Squid, Anyone?

Ren's hometown, like many towns in Japan, is near the sea. He grew up eating great seafood and has never been thrilled with the unidentifiable selection of frozen fish at our local Midwestern supermarket. One of his life goals is to make sure the kids grow up with an appreciation for decent fish--which is how we found ourselves in a fresh squid restaurant on the coast of northern Kyushu yesterday. 

When Japanese people say something is fresh, they tend to mean it. Squid isn't completely fresh unless you are sitting on a boat and looking at it swimming mere minutes before you are eating it. Truly fresh fish is still moving (from residual nerve reflexes) on the plate in front of you.

Let me pause here to say that I am not particularly a fan of fresh fish. I prefer my fish to be of the freezer-burned block variety. I don't actually want to be reminded of what my meat looked like before it became my dinner; its dinner-plate form should in no way resemble its swimming-in-the-ocean form. But that's just me, and we ARE trying to raise bicultural kids, so occasionally I need to defer to Ren on these things.

So, I agreed to go seemingly willingly to the famous squid restaurant Ren suggested on our way back from a museum jaunt. As you might imagine, fresh squid is NOT on  my Top Ten Favorite Foods list.

Ren's Fresh Squid course that included a VERY fresh squid.

The kids loved the restaurant because,

duh,

it was on a boat, with big fish-tank like windows all over the place. I mean, what's not to love? Of course, the kids couldn't eat 75% of the kids' lunch due to allergy restrictions. 

So, we ordered ika don-- rice with fresh squid on seaweed with a raw egg on top for them. My hope was that somehow the freshness of the squid combined with their penchant for liking foods most kids their age don't would be enough to get them through the ika don.

It wasn't. Instead, all three kids refused to eat. This might have been one of the times I would let them get by with eating a few bites of white rice, but Ren saw this as an essential learning opportunity. We weren't going to leave until a majority of the ika don had been consumed. So, of course, there were tears. Followed by bribery.

In the end, Sky earned five bonus snacks for eating 15 bites of his. Pink earned one. If I was in the running, I would've earned three snacks of my own for my valiant attempt to get Pink P to swallow her three bites. It took close to two hours. The extra snacks led to extra bad behavior which led to possibly the worst Shichi-go-san (7-5-3 click here for link) photo shoot on the history of the planet. (But that's another story, one I may never find the courage to tell...)

Maybe one day I will figure out how to balance three kids' need for structure with their need for a 100% strict diet and our desire to have them experience as much of their two cultures as possible. But, yesterday was not that day. I guess at least now they can brag to their friends about the barely dead squid with raw egg they ate that time in Japan, so there's that.

Retrospective 1, Summer 1995

Long before I was a Japanese housewife, I was a very angsty twenty-something living alone in Japan (Sorry to those of you who had to endure the letters I wrote home. I kept copies of some of them. Sheesh!). Though it was summer vacation when I first arrived in Kyushu in 1995, and though my fellow JETs in other cities had the summer off, I had to sit at my desk in the Board of Education for eight hours a day for the first four weeks I was in Japan. It was excruciatingly boring. Fortunately, I had ample opportunity to record my first impressions. Here are a couple of them (with all signs of angst removed).


*****


There is a man in my office who looks like he is older than Mt. Fuji. The JET teacher at the Board of Ed before me nicknamed him Origami-san. About every other day, he comes to my desk with a new origami figure and tries to teach me how to do it. It's actually a nice reprieve from the intense boredom of trying to look occupied for eight hours a day. Origami-san doesn't speak a bit of English, so I learn by copying him. Honestly, though, I can't seem to remember how to make anything. He's taught me how to fold cranes twice now. I'm afraid to ask again beause I imagine the Japanese would take my inability to master this simple task as a sure sign of feeble-mindedness.


*****


Today at work, I noticed that it suddenly got really quiet. I looked around only to discover that over half of my coworkers had disappeared. I figured it was a meeting I didn't know about, but just as I was forming this theory, one of my co-workers walked past wearing black combat boots and a fluorescent orange hat. I turned to see another wearing his beige fieldwork outfit when only moments before he'd been in a suit and tie. Finally I asked Sawako, the woman who sits next to me (and, not coincidentally, the only one who speaks English in the entire city hall), where everyone went, and she said:

"Kaji. Do you know kaji?"

I do know kaji. It means fire, as in building fire. So my first thought was that the building was on fire and everyone else was evacuating. As I was thinking this, Sawako, managed to find the word in the dictionary.

"Fire," she said looking up from her dictionary, "or conflagration" (the second one came out with a mess of r and l sounds, so it took a minute for me to compute).

"Same difference," I told her.

Then there was a pregnant pause, as if her two word explanation sufficed. It didn't.

So I asked, "Is there a fire somewhere?"

"Yes," she offered as a tantalizingly unhelpful reply before returning to her work.

I decided to persist. "So are they going to fight a fire?"

"Yes."

"Where is the fire? Don't they have a fire department?"

"Yes."

"Oh," I said. (...while beginning to suspect Sawako's English skills are not all that good).

Moments later, I heard sirens. The section across from mine has a ham radio, and I could hear firefighters talking. I had no idea what they were saying and no one bothered to explain. The guys came back to the office just before lunch and returned to their work as if nothing had happened.

And nobody said anything.






image: http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~fa6t-kns/free-d20.html, http://www.kintetsu-community.co.jp/resident/images/insurance_img_7.jpg

How I Met Ren, Part 4

Okay, I guess to talk about what happened next, I need to backtrack a bit...

During my two weeks in the hospital, in an attempt to get rid of the stress that seemed to have caused the ulcer, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was bugging me. Ironically, the ulcer attack came the same day that I'd signed a contract to stay in Japan for a third year. So, I took the suddenly revolt by my stomach to be a sign that I'd made the wrong decision. Those two weeks in the hospital, I mulled over my decision and tried desperately to figure out if I'd made the right one.

Ren knew about this. Which is why on our first date, as we (or at least one of us) looked out over the city, he told me I should definitely stay in Japan. He probably should have given up right there. Because my response was something to the effect of: "That's nice of you to say, but I've never made a decision based on a man before, and I'm sure not going to now." But, here's the thing about Ren, he's totally cool with me being a dumbass. Totally. Instead of feeling hurt or frustrated, he simply told me to do what I had to do.

Eventually, I decided to stay in Japan. I can't say if Ren influenced my decision or not because I don't remember. I do remember tossing a coin, though. And I suppose you could say the coin landed right side up.


After we'd been dating a month or so, Ren asked asked me if I would marry him. "I don't know," was my honest reply. After all, I wasn't ready to commit to an international marriage or to life in Japan or to being a step mom. I had things I still wanted to do. "That's okay. I can wait," he said.

And he did. For more than two years. He waited while I finished my stint on the JET Program, while I packed up my stuff and said goodbye to all my friends in Japan, and while I moved off to California to do my Master's at Stanford. Not once did he ask me to stop thinking about what I wanted to do. He just waited. And he managed to wait without seeming like he was desperate. Or making me feel guilty. Or even seeming like he was waiting at all. I'm not sure how he did it, but he did.

And then one day, April 21, 1999, to be exact, I said yes. I know the exact date because it was the day after the Columbine shootings. That day, as I drove from my apartment in Mountain View to the Stanford campus 20 minutes away, I thought about those kids who'd left for school that morning with no idea that it would be the last day of their lives. And I realized I needed to quit being scared of the things I didn't know. I didn't know if I could be a good step parent. I didn't know if I could manage an international marriage. I didn't know where we would live or what we would do. But I did know that Ren loved me, and that, in her own way, Big Sissy did, too. And I realized that if I knew that, I knew enough.

So that night, at the end of our daily two-hour phone conversation, I said, "There's something I want to say."

"What?" (Nani?)

"Oh, forget it." (Yappari, ii)

"No, go ahead." (Nan daroo?)

"Do you want to get married?" (Kekkon shiyou ka?)

"Sure." (Hai.)

"Ok."

"Ok."

"Goodbye." (Jaa ne.)

"Goodbye." (Jaa ne.)

Ren must've been in shock, because the next day when we talked, he said, "You know that thing you asked me at the end of the conversation yesterday? Were you serious?"

I was.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

How I Met Ren, Part 3

So here are a few tips from the Ren playbook of luuu~v.

1. Obtain unwitting foreign girl's phone number before she leaves the hospital by promising to introduce her to various mountain trails in Kyushu.

2. Purchase mulitple phone cards to ensure that you have enough minutes to carry on a two-hour conversation on the hall pay phone (much to the chagrin of your fellow patients).

3. Call her, and in the course of your witty conversation, suggest that she stop by when she comes for her follow-up appointment with Dr. Miyajima.

4. When she stops by to say hello, ask her, "So whaddya doing next Sunday?"

At this point, you will totally confuse her because, after all, you are still in the hospital. So you will have to explain the concepts of "gaishitsu" (leaving the hospital for the day) and "gaihaku" (leaving the hospital overnight). When she hears this explanation, she will be flabbergasted because who ever heard of a healthcare system that allows you to stay in the hospital long enough that you actually need chances to go home for a day or two?

5. When you go to pick her up on Sunday, dress your best and take her to the nicest restaurant in town.

6. After a nice meal, take her to the most scenic spot around for a romantic stroll and, at the opportune moment, tell her you think you were meant to be together.

*****

For a guy who hadn't dated in a really, really long time, Ren seemed to find his mojo pretty quickly. I just had a few suggestions:

First, when you take a girl on a date, make sure she knows she's going on a date. (Okay, this one wasn't really his fault. By my second year in Japan, I was used to being asked to meals by all sorts of folks. Since Ren is older, I wasn't sure if we were going on a date or if I would be eating dinner with his kids in exchange for a free English lesson).

Second, while preparing a drink for her to enjoy in the car on the way to the restaurant is an incredibly thoughtful gesture, Pocari Sweat really isn't the drink to set the mood.

Third, don't take a person recovering from a stomach ulcer to a French restaurant and order a five-course meal.

Fourth, when you take her on a stroll to a scenic point overlooking the city, make sure you take your glasses so you can tell her what she's seeing.

Fifth, for the love of God, don't wear your woven leather shoes. I'm sure they were expensive, but they just make her think you might be a middle-aged pimp.

(You know, I actually still kinda feel guilty about these shoes. After the first date, I told Ren I never wanted to see them again. He must've really liked me because I never did.)

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4

How I Met Ren, Part 2

On my third day in the hospital, I was finally allowed to join others in the common area and eat my first meal of solid food. And by solid food, I mean okayu with absolutely no seasoning. For the uninitiated, okayu is what happens when you boil your rice for way, way, way too long. It's a lot like watered-down paste. Made from rice. My first meal after three days consisted solely of okayu rice paste and weak tea. Yummmm. But sitting there, gloomily considering the gustatory challenge before me (after all, if I didn't eat it, I wouldn't be promoted to better food and couldn't secure my discharge), I had a chance to look around the room and see for the first time all of my Miyajima 3 floormates. They were either very old or what appeared to be members of the local motorcycle gang (bozozoku).

As I scanned the room, I noticed a not-white-haired, non-bozozoku, and (gasp!) tall Japanese man helping carry trays to various immobile patients. Maybe it was his matching yellow-striped pajamas, maybe it was the fact that he seemed to be born in the same generation as me, maybe it was his towering height (he was surrounded by old people, after all), or maybe it was the kindness he demonstrated to his fellow patients, but Ren stood out to me the moment I first saw him.

Almost immediately, I got the sense that I really needed to talk to that strange, tall man in the matching pajamas. So, after the trays were put away, I lingered in the common area and pretended to study the pictures of mountains hanging on the wall.

"Those are the Japan Alps," said a voice from behind. No kidding. As if reading my mind, Ren walked up to me and started telling me about all the pictures on the wall. From that first conversation, I learned a couple of astounding things. First, Ren, like me, was an avid hiker and spent as much of his free time as possible in the mountains. Second, his father was born and raised in the tiny mountain hamlet that had become my home. The conversation was brief and soon we returned to our rooms.

That night, Ren appeared in my dream. In the dream, we were sleeping side by side. It was a profoundly peaceful dream. Okay, let me stop for a minute (again) and emphasize the point that I don't normally dream about men, or sleeping with men, or sleeping with tall strangers in matching pajamas. But, there you have it, from the first time Ren and I spoke, he had clearly inhabited my subconscious.

"Weird," I thought when I woke up the next morning. It wasn't like I suddenly realized he was the man I'd been waiting for (Ha!). It wasn't even like I planned to talk to him again. But, I did find myself spending more and more time in the common room. And somehow Ren usually showed up. Later I learned that he spent his time waiting for me to go to the common room and then resisting the urge to run out and talk to me whenever he saw me there. But I didn't know that at the time.

When the day of my release finally came, I packed my bag and sat on the bed waiting for my neighbor to come get me. As I sat there waiting, I felt unexpected pangs of regret knowing I would never figure out what was going on with the tall stranger in the hospital room next door. I didn't even know if Ren knew I was leaving, and I certainly had no idea whether he liked me or not. Eventually, I convinced myself that too much free time relaxing in a hospital bed had made me crazy. I barely knew the guy, after all.

This is what I was thinking as I left the room and started walking toward the elevator. My heart started to race a bit when I realized Ren was sitting at a table between me and the elevator talking to a friend. I had no idea what to say as I walked past, or whether I should say anything, or whether I should even acknowledge him.

And then.

He stood up.

If you know me, you know I am not in the least bit romantic, or melodramatic, or prone to much in the way of sappiness, but when he stood up, I swear I could hear violins swell and everything else fell away leaving just the two of us.

"Jya, odaiji ni (Get well soon)," he said.
"Arigatou (Thanks)," I replied.

And then I walked to the elevator, out of the hospital, and to the car, and made my back up into the mountains.

To be continued...

Part 1
Part 3
Part 4

How I Met Ren

In honor of Valentine's Day, a little story...

When I moved off to Japan to teach English the summer after college graduation, friends jokingly reminded me not to "find [myself] a man" there lest I end up "staying forever." I thought the chance of finding a boyfriend, much less a life mate, in Japan was pretty slim. First of all, I didn't really believe in dating. Second, I had no burning desire to marry. And third, I couldn't imagine any Japanese man being "my type" (Whatever that means. After all, I had no idea what my type was since I had essentially sworn off dating). Okay, let me stop here to point out that my complete and utter pessimism about dating and marriage had nothing to do with any negative experiences related to dating and marriage. I wasn't the child of divorce, and I had never been dumped, lied to or cheated on. I was just insanely independent and probably too much of a realist for my own good. Marriage was the last thing on my mind.

Fast-forward eighteen months, or approximately half-way through my second year in Japan. By this time, I had traveled through most of Japan and been to China, South Korea, and Thailand on my own. Somewhere in Thailand, it occurred to me that it might be fun to share some of these experiences with someone. It also occurred to me that, at 24, I was tired and maybe ready to settle down a bit. It was a completely unexpected and somewhat unwelcome set of realizations. But, for the first time, I was willing to concede that it might be nice to be married some day. I still wasn't ready to go through the rigmarole of trying to attract a guy and date him, though, so I decided that the only way I would get married is if the whole thing happened so quickly that I didn't know what hit me.

And so it was, one cold February night, up in the mountains of rural Kyushu, that I got a severe stomachache and had to go to the emergency room in the city 45 miles below. After a rough ride down the mountain in the back of a farmer's K-truck, and some fervent banging on the ER room door to awaken the doctor on duty, I was deposited at Miyajima Hospital, where it was determined that I was not dying but would need to stay the night. With no car and no good idea of where I was, and with very rudimentary Japanese, I was at least stuck until someone from my town came to get me the following day. But by then, I had been in Japan long enough to know that no one was coming to get me unless Dr. Miyajima agreed that I could leave. What I didn't know is that unlike the United States, Japanese health insurance enables people to stay in the hospital long enough to recover from whatever ails them. In the end, I was at Miyajima Hospital for two weeks. Two weeks! (It turns out I had an ulcer). And, even then, I basically had to promise my firstborn child to get them to let me out early.

Once I got over the shock of what I perceived to be my unwarranted incarceration, I found hospital life to be pretty enjoyable. As the only non-Japanese person there, I was an instant celebrity, and once I got my electronic dictionary, the mind-numbing string of medical terminology didn't seem so bad. To be honest, I rather enjoyed the lazy afternoons spent chatting with my three roommates (once I got over the fact that I was sleeping in a room, a hospital room, no less, with three complete strangers). The best part was when my parents would call from the US (though I am 100% sure they did not think this was fun at all). Since I didn't have a cell phone, they would call the registration desk at the hospital and ask for me. No one at the desk spoke English, so my parents learned to just call and repeatedly say my name (and I'm sure they said it really loudly because that's what Midwesterners do when they think people don't understand them. They talk louder.) By the time the call was transferred through several nurses stations to me, my parents had spent quite a bit of money in international calling fees (pre-Skype, y'all) and were totally flustered. (Tee hee).

To be continued...

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Top 10 Signs You'll Never Be a Japanese Housewife

10. You can't sew. Therefore, you can't make all of the fancy-schmancy things for school like the lunch box bag, the tea cup bag, the shoe bag, the book bag, the PE uniform bag, the luncheon mat, the sweet little book marks, and the notebook covers. You also can't turn your son's smock into a work of art inspired by Monet. Why? Because you can't sew.

9. You think your kids will probably survive just fine, even if you don't make them gargle with iodine every single day.

8. You don't feel compelled to make cute animals out of the various foods you put in your son's lunch. Rabbit apple slices. Lion mini sausages. Hello Kitty carrots. You can live without creating these things.

7. You think your kids will do okay in kindergarten despite the fact you don't take them to after-school lessons in math, calligraphy, and English (ha! at least you've got them all beat on the English thing!)

6. During the long weeks of the rainy season, you've been known to take your laundry to the laundry mat to dry it.

5. You're pretty sure your husband can get his own beer/tea/coffee, and you're not afraid to make him try.

4. You don't think of an apron as an everyday article of clothing. In fact, you don't feel at all self-conscious doing all sorts of work inside and outside the home without one on.

3. You microwave at least some part of some meal once a day.

2. You don't think the occasional carbonated drink will melt your kids' bones and put them on the path to delinquency.

1. You're not Japanese.




(I should add here my usual disclaimer about how all people are different and how stereotypes sometimes--and in this case, definitely--make for better blog entries.)

The Unexpected Go-Between

A few months after Ren and I started dating, I got called into an unexpected meeting with the head English teacher, Mori-sensei. At that point, Mori-sensei had been teaching for over thirty years, making her just a few years away from retirement. She was under five feet tall and had an annoying(or endearing, depending on your mood) habit of singing to herself. Not only was she the de facto head of the English curriculum at the school, she was also someone I taught with regularly (regularly enough to know that she was by nature unassertive--not the best quality for teaching junior high students). Compared to the other English teacher (Matsuo-sensei) though, teaching with Mori-sensei was a walk in the park. Matsuo-sensei deserves at least one blog entry of his own, but suffice it to say that he had employed the tactics of fear and humiliation to teach English to three generations of students living in that small mountain hamlet, and like frat brothers who love their fraternity more after enduring brutal hazing, every man, woman, and child over the age of 13 demonstrated a deep sense of love and gratitude for Matsuo-sensei's unorthodox teaching methods.

Anyway, on that particular day, as I prepared handouts for the day's lessons, Mori-sensei invited me back to the tea room. In Japanese schools, the teachers' desks are all gathered in one room. There they keep all of their teaching materials which they carry back and forth to the classrooms. Students don't rotate, teachers do. In smaller schools like the ones where I taught, all of the teachers' desks were in that room organized in clusters by grade taught. Since the teacher's room is a very communal space, every school has some kind of tea room/break room suitable for the occasional private conversation. I'd never been summoned to the tea room before, so I followed Mori-sensei with a deep sense of intrigue.

The conversation went something like this:

Mori-sensei (haltingly): "The principal wanted me to speak to you about something...."

Me (perplexed--I wasn't sure the principal even knew I existed): "Yes?"

MS (stalling): "Someone called him."

Me: "Okay."

MS (even more haltingly, face increasingly reddened): "And they are worried because (pause, pause, pause)....(pause, pause) sometimes you don't come home at night."

Me (in my head): What the heck! Which of my nosy neighbors has it out for me? Ugh, it's probably the bitter divorcee Koga-sensei(who happened to be the school nurse at the other junior high where I taught).

Me (out loud): "I see, so one of my neighbors is worried about me? Do you know who called? I'd be happy to talk to them."

MS (with a certain amount of resignation): "The principal didn't say. He's just worried. You see, everyone knows you have a new 'friend.'"

Me (in my head): You've got to be kidding me. I'm 25 years old. Even my mom wouldn't be this nosy.

Me (out loud, as tactfully as possible): "Yes, sometimes I do stay down in the city. Many of my friends live there, you know. I thought it was safer than driving on the mountain road late at night."

MS (dubiously): "So, you are staying with your foreign teacher friends?"

Me (vaguely): "Yes, various friends..."

MS (gaining her footing): "Because, you know, since you have come all this way so far from your family, everyone feels responsible for you. And you do have a new male friend."

Me (keeping my cool despite my desire to do otherwise and dismayed that I actually have to say this to a work colleague): "You don't need to worry, I am not doing anything inappropriate. Besides, my parents know about my 'new friend' and they are not worried, so you don't need to be either."

MS (relieved--not by my explanation but because the conversation was clearly nearing its conclusion): "I'm glad to hear that. I will let the principal know he doesn't need to worry."

So let me say here, that my response to Mori-sensei's line of questioning went against every fiber of my being. What I really wanted to do was chastise her for prying into my private life and attempting to squelch my sense of independence. After all, what I did on my own time was my own business. Fortunately, though, I had lived in the town (and in Japan) long enough at that point to know that a) my business was not my own, and b) reacting as a strong-willed foreign woman would get me absolutely nowhere. I had also managed to do the don't-say-exactly-what-you-mean-and-let-others-think-what-they-will dance successfully for the first time, so, it probably sounds funny to say this, but I was proud of how much I'd grown.

That night, I told Ren about the conversation, hoping to vent my frustration at having every aspect of my private life analyzed by meddling neighbors. Ren patiently listened to my account, and then said something that totally shocked me:

"I think I should talk to Mori-sensei."

Me (in my head): Whaaa~t??? I totally did NOT see that coming!

Me (out loud, not at all sure how this would pan out): "Ummm, okaa~y."

So, we called Mori-sensei (awkward), and we invited her to dinner (even more awkward), setting up a date for the next night. (Whaaa~t?)

Have you ever seen those "meet the parents" movies where the young adult child brings home her unexpected betrothed and all sorts of chaos ensues? That's kind of what the dinner date was like. Only, the meeting wasn't with my parents. And we weren't betrothed. There was no chaos (Japan is almost always notably lacking in the chaos department). And the food wasn't all that great, either.

It was a very, very uncomfortable meal. I had no idea what to say to either Ren or Mori-sensei, both people I like very much, so I said nothing. Ren and Mori-sensei tried to forge casual conversation, but failed. Finally, Mori-sensei got to the point, in one of the most mortifying moments of my existence.

She said, "So, what are your intentions?"

Ren, not missing a beat, replied, "My intentions are pure. Please know I am not playing around. I'm serious about her and will take good care of her."

Holy shit! This is like where the guy meets the girl's dad and asks for her hand in marriage. We're just dating for goodness sake! And then it hit me. Since my folks were thousands of miles away, Mori-sensei had been appointed to be the unofficial go-between in this most unorthodox of o-miais.* Both Ren and Mori-sensei were in the middle of a necessary formality and nothing I would do or say would halt the inevitable.

Now, many years later, we are still friends with Mori-sensei. We exchange new year's cards, and whenever we are in Japan, we drop in for a visit. Still, I will always wonder how she felt about being assigned the task of being our unofficial go-between.



* An o-miai is a formal meeting between two families to determine whether they will proceed with an arranged marriage. In the past, the potential marriage candidates would be meeting for the first time. These days, in the era of the so-called "love marriage" (as opposed to an arranged marriage), the o-miai has taken on a much different feel and, indeed, is usually absent.

Japanese Housewife Handbook: How to Be a Kyoiku Mama

There are two exceedingly important roles in the family that seem to be assigned to every Japanese housewife. The first is manager of family finances and the second is kyoiku mama (or "education mom," which is a totally lame, but linguistically accurate translation of the term). As an independent, working woman, I did not feel any particular need to take on these two vital roles, but they were thrust upon me just the same.

By the end of our honeymoon, I decided that the "holder of the purse string" role was actually pretty vital for the survival of our family. After all, Ren has trouble keeping track of his wallet, literally, not figuratively. The first time he visited me in the US, he dropped his wallet on the airplane. Fortunately, he realized it was missing before we caught our connecting flight, and the wallet which included his passport and various forms of ID was found and returned to us. But there was no cash inside, and there were incriminating traces of barbeque sauce on the outside. On our honeymoon.... Even now, more than ten years later, it's difficult for me to discuss.... Let's just say he fed the fish in Hanauma Bay enough money to sustain them for several generations.

These days, he's only allowed to carry minuscule amounts of cash.

When Ren and I married, Big Sissy was in her second year of junior high school (a.k.a. 8th grade), or just over a year away from her high school entrance exams. Sissy went to an "academic" junior high, so preparations for entrance exams was intense. In fact, the entire school completed the three-year curriculum in two years so the final year could be spent on review and exam prep. The eighth-grade year was spent focusing on studies and preparing for the all-city kendo tournament (for which I was asked to wear an apron, see previous post) held in the early summer of the ninth-grade year. Students participated heavily in the sport of their choice (only one!) for the first two years of junior high school, only to stop completely during the summer vacation of the ninth-grade year to focus on exam prep.

Most kids were already going to cram school by this time. In fact, most had been going to cram school for a long, long time by the time they got to the summer of their ninth-grade year. Not Big Sissy, though. We knew that unless she showed initiative regarding preparation for exams, no amount of money paid to a cram school would do any good. So we waited (and waited) for her to make the first move.

Some parents would view this as extremely risky behavior. After all, how could she possibly know what was best for her? Weren't we sabotaging her chances at getting into the best school by not forcing her to go to cram school? Of course, we knew a few things about our kid that others didn't. First, she was smart enough to get into just about any school she wanted (whether her class performance indicated as much or not). Second, money spent on things she didn't want to do was always wasted money. And third, she'd eventually come around. As far as I can tell, our waiting paid off. She finally decided she wanted to go to cram school the August before her exams the following January and March. This meant we only had to pay for less than 8 months of cram school. It also meant that she was just panicked enough to study hard, putting our money to good use.

Once summer came, however, life became no fun for anyone. For Sissy, regular school was followed by cram school three days a week, and her life began to be filled with one diagnostic practice test after another. It seems like we were going in for student-parent-teacher or parent-teacher conferences once every couple of weeks. Every practice test result came home with a class ranking. Since she went to the best school in our area, we knew that approximately half of the kids in her class would get into the best high school.

Sissy didn't really seem to care too strongly which high school she got into, but since her friends were vying for the best high school, she decided she might as well do the same. And since her "motivation" was external, and not especially strong at that, for the first few months of "serious" study, she was not so serious, and her practice test results reflected this. Just about every test she brought home showed her ranked in the very middle of her class, one or two spots above or below the magic cut-off line. And every meeting with her homeroom teacher went about the same way--"Well, she might get in, but then again, she might not..." You can see why this was a particularly frustrating process for us.

Eventually, Ren and I decided to level with Sissy. "Look," we told her, "Maybe you're not cut out for the best high school. To get in, you have to work a lot harder than you are now. Maybe you should shoot for number two." And like just about every adolescent on the face of the earth, that was all it took for her to defy us and work hard enough to get into the best school. I kid you not, from that day on, every practice test score came back with her ranked in the top five. Top five!

What no one tells you is that when your kid is preparing for high school entrance exams, the whole family is preparing for them. You can hardly tell your test taker to study hard while you run off to the movie or the mall. So, for the entire eight months that Big Sissy got serious about studying, we went nowhere and did nothing. We all watched from a distance as she doodled and fell asleep over her textbooks and fought to get through the material before her. And suddenly, the whole family became acutely aware of Sissy's sleeping and eating habits. After all, if she didn't eat and sleep well, she might get sick, and if she got sick, she would not be able to study. It was no fun for anyone.

The morning of the first exam for her back-up choice, a local private school, arrived, and Sissy woke up sick. She'd fallen asleep under the kotatsu (a small heated table with a blanket over it--everyone knows sleeping under them makes you sick!). The morning would've been comic if it wasn't so tragic. "How could you fall asleep under the kotatsu after all those months of studying?!?" we implored half-angry, half-panicked before sending her off to take the test anyway. She passed.

Then six weeks later, it was time for the real deal, the entrance exam for local public schools. All kids take the same public school test, but they can only choose one school to receive their scores (hence the endless discussions with her teacher about which public school she would shoot for). As planned, Sissy tested for the best school in the region (and fortunately, she wasn't sick the day of the exam).

Two days later, the results were posted on huge pieces of paper taped to the side of the high school's gym. Sissy went alone (though Ba-chan and I sneaked out separately and spied on her) to see if her exam number made the list. Number 583. It was there! She'd done it.

That night, we invited her aunts, uncles and cousins to dinner and celebrated her accomplishment. The next morning, she dressed in her junior high school uniform and we proudly accompanied her to her new school. Where we sat in a gym full of new students and their parents and listened for two hours as each teacher stood up, congratulated them on their achievement, and then proceeded to tell them that life was about to get much more hellish than any entrance-exam hell they could imagine. After that, each and every teacher gave them a homework assignment to do over the summer--homework assignments that generally covered the first third of each of the newly received textbooks they held on their laps, homework assignments that were ludicrously long and insanely detailed in terms of how they were to be executed.

Sitting in that gym, thinking about three more years of exam-like hell literally made me cry. It wasn't over, it was just beginning.

Japanese Housewife Handbook: The Gender Divide

My first encounter with gender stereotypes in Japan came during my first month there, when I was forced to sit at my desk at the BOE for 8 hours a day every day (see my Learning to Drive entries for more on this). Since the highlight of my endless days at the BOE was trying to figure out what to order from the local restaurant for lunch, I was desperate for anything to keep me busy. After all, there was only so much journal writing and Japanese studying a person could do in any given 8-hour period. In a last ditch effort to keep myself from going crazy, I asked Sawako (the OL who spoke English and whose desk was next to mine) if there was anything I could do to help her.

"Yes," she told me and led me to the small kitchen area. Then she proceeded to introduce me to the various tea cups that were in the drying rack there. "This one is for Nishmura-kacho. And this one is for Ono-kakaricho..." she told me, working her way through the office in order of rank. Only then did it dawn on me that we were going to be serving tea. With no way out, I politely listened as she explained first the cups and then the proper method to making tea. I quietly followed her as she passed out the freshly-prepared cups to each of our colleagues. And when everything was done and we were back at our desks, I leaned over and said, "Thank you for showing me that. I will never do it again, though, since I am pretty sure those men can get tea for themselves."

The longer I lived in Japan, the less sensitive I was to these gendered expectations. Perhaps the biggest reason for the change was the fact that most of the women I knew, women who worked full-time and took care of families on top of that, seemed to carry out these menial tasks with a hearty dose of cynicism. Many of them voiced, in one way or another, the idea that even though the men around them tended to hold positions of power, most of those men were hopelessly incapable of taking care of themselves. In other words, these women saw themselves as ruling from behind the scenes and believed they were giving up positions of power for the sake of the greater good. This type of thinking was just subversive enough for me to accept.

Ren conforms to gender stereotypes about as much as I do. When his younger sister got married, he acted as the family head in place of his deceased father. Ren is one of the many Asian people who lack the enzyme necessary for his liver to process alcohol. Ever notice an Asian friend turn bright red after a couple of sips of beer? This is because they lack the same enzyme, so any alcohol that they consume essentially poisons them. (Amazing what one can learn by teaching English to doctors who specialize in diseases of the liver...) Anyway, one of the things a family head at a wedding has to do is go to each and every table and offer drinks to the guests. Since drinking in Japan is reciprocal--you serve him a glass, and then he serves you a glass and everyone drinks up to indicate camaraderie--not drinking a glass that has been served to you is essentially not an option, and sharing drinks with the more than 100 guests while lacking the enzyme to process alcohol, is also not really an option. So, Ren's solution was to have me tag along. Dressed in a fancy kimono, I stood behind him and drank two out of every three glasses offered to him. After all, I not only have the needed enzyme, but I'm also of German descent.

Another time, Big Sissy's junior high was hosting the city-wide kendo tournament. All the moms were called into action and had to serve not only as score keepers and snack/tea providers, but also as parking lot attendants, telling people where and how to park their cars. I was relieved to be assigned a position in the parking lot--after all, it would save me from tea pouring. One of the requirements for all of the moms, even the ones working the parking lot? We had to wear aprons. Aprons! What makes you think I own an apron? And, I'll be damned if I am going to go out and buy one just so I can direct traffic in a junior high school parking lot! When the day in question arrived, I showed up in my track suit and a baseball cap. Take that you apron-wearing moms!

There were a couple of times when I just couldn't quite buck the system. The one I remember most vividly was at the wake of one of Ren's distant relatives, held in an old farmhouse up in the mountains. It's morbid to say that I looked forward to the wake, but I did. It was something I hadn't seen before, and I imagined it would be a good learning experience. Unfortunately, as soon as we walked into the house, Ren was ushered into the front room where the wake was being held--a room full of mostly men drinking tea and eating snacks, and I was taken into a small room off the kitchen where I was forced to prepare tea continuously for about two hours, which is about how long it took Ren to figure out I had been kidnapped. Ironically, I couldn't and still can't make a good cup of green tea (most likely an overreaction to the first time I was asked to make it back at the BOE), so I was relegated to pouring it. Apparently, I didn't even do that well. About 15 minutes into my two-hour tea pouring hell, a relative I had never met chastised me four pouring. the. tea. with. my. left. hand! What can I say, I'm ambidextrous, but given there were about 10 of us in a space no larger than a pantry, left-handed serving was easier. Nothing annoys me quite like being forced to serve tea and then being told exactly how I have to do it, but after incurring the wrath of a bunch of old women I hardly knew, I had no choice but to serve the tea right handed.

I'd like to say these gender issues only happen in Japan. We all know that's not true, though. I'm married to a stay-at-home Japanese dad. I hold a full-time job while raising children and breastfeeding. People are shocked to learn that Ren gets up at night to change the baby's diaper before handing him off to me (and not just on the weekends). At parent-teacher conferences, it's assumed I will be the parent who attends, but if I don't have my husband with me, sometimes I'm not heard. As far as I can see, things haven't improved all that much since third grade Y basketball when none of the boys would pass the ball to me. The only way I could score a point was to steal it from someone on the other team and drive, drive, drive to the basket. Japan or the US, it seems like I've been driving ever since.

My Secret Life as a Japanese Housewife

I was the only girl on my 3rd grade Y-basketball team. Throughout my elementary school years, I spent hours at the Y practicing my shot and could beat just about any boy who challenged me to a game of one-on-one, no matter how old he was. I've lost more than a few boyfriends and potential boyfriends by beating them in a number of different sports.

Before I moved to Japan to teach English, friends and family members joked about my finding a Japanese husband. I couldn't think of a more absurd scenario. Super-independent and stubborn me falling for an old-fashioned, chauvinistic Japanese man? Never! Well, we all know how that turned out. It's also probably obvious by now that Ren is no more a "typical" Japanese man than I am a "typical" American woman. Also, stereotypes are usually wrong and never useful. Still, my fierce competitiveness (along with a number of other "un-ladylike traits") made me a less-than-ideal candidate for becoming a Japanese housewife.

Despite my best intentions, however, I spent more than two years of my life in that role. Like many Japanese housewives, I had a Japanese husband, a kid, and a part-time job. Unlike them, I'm not Japanese, my kid was a step-kid and my job was teaching at a national university, but I suppose I fit the role just the same. Before I married Ren, several of my Japanese friends warned me against becoming the wife of the oldest son. The role of daughter-in-law is never an easy one, made much worse when living with one's in-laws. And as the wife to the oldest son in a family from somewhat rural Japan, I had the distinct pleasure of living with my mother-in-law after Ren and I married.

When we dated and talked about getting married, Ren was anything but the typical Japanese man. He cooked, he cleaned, he shopped. He expected me to be and do who and what I wanted. Unfortunately, one man's expectations can't hold up to an entire culture's. First of all, Ren's mother did not want Ren in the kitchen. That was my job. The hardest part of married life for me was cooking. As a single person, I "cooked" but this usually entailed boiling pasta, melting cheese on tortilla chips, or making berry smoothies--hardly food I could serve to my new Japanese insta-family. After all, I went from being single to living with not only Ren but also Ren's daughter Big Sissy and Ren's mom, Ba-chan.

Worse. Breakfast in Japan cannot merely be cereal, a banana and some yogurt. No, there is usually miso soup, rice, and some kind of fish involved. "Western" breakfast invariably include fried eggs, toast and a salad. For someone who could barely manage pouring cereal in a bowl that early in the morning, the breakfast expectations seemed unbelievably high. While making breakfast, I was also expected to make boxed lunches (bento) for Ren, Big Sissy and I as well as dinner for Ren who usually worked well past dinner time. Given that I was the kid who never ate breakfast because I couldn't stand the sight of food before say, 9 a.m., this was not easy.

Mornings were made more challenging by the fact that Ba-chan threw down the gauntlet regarding wake up time. If I got up at 7, she got up at 6:30. If I got up at 6:30, she got up at 6. If I got up at 6, well..., you can figure it out. Not one to back down from a challenge, I would peel myself out of the futon at 5:30 and before even opening my eyes, I could get the rice washed and cooked, start a pot of soup, and finish making half of the bentos. By the time everyone was up at 7, I had everything cooked and on the table, the laundry in the washing machine and the futons shaken and stored in the closet.

I wish I could say that I learned something enlightening from being a Japanese housewife for two+ years, but mainly I just got very, very annoyed. I decided that women in Japan have to work a lot harder than women in the US. Not just with cooking, but with shopping--since refrigerators are smaller and food fresher, most women shop every day or at least several times a week. Since Japanese houses are more permeable to the outside, most women dust and vacuum daily. Since washing machines are smaller and fill up sooner, daily loads of laundry have to be hung out in the sun (most families do not have dryers). Sleeping on futons means that bedding has to be shaken out and folded up every morning and aired out at least once a week. When I was a Japanese housewife, there was an insane amount of work each and every day. It helped to have a husband who vacuumed, a job I could go to, and a sense of humor, and most of all, it helped that we finally left Japan for the US.

My time as a Japanese housewife mostly taught me about the sacrifices we make for each other when we get married, sacrifices that seem more extreme when the marriage is an international one. Ren has sacrificed as much or more since we came to the US. Knowing how hard it was for me in Japan, my sense of gratitude for his sacrifices is tempered by a sense of guilt since I have a good idea of what he is going through.

*****


NOTE: I should probably note that these stereotypes regarding the roles of men and women are much more entrenched in rural Japan than they are, say, in Tokyo, and of course, there are exceptions to these stereotypes just about anywhere. Sometimes sweeping generalizations make for more interesting blog posts, though...

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Learning to Drive, Part 4

I'm afraid part four is a bit anti-climatic. You could probably guess that I wasn't willing to pay $2000 to fix my $1100 car, and so I went back on the market for a car (the third car in less than a year). Mr. Shinohara, finally grasping the depths of my miserliness, sold me an even smaller, even older, and even more beat up car for just $500! It had less than a year of "shaken" left on it, but I didn't plan to be in Japan that long.

The best part about that car, which was also a stick shift, was that the engine invariably died twice each time I drove up the mountain to my second school. Since it did it consistently and since this usually happened on the steepest parts of the drive, I got pretty good at predicting when the engine would die so I could get out of the middle of the road before power left me completely.

If it hadn't been for a certain Japanese man I met half-way through my second year as a teacher in Japan, I would have kept driving that death trap up and down the mountain until it's final "shaken" day (at which point I am sure the car would have failed inspection and been impounded). But that guy (a.k.a. Ren) convinced me I was being too cheap and stupid for my own good. He also convinced me I might want to stay in Japan just a bit longer than originally planned. So the fourth car I got (yes, that's four cars in the span of two years) cost me a whopping $2500 (for a grand total of $4100 spent on three white, stick-shift, "K" cars).

I am happy to say that car and I lived happily ever after.

Okay, some more pictures. First, the road (you can see it at the end of the red bridge) where I nearly met my demise with the "falling rock" (or mountain side).



Next, same bridge, different angle:



My mountain road to school:



And the road to the "big city":



Alas, I can't take credit for any of these pictures, since I lived there in the days before digital photography...

Learning to Drive, Part 3

So my first attempt at car ownership in Japan didn't go as planned, but now everyone was motivated to help me get a car. Within a day of my disastrous driving lesson at the town ground, I was introduced to Mr. Shinohara, the only car salesman in town, and father to two of my students. Mr. Shinohara convinced me to pay $1100 for a "K" car with a year and a half left in the shaken period. So I bought one of these:



Though mine was much older and a bit more banged up.

This car was perfect for me (though literally painful for anyone taller than 5'10"). Only one thing, it, too, was a stick shift (I told you I was a cheapskate). After the hazardous lesson with my "friends" from the BOE, I decided I had to find another way to learn how to drive. And so it was, that Mr. Atsusaka, the 8th grade science teacher, was nominated to give me driving lessons.

Mr. Atsusaka was not only the most popular teacher at the school, he was also extremely funny, outgoing, and as it turns out, made with nerves of steel. Rather than driving on the town ground, he decided I'd learn quicker if I drove up and down the mountain. As he was teaching me, he was also taking a video of the lesson (since I had decided by that time to try to record my various experiences). Later, when my Japanese was better, I watched the video and realized just how horrified Mr. Atsusaka must have been. Besides the fact that I kept turning on the windshield wipers when I wanted to turn, I also pretty much did just the opposite of whatever he told me to do. "Turn left here," he'd say, and I would turn right. "Go straight," he would say, and I would turn into some stranger's driveway. "Stop," he would say, voice slightly panicked (a nuance lost on me and my intense focus on driving), and I would just keep going. Funny how he thought I did well enough on my first lesson that there was no need for another.

I am pretty sure that one lesson took years off of Mr. Atsusaka's life, but I did learn how to drive the car.

And though it took nearly a year for my BOE to explicitly grant permission for me to drive to school, I started zipping up and down the mountain the very next day. And, I mean zip. It's probably lucky I survived my time driving in those mountains because soon this became my new sign:



Twice I hit falling rocks (or possibly the side of the mountain--remember, no shoulders). The first time, I pulled into my driveway to discover that I was missing one of my rear-view side mirrors. The second time, the impact was a bit more noticeable. And ironically, it happened on the very day, nearly a year after I had started driving, that my BOE finally gave me official permission to drive my car to work.

After this second encounter with falling rock (the side of the mountain?)I had to turn my steering wheel 90 degrees in order to go straight, so I figured it wasn't good. Since I was alone on a narrow mountain pass far from other traffic (in the era before cell phones), I had no choice but to drive my severely crippled car back down the mountain to the junior high school closest to my house.

Sliding open the teacher's room door, I calmly said, "Umm, could someone take a look at my car? I may have hit something and it's acting funny," downplaying the situation as much as possible. Fortunately, it was summer vacation, so there were only three other teachers there. The vice principal took the initiative and went out to look at my car. He started it. He drove it in the parking lot. He got out and stared at it scratching his head. He walked around it a few times. More head scratches, and then he determined it must have a flat tire. (Now, I knew it didn't have a flat tire, but sometimes it's better to let these things work out on their own). The math teacher, the only other single person anywhere close to my age working at the school, was nominated to go with me to the filling station to put air in the tire.

Being quite a bit sharper than the vice principal, once it was just the two of us, the math teacher asked me what had really happened. I told him. He laughed and took me to the filling station anyway. And when there was no one there to help us, he made a half-hearted effort to change the phantom flat tire.

When our trip to fill the tire didn't solve the problem, it was determined that we should call Mr. Shinohara, the man who sold me the car, to see if he could fix it. He came to the school, popped the hood of the car (something no one else had thought to do), and burst out laughing. The battery was on the opposite side of the car, having been completely dislodged from its moorings. Then he got down on his hands and knees to look under the car, again something no one else thought to do. And again, there was laughter. Apparently, the shaft between the front wheels had a kink in it--a 90 degree kink--kind of like Zorro's Z. No wonder it wouldn't go straight. When he finally stopped laughing, what he said made me want to cry. Total estimated cost for repair: $2000 (or nearly twice what I paid for the car to begin with).

Learning to Drive, Part 2

I am an admitted cheapskate. So even when it became evident that my Board of Ed (BOE) would let me get a car, I wasn't sure I'd find one in my price range (any free used cars out there?). After all, I hated to spend thousands of dollars on a car that I would only use for a year or two. Of course, I didn't know then that I would end up spending 8+ years of my life in Japan, but that, of course, is another story.

Aware of my extreme frugality, my colleagues came up with what they thought was the ideal solution. They would give me a car. Granted, the car was an old car used for official town business and had the name of the town painted on both sides of it. And the only reason they were offering to give it to me was because they didn't want to pay to dispose of it, nor did they want to pay the more than $1000 it would cost to put the car through the "shaken" (shaa ken)inspection cars had to have every three years in order to be driven legally in Japan. In order to make the car mine, I would have to pay for an inspection, but all things considered, it seemed like a good deal.

Except for one thing: the car had a manual transmission, and I didn't know how to drive a stick shift. (This turned out not to be the only "one thing" wrong with the plan, but that comes later). I have older siblings, and at some point in my young teenage life at least one of them tried to teach me how to drive a stick. None of them turned out to be patient teachers, however, and the experience ended up being fairly traumatic. After that, how hard could it be to learn how to drive a stick shift...in the mountains...on the opposite side of the road...that had no shoulder?

It was decided (a lot of my early experiences in the village were decided by consensus, without the least regard to my opinion) that my first driving lesson would be on one of the Wednesday afternoons I was forced to spend at the BOE during the school year. Somehow it was also decided that half of the members of the BOE would be giving me this driving lesson.

So the five(!) of us headed out on that sunny fall afternoon to test drive the car. It was a white station wagon, one that looked a lot like an elongated Pinto, and the first thing I noticed, besides the fact that the town name was painted on the side, was that there were no floorboards or carpeting inside. "Well, at least it's free," I told myself. The young OL Sawako, who was the only person in town who could speak a lick of English, was nominated to drive the car first. She hopped in and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. She tried again. Again, nothing. Followed by a flurry of conversation in Japanese that I couldn't comprehend.

The next thing I knew, the other three guys, dressed in suits, were pushing the car through the city hall parking lot, toward the slope that led to the city ground (picture a huge circle of dirt the size of three football fields side by side--see the picture on the previous post? You can see part of the town ground in the picture). Suddenly, the engine kicked in, and Sawako was gone. The four of us stood there for awhile, expecting her to loop back around, and when she didn't I half-wondered if my free car had exploded with her in it. "No," I told myself, "I would have heard something."

Eventually, we figured out that Sawako was down at the ground waiting for the rest of us to get there. When we did, it was time for my driving lesson. Okay, so you can picture how well this went. Me, with limited Japanese, learning to drive a stick shift car with four backseat drivers and a broken starter. Each time I killed the engine, which I did a lot, the four of them, dressed in business attire, rolled out of the car and started pushing it across the dusty, dirt-covered town ground until I figured out how to get it started again. Now imagine that school let out and all the members of the junior high baseball team (all my students) were watching the ill-fated driving lesson while waiting for their coach to arrive.

Thank goodness for the baseball team! Our lesson was cut short when the coach showed up.

As we were walking back into the city hall and up the stairs to the BOE, the four of them tried to convince me of two astronomically absurd things: 1) the driving lesson went pretty well, and 2) the car was perfect for me. "After all," they argued, "My house was on a hill, so the slope would make it start automatically." (Forget the fact what comes down must go up, and, besides, once I got to the "big city" there were no hills at all. "Your friends could give you a push start," my BOE colleagues argued.) Yeah, right. Sometimes even a free car isn't worth it.

Learning to Drive, Part 1

The Japanese mountain village I called home for the three years after college had no train. Take a minute to think about this. There was no train. In fact, the closest train station was 45 minutes by car, making it perhaps as far away from a train as one could get in an island country the size of California that relies on trains as a major means of transportation. There was also no grocery store to speak of. Sure, there was the family-run affair down one of the back streets, but they sold things that had expired the previous decade. And half-way through my time there, the village did get a combination convenience store/farmer's market, but it was literally the size of my bedroom back home. The bank closed at 3 p.m. daily (in other words, before I got off work)and was barely big enough to hold the two tellers who worked there. The public bus that ran through town made its first pick-up at 7:30 in the morning and its last departure for the "big city" at 4:30 in the afternoon. This meant if I wanted to go anywhere by bus, then I needed to get to the bus stop by 4:30 p.m. (just about the time I got off work). It also meant that I wouldn't be coming home until at least 7:30 the next morning.

I taught at the two junior highs in this small town (or more accurately, collection of villages and hamlets). There were two junior highs not because the population was big enough to support two of them, but because the rugged mountain terrain and narrow mountain roads made it difficult for all the kids to get to a central location. So, when I was there, the larger school had 123 kids in grades 7-9, and the smaller school had just 57 kids, most of whom were related and a good 1/2 of whom had the same last name, Kamura.

Now, if you know anything about Japan, you know that people go by their last names. Junior high teachers call on their students by last name. But if I said "Kamura-kun" during class, half of the kids would look up at me. It was unnerving. So, I had to learn their first names. This might not sound so difficult, and usually I am good with names, but this was a classroom full of kids who had on the exact same clothes (navy uniforms), the exact same color hair (and eyes) with the exact same hair cuts (buzz cuts for the boys and above-the-collar hair for the girls), who were mostly related and from the same small town. None of my name-memorization techniques seemed to work with this group. They wore name tags, so once I figured out the kanji (Chinese characters) for their names, I was good. At least on the half that didn't have the same last name. Eventually, I learned all the students' names and even figured out how most of them were related, but it wasn't easy.

This second school was 20 minutes up the mountain from the larger school, which was directly across the street from my house. Because I wasn't permitted to own or drive a car (by my Board of Ed--more about this below), I had to take the bus to school. Since the bus ran so infrequently, this meant that I got to work late and had to leave early. Worse, though, was the fact that the road between the two schools was a one-lane mountain pass. It was also the only road between the hamlets to the north and the "center" of town where I lived. This made the road absolutely harrowing during "rush hour," particularly if you are making the trip on a city bus. Question: What happens when one vehicle fails to yield for another and enters the one-lane stretch of road anyway? Answer: Someone gets to back up. And since there was more traffic headed down the mountain to "town" than there was headed up the mountain to my tiny junior high school, I spent many a pleasurable moments on the practically empty bus, whiten-fists clenched to the seat in front of me as we backed back down the mountain to let the other folks through. It only took a couple of trips to convince me that I would die on that bus sooner than I would kill myself driving up and down the mountain. I had to get a car.

The first month or so after I moved into the village (during the summer holiday between semesters), I was required to sit at my desk in the "town" Board of Ed from 8 to 4:30 every day. Eight hours a day with literally nothing to do. "Study Japanese," they told me. I'd already studied Japanese for several years in college, and reading through those textbooks day after day was not helping me get any better at using it. While I didn't learn much Japanese while sitting there day after day, I did learn two important lessons about how to work the system in small town Japan.

Lesson #1: don't piss people off. This was an easy lesson for me because apparently my "predecessor" (the foreigner who sat at that desk and taught those classes and lived in that apartment before me, who, by the way, even though she was Scottish, short and blonde-haired apparently looked just like me, a taller, dark-haired American)was very good at pissing people off. In fact, from what I could gather, most of what she did made people mad. Why? Because she did what she darn well pleased regardless of what she was asked or told to do. (Note to any of you out there reading this who might one day find yourself teaching in a small village on the JET program. Don't do this. It makes life hell for the one who comes after you). I heard a lot about my predecessor, and it was usually in the context of me being told I could not do something (like own or drive my own car) because she had done it and it had caused a lot of trouble. Amazing how one short Scottish woman with limited Japanese language skills could cause so much trouble, but she could, and she did.

Lesson #2: always let the superintendent think that things are his idea. Even though I had absolutely nothing to do the first five weeks I was in the village, the superintendent would not let me leave my desk. I wasn't allowed to go out and acquaint myself with my surroundings, shop for things I needed, or even visit the schools where I would be teaching (thanks predecessor for making life so fun). He did want me to learn about Japan and to speak better Japanese, though, and it was this second point that turned out to be my salvation.

See, no one could teach Japanese in my tiny town,and my language skills were good enough that I tested into the advanced class being offered in the "big city." Problem was, it didn't end until 8 p.m. This meant I couldn't get there and back without a car. I knew they wouldn't tell me not to take the class, so I asked if someone could pick me up every week (see how I didn't ask if I could get a car? Clever, right?). It only took a week (a single round trip to the city) for the person assigned to pick me up to convince the superintendent that I should have a car. One week! I was starting to figure things out.

Next time: How to buy a car in a really small town when you don't really speak the language.

**The picture at the top is not the best quality, but it IS the actual village where I lived...