First day in Japan (top photo) and now!
One year has passed since I boarded a plane to pop to Japan for a job and a jolly.
I’d never taught before. I knew one person in Japan. I knew two words in Japanese. I knew three things about where I was going to live – It had a famous garden, a fancy castle and… no, only two things I knew. Spoilt that, sorry.
“Percy.” said I, turning to him with confusion in my eyes. “Will this be a fun filled jaunt?”
“Don’t ask me.” retorted Percy, scowling at my stupidity.
“Why ever not?” My bottom lip quivered.
“For I am a stuffed bear. Now have a bevvy and enjoy the flight, you cad.”
“I CAN’T, PERCY!!” I wailed. “I booked Egypt air!! It’s a dry flight! I don’t know what to do! I’ve even considered suckling the alcoholic hand wipes to get a fix!”
“More fool you.” Percy cruelly cackled, reinforcing my hypothesis that all teddy bears are sadistic bastards.
This is not Percy. True Percy is a darling.
Eighteen hours of flying later, I have since lived and breathed in Japan. To date, that’s one year and one month.
I’ve felt happy, I’ve felt sad, I’ve felt challenged, I’ve felt frustrated, I’ve felt elated, despondent, nothing, everything. I’ve been careful and considerate, and I’ve been obnoxious as fuck.
What have I done?
I have worked in public elementary schools and junior high school, and in English conversation school. I’ve lived in Okayama and Tokyo. WHERE DEM PLACEZ??! You may explode with the desire to know. Calm the dickens down, I’ll tell you! Okayama is part of the western region of Honshu, the largest Island of Japan. Although I lived in Okayama City, the small town where I resided for 7 months felt very countryside to me. Moving to Asakusa, East side of Tokyo (the capital of Japan, Kanto region), was a mind-blowing contrast to Okayama. Both of these experiences held different learnings, which I’ll flit between.
I’ve also done a fair share of bopping about Nippon, but I haven’t left the country. It’s felt pretty intense. Japan is still in many ways a closed country, at least in comparison to other developed countries. It is a notoriously homogeneous society. As soon as I got off the plane, I felt I had entered a bubble world, far away from all I had ever known before.
I shoulda learnt some valid things from this… let’s go off the assumption that I have. To have degenerated would destroy my small talk with Brian and Betty back in Blighty. Here’s some stuff I think went in the dusty head. Some of these will be drawn from Japan, other things will be regarding personal growth taken from living away from my native land.
Understanding your relationship with stereotypes and generalisations
“I DON’T stereotype!” I haughtily claimed in my the youth of yesteryear. I am wisdom and culture epitomised.
Ha ha ha ha hO HO HO.
The first few days and weeks caused me to be dizzy with all the new stimuli. The sights, the smells, new behaviours, new etiquette. Bloody hell, this is all a bit different innit!? To try to make sense of it without my head exploding, I reached to stereotypes that lay dormant in my subconscious. They were ecstatic to be born into the world, even if I KNEW they weren’t true.
“All Japanese people are shy.”
“Everywhere is Japan is perfectly clean! SUPER!”
How comfortable these ideas are!
Every time I was confronted with something unexpected, my mind snatched hold of my memories of “normal”. It yearned to take refuge in these limited perspectival stances where everything made sense. I once set up an interview activity in second grade and JHS. The boys of the class ignored me, lined up at the back of the classroom and waited as one walked along and grabbed the fun zone of the other from behind one by one, between the legs, raising them high into the air. I went into internal meltdown. Why, why, WHY do you feel each other like this?! THIS IS NOT NORMAL, THIS IS WEIRD, WHAT THE GIDDY BIDDY!?!
I was drawing back to my own experience of being 14 where all boys would never dare do something that could cause them to be subject to the jests of being “gay” or non-masculine. The mind attaches to its own memories and then projects this onto what it is currently experiencing, causing bias to the reality of what is happening. But what I see is not built on my own experiences that occurred in England nearly ten years ago.
I now try not to make grand and bold statements of what Japan “is” and how Japanese people “are”. Can such overgeneralisation – stereotyping – really be applicable to a whole country with a current population of 127,341,000 people? No! It’s important not to be sloppy with your perceptions – to dilute a few experiences and do a whitewash of the walls of your brain with them. I can only view it from my angle, in one short year, from my circles of companions and the hundreds of Japanese people I have been fortunate to meet and converse with. But to take what is there is in front of you is important, not what you think you see or feel from preconceptions.
On the flip side, stereotypes do exist for a reason. To deny the foundations of some would be stupid. One must take responsibility to dig deeper to understand the roots of such claims.
Another thing is the reverse of this sensation – learning to deal with stereotypes some Japanese people will press onto you as a representative of your country. “Oh! Everyone loves fish and chips in England, yes?!”
“……. sure, why the fuck not? Also, this is how they’re served every time”
It’s bemusing, it’s irritating, it’s endearing. It shows me how ludicrous it would be to cling to my first ideas of Japan.
To be “other”
It was a mindfuck and a privilege to understand what it feels like to be the “other”, something I’d never come to grips with living in London. In Tokyo people don’t give as much of a hoot. But it is still present! Only yesterday I was invited to be in a photo just cos I was passing by, and then the next question was the inevitable “why did you come to Japan!??” What’s weird is that this is no longer weird when it happens.
How to be alone (sometimes…….)
Independent activity was enjoyed up to a certain point in England. I could go to the corner shop alone, pondering whether baked beans love or loathe sharing their tin with pork sausage pals (I’d love the companionship, but I can’t be spokesperson for those devils) Yet with organised leisure activities, to be alone was to feel lack. I needed someone to revel in the situation with me.
Japan caters for the independent activity and for the alone time (perhaps a little too well…) I am not talking about physical proximity but mental independency. I learnt the importance of being still in my mind, to be surrounded by people but not craving constant stimulation by them. It is a pleasure to go shopping alone, go to museums alone, have a coffee alone accompanied by my darling Mister Donut. It certainly helps not to understand most of the babble around me. I no longer get distracted overhearing Billy and Sally’s public train strop, because I cannot understand Billy and Sally, and, well, Japanese Billy and Sally would rarely strop in public. Goodbye public conflicts! But that’s a different matter.
How to deal with (some) things alone
It’s the nitty gritty small shit that used to be done without a care that halts me in my tracks. Every process takes research and planning. My first attempt at going alone to the post office in Okayama was traumatising. I memorised how to say “stamp” in Japanese and ventured in, fingers pathetically trembling as they clutched the letter. I mustered all my courage and blurted it out. She nodded! Joy flooded my brain!! CONQUERER OF ALL! The lady smiled and then spoke to me more words. Wait…. stop! I wasn’t prepared for more words. Why wasn’t I warned more words would be worded?! I’ll bloody sue the post office! I stood there blankly, furious at myself for not being able to understand. I dashed home and looked up more words.
Since this mini experience there have been a hundred more, I learnt how susceptible I am to stress, how frustrations and setbacks are inevitable in life and I have to work forward alone to cope. It’s probably not necessary to implode trying to buy a stamp. Probably should calm down a bit, silly cow. Doraaama ain’t welcome here.
A world where Kanye West couldn’t survive
Western cultures sport a multitude of personalities bubbling all over the place, in public, and private. We typically function on an individualist basis. In Japan, the opposite prevails – it’s group life to a very large extent. A great deal of attention is paid to developing the proper attitude toward social responsibilities. These are taught as the basic facts of life. One thing that jarred me greatly was the different relationship to what I understand to be the ‘ego’. Very basically, Western philosophy has been more inclined to think and teach that destiny in one’s life is shaped mainly according to the strength of individual will – to go and get, to conquer, to control, to make occur. This helped form some strong ego identities. In Japanese conceptualisation of self, ego negation can be seen to be an important step towards the achievement of self. To nullify the ‘ego’ increases the individual’s capacity for relationships with others.
What Westerners might see as acceptable questioning of a decision or ‘standing up for oneself’ in a situation for may be categorised as ‘selfish resistance’ in many Japanese contexts. What I would consider being authentic – irrespective of the potential ruckus it may cause others – would perhaps be seen as egocentric here. I’ve learnt that concepts of being ‘self-centered’ are perceived differently depending on the culture.
Of course, these are generalisations and not everyone is tied to these traits in any of the cultures. Western influences and attitudes are part of the society too. What I can personally take from this experience is that the ego is malleable and one shouldn’t get attached to it. One is able to transform it at will to experience and create new. It’s just a vehicle which we use to experience the world, and not the fixed core of all we are.
Language is not wholly necessary for communication.
I’ve had some bloody good conversations with people who speak as much English as I do Japanese. It can be brilliant. It can be frustrating. Most of the time I forget that we don’t share a common language. What a joy!
I’m young! I’m free! I’m a travelling little…. Oh. Who am I?! Why am I doing…?!!
One needs an undercurrent of meaning in what is being done or experienced, wherever you go in the world. There is no such “escape” from your real life woes that travelling can permanently provide you with if this focus is ignored. Quitting the menial slog of a job to travel is a temporary drug. As long as you are aware of what you are gaining, living away can be a beautiful, enriching experience. Assumptions that the thrill of dashing around forever is sufficient in itself could result in a disappointment later on when you see the same patterns to your responses. As part of a bigger picture and with a current of purpose pulsing through it, travel/living away/working away can be enriching, beautiful, moving and all of the things. It can be all the non-romantic things too. Don’t just romanticise that shit, dumbarse.
Who are you?
Who we are as individuals, what our sense of self is, what we are able to think and feel, is profoundly shaped by the culture and institutions into which we are born. Living in a different country is a beautiful way to understand this. You learn that your bubble is not the centre of the universe, that your presumptuous ways are not the foundations of all humanity. Sure, you can always have awareness of this, but to really FEEL it is to be away from it for a significant amount of time. To take what you know, to take your conceptions of self and to tilt it all, attempt to view it through different eyes.
My struggles trying to function in a different society have been bleeding exasperating at times. The core ways you used to take for granted aren’t being reaffirmed, they’re ignored or met with confusion. It is infuriating trying to argue in a situation you deem justified to argue in and are met with blankness. Less flexibility in day to day life has driven me barmy at times. I also felt like I couldn’t connect with people upon occasion, all because they don’t adhere to my engrained expectations of small talk!
Not sure this is the place for you, dear….
I’ve also felt pure appreciation in acts that move me, time and time again. Things that would never happen in any other country, people going above and beyond to help you and show you respect, irrespective of how you treat them. I’ve seen that viewing the world just through my Western lens is not to see clearly. Tackling a different perspectival stance is a challenge worth undertaking to better yourself and stretch your brain.
There will be times where you enjoy nothing more than feeding the obnoxious beast inside of you. KNOWING you’re being a wanker and indulging it. Loudly talking and boozing on the train is probably one of my preferred shameless pastimes.
On a final note for now (because I always write too much)
I’ve learnt that one can make deep and delicious connections with other human beings, anywhere. Isn’t that magical? My youthful “what if I don’t make friends” fears have deteriorated. Faith in people is strong. I am so stupidly fortunate. MUSH.
That’s all this time! MATA NE!
Life of Pap 