy soup all over one's face or clothing in the noisy act. We hiked up the hill to the トイレ--toire (toilet) and I was greeted with a sight never before beheld...an oblong, slightly ovalesque shaped piece of porcelain inbedded in the floor.

Huh?

So, how on earth do I use this?

My host mother and eldest sister came to my rescue, trying desperately not to laugh as my host mother hiked up her long skirt to demonstrade the "straddle and squat"...a position that, after three years of perfecting, really does wonders for the thigh muscles (now millions of blog readers will go and install Japanese-style toilets in their homes just to tone, I know...).

Trick is: when there is plumbing, face the plumbing.

When there isn't, just try not to lose your slipper down the toilet. It happens to every 外人 at least once. Poor John from Perth was blessed with a non-potable hole in the ground benjou at his residence and lost so many slippers down that thing that the sewer sucker-dude who came by every few weeks for taking care of the benjou waste would just, reportedly, laugh.

My episode occurred at the Nakanojo 文化会館, the bunka kaikan, the local cultural center, at an important event. No matter what you wear, you change into slippers three sizes too small for your feet upon entrance. Another story for another day. One of mine plopped into the plumbed fixture by accident. Oops. That was fun to try to remedy.

My parents came to Japan in March 1997 to visit. I took them touring through Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto, and back up to Nakanojo before we met up with my sister, who had already visited me a year and a half before, and hit China and Hong Kong together. Feeling rather punchy following the longest plane ride of their lives, followed by a 2 hour commute back into Tokyo to their hotel and the experience of passing through customs...it was their first international travel--it would be my father's last and the first of many for my mother--we settled into our rooms. I stayed in Tokyo with them, as Nakanojo was just less than 4 hours away by train, and a good friend's father, a hotel entrepreneur, arranged special deals for all of us throughout our stays.

My phone rang. It was my mother. She sounded relieved to be able to figure out how to pick up the phone and ring my room.

"Can you come over here for a sec?" she asked.
"Sure, what's up?"
"Um...the toilet doesn't seem to work. I can't figure out how to flush this thing!"
"I'll be right over."

The toilets in many nice Western-style hotels are western-style. However, in saying "western-style" this is to mean "decked out to the max." You have next to your hipline an array of buttons you can push for a variety of cool effects: everything from the sounds of rushing water to bells ringing, a bidet feature, a fan feature (to dry you off, of course) are all expertly displayed with lights and little kanji characters that describe, to the trained eye, exactly what each button will do.

But none of them seemed to make the toilet flush.

I couldn't imagine how many of these buttons my mother must have pushed before she called me. But from her uncontrolled giggling I guessed that her efforts must have involved most of them.

"Here, Mom." I pointed to the side of the toilet, where the flush knob is on pretty much any toilet we in the Western World has ever used. This, of course, made her laugh even harder. "They put so many buttons here in plain sight, you'd think one of these would do it!" she roared.

Yeah. That would be too easy.

My little house had a western-style toilet. Pink. Cute. In an itsy-bitsy tiny little bathroom about the size of a 3' by 6' rectangle. It had two manual flush cycles...小 and 大 (little and big)...depending on the purpose of the flush (I will refrain from further illustration). The only other "extra" my little pink piece of ceramic heaven had was a heated seat function. In July, when first arriving, I had to admit to not having any idea as to why in the hell Toto (yes, that was the name of the brand. I heard the music group "Toto" got their name after having been in Japan. All I could think about for three years, every time I went to the bathroom, was "Toto too? Yes, Toto too.") would make toilet seats that would heat, especially being a person who prefers to philosophize in a nice big rocking chair as opposed to "on the pot."

Then came winter.

Wow. Heated toilet seats. What a GREAT invention! At least one part of my body can be warm...

More on Japanese winters on a different blog that I never continued...perhaps I should cut and paste those entries into this series?

The photo included with this post is that of one of the cleanest Japanese-style toilets I had ever seen. That was, however, out of the norm.

日本の思い出 ... Memories of Japan

Wow..it has been so long since I have even typed in Japanese that I had to enable the Japanese keyboard on my computer to be able to make the characters.

As the time going into winter is one of great nostalgia for me, I feel it fitting to delve a bit into some of my fondest memories of my younger days. I spend three years teaching ESL at two different middle schools in the town of 中之条. Nakanojo. "Naka" means "middle, center"; "no" is a possessive or, in this case, used as an "of"; and "jou" (long o, two syllables but not always romanized that way) means "road."













Middle of the road.

Just your average little town cradled in the foothills of active and dormant volcanoes where most citizens have rice paddies, know how to dance the yagibushi in the town's summer festival, and have very limited, if any, contact on a daily basis with any 外人。

Gaijin. Literally, the outside (gai) person (jin).

The foreigner.

Somehow Nakanojo and I were the perfect match. *cue rambling mode* I had been to 群馬県 Gunma-ken (prefecture) in August of 1990. I went as a member of a youth orchestra exchange, and spent two weeks with a host family that spoke very little if any English. The eldest daughter was a percussionist in the 太田 Ohta City Youth Philharmonic, the middle daughter played trumpet and the youngest daughter was, like myself, a violinist. I was selected to play concertmaster (we always called it 'concertmistress', the coveted position being She Who Gets to Sleep With the Entire Orchestra...although in those times I was waaaaaaaay too angelic to take that title seriously), which made my family very proud and they wanted me to give Ayumi-chan tutorials each night on her pieces. What struck me most was the fact that we could not look at each other, open our mouths and say anything that could be understood by the other; however, we could look at the same page of lines and, to the untrained eye, seemingly random dots and various miscellaneous markings and create exactly the same sound. This realization blew my relatively naive mind and marked the beginning of my openness to communication in all forms.

I maintained contact with my host family during my subsequent four-year tenure at University. I completed a double major, one of which was Spanish, and a double minor, one of which was Japanese, and could basically write notes and send them and, obviously, be somewhat understood in my efforts to master at least the two basic phonetic alphabets.

Upon returning from studies in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in the middle of my junior year of University, I felt at a great loss of direction. Indeed, my time in such a poor area made me yearn to go back and idealistically solve the world's problems but also armed me with the knowledge that such goals are impossible to achieve. Best to better oneself so as to be capable of offering more. But how?

In Senior Thesis hell, required for both my International Studies major and my Honors degree, I also started teaching ESL in a local school district, which also meant moonlighting as a social worker and translator. I spent countless hours transcribing interviews my primary thesis advisor had conducted with a variety of female migrants for a book she was authoring, not to mention my own interviews I held with legals and illegals alike regarding their perceived assimilation and acculturation experiences. Fascinating. But leaving me feeling, still, without a defined direction. Life without school? How could I consider my next step, post-University "real life"?

Long story short, I was told I should apply to the then rather selective Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Program(me). I figured I had nothing to lose, so I did, interviewed and was offered a position along with one other from my University. As I had previously visited Gunma prefecture, that was where I was again sent, but this time out to rural Gunma perhaps due to the fact that I had, in comparison to some applicants, a decent base of Japanese upon which to grow and actual ESL teaching experience and, of course, living abroad experience.

I arrived in Tokyo in sultry July, spent three days in whirlwinds of conferences, getting to know other 外人 being sent out to my same prefecture, everyone "testing out" each other's Japanese levels in a meager effort of reassurance. The bus ride out to Gunma was interesting in that we were given a crash course in how to accept a business card that is presented to us, as was to occur following a ベントlunch...

You must bow. Try to bow lower than the person you're bowing to, as it's probably going to be your supervisor. But don't fall over. Don't bump heads, either (don't laugh...it did happen to me once!...but fortunately not that day). Don't act overly enthused; keep all nervousness and excitement undercaps.

You will be presented with a business card. That is the way people meet here. You don't just take it and stuff it in your back pocket. You accept with TWO hands and bow. After retiring to your place you keep the 名刺 (meishi) out, in your hands, "study it" or at least feign interest and admiration...a lot of money goes into each individual's 名刺 and you will also soon receive your own set.

And with that, we were off...

Three men came the prefectural capital city of 前橋 Maebashi to greet me and take me back to my new home. The gruff looking Mr. Nakazawa was the Superintendent of Schools for Nakanojo Town. He was also a musician, and brought some of his favorite Stephen Foster scores for me to look over as an ice-breaker as we settled in to a small café for an aisu co-hi (iced coffee). The other two men, Morita-san and Iyoku-san did not speak any English and appeared rather shy; Iyoku-san would, in fact, become my papa-chan, as I so affectionately nicknamed him, as he would take care of all my day-to-day issues while demonstrating worlds of patience for my developing Japanese skills, and we did a lot of things socially together as my Japanese really took off and I could communicate well. There had been two foreign teachers preceeding me in Nakanojo, so although the routine was somewhat familiar it was still far from set in stone.

That is where my stay in my dear Nakanojo begins...

star misalignment?

Hopefully not for long...

Funny, how when one's washing machine does not work, everything else seems to fall apart. Take the Young Prince, for example. He has been potty-trained, for all practical purposes, since 2 1/2 or so. Nighttime accidents were occuring once every perhaps couple months, if that. Since our washer went out, he has wet the bed three times. I am now out of sheets. I hope the people who said they would show, do so today. Unfortunately, I had to give them black-out hours during which I have students in the home and cannot have repair people; I hope this doesn't work against me. However, the kind woman on the telephone yesterday even took the model number and serial number of the washer, and the name of the company that has not come through for me...perhaps they know they have a bit of a reputation here to establish.

To continue with yesterday's thoughts about La Princesita:

It was interesting last night, La Princesita came to me in my office and sat and told me that she missed Rosie. Out of the blue. She became very sad and she wanted to be held, and said that when I speak Spanish or teach Spanish she thinks of Rosie because that was the main connection we had with her and her mother. I have not spoken aloud of my conversation with her teacher to anybody and I know she does not read my blog--perhaps I hit the nail on the head. We read a good book about being a good friend and all that involves, including how hard it can be to extend oneself to make new friends (a problem I seem to be experiencing much more now than in my youth). Afraid? Of rejection? Of judgment? Of getting close and then losing, yet again? I have had my share of loss of friends, from either death or moving away. Neither is easy. Perhaps I am not setting a very good example for her.

and it is Monday!

What a gorgeous morning. Sun shining, birdies singing...

I was unloading dishes when the sound of my eldest wretching reached my ears. Poor thing started her day throwing up. Whatever it was seems to have now, fortunately, passed.

My headache lingers, but I can work today. Goal: finish Chapter 10 of the text by Wednesday. We'll see if that happens. But it's a goal.

La Princesita's kindergarten conference was this morning. She has already demonstrated having exceeded all kindergarten learning objectives. But she's a smarty-pants and a perfectionist, so I'm neither bragging nor am surprised. That is just who she is. However, she has been noticed to want to stay with the teachers during recess or play by herself rather than play with her classmates. There are various possible reasons for this that we brainstormed, one of which could be having had the one little girl she really felt empathy with, Rosie, who left the school as soon as the two girls were really starting to feel close. Although this occurred at the beginning of the school year, we all know what a sensitive soul La Princesita is. She could be afraid of getting close. She could be shy in meeting others, as the only other child from her preschool is in the afternoon kindergarten class, not the morning group. There is also the issue of having been involved in two major auto accidents by the age of 5. I never thought of that, but her teacher said it warrants a further look. One of her friends also hit her on Friday of last week, a friend who does not have a very highly developed speech level yet and who probably hit in frustration, not being able to verbalize her feelings. This, however, really affected mi Princesita and in her relating this story it was possible to see how betrayed she felt. This has occurred with mi Princesita in the past, before she can really remember, with a couple of her other playmates, so I suppose it's possible she feels a bit traumatized.

Academics are not everything. I want a well-adjusted and happy child. I want her to enjoy her childhood. She loves school, so I don't believe that she is having serious problems in any aspect, social or otherwise. And I don't want to be "the pushy mom"...I want to be involved enough to be a part of my children's lives but not demanding how these lives should and will develop.

Do I make sense? It feels like such a thin line sometimes, that which separates "involved" and "pushy". I constantly pray for the guidance to do right by my children....

...and happily accept advice from Those Who Know and Understand!