Japanese My Is Bad

My Japanese notebook is from China, a gift from a friend that’s living there this year. He gave me the notebook when he was passing through Japan, choosing it because of the comedic English that’s scrawled on the cover. It states:

“TREE

Primary fence next to the dandelion More than

ten miles a taste of the scenery
Fog grass came the voice of her How many years
have begun to sound good Sent a letter to wish a
paper airplane Because we can not wait for the meteor”

I laughed at this when I first read it, a laugh that insinuated something like, “Stupid Chinese people, can’t even write a poem in English.” I’ve used the same laugh when reading Kleenex boxes that say things like:

“Bird is wet, and me too. Rain…Rain. It’s rain every.”

Or t-shirts on mild mannered, polite Japanese climbers, with the phrase “We are fuckin’ one” written across the back.

When I open the notebook my friend gave to me, however, there is language much more incomprehensible and enigmatic than anything else I’ve come across—my study notes in an attempt to learn Japanese.

The first ten pages or so are dedicated to vocabulary, broken down into verbs, adjectives, and then everything else. Whereas the verb and adjective sections are relatively organized, the “everything else” is a hodgepodge of nouns, adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, common expressions, pronouns, exclamations, onomatopoeia and cool sayings that I find interesting. I use that section to quickly jot down things that I hear or read and want to make sure that I commit to memory later. At my low level of Japanese just about everything I hear or read goes into that section, flooding the pages to the point that I can’t study fast enough to be able to memorize all of it. When I do get a chance to make flash cards and quiz myself I am faced with another problem: all the words sound the same.

Okay, clearly this is a hyperbole. Of course all the words don’t sound the same. But there are similarities between sounds of words that make them very hard to keep organized. It’s a problem to the point that I have dedicated a whole page of my notebook to “tricky words”. There you can find examples like:

okita- woke up

okutta- sent
okotta- got angry
okureta- was late

Such similar words make me hesitant to speak in the past tense lest I say something like, “I woke up with George” instead of “I got angry at George.”  If I mistake the word hantai for hentai, for example, rather than saying “I disagree”, I would be calling the person a pervert.

Some words are, in fact, exactly the same. Katta can mean both ‘bought’, and ‘won’. Itta can mean ‘said’, and ‘went’. And the word kaeru means ‘go home’, ‘to change’, and ‘frog’. There are no spelling or pronunciation variations to create different meanings, you use the same exact word. If I said, “Kaeru wa kaeru toki nanka o kaeru” it would mean “When the frog goes home he changes something.”

No, it isn’t a phrase that I use often, but it illustrates the fact that when memorizing words I have to make sure I remember that that one word is the exact same way to say three other things. And this is just individual words.

When it comes to putting together sentences, the crux of Japanese becomes much more challenging. The difficulty is derived from both a very different syntax to English and the number of exceptions and special rules that arise in different contexts. In my notebook I have tried to organize these exceptions. But, like with the “everything else” section, the result is a jumbled mess. Some of the categories include:

- Three different ways to say ‘to give’

- Two ways to say ‘more’
- Two ways to say ‘to be’
- Three ways of saying ‘because’
- Three ways of saying ‘and’
- Two ways of saying ‘want’
- Using colors as adjectives
- Saying something looks like something else versus saying something is similar to something else
- Three ways of forming ‘if’ sentences
- Conjugating for potential, volitional, and conditional tenses
- Saying something is about something
- Saying something is intended for someone, versus for their benefit
- Using one word to say both ‘I already decided’, ‘I decided right now’, and ‘I’m thinking’
- Three different verbs for playing instruments
- Three ways of saying ‘only’
- Multiple ways of saying ‘it’s scheduled for’ versus ‘it’s planned for’
- Hoping for an outcome for someone else
- Hoping for an outcome for yourself
 
It goes on.

When I say two or three ways to say something I’m not referring to synonyms. In English we have lots of ways to say things, like sad, morose, melancholy, depressed, etc.  Synonyms I can understand. With synonyms, at least I can opt to just learn one word, usually the easiest one. No, the similarities that I am highlighting are the basic ways to say simple words. The easiest way to say something that I would expect to be simple, like 'and', changes according to context. The word ‘and’ can be soshite, -kute, or –de, depending on what you are saying. The different words are not interchangeable and have to be used in the right way given the sentence structure.

All of the above examples in my list have special ways of saying the intended phrase that does not correspond with any rule other than the ‘this is just the way you say it’ rule. They have to be memorized in order to use the language. Though some of the phrases may seem obscure, and maybe possible to avoid learning, like ‘I already decided’ versus ‘I decided right now’, most are things that you use in almost everything you say, like ‘because’,‘more’, and 'and'.

My notebook, which started as an attempt to help me keep track of my learning and progress in my language ability, has left me befuddled. If I’m trying to talk to someone and a verb conjugation comes up that I know I covered, it takes me about a minute to pour through all of my notes in order to find the precise one that applies to that context. It takes me about another thirty seconds to add it to a comprehensible sentence. And in most cases, I still have to look up new words in order to make what I’m saying sound complete.

That’s where I am in my Japanese right now. I have an idea about what I’m supposed to say, but know that I am most likely making grievous errors. I can piece simple sentences together, but I am sure that I sound like Tarzan. I know maybe a few hundred vocabulary words, but the average fluent speaker uses a few thousand. I can plan climbing trips with Japanese friends, order food at a restaurant (if I can read the menu), and make small talk with strangers. That’s about it.

What I can’t do: I couldn’t even begin to write good enough sentences for t-shirts or Kleenex boxes, nor get even close to writing a Japanese poem worthy of a Chinese notebook.

Impressions of Ha Long Bay

Part I: Arrogance

We set out from the harbor in light fog. The forecast for the day was overcast and cold—not ideal for climbing up and throwing yourself off of limestone islands into the ocean. But that’s why I came to Vietnam, and it was the only chance I would get because, unknowingly, I had chosen a time of the year when the daily tides were too low for safe deep water soloing. This was the one day that the tide was at a reasonable height. Despite less than ideal temperatures, I decided to go for it.



Ha Long Bay

I boarded a junk boat replete with tourists embarking on package deals to see the bay. The majority of their carry-on luggage included enough Tiger Beer to induce something like seasickness. Perhaps the kayaking and climbing included in the trip was merely the warm-up to “earn” drinking rights come noon. Or, let’s face it, 10:30. For some, the climbing trip would be the highlight of their time in Vietnam, a proud Facebook post declaring their extreme adventure: “Rock Climbed in Vietnam”. Others were wary of the adventure elements of the outing, having been forced along by their significant others.

“I don’t want to go out in the kayak,” I overheard a girlfriend say to her boyfriend.

“C’mon baby. We can go see a nice beach,” was his response.

“But it’s cold out and I hate kayaks.”

“You don’t hate kayaks, honey. We took kayaks on our vacation in Maui. Remember?”

“Yeah, and I told you I didn’t like it.”

“I thought you said you had a good time.”

“No I didn’t. And now I’m staying on the boat.”

The conversations went on like this, some making me wonder why people decided to travel here in the first place. I caught the middle of a Dutchman’s complaints to a Canadian that he met on the boat.

“And then when we got into the taxi, the driver couldn’t speak any English!”

“I know,” the Canadian responded. “Everywhere we have gone in Vietnam, no one speaks any English. I was trying to rent a motorbike and I had no idea what the guys trying to sell it to me were telling me. I kept saying ‘English! English!’ and they just looked at me like I was crazy. Thailand is much better.”

“Yeah, I like Thailand a lot more,” the Dutchman agreed.

I tried to hide in a remote corner of the boat, not wanting to be associated with the tourists. To my dismay, I was discovered by a pasty white Aussie with shorts that didn’t leave much to the imagination.

“You going on the Deep Blue Soloing excursion too?”

I cringed. Though I was going on the deep water soloing boat, I hadn’t signed up nor paid for an excursion. I had worked out a deal with the company in charge of the trips, a group of climber’s from around the world. If I helped them out with some menial tasks, I could go out to deep water solo for free. The transaction made me believe that I would be freed from tourist status and that, for some reason, my trip to climb the limestone islands would be much more legitimate than the pasty Aussie's. I ignored the fact that what he was planning on doing and what I intended to do was, in every detail, the exact same thing.

“Yeah. I’m going deep water soloing too,” I responded.

“Ah, great mate! Looks like good fun, eh?”

Unenthusiastically I agreed, “Yeah. Looks like good fun.”

Though he was unaware, he was slowly bleeding my desire to try a facet of climbing that I had believed was dangerous and for experts only. Now a ‘gumby’, as we call them in the elitist climbing world, was showing me that deep water soloing wasn’t really that extreme. Afterall, if he can wander in from a Hanoi resort and give it a shot, how extreme could it be? He continued to make things worse with the comment,

“My wife’s coming too. We don’t do the rock climbing much. I’m more of a scrambler myself. But it looks like a fun thing to try. Have you ever rock climbed?”

I’ve been climbing for thirteen years. Climbing was one hundred percent of my identity through high school and college. When I started teaching and traveling it was reduced to ninety percent. I have put up first ascents in the Andes, spent days on big walls in Yosemite and have free soloed up to eight hundred feet. I scoffed at such a question.

“Yes, I’ve rock climbed,” I responded bluntly.

“You ever done anything like Deep Blue Soloing?”

“Yeah. Once in Spain.”

“Is it fun? Is it scary?”

Is it fun? Is tossing your body from twenty meters up into the maw of a cold and angry sea fun? Scary? Is being gripped on the underbelly of a limestone behemoth, sweating while an overdose of adrenaline gushes into your brain, scary? Is having lactic acid turn your forearms into mush while you contemplate the odds of certain death before you release yourself to the unforgiving hand of gravity, scary?

My response: “Yeah, something like that.”

“Great! I’m stoked, mate. See you out there!”

When he left, my ego torqued something inside of my chest. I recited to myself, as if it was a mantra, “You’re not one of the tourists. You’re not one of the tourists.”

Part II: The Floating Villages of Ha Long Bay

Before the junk boat arrived at the deep water soloing islands, it passed through the fishing villages of Ha Long Bay. The villages were made up of small ramshackle houses, walkways and dangling electrical wires; normal fare for a developing country. Dogs wandered around sniffing at trash. Families sat in front of small cafes talking to their neighbors. Televisions ran commercials for shampoo. There were places to bathe, to buy fruits and vegetables, to play games with friends and to buy clothes. All of this is not uncharacteristic of a village, and would hardly be worth mentioning if the villages didn’t happen to be floating in the middle of the bay, like populated masses of seaweed that rose to the surface.

There are thousand of islands in Ha Long Bay, and between them, bobbing up and down in the turquoise water, hundreds of floating villages. The limestone islands that rise vertical out of the sea and are capped with dense jungle are uninhabitable. Yet the sea is optimum for fishing, an industry where many make their livelihood. The one pesky detail that gets in the way is that there is no good land to live on. The solution: build the villages on the water.

The foundations of the villages, from what I could gather, were made up of large empty blue barrels that acted as buoys laying horizontally in the water. To the barrels the villagers lashed boards that connected them to other barrels, and then to others, creating a large grid of a floor from which everything else could be erected. The floor stayed as a grid, or rather, the fishermen didn’t board it closed like a basketball court or ballroom dance floor. They kept the floor open, porous, allowing the fishermen to drop their nets into the water from large open squares between the planks. Each open square acted like small farm tracts, but instead of vegetables, the fishermen would pull fish out from their tract. 

This layout of open planks made the structure of the village foundation look precipitous, like walking beams in a skyscraper skeleton during its construction. To pass from one area of the village to another, the villagers would have to walk planks of wood that were not tightly secured to anything and that ebbed and swayed from the movements of the sea. The instability appeared to have no impact on the villagers. Small children would run across the planks with awkward, new steps, but with as much confidence as we would have taking a single step on solid ground. The adults could maneuver and balance on the planks while carrying large loads suspended from bending boards lashed to their shoulders. Even the dogs would bound and leap from one line of planks to another while chasing or attacking one another.

Floating Village of Ha Long Bay

It was a sight to be seen. From the junk boat, I pondered a life on a floating village in Ha Long Bay. I wondered how I would adapt to living on planks in the sea, in a house no bigger than my bedroom, among people who slaved everyday in order to provide themselves with basic necessities.

I caught the eye of a girl who sat on the corner of one of these villages. She was looking out at our boat. She appeared to be doing the opposite of me, imagining a life in my position. I wondered what she thought of the foreigners who took boats out into the bay in order to climb rocks. The notion must have been ridiculous to her. Why on earth would we come all the way from lands with other people that looked like us in order to climb up islands and fall into the sea? Didn’t we have families to fish for? Or was it true what her friends told her, that the foreigners had too much money and could do any silly thing they imagined; like ride motorcycles across all of Asia, or buy big islands where they would put only one enormous house and not let anyone else in.

The exchange of glances and thoughts was brief, but I felt unsettled for some reason, like my life was the wrong one. I felt guilty and ashamed. Hiding from the girl’s gaze, I tried to blend back in with the rest of the tourists.

Part III: Humility…hopefully

We departed the junk boat on a basket boat, a small, rickety craft, the stern half covered with a deteriorating black tarp. The bow of the boat was a beaten deck that was meant to be the launching pad to get onto the walls we were going to climb. I sat under the tarp in a cheap bathing suit that I bought at the market the day before. The seams were already ripping and the cut exposed more of my white legs than I cared to reveal to the others. The Aussie sat across from me. Next to him was his wife. A breeze caused us all to shiver even though none of us had taken the plunge yet.

The guide, an American girl who had been living on the main island for the past four months, shouted a non stop stream of warnings and instructions at us over the noise and fumes of the basket boat motor. It felt like a briefing on how to skydive moments before they threw you out of the plane.

“Okay guys! You all psyched?! Great! Listen carefully! Deep water soloing is dangerous! You can get hurt! When the boat gets to the wall you must immediately get to your starting holds! Don’t hesitate! When you are secure we will push the boat away from you! Do not let go of the holds or you will fall on the boat and you will get seriously injured! If you fall climbing, push away from the wall or you may hit another part of it on your way down! Always look down at the water before you fall! There may be jellyfish, trash, or rocks right where you are going to fall. Do not, I repeat, do not fall on any objects! Jump away from the objects or you will get hurt! Okay?! Great! Who’s up first?!”

With no hesitation, I volunteered. I had been waiting months for my chance at this. The boat approached the wall and I grabbed a pair of starting holds. Heeding the guide’s advice, I held strong and waited for the boat to move out of my way. When it was clear, I started up the overhanging limestone.

I chose my initial route as a warm-up, something I knew I could easily do. I placed my feet intentionally, moved my hips and torso to maximize efficiency and cruised up the wall. Fear never took ahold of me. It didn’t have time to. Within two minutes, I was twenty meters up.

“Nice job Josh!” I heard the Aussie yell from the basket boat.

When I looked down to acknowledge the comment, I realized the folly in choosing a warm-up route first. Though it was quick and easy and I had no problem I with the actual climbing, I was stuck at twenty meters, facing one solution to get off: jump.

I didn’t like the idea. Yes, I knew what I was getting myself into. I knew that I would have to hurl myself into the sea eventually, but when I was faced with it as real, and my only option, I froze.

“Uh…so I just, uh, jump?” I shouted from the wall.

“Yeah! How else you gonna get down?” the guide shouted in response.

Good point.

“Maybe I can climb down a little and then jump,” I offered as a counterpoint.

“Or you can man up and stop being such a baby!” was the guide’s rebuttal.

“You got it Josh! C’mon mate,” The Aussie shouted.

Damn supportive Aussie. I became sure that if he were in my position he would jump without hesitation. The thought torqued my chest again, my ego reminding me of its presence.

“Okay,” I shouted. “Here goes.”

I tried to take control over my impulse to down climb to a more reasonable height. The jump at the end was supposed to be part of the thrill of deep water soloing but I didn’t want to do it because, well, it was scary!

The Aussie started a countdown, “Three! Two! One!”

Inhaling, I released both hands from the rock, pushed away with my feet and felt gravity whip me down towards the water. My head contemplated how I should fall, when I should hold my breath, if I should close my nose or not, where I should put my arms, all of it, just a little too late. I smacked the sea with appendages akimbo, taking in enough water through my nose to fill a water bottle. When I surfaced, the basket boat was already coming to pick me up.

“Ah man! Awesome mate! Nice job,” the Aussie said as he patted me on the back. Sea water choked the back of my throat and flowed out of my nose.

The Aussie asked excitedly, “So? How was it?”

I paused and considered the experience. I could still taste the salt water in the back of my throat.

“Well. It was…scary! But it was totally fun!”

“I knew it,” he responded.

*  *  *

Enjoying a Tourist Excursion

We all made a good go of it on the island cliff. The sun never did come out and we shivered between every break when we weren’t on the wall or falling into the sea. The Aussie did a stand up job. Climbing to the same height as me, he also went through the same hesitation before it was time to jump. Our shared fear of jumping gave us something to talk about back on the junk boat.

“Oh man, my brain was like, ‘Don’t jump. Don’t jump.’ But I just had to tell myself to go,” the Aussie described his experience.

“Me too!" I replied. "It’s funny, I thought it would be easier than it was, but I really had to convince myself to jump."

Smiling, the Aussie asked, “Hey, you want a Tiger Beer? We brought loads.”

I reflected on my past criticisms of the tourists, and the hypocrisy I was now living. “Yeah, I’ll take a beer. Thanks.”

Part IV: Nightlights

I was already buzzed when the junk boat started making its way back to the harbor. Because of the clouds that had been in the bay all day, the night snuck up almost unnoticed. There was no impressive sunset or clear transition to darkness. It was just, suddenly, night.

A group of six Dutchmen, including the one I overheard earlier in the day, plopped down around me on the upper deck of the boat. Their collection of empty beer bottles had grown in number.

One of them turned to me and asked, “You ever been to Thailand?”

“No,” I responded, laughing a little. “But I hear it’s nice.”

“Oh, so nice!” he said energetically. “And the traveling is so easy! I really like it there.”

We ended up talking for awhile about the things tourists talk about: where else has the other been, what was nice about it, what didn’t you like, where were you planning on going next. He offered me more beer and I became even more engaged in the conversation. At some point I mentioned that I live in Japan.

“Japan!” the Dutchman commented, “Do you speak Japanese?”

“Well, not really. I’m learning.”

“Does anyone speak English?”

“Not too many people where I live,” I replied, expecting to start a debate about the merits of a country not catering to English speaking tourists.

“And is it difficult? You know, not knowing Japanese and them not speaking English?”

I pondered the question. “Well…yeah. It is difficult.”

“Don’t you get frustrated?” he asked.

Again I became reflective of the experience, “Yeah. I guess I do get frustrated.”

“I bet. That’s how I feel here in Vietnam. No one speaks English here!”

I still knew that was where our theories about our frustration would diverge. Whereas I liked the frustration because it motivated me to learn Japanese, he disliked it because it made it harder for him to enjoy his vacation. But regardless, we were still talking about the same thing: frustration. And wherever it leads, the initial feeling is still a feeling that we can both agree isn’t a good one.

“I understand the feeling,” I replied.

“Yeah, I bet you do. Hey, want another beer?”

“Sure. But I have to go to the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

After the bathroom visit I started heading back to the upper deck, where I had sat talking with the Dutchman. Before ascending the ladder to the deck, I paused and looked out into the bay. We were passing the villages again.

They were lit up now, the sound of generators humming from within the houses and shops. The lights illuminated groups of the fisherman gathered with their families for dinner. The walking planks, fishing nets and stray dogs were obscured by the darkness.

I could hear the Dutchmen laughing and talking loudly on the upper deck, their debauchery now enough to make them embarrassing spectacles for the rest of the tourists on the boat. When one of them started to sing loudly, a family from the floating village, eating quietly on the floor outside of their tiny home, turned and stared at the boat. A girl who was eating with them and who I imagined to be the daughter, looked up at the singing Dutchman and then down to the main deck, at me. I looked back at her as our boat motored by, each of us pondering again what life was like on the other side. I kept looking at her until the village disappeared behind an island and all became darkness again. Thoughts of life on the floating village passed through my head like an ether. Hearing the jovial laughter from the upper deck, I made way back, joining the tourists, the Dutchmen and the free beer.

Iwaki

Iwaki Coast

From the beach where Eriko and I stood, long, wide arcs of water playfully reached for our feet, retreated, and returned as we looked out at the sea. The sky hung grey over our heads and a lighthouse sat on a cliff in the distance. Behind us, a few skeletons of houses crouched over themselves, as if aching, ready to collapse. There were only a few of these dying structures left; the rest was a field of concrete foundations marking where homes once made up a small coastal village. All that remained now was a pile of rubble that overflowed from the junior high school pool.

“Tsunami”, Eriko said, now facing the grave of concrete.

We walked along the remaining road that followed the beach. It was broken and covered in sand. The few buildings left were in shambles, waiting to be torn down by tractors and wrecking balls. There were only a few people walking amongst the wreckage, people who once belonged to the village, but who now seemed as lost as we did.

“This looks like my village,” Eriko commented. “Only in mine there aren’t even a few houses standing anymore. It’s all gone.”

I was quiet, angry at myself for inviting her to the coast with me. I didn’t realize that the tsunami damage would still be so fresh.

“I’m sorry, Eriko. We can leave if you’d like.”

“No. It’s okay.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s fine, Joshua. Don’t worry.”

The rubble in the junior high school swimming pool sat like a decaying carcass. Men in business suits and yellow hard hats had come by and told the weathered fishermen that it was all saturated with radiation and it couldn’t be moved. Surveying its height and breadth, I could make out mattresses, tables, kitchen stoves and desktop computers. There were dolls and plastic playground slides for toddlers, car tires and street signs. The items absorbed into one another and smelled of mildew.

“In my town, the tsunami came up twenty meters,” Eriko told me.

I looked out at a lifeguard’s perch on the beach. The railing was twisted and uprooted from the concrete. Rust had already covered the exposed metal. The tsunami must have been just as tall as the top of the structure.

Holding my gaze at the same height as the lifeguard perch, I turned toward the village, envisioning the tsunami’s path. Maybe I could conjure the sounds of wood buckling and cars being turned over, of ships being lifted over the wave breakers and smashed into the cliff behind the town. Maybe I could see faces of people watching their houses drown in the angry sea. Maybe I could feel a fraction of their pain.



I couldn’t.



I looked at Eriko who was lost in thought, likely about her own village. It was clear that she had already grieved, in her Japanese way, and was ready to move on. There were new challenges to face that the tsunami left in its wake. Her parents were still living in a family shelter provided by the government, and needed to find a new place to rebuild their home. She was still getting used to the new town she had been relocated to. And there were daily broadcasts of radiation levels that had us all wondering just how safe Fukushima was. The aftermath had forced her wounds to heal quickly.

I admired Eriko. I wanted to console her, to share some profound advice on life and say how it’ll all be okay. But the sight of the leveled village choked my thoughts and kept me silent. There was nothing to say. 

We walked off together, back towards my car. The silence remained as we drove away, leaving the sad remains of the village behind us. We didn't speak again until my car passed over a hill and the sea disappeared from our view.

Does Size Matter in a Japanese Sauna?

I was naked, sitting next to Endo-san, a fifty year old, five foot four inch, stout Japanese man. He was also naked. Next to him was a slightly taller but portlier man, naked as well, around Endo-san’s same age. All of us were sweating profusely in the thick heat. A still older man flung open the sauna door and tried to casually walk his wrinkled, sagging body to one of the tiers of wooden benches that we were seated at. I say "tried" because the man was clearly drunk on sake and had difficulty putting one foot in front of the other. Stumbling around drunk in a sauna wasn't a good idea, but the man didn't seem to recognize the danger. I winced as I watched him sway close to the burning stones that heated the small room. He swaggered and tried to focus on a place to plop down his floppy, bare cheeks. Seeing him eye the towel on the first tier of benches, a spot dangerously close to my foot, I moved into the agura position, cross legged, in order to avoid an incident. The position switch made my spot on the second tier feel more cramped, but it was far better than having an old Japanese man rest his naked ass on my toes. His presence made me uncomfortable. But that was just the beginning of the discomfort.

Endo-san laughed. He gestured a drinking motion at me to explain that the man was drunk. I feigned surprise and smiled back. I was still trying to get used to the whole situation.

Going to an ofuro, or public bath, is a very traditional Japanese activity. As much as I was grateful to Endo-san for inviting me to go, I was still anxious. Despite being a means to relax, ofuros, like all Japanese traditions, have strict rules that need to be observed in order to participate. I of course, was not familiar with most of them.

Before leaving for Japan in July I consulted a friend of mine who had lived there for two years and was currently getting a PHD in Japanese History. I asked him about working in the schools, what etiquette I should observe, foods that I should look for and others that I should avoid— all the basics that I would need in order to make a smooth transition into the new culture. During the conversation my friend mentioned ofuros.

“You know about the public baths?” he asked.

“I know something about them, I guess. They’re like a hot springs, right?”

“Kind of. There’s a bit more to it than that. You don’t just dive in and relax. The Japanese shower before getting into the baths. But it’s not like how we’re supposed to shower before jumping into a pool; like where you splash some water on yourself and call it good. In Japan, you sit down on this little stool and scrub the hell out of yourself for about fifteen minutes. You’re in a line with a bunch of other naked guys and you scrub yourself until your skin is red.

“Since I was a gaijin I made sure that I really scrubbed myself down. The Japanese have this image of us as dirty barbarians, so I did what I could to make sure that they knew that I was just as clean as them. I must have been there twenty five minutes scrubbing, longer than anyone else.”

I laughed. “Really? You really clean yourself that much?” The idea seemed silly to me, a man who has gone two weeks in the mountains without bathing.

“Definitely. And even then, when I rinsed myself off and went to sit in one of the baths, a Japanese guy saw me coming and got out. He didn’t want to be in the same bath with a dirty gaijin.”

I looked surprised, “Really?”

“Oh yeah. The Japanese can be pretty racist sometimes.”


With my friend’s advice in my head, I wondered what the Japanese men that I sat in the sauna with thought about me. We hadn't even gotten to the baths and showers yet, but I was worried. Was I ruining the others' ofuro outing by being there? Were they eyeing my body, looking for some filthy, contagious gaijin disease that could be spread to them?

Endo-san looked over at me. I expected him to say something about how I didn’t clean off enough.

“Joshua-san,” he said in Japanese. “You’re tall.”

He brought his hand up to the level of my head and compared it to his own, saying “Bigger!”

I laughed, hoping the action would calm my nerves a bit.

Endo-san looked at my arm. He flexed his bicep next to mine and made me do the same, comparing sizes again.

“Whoa!” he said, shocked. “Bigger!”

The game would have been funny if we were fully clothed. But now, naked and sweating, I couldn’t help but feel awkward.

He looked down towards my waist.

“Whoa! Much bigger!” he exclaimed.

The heat of the sauna felt like it jumped five degrees. Had my face not have already been red, I’m sure that Endo-san would have caught me blushing. I laughed uncomfortably.

Endo-san brought his hands toward me to measure the body part that he had just labeled as "Whoa! Much bigger." This was a clear cultural difference in personal space standards that no Lonely Planet cultural summary had prepared me for. Before I could jump or run, or perhaps curl into the fetal position and cry, I saw that he held his measurement far enough away that I didn't need to overreact. Relief came like a splash of cold water. But it didn't last long. I quickly divined that the measurement that Endo-san held up was almost a foot and a half. My relief became confusion.

“So big!” he declared.

Though I knew he was being generous, I glanced down at myself to verify how ludicrous his eye-balled calculation was.

Nope. Definitely not that big.

I thought that maybe his augmentation of my body part was some sort of strange Japanese way of complimenting me. Or perhaps he was fishing for me to respond in a similar way by, ahem, 'enlarging' his own measurement. Whatever it meant, I had no idea how to respond.

I was going to say something like, “Thank you” or “Oh, it’s not that big,” when I saw that he was bringing his one and a half foot hand measurement toward himself in order to compare. I quickly looked away, hoping to give him what privacy I could.

“Joshua-san, look."

That was the phrase that I was dreading. There are a lot of respect your elder politeness rules in Japan, but I wasn’t sure if that meant that I should or should not look at what he wanted me to see. I turned my head towards him, cringing slightly as I glanced in the indicated direction.

“You are much bigger.”

Endo-san had his hands at the same length as before but, to my surprise, he wasn't sizing up what I had expected. He held his hands just over his thigh. His was about a foot long, and mine was about a foot and a half.

I sighed relief, “Oh, yes Endo-san. Much bigger.”

Our thighs— he had been measuring our thighs the whole time.

The drunk old octogenarian in front of us slumped over, singing something to himself in more of a murmur than a song. I moved my legs out of the agura position and rested my feet back on the first tier. Despite the body part measuring game, I was feeling more comfortable now.

Then, a knock at the door.

The sound was unusual. Everyone who had entered before had simply flung the door open and sauntered in. I expected it to be some etiquette rule that I was unfamiliar with. Maybe I should have knocked when I first came in.

The knock came again, this time accompanied by a crackly, tired voice. Though I couldn’t understand what it was saying, I could tell that the voice was an old woman's. She rattled something in Japanese that seemed to issue a warning. I looked at the drunk man and wondered if it wasn’t his wife looking for him. Or maybe the ofuro was closing and we were supposed to leave.

Endo-san yelled back, “Dozo.”

“Dozo?!” I thought. The word itself is now easy for me to understand. My shock was not one of confusion as to the meaning of the word, but as to why Endo-san would respond, "Dozo", or "Come in", to an old lady about to enter a room full of naked men; naked men that included me!

I thought in silent protest, "What do you mean ‘dozo’, Endo-san? We’re butt naked in here!”

Apparently our nakedness wasn’t a problem. The old lady swung open the door and charged in with a bundle of fresh towels in her arms. When she set them down on the first tier and stood up, she was at eye level with my waist.

Being a gaijin, I understand why people stare at me in the streets or at the schools I work at. My brown hair, blue eyes and six-foot one stature are a stark contrast to the short, black haired Japanese. Usually I don't worry much about the stares. Now however, squeezed into a blazingly hot sauna with an eighty year old grandma looking on, I wished that I didn't stand out quite as much. I could only hope that her waist level glances toward me, like Endo-san’s, were merely to check my thigh length.

I stood up quickly with the other men and we helped pick up the old towels that we had been sitting on in order to replace them with the new ones. Brushing against a bunch of naked Japanese men was strange enough, but stranger still was the fact that the old lady stood there, maybe a foot away, barking orders at us. Again I was glad that the heat was a valid excuse for my blushing and profuse perspiration. The other men weren’t fazed a bit.

I wondered to myself about everything that I had heard about how shy the Japanese were and how privacy was very important to them. My experience wasn’t fitting into that paradigm. You would think that during my friend's advice about adjusting to ofuros he would have mentioned the old ladies that come in when you're butt naked and make you change the towels. I guess that part never crossed his mind. Or perhaps he wanted me to learn that lesson on my own.

Even when the towels were laid and the woman's job was finished, she stayed for a bit and chatted with Endo-san. Endo-san, as naked as anyone else, didn’t give it a second thought. He sat on the second tier, legs spread open, and chatted with the old woman about who knows what. I ignored the conversation, since I didn't consider it an ideal time to practice my Japanese, and attempted to sit cross legged again in hopes of maybe covering up a bit. It was hopeless. Actually, a better word would be ‘pointless’. The old woman cared as much about my nudity as I would have a naked baby’s. Whatever body part came across her view, big thighs or little thighs, it wasn’t of any interest to the towel granny.

When the woman left, Endo-san let me know that he was heading to shower before getting into the bath. I hadn’t even started the real ofuro process yet and I was well outside of my comfort zone. But clearly, there was no hiding. After such a start I actually felt somewhat empowered. What else could happen? Whatever awaited me at the showers and the baths, it would be hard to find anything that would be as uncomfortable as my first thirty minutes in the sauna.

I stood up and walked out of the small room, happy to leave the heat behind. As soon as I crossed through the doorway I could hear the old drunkard, alone now in the sauna, belting out a new song.

Fall Colors, Honky-Tonk, and Language Difficulties

We’re headed to Mount Aizu. It’s fall now and Aizu is the best place in Fukushima to see the colors changing. I’ve been invited by Kawase-san, my Japanese teacher, and his family.

From the tape deck in Kawase-san’s small SUV, the songs go between old honky-tonk and bluegrass. At first my brain struggles with the anachronism, being from both a different time and a completely different culture. But then, as I take in the banjo twangs and look out at passing shrines and Buddha statues, I realize the humor in it and I can't help but chuckle.

“Kawase-san. Ongaku ga dai suki,” I say after a long thought process to make sure that the sentence is okay: ‘I really like the music.’ When I finish the phrase my pride sneaks up on me and pats me on the back. I'm actually able to speak some Japanese.

“Hankuwiru musu” he responds.

That's when the cold stab of ignorance sets in where my pride had just snuck up a moment before; I don't understand.

“Sumimasen. Mo ichido onegaishimasu.” I ask Kawase-san to please repeat what he said.

Changing Colors - Aizu

My low level of Japanese makes it so I hardly understand anything, but sometimes when people repeat a phrase, and slow it way down, I can pick up on one word that allows me to guess at the general context of the question. From there I can give a blind shot at an answer, though I don’t have much of a vocabulary to give any elaborate response.

Kawase-san repeats, “Hankuwiru musu.”

I recognize the iru ending, which means that he’s using a verb form in the normal (not polite) present tense. But I have never learned the verb hankuwiru. Hanku sounds like hanko which is the identification stamp you use to sign documents. My Spanish would lead me to believe that maybe you could turn the noun, hanko, into a verb, hankuwiru, since there would be an obvious root to work with. But I’m slowly learning that Japanese doesn’t share roots as easily as romance languages. Sometimes it works; like with the verb ‘to sing’, utau, which sounds like the word ‘song’, uta. To say singer then, I would assume something like uta-jin, ‘song-person’, or utau-jin, ‘sing-person’. But unfortunately, it has no connection to the root. ‘Singer’is kashu. That's why I no longer trust my natural inclination to connect verbs and nouns vis a vis a root. It just doesn't always work in Japanese.

I repeat the word aloud, “Hankuwiru musu.”

“Hai,” Kawase-san affirms. “You know hankuwiru musu?”

At this point I have to admit defeat. I don’t know what the words mean. My face immediately reverts to an expression that has been my way of saying ‘I don’t understand’ since arriving three months ago - I raise my eyebrows and my eyes grow wide, as if the new word or phrase was a slap in the face from a martian. The face says, “I can’t believe it” and “What the hell is going on?” at the same time. People catch on to the meaning pretty quickly.

I have no idea what hankuwiru musu means and I don’t know why Kawase-san would be talking about identification stamps after I told him I liked his music. The phrase can’t be connected to hanko, then. Unless it’s an expression; like, you give it your stamp of approval.  No, that can’t be right.

My mind goes blank and I concede, “Iie. No. I don’t know.”

He looks surprised. In English, he comments, “Really? Very famous.”

I’m sure he meant to say that the word is very ‘common’, but I get the gist of his mixed adjectives since we have been meeting each other for two hours every Friday for the past two months. Our discourse is like that. I say funny things in Japanese and he understands me. He says funny things in English and I understand him.

His reaction to me not knowing hankuwiru musu doesn’t help me feel better. I think, “Great, I don’t even know famous words.”

Then Kawase-san’s wife interrupts with more Japanese that I don’t understand, but the meaning is easily inferable as she reaches her arm to the backseat, where I am seated, and hands me an orange.

“Oh! Arigatou gozaimasu.” I say, still fixed on hankuwiru musu and what it could possibly mean. Before I can ask, Mayumi, also sitting in the backseat, changes the subject.

“We are picking up my friend before we go to Aizu. Is that okay?”

“Of course,” I reply, tickled that her translations from Japanese to English still include the politeness to ask my permission for something I clearly have no control over, nor would I ever be opposed to.

“He is from Korea,” she explains.

I ask, “Oh, does he speak Japanese?”

“No, no, no. He is only here visiting. He speaks English though.”

I feel a relief that is irksome. I know I will be happy to be able to communicate in English, but I want to be forced to speak Japanese. Forced communication is the only way to relieve myself, eventually, from this constant feeling of ignorance. At least her friend will be in the same boat as I am. We can laugh about how we don’t understand anything.

When Mayumi’s friend, Jung, gets in the car, Kawase-san starts asking him questions in Japanese. I prepare myself to see the same dumbfounded expression arise on Jung’s face. To my dismay however, he barely hesitates before he responds to the questions clearly and articulately.

“I thought you didn’t speak Japanese” I try to say casually, hopefully hiding my jealousy.

“Oh! I don’t,” he responds without out any pretense. He really doesn’t consider his responses to be speaking Japanese. If he can answer Kawase-san’s questions and considers it not being able to speak Japanese, than I wonder what he thinks of my language ability. I must be at comatose level, or the level of some inanimate object; “Yes, I speak Japanese almost as well as a rock.”

Again Kawase-san’s wife’s arm comes arching to the backseat and hands all of us some wasabi peas.

I respond, “Oh! Arigatou gozaimasu,” happy that at least I can say that much.

Jung also says thank you, opens the tiny packet of wasabi peas, and before eating says, “Itadakimasu” which shows that you humbly receive the food. It’s a word that is always said before eating anything. I forgot to say “Itadakimasu” and I’ve already eaten four wasabi peas and my orange peel is sitting in my lap.

***

Kawase-san drives his small SUV like it’s a steed. He’s the cowboy trying to wrangle up wild cattle that done run off the ranch. Or, in this case, he’s trying to take us on a Sunday drive to see the fall colors. Between the speed at which Kawase-san takes turns up the winding mountain road and the thick fog, I am barely able to take in any kind of a view. I assume we’re headed to a lookout point and I’ll be able to appreciate the iridescent trees from there. When we get to the lookout however, the fog is so thick that we can’t see ten yards in front of us. I laugh at the circumstances. I don’t really care that much about the view. The time spent with everyone is entertaining enough.

On the way back down the road, Kawase-san really digs his spurs in and we tear through the forest. I think he wanted to match the rhythm of the honky-tonk still playing on the tape deck. Unperturbed by the speed, his wife yet again reaches to the backseat and gives us little cartons of an iced coffee drink. I think to myself, “Where is all of this food coming from?”

As we bounce and jar to the whim of Kawase-san’s driving, Jung reads the Japanese writing called katakana that's written on the coffee label. “Co-fu-i o-re-i.”

He doesn’t know Japanese, my ass.

***

The Kawase’s take us to a tea ceremony and then to an ancient castle. It appears that the Japanese tourist image isn’t solely reserved for the Grand Canyon or Disneyland. Even in their own country, people are out in the dozens, taking photos and posing by holding up peace signs in front of all sorts of interesting landmarks.

The day is long but enjoyable in its entirety. I am sad when we are on the road back home, where I’ll eventually sit down to another dinner for one. My brain probably needs it though. Despite not talking much I have managed to write down twenty new words and five new phrases that I try to commit to memory while we’re in the car.

The food providing arm reaches back yet again and deposits chocolate in my hand.

“Oh! Arigatou gozaimasu!” I say again. Then, before eating, I make sure to include, “Itadakimasu”.

A familiar song starts playing from the speakers. More honky-tonk. Kawase-san turns it up a bit and says, “hankuwiru musu.”

I’m so full of new words from the trip that I almost let it go by. It’s obviously too hard for me to get; hankuwiru musu. But then I pause and my brain chews on it a little more. Hankuwiru musu. Hankuwiru musu. Han-ku. Wi-ru-mu-su. I give a kind of guffaw of disbelief that I couldn’t figure it out before. Hanku Wi-ru-mu-su. Hank Williams.

SEXY Blog, 2011

Welcome to the new, improved, On The Move blog. There are a few new features to peruse at your leisure that I'd like to bring your attention to:

1st- There is a new "Welcome" tab that you can read if you so choose.

2nd- You can now register on the right-hand sidebar to receive emails when I update my blog.

3rd- Also on the right-hand sidebar, you can become one of my "followers" (weird...but it would be cool to see who reads this).

4th- There is a new tab called "Writing Projects" where I have put some stories that are of a different genre than the travel writings. All of the pieces I have put more work into than a normal blog post. Whether that makes them better or not, I have no idea, but I'd love to hear comments and feedback on any of the stories as it would greatly help me grow as a writer.

Finally- I have a new post from Japan, entitled "Typhoon" just below.

Thank you for taking time to read some of the stories from my life. I greatly appreciate it.

Sincerely,
Josh

Typhoon

The people had heard of the typhoon days in advance. It was on their televisions as a digitally rendered spiral mass. On the radio, they said to batten down the hatches, or something of the like in Japanese. People talked about it in the streets when the clouds moved in lackadaisically grey and heavy, and the first rain drops appeared.

There were only so many preparations for the people to make, and they became less dire in a land that was accustomed to the monthly natural disaster. It was an earthquake in March, another in July, mudslides and flooding in August. And now: typhoon.

School stayed in session. When the first winds picked up, it lashed raindrops against second graders in yellow slickers. The children marched in a line from the bus to their classroom. The teachers closed up the windows and the rain became background chatter to their daily lessons. By lunch time, the indoor world and the outdoor world were of entirely different spirit. In clean, dry shirts and ties, teachers looked out from the protection of their rooms and watched trees bending and swaying sideways. The rain fell from all directions and sometimes leapt toward the windows, like a horror movie ghost, only to be broken up on the glass pane and turned to rivulets drawn down by gravity. There was nothing the people could do but wait out the storm.

***

The rice paddies had already started turning golden brown before the rains. It would be harvest time in a month or so. The grains were growing heavier and were bending the rice stalks into a reverent bow. No longer sprightly, green adolescents, the stalks had matured into middle age and bore the weight of their lives with quiet dignity. When the rain picked up and the earth dampened, the stalks were not affected. They were firmly rooted in the dark earth.

When the dirt became viscous and turned into mud, a soft pair of bulging eyes, no bigger than fish eggs, surfaced to see what the commotion was all about. The soft membranes blinked, checked the paddy for dangers and slowly surfaced, revealing a blunt arrow of a head, and tiny forelegs. The frog inhaled thanks to the rain, silently praising it. Moisture! He blinked his bulging eyes again, clearing any mud from them, and then creaked a noise more fit for a creature fifty times his size, a stentorian, deep croaking that called to his friends. For a moment, silence. Then the responses came. Other frogs chimed in with their croaks: “The rain is here! The rain is here!” The responses came in the hundreds, from all parts of the paddy, from all the rice paddies stretching down the mountain valley. They rejoiced in the rain which was now becoming stronger still and turning the paddy rows into a muddy playground.

The frogs delighted in the wet earth and set to leaping about. No predators would be around in such a storm. For the frogs however, the weather was perfect. They jumped above the bending rice stalks, into the wind and lashing rain of the typhoon. Then they came splashing down softly into the new pools of black water, all the while continuing their croaks. Swimming beetles and unfortunate grasshoppers would find themselves hopelessly flailing about in the pools, and the frogs found opportunity for a feast. In an instant, they would send their sticky tongues out like a whip, grabbing the defenseless creatures and gobbling them up. The frogs found mates with which to celebrate the rain, and leapt about together, chasing and flirting with one another. It was one of the few times when the frogs could play safely. They knew this, and they loved the rain for it.

In an hour’s time the rain had increased significantly. Now the pools poured into one another. The rice stalks tried their hardest to not uproot, though their heavy bounty was now dipping into the water. The frogs, who before found hills and banks to jump from, were now swimming about, looking for the reprieve of solid land. But there was none to be found. They were growing fatigued from swimming. Though their powerful hind legs were made for such sport, the deluge became too much. Streams and rivers formed, threatening to carry the frogs downstream. They began to yearn for the mud again, for a place to bury themselves away and rest. The hundreds of frogs needed to escape the deep pools and rushing water; they had to find higher ground where they could wait for the floods to cease.

***

Thunder cracked and roared down the mountain valley. There was no beginning or end from whence the rain came. Rather, it all chaotically spun about in the atmosphere and poured down on the earth. Hillsides were giving, and trees toppling over.

The elementary school students were being dismissed to the busses. Their rain hats were grabbed from their heads by the wind and were swallowed up into the dark storm. They entered the busses bewildered and silently watched the typhoon from behind the windows as they were driven off to their homes.

When night came, the teachers were still working diligently in their office. The storm had still not abated. A teacher packed up his things, told his colleagues to please drive safe in such terrible weather, and then darted to his car. He was soaked by the time he got in. With the engine catching and the wiper blades violently waving back and forth, he pulled onto the road and made his way home as quickly as possible. When there were not pools of water in the street, he could get up to sixty kilometers per hour, a good clip considering the conditions. It was enough to get him home as quickly as possible, so that he may dry off and sit by the heater.

There weren’t many cars on the countryside road. The headlights of the teacher’s car only illuminated a small triangle ahead of the vehicle. The teacher’s hope to get home quickly translated into a push on the accelerator and the car began barreling down the road, the rain crashing down upon it. The storm was still surging but it wasn’t as bad as before. The car moved faster, swerving around large puddles and careening into the small ones. The teacher would be home in twenty minutes at this rate, faster than he originally thought. Maybe he could make it in ten minutes.

The rain was almost stopping now. The speedometer moved to seventy, eighty. The teacher could almost feel the warmth of his heater at home; of his dry clothes. And then, too suddenly for the teacher to do anything about it, in the small triangle of light that the headlights cast upon the road, a leaping frog hurled himself in front of the car.

The teacher cringed at the sound of the small impact. But he didn’t slow, his resolve to get home growing stronger. A few seconds later, another frog leapt from the side of the road and landed in front of his left tire. The tiny bump it made could barely be felt by the teacher when the car ran over it. Just as a notion of surprise at hitting two frogs crept into the teachers head, the triangle of light, now moving at eighty three kilometers per hour, illuminated more tiny bodies leaping into it. For a millisecond the teacher could see their brightened bodies as if frozen in mid air. There must have been half a dozen of them. But he had no time to neither swerve nor avoid the inevitable collision. Every tiny, leaping body that the triangle of light picked up came to the same end: smashing violently against the car that charged down the wet road.

The sound began to rat-a-tat-tat from the front of the car and the teacher noticed that the frogs were leaping in front of him by the dozens. He slowed, but still not enough to stop the massacre. Every meter he progressed a new onslaught of bodies threw themselves in front of his vehicle. The teacher’s morality began taunting him. Every new thump to hit his car, every small bump that became muted under the tires, was a plea that he be merciful and stop his car. But he continued on. The horror of it was interminable. The teacher accelerated, hoping that the nightmare would end faster that way. The thumps and tiny crashes picked up their frequency. Instead of hearing rain drops hit the car now, it was frogs; hundreds of them. He accelerated still more. The faster he went, the quicker it would end. Soon he would be home by the heater, where he could wait out the storm in silence. With the belief that such an event had to end quickly, that there couldn’t possibly be more frogs, the teacher pressed on. But the thuds and crunches continued relentlessly, echoing in his ears, shaking his conscience. The debate in his head of whether he should stop or not was meaningless. What was the point when he had already hit so many? He weighed the pros against the cons of stopping, of waiting for all the frogs in the valley to pass. But still he continued on, his car plowing against more and more helpless creatures running the gauntlet of the road.

The triangle of light was a merciless picture show of the teacher’s callousness. If he would just stop, dozens would be saved, hundreds perhaps. But it had to end. Maybe a second more and it will end, he assured himself.

His assurance was met with only more thuds, which now he ignored. He had set his course. It was their own fault anyway. What the illuminated triangle at the front of the car revealed in all its frigid indifference, the darkness behind the car covered and left to be forgotten in the night.

Just get home. You’re almost there.

***

The heater in the teacher’s small apartment was nice and warm. He quickly changed out of his wet work clothes and into jeans and a soft, dry sweater. He drank tea to drown the last inklings of cold that his body had taken on and soon enough he had moved to his bed where the blankets enveloped him from chin to toe.

The rain had stopped completely. The teacher noticed the quiet. It sounded foreign and new against a day of constant storm. Just before the silence took hold of the teacher and carried him off to his dreams, it broke. Somewhere beyond his window, in the rice paddies of the mountain valley, a sound of croaking began.