Monday, February 21, 2011

Koreaaaahhhh!

Did I ever tell you about the time I went to Korea? No? Well, here's the story.

About a month or so ago, I boarded an airplane to South Korea. I'd decided that I wanted to visit a college friend who was also teaching English. There was really nothing to the trip. I was just going to spend 10 days touring a little bit of the country, relaxing and catching up with an old friend. I'd just finished leaving my job in Japan and before I started teaching lessons again, I wanted to take a little vacation.

So I hopped on an airplane and took a two hour trip to Incheon International Airport. On the airplane we were fed a small meal consisting of a sandwich (I don't know what kind of meat was in between those two large buns), some potato salad, a pickle, a green salad and some orange juice. I usually try not to eat on flights for fear of getting sick, but I was a little hungry and decided not to be snobby about it. When I arrived at the airport, I followed the herd of people to customs. When it was my turn at the counter, the lady who spoke very good English said, "Passport and declaration paper." I handed her the documents. She typed something into her computer and asked, without looking up, "Is the friend you're visiting Korean?"

"Um, yes," I said. "Well actually, she's Korean American. She's just teaching English in Korea." The lady, who was not in the least bit interested, handed me my passport and began typing on her computer. I waited around for a moment and then assumed that she was finished with me. So I began to walk off. Then, on second thought I backed up. She didn't say, "Okay, thank you!" or "Have a nice day!" or "Welcome to Korea" after all, so maybe she wasn't finished.

I stuttered out, "Are you . . . uh . . . Can I go?" The lady looked up from her keyboard, gave me a nasty glare and waved me off. I walked past a huge sign that said, "Welcome to Incheon International Airport . . . Where Korea Greets the World." This was my first sign that I should have just gotten the heck out of the country. Either way, I took a monorail, and walked down a series of halls and escalators until I reached the main lobby of the airport. When I found the bus area, I bought a ticket and was greeted with the same kind of nasty attitude as the lady at customs (and the guard at the monorail station.) The odd part about it was that it didn't bother me. Not at all. I knew those ladies. I'd experienced them somewhere else, in another place and time. In fact, they felt like part of a familiar song that I couldn't quite put my finger on.

It would be 2 hours until my bus arrived so I sat down and got on the internet, attempting to "name that tune." And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. These rude people were the same as the cashiers and clerks and nasty attendants that I'd come into contact with in my own country. I'd been in Japan so long that I'd gotten used to good service and politeness. It was only when I arrived in Korea that I remembered that usually people in service positions (in ghetto terms) "don't know how to act." It was like I'd gained my bearings. Wakatta!

So with the newfound knowledge that I wasn't crazy, I walked toward the bus stop and chuckled to myself as the guy rudely snatched my bags from me and threw them into the compartment area under the bus. It's important to note, however, that along with this level of rudeness comes a certain amount of impatience and nervousness. So unfortunately, I began to feel rushed and excited, similar to how I felt in the U.S. at times, stuttering and unsure. But in South Korea I was at a much greater disadvantage. I didn't know a bit of Korean and the only thing I had going for me was a Lonely Planet book that my friend Bob gifted me with the day before. The book had a few phrases in the back, but they didn't prove very helpful amongst my impatient Korean brethren. I found my brain desperately grasping at random Japanese and Spanish words in an attempt to communicate with the people around me. Of course, my Japanish made absolutely no sense to them. Either way, I sat on the bus listening to my iPod and staring out the window. The air outside was bitterly cold, and there was snow on the ground here and there. The mountains in the background looked slightly different from Japan but I was too tired to identify why. The bus rattled and shook, stopping every so often to let passengers on and off. All of the signs were written in Korean script, which consisted of a series of circles and lines. There was no way for me to identify where I was.

After the second hour, I began to panic a little. Does my friend really live this far away? The driver stopped at what looked like a convenient store parking lot to let people off. He got out of the bus to take bags out and give them to their owners. I stood up and walked down the stairs looking for the nerve to ask the driver where we were. He yelled at me in Korean to "sit back down, this isn't your stop." I was thankful that he knew where I was supposed to get off, but a little embarrassed to get yelled at. Either way, I turned around and found my seat, a small part of me hoping that he would let the pathetic foreigner know when to get off the bus. So two more hours passed and the night got darker and darker. Finally, the driver parked the bus and actually turned off the engine. He walked over to the lower compartment, opened the latch and then walked away to go smoke a cigarette outside of the nearby department store. "I guess this is my stop," I muttered to myself as I pulled my bag out from under the bus. I found the Starbucks that my friend told me to stay at and waited with a cup of coffee. After 30 minutes, I pulled out my computer and decided to try my luck at getting wireless internet.

Now the wonderful thing about Korea is that wireless internet is EVERYWHERE. This is the opposite of Japan where, surprisingly, the concept of wireless internet is still a novelty. So I was able to contact my friend on Skype and sure enough, she showed up 20 minutes later wearing a long Kim Jong Il coat and a big, beautiful smile. We hugged, chatted a little and then headed for the bus station. As soon as we headed out the door, the cold air smacked us in the face. Although, I have dark skin, my face was as red as a cherry. It was the kind of cold that penetrates all layers of clothing and makes it hard to breathe because the cold air fills your lungs and makes you want to cough it back out. I moved around attempting to get the blood pumping throughout my body. My toes were a lost cause, however. By the time we arrived at her apartment, they were a different color.

Now the bus ride to her apartment was something different in itself. As soon as I dropped my money into (the wrong) slot, the bus took off, speeding through the snow and slush, swerving around corners and coming to quick stops like a stunt car. The way I wrapped myself around the pole, I looked like an overdressed stripper. It was extremely crowded as more and more people got on the bus. At one stop, an elderly woman began her descent down the steep stairs toward the snow filled street. My friend and I watched with baited breath as the bus began to pull off while the old woman held onto the bar attempting to gain her bearings on the road. It was a horrible sight to see. Fortunately, she was not dragged by the bus. Although, I'd hardened my emotions to certain things, I don't think I could have handled seeing an old woman dragged to her death on my first day in Korea.

That's all I got for now . . . stay tuned for Part II where I talk about delicious chicken.

Thursday, February 17, 2011

The Cherry Tomato That Broke the Camel's Back

(A detailed description of Bullet Point #1 from the last blog post)

It's been a while, and I apologize for my absence, but rest assured, I have a good reason for my disappearance as of late. By the title of this blog, you will see that I took the initiative to leave my English teaching job in Japan. Unfortunately, that cuts short some of the articles that I planned on writing about the different age groups, however, I have some of those on backlog and will publish them once I finish doing some much needed tweaking.

You're probably asking why I decided to walk away from my wonderful job. Well, to be honest, there were a ton of reasons, but the main reason was health related. Also, there were some conflicts of interest that were beginning to wear on me day in and day out.

In order to clarify what this means, allow me to revisit a running theme that surrounds Japanese business culture as well as many other businesses all over the world. The pressure and stresses one faces at work are real. These stresses can cause the more "vulnerable" of souls to sacrifice their moral integrity in order to reach goals and keep clients. This can also manifest itself through the treatment of one's workers. Unfortunately, there were things that I was asked to do that I wouldn't do in any country, and that is where the conflict of interest arose. Either way, I don't want to focus on that. As you could see in my posts, I enjoyed working with my students and they enjoyed my lessons. And fortunately, I was able to take advantage of the many requests for English lessons that were solicited by members of my congregation as well as some folks in the community . . . so that's been pretty awesome.

My decision to leave may seem abrupt, but it definitely wasn't. It took months and months of deliberation and consultation from friends and family. But in the end, what it all really came down to was a tomato. Yes, you read right . . . a cherry tomato.

Well, let me just get to the story. I was having some *ahem* traffic problems and uh, well to put things into perspective here . . .
everyone poops.
Let's just say I was having a hard time. I can see some folks getting uncomfortable reading this. (Sorry big sis! But you should read this book, apparently everybody does it - except me, in this particular instance.) So unbeknownst to me, constipation is a big problem that people face when they are overseas and getting used to a new diet and let's face it . . . stressed out. I was all of those things. Unfortunately, I'd been dealing with my digestion problem since Mt. Fuji. However, it took me 3 months of drinking tons of water and eating tons of raw vegetables and some weight gain to finally get the nerve up to go to the doctor again. So after a last phone call to my mother, I walked over to the hospital in order to see what was ailing me.

Embarrassed and confused, I didn't know how to explain my problem except by pointing to my stomach and showing the doctor words such as "bulged" and "hard" on my iPad. After about 10 minutes of pantomiming, the doctor wanted to speak to someone fluent in the Japanese language. He called one of the Japanese teachers that I worked with and she sped down to the hospital as soon as possible. "Why didn't you tell me you wanted to go to the doctor?!" she asked, obviously upset and a little worried.

After an introduction, the Japanese teacher answered her own question and began a 20 minute dialogue with my doctor that went into depth about all of the reasons why my stomach was big and disgusting looking. Occasionally, the doctor would scribble words on a notepad. He drew a picture of a digestion track and some squiggly lines inside, I guess that represented the uh, *ahem* the excretion. He then wrote words on the pad like, "colonoscopy" and "pregnant," and "gynecology disease." I sat and pondered ways that I could kill myself using his pen. Occasionally, I asked her what they were talking about and she would respond with brief answers like, "He's just telling me what you told him earlier." Finally, the doctor and my coworker decided that I should get a blood test and an MRI. They did a secret Japanese handshake and lead me to the changing room down the hall.

After the MRI, I walked back to the doctor's office and he told me that despite the fact that I could use more iron, my blood came up just fine. As far as the MRI goes, he said that I was not digesting food properly because of stress and he gave me some laxatives and told me to return for a refill when the problem comes back.

I took a deep breath of relief and thanked God that a human being actually uttered these words in front of my coworker. "Stress."

(For the record, my American coworkers and I have been accused of "easy lifestyles" in comparison to our Japanese counterparts. Unfortunately, many Japanese people can be consumed by their jobs, some to the point of committing suicide so the idea that a "lazy" American could be stressed out, is often met with incredulous eye-rolls.)

Regardless, I was now a part of this culture and I was stressed. Everyday I came home with a migraine. I was always tired and I didn't have more than 30 minutes to myself at any given moment during the day. I spent 9 hours of my day in a closed environment, surrounded by people who did not understand or (to be honest) even like me. I was stressed. And now, I would return to work and my manager would have to understand that I was "stressed" and maybe life would be a little easier at work. Maybe she would discipline my particularly brutal students a little more or I wouldn't have to do my student's homework for them, or she wouldn't ask me to do impromptu English lessons on my 10 minute breaks. Just maybe.

So I begged my Japanese coworker not to utter a word of my digestive issues, of which she promised she wouldn't. As soon as she steps over the threshold, she tells my manager everything and the office is a-buzz with my "stomach problems." They watched quietly as I sat down and took my lunch. That particular day, my lunch was a piece of bread, some water and some fruit jello (which is sometimes a quick snack for me on days when I am not hungry but need some kind of nourishment.) It was then that my manager begins to ask me questions.

"So, BG . . . do you eat vegetables?"

Me: Uh, yeah. I eat them all the time.

Manager: How often do you eat them?

Me: Well, uh, probably everyday. I like to eat them for dinner when I get off of work-

Manager: (interrupts, ignoring me) Yeah, because you should eat vegetables.

Me: (Steve Carrell voice) Yeah.

Manager: What kind of vegetables do you eat?

Me: I eat broccoli and uh, spinach. I eat a lot of spinach. And let's see, I like . . .

Manager: Do you eat tomatoes?

Me: Why uh, ye-

Manager: Here! (pushes a small carton of cherry tomatoes toward me) This is called a cherry tomato. Please try it.

(Watches me as I put it in my mouth)

Me: Thank you.

Manager: How is it?

Me: It's good, thank you!

Manager: They are very good for you. Have you ever eaten a cherry tomato before?

Me: Yeah, I -

Manager: I used to not cook or drink water either. When I went to Canada I didn't cook because I only want to eat meat and fast food. So that is all I ate until my friend, he told me to eat a vegetable.

(At this moment, my mind fades out. I felt like this woman was patronizing me, not listening to a thing that I said and judging me according to "American stereotypes." I'd been eating nothing but vegetables for 3 straight months. I worked hard, sometimes staying up as late as 2am in the morning cooking soups and stews to aid my digestion, ate nuts and berries as snacks and drank nothing but water and vegetable juice. Since I'd been to Japan, I could count on one hand how many times I'd eaten fast food. As my friend K would put it, I could feel "the anger" becoming more prevalent. I decide to be patient and force my teeth to stop grinding together so I can listen to her simpleton advice.)

Manager: (cont'd) . . . so I eat a vegetable and I feel better. Oh, and drink water. When you wake up, don't drink soda. You should drink a water.

Me: (rather my patient side) Okay! Thank you manager. I will try all of those things. (smile and rise from the table to dump my trash)

Tada! Take that Buddha. That's what I call "pulling a Jesus" - and turning the other cheek, baby!

And then, my manager pulled a "Confucious."

Manager: You can't live with me.

Me: Excuse me?

Manager: I can't take care of you. You have to learn to live on your own. You have to learn to take care of yourself.

And so, a month later I pulled an Alanis Morisette "Isn't THIS ironic?" and quit. (I'll save the actual "quitting" story for the book version of this blog. *cough, cough* Hello Random House Publishing *cough, cough*). Within two days of my leaving, the headaches went away and my digestion went back to normal.

And it was all because of a "cherry tomato."

THE END

Friday, January 28, 2011

America Through the Looking Glass

First of all, I apologize for the sporadic posting. One of the things about being a good writer is that you have to take breaks from writing in order to fully experience the life you're writing about. Hope that made sense. Also, I've been taking the time to fulfill my true passion of video recording (and in the future, hope to provide some video blogs.) Either way, I'll catch you up on the last couple of months in a series of one sentence summaries.

#1 After a number of stress related health difficulties (and a few other things) I decided to limit myself to teaching private lessons to members of my church congregation.

#2 I travelled all over Japan and then later visited South Korea where I had a terrible experience complete with getting sick, being stranded in the middle of nowhere and of course, eating delicious chicken.

#3 I returned to Japan and have moved into my lovely (yet really really tiny) apartment.

#4 I have been spending endless days with the quirky, yet love-able members of my congregation and learning TONS of information about Japanese culture (and I mean the real deal).

#5 I will be returning to America in a month.

Please feel free to comment (this includes facebook) or email me at blackginjapan@gmail.com if you want me to go into detail about any of the above statements. (If I don't get more than 3 responses, then I don't think it's worth explaining. In other words, what happened in Japan -and South Korea- will forever remain a mystery.)

--------------------


Okay, so here we are . . . I've been in Japan for about 8 months. I haven't mastered the language yet, but I have mastered the ability to have superficial conversations about food and the weather. I know how to read 2 of the Japanese writing styles, navigate the train stations and I also know my way around the grocery store. I have my own apartment and know how to use my bicycle to get from A to B in my little neighborhood. Believe it or not, these things are leaps and bounds in Japan and armed with "Oishii!" (this is delicious) and "Samui desu nehh!" (It's cold isn't it?) I am living as the Japanese would put it the "Nihon no sekatsuyoshiki" or the Japanese lifestyle.

I spend a ton of time with the wonderful folks from my congregation and through our every day interactions and their millions and millions of questions about American life, my viewpoint (and confusion) about my homeland has changed a little bit.

For example, I was having a friendly conversation with a girl just yesterday and I asked her to come visit me in America some day. The girl paused for a moment. "Are there guns there?" she asked while mimicking the actions of someone popping off a pistol.

I paused and said, "Well, yes. There are."

She then asked, "Does everyone carry one?"

I laughed and assured her that everyone does not carry a pistol and that in my 26 years as a resident in America, I'd never seen a civilian citizen holding one. And then at that very moment, a terrifying memory flooded into my brain, making me a complete liar (and giving me cold chills for a moment).

(True Story)
One night, when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, my family was returning from the grocery store in my mother's rickety old Ford Thunderbird. We stopped at a video rental place - right before it closed - to pick out a movie and when we returned to our car, it didn't start. My mother told my 2 sisters and I to lock the doors and sit tight while she ran to the pay phone (remember those?) to call for help. Right at the moment that she returned to the car, a grizzly looking man in a beat-up, dark blue car pulls up beside us in the lot. Now being that it was very late at night, the parking lot was empty (except for the 2 vehicles) and the video store was now closed. My family sat and watched as this strange man slid over to the seat closest to our car, took out a pistol and placed it on his lap. For maybe a half an hour or so, he stared at us through the window. I don't know if you can call it a hostage situation but for that long moment, I only remember everyone in my family being very still and silent and my mom praying. Finally, as the man opened the door to get out of his car, pistol in hand, our relief drove up and the strange man hopped back over to the driver's side of his vehicle and drove off.

And that . . . is my pistol story.

Now aside from the fact that me - an (average, boring) American - can have a memory of something so terrifying and not immediately recall it to mind is bad enough. But it's equally interesting that up until now, I've never really given much thought to the idea that my country allows regular human beings the right to carry around weapons that are only meant to kill . . . and this is really going to blow your minds guys . . . other human beings. (I'm talking about handguns). Now in Japan, handguns are illegal and they find it strange that we are a country that is 4th from the top when it comes to the most deaths by gunfire homicide, yet we still allow folks the right to carry around concealed and in some states openly displayed weapons. So they think that normal Americans literally walk around shooting each other. And after working in news for 5 years and editing stories about homicides every day and then moving to Japan, a country that is relatively free from gunfire homicide, I've started to share these sentiments and honestly, I'm a little terrified about coming back to the states. (But I would never let my Japanese friends know this - because I want them to visit me in America, afterall.) Either way, I just thought this was something that our government should be concerned about. Our reputation as an intelligent country has always been questioned, but I don't think it's understood that our status as a civilized country is . . . well . . . slipping. (*shrugs*)

Speaking of trains . . . I really, really think they should introduce the Shinkansen to America. I know I wrote about it in the last post, but I want . . . no, I need you to think about this. Imagine that you could get from New York to Washington, D.C. in just a half an hour? Just think about that . . . let it marinate in your brain juices for a minute. If you could get from one end of California to the other in 3 hours? Can you comprehend how that would change things? Being able to turn a 12 hour road trip into a 4 hour train ride? Why have we not done this? Why are we not doing this? Who did the airline people pay off? And how much did they pay?


Japan is not a "luxurious" country but I swear the longer I'm here, the more I feel like the backwoods cousin who's excited about having indoor plumbing. There are so many things that I get sad about going without once I get back to the states. For example, cameras and/or phones attached to the doorbell. A room that turns into a dryer when I want to dry my clothes indoors in an eco-friendly manner. Clean public restrooms with toilets that "bidet" me. (I know that "bidet" is not a verb . . . but you know what I'm saying). And for the record, the electronic toilet is pretty standard. You can find them everywhere. Going to an onsen and walking around naked with other women and knowing that I'm not going to get judged or attacked, and that the people I am "onsening" with have washed thoroughly before getting into the shared water environment. (Yes, you might run into a few monkeys here and there but that is a problem that's only unique to Japan and for the most part, the monkeys are safe and just want to relax like the rest of us).


Either way, being on the outside of my home planet and looking in occasionally through the news paper and the Jon Stewart show, I get a little sad for the future generations of Americans . . . particularly my nieces and nephew. Currently, I'm living in a country that makes fiscally responsible economic decisions, passes legislature (such as "no handguns") that protects its citizens, doesn't rely on gasoline as much as we do, creates and actually USES technology that is super-efficient, eco-friendly and beneficial for its citizens as well as has a reputation for creating competitive, reliable products that it exports to the rest of the world. Oh yeah, and they are all dead-set on learning the English language (as well as Chinese - and I'm not even going to get started on China - I'm sure you already know that they own us). Now, I'm not going to say that Japan is perfect (there's definitely a lot to be desired in this country and their government is just as corrupt as the next) but I will say that all of the Americans that I've talked to who have lived in Japan for as long as I have (and longer) have a more sobering outlook on things. Our conversations are no longer a matter of "will we ever go back to being #1?", it's now a matter of "when are they going to start filling the emergency rafts with regular people."

Start teaching your children Chinese.