by Kevin Cooney

     Perhaps the most universally hated question on the "Nice to Meet you I'm a gaijin FAQ" is the personal and perennial "Why are you here?"
     There are a variety of reasons why we squirm under the spotlight this throws on our transient lives.  That it's a personal matter, the question is too complex, or (as our mom suspects) that there is no answer.  After all, my closest family connection to Japan is a game boy and my Tsutaya video shop membership. Possibly my legal visa status is something, so there surely must be some greater purpose to my continued existence here. Or why am I here?
      We all have our reasons.  I've had so many it's hard to remember, and all of them sound strangely like alibis. Why does the question make us offer excuses for just being.
      For those who came for love of something material, the expat Otaku Akihabara denizens, the admission that you moved here for a cartoon seems so ignobly narrow.  Emigration for fandom, is like living in Sweden because you like Abba.
      For those who followed their sweethearts (or perhaps other organs) the answer also seems sadly insufficient.  No one likes appearing as if they have so little say about their life.  It's like the "They made me come here!" explanation given by those married to their companies.  Both types often throw in an obligatory and vague "But I'm really excited about the culture."
     Then there are those indentured servants who make their way here as teachers and travelers, always one step away from being homeless, or to put it more nicely "a backpacker."  The "I just came here to travel" is fine, and good for those young travelers, but as you renew that third visa the explanation wears thin.  After all, travelers, by definition are on their way somewhere else.
            "I want to experience new cultures..." sounds like you're running from something.
            "I want to explore new worlds..." sounds deviant.
            "I want to grow as a person..." sounds like you were a failure back home.

     No reason for being here ever sounds right.  So, why do we even offer any justification?  We are here, isn't that enough?  Until I moved here I never had to explain my mere existence so regularly.  The "why are you here gaijin" question often feels like living in your parents basement, with everyone wondering when you are going to grow up already and move out to a normal life.
     Well, this is my normal life.  Never did I sit on my sofa watching TV, with my Doritos and beer and suffer the angst filled question... "Why am I here?"  The answer was obvious: because this is my sofa and I like Doritos and beer.  Granted, now I sit on a cushion on the floor, my Doritos taste of sea life and the beer is much more expensive, but damn it, I am just being here, because this is my cushion.  This is my piece of floor.  Move along, there is nothing to see.
    Why am I here?
    Why am I here?
    Well, I have a visa, therefore I am.

By Kevin Cooney

    I recently went home to America, which is not to say the country I call home.  It's a weird thing landing in Narita and thinking to oneself "I can't wait to be in my futon."  That's an odd feeling to have for some one from the ol' US of A, because though I am American, I feel after 9 years abroad less and less at home there.  When I do the math, I've spent nearly a third of my life in Japan. I'd never envisioned this when I was young.  Even when I made the decision to live in Japan, I had intended to stay for just one year.  Life has a funny way of surprising you.  Home is where the futon is I suppose.
    I've never understood the concept "culture shock."  I had exactly zero when I came to Japan.  Nothing was or is shocking about Japan to me.  Sure things were new, but that's what I was expecting, even hoping for when my plane landed that first time in Narita.  Ooooooohhhh they eat raw horse meat!  I wasn't shocked, because a foreign place should be... well, foreign.  Seriously, who is "shocked" that things are different in a foreign country, even surprised.
    What does shock me, however, is the return. "Reverse culture shock" is actually something I understand.  It shocked me, because I truly was surprised.  This last trip home bewildered me. It had been about 2 years since my last trip back to the US.  More than ever before I felt out of place.  It was as if I was a second or two behind everyone else.  I felt out of sync with society.  I got cut in front of in lines.  I didn't know how to banter with sales staff.  I saw famous people on TV I didn't know.  I heard songs by top selling artists I've never heard. It was like visiting a foreign country, where they spoke English. I felt like a non-native. My own english having devolved over the years I found myself muttering Japanese reactions like "Ehhhhhhhh" in the middle of conversations and getting awkward looks from friends.
    I have no new opinion of America.  I will always love the US and consider myself an American; a New Yorker.  I have no interest in becoming Japanese either culturally or legally. That said I was surprised by how foreign the place seemed. It's hard to put a finger on exact details.  The sass from the girl at Starbucks.  The size of the oven in my parents house.  The rifle and shotgun section in Wallmart, where I could have bought a .22 had I the need for one. Which, frankly, on the packed and crowded streets of Tokyo I think I might. 
    Again, I'm neutral on all these things.  I'm not saying attitude from a barista is bad.  In fact, I kind of miss it.  But I had never noticed it was there before my long years abroad.  It just was.  The returning is odd because you notice that you never noticed it before.  You take for granted that things are the way they are supposed to be because that is "how it is."  It's strangely alienating, yet I'm a non-alien.  I love America, but it now befuddles me.  I never expected that.  You could say, I was shocked. 

By Kevin Cooney

    When I first arrived in Japan I spoke no Japanese.  I obviously read none either.  But I did my first day in Japan learn my first two new Kanji.  A process that would not prove as easy for other more complicated Kanji.  They were 大 and 小.
Respectively they mean "Big" and "Small." You might wonder by what means of deduction I figured out their meaning.  Well, these two Kanji I found side by side. No, not on the menu for beverage sizes.  No, not while buying a pair of new Japanese shoes.  No, not while trying on "I love Tokyo" T-shirts.  I found these two Kanji side by side in the bathroom.  I was presented with a flushing choice: big or small.  I'm still after nine years not entirely sure what decides big or small.
    I bring this up, because after nine years this still strikes me as one of the most emblematic creations of Japanese design genius.  Using less water when necessary is ecological, economical and entirely simple.  The world is currently worrying itself about any number of disasters.  Global warming, harsh economic times and a plethora of other issues confront the world.  The looming water shortages don't even blip on the radar of most folks.  As the world tries to adjust to painful lifestyle choices like using less petroleum or changing their diet, some small solutions exist that seem despite their obvious benefits to have not been adopted world wide.
    I suppose over the years the toilet with a size choice has become less novel for me.  But I still look at the handle in wonder.  Not that I can't decide if I need to use big or small.  Rather I don't understand why every toilet world wide doesn't have this option.

By Kevin Cooney

I am not a voyeur.  Neither am I an eavesdropper.  I don't listen in on others. I have never been a peeping tom.  I do not, generally speaking, interest myself in the lives of others.  But in Tokyo where you can't throw a rice ball without hitting somebody, it is nearly impossible not to be acutely aware of everything being said nearby.  Largely because, in Tokyo, nearby is about twenty centimeters... at best.  It's a great feat of design that fits one hundred coffee tables in to a space meant for 50.  If this were the US, most people couldn't fit between the tables to get to their seats without moving furniture.  But the Japanese are, well... aerodynamic.
    On the train you are almost literally sitting in the lap of the conversation next to you.  My first few years in Tokyo I was but a lapdog listening to the musical "Sou desu ne." ("Yeah, right.") and "Sou ka?" ("Really") going on all about me.  I would catch words here and there and imagine it must be something terribly interesting they were discussing.  After all, there were a lot of "Sugokunai" ("Isn't it fantastic.") being bandied about.   
    Now I'm somewhat conversant in the local lingo and I've discovered, no... it's not actually that fantastic.  Ninety five percent or so of conversations I've overheard are exactly the same banal and formulaic conversations I'd learned to tune out on the New York city subway, or the London Tube, or in any crowded hutch of my fellow english speakers.  
    I've learned now to tune out all the conversations around me in Japanese, just as I once had to do sitting in the orchestra seats of a vapid English conversation playing with gusto.  I can squelch out either language and find some small Zen bit of peace even in the most cramped and chatty of situations. That is with one exception.  When it is only one language or the other being spoken nearby.
    Sitting in a Tokyo cafe, trying desperately to focus on the words coming from my Japanese friends mouth, all I can hear is the conversation by two English speakers on the other side of the room.   I'm really really really trying not to listen to them but it enters my brain-space anyway.  My eyes dart over and they catch me looking.  Now they know I'm listening.  I try to be extra engaged in my own conversation, which my Japanese friend reads as me being overly caffeinated.  I try to focus, but the English words keep coming.
    Is that an Australian accent.  No... New Zealand maybe.  What? I just missed the last two minutes of what my friend was saying.  I take a chance with "Sou desu ne." He looks at me quizzically. I should have said "Sou ka?"  I look to see if the English speakers still think I'm listening.  Doh! They caught me again.  Their stare says "Why in a room of a hundred people are you listening to us?"  Because, I can't filter out more than one language at a time!  I'm not eavesdropping, I swear!  They see the guilty expression on my face.  
    So I ask my friend if he's in the mood for Chinese.