#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.)
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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.
