Bodily functions

I bet Madonna farts when she does yoga. Someone lets one rip about once a week in my yoga class, although apart from the occasional hearty cough (which instantly follows in an attempt to pretend it wasn't actually a fart and just part of a cough, and which instantly lets everyone know who the perpetrator is), they are generally dealt and received in a mature silence. No giggles. Japanese people tend to be very sensible and mature about bodily functions. Bodily functions are not naughty, gross or amusing like they are for us. A friend from the UK remarked that the whole comedy industry in Britain would go bankrupt if British people had the Japanese attitude. People here, especially the women, talk about digestion, openly and often, partly because constipation is such a common problem. I've seen countless advertisement for laxative medicine posted up and around the place, and one of my yoga teachers starts each session with this question: 'So, who here today is constipated?' At the end of class, the willing yoginis (women who do yoga) line up and she performs a kind of 'magic' on their stomachs to help get the digestive juices flowing again. My friend Tomomi volunteered me once and I found myself lying on my back while the sensei rubbed my stomach in a complicated pattern and muttered something. Did it work? Well, it half worked, I won't go into detail because I'm not Japanese, see, it's a little embarrassing. I did find a much more effective cure at the local chemist's. During the winter, I went in after about 5 days of, ahem, blocked pipes, hoping for a little relief from my agony. Feeling a bit shy, and practising my Japanese phrase over and over again in my head, I sidled up to one ancient old crone who was busy stacking some shelves in a corner of the shop, miles away from the other customers, and whispered to her, 'I was wondering if you have any medicine for constipation?'. She nodded understandingly, and whispered back, discreetly, 'Please wait a minute.' Then she turned, cupped her hands to her mouth, and roared out to the shop assistants on the other side of the vast store, with a surprisingly loud holler for someone so slight and wizened, 'SUMIMASEN! BENPI NO KYAKU SAMA GA IRRASSHAIMSU!' (EXCUSE ME! THERE'S AN HONOURABLE CONSTIPATED CUSTOMER HERE!'). She might as well have been holding a megaphone, and shining a spotlight on me. Every customer in the shop looked over my way, with interest, but no-one giggled. I grabbed the senna tea and ran, blushing. I'm not sure why we are so uptight, or immature, about that kind of thing. It's a natural thing. We fart. We poo. We get angry when we can't poo. Doing the crab pose can make us fart. Why is this so funny?
Just down the road from me is a huge 3-metre-high neon sign, 3 storeys up in the air, proudly proclaiming: 'ジ'. In English: 'HAEMMERHOIDS.' I asked a Japanese friend to explain it and he just shrugged his shoulders and said 'It's an advertisement for haemmerhoid cream.' Wasn't it kind of funny that the sign only says 'Haemmerhoids'? 'I suppose it is,' he said, 'I've never thought about it like that.' Well, it actually isn't that funny. Maybe I'm just a little childish. By the way, if you are constipated, I highly recommend the senna tea. But don't drink it before you go to karaoke with your friends, or you'll find you keep missing your turn to sing.

Dictators and yearbooks

At their high school graduation ceremony, the students receive yearbooks made of thick, glossy card, full of colour photographs of themselves and the staff. They’re as heavy as a giant world atlas and cost about the same amount. Inside, on the first page, is a humungous photographic portrait of the school Principal. Then, two slightly less humungous photos of the Vice Principals. Next, rather smaller photos of the teachers. Next, the smallest photos in the book - the students. I expressed my surprise over the rather large size of the Principal’s photo to one of the Japanese English teachers, and asked if it was because Japanese society was hierarchical in structure. He said, ‘Yes, the students’ photos are very, very small, because they are not important!’ Smiling, he continued, ‘This is Japanese society. Japanese society is like the societies of mediaeval Europe. It is a very bad country! We are not a democracy at all.’ He gave a big, booming laugh. Suddenly all these images of Chairman Mao plastering his face all over everything came to mind. Then Kim Jong II. I tried to imagine getting the urge to put portraits of myself all over people’s stuff and found that the idea just didn’t appeal. I wonder if the Queen minds having her face all over our spare change. I don’t suppose anybody has ever asked her. Don't get me wrong, I'm not putting the Principal of my school on a par with Kim Jong II - I expect he just puts up with the oversized photo because that's his responsibility as the figurehead of the school, because that is just the way it is done here.
These gorgeous yearbooks cost around $150-200 each. Japanese parents are always forking out cash for these kinds of souvenirs, as well as the expensive school trips. The second year students go to Korea every year and stay in hotels, which makes my forth form school camp to Motatapu Island seem kind of lame in comparison. At the same time, Japanese people constantly cite the costs involved as a major deterrent to having children. No wonder the declining birthrate is such a serious problem in Japan. People can’t afford the yearbooks.

Interesting Japanese #2

'Baa-ko-do' = 'Comb-over'
This is a transliteration of the word 'barcode.' This describes a hairstyle popular among some aging Japanese gentlemen. Long, black strands of hair are combed over from one side of the head to the other in an attempt to disguise the pale, shining bald pate - looking just like a barcode. One TV show even tried scanning peoples' heads to see what prices would come up.

Sunday afternoon

It's a warm, peaceful Sunday in my neighbourhood. I've been sitting on my verandah in the sunshine and eating leftover rice wrapped in seaweed and drinking miso soup, watching the white butterflies darting in and out of my neighbour's large crop of red opium poppies. I don't think it would be possible to grow such a large crop of poppies in your garden in New Zealand without someone ripping them off to convert into something illegal. A shame, because they are so pretty against the blue sky. In Eurasia there is a legend that the Buddha cut off his eyelids to stop himself from nodding off, and where they fell to the ground a plant grew which would bring sleep and terrible dreams to those who used it. Perhaps my neighbours suffer from insomnia. The drug laws in Japan are very strict, for example possession of marujuana is pretty much on a par with possession of cocaine, but deep in the countryside there are plenty of farmers who harvest wild cannabis for medical or personal use. This is an old practice which goes back to their ancestors, who used the plant as a natural and handy painkiller, for example for toothache. Also, while the drug laws are very strict for certain substances, other addictive substances ie. alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco. are widely used. Still, the strict drug laws do seem to work - in the whole three years I've been here I have never heard of any of the students at my school using illegal drugs. I know the older ones drink, sometimes, and maybe some of them smoke, but that seems to be as far as it goes. Last year the vice-principal informed me and Mum (who was visiting) in very serious tones, that some students were in trouble because they had left a school baseball game to buy ice-creams. Upon which Mum whispered to me, 'If it had been the kids at my high-school, it'd have been much worse than ice-cream!'

On the Nanboku line

A recorded voice reminds everyone again and again to switch their cellphones off and give up their seats for elderly people, and a poster on the wall shows a female hand seizing a man's arm and thrusting it into the air: the message is 'Groping is a Crime!' Under the poster a woman sits and clutches a shiny white paper bag that says 'SOFULOL: Sophisticated Full Length Office Lady', like she's a coat to be draped over a salaryman's arm. Three schoolgirls get in and plonk themselves down on the seats. Simultaneously, as if controlled by the same joystick, they each take out a pink plastic-backed mirror the size of an A4 exercise book and begin to preen themselves, suddenly frozen by their own reflections, fingertips patting and stroking strands of fringe which already sit stiffly unmoving. A middle-aged man with white hair and a towel around his neck huffs and puffs, then pulls out a pretty paper fan and vigorously fans himself for three stops. Further down the carriage two 'Go-su-lo-li's (Gothic Lolitas) sit side-by-side with legs spread like rag dolls, heels out and toes turned in, one plump, one skinny, black hair dyed blacker, platform boots and white makeup, clutching designer handbags, adorned all over with the Vivienne Westwood motif. Goths gone posh. A salaryman sweats over his briefcase next to an old lady who gives everyone grumpy looks. Next to me is a young mother and on the other side of her is her little boy who is leaning on her lap and chatting away to her. When he sees me, he says 'Look mum, it's a foreigner!' I give him a sideways smile and he gives me a big grin back. I wonder what it will be like to be home again and have no-one staring at me anymore. I wonder if I will stop staring at everyone else.

Interesting Japanese #1

‘Kare ga kingyo no fun mitai da ne.’ = ‘That guy is so clingy.’
This literally means, ‘That guy is like goldfish poo.’ If you’ve ever owned goldfish, you’ll know what they are talking about. I remember my first experience of goldfish poo quite well. I ran screaming to my mother, convinced that my favourite goldfish’s stomach had exploded and it was trailing its guts behind it like a string of sausages. Mum reassured me that it was not its guts, but rather the result of a heavy lunch and we wouldn’t be rushing the fish to surgery anytime soon.
This expression is apparently so common that it was in my textbook.

Schoolboy fashion

Japanese schoolboy fashion is way cool. Imagine Robert Smith-style haircuts - big black mops with asymmetrical cuts and lots of gel. Top that off with an oversized pink plastic hairclip in the fringe. The eyebrows are shaved or plucked. The glasses in fashion right now are the ones with rectangular raspberry-red frames. The uniform white shirt is oversized and baggy, the hem hints at being tucked into the belt, just enough so you can see the non-regulation belt - this is where individuals can make their statement. White leather with silver studs is in, so is anything with metal or tassles all over it. The trousers hang as low as possible from the belt, and multi-toned fluoro trainers are in. The bag comes with various soft toys hanging off it.
The teachers constantly despair that the boys spend too much time in the bathroom looking at themselves in the mirror. What they don't realise is that looking that good takes time.

Shopping is my hobby

Common conversation:
Me: 'What's your hobby?'
Student: 'Shopping...and sleeping.'
Japan must be the only country where shopping and sleeping are considered hobbies. In a country when people hardly have any free time, due to the crazily long work hours, sleeping and shopping are not necessary activities, but have been reconstructed as fun things to do on your time off. They've got to make it fun, because for some people, these are the only activities besides work they will have any time to do. Besides that, the shops are great. It's a consumer paradise. There's even a shop called 'Three-Minute Happiness' which pretty much sums it up.
Luckily for my bank account, clothes shopping is not as easy for us non-Asians. I was reminded of this when I went looking for summer clothes last weekend. I was Gulliver going shopping in the land of Lilliput. Trying on jackets and shirts with their narrow backs and tight sleeves had me grimacing in discomfort while the saleswomen looked on with no change in expression, exclaiming brightly, 'Oh! Just right!' But it was only just right if I never wanted to cross my arms again or touch my face, which would rule out eating. Maybe that would help me fit the trousers, though, which I had difficulties getting past my knees. When I did get them all the way up, they would reach halfway down my calves. Nothing fit. I started getting grumpy. I was no longer Gulliver, but a 5-year-old in a lolly shop who couldn't get any of the wrappers off the sweets. I was getting so desperate that I nearly bought something just because I could get it on. Until I realised I really didn't want that beaded multi-coloured kaftan-style dress. You have to be careful of shopping in foreign countries. I remember going shopping in Sapporo with a friend who was about to fly home to New Zealand. He was on the brink of buying a baby pink satin bomber jacket with a snarling tiger and 'JAPAN!' in huge letters across the back, before he thought better of it. He later told me that as he soon as he stepped off the plane in Christchurch he knew he'd made the right decision. You can be too careful, though. I'm still kicking myself for not buying that 'Good girls go to heaven, bad girls go to Amsterdam' T-shirt when I was in Holland with my sister last Spring.
In the end my shopping day ended well, by the way. I did find a couple of great pieces of clothing, and here's nothing better after a long day trawling the shops than a feed at the kaiten sushi and a mug of steaming green tea.

Japan v Croatia

‘DAIJOUBU! DAIJOUBU!!’ A man wearing a black fedora hat, a bright blue T-shirt with the Superman logo emblazoned across his chest, and a flowing cape made out of a huge Japanese flag, led the chanting in my local bar last night, standing beneath the giant screen especially brought in to watch the World Cup soccer matches. Now this guy has an interesting job. He’s a spy, working to track down and follow the activities of gangs of Russian car thieves (I was reassured that he doesn’t wear this kind of outfit on the job). The chant ‘Daijoubu! Daijoubu!’ means something like, ‘It’s OK, it’s OK! Everything’s gonna be alright!’ I kind of liked it as a cheer – much gentler and more philosophical than ‘We’re number one! We’re gonna kick some arse!’ or something. The game was pretty tense, with neither side managing to get ahead, and at every save by the Japanese goalkeeper, and at every missed shot at the goal, the chanting would begin again: ‘DAIJOUBU! DAIJOUBU!’
In the end, it was a draw 0-0. As the bell rang for full time there was a communal sigh and bowing of heads in disappointment at Japan’s lost chance to get through to the next round, but soon the music was back on, more beer was poured and everything was ‘daijoubu, daijoubu,’ once again. Japan hadn’t played so badly as last time, after all. What’s more, they hadn’t been wearing shirts that looked like someone had cut up a tablecloth from a 1970’s Italian restaurant. I kept expecting someone to come out and place a bottle of cheap Chianti on one of the Croatian players’ chests. In fact, I think I saw someone in the stands balancing one on his gut, in one of the many lingering shots of Croatian supporters’ bare, sunburned chests by the Japanese cameras.

Musings on Maids

 
I've been thinking about the Maid cafe (see my last entry), as a few people asked me if there was anything, well, pervy about it. As we waited outside the café before we went inside, one of my colleagues, a Japanese man in his forties, confessed to me quite earnestly that his dream was for a Maid to write his name in tomato sauce on his om-rice (not some kind of spiritually pure rice but a favourite Japanese dish of an omelette filled with rice). Hearing this kind of dreamy teenage fantasy from a fully grown man wearing a suit was something between rather sweet, plain pathetic and slightly disturbing. The Maid phenomenon has been criticized for its treatment of women as fetish objects, and before my visit, I had an image of the Maids being like the common fantasy figure of the 'French maid', but inside the café the atmosphere struck me as remarkably sexless. For a start, the customers were not all male, as I'd heard - only half were - and everything, the Maids, the customers' behaviour, the ornaments, the music, the decor, was childish. Extremely childish. It was adults playing at being children. It was regression in a big way, but there was nothing pervy about it. What is more worrying, perhaps, is that our urban societies are creating adults who need to regress to such an extent - emotionally immature and undeveloped adults. Adults who spend their lives working behind a computer screen, or a desk, and who are regimented into being a voiceless, insignificant cog in an overwhelmingly large society, unable to express their opinions and feelings, and unable to develop meaningful adult relationships with the people around them. Who feel more comfortable being children, a state of being which they already know, which is safe, and unthreatening, and undemanding.
Or is it just good fun being a kid again? Is the comfort of regression harmless and even necessary? Japan’s custom of bathing has been compared to the ultimate regression - to the womb. The Japanese bath comforts, rejuvenates and refreshes you. It brings you back to life again. In a society like Japan's, where one has to bear the pressures of work most of the waking hours, and must be 'majime' (serious/earnest) in their work at all times, no wonder people want to wear animal ears and play tea parties in their free time.

Maid in Japan

Last night I was served pancakes by Little Bo Peep. Then as she poured my tea from a white china teapot she called me 'O-Himesama' (Princess), her large, limpid eyes shining above impossibly cute dimples. I was sitting next to Alexander the Great and to his right, three Japanese men from the Board of Education, who all had ears like cats.
This is only partly true. She wasn't actually Little Bo Peep, but my waitress was dressed very much like her. She did pour me tea, though, and she was very cute, in the Japanese sense of cute. This was my first visit to a Maid Cafe, which is all the rage with Japanese computer geeks and manga addicts. The girls who serve you are dressed as 'Meidos', which are based on female characters from manga comics. They look a bit like lifesize dolls. Everything in the cafe is very doll-like. It's like being at a tea-party inside a doll-house. When you eat at a Maid Cafe, the Maid will call you 'Master' or 'Mistress' or another name of your choice (hence 'Alexander the Great', his real name is Alex), and treat you as such. They don't stop at pouring your tea, some will even spoonfeed you. 'Cute' is a big theme. There were cute soft toys sitting on shelves behind the counter and cute music playing (the songs have names like 'Candy Candy' and 'Cutie Honey'). You can borrow the cafe's cute cat ears or oversize bows and ribbons to wear in your hair as my colleagues were.
So are the Maids cute, or not? I asked some students and friends. My students (female) were unanimous. "Very cute!" they cooed. One foreigner friend said 'They're scary' and another said 'Too artificial. It's too posed.' This might be a big difference between our sense and Japanese sense of what is 'cute'. At the Maid Cafe, we looked through books of photos of the Maids, posing with soft focus, pretending to bake cookies and pouting, gazing up at the camera with wide eyes and lips glazed in strawberry lip-gloss. According to the Japanese guys we were with, this was very cute. Although the Maids are very pretty young women, and their outfits are fantastic, I wouldn't call them cute. For me, cute is something which is unintentional. For example, my students' English is often very cute - like today in class, a boy writing about child labour in 'Bang Radish' (Bangladesh). Cute is when we are vulnerable. Not just looking vulnerable, but when we really are.
Maid cafes have been criticized for showing women as subservient. So how, as a feminist, would I feel about this aspect of it? Well, when I was there, I could see nothing subservient about those women at all. They might act 'cute' but they are completely in control. Quite a few single geeky guys came in when we were there and they were all mushy and adoring of the Maids, bringing them soft toys as presents, and doing whatever the Maids told them to do. The girls might be their Maids, but those lonely manga geeks are the girls' slaves.

Soccer shock

The whole country was in a state of shock after Japan got beaten so badly by Australia. At school, nobody was talking about it. I mentioned it in class to illustrate the word 'terrible', and was met by a wall of silence. One of the teachers whispered to me that everyone was too upset by the result to speak about it. The reason is that Japan have to win against Croatia and Brazil to make it through to the next round, and their chances of doing that are fairly slim. The other reason is that Japan didn't play very well in the Australia game - even I could see that and I don't know much about soccer. I thought one of the All Blacks had wandered out onto the pitch until I had it explained to me that he was the referee. To be honest, I spend most of the game comparing the players' haircuts and deciding which one is the best-looking.

Coffeeかな？

Brilliant! A new cafe, Morimoto, has opened up near my yoga school which has decentish coffee and good food, including sandwiches on BROWN bread! I'm a leetle ashamed to say that since coming to Japan, I've been forced against my better judgement to frequent the cafes of a well-known big bucks mega-company whose name rhymes with 'blah, sucks' (if you can think of a better rhyme let me know). I wouldn't have bothered with such dull cafes as these in New Zealand, unless I happened to be in St Lukes shopping mall, where somehow it feels normal. I remembered feeling quite offended when the U.S. giant dared to open one of its bland cafes on our precious K Rd, elbowing its way into the middle of such coffee greats as Brazil and Allelujah.
Here, however, good coffee has been harder to come by. Although Japan drinks a lot of coffee, they drink it as though it were tea. Meaning weak. Over-extracted. You go into a cafe, order a coffee, the barista sweats and fusses over a complicated-looking aparatus for what seems like an eternity, then produces a cup of something which vaguely resembles coffee, but isn't quite. It tastes as if someone made a plunger of coffee, drank the coffee, poured more boiling water into the plunger, plunged it straightaway, and then poured you a cup. It's like drinking the ghost of coffee. Which wouldn't be so bad, except that they then charge you $8 for it. That's how I became a regular at the S----ucks coffeeshop closest to my yoga school. A junkie will do anything for a fix, even when it comes in a cup with some crappy logo of a two-tailed mermaid on it and doused in 'cafe jazz'. Now, I can go to Morimoto instead, which is also a chainstore, but at least it's local and the food is so much better. I say, "Banzai!"
The one downside about lunch at Morimoto is that so far, you can only get your coffee in a paper cup. I'm planning to write to them and suggest they get in some muggu cuppus (mug cups)...I'll let you know how it goes. I recently wrote to my favourite bar and suggested they stock locally bottled, fresh Hokkaido mineral water as well as fusty old Evian. I didn't get a reply, maybe they think I'm a pain in the arse. I also mailed Amazon and asked if it was completely necessary to get a humungous cardboard box as packaging every time I ordered a teeny-tiny book or magazine. They told me that they had noted my request, but that was the last I heard. Well, anyway, writing bothering letters to companies is a great way to improve your Japanese!
Another interesting feature of the new Morimoto cafe is that the two people making the sandwiches do so behind a large, shining glass window right next to where you sit to eat. They might feel a little like animals in a zoo, but it's a good way of checking that no-one's spitting into your salmon bagel.

World cup mania

Japan is gearing up for the big game against Australia on Monday. It's all over the TV news. A man down south has filled his fish tank full of blue fish in support of the Japanese team. A primary school served frankfurters and rye bread for school lunch so the kids could experience some German culture. They showed all the kids shouting in unison 'Oishii! Ganbarre!' (Delicious! Fight on!) This morning there was a panel of experts on NHK assessing Japan's chance of winning. In true Japanese style they have researched the finer points meticulously. Apparently the average height of the Japanese team is 178 cm, whereas the average height of the Australians is 184 cm. I'm not sure if that's good or bad for Japan. One TV presenter stood next to a lifesize cardboard cut-out of one the strongest Aussie players (sorry, don't know his name), shown grimacing fiercely in mid-run. The consensus by the panel of experts was that because this player had a wife and very cute three-year old child, he would be very homesick, so his spirits would be down and he wouldn't play well, so Japan has a better chance of beating the Aussies.
I was asked at school which team I would be supporting, so I said, 'Anyone who's playing against Australia.' I'm sure there are people at my school who still think I am Australian, so if Japan lose I might be in trouble on Tuesday.

Welcome new teachers party!

Last night was the English department welcome party for the new principal and new English teacher. Ms Tsuchi wore a kimono with an obi (belt) decorated with traditional Japanese instruments. She looked hot. I wore my new necklace of beads (a present from Lucy and Niall) and was asked by one teacher if it had been made by Aborigines. The dinner began with the usual speeches: the speech to welcome the new teachers, and the speeches given by the new teachers. These tend to follow a formula. The new teacher says something like ‘There are many things I don’t know about this job, and many times when I am stuck or in trouble, so please help me out. I need your assistance.’ It struck me how the Japanese are very good at admitting weakness. So many times I’ve heard a speech begin with, ‘I am very nervous, so please bear with me.’ It’s such a relief to be able to say that. I don’t know why we always have to show ourselves as super confident and strong to other people, when we really don’t feel like that on the inside. To be humble is a great virtue here, which means that you can show your weaknesses more easily. You should also be humble about those people close to you. For example, a conversation I had last week:
Me: ‘Your daughter is so pretty.’
Mr S: (with a pleased smile) ‘She is very fat.’
Me: ‘And your wife is so nice.’
Mr S: (with a loving chuckle) ‘She is also very fat.’
From this conversation, his expression, i could easily tell he adores his family.
It’s funny how it has taken me three years to work something out which seems so glaringly obvious. Maybe it’s to do with finally understanding what people are saying. Language is such a big part of culture, or rather, language is culture.
Dinner was the usual sashimi, tempura, tofu and gallons of beer. My neighbour recently got married so we had a long discussion about marriage at our end of the table. I mentioned I’d heard a Japanese celebrity compare marriage to bungee-jumping – if you think about it too long, you won’t do it. Mr S, who has been married for 21 years, said that he didn’t agree. He said, ‘If you get married, you will regret it. But if you don’t get married, you will regret it. In my case, I hate being lonely. So I wanted to get married. Any woman was okay.’ I think that’s one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever had concerning marriage.
Dinner was followed by a ride on the Ferris wheel on the roof of the building with great views of the neon-soaked Susukino. Our carriage came complete with musak and heated seats. We took lots of photos of ourselves high above the city, and whooped excitedly as the teenage couple in the carriage ahead of us started to pash at the highest point of the wheel. I don’t know if this was intentional but as we came down, nearing the end, the muzak suddenly got really sad. I felt suddenly a bit teary-eyed and nostalgic, thinking that I am nearing the end of my time in Japan. Funny how it always takes leaving somewhere to make you want to stay.
We went back down to the fourth floor to the karaoke place and had a raucous karaoke session involving a lot of loud singing/shouting and even a broken glass. I got emotional again when the Vice Principal sang ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ (really well!), and luckily our booth came equipped with a box of tissues put there especially for those moments. They really do think of everything. I sang a couple of Japanese songs (pretty badly) and ‘On Top of the World’. Three years ago I never would have believed I would have been singing the Carpenters so enthusiastically, with no hint of irony, in front of a large group of people. One teacher sang ‘Candle in the Wind’ with a lot of gestures towards me, which had people yelling out ‘Oi! Shinde inai yo!’ (Hey! She’s not dead, okay!).
I’m reallly going to miss a country where you can eat dinner, go on a Ferris wheel, and sing karaoke - all without leaving the building.

Black or gold, need or want

I must go shoe shopping this weekend. I need some plain black shoes. But I want some gold high heels. Need, want, there's a fine line sometimes.
Perhaps what I really need in my life is a pair of gold high heels.