so i landed myself a job in the land of the rising sun...this is a collection of my misadventures and earth-shattering epiphanies...or at least some quasi-interesting stories...i hope.
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just tucking into my finally warm living room after another trip. spent 5 days on the east coast in tokyo, yokohama and kamakura on a mix of business and pleasure ventures. lots more to come on that, including way more than you probably care to hear or will bother to read about our night of molecular gastronomy at the mandarin oriental hotel.
faithful readers, remember the tokida family whom i lived with during my homestay? remember the letter i stressed and sweated over, telling them that i’m back in japan? recall the run-in i had with my host-aunt at the family-run restaurant last time i was in nagoya? well, i got this postcard in the mail a while back, but wasn’t really able to make too much sense of it as it’s hand-scribed and chocked full of the terribly tough kanji characters. i finally fished it out of my bag one day at school recently and enlisted a couple of students to help me decode it. i was damn near moved to tears to discover that it’s a note from the family! they were sad to have missed me in nagoya [when they were vacationing in germany], were thrilled to hear that i was living in japan, were surprised to hear that my japanese skills have improved exponentially [obviously they are referring to conversation not reading ability], and were eager to meet again next time i am in their city. this is reason enough for me to go ahead and start planning my next trip.
recently i had some remarkably delicious curried squid in my school lunch. i decided that i needed to learn how to prepare this sturdy, lean seafood at home. although it’s rich in the trendy omega-3 oils and low fat, in researching how to prepare the creature i learned that squid is one type of seafood noted for its high cholesterol levels [the others being prawns and roe]. as i’m genetically bound to have a heart attack any day now, i was a bit dismayed but undeterred. a friendly grandmother in the seafood section patiently explained to me how to go about making the purple sea dweller come out like my school lunch.
mine could’ve been plucked from this batch, although truthfully it wasn’t. when i started cooking dinner i didn’t realize this would be a conquest worth documenting, so i failed to get a shot of the squid in it’s natural supermarket state, in a habitat of styrofoam and saran wrap.
i wrapped my thumb and forefinger around the joint between the body and head, just below the eyes, as granny had told me to do. the head [with attached innards] didn’t pop off nearly as easily as she had described. with all the pressure i was applying, the body cavity let out a slurping, sucking sound that scared me into flinging the thing into the sink accidentally. the comeback kid got it in round 2 though. then, following instructions, i slit open the tube and cleaned all the guts [rather sparse] out.
granny acted like it would be easy to remove the skin if i started at the rear, which made much more sense before i was actually looking at the thing. i picked and scratched and cut and tugged but couldn’t seem to get the metaphorical ball rolling. then i realized there was a cartilaginous strip connecting the rear spade and the body that i surely wasn’t gonna eat, thus it had to be removed. as i sliced down it’s edges i realized this is the backbone that granny had mentioned [i thought i’d tugged it out in the intitial cleaning]. after cutting the meat away from this ridge, i pulled it towards the head [that was no longer attached] and watched the skin peel effortless off. unfortunately i’d already scored and scratched the skin so much it didn’t come off in one piece, but with this head start, removing the purple membrane wasn’t too much off a hassle.
after a little marinade of olive oil, chili peppers, lime juice, lemongrass, garlic, salt and pepper, i grilled the squid and tossed it with spaghetti and veggies…a lil thai style spicy goodness a la tiffany emerged.
NAKASHIBETSU, Hokkaido -- A brewery here has succeeded in producing a low-malt beer with milk, after the drink was suggested as a product that would help use up surplus milk.
The drink, called "Bilk" will go on sale on Feb. 1. It reportedly has a fruity flavor that its brewers hope will be popular among women.
the japanese language is a curious thing in many respects. the lists of set phrases they employ by rote, the numerous levels of formality, masculine and feminine vocabulary distinctions, varying alphabets used to scribe different types of words, the intermingling of those distinct alphabets in phrases and the words they borrow from other languages. foreign words that have been adopted into the japanese vernacular are written in katakana, one of the 4 writing systems they utilize [the others being hiragana, kanji and romaji]. foreigner’s names are also transliterated in katakana. Tiffany becomes ティファニー which would be sounded out as ti fa nee there is also an R and L issue when it comes to transliteration. the japanese alphabets simply don’t contain the L sound, so the closest they can come to approximating that pronunciation is with an R sound. my middle name Lynn becomes リーン which is pronounced ri i n as you can imagine, this makes for some pretty funny translations. some recent favorites:
ラップ = ra p pu which is japanized english for ‘rap’, as in rap music, and ‘lap’, as in a lap ran during an athletic meet. they’ve also borrowed an American brand name and made it their own; ラップ means wrap too, as in saran wrap, or kitchen cling film.
ランチ = ra n chi this is the way to write both ‘lunch’ and ‘launch’ in katakana. but be careful, if you want to talk about the dude ranch you should use the word 大牧場 [dai bokujou] instead.
ラフ = ra fu these symbols are used to represent both the English words ‘laugh’ and ‘rough’. it’s up to you to decide based on the context.
and then there’s love…probably our favorite to utilize…ラブ ラブ…rabu, rabu… and it’s variations, like ラブレター [rabu reta] or love letter.
or you go to the store and you don’t know the word for the new blades you need. you try to change razor into レーザー [re za] hoping that’s a word they have borrowed. the store clerk looks at you all puzzled; of course you can’t buy lasers over the counter.
or in class you are working on poems. you want your kids to rhyme so you say ライム [ra i mu] in the hopes they’ll get it. they can’t figure out what a sour fruit has to do with the assignment. they all start writing about limes.
The World Economic Forum ranks Japan 69th out of 75 countries in female empowerment. They under-utilize the female portion of the population and are governed by politicians who horribly under-value women, such as health minister yanagisawa who recently said they are simply "baby making machines". you should read this article that intelligently examines the far reaching implications of this mindset. Japan's innovation problem
Our feet were itchin... they were restless, ready to start plodding down a road that lead out of the mountains and rice paddies. they were anxious for highways that would fracture into streets that would carry us to a bustling downtown where we could find amusement and distraction. We loaded up my car and took to the road, heading south to Nagoya.
Although this was my second trip to Japan’s fourth largest city, my recollection of the visit 10 years ago had faded and become blurry. i was eager to fill in details and redefine the place that began my fascination with this country.
Backstory: When I was younger, my dad was the sales manager at a Toyota car dealership. The national company was offering several scholarships for summer home stays in Japan. My wanderlust had emerged from its cocoon but, at that time, had yet to take flight. I was thrilled by the possibility. I remember the pages and pages of applications. I remember pounding out revision after revision of essays on my square, chunky word processor. And I remember storming my mom’s work place clutching my semifinalist notification. She was damn near as ecstatic as I was. A couple days before I was to be interviewed for the award, my mom died. That unkind turn of events threw my whole world into an uproar. As I questioned how I would even manage to go on existing, my japan home stay interview was all but forgotten. Some adult with more mature stress handling mechanisms than me [my dad?] must have dealt with the situation. Youth For Understanding, the company doling out the awards for Toyota, had agreed to postpone the interview, but after learning the reason why I’d had to reschedule, almost reneged their offer. They were understandably concerned about my mental health and skeptical of investing in a candidate who was at-risk of failing under stressful conditions. They eventually agreed to send some specialist to my house for what turned out to be an interview/psych exam. Even at the age of 16, I was able to play ‘the game’ fairly well. As my father and I sat at our antique, wooden kitchen table across from that man, I pitched myself as a worthy recipient who, if able to survive the death of her mother, is more than adequately prepared to face any other challenge life may present. Up to that point, applying for this scholarship had been the largest endeavor I’d ever personally undertaken and I was painfully aware that it was the last one my mother would ever know about. Several weeks later I was awarded the opportunity to see this dream through to fruition. In June of 1996, I boarded a plane bound for San Francisco. After one week of crash course language and culture studies, it was on to Nagoya where I would spend 7 weeks living with an incredibly gracious family. I spoke so very little Japanese and the family’s daughters had only a decent grasp of high school English. It was quite an introduction to Japan and to the world.
Let’s return to the story already in progress:
As carrie, liz and I made our way to this transportation and economic hub, I was excited by the prospects of reminiscing and rekindling some memories in a town known as one of japan’s most entertaining destinations.
I will spare you the details of every fabulous meal and every interesting diversion that served to convince us we need to be close to a real city. Here are some of the highlights…
We found an open-air pub on our first night in town. Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I dined or drank on a proper patio. Oh wait…yes I can…it was back in Seattle. That’s damn pitiful. We met a few tables of Australians and Brits that kindly offered us suggestions and invitations which we were sure to capitalize on. [including a recommendation for tacos and burritos at a place owned by a real *gasp* mexican. that’s unheard of around these parts.]
another highlight was ‘the robot museum’ that opened last october. there is a rotating exhibition space that was housing these two ordinary looking but talented bots. one snaps a shot of your silhouette then spins around to sketch your outline.
another bot relies on its mechanical whizzes and whirrs in different tones to play rock and roll hits.
stolen from carrie's you tube acct.
the permanent exhibit detailed the history and future of robots, from old ‘appliances and household robots as the way of the future’ advertisements to comic books to movies [including fritz lang’s metropolis] to real bots spanning the decades. how amazing to see the evolution of human imaginations with robots as the medium. it also challenged my definition of a robot by including all sorts of machines whose characteristics stretched the traditional meaning.
then, of course, there was play time. lots of interactive, remote control, cell phone controlled, purpose driven androids to taunt and try.
me with "Paro, a seal-shaped robot that has been registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the robot most effective in healing people."
there was also a really cool computer aided design program to create your own bot. this doesn't look like a bad job at all. and yes, that's a metallic blue rocket strapped to his back.
we also stumbled upon a battle of the bands near nagoya tower...
and a bunch of battling elvis-look-alike gangs...
As we tooled around town, of course I was on the look out for sites that would jog my memory. although I had described a park to carrie and liz enroute which we later discovered, I was becoming extremely aware of how the time that had lapsed since my home stay had pushed my memories to the far recesses. One night we’d been cruising towards the nightlife district in a taxi when I was caught off guard by this little wooden restaurant nestled between 2 modern storefronts. It seemed intimately familiar, like I’d spent time there, but I just couldn’t be sure. We stayed the course towards the restaurant as I waxed nostalgic. On the day we were departing Nagoya, as we wandered around the city’s center lamenting our imminent return to the countryside, we passed the same little wooden restaurant tucked away between glass and metal constructions. I froze, craning to see past the gates and through the garden fronting the shop. I finally crept towards the entrance and inspected through some low windows. The place appeared to be closed, no customers, only an eerie familiarity. I turned to creep away from the entrance when a woman wearing a beautiful kimono rounded the corner into the garden. We both halted abruptly as our eyes met. Over her face washed a kind softness, as the words “tiffany chan!” escaped from her lips. I was instantly moved to tears at her effortless recollection. This woman was my host-aunt, yoko san. Her husband is the older brother of the woman who had taken me into her home some 10 years prior. As the oldest son usually inherits the family business, this woman, my host-uncle and their two children lived above the restaurant with the grandparents and ran the daily operations. My host-mother often helped out with the business so I spent countless days there, playing with the children in the small upstairs apartment, wandering the streets around the restaurant or hanging out in the kitchen with the chefs who didn’t quite know what to make of this foreign girl who couldn’t speak any japanese. This kimono clad woman embraced me in a completely uncommon way; full of emotion.
She bundled liz, carrie and I inside the shop and scurried around attending to us. An older woman, whom I didn’t recognize brought out steaming green tea. She stepped back, admiring me, saying I hadn’t changed a bit, as my host-aunt shook her head in agreement, adding only my hair was different. we chatted for a bit, which is a feat we were completely unable to accomplish a decade earlier when i’d spent nearly 2 months in her company. my Japanese is light years better now, meaning i was able to tell her how important my time in japan had been, how it had impacted my future and how she and her family were in a large way responsible for this. she told me to wait while she scurried off, returning a couple minutes later with a young woman in tow. her now 14 year old daughter had been my steady playmate 10 years ago. she was a bit shocked and shy about chatting, but opened up when it was just the 2 of us standing there. she told me that she couldn’t be sure if it was actual memories or just recollections of often viewed photographs, but she has mental images of she and i playing with the grandparents birds up stairs, which we often did. unfortunately, the nuclear family who had actually opened up their home and allowed me to interrupt their lives was in germany for the week on vacation so i wasn’t able to reunite with them. as i could barely keep the tears from leaking outta my eyes anyway, perhaps that reunion is best saved for the next visit.
I couldn’t help but feel a little sad when I got this letter today…
Non-recontracting acceptance
ALT’s name: Ms. Tiffany Jackson Host Institution: Joetsu City
This letter is to inform you that your decision not to re-contract has been accepted by the institution indicated below and we will not re-contract with you.
Date: January 23th, 2007 Signature: Takeo Kobayashi
‘closed door policy’ is a term often used to describe japan’s attitude towards the rest of the world in the years before U.S. navy commodore matthew perry arrived on the island demanding trade.
now japan has economic links to other countries but the older generations are still reticent to open the door to foreign influence in regards to immigration [it’s nearly impossible to gain citizenship], importation of pop culture, adoption of an international business language [my job is the mark of a shift, but one that has had negligible results over the last 20 years], etc. i’ve long considered ‘closed door policy’ to be a dirty word, so it’s regrettable that i am coming to associate this philosophy with america and it’s government strategy.
i’ve recently had occasion to meet several people who were denied entry to the U.S. the stories were made all the more embarrassing and painful because while i sat listening, i was a visitor in a foreign country, experiencing culture and adventure in much the same way they had longed to do in america. a while back the girls and i went to Nagoya and sought out a highly recommended Mexican restaurant. we were told to ask for rudy, that he’d take care of us. turned out this rudy character made delicious enchiladas and had tons of interesting stories. he was born in mexico and moved to the u.s. with his parents shortly after birth. he was reared and schooled in America. his aunts, uncles and cousins were all legal immigrants and his parents have since become recognized tax-paying citizens. rudy was hoping to go back to the U.S. to visit his family but has been embroiled in a visa battle for quite some time now, caught in a limbo because he has been living and making a life in japan for so long that the American government doesn’t recognize his ties to the country or his right to enter it. they basically lump him into the same category as mexican immigrants who they worry won’t leave once they gain entrance. never mind all the evidence to the contrary, such as his wife, small business, and obligations in japan.
then, in India, we visited an outdoor kebab shop called bade miya. as we struggled with the menu, a friendly muslim family at the next table helped us decipher what was what. we got involved in an interesting chat that spanned the length of our meal. turns out they are from India but have lived in Tanzania, Africa most of their lives. they were in Mumbai visiting their son who is studying dentistry there. the whole family speaks impeccable English, is well-traveled and so curious about the world. this was evidenced by the way they engaged and questioned us. we traded stories of our adopted countries and even exchanged coins as tokens of our connection. i was taken with their outgoing nature and kindness. although, or perhaps because, they didn’t consider us agents of the u.s. government or proponents of its policies, they wore disapproving scowls when they talked of the one place they’ve been unable to visit in their travels; America, because they haven’t been able to secure a visa. i stumbled upon this article today which added statistics and numbers to the story i’ve seen unfurling over the last few years. Travel industry: U.S. losing out on international tourism perhaps if the echoes of these issues become a loud enough din, the U.S. will be encouraged to re-examine the policies that are inspiring the problems. it’s amazing how much you can learn by objectivity, taking a step outside and looking in. i feel i have an unprecedented view of american socio-political culture from my perch on the opposite side of the world. at a time when i feel more like a world citizen than a nationalist, at a juncture when i’m more motivated and able to explore the world than ever before, at a moment when i’m engaged daily in internationalization at a grass-roots level that truly illustrates the importance of cross-cultural understanding, i am so disheartened to see this shift in U.S. policy. i’ve always thought America was relentless about promoting an open door policy, boring into foreign markets and spreading western ideals, while fairly [in theory] opening it’s own borders to trade, investment and influence from abroad.
it now seems as if America is the bully with his shoulder against the door preventing the weaker kids from gaining entrance. i have incredible sympathy for foreign nationals who want to enter America to work, be it for financial or intellectual gain, as that is the current situation i’m living. i’ve visited more than 15 countries, some of whose residents would undoubtedly not be able to enjoy the reciprocal experience of an American vacation. these inequities leave me ill-equipped to explain the American government’s stance to people slighted by it’s policies, which were born of knee-jerk reactions to unfortunate but understandable circumstances in the world we share. america’s recent behavior is hurting its credibility as a ‘fruit salad’ where cultures are encouraged to intermingle, it’s damaging america’s reputation as a tolerant nation that encourages freedom of thought and expression, and it’s serving to bolster contempt and disdain. america does not appear to be at the top of it’s game. and when a player begins to make mistakes and gets cocky, it isn't long before they are unseated from their top position.
