Memories of Summer Woes

I'll start by saying, I hate summer. Always have, always will. And in Japan, at least in the parts I lived, the summers are parTICularly unbearable ~ though you must bear them ~ because of the extremely high humidity. It was not unusual for the temperature, at, say, 7:30 a.m., to be 85+ degrees already, and the humidity over 90%. It was awful. AWFUL!

One summer the stores had postcards showing a little guy surrounded by orangey-yellow heat with a swirl of red going round above his head, his eyes big as saucers and rather bleary looking. The heat and humidity of August are legendary. In case you need reminding, summer in Japan is AWFUL.

For two years I lived in an apartment in Tsuchiura that was lovely in many respects, but it had no air conditioner. This was my second time living in Japan, my first time living on my own there. I probably could have bought a unit and had someone install it, but I believed a) I wasn't going to live there long enough to justify paying that kind of money (they seemed pretty expensive, more than I wanted to pay), and b) I thought I could bear it. It helped that my friend Margaret lived just across the river, in an apartment that did have air conditioning in the main room. We spent a lot of time in her apartment in the summer; she came to my apartment more in the winter because it was warmer than her place.

However, I still had to deal with the heat of my apartment, and getting ready to teach Business English classes for a company with a fairly strict dress code. I had to look professional, myself. And that meant.... du-du-du-duhhhhhhhhhhh: pantyhose.

Oy.

If you're a man, you may not fully appreciate how hot those are, never mind about getting them on in the first place when it's hot (and humid). AWFUL!!! So I needed a plan. And I came up with one that worked. It worked so well that I recommend it to anyone in a hot and humid place with no air conditioning, because you'll be comfortable (afterward) for at least an hour, maybe two. Here's what I did.

I filled the tub with cold water. In Japan, the tubs are short but deep, so you can't stretch out but you can be up to your neck in water. And so I filled the tub with nothing but cold water, and when it's running long enough to fill a deep tub, that water gets very cold. And then I got in.

Hyperventilating at first, because going from the intense heat into that cold water... well, it was tough getting in, but then I was able to slow my heart back down and relax and.... ahhhh, that felt really nice. For a bit. Until it didn't anymore because now I'm FAH-REEZING!!!! But I forced myself to stay in there until I couldn't stand it a second more, my teeth chattering and goose bumps all over. I got out and dried off and out into the hot & humid room again, and it felt wonderful. I was not hot, I was not cold, I felt clean and dry and refreshed. I could even put on the pantyhose and not be miserable. And get ready for work, and feel fine.

I did skip the walks to the train station, though. I knew the bus schedule perfectly, especially the one just across the street, and I was never late (neither were the buses, thankfully). Oh! And the buses? They were air conditioned. Thank God!!

Fish Tree Tales

I’d never thought about the advantage I sometimes have with English as my native language, until I moved to Japan to teach it. I’ve studied six foreign languages, and when I was studying, I’d often wished osmosis would occur. I’d put a dictionary of that language under my pillow at night, hoping to simply absorb all the words and grammar in my sleep. Of course, that never happened. I had to study and practice like everyone else, making mistakes and learning along the way.

In the first years of learning Japanese, I often made mistakes with word choices. I’d forget the word I wanted, or say another word instead, rendering a completely different meaning to the sentence. I still make mistakes but they are usually of the less interesting, mundane, grammatical sort. In the early days, my mistakes were funnier.

One night at dinner with the family I was living with for the summer, there were many people sitting around the table, all of us eating and talking and having a good time. I was mostly listening, since I didn’t understand 98% of the conversation. At this point in my Japanese language journey, I was fluent in numbers and colors, but not much else. At dinner that night were aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, boyfriends and girlfriends—it was a large, happy group and everyone was quite jolly. They were happy with me and encouraged my stumbling attempts to communicate. Fortunately, several members of the group also spoke English, so we all had a backup.

After awhile, the food was being passed around for the third or fourth time. I was so full, but I thought that saying “no” was considered impolite, so I tried a different angle. I was very polite and I turned down the offer for more food, believing myself to say, “My stomach is full.” Immediately, everyone thrust their hands at me, palms up, as they grinned from ear to ear. I must have looked pretty funny at this unexpected reaction, and I searched the crowd for someone who would tell me what was going on….

And this is how I memorized the difference between the words for “stomach” and “money.” You could say this was osmosis of a different sort!

That was during my first month in Japan. Years later, on my third venture to this country, one day I realized I was speaking Japanese that I didn’t know I knew. I hadn’t studied since leaving the country five years earlier. I had studied Portuguese, however, and experienced an interesting phenomenon during that time. While studying lists of Portuguese vocabulary words, I would try to remember and use them in common sentences. However, instead of translating them into English, I found myself translating those words into Japanese, making Japanese sentences with them. It was bizarre, but it seemed to work and, in the end, gave me a much-needed boost for my move back to Japan a few short months later. When I got to Japan that third time, I realized that I could say things I’d never “gotten” before. It was eerie, and cool, at the same time.

During this third time living in Japan, I frequently went to one particular bar, “Eddie’s.” I loved going there. For reasons no one quite understands, there seem to be people from all over the world in Kofu, so I got to know people from many cultures. Some of us could only speak Japanese as our common language, even though it was native to none of us. After awhile I was going to Eddie’s almost every night, and friends knew they could find me there. We’d eat and drink and be merry. We’d talk and joke and discuss world events. We’d play chess or cards or backgammon, game after game after game. I had arguments there, got terribly drunk there, laughed and cried and got scared there. I fell in love there. It was very much a part of my world.

One evening when I was ready to leave, I went to the cash register to pay. In a clear, loud, perhaps drunken voice, I announced my desire to pay: “Hatarakita-a-a-ai !!!!” My good friend Kazumi, who was the waitress, looked at me strangely, then handed me a towel and said, “dozo”, or “please, go ahead.”

Huh? Ah, it was another example of the wrong word coming out of my mouth. I had meant to say “haraitai”, which is “I want to pay.” What I’d said was, “I want to work.”

Even after five years, mistakes and errors found their way into the course of a normal day. Once, my friend Margaret and I were walking along the riverbank that led from near our apartments to the downtown area. It was one of those stunning, glorious, early spring days when the air is soft and the cherry trees are all at the perfect level of blossom, just barely at full-bloom and only hours away from falling off. The cherry trees are so copious in Japan that a soft, pale white-pink bathes the light of every corner, blurring the mind to a soft focus of the world. It is simply breathtaking and wonderful for about a week every year.

So there it was, a splendid, glorious day, and I was moved to sing. What else, under the cherry trees, would one sing, except the cherry blossom song? If you’ve ever eaten in a Japanese restaurant, you probably have heard this tune. It’s one of those Japanese things that got itself exported to this country, like cars, chopsticks, “sayonara,” and karaoke. So I began singing: “Sakana, sakana…..” It’s a lovely little tune, although I don’t know what words come next in the song. I just knew, and so sang, that part. “Sakana, sakana….”

…at which point Margaret began laughing so hard she had to stop walking. Now, I know I’m not the world’s greatest singer, but I thought this was a bit overdone. I stared at her, wondering what was up. When she could catch her breath, she told me I’d sung “sakana” instead of “sakura.”

Sakura, you see, is the word for cherry blossoms. Entirely appropriate to the day. Sakana, on the other hand, means…. Fish Now I’m doubled over with laughter, then we cried because we couldn’t stop laughing. Then, finally catching our breath, we continued on.

But we were noisy foreigners who ruined the “wa” of all the Japanese in our hearing, because we couldn’t help singing at the top of our voices, as we continued along the river, “SAKANAAAA, SAKANAAAAAA!!!”

The Expected Earthquakes

There’s a line in Nassim Taleb’s book, Fooled by Randomness, that goes like this:

Rare events are always unexpected, otherwise they would not occur.

I believe that is true. I believe it so much that I think he stole the idea from out of my head. I believe it because it happened ~ or rather, didn’t happen ~ in Japan. I believe it about earthquakes. Here’s my tale.

One apartment I lived in had hot water simply by turning on the hot water tap, just like here at home in the USA. In all the other apartments, however, if I wanted hot water from the faucet, I had to push a button or flip a switch to turn on the gas that would heat the water at some point in the flow between the source and my spigot. The water never got cold… and it was hot hot. Not tepid, not fluctuating, but steadily hot and, if anything, it got hotter the longer it was on. In the winter time, that was divine!

However, it worried me, too. I worried about earthquakes and fire, things blowing up. I think it was liquid propane gas that heated the water…. pretty flammable, right? Or maybe not but I’m not sure and so I think it is and so it worried me. A couple times a year, newspapers in Japan carry a full-page spread with instructions about what to do in an earthquake, especially a large one. The #1 step is: turn off the gas.

Generally, earthquakes come without any warning. Slight correction ~ they do have the technology now in Japan where they announce an earthquake warning on TV and you have about 10 seconds to prepare. Like, turn off the gas and get under a heavy table or stand in a doorjamb, stuff like that. But that’s only good if you happen to be watching TV 10 seconds before an earthquake.

So my worry about the gas being on during an earthquake was founded. In the last apartment I lived in, which was a newly remodeled and lovely place (more about it is in the book!), there was a computerized system in both the kitchen and shower room ~ the whole room was the tub/shower. How sweet is that!? In each were controls to turn on the gas for hot water. I could even punch in the temperature I wanted the water to be, and it ran steadily at that temperature. Too cool? Punch the up arrow button. The temperature would go up one degree and a computerized voice announced the new temperature. Too hot? Hit the down arrow. Nice!

But in the other apartments, the gas/hot water control was in the kitchen. So I was worried…. what if I’m in the shower and an earthquake hits? I would practice “earthquake drills”, standing in the shower room and practicing running to the kitchen to turn off the gas. I made sure I had a clear path, but the layout of one apartment had me making a U-turn from the bathroom to the kitchen, through some glass sliding doors on the way. That one required more practice.

I was in many earthquakes in Japan. They have at least one every day somewhere in the country; most, of course, are not newsworthy outside of the country or, perhaps, even the town. The vast majority aren’t even newsworthy enough to make it on the local stations. But some do stand out as bringing a level of excitement to things. Once my friend Margaret and I were in my living room in the dead of winter, enjoying the toasty warmth coming from the kerosene heater….

Didn’t I mention the kerosene heaters? In this earthquake-prone country, kerosene heaters are still the heating method of choice for most people. When I bought my first one, I expressed my fear of fires in earthquakes, and my friend who was with me said not to worry, kerosene doesn’t explode, it just burns.

That’s comforting.

Well, any kerosene heater worth its pride has a little chain that, supposedly, automatically shuts the thing off if it moves. I tested this and tried to shake the heater (yes, it was on. How would I know if it worked otherwise?) to see how stable it was, and I have to say, I was impressed. Very stable, and it did turn off when (I can’t believe I did this) I attempted to tip it. It was on, the fire was burning, and I tried to tip it over in my apartment!

Holy crap!

So there we were in the toasty warmth of my kerosene-heated living room. It had gotten too warm in there, as temperature control consisted of opening windows and doors within the apartment, then to the outside. Or you can just turn them off, but that’s a last choice because the room cools down very quickly (insulation is largely unpopular in Japan) and you have to turn them on again within minutes. Some people don’t care for the fumes that linger when you turn kerosene heaters off or on. Now they make heaters with thermostats, but then, they either weren’t available or were grossly overpriced.

Back to Margaret and I, we had just opened the sliding doors between the living room & bedroom, between the bedroom & kitchen, and between the living room & kitchen. It was always a forgotten relief, the cold air from the unheated bedroom and kitchen whooshing into the hot living room. Before long, we would have to resort to opening a balcony door to let air in from the frigid outside, because the whole apartment would become too warm, but for now, there we were, playing Scrabble, drinking tea, just hanging out. Suddenly, a significant earthquake struck!!

Margaret and I got up, ran to the nearest doorjamb (an allegedly safe place because it’s got more support), then the next, and the next and the next and the next round and round and round my apartment. Living room, bedroom, kitchen, living room, bedroom, kitchen, living room, a circle of rooms! I think we wanted to stick together, but doors are narrow in Japan and we couldn’t both stand in one doorjamb, so we kept running around in a circle through the whole earthquake.

When it was done, we were crazy laughing, and decided we definitely needed some beer. There was a beer machine right outside the apartment building, so we went down there and… stood in line. For the first time ever, there was a line at that machine. Some people were buying beer, others went straight for the whiskey. Apparently, being freaked out by that earthquake was not a foreigner thing!

We went back upstairs and turned on the heater (see? It must have turned itself off because in our mad dash from one doorjamb to another, neither of us had done it). We had our beer, and calmed down enough to walk over to Margaret’s apartment on the other side of the river, to see what kind of damage may have happened there. Sadly, a plastic bear of honey had fallen off a shelf onto the floor. The lid had been knocked off in the process, and a good bit of honey had oozed out onto the floor. But that was it. Nothing had broken, no fires happened in the city, no one was hurt as far as we know; just lots of beer and whiskey was sold afterwards.

There were many earthquakes. Some were fun, some were scary, none were expected. The expected earthquakes, the ones I prepared for, never happened. And so I am convinced that if I’m thinking of an earthquake happening, it won’t happen. They only come when you don’t expect them.

Of course, until one occurs when I’m actually thinking of them, that statement is unproven, but… I believe.

The Italians

Wow. That was my first impression, seeing a small group of three Italian men sitting with my friend in the McDonald’s on the second floor of the train station in Tsuchiura. “Wow.”

You’ll notice the lack of an exclamation point. Not a “Wow!” More subdued, sublime, internal. More like a sigh or whisper. “wow….”

My friend, “A”, who was sitting there in the McDonald’s waiting for me with these three men (she had called me, told me she’d met some people she knew I’d like to meet) smiled, and the five of us sat there ~ in a McDonald’s! ~ having a nice little time. These men were in town on a job contract, doing some engineering work for 2-3 months. They were staying at the fancy-schmancy hotel that was just across the street from the language school where A worked.

In a coincidental accident of time, A was leaving work and they were leaving the hotel at the same time. In Japan, foreigners are eye magnets. It can’t be helped ~ foreigners stand out, you cannot help but notice them. So A met the Italians, who said they were going to McDonald’s (the only place they knew to get some food), and invited her along. She called me, and the rest is this story.

After spending about two hours sitting in that McDonald’s, the counter staff eyeing us nervously because we didn’t leave, we finally were shooed out when they wanted to close up. A and I arranged to meet the Italians again the next evening, thinking we’d go to one of the bars we liked, for dinner after work ended at 9:00 for us English teachers. We told the guys how to get there, and they said they’d meet us there. We think that’s what they said. Their Japanese was non-existent, and their English was not exactly precise.

The next night, A and I met up and walked to the bar together. We’d invited another friend, “F”, to come with us so we’d be three and three. We opened the door to this little 26-seat bar and…. Wow! There were now about a dozen Italian men there! We could only laugh! Where had the others come from? Why hadn’t they been mentioned the night before? What on earth was happening… were we in Japan?

Yes indeed. This was the first of several experiences I had, meeting groups of people (okay, men) from a non-English-speaking country and getting to know a new non-Japanese culture, in Japan. A and F and I spent a lot of time with several of these men during their stay in Tsuchiura. We three women were all there on one to two year contracts, and these men gave us some much-needed frivolity. We were hard working English teachers, and we spent a lot of time being serious. These men had no interest in learning English, or really in what we did for a living. When we got together, we just had fun. Lots of laughing!

One thing that I remember about one of these men was a misunderstanding in English. In Italian, “ciao” means both hello and good-bye. This man always got it wrong. It was like the Beatles’ song ~ I’d say hello, he’d say good-bye. He really thought that was the answer when someone said hello. Like in Japanese, when you come home or come back to work after leaving for an errand or lunch break, when you enter you said tadaima (I’m home, or I’m back) and the reply is always okaeri (okaerinasai, if you want to be formal), which means welcome home, or welcome back. So being in Japan and hearing that two-word greeting exchange, this young man said, he thought the answer to hello was good-bye. That’s what he said, anyway.

Did he really believe that? Was he just joking? Who cares!? He was Italian, and…. wow.

Sayonara.... Again!!?

July 15, 2001. A date I’ll never forget. Among other things, it was the date of my next-to-last sayonara party in Japan. There’s always a good-bye party, and since I’ve been there six times, I’ve had six sayonara parties. Yes, even when I was only there for a week on vacation, the last night there was a sayonara party.

And so July 15, 2001 was one such evening. It was a lot of fun, with friends and students packing The Rink. Or at least filling a goodly portion of it! Nearly all my friends were there, plus I’d had a very special afternoon beforehand, with one friend in particular. Nothing but good memories about that day, and unlike other “nothing but good” days, for some reason this one was truly unforgettable. And it makes me a little sad. It was so spectacular, and nothing has come along since then that has been so overwhelmingly good as that was.

Then there was the last party, on December 21, 2007. My friends know me well… we decided to call it an “itterashai” party ~ a “see you later” party. That evening, a man named Daisuke, who I hadn’t seen for years, came into The Rink by chance. Daisuke had been one of my students, 1996-1998, in a company class. He’d been at the previous two sayonara parties (1998, 2001), and when he came into The Rink last December, I called to him and waved him over to our crowded table.

“Daisuke! I can’t believe you’re here,” I said. We hugged and laughed and commented on whether and how the other had changed. Then I told him, “it’s my sayonara party.”

He said, “Again?”

Ah! The brat. My jaw dropped but he just laughed. That is his way, but still, it struck a nerve. I wasn’t sure what to think of that, but on the other hand, truth is truth. So, what the heck? I just shrugged and laughed along. No point in arguing the obvious!

Piece of Cake!

One day a private student, upper intermediate level, was practicing countable and uncountable nouns. She was reviewing picture cards of some everyday nouns, when she ran into a little difficulty sorting out the difference between a slice of cake and a hunk of cheese. She asked about pie and pizza, and then chuckled nervously at the piece and slice. But she took notes and—what a trooper—hung in there.

Then “Evil Sue” took over. I introduced her to “piece of cake!” Not to be confused with a slice of cake (or a piece of cake, for that matter!) I explained the idiom to her, and her eyes widened and, frankly, she looked stunned. “How am I going to remember these?” I could almost see the words pass across her forehead while she looked at me rather blankly. Like a deer in the headlights.

I just smiled. Suddenly, she laughed and I saw a light bulb go on over her head. She loved it! She repeated it to herself several more times to get the intonation and inflection down.

At the end of the lesson, I asked her how today went for her, and she said, “It wasn’t a piece of cake.” Perfect answer! Evil Sue is a genius!

A Story about Eel

Tomorrow is July 1st, and I know that in Japan, many people are about to embark on the annual eel eating feast. It’s not the same time every year or from one person to the next, but my first year in Japan we specifically went out for lunch ~ my then-boyfriend, his mom, and his cousin, and I ~ to have eel.

Grilled eel.

The aroma of grilled eel wafts through the air.

I like the smell, actually. Which is good, because all summer long, you can smell the aroma (some say stench) of grilled eel wafting by as you walk past restaurants with their front doors open, hoping to let in any possible breeze.

No, you cannot assume any traditional restaurant will be air conditioned. Better to assume the opposite! Only the western-style restaurants like Denny’s, McDonald’s, Starbucks, and their ilk are sure bets. I think most of the mom & pop coffee shops I went to were, as well. But I digress. Back to the eel.

So there you are, walking down the street, passing this and that Japanese restaurant with their doors open in hopes of catching any possible breeze, and the smell of grilled eel is wafting out. If you hate that smell, then you’re out of luck. Get used to it. Or carry around a scented handkerchief to hold up to your nose when you walk through the cloud of eel-smell (sometimes I think I can see it). You’ll need that handkerchief anyway, to dab at the sweat that will be pouring from your body in the extreme humidity that is summer in Japan. So make it a scented one, and you can hold it up to your nose to hold the grilled eel smell at bay.

But I like the smell ~ I don’t know why. I hate the taste. Of course, I didn’t know that the first summer I was in Japan and I went with my then-boyfriend, his mom, and his cousin to eat eel on July 2nd. The purpose of eating eel, Atsuko (then-boyfriend’s mom) told me is to gain stamina in order to make it through the summer. They know what they’re talking about. That humidity is unbelievable. It drains the energy out of everything, even my clothes as they hang on the line hoping to be dry three days later. It wreaks havoc in cupboards and closets and on ceilings, inviting mold and mildew to take hold and grow and ruin everything it touches. I know a woman who was unprepared, and everything in her closet was ruined. You can’t wash that out. You can’t dry clean that out. The only way to get mold out of your clothes is to throw them out! She got a new wardrobe out of the deal, but it’s better to be prepared. Get those water-sucking things ~ they’re called “Dry Pet” ~ that go in closets and cupboards and drawers, and change them weekly or monthly. The humidity is murder.

Hence, the eel. I swear, this story is about eel.

So, June is the rainy season, then the rain stops and everything just steams all through the rest of the summer. Laundry, as I mentioned, hangs on the line hoping to be dry in three days. You can see, it looks limp. Airless humidity, and even your freshly-washed clothes (out on the line) look tired. You can imagine, then, how it is for people. They need something to build up their stamina to get through the summer months.

Grilled eel, to the rescue.

I don’t know why eel is the answer, but I know we ~ the four of us ~ went out to have eel for lunch on July 2, 1985. My first taste of eel.

My last taste of eel. Here’s how it went.

Bite 1: I’m leery, because it’s something new, but then I thought, “Mm, not bad! I can eat this.”

Bite 2: Okay, still alright. I can it eat but there’s a bit of an aftertaste.

Bite 3: Um, I’m done. That aftertaste is giving me the shivers.

Bite 4: Nope, didn’t even make it inside my mouth. Had to stop. Couldn’t. Get. In.

Bite 5: No, silly, this isn’t eel. It’s a McDonald’s cheeseburger!

Atsuko was very kind. They all finished their eel and watched me turn green, then we went across the street to get me a cheeseburger. Either to celebrate that they had finished their eel, or that I didn’t pass out, we all had milkshakes, too.

Mm, grilled eel and a milkshake. Make mine chocolate!