August 2009Archives

by Anna Kunnecke

     On train station platforms, in convenience stores, in the clusters of vending machines on every corner--I love the fact that in Tokyo you're rarely more than a 30-second dash from PET bottled liquid refreshment.  In the winter, I buy the hot green teas and warm my freezing fingers.  I slip them into my coat pockets and pop them into the nifty insulating covers that they give away (hello marketers, I'm your gal).   In the summer I press the cool bottles to my wrists, my temples; I cling to them on sticky steamy sweaty trains as I loop my way through the city; I'm tempted to just pour the water directly onto my miserable, overheated self.  (I usually resist.)  In mid-August when the vending machines can't keep up with the heat and the drinks come out of the chute lukewarm, I actually want to cry. 

     I know that PET bottles are terrible for the environment.  I applaud the companies who make the new bottles that you can crunch into an eco-friendly twist, a perky little candy wrapper of trash, a tiny twizzle of pollution.  (Unfortunately, the thin plastic tends to crackle and rustle, something that's not useful in a sound booth, and I returned to my regularly programmed water when working.  But I digress.)  I am mostly amazed by people who carry around those terribly hip cylindrical steel flasks.  How noble!  How good for Mother Earth!  I rejoiced when an evolved friend gave one to my daughter.  We took it to the park, smug in our eco-chic halo.  Five minutes on the swings and we were both thirsty.  We emptied it in about ten seconds.  So after you swill your beverage, where do you fill it up again?  From the taps in the bathrooms in Tokyo station?  I don't think so. 

     Visitors to Japan exclaim over the incredible quality of the tap water.  It is safe, clean, tasty.  There is just one problem.  It smells like chlorine, and sometimes during rainy season, like the sea.  Add to that the fact that my family lives in the shadow of an enormous incinerator tower, and we arrived at a solution that works for us: we bought a water distiller.  It's scary what I clean out of the bottom of that at the end of every month.  To be fair, if I were to distill the expensive water that comes from some exotic and mineral-laden stream, I'd probably have to clear it out with a shovel. 

     It's generally acknowledged that tap water is scrutinized much more closely than bottled, and public water is tested and held to a much higher standard than anything sold with a plastic cap.  There is also a persistent urban legend that the plastics in PET bottles leach nasty things into the liquids we drink.  Nonetheless, I find myself standing in front of a vending machine dreamily contemplating the choices.  When I need to use my voice for work, I chug water.  When Ihm just getting through the day, it's green or jasmine tea.  I'm partial to pretty packaging, myself, which might seem ridiculous considering that however lovely the label, I'm holding in my hands a piece of pollution.  I am sorry.  I plead guilty. 

     Also, dehydrated. 

By Kevin Cooney

     Deep in to basball season, I find myself wondering about Japan's boys of summer. How difficult it must be to introduce themselves at parties: "Hi, my name's Kenji, and I catch for The Swallows."

     The Swallows? Who is naming these teams? How long was the brainstorming session that produced The Swallows?  This is the most intimidating bird they can imagine.  Eagle, Ok! Hawk, Sure! Swallow, huh?

     Imagine some smoky boardroom where the question was put to the table. What will we name the team? And some brave gray suit rolls up his sleeve and says, "Carp." No, not The Sharks, or The Swordfish or even The Blowfish (which is at least poisonous). The Carp. Now I realize that the carp is an ancient symbol of strength. But what are the real attributes of a carp?

     A fat, bottom-feeding fish that spends most of its day gulping at the sky in hopes of catching falling crumbs. Its greatest quality is its ability to survive in the most polluted waters, which, come to think of it, is a rather fitting symbol for life in urban Japan.

     The Nippon Ham Fighters. Because, really, nothing says "fight" quite like a ham. Honestly, I would find it very difficult to shout "Fight, ham, fight!" in the presence of friends, family or females.  It only makes sense in the context of playing against a kosher or halal team.

     Not all baseball teams in Japan have picked poor names. The Lions, The Tigers and The Giants--Oh, my! Though I'm still hesitant about The Giants' fluffy orange mascot.

     The martial arts have provided a wonderful outlet for Japan's pent-up masculinity. The most curious of these for newcomers to Japan is, of course, sumo. It is a wonderful sport, and its obese competitors are amazing athletes. What amazes me, though, is not the size of the competitors, but rather the religiosity of the competition. The sumo judge is in fact a Shinto priest, and the ring a sacred space. This begs the question: Why don't more organized religions have sporting events?

     For example: Hindu wrestling, Buhdist boxing, or perhaps even Sikh snowboarding.

Truly distressing, however, is the absence of dominating competitors from the fifty nifty United States.  Sure, a few Hawaiians have done their part, but where are our southerners and northerners carrying the banner? I'm sure the great state of Texas could field at least one or two Ozeki in the dohyo.  At a waffle house somewhere in Arkansas, there must be a Yokozuna in the making, slathering an inch or two of buttery ooze over his supersize Sunday brunch.

Who needs chanko nabe when you've got Wendy's?

by Anna Kunnecke

I took dance lessons, like many little girls, at the unassuming studio in my neighborhood.  My family was living in Ichigao, perched precariously on a dinky train line between Yokohama and Tokyo.  Two afternoons a week I would stop in at my train station for fried chicken sustenance and walk down the block to class.  With the other girls I would pull on my clingy pink tights and black leotard, dip my slippered toes into the crunchy rosin, and start stretching. 

But that's where the similarity to most childhood ballet classes ended.  My teacher, by chance, was the distinguished dancer Kuniko Kisanuki. My parents had no idea who she was; they had just signed me up for a local class so that I would stop tap dancing on the kitchen table.   And to me, she was simply Sensei: beautiful, beloved, feared--she was incredibly thin, wore long black wide pants, was graceful and strong and fast. 

No toe shoes for us; she said they ruined dancers' feet.  We went through the preliminary ballet plies and turns, but then she encouraged us to stomp, leap, writhe; we danced trees and walls and animals; we danced ugly and wild and thrilling.  It dawned on my parents that this was no ordinary dance class when the annual concert rolled around.  While other girls tried on pink tutus, we were handed nude body stockings with tatters hanging off them.  All over Japan, little ballerinas danced scenes from The Nutcracker and Gisele, while we marched barefoot in military formation to Joan Baez peace ballads.  We fought, died, were reborn, and then the dance morphed into an enormous rolling cycle depicting the turning, twisting, churning evolution of the human race.   I went back and watched the scratchy video a few years ago, and my heart raced to see a throng of little girls turned into a work of art so wild and powerful. 

My mother, brave soul, took me downtown to see my teacher dance solo.  It was like nothing I had ever seen before.  Kisanuki-sensei, she of the lithe body and sharp voice, quivered onstage as a caterpillar.  Slowly, slowly, so slowly that I could hardly stand it, she inched her way into a tight little cocoon; then she crawled her way out in a dramatic rebirth.  Tefu-tefu, the dance was called.  I later learned that the title is a classic literary reference, but I imagined that tefu-tefu was the sound that butterflies made when they beat their wings for the first time.  In a simple white dress, on a bare stage before hundreds of people, she danced death and rebirth in all its raw, naked urgency. 

By Kevin Cooney

ATSUI, DESU NE? Atsui, naa. Atsui, yo! Atsuuuu! Achi. Atsuiii! Or, in English: "It's hot."

You know. I know. We all know. The word is out. So since it's always a long summer of hot days here in Japan: Stop saying it!

Most astonishing is the astonishment with which "atsui" is uttered by people as they exit their air-conditioned offices and spill out onto the hot streets of Tokyo. When did these people enter their offices? January? Expect a temperature differential.

The "atsui" season, however, constitutes only half of the Japanese year. The other half is the "samui" season.

Spring and autumn are really just the indecisive seasons. The trick is deciding if it's a "samui" day or an "atsui" day (there is no "in between" day). Once determined, it must be announced to the world. Pray that your meteorological sense doesn't conflict with a friend or, worse yet, superior from your office. (A similar situation exists in ramen appraisal and the word "oishii" -- or "delicious.")

As summer's mercury rises, so rises the value of certain prime Tokyo real estate. No, not rooftop gardens or flattop tar parties decorated with air-conditioning vents and plastic bamboo. Rather, it's the highly valued end seat on the train.

What is it about that bottom-sized plot of public space that makes innocent old ladies stiff-arm a gauntlet of would-be sitters? The end of a row of seats on a Japanese commuter train, like money, youth and Katori Shingo, is universally valued in Japan.

Strap-hangers standing before the end seat will warily eye one another, hoping to get a jump on others if the passenger gets up. They must also beat out the person in the adjacent seat, who may slide over. They must even beware those seated diagonally opposite, who may dart across the car.

We each have our reasons to want to sit in the end seat. Some seek sleep, others privacy and my mother the safety of being near the door. I have my own reason: The seat allows only one person next to me.

You see, I attract fat and sweaty businessmen like an "oishii" ramen shop. They stink. Invariably (despite the statistical odds) they are left-handed, and keep a steady flow of pungent "tonkotsu" tinged air coming my way with a frantically fanning fan in that sweaty left hand.

Put it this way: It is not a divine wind. And with another businessman seated to my right, it's a downright typhoon of stink.

For those who don't know, let me explain. The fan is not making you cooler. It is making you sweat. The only value of a fan is for wrist aerobics, fashion or as a prop for a Rakugo comedian. As you presumably engage in none of these, please holster the fan.

Instead, imagine yourself on a rooftop garden. Still sweating? Ah, summer. Atsui, ne?

by Anna Kunnecke

The kabutomoshi are rioting.  They stalk their cages, rattle their bars, fetch high prices, and are cosseted and petted.  Since furry animals are banned from the great hives that house many of us Tokyo dwellers, every year a swarm of Japanese children tie their heartstrings to giant bugs.

Coming to Japan at age five, I was already too schooled in my fear of insects to be anything other than fascinated and repulsed.  But my little sister, who was born here, was friendly with the great armored beetles.  As a toddler, she would pluck them out of the flimsy green cage my brother kept them in and let them climb in her hair.  As they slipped and slid through her brown locks, they looked like toy action figures-- as militant and fearsome as superheroes. 

My daughter's preschool has its own boot camp.  In late spring the teachers set up enormous terrariums so that the kids can see the beetles hatch out of the dirt.  The exotic creatures begin, forgive me, as maggots.  Then they grow into loathsome enormous transparent grubs, and then they are great thick white nauseating larvae for weeks.  But the kids love it.  They adore their kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle) and their kuwagata (stag beetle), pat the cage lovingly, and report each day on their progress.  Unbelievably, these blind wriggling digits eventually morph into shiny black warriors with great horned heads and powerful pincers. 

In an odd twist, as I was writing this piece, an enormous semi (cicada) skittered onto my balcony.  He lay on his back, stunned for a minute, and I contemplated him still being there when my daughter got home from school, knowing full well that she would want to adopt him and feed him her fruit jellies, and that she would mourn his death.  I wasn't thrilled with the prospect.  But then he recovered himself with a great flapping clatter.  At sixteen floors up, he was tragically out of his element and furious about it, and the noise was unbelievable.  He chittered and screeched his despair, banging around my potted geraniums, before finally taking off to find some decent digs. 

There is another kind of bug that you see in Tokyo.  Smaller than the kabutomushi and the semi, and infinitely more sinister: the cockroach.  But let's not speak of that. 

Beneath my revulsion, I am relieved.  My daughter is hearing a story about the things that repulse us, one I can't tell her myself. 

Turn over a leaf and see what is underneath.  Dig into the dirt to learn its secrets.  Find what lives pale and blind in the darkness, watch its shell harden dark and shiny, see it grow weapons.  Feed the fierce beast on plastic-cupped jellies from the local family restaurant.  Stroke its horns.

By Kevin Cooney

Walking through Ikebukuro the other day I was stopped dead in my tracks by a large group of Japanese all clutching whatever recording device they could.  Tokyo, being Tokyo , it could have had any number of causes.  Was there an Ayumi Hamasaki sighting?  Had Godzilla finally returned?  Were they just excited to take a picture of me, a friendly gaijin.  Sadly, no, they were not snapping my picture but the enormous rainbow I turned to see behind me.  At each and every corner along my route I found the same scene.  A dozen or more natives, stopping their shopping, if only momentarily to catch a digital rendering for their cell phones and digi-cams.

Going with the flow as one often does on Tokyo's city streets, I couldn't help but jump on the bandwagon.  I popped out my camera and took a few slices of rainbow home for myself.  To be fair, I don't think anyone actually got a picture of a rainbow, more likely just a "rainbow-bit" Maddeningly one could only glimpse a small portion of it from any given spot between the tall towers of the cityscape.  But, it was enough.  With all of Tokyo's neon and plastic it was an awe inspiring little reminder that somewhere far beyond the grays and browns human structures mother nature was still doing her thing.

Surprising as it was, near Sunshine City, on "Green Road" was an actual, honest to goodness display of the beauty of mother nature.  As clicked away, I heard the crowd cooing "kirei desu ne!"  Beautiful isn't it.  It was.

As beautiful as it was, I turned and found the crowd was far more interesting than the mother earth happening that had brought us together.  Tokyoites were actually talking to each other.  People who didn't know each other!  This is even more out of the ordinary for the famously polite, but somewhat distant Tokyoites.  The crowd had in this moment of spontaneity become a little friendly chattering community of on-lookers.  I paused to enjoy the scene of all these hustle and bustle city folk lingering to chat with each other for a moment until a woman (a total stranger I must add) said to me "Did you see it. Over there?" I smiled and told her "Yes, I saw it."  I saw something very special.

By Clay

I've been teaching English for about four years now.  I've taught all ages during that time, from the cutest of preschoolers to the oldest of old men and women--funny thing is, in terms of hair, teeth and verbal ability, the extreme ages of the human species are pretty similar, but I digress. The one thing they all had in common was a certain phrase.  A phrase I have, to be frank, kind of come to hate at times: "I'm fine. How are you?"

On the surface, what's not to like?  Someone asks you how you are, you confirm the normal working order of your organs, emotions, and mental facilities and politely inquire in kind. Perfunctorily, it meets all the basic requirements of human interaction. But the thing about human interactions is that they shouldn't be done in a robotic manner. From the first time I had a class of students say it in unison at me back when I first started teaching, I've found it a bit off-putting. Some students put a little garnish on it with a thanks: "I'm fine, thank you. How are you?" It's a nice try, but I'm still not feeling the love. Both variations have the same origin and means of preservation within Japan: a very systematic and stiff tradition of teaching English.

I'd like to find out who wrote a school book I theorize exists.  This book, which I think may have been titled something like Diligent Children Memorize their English, probably had the "How are you?" conversation on it's first page (the second page would most likely have been adorned with the famous "This is a pen" phrase that mystifies me with its ubiquity in Japan), and the members of school boards across the country, not wanting to shake things up, diligently put it in their textbooks too. What I'm getting at is that you can not and should not try to make a language like English into a plug-in-the-memorized phrases type of formula, and even if you do, you should at least update the formula every once in a while; English has moved on since the 40s.

Just as English has a lot of variation in it's greetings, so too can Japanese, but thanks to the the complications of social strata, you are a lot more likely to hear set phrases in the latter. The English greetings such as "Was'up?" "How's it hanging?" "Everyt'ing be cook and curry, wit' you, mon?" and "Duuuude" of English certainly have their counterparts in Japanese, but casual, variant language doesn't have much room in the Japanese classroom or boardroom (the two places where English use is most prevalent in Japan). So it seems there is a tenancy to think that English is limited to a few set phrases.  The student feels the need to say his set phrase and not think beyond it, or even what it really means. This is why I want to avoid the phrase "I'm fine;" it's the death of creativity on one hand, and the erection of formal barriers on the other.

Beyond that, I suspect the phrase is all but dying out in use, going the way of such phrases as "How do you do?" or "Have you a comely wench?" from bygone days. Whenever a native speaker tells me that they are "Fine, thank you." I know that they are not fine, especially if they are my girlfriend and we are at a wedding.  In this case, "I'm fine." becomes a very serious warning that I will either have to commit soon or get kicked out of bed in favor of Alfonso. Stupid Alfonso, with his head of full hair, and his ability to avoid abstract jokes...

So every once in a while I try to get my students (currently I teach only adults) to change from the formula. They seem pretty shocked when I apologetically tell them that I don't think it's a very good response these days and why I think so. I even explain that it sounds a lot better if you make just a small variation like, "I'm feeling fine, thanks!" My meddling teacher ways get the students to switch to more dynamic greetings for a while, but ultimately, they go back to being fine. Just fine. After all, they've been "fine" their whole life, why change now?