September 2009Archives

By Martin Faynot

by Anna Kunnecke 

I once had the great privilege of being on Harumi Kurihara's TV show, Your Japanese Kitchen (you can watch it here on jibtv, and no, they didn't pay me extra for that).  This great and beloved chef was graciously battling my culinary ineptitude, trying to teach me how to cook a rich curry that included eggplant.  She first showed me how to properly wash and cut the eggplant, then soak it in ice water for a while.  It draws out the bitterness, she explained gently.  Eventually we pulled each piece out of the water and patted it dry with something that looked like blotting paper.  It's important that all the moisture is gone, she said with some concern, so we carefully laid out the pieces to air-dry.  I'm pretty sure my mouth was actually hanging open on camera, because just prepping the eggplant was more work than I wanted to do to make an entire meal, and nothing had even been cooked yet. 

I'm stunned by the amount of work and planning required by standard Japanese fare.  For example, anything involving tofu comes with the following instructions: drain water from package and rinse.  Sandwich the tofu between two wooden cutting boards and place a bowl on top to press out excess water.  Drain tofu for thirty minutes.  Are they kidding?  Thirty minutes from the time I start cooking, I want to be eating.  Also, I only have one cutting board. 

Miso shiru, which was traditionally consumed with every meal and is still often served in Japanese households for breakfast, is a comforting soup flavored with soy paste and usually includes tofu (see above).  But you must first start with bonito flakes and boil them to make a broth called dashi.  Then you remove the bonito.  Even if you skip that step and use packets of powdered dashi, there's no way to skip the step where the miso paste must be forced through a sieve bit by bit with a wooden spoon and slowly stirred into the soup.  Needless to say, when we have miso at our house, it's the kind that only required the addition of hot water.

It's embarrassing to confess my laziness in print, but every time I resolve to do better, to steep myself in the beauty and tradition and ritual that is Japanese cookery, I last about five minutes.  Then I'm confronted by a six-step process to cook the noodles properly, or the number of minutes I am required to wash the rice, and I throw in the towel (which is hand-woven and loomed and dyed with traditional shibori techniques, at least--I can't do tradition, but I can support it). 

I'm comforted by the rows and rows of convenience food at the supermarket.  There are many meals that can be popped in the microwave just as they are or poured straight out of the vacuum-sealed pouch onto the plate.  My lovely neighbor upstairs may be spending four hours shopping, planning, draining, chopping, stirring and seasoning, but somewhere  out there other harried people are slipping these premade meals into their shopping basket.  I may feel guilty, but mostly I'm grateful.  And I have proof: I am not alone.  

By Kevin Cooney

       I trust naked people.  It just seems natural.  Naturally, an open palm (showing no weapon) evolved into the handshake.  Nudity, however, is not something I'm used to sharing as easily as a handshake. Strangely though, when an old man shuffles towards me at my local sento (bathhouse) and asks some random question or reminds me not to soap in the sento, something that would normally annoy me, I pause and smile because I trust the guy.  How could I not he's standing there naked in front of me.  At least I assume he is, as I desperately try to block his figure from the blurry periphery of my averted eyes and think happy thoughts.  Like I said, I'm still not totally used to it.

        I visit my local sento about 3 or 4 times a month.  It's something I'd never have imagined doing before I lived here.  Now, I relish the slow, relaxing evenings when I can go have, what we call back in New York, a shvitz.  But the sento is a bit more, I think, than just a place to take a bath.

I've developed my own, totally fact-less theory based on the various neighborhoods I've lived during my 8 years in Tokyo.  Neighborhoods that have more sentos, have fewer crazy people.  I suppose the reason is simply that neighbors that bathe together, live well together.  I've seen a large portion of the men in my current neighborhood naked.  It seems strange to say that.  But that being said, I actually know the majority of my current neighborhood.  Now this is not that I hadn't tried in other neighborhoods.  They were bigger, noisier, less friendly neighborhoods like Shibuya where neighbors didn't even acknowledge each other, clothed, much less naked.

The long history of Japan (I'll go out on a limb here even though I wasn't present for most of it) was one of community.  Just as it took a community to grow rice, it took a community to raise the children and keep the streets clean, safe and friendly.  But what Tokyo's kids seem to be learning from the paranoia of their modern day parents is that anyone and everyone outside of the family unit is a psycho to be avoided.  I'm all for protecting the kids, but GPS trackers and mobile phones that give parents constant updates as to the child's location, while technologically possible, are no match to having a strong community of neighbors who look out for each other and their kids.  In this sense I would trust my children with my naked neighbor more than a GPS tracking device.

I have this small paranoid fear that someday I'm going to choke on something while eating dinner in my bachelor pad. I'm going to go next door and knock frantically.  When the Japanese old man opens the door and sees the blue colored foreigner gesticulating wildly at him will just close the door and go back to watching TV.  In the morning when he finds my asphyxiated body on his doorstep, he'll tell the police, "well, if he spoke better Japanese I would have known what he wanted."  And that will be the end of me.

But I know that won't happen.  Because, I've seen the old man who lives next door naked.  What do we have to be strangers about?  I live in a neighborhood where I think someone might give me the Heimlich.  There is something comforting about that.  There is something comforting about naked tokyo.

By Claytonian



Lots of people like to travel with maps, itineraries, and guides, especially when they live in or travel to Japan as foreigners. Naturally, this is a great way to get around, but I like to advocate a different way of traveling to the adventurous people among us: getting lost!

I suppose I've been in the practice of getting lost since I was a kid. I lived in a rural area, and used to go to hiking around looking for Bigfoot in the mountains, or visit a local abandoned hotel (of course, it was haunted to me and my friends). Even before those peccadilloes, I remember getting bored during a family trip to Italy --honestly, how long did my family expect me to keep interest in naked statues?-- and wandering off on my own. Luckily, though I was only five, I only got lost for about an hour. This taught me an important lesson: you can always backtrack if you get lost, which is what saved my young self that day.

So how does one get properly lost in Japan? It's pretty simple: pick a direction and just go. I usually head in the direction of the mountains while on my bike, but in cities foot power works quite well too. However, I did do a week in Tokyo by foot once and came to regret it once my puppies started barking. Still, I discovered a lot of cool things that way. When I stayed in Kyoto, I enjoyed the luxury of a rental bike.

Discovery is what getting lost is all about. For instance, I went out today, and discovered the following: a water park, an oddly isolated sushi shop, a pond, a strip mall in the middle of nowhere, a tiny shrine, a temple with a baby theme, Japan's smallest yakitori place, another temple (horse-themed this time), and an udon chain with a frowny mascot. I probably covered about 30 kilometers, and am feeling pretty good about all I saw and the exercise I got in. It would be nice if I had a real bike instead of a standard mama-chari though.

So why are you still here reading this? Get lost already!

By Anna Kunnecke

 

I'm a city girl.  Specifically, I'm a Tokyo girl.  My many years in Japan have all been spent right here in the metropolitan sprawl that connects Yokohama, Tokyo, and their bazillion respective burgs.  So when I venture outside my urban comfort zone, I feel like I'm entering another country.

My family spent nearly a month in a small town this summer, and it was odd to be outside my stomping grounds.  For starters, everyone drives.  You need a car or a bus just to get from your house to the train station.  This is as different as could be from where I live: my apartment building is perched in extreme proximity to not one but two modes of efficient public transportation.  We may not have a whole lot of greenery happening, but hey, it sure is convenient.  The subway entrance is only one minute from our building's entrance, and while it takes three whole minutes and an extra set of stairs to get to the JR station, I pass my daughter's preschool and our coop grocery store on the way, so it's basically a wash.  I never drive downtown, even though I have my Japanese license, partly because I have no car but truthfully because Tokyo driving takes serious guts and I prefer to get my kicks doing nice calming activities like bungee jumping and snake handling. 

Aside from the reliance on four wheels, one of the things that was jolting about being outside the big city was feeling conspicuous all the time.  In Tokyo, where people are blasé and don't blink at Little Bo Peep outfits or foreigners traveling in packs, I walk around all the time minding my own business and hardly ever cause scenes.  Out in the sticks, however, I was something of a spectacle.  Or maybe not so much me as my daughter: blue-eyed, blond-haired, and prone to singing loudly in public, she was a magnet for attention.  People sneaked glances in stores and looked up when we stepped onto trains.  The looks weren't malicious, just curious.  I chafed a bit under the steady gaze.  I forget sometimes; it may be my city, but it sure ain't my country.   

Something I love about Tokyo, or really any big city, is that little bubble that you get to pull around yourself.  Call it antisocial, cold, or disconnected: to me it feels like a little bit of healthy personal space.  In the city I can quell well-meaning old ladies with an icy look when it comes to my daughter: look if you must, but don't touch.  In the country, strange hands would muss her hair, pat her head, and hand her candy.  I appreciated the warmth, I really did, but it bothered me that people felt so free to get so close.  It was as if because we were obviously different, none of the social codes applied. 

One of the ironies of city living is that even when people are packed together, you still keep your little bit of breathing room, even when you're breathing other people's air. 

 

By Martin Faynot

By Claytonian

I hinted that I had a little more to say about this story, but here's a quick recap first: my friend of Taiwanese decent and I went to a soba shop to fill our bellies. At the restaurant, the people inside were shocked that my friend couldn't speak much Japanese compared to me. So shocked was one drunken old man that he shouted something like " how could you lose to the white guy with a face like that?!" This triggered an association, and I went on a bit of trip to my past, back to my days of teaching in junior highs.

One day I dusted off one of my favorite teaching activities to do with the kids.  It's an activity where they travel around a map of a world, board game style. Wherever they land, they have to follow that country's "custom" (which is in scare quotes because it's just a silly order, like "jump three times," "wink at a cute girl" or the dreaded "go back to start"). I usually change one or two customs from game to game to keep it interesting.

One time, I changed one of the customs to "decide who in your group looks American." When I made this one, I must admit that I was only thinking of the humorous implications of the students comparing facial features. But as the game got underway, and I saw the kids comparing noses and hair color, I started to realize that I had maybe been away from America for too long, and had been sucked into the stereotypical image so often used around here, especially in the mass media. Heck, with blue eyes, blond hair, and a huge honker, I am the stereotypical image of an American. Then the true answer to the question hit me.

As I explained to the kids at the end of the class, they all had an American face. People of all ethnicities can potentially be American.  But it doesn't end there; people with any type of background may immigrate to any country, even Japan, and even become full-fledged citizens. We tend to fall into a trap that citizenship and race are synonymous, but they are not.  So what is a Japanese face? What's an American face?  It's any face. It's a human face. If I ever get a chance to use my game in a class again, I think I'll keep the custom of finding an American face, so that I will have the chance to share my revelation again.

by Anna Kunnecke

 

A few weeks ago, I went to a workshop on raising bilingual kids.  My daughter prattles in Japanese at her lovely preschool, and at home our language of choice is English.  (Her father speaks Kiwi and I speak American, and we both like to speak quite a lot and at top volume.)  I wanted to be sure that she could hold her own in both her worlds.   

The workshop leader was funny and smart, and listening to her I was lulled into a wonderful cocoon of serenity: our daughter is fine, her foundation language is English, and then whatever Japanese she speaks in addition will be gravy.  I marveled at the parents who had complicated set-ups and multiple languages to impart to their kids: a mother who speaks Flemish and Mandarin*, for example, whose Japanese husband speaks French and English*, whose son attends an English-speaking kindergarten in Japan.  They had a plan, and it was impressive. 

Then a story caught my attention with such urgency that the vertebrae in my neck made an ominous sound as I cranked my head around to see who was talking.  A lovely woman spoke earnestly and with great concern about her five-year-old daughter, whose verbal skills seemed delayed.  The workshop leader asked a few questions, and you could feel a silent gasp of horror rising from the group as the woman laid out the situation.  The Chinese father* and Korean mother* were sending their daughter to a Japanese kindergarten.  With three languages in play, it was easy to see how it might take a kid longer than usual to absorb it all.  But here was the clincher: the mother had been speaking to her daughter since her birth only in English.  In the same English she was speaking now, which was broken and halting.  She had so wanted, you see, for her daughter to be able to attend an international school; she had done what she believed would be best for her daughter.  But what had happened was that this little girl was growing up without a native language, literally without a mother tongue. 

I went to school with kids like this, whose well-meaning parents spoke to them in a language they were themselves desperately trying to learn.  Some families even banned their own language at home in a fevered attempt to adapt to a new culture.  These kids ended up in a gray zone where they were vaguely conversant in several languages but not truly adept at any of them. 

I am sad for that little girl.  How can she learn a language when she only hears it spoken poorly?  How can she have an intimate relationship with parents who struggle to communicate even rudimentary facts and emotions?  It's a huge loss, and one that makes me angry.  This was a common story when I was growing up here twenty years ago, but I thought that it was a thing of the past.   There are masses of resources out there now for parents about this; there is no need to reinvent this particular wheel.  There are educators, seminars, specialists, and books.  There's always TELL (Tokyo English Lifeline).  But before any of that, I wanted to say to that mother, give your kids the gift of yourself, in your own language, so that they can hear you, and so that you can hear them. 

 

*Identifying details have been changed 

By Kevin Cooney

 

           Today was an important day in the life of this man.  An new era, ushered in.  Unchartered waters ahead, the great unknown beyond.  I bought myself a TV. The key word in this sentence being... bought.

I understand that buying a TV may not seem like a big deal to you, but it is to me.  It's big, it's boss and it makes the news caster's head bigger than my own.  I plopped down way too much of my own hard earned cash to buy this thing.  It was not without trepidation that I greeted the deliverymen this morning.  That's right,  deliverymen.  It's so honkin huge it needed to be taken here by truck, and moved by multiple people. 

           I realize, now, I may have been a bit overzealous when I purchased it last week.  It didn't seem quite so huge at the electronics shop.  But now inside (what the real estate agent called) my "living room" is a wall of moving images.  It's not unlike sitting in the first row of a movie theater, and getting slight motion sickness from the proximity to the flickering light and action.  But who cares, it's big and it's boss and it's mine.

           For many foreigners living in Japan, especially in their early years, buying a TV is a ridiculous concept.  After all, your stay may be brief and apartments are rarely furnished.  So, why invest in anything expensive.  This is the first TV I've bought in 8 years in Japan.  Mind you, it's not my first TV.  I've had three.  TV's like most home appliances (refrigerators, washing machines, etc...) are handed down through the ever-renewing generations of foreigners who come to Japan. 

Basically, when one foreigner leaves Japan, or actually buys a new piece of electronics the old TV is passed on to someone recently arrived in the office, or some friend making do without the luxury of a TV set.  You just walk into your office and say... "Anybody want a TV?"  Chances are some other foreigner who has been here fewer years than you will want it.  As the years go by, you slowly upgrade to better and larger TVs. 

The classified ads of most English language publications in Japan are filled with the common plea "Sayonara Sale! Everything must go!"  This is where people liquidate their lives as quickly as possible so they can get on that jet plane bound for home.  Often the price tag is free. 

But the cheapest market place in Japan is the curb.  It's something no one is proud of, but everyone has done.  Walking home from a night out drinking you come across a TV, sofa or some other item just laying in the street waiting to be picked up by the garbage man.  When it comes to food, the Japanese are obsessed with using every last possible scrap.  "Mottainai" they say, which loosely means, "waste not want not."  Somehow, this doesn't apply to electronics.  Many Tokyoites seem hopelessly obsessed with having the newest and best TV or refrigerator.  As a result, the early morning curbside often yields a bounty of nearly new household furnishings.  I've been in awe at the things some people throw away.  Another man's trash is this foreigners refrigerator.  Again, I'm not proud of this, but I do have a refrigerator, washing machine, beer fridge, fan, air conditioner, gas heater and lots of shelving.  Courtesy of other peoples distain for any electronics over two years old.

You may call me a stingy garbage picker.  I like to think of myself as an environmentalist.  An environmentalist with a tight budget!

by Anna Kunnecke

There is a debate going on in the USA over healthcare.  As I read what some Americans are writing about what they think might happen should the current system be reformed, I am baffled by their fears.   Someone is trying to scare them, and it makes me mad.  So I thought I'd share my experience with the big bad scary thing that is socialized healthcare.  I've lived here for many years and been part of the kokumin hoken (healthcare for individuals) and I like it.  The icing on the cake, my friends, is that I can actually afford it.

Sure, Japan's medical system isn't perfect.  I have received some lousy care and I've heard some horror stories, which is surely true of any country in the world.  But you can say this about Japan: they take excellent care of their kids.  All immunizations, doctor visits, and prescriptions for kids under 6 are free.  You probably zoomed past that and didn't catch that the first time so I will write it again:  no co-pays, no refunds, and no HMO to haggle with, because it's all free.

This means that if your kid is sick, you just take them to the doctor.  If you don't like the care you get there, you go to another one.  If you need medicine, you get it.  No parent has to face the devastating question of whether they can afford to go to the pediatrician this month, or to wonder if their kid could do without the expensive prescription.  It's a godsend to new and nervous parents who aren't sure whether their infant is sick or whether all the crying is simply due to the fact that their baby knows so very few words.  It keeps families out of the emergency rooms, because you don't have to wait and see if something is going to get really serious before you shell out the cash to find out; you just take the kid to the darned doctor already.  It's so humane.  It's so kind.  It's so smart. 

I wrote about this in January on my personal blog, www.sitatmytable.com and I've reproduced the post below. 

http://sitatmytable.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/why-i-love-socialized-medicine/

 

Why I love socialized medicine

January 22, 2009

 

For one thing, the frog stickers.

But really because we can choose any doctor we want

(including the one downstairs who is actually

an Ear Nose and Throat Specialist but is also a mom

and who listens to my opinions about antibiotics).

And because no matter how many times we go,

all of my daughter's visits and all her prescriptions

are always FREE.

And because today, the little hypochondriac said

"I so sick. So ess-citing, go doctor."

By Claytonian

I and my friend went into a soba (buckwheat noodles) restaurant the other afternoon. As he is of obvious Asian decent and I am of obvious snow giant decent, it caused a bit of a stir in the restaurant when I did most of the talking.  I'll try to remember to blog my thoughts on said stir in a future post, but for today's entry, I would like to focus on what one of the patrons (a very drunk and old one, who also surreally had 3 ponytails at random angles) said to my friend.

I mean the language he used was what struck me, because he said something along the lines of " Why are お前ぇ (you) losing to the white boy with that face, 貴様 (you)?!" He threw in a few 手前ぇs (also meaning you) in there too as he grumbled on incoherently, among with some old man cackles.  So why did he use so many different terms for you, and why did they raise my prodigious eyebrows? Well, that's what I'm about to explain.

You see, addressing someone as you (usually by using the word anata) is a bit risky in the first place in Japan. It can come of as very personal and accusatory. Subjects and pronouns are dropped altogether in Japanese if we can help it (this is known as Japanese telepathy). Then there are even stronger versions of "you," which this old goat used, some of which we'll explore here. The funny thing is, they didn't always have this strong reputation. Here they are:

貴様 kisama: from 貴 (ki, an honorific) and 様 (sama, another honorific that is kind of like "m'lord"). Kisama was first used during the middle ages in letters between warriors as a highly respectful form of address. But in recent times commoners got a hold of it, turned it into a spoken word, and the meaning lost it's respectfulness pretty fast. It started to get used by people to refer to their equals and lowers. Then the upper classes and ladies started to be like, we are so done with this word and it became a word used as an insult. I recommend not using it unless you want to fight, and even then, your opponent will probably start laughing because you used a word that we usually only see in comics these days.

お前/お前ぇ omae/omē: from the honorific お (o) and 前 (mae, front).　Omae used to refer to being in the presence of greatness, be it gods, buddhas, or noblemen. But as the years went on it saw the same dilution that kisama did, to the point where it became a brusque form of address. The omē-style of pronunciation is a more modern development. Many vowels get transformed into e sounds these days to add a little rough manliness to them.

手前/てめえtemae/temē: from 手 (te, hand), and 前 (mae, front). This one can mean lots of things, most of them harmless.  You can even use it to talk humbly about yourself. But when you use it for another person, you place them at an equal or lower level than you. Like the omē above, it has been further roughened with an e sound. In fact, I think people say it the rough way more often to keep the meaning clear.

So as you can see, these words all have respectful or humble roots, but as old drunk men sitting in soba shops got their hands on them, they became rather rude versions of "you". Use them with caution. No, on second though, you shouldn't use them at all, you.