I came to Japan almost 6 years ago, with absolutely no expectations. I’m not and have never been a Japan-o-phile. I don’t find manga remotely interesting. I’m not into cartoons so anime doesn’t move me. I don’t really like the sorta bland and tasteless food, (it all tastes a little like dirty clothes to me), but I realize a sizeable portion of the world lives and dies by sushi. To each his own. I’m not into J-pop or izakaya culture, not into the architecture or the concrete slabs or the gazillion ‘conbeenees’ all over the place. It isn’t that I actively don’t like this stuff, it’s just that none of it particularly attracts me, I can take it or leave it. But, like lots of foreign men, I do find the women attractive, however, after having had my share of experiences with Japanese women, they seem to me like a meal without any meat, no pun intended. Well, maybe pun intended. Imagine a plateful of beautiful veggies and appetizingly displayed starches and carbohydrates, looks good, but um, I need more. We’ll return to this theme later, albeit only grazingly.
I arrived here in October 2003. I was living in Los Angeles before that, pursuing a relatively successful acting career. I say “relatively” because most of my actor friends at the time were really waiters or jewelry salesmen or smoke alarm installers. At least I had actually been in some movies and on a few TV shows and stuff, and gotten paid for it. I met Tom Cruise and asked Keifer Sutherland to bum me a smoke and accidentally elbowed Jennifer Lopez in her skull and watched a stupid and drunk Britney Spears mess up two words on a Pepsi commercial about forty-five times that we both were working on. Okay, she was working on it and I was standing behind a plant, but I was there. I befriended Charlie Sheen, who is taller than you think, and I even got kicked off an Eddie Murphy movie for peeing behind his trailer, I didn’t know where I was supposed to pee and in Brooklyn, where I’m from, we pee anywhere we want. Once, I think Halle Berry was looking at me, but she was probably looking behind me or above me, but it felt like she was looking at me. Anyway, after about 5 years of this glamour, the bottom started falling out, I had grown my hair WAY TOO LONG to be considered for most roles, and I was broke, hungry, and a little nervous. One afternoon, I saw an ad on the back of an industry newspaper advertising:
“TEACH ENGLISH IN JAPAN!-Want to earn GREAT MONEY teaching acting and English in Japan?!”
Of course, I thought, who doesn’t? After eating bananas and snickers bars for dinner the last 3 months or so of my life, the ‘GREAT MONEY’ part sounded pretty effing good to me. I called and hastily put together a package of pictures and stuff to be sent to the address on the ad. After about a week, I received a call from some Asian sounding woman who told me, “we rearry rike your pik-chahs and we want you to come in for intah-view”. I was stunned. Was she serious? Didn’t she know the whole thing was kind of a joke to me? I had been applying for jobs at Albertsons and Blockbuster videos and In-n-Out burgers, and now, I was heading off to an interview to become a ’sensei’ in Japan? Life is strange.
At the intahview, the woman I’d spoken to on the phone was, surprise, Japanese. Cute and professional to be sure, but I hadn’t yet developed the ‘yellow fever‘ thing that plagues most foreign dudes here, and, well, honestly, most Japanese girls too. I still don’t have yellow fever, and I kind of feel sorry for both the dudes who do have it and the women who are victims of it.
In fact, I can’t recall ever having been untowardly attracted to Asian women. I didn’t see them much around my neighborhood where I grew up and hadn’t had much contact with Asians in general. Whatever. She was polite and I tried to be too and there it ended.
The interviewer asked me a few questions like, “..if we rike you, can you come to Japan within one month?”, I said sure, no problem. I asked her questions like, “…are there clubs in Japan?” I was that naïve. She looked at me strangely and smiled that Japanese smile that says, “whoa man, you are an idiot aren’t you.” I was.
She made a call to the owner of the school, who at the time was in Tokyo. I spoke to him on the phone for about 7 minutes. He asked if I was a teacher, I said yes. He asked if I thought I could teach Japanese kids to speak English. I said yes. He asked if I could come to Japan in one month, and stay for the duration of a year-long contract. I said yes. I asked him if there were any clubs in Japan, he said, “you’re coming here to teach English, not go to clubs”, I said sure, no problem. Yes We Can.
I gave the phone back to the cute professional Japanese woman. They had a brief conversation wherein she said “hai, wakarimashita” about seventy-five times, then she hung up and told me to pack my bags, I’d be leaving for Japan in 30 days. I said okay, shrugged my shoulders and went downstairs to my then vegan girlfriend who ate a lot of chocolate cake, and who was waiting for me in her pick-up truck on Hollywood Boulevard. I told her, “I’m going to Japan in a month, I think we should break up”. She got pissed and screamed at me a lot and told me she was going to steal my guitar and called me a lot of names, but all I could think about was “GREAT MONEY”. I was going to Japan.
31 days later I arrived in Nagoya. It was early October, still a little humid. I had done some research on the weather and nightclubs, those two things were really important to me, still are kind of. Two Japanese women met me at the airport and drove me to my apartment, which had been procured for me by the school I was to work for. I remember the drive from the airport, thinking, “..wow, Japan is, kind of dirty..” The two women who picked me up were super-sweet, but I also remember thinking, “damn, dentist anyone?”-we Americans take fluoridated water waaay for granted.
I arrived at my apartment, and I remember thinking, “hm, is this space reserved for midgets? Who do they expect to be able to take a bath in that? It’s as big as a soupbowl.” But, I was happy to have my own space, happy to not have to deal with my psycho chocolate cake eating-vegan girlfriend anymore, looking forward to getting that “GREAT MONEY” the ad talked about.
I had a year contract with that school. The owner used to be this famous movie-star ninja actor dude here in Japan. At his height, he had 3 schools scattered around the country, plus one in LA. When I arrived, things had been looking dour for his school, enrollment was dropping and his star had long faded. I guess he was hoping i’d be able to rev up the students and increase enrollment. I’d do my best to teach and whatever else they wanted me to do everyday, after class I would try talking to the parents about their children a little bit, then I’d go to this unagi restaurant everyday and eat eel and rice, then go home and listen to my cds I had brought with me. What I didn’t know was that you’re not supposed to talk to the parents of the students at all, just do your teaching and go home. I would tell the parents how their kids were doing and whatever else, then get scolded for doing that. That job lasted 6 months, after which, I was abruptly told my contract had been cancelled, and that I should go back home, or accept a part time position making a fraction of the not-so “GREAT MONEY” I’d been promised. I walked away feeling like I’d been cheated, but I wasn’t ready to go home just yet……
5 years, one wife, two babies and about 25 different jobs later, I’m still here. My experiences in Japan have been varied and colourful, some wonderful, some not so wonderful. During this time, I’ve learned about a different culture, eaten the food, traveled around the country a little, learned a little of the language, and generally made a mess of my life while doing it. I’ve also learned a great deal about myself. I don’t like sushi that much. I REALLY like green tea. It’s VERY difficult finding male Japanese friends. And Japanese women, though beautiful and exotic, are super fickle .
My wife split from me a few months ago because I was sort of mentally and emotionally freaking out and couldn’t properly handle the pressures of life here and as a result, I did a stupid thing. A few stupid things. I found a new place to stay, but just recently my current housemate told me to pack my bags and hit the bricks because again, I did a stupid thing as a result of not being properly socialized to life here, after almost 6 years . Lots of the friends I’ve made since I came here have left and gone to Tokyo, Osaka, or back home, wherever home is. Lots of my friends are still here in Nagoya, plowing through it, doing the best they can. Nagoya presents it’s own set of peculiar problems and issues to deal with in Japan, it’s like no other large Japanese city you will ever visit.
I went and saw a theater production last night at the Aichi Arts Center called, “Everything I Needed To Know I learned In Kindergarten”, one of those things was be ‘good to others and they will be good to you’.
I’ve tried my best to be good to the people I’ve come across in Japan, and in return, I think people have tried to be good to me. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be, anywhere you end up?
Just so happens, I ended up in Japan.
