Moshi moshi!

I am now back from Japan, which was a great experience. Some running content first: on the day after I arrived we were eating our Japanese breakfast (sitting on the floor on tatami mats, eating things like fermented soybeans and fish and lots of seaweedy stuff) and on TV was the Tokyo Marathon. Had I planned better, that might have been a more reasonable choice since it does not involve 7000 steps and the Japanese actually understand running! At least in some places they do—in Tochio, the small town where my student Kelly teaches English, she says that she and this one guy are the only runners in town. Other places, however, we saw runners galore, which actually made Kelly wonder what was going on. In Kamakura, an ancient capital of Japan, we saw tons of them, including some in groups. That is probably explainable by the fact that Kamakura is not only an ancient capital with lots of Zen temples, but also an upper-middle class (at least it seemed so) bedroom community of Tokyo. Wherever you find yuppies, you can also probably find runners.

Despite my frequent admonitions in my teaching and in life in general regarding the hazards of stereotyping, I am now going to engage in some discussion of Japan that does just that. Generalities are inevitable, even if sometimes problematic, but also they can reveal some fundamental truths. I’ll even organize this into numbered and lettered examples, so as to enable you to enjoy some of the fruits of my Political Science-educated analytical mind.

1. Japan is polite. (I guess it would be better to say “Japanese people are polite.”)

a. All over you see people wearing surgical face masks, even though the vast majority of them are not surgeons and probably do not even play surgeons on TV. Unlike in China, where mostly people wear such masks to reduce the effects of the pollution, in Japan people wear them when they are sick, to avoid infecting others.

b. Despite the fact that Japan is a mobile-phone crazed society (some 80 million subscribers in a population of 127 million) they are not supposed to talk on them or even let them ring on the shinkansen (bullet train) or parts of the subway system in Tokyo. And people actually follow these rules—when people’s phones vibrated (remember, no ringing) on the bullet train they would always go to the corridor between cars to have their conversation.

b (1). When they can answer their phone, they say not “konichi-wa,” which is Japanese for “hello,” but rather “moshi moshi”. I find this inherently more polite than in China, where the phone is answered by saying “wei?!” which basically means “Hey?!” This usually comes out kind of surly. However, I think it would be almost impossible to be surly while saying “moshi moshi.”

c. The Japanese language is full of other politenesses. When Kelly and I entered the museum at the atomic bomb site in Nagasaki, Kelly was carrying a soda can. The woman from behind the entrance desk came running up, and said, in English “Is it OK or not for you to carry that can inside?” (or something like that). What she really was saying was “It is not OK for you to carry that can inside” but that would have been too direct, so instead it was a question.

d. Before she returned home, Kelly had to buy gifts, known as omiyage, for all of the teachers in the schools in which she teaches. That is 70 people, folks. This is a common custom—wherever you go, you buy omiyage for your co-workers because you are supposed to feel guilty (or shameful—some scholars say Westerners do guilt and Asians do shame) for being on vacation while they were left behind to toil in your absence. All over the place, for instance in Tokyo Station, you find nicely wrapped boxes with labels saying something like “this box is good for 8 people.”

e. Generally you do not criticize your boss or your coworkers so as not to destroy the wa, or the harmony of your workplace community. However, there is one time that this is permitted, and that is at an enkai. This is when you all go out together, get smashingly drunk, and then are permitted to be honest with your boss.

f. In Japan, they do not even jaywalk. If you are at a light and it is red, you wait for it to turn green, even if there is not another car or pedestrian around. Admittedly this is a rare occurrence, but in Kelly’s small town of Tochio (not to be confused with Tokyo) we were walking home from an evening of ramen, gyoza, and karaoke (I sang, badly, “I Will Survive”—I’m considering going on an “I Will Survive” karaoke tour of the world since I have now sung it in at least two countries) and there was no one else around. Nonetheless, we waited for the green light to cross.

g. People do not litter, even though trash cans are few and far between. Instead, they hold their trash till they return home and can throw it away on their own turf.

2. Japan is safe.

a. See 1f above.

b. On the Tokyo subway, you can see small schoolchildren in the morning and evening (I’m talking ages 6 and up here) on their way to school. Alone. Without parental accompaniment. Try that anywhere in the U.S., much less anywhere with a subway system, and watch the parents promptly arrested for child endangerment.

c. Kelly liked to joke that in Japan the police primarily exist to give directions, a hypothesis that we were able to test a few times and does actually seem to be true.

3. Japan is clean.

a. See 1a above.

b. See 1g above.

c. In private dwellings and in some other spots you are expected to remove your shoes. I was in Japan less than 6 hours before committing my first shoe faux pas, which just involved stepping my shoes on the wrong part of the floor as we were entering the onsen (Japanese bath, where everyone is naked together—single-sex only—a story for another time and place, perhaps).

c (1). Due to the removal of shoes, you often wear slippers around indoors, or at least hopefully socks without holes. In several places, you were expected to change your slippers into the special ones provided for going into the toilet. Sometimes, these are even helpfully labeled “toilet” so you are very clear about when and where to wear them.

c (2). While on the subject of toilets, Japanese toilets often come equipped with all sorts of extra features, accessible by buttons on the side. For instance, on many you raise and lower the seat cover by pushing a button. Some have heated seats (much nicer than in a car, really), and built in bidets, so you have to be careful to push the right button or else you might be getting some unexpected services.

4. Japan is a technophile’s dream. (These are admittedly all incredibly trivial examples.)

a. See 3c(2) above.

b. Everywhere you go you see vending machines selling beverages. Even beer.

c. I had sushi for breakfast one morning at the Tsukiji fish market, which is where most of Japan’s (amazing, by the way) seafood originates. They had a picture menu where you could pick which sushi you wanted. When I entered (a little counter place that could seat maybe a dozen people) I was handed a laser pointer to point to my sushi choice. Very clever.

d. Along with many other toilet options, many public restrooms feature a motion activated flushing sound effect, which helps obscure the noise of what you are doing in there. Apparently this was introduced to save water from people actually flushing to do this. Which of course takes us back to the “Japan is polite” point.

Since this is getting rather long, I will stop here for now…Next entry will feature a few Japan photos and perhaps even some updates on my marathon training!