By Claytonian

Since we are cautious about copyright laws here at jibtv, I can only direct you to follow a link to what I am going to be talking about today:ahiru-kuchi (the pursed lips of a person, usually a girl, impersonating a duck).

Pursed duck-like lips are a favorite of models in Japan. I guess because it's cute. And their lips are often pursed anyways to talk in that modern complain-laden way of talking that is also popular these days (I think it's called tongata-kuchi in Japanese, or pouty-mouth). I thought the duck face was a Japanese phenomenon, but I discovered antiduckface.com/ just a few minutes ago that gives me the impression that I am behind the times.

To remedy that, I made my own ahiru-kuchi image. I threw in a few purikura tricks and net slang to make it super kawaii. Am I still cool, kids?

By Claytonian

Forgive me, I'm not near as good an illustrator as our own Martin, but I thought that this drawing, which started as a absentminded sketch while thinking about winter, encapsulates a lot of my impressions of Japan when it is cold. And it's still quite cold as I write this!

That whole lack of significant insulation or central heating thing that happens in homes over here necessitates a certain lifestyle. Let's analyze my scribble to see what I've included from the lifestyle. First off, lets talk about the mikan in the room.

Mikans are like oranges. Or clementines. Or something. I hear them referred to by all kinds of names, but I just know them as the citrus that dominates the countryside to which I first moved when I came to Japan. The people of the city import the mikans by the veritable basket-load for winter consumption as they are easy to get during this time. And then they give them to their eikaiwa teachers, or customers, or passing strangers. There are a lot of mikans coming into my house at any given time.

Besides the anthropomorphised mikan, there are some other wintry objects. For instance, we have his hat. I don't get the impression that many Japanese people wear hats in their cold rooms, but I certainly do. I get wrapped like a Bedouin each night.

Then there is the stove. These are filled with noxious gas and will probably kill you. So of course lots of people use them. The stove is often topped by a teapot to keep moisture in the air and teacups. Or in my case, laps.

The most important heating object in this picture is of course the kotatsu.  Not pictured is the air conditioner. Where I come from, air conditioners only cooled air, but here they go both ways. Despite the fact that heat rises, air conditioners are always near the ceiling. The TV is important too; it distracts one from the bitter pain of the cold.

By Claytonian
I'm from nowhere, USA. By the time I arrived in Japan, I had a train riding tally of one: some in-state ride that made one stop about every three hours. So when I realized my primary means of transport out of my first town in Japan was trains, I was a bit scared to be honest. I remember my first ride in Japan quite clearly.

I needed to go to a gathering of ALTs in some nearby town. My handler took me to the station and ordered a ticket for me. Then she started to just walk away after passing it to me. "Wait!" I choked. "Where do i get off?" I couldn't remember city names at that point, let alone stations. We conferred with the station master, and I was told to get off at the fifth stop down.

I was quite jumpy for the whole ride. Not only was it an alien feeling to ride the train, but I couldn't understand the announcements and was paranoid about my ability to merely count to five reliably. Luckily, another ALT got on the train at one of the stops because he was going to the same meeting. We exchanged tales of how weird life had been since we'd arrived in Japan a week before to relieve our mutual stress until we got to our final destination. In a way, I had dodged my first test by encountering the other ALT. But there were plenty of chances to fail at trainsmanship over the coming months and years.

I make mistakes, even today. Even with my magical ability to read those funny characters and tons of experience on the rails. It's kind of amazing that I still can't get trains right, but I take heart that even Japanese people make mistakes at this. One trick that does help is to ask the golden question: [station name]で止まりますか (~de tomarimasu ka, which means: does this train stop at station x?). That phrase has saved me countless times.

Unfortunately, since I moved to the much busier area that is East Japan, I don't get to see the train staff as often (the trains are too long and the staff are in the ends usually). They will direct you, using their encyclopedic train knowledge, to the correct train platform if the one in question is not right. If staff is not immediately available, sometimes I resort to asking civilians. But that can freak them out--yes, some people freak out when approached by a foreigner no matter what language said foreigner is using--, so I loathe doing so.

Lately I have been relying on my smart phone to find the simplest-possible route between places. If I have to do a 乗り換え (norikae, switching trains at a stop), that multiplies my error margin by about 10%, so the phone is a life-saver. But even the phone will sometimes make a mistake! I got to feel smug one night when I noticed that the phone was giving me bad advice. Take that, "smart" phone! I snickered to myself. It retaliated a few days later by running out of battery power in the middle of Shinjuku Station.

This picture of drunkanese will become very relevant to the article, or so the statue tells me.

Recently, I went on an official writing trip to Niigata. It was a pretty unique experience, not only to be essentially a travel writer in the land I love, but also linguistically. For the former experience, with lots of pictures and links to places I went to, I'll defer you to my blog entries on the trip. For the latter, I will talk about my musings on language that I had while on the trip in this post.

We made for an interesting pair: I, an American with my English and 1kyu Japanese, and my fellow travel writer, a German woman who writes in English and understands Vietnamese and French. She also had considerable Japanese ability, but my experiences with the big standardized Japanese tests and language school gave me an edge for the technical terms. Our handler from the company arranging all of this, despite his time abroad, generally declined to speak English, as he seemed to have given up on it. Not that I blame him. So it fell to me to translate for my German compatriot.

It's not the first time I've been a hapless and woefully under-qualified translator. Back when I lived in Kyushu, I was called upon to help translate for a couple of visiting citrus farmers from Spain. They would speak broken English to me, and I would speak yet more broken Japanese to the local mikan farmers we were visiting. Then the locals would speak their local confusing dialect, and I would translate that back to simple English for the Spaniards.

This time around I was a bit more proficient. As we were guided around Niigata, Sado island and the Echigo area, my listening techniques, as I've noticed in retrospect, seemed to be rather zen. Instead of trying to listen and understand each term, I just took whole sentences in. I would stand and keep an ear half-cocked for whatever explanation we were getting at the moment, and have revelations like, Ah, yes, they are talking about the Bakufu's corporal policies. This worked pretty well for me most of the time. Occasionally, the German would ask me what a word meant. Usually, I had to admit that I hadn't picked out whatever term had gathered her interest. The zen of listening to Japanese is to not listen, or something. But happily, I am to the point where I could relay the German's terminological request and understand the explanation. This part required actual concentration.

On day two of our journey, we had dinner with a local couple. The husband was actually a Spanish citizen. They spoke to each other in Japanese at times and English at others. They wanted to speak his native language when together, but wine always got in the way. Ah libations, they can both help and hurt linguistic abilities from what I've observed.

Skip to our last night of travel luxury, in a ski area hotel, and the three members of our team were all talking in Japanese, which was a bit of a nice marvel to me. We had not gotten our handler to break down and actually speak English (which he could understand) outside of one good drunken karaoke session -what did I tell you about libations?- where he sang some, and eventually I and the German were the ones that broke down and spoke more and more Japanese over the course of the trip. By that final night, I was feeling almost fluent and my fellow writer was very impressive herself.

But when I got back home that fluency fell back to its usual embarrassing levels. What was different? Maybe I lost my zen in my normal setting. Maybe it was that I had to go back to teaching English the next day. It's hard to say. I'm not particularly good at languages to begin with, but it was nice to feel like I was for a while. I am not going to stress it. I don't even carry my dictionary around anymore. If there is a need to communicate, a way will come. Way? Maybe I'm a linguistic Taoist instead of a zen-listener. Or maybe I am just awesome at muddled-metaphors.

By Claytonian

I know all there is to know about the staring game. I had lots of training as a lad. You see, I used to go to a lot of church. I recommend church for young people. Not only can you get morally indoctrinated, but you have lots of boring time to pass and thus a fertile field in which to raise a vivid imagination. I must have fought so many pirate kings in my head during sermons over the years.

Frequently, my zoning off would be interrupted by younger eyes. Little kids would be staring at me over the pews. One day as a teen I started staring back to amuse myself. Kids are the best stare-off opponents, for they are largely unselfconcious. Getting a kid to avert their Village-of-the-Damned-gaze is a proud accomplishment.

In my modern Japanese existence, this immature game has made a comeback. Only the opponents are Japanese people of all ages. The older ones are counter-stared into shame quite easily, and the kids are easier than American tykes, but one has to be vigilant, lest they sneak their eyes back upon you.

So the game is to counter-stare, feign relaxation , and then counter-stare again just when they thought it was safe to spy a foreigner.

This morning I had a particularly tough game.  The kid was a mouth-breather. If I laugh at that, if I even crack a smile, I lose this titanic battle of wits.

Oh no! She's got a twitchy bunny nose! Must not snicker! The mother is in on it too! Tag-teamed?! Ah, they're down for the round and its time to act non-chalant. Wait. What's that in the corner? A toilet booth? We are in the toilet car?!

And with that the game gets too funny. I laugh, and lose. I must collect myself; only a matter of time until someone gets curious at the laughing foreigner and my game starts again.