Dating in Japan is something of which I have experienced not at all a great deal. My personal shortcomings on that front aside however, I have had the distinct pleasure to observe Japanese people dating each other (or attempting to at the very least), with some regularity. A Japanese man and his special lady friend enjoy a symbiosis fraught with cultural idioms of which a casual observer can scarcely be aware. It is perfectly normal for instance for a woman to sit, quite bored, waiting for her boyfriend to finish impressing her with some perfectly honed, yet desperately useless skill. I quote here last night’s example, a couple playing darts across from our game of billiards, wherein a young man, still dressed in his ‘office worker’ uniform, with the deadly accuracy of a Army Recon sniper, tossed dart after dart into the dead center of the bulls eye. This phenomenon repeated itself several times yet impressed me more than his girlfriend who, without any attempt to mask her boredom, stared blankly around her, and fiddled with her cell phone. Though the young man spoke often and asked her the occasional question (at which time she would pretend to find it all fascinating and giggle obligingly) it was clear darts wasn’t her thing. In stark contrast, I found this entire affair to be extremely interesting; its subtleties not lost on me, and the symbolism blatant, I smiled and potted the 8 ball – corner pocket – and made a mental note to relate all this to you with a smile on my face.

My teacher at school too speaks of Japanese men, including her husband, with little sense of wonder. Romance, so she related to us, is not the forte of the Japanese man, and dating in Japan is more about finding a suitable provider for your children than finding a lover for yourself (and though she left out the fact that lovers can easily be had on the side as men are expected to work the better part of 10 hours a day, the insinuation was plainly there). As it happened we were learning to talk about our daily activities, including dating, and we were all to happy to reciprocate and ask her about her first date as she had asked us the same thing. It is extremely difficult to relate to you, through writing, the wild gestures and painful look on her face as she thought long and hard, and could not come up with that particular memory, despite several minutes of trying. Suffice to say then that her husband, though apparently a suitable partner and father of her children, failed to impress upon her during their initial romance. Likewise, some Japanese girls I met, both in their early 30s, found it extremely important that their husband and boyfriend respectively be well-adjusted and dedicated office workers, but less important that they spend any time with them. So it is that these two particular ladies eat lunch and dinner alone every day, or with girlfriends, in restaurants about town – sponsored by their significant other who they rarely see. Moreover, it is considered entirely acceptable for someone like me to enjoy the girl’s company, in the absence of their partners, in a manner which can be described only as extremely flirtatious, which brings me neatly to my next topic:

Japanese women, for as far as I can tell, are some of the cutest, most adorable, flirtatious and lovable creatures on this green earth. They are generally jovial, energetic, and up for almost anything, be it playing darts with dead-beat boyfriends, or going clubbing until the wee hours of the morning. Their flirty and fun-loving demeanor mask their true nature however, as Japanese women are as rational as their male counterparts, and every bit as shrewd. Behind the pink, glitter-covered cell-phone, immaculate make-up, cute clothes, and girlish giggling hides a woman with a plan chiseled in stone. Behind each flirty smile, touch, or hair-toss exists a set of rules and boundaries of which only the Japanese girls themselves are aware, and whose existence may go entirely unnoticed with all the consequences of such ignorance on the part of potential suitors. Again however I am foiled by limited experience with Japanese women, having dated a grand total of three, only one of whom I met here in Tokyo. Thus, as with the parasols, this subject too will be elaborated upon in future TGJA installments. Forgive me – I don’t make the news, I just bring it to you as it comes.

I would be remiss were I not to write a few words on current events from time to time. Currently, the influenza-fueled media craze is sweeping this, the land of the rising sun. Little white facemasks – always a common sight on random faces in the crowd – have sold out at many ‘konbini’ (convenience stores) as pigs everywhere are being held accountable for a disease that is entirely centered around man. My Japanese host mother, always up for laying down more rules, jumped on the swine-flu bandwagon with unrivaled gusto. I have been coughing, due to entirely unrelated reasons, for almost the entire time I have been in Japan – some two months now. Though my condition continues to perplex doctors, who have blamed all manner of things from allergies (which I do not have) to Pertussis (Whooping Cough), all of them unsuccessful in their treatment, I do NOT have swine-flu. Nevertheless, once the news casters, delighted with having something to report at last, invaded homes and minds with influenza drabble, my host mother panicked, dove for the facemasks, and told me to put one on.

Having willingly suffered the burden of the mask before (in an effort to humor her during the first week of my coughing) I politely declined and reminded her allergies and influenza are two entirely different brands of sport. Unconvinced yet utterly powerless to deny my gaijin logic, she launched into a well-rehearsed speech concerning the ever-present possibility of infecting others in the household (a real challenge if allergies are truly the root cause of my cough as the doctors now once again suspect!). The also reminded me most urgently that should I change my mind, endless amounts of facemasks would be readily available to me. Suddenly, the polite Japanese we have been learning in school seemed grossly inadequate as my mind strained to find the right words with which to tell her to go stuff it. When five expert physicians tell me my cough is most likely indicative of an allergic reaction to any number of things which are unique to Japan, it is unlikely  I will let an old lady, incapable of spelling ‘influenza,’ dictate how to go about my life.

The “epidemic’ – and I loather to call it that, fearing people may misconstrue my words to mean: ‘you will all fall ill and die lest you hermetically seal your house, lock yourself inside, and throw away the key,’ continues to claim lives. Influenza, in all its different forms, has done so globally for hundreds, if not thousands of years – often at far more staggering rates than today. New this time: 24-hour news stations vying for ratings. Do not be fooled. Stick it to ‘The Man’ and take your kids to a petting zoo and go straight for the pigs. You’ll be the only ones there.

There is great order to be found in apparent madness. Nowhere is this more true than in ant hills. Each ant tends its task, tirelessly, without fail or question, as do her sisters. An ant does this, to the best of my knowledge, due mostly to instinct in conjunction with chemical messages produced by her sisters, her food, and her queen. She slaves away without complaint for her entire life – short as it may be – unburdened by ego, possessions, or consideration of self. Around her, the hive throbs, ants scurrying about seemingly haphazardly – each day very nearly identical to the last. Yet, ants have been around, and successfully so, for very much so longer than we ourselves have been. Now, the reason for this is beyond the purview of the education I have as of yet enjoyed, though I am confident we can all appreciate stipulated facts when they are presented us.

Ants then are survivors, and our story, for which this ant business is merely an analogy, echoes that sentiment.

It is the Japanese who bear an uncanny resemblance, in their actions, to the ants of this world. What they lack in size, free will, and imagination, they (over)compensate with diligence, blind loyalty, perseverance, and sheer weight of numbers.

Give a group of 1000 western people a problem to solve, no matter how simple, and the utter chaos that would surely follow can ill be described. Give the same problem to 1000 Japanese people, and students of chaos theory (the notion that there is order in apparent chaos) may rejoice, as seemingly at random to the untrained eye, the group will establish a leader, a common goal, and an unrivaled work ethic to get the job done. All this, mind you, while observing a level of social etiquette of which we have not the equal. No raised voices, no pushing or shoving, no quitters  – a united people, bound by unseen forces, impervious to the failings of the individual by virtue of the strength of the collective. It is a wonder to behold, as I do, on a daily basis.

Where in other congested hubs of human development our humanity rubs raw the temperance of our fellow man – eroding social graces and common courtesy with equal vigor and proficiency, in Tokyo an unspoken truce maintains an improbably status quo. Dire-faced office workers share their world with rebellious youths sporting punk hair and androgynous clothing dyed every color under the sun. Old ladies, perched precariously atop rickety bicycles, cause mile-long pedestrian traffic jams – no one bats an eye. Subway stairs, sixty feet wide, are only fifty percent saturated, as the flow of people going up at rush hour puts to shame the trickle of people going down. Yet, without any coercion beyond arrows on the floor indicating which half of the stairs are meant for going up, and which for going down, not a soul ventures unto the nigh empty steps in the opposing direction. It would not occur to them to try.

In this place where so often truth is buried beneath socially acceptable façades, denying true understanding in favor of perpetuating a comfortable status quo, venturing down forbidden roads, trivial or great, is quite unthinkable.

While still a student at my Japanese high school I did not have a cell phone. I did not think that I would need it since I was living with my family and making friends at school did not seem to be related to it. But again I was wrong.  A classmate once came to me and asked for my cell phone number (and mail address) so she could contact me regarding class matters easily, without having to call my house. When I said that I did not have one, she looked at me awkwardly and said: “But you can’t make friends without a cell phone!” As strange and awful as it sounded, it was perhaps true – the cell phone had become the one and only link between friends, their only tool for communication with each other. Things which could not be said face to face were put in an e-mail, accompanied by a countless number of emoticons revealing the tone of the writer’s emotion. I realized that the cell phone culture in Japan was much deeper than I could expect – it was a way of life: the only way teenagers could lead a “regular” social life – a life with friends, or “best friends” as they often called me… after I bought a cell phone.

Recently, however, cell phones have been pushed aside by a new tool of communication – a social communication network called Mixi, launched in 2004. Mixi is a website that allows its members to connect with friends from elementary school days to present, write open-to-public diaries, view others’, make comments, upload pictures and videos, exchange messages, etc. It can be accessed both via computer and a cell phone. Recently Mixi has been enjoying an enormous popularity proven by the constantly increasing registration of millions of Japanese, as well as an impressive number of foreigners (particularly those living in the country). For Mixi users, logging on means a lot – their acquaintances’ updated information can be checked by a single click, and their own thoughts on any subject can be read by others with the speed of  light. Regular comments on pictures or diary inputs bring people closer than before, and allows them to call each other “friends” even though they were not such before. Mixi has become a very important part of the daily routine for many Japanese of all ages. An internet cafe near my house offering six seats for people who wish to use the internet, is very often crowded with Mixi users, who by sitting in front of the computer can get the best of both worlds – communicating with all their friends, but from a distance; or said in other words – mix with others in a safe way.

It did not take me eight years to understand that my assumption that the Japanese people do not communicate with each other was wrong. In fact, I have come to realize that they communicate with each other much more than we do in Europe. It is just that the way of communication is different. While back in my home country I would knock on my friend’s door, here in Japan I would take out my cell phone, open the mail inbox and press reply.

The southerners are a big, loud, lively bunch. They won’t say but they know that you know that they worry about the eyes of their neighbors despite the trivial nature of their concerns.  That said, they sure don’t act like it sometimes.  They’re hardly the ones to hold back their feelings. They will laugh, cry, yell and praise hallelujah to the high heavens at the top of their lungs before they even think about holding their tongue.  And they’re huggers.  My god, are they huggers.  They hug you when they see you and hug you before you go and don’t think they don’t hug you in between.  Being that young and impressionable, I started to hug.  It never became second nature or anything but I came to accept them and willingly lived up to my expectation that I should hug back.

I can’t recall how it came up but I told my friends I was not used to hugging so much.

“Wait, not even your family?” They asked with disbelief.
“Yeah, not really anyone, not even my grandmother,” I said.

“Well, don’t you love her?”

“Of course I do!” I defended.

“Do you even tell her you love her?”

I stood there silent for a moment.  Of course…I must have… I mean, I do love her.., Why couldn’t I think of even one occasion?  I gave up and shook my head.  This got them going.

“How could you not tell her?”  “How will she know?”  “You have to tell her!”  “You have to tell her before it’s too late!”

Before it’s too late? I was taken aback and struck with panic.  Oh my god!  They’re right!  I have to tell her!  I have to tell her before it’s too late! I could never forgive myself!  What have I been doing all this time?!

So that following summer when I went to Japan, I was on a mission to profess my love for my grandmother and began scheming a plan.

It wasn’t as easy as you may think.  You can’t just say, “I love you,” to anyone in Japan. There are three words of affection: suki, daisuki and aishiteru.  I translate suki as “to like” and daisuki as “to like a lot; to really like.” Aishiteru is “I love you” but only to be used between lovers, not necessarily family members or friends.  In fact, you never really use those words except to lovers or to inanimate objects such as food or a place.  This was a problem I couldn’t figure out how to get around.

Then there was the physical act of hugging.  I don’t think my mother and I ever hugged each other before moving to Alabama.  And I don’t think I ever saw people hug on in Japan, at least not where I’m from.  The only time I did see it was from TV.  The main character (usually male), over come with emotion, can no longer hold back, grabs the girl and stiffly holds on to her.  She’s surprised and has that awkward, confused look on her face but she too can no longer resist and they embrace!  The music plays, the rain starts to fall and cut; end scene.

Despite my desires, my month long stay had come to an end and I still hadn’t completed my mission.  I tried once, briefly, at dinner to tell my grandmother that I liked her but it made for an overwhelmingly awkward moment.  When I quietly said the words, my cousin’s mouth dropped.  There was silence and I felt my face flush bright red.  After what seemed an eternity, my cousin bust out laughing and told me to stop being weird.  Everyone else went on with their conversation or became engrossed with the TV, pretending nothing happened and the dinner went on.

My bags were packed and loaded in the trunk. As always, my grandmother saw me off at the door. I was about to get in the car when I was struck with failure and disappointment.  Was I really going to go home empty handed?  Will I regret this for the rest of my life?  No! No, I mustn’t! I have to do it! I turned around and walked to her, opened my arms, ready to embrace her when all of a sudden, my cousin, seemingly out of no where stuck her arm out and shoved me aside.

“Hey what the hell?!” I yelled at her in Japanese.

She gave me a look and told me, “Erika, we don’t do that here.”

“Huh?  But-“

“No, we don’t do that here.”

I turn to my grandmother and gave a quick but still respectable bow, went back to the car and waved from the window as we drove off.

I felt mortified and confused the whole ride to the airport and onto the plane.  I went over the scene repeatedly in my head until it hit me!  I realized, “Erika, we don’t do that here.  There are other ways to show how much you care and appreciate someone.  It doesn’t just have to be words!  You do as they ask, you listen to them, and you think about them.”  It was a very insightful plane ride.

When I got back to Alabama and met up with my friends, they asked if I did it.  Did I tell her?

“No,” I said smiling proudly.  “We don’t do that there.  Love isn’t so easy to put into words and besides, there are other ways to show love.” They stared silently at me for a moment with a bizarre look about their face, then broke out in disbelief: “That’s so weird!  Japan’s weird!”

“Hah, I suppose.”

It’s been ten years since that incident but I still remember that moment as clearly as it happened.  For years whenever I saw my cousin I felt slightly embarrassed by the memory but that has now passed.  I’ve learned from it and now when I visit my grandmother I try to help her, despite her practiced protests, to hang the laundry, to take out the trash, and other household chores.  And it’s not just out of obligation but with sincerity.  However, I’ve always wanted to do something more for her; something to really show I cared, and today I got the chance.

My grandmother had just gotten back from pulling out the weeds that had invaded her garden due to the unusually long rainy season this summer.  She is now 83 and pushes a walker with wheels to keep her balance.  She stands at a constant 45-degree angle and when she bends down, it takes all her strength to get back up.  She started to fuss next to me and I called out to her, asking what she was doing.

“I need to cut my nails,” she said.  I got up and helped her get the clippers and laid down a newspaper.

“I have to sit here, it’s the only way I can reach my toes,” she said.

“I’ll do it.” I told her.

She protested, saying they’re dirty and gross, but I took the clippers and sat down at her feet.

I’m not going to lie.  It was gross.  The nails were over grown, filled with dirt and her feet were wrinkled, smelly and covered with hard bumps, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t want to show any emotion as if to suggest this was normal and expected so she doesn’t have to feel embarrassed.

I think this was one of the most humbling acts I have ever done for her.  All the good grades in school and help with household chores stand small compared to today.

When I finished, she thanked me and said, with a smile, “I’m glad you’re here.”

To my friends back in Alabama and anyone else, those words might as well have been “I love you.”

I may not be able to hug or say how much I love her, but I can cut toenails for her.

For the sake of simplicity, the U.S. has two basic cultural foundations that inform the society. Christianity speaks of original sin while Atheism is the Darwinian/Freudian model that life is a meaningless accident, the subconscious is a harbor for suppressed emotions, and entropy is the rule. At the core of both models human beings are viewed as inherently flawed creatures.

In a country where religion is minimal, fundamentalism is unheard of, and Zen Buddhism is the dominant spiritual philosophy, the picture is entirely different. All species including humans are viewed as an expression of the divine source. It’s a well known fact that Orientals generally have longer life spans and retain full mental and physical capacities for much longer.

Another significant cultural difference is the food. Some of the funkiest, nastiest, smelliest stuff the old farts eat is also the healthiest. You don’t see them guzzling soda and candy bars. In contrast, the younger generations are eating more Western junk food, less traditional food, and have health problems the likes of which the older generations have never experienced. And these old timers still drink like fish!

When I see elderly Americans it’s depressing. Many are consuming handfuls of pills daily, oxygen tanks are common, and there’s often a general air of sadness about them. We’re taught to respect older people- is it because of knowledge gained or do we feel sorry for their decay?

The old bats in my western Tokyo neighborhood are a pain in the ass. They have full mental and physical faculties and not enough to do, so they bumble around driving everybody crazy. The local hospital has a sign in the waiting area that reads, “Seniors, please don’t have your picnic here.” But at the same time I admire them. I want to be that healthy and energetic when I’m that age and thanks to them I know I can be.

As the months passed, from one city to the next, we saw female feet of all ages turned in, attempting to walk around stores and catch trains using only the tiniest of inverted steps. To compound the apparent difficulty of making it from point A to point B, most of these girls and women wore towering high heels.

It is common for Westerners to be puzzled by this practice, known as uchimata, because we have been raised to view the condition only as a medical problem. Among many Japanese people, however, turning in your toes and taking small steps is seen as the most ladylike way to walk. It is considered to be infinitely more delicate than walking with your feet turned out.

After doing some research, I decided to broach this potentially awkward topic with my Japanese colleagues. At an informal interview session, they revealed their cultural conviction that uchimata is more attractive than “walking like a man”. They were referring to the way I walk, in case you were wondering. As for the ubiquitous high heels, they went on, sexy shoes are another important component of the super vulnerable and feminine appearance they aspire to cultivate. Unfortunately, they said, it is impossible to wear such shoes and walk in this manner every day. Since they have to maneuver around a workplace and get places quickly, it is not practical for them to move slowly and turn in their feet.

They do, however, like to revert to this style when dressed in traditional kimono. Kimono robes are not sealed in the front by zippers or buttons or strings. So, by walking “like a man” one runs the risk of exposing everything that is hidden underneath. Although the mystery has been somewhat solved, I still do a double take when I see a particularly painful looking young lady hobbling beside me in the mall. I have to remind myself that she is probably just as perplexed by my tendency to wear unsexy sneakers in public and take the stairs two at a time.

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photo credit: Photocapy

One of the first things that struck me about shopping in Japan was the level of service. Walk into almost any shop, no matter what price bracket and they lavish even the most blatant browsers with rapt attention.

Japan to me epitomises ritualised, formal politeness. Here, customers are addressed honorifically as “O-kyaku-sama”. Honorifically! As a Londoner, in the pricier shops, I am accustomed to being ignored, as I do not have the power to dispel the snootiness from sales assistants with the flash of a black card.
At the other end of the price spectrum – read Primark, any sports store, Argos – I am also accustomed to playing the invisible customer, mainly because the staff are incompetent (underpaid) sixteen year olds. I am not exaggerating, as a student I racked up a few years in the retail sector and I am sure I was quite incompetent when I was sixteen working in Debenhams!

Walk into any store here and hear cries of “irashaimase” from every member of staff in the vicinity. Sales assistants appear eager to help you in any way. If you do not understand much Japanese, it can be overwhelming to have all this chatter and enthusiastic cries aimed at unassuming little you! Yet I prefer hearing it to; “are you okay there?” Am I okay where? I don’t know if it’s just my pet peeve, but when did this become the phrase to offer customers help?

However, after a few weeks, this all begins to wear thin. While the Japanese do in fact aim to treat every customer with respect, the smiles become fixed and the welcoming cries soon sound robotic, as if they had already been uttered 500 times that day (which is highly probable). I recently read an article about a video camera that reads the smiles of a company’s staff and determines whether they were genuine! The Japanese clearly mean business when it comes to serving customers. Yet I wouldn’t blame these shop assistants for being unable to remain maniacally cheerful all day. And to be honest, as long as I am getting served, I don’t mind if the smiles are not as authentic as those between best friends.

So if you fancy being treated like a king or queen while shopping… genuinely or otherwise, Japan’s your kind of place. But be warned, when you return home, the next time you hear a droning “are you okay there?” with an underlying tone of “I really couldn’t give a damn”, you may find yourself haughtily demanding to be treated like an honorable kyaku-sama!

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