July 2010Archives

by Martin Faynot

by Anna Kunnecke

Dear Makeup Artists,

     First, let me say that I know you are pros.  You know this business inside and out; you create beauty for fashion shows, photo shoots, TV shows, and more.  However there are a few details that I think might be useful for you to know when it comes to putting makeup on foreigners, we the pale-paced, we the big-nosed, we the gaijin. 
     First of all, the eyes.  It might be a delicate topic, but there are some basic physical differences here that we need to talk about.  Let us be brave and not flinch from facts.  The eyelids, they are different.  If you put bright blue eye-shadow along the lid of a Caucasian model, instead of sliding demurely out of sight the way it would on a proper Asian girl, it will instead remain in full view, blinding in its blueness.  This will not in fact enhance any eyes that are already blue; it will, instead, make them look dull, as well as casting a jaundiced pall over the entire face.  Moving on, the eyelid crease.  Against all instinct, I must beg you to darken the crease rather than using white frosted stuff on it.  The darker color  will create those lovely emaciated skull-hollows that the fashion magazines are so fond of.  In the same vein, if you put all the dark color down by the lashes, and then delicately blend up in one lovely seamless gradation all the way to the eyebrow, with the lightest colors on top, the upper lid will visually recede and the area under the brow will jump forward, giving your model puffy hangover eyes that appear to be swollen and uncomfortable.  Finally, eyeliner.  I am at a loss as to why you try to put it on the inner eyelid.  This is a look that was often seen in sixth-grade bathrooms in the eighties.  It really should not be seen anywhere else.
     Second, let's move on to the contours of the face.  You see, we have lots of them.  More, I respectfully submit, than our Asian counterparts.  In fact, when we speak, smile, and blink our eyes, these parts of our face move.  This causes creases.  I am in utter awe that this does not happen with Japanese actresses, but judging from the thick mask of foundation that seems to be the norm, I can only guess that their faces move not a whit.  Also, when you pop in during takes and layer powder over those creases that happen next to eyes, between the nose and cheeks, and forehead, that will not, I am sorry to say, make them go away.  No, in fact, it will simply increase the great hulking shadows that they cast. Might I suggest that you put that powder, instead, on the nose, cheeks, and forehead. 
     That brings me to our third topic, the concept of tomeikan, which I will loosely translate as transparency.  It appears to be the ultimate virtue in Japanese makeup, but like many mysteries of Japanese culture, it is confusingly and selectively applied.  This is why a model can find herself with inches of thick caked makeup around her eyes, where it will wrinkle and form crevices rivaling a desert canyon, while the bright red unfortunate blemish on her cheek is left completely uncovered to blink its bright red holiday message to the world.  It is perhaps one of our greatest cultural differences that foreigners do not, in general, find this to be attractive.  I know, it's very shocking.
     Finally, let us move on to those famed noses.  Shiny white pearlescent highlights are generally not appropriate here.  Nor, I might add, are they useful on the chin.  Generally these features are big enough already, and adding a layer of shine is pretty much exactly the opposite approach that is required. 
     In conclusion, it is also worth mentioning that Hana ga takai!  (Your nose is so tall!) and Kao ga chiisai! (your face is so small!) are generally not considered compliments.  I know that all of this is quite counterintuitive and goes quite against conventional industry wisdom, but I hope that you will take it in the spirit in which it is offered, which is one of mutual cooperation and edification.  Oh, and if your model should have curly hair...well, that's a book unto itself.

Respectfully yours,

Anna

By Claytonian

Oh, to be a foreigner in backwoods Japan! You can't know unless you've done it, but I recommend you relocate posthaste! When you arrive, prepare to be treated as a king. Only if you look foreign, of course.

I spent a few years in such an environment. People were constantly turning to see my foreign presence enter a room and letting their eyes widen to proportions usually reserved for those magazines in the back corner of the combinis. "Where are you from?" They would say while putting an arm around me and guiding me to a seat adjacent to them. Then they would wine me, dine me, and tell me to marry their daughters (no exaggeration). It didn't matter that it was all shakoujirei (social pleasantries), cause it made me feel special, damn it.

Fast forward to life in the big city (I'm living in Yokohama now), and things are a bit different. In this town, most people don't bother with the double take that their country brothers throw around like so much whip-lash fodder. No, I am anonymous and unnoticed for the most part. Sure, when I engage people on a personal basis, I still encounter the Foreigner Reality Distortion Field, but for the most part I am left to my own devices, which is great for an eternal tourist such as myself.

The other night though, I heard some loud sax. I love me some good sax, so I walked down the street until I found it. Turns out a guy was grilling in the entrance to a bar, and in between flipping shish kebabs, he traded notes with a guy on an old Hammond organ beside him. It was really swinging. When the sax/grill-man saw me, he beckoned me inside, telling me I needn't worry about the cover in a way that felt like those old friendly greetings that I used to get in the countryside bars.

Once inside, that familiar foreign royalty feeling came rushing back as everyone cheered at seeing me and told me to chow down. I ordered a kebab and drank in the atmosphere. A man offered his wife's female friend for dating purposes. Then a guy and his kid moved tables to sit with me. They asked what I was drinking, but I insisted that I wasn't interested in alcohol. Then they pointed to the soft drinks menu and said it was okay. Now, you have to understand, strangers in bars don't ever do this unless they plan on paying for the drink. That's my experience. So I relented, thinking it would be fare compensation for the awkward little English lessons he was forcing between his 11 year old and me--who wants to talk to kids when there is live and energetic jazz in a bar?!-- and ordered an orange juice. Stiff price it was too, but if he really wanted to pay...

I drained the glass and ate my kebab. He ordered me another one. Just kinda decided on his own, hey, you want this, and I had another one placed before me. Well, if that's what he wanted to give me, who was I to argue? I finally asked for the bill, confident that the man would follow the pattern I was so used to and pay for my drinks. I even half expected him to cover my kebab as well.

Well, you have probably already guessed that I ended up paying full price for those icy orange juices. You may also think that I am a little spoiled. I do. It was a good reminder that I can't always be a taker, living off of the goodness of Japanese strangers. In fact, maybe it's about time I bought a Japanese person some food for a change. I'll even insist that he date my daughter.

By Martin Faynot

     What's more classic as a cliché of Japan than sleeping people in the train ? Classic but essential, that's why I wanted to share it!

by Anna Kunnecke

     I have been reading this great book on childrearing.  It's called Raising Your Spirited Child and it's written by a woman named Mary Sheedy Kurcinka, whose feet I would like to kiss.  My mother handed it to me a while back.  There was no offering, no suggesting, no 'perhaps you'd like to take a look at this.'  No.  My mother, grandmother of my daughter, handed this book to me with the words, "You're going to need this."  
'How did she know that?' you might ask.  Well.  
     Grandmothers just know things.
     This was the book, apparently, that helped me reach adulthood because it helped my parents not kill me.  The definition of a 'spirited' child is that they are a little bit more--more intense, more sensitive, more perceptive, more persistent.  What?  Who, me?
Yeah, yeah, and my daughter too.
     So I've been learning lots of very useful things about how my daughter's nervous system works.  Some kids really do seem to be wired a little bit differently.  Some kids really can feel the seam in their socks.  Some kids really do seem to soak up the emotions of those around them.  But the big surprise has been the ah-ha moments I've had about myself.  Specifically, how noisy, crowded places can trigger these ever-so-slightly-sensitive folks with a totally overwhelming flood of information and sensation.  
     I always assumed that everybody felt crazy and overwhelmed and frantic too, but they just handled it better than I did.  Hunh.    
     Because here is the thing.  I used to walk around Tokyo, this noisy, chaotic, pumping, streaming metropolis, in a pretty blissed-out state.  I liked the energy, I liked the rush, and the crowds didn't bother me that much.  That changed when I had my child.  
Now I know why.
     I used to travel this city in a bubble.  I bet that most Tokyo inhabitants do.  You have to, really, to survive.  You're pressed full-body against total strangers every morning in the train; your ears are assaulted with right-wing loudspeakers blaring hatred; you constantly, constantly, have to watch where you're going or you'll get run over by a steady stream of people, whether you're navigating the supermarket, a train station, or the wooded path by the river.  So you develop a zone.  A private space.  You tune out.  You filter.  You just have to.  Some people use books or video games or headphones and music to do it; others can just go to that happy place.  
     When you're trying to keep track of a bouncing, running, chattering, giggling, and totally-crying-her-eyes-out-because-she-wanted-chewing-gum toddler, you can't do that.  You can't zone out.  You can't drift.  Oh my god.  It's awful.
      I have to stay engaged with my daughter to keep her safe.  And I want to stay engaged, truthfully, because she says these hilarious and adorable things that I am biologically programmed to find enthralling.  But oh my lord, the noise in this town!  The trains are bad enough, but those big electronics stores that go up thirteen stories and have loudspeakers blaring at every step?  I get homicidal.  I want to throw a temper tantrum.  I want to go all toddler on their asses.
      So here is my plan: clear plexiglass bubbles.  We'll be bubble people.  It'll be the next big thing.  Sure, they might hamper our ability to walk, but then so do most shoes for women.  We'll develop a nice, blissed-out waddle.
Good plan, right?  

by Emily Connor

Every year I hear so many rumors about earthquakes in Japan. I don't mean just your little run-of-the-mill earthquakes, either-- I'm talking about the earthquake, the one that will leave Tokyo in ruins and thousands upon thousands of people dead and without anywhere to go. For the first couple of years I was in Japan, all this talk of earthquakes really had me scared. I saw information about predictions of devastating earthquakes all over the news and on the internet, and I'd be lying if I said there were nights when I couldn't sleep well because I had heard rumors that on that particular day it was predicted that the earthquake would strike and mass havoc would be upon us.

I'm sure that this major earthquake will eventually happen and that it will, without a doubt, be disastrous. However at times I feel that the way the predicted earthquake is covered on television that it's a bit too sensationalized and causing unnecessary anxiety in a lot of Japanese people. I've seen this one Italian psychic on TV several times since moving here, and every time I see him he's talking about when he thinks the quake will happen, and about how devastating it will be. Apparently the man is a really well-renowned psychic (if it's even possible to be a well-renowned psychic...) and I can't recall his name right now, but there are times when I think it would be better to not broadcast such information on national television. I mean, the guy is a psychic, not a scientist.

You could argue and say that television in the US constantly sensationalizes information, too, and you would be right. But I've never seen a two-hour primetime television special about some psychic who feels compelled to tell the nation about a supposedly impending natural disaster. I've seen many talk-show like programs in Japan focused only no non-scientifically based predictions about the Tokai earthquake, and I don't think it does any good for anyone. They say that ignorance is bliss, and while scientifically-based facts are completely fine by me, I find it kind of blasphemous to sensationalize psychic predictions. All it does is increase anxiety and unnecessary unease in people.

Natural disasters are a thing of nature (obviously, judging by the word 'natural' disaster) and it's inevitable that they're going to happen. While I feel it's important for everyone to have a plan of action for if and when this huge quake occurs, I don't think it's right to use scare-like tactics to get civilians anxious and worried about a completely unset date. It's not like how people are saying the world will end on on December 21, 2012-- people are simply saying 'the next huge Tokai earthquake will occur sometime in the 21st century', and that's pretty vague. When it happens it happens, and everyone should just have their own survival plans and not listen to sensationalized psychic personalities. 

by Anna Kunnecke

    Last week I was at the city ward office.  It is time to renew some of the documents that allow me to live here, and I needed to collect papers to prove that I had paid my taxes.  This shouldn't have been hard, because I had in fact dutifully paid all my taxes and was already in possession of quite the stack of documents to prove it.  (In duplicate.  With official stamps on them.  That had already been filed once with the tax office.)  But what I required was a totally different set of papers that would prove it for the immigration bureau. 
    So I found the right section, grabbed my slip of paper from the little ticker-tape machine, and waited for the 17 people ahead of me to get served.  Then when my number was called, I went up, handed in my filled-out form, and took another number.  Twenty minutes later the kindly woman called me up.  My papers were there; I could see them on the counter; but there was a problem.  You see, it was my name.  It was too long.
    It was so long that when printed out on the fancy official city office stationary, the final three letters of my middle name, Elizabeth, were cut off.  Perhaps, I suggested, since the last, first, and majority of my middle name were intact, it would do just as it was?  Oh no. Perhaps they could simply do away with the middle name?  Heavens no.  But Japanese people usually don't even have middle names, so....  No no no no.  Okay, I sighed, could you just write it in Japanese instead of in romaji?  But I already knew the answer. 
    So I went up a floor to repeat the process. 
    Another number, another ten minutes, another set of forms.  Then I waited twenty more minutes for their big printers to spit out another official document that, yet again, named me as Kunnecke, Anna Elizab.  I longed to simply snatch them and run.  But since I'd like to continue living in this country, I didn't. 
    There was a lot of hemming and hawing.  This was a big problem. 
    Ever resourceful, however, they figured out a way to fix it that would not displease the document gods.  They took a black ballpoint pen and wrote the letters 'e' and 't' at the end of my name.  By hand.  They handed the papers over. 
    I looked at them for a long moment. 
    And then, in spite of all my smarter, savvier, better instincts, some obedient schoolgirl part of me felt compelled to point out that unfortunately there was still an 'h' missing. 
    WHY?!??? 
    I do not know.  I could have just written it in myself. 
    Instead, they took the papers away again and were gone for several days, weeks, and months that probably really lasted only ten minutes or so.  Then they brought them back.  The 'h' had been penned in.  I was free to go. 
    So, in this quest to continue doing exactly what I have been doing, which is live here and contribute to society, I have one government office down; four more to go.  It's going to be a long week. 

By Claytonian

I am not an English teacher. When I first came to Japan, it was indeed through the JET Programme, but that stands for The Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme, not Japan English Teaching Programme. And yes, the British spelling of "Programme" is a mystery that eludes me even today. I was not a mere English teacher. I was a cultural ambassador... that used the medium of supportive English instruction at junior highs and elementary to spread my message of internationalism and peace.

Through my experiences as a JET I learned what a past participle was, but never caught on as to how they can dangle. I also learned what 関係代名詞 were and how we use them, but I can't recall what we call them in English. Connective representative nouns? No, that's not it...

I started to develop peculiar ways of describing English, as much for myself to work out it's complexities as for the students' edification. "Kids, can I tell you about Mister A? He likes Mister Noun, but they have an open relationship, so Miz Adjective can come between them. Mister The doesn't like Mister A and kicks him out to keep the precious Mister Noun all to himself. Unless Mister Noun has a name. Kids, is this all clear? This... is... English! Where are you going?"

I also started to experience pidgin rot. Pidgin rot is when you start losing your native language because nobody you know can speak it properly. Suddenly I was losing articles left and right. "Can you pass the salt?" became, "Salt... pass me?" Japan was turning me back, linguistically, into a caveman (emotionally I've been there for years though). Another problem was that I had to intentionally dumb down and slow down my language. Upon meeting other native English speakers, I would have to go through an adjustment period of a few minutes to get my tongue back up to snuff.

Finally, my time at JET ended and I became a student at a Japanese language school. To make ends meet, I found myself leading a few groups of adults that wanted to learn English. Still, I was not a proper English teacher, but more of a facilitator, trying to lift the conversation to a higher level, while often succumbing to pidgin rot during my instruction. I started to take to reading The Oxford Guide to English Grammar. I have a copy in Japanese (which makes it doubly effective as a sleeping aid by the way). It helped me at times through some of the trickier questions, but the more I studied English the more I learned that: a) English is an insane language, b) Not even a native speaker can understand said insanity, and c) One will sound quite inane when trying to explain it in their broken and purposefully simplified English. So why must I correct your speech sir? I don't know, that's just not the way we say things in English.

Recently the biggest problem for me though is the way all this listen-and-try-to-correct stuff has affected my personal interactions. Sometimes a person will be talking to me, and I will just blurt out a correction at them. "Oh, I'm sorry! Um, I didn't mean to to do that. It's just that I correct people for my job. At they speak. Speak the do I teach good way. Good speaker, I. Uh... Me... me go now."

by Emily Connor

English pops up in the most peculiar places in Japan. Store-fronts, restaurant menus, product tag lines... There just seems to be an overall fascination with the English language in Japan, even though so many people claim to be unable to speak or understand it at all (I'm still convinced that it's a lie, though!). The English that is most commonly seen tends to be a bit obscured, though... It's usually packed with grammatical and spelling errors, a lot of them being really comical. I once saw the word 'pineapple' misspelled as 'pain apple' on a restaurant menu, just to name one of the thousands of mistakes that I've seen.

T-shirts with English catchphrases are popular with all age groups, although the English on shirts tends to be some of the most butchered English that I've ever had the honor of seeing. Classic phrases such as 'To the dream for which it has' and 'WORLD EXISTS PERFECT' are just a few of the examples of English that I've seen splattered on the T-shirts that Japan's youth proudly sports. And my only question is--- why? There are tons of native English-speakers living in Japan, and tons of Japanese people with native-level English. Despite this, absolutely bizarre English just seems to be everywhere. I would think that a large and popular clothing company would perhaps think to themselves before putting an English phrase on a shirt that 'Well, maybe we should consult with a native English-speaker to see if this English makes any sense!'. But, no.

Even restaurants that have a large percentage of foreign customers tend to have inaccurate English on their menus. The popular 'Brown Rice' often becomes the not-so palatable Brown Lice' and I've even seen a type of fish called kajiki in Japanese (usually a type of Swordfish in English) be translated as the word 'Wikipedia' on a sushi menu. That's right-- I went to a sushi restaurant that was actually serving 'Wikipedia'. Couldn't the person in charge of typing up the English menu take the time to ask one of their friendly gaijin customers for some English advice before bothering to print the darn thing? Do all of these restaurants even need English menus if the English translations are just as confusing as looking at a full-Japanese menu?

To be honest, I would be really sad to see of the English in Japanese suddenly become native-level English. In a way the messed up English that is littered around many parts of Asia really gives the place a bit of its charm. On a certain level, though, I would like to be able to help some places clean up their slightly too Japanese-y English and make things easier to understand for those customers who have no idea how to read or speak any Japanese, and even less of a clue as to what the butchered English on the menu is trying to describe. 'The ball of wheat noodle which is fried'-- come again?

Then again, if free online translating Web sites finally got their acts together, then this entire dilemma could be avoided, now couldn't it?