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Published: October 28th 2007
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Tea and these things
Jessie readies herself for her tea as the ceremony gets underway. We are a novelty here. For that reason, people stop by our house, bring us places and are generally interested in us simply because we're Americans. Never before have we made so many friends and acquaintences in one place.
Some of them want to practice their English with us, some want to practice their pick-up lines on Jessie, but others have given us hope that after a year in another country, we will return to the States having made real friends, who genuinely cared about getting to know us and who took the effort to bring us inside the otherwise inpenetrably private lives most Japanese lead.
One of those people is Yoko. Yoko loves the Harry Potter novels and Pirates of the Caribbean, in particular, Johnny Depp. She works, has a couple kids and a husband who works very late. Yoko is one of three students I teach English to once a week. We meet at her house, go through a quick lesson I've prepared, talk about a particular topic -- mostly about ourselves -- and generally just practice using English.
Like many Japanese people, Yoko looks a good ten years younger to us than she really is, but in
Mmmm...tea
The tea wasn't good, but the spectacle of the ceremony was very interesting. From the rotations of the cup before and after drinking, to the bowing to your server, the tea ceremony was a once-in-a-lifetime experience...hopefully. Just kidding, it wasn't bad at all. Very interesting stuff and a big part of Japanese culture. her case, she also acts ten years younger. Having taken English lessons for years, waded through American movies and books, and mooched off her sons' textbooks, Yoko understands quite a bit of English, like many Japanese. Although for nearly all Japanese, the real challenge is using the many words they know in natural-sounding sentences. But that's a whole 'nother story...
On Sunday, Yoko, Jessie and I, along with our friend Jason and a younger Japanese man named Johji, headed out to Kofu, where one of Yoko's sisters treated us to a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. Lines of women, mostly, dressed in their kimonos and with some of their faces powdered in the old style, packed into an upstairs series of rooms in a downtown Kofu building. The reward for the wait was not the tea. The drink was a thick, dark green one, and why someone hundreds of years ago decided drinking it was a good thing, I have no idea. But they do, and the ceremonial way in which the tea is presented is really what people come to see and be a part of.
As is the case in many instances where I should be unnoticed,
Mmmm...creamy
Yeah, thick and green would be two words to describe this ancient beverage. I managed to slip on the tatami mats and bang into the shoji doors (the ones with paper in the panes) while in a silent room with around 40 other people dressed to the nines and as composed as possible. Clumsy ogre...it's a lot of pressure to represent an outsider group whenever you're doing something. We can very easily add to the negative image foreigners have here in Japan.
But in that same way, we are also assumed to be so different that we will never fit in, I'm told, by another of our acquaintences, Mr. Saitoh. Mr. Saitoh stops over to see me about once a week, at which times we talk about English commercials he has seen, break down the parts of speech found in said commercials, and discover that my BA in English is no match for his extensive knowledge of the nuts and bolts of the language. Mr. Saitoh is a former English teacher who has read more English grammar books thatn I can imagine and uses words I would consider too complex for use in conversation with an average native English speaker. Still, again, he struggles to sound natural when he speaks, although he
Mr. Saitoh
Showing off for the camera, Mr. Saitoh isn't shy about kicking the top of your door frame, putting a leg behind his head or generally making you feel like a lazy, unfit human being. is probably the second best Japanese English speaker we have met here.
Mr. Saitoh is an interesting character because he is very unlike most Japanese. He even prides himself in that fact, saying that if I ever want to learn more about the Japanese, that I need to become crazy first, and the culture will make much more sense. Mr. Saitoh says he is seen as an oddball because he says what he thinks and urges others to do the same. He is also extremely proud of his English ability, and for a 75-year-old, he has a right to be.
Mr. Saitoh tells me stories about his first encounter with gaijin (foreigner/outsiders). When he was a boy, two American soldiers came to his village. A typical Japanese village in the 1940s, with no electricity, running water, etc. He said he thought the soldiers were aliens, and that even today, many older people feel Japanese and Americans are not of the same species. They think our extended brow bones, hairy bodies and long noses make us look like ogres, which I suppose makes sense if all you've seen your whole life is Japanese people. After asking him if I
Shamisen lesson
The shamisen lesson with Yoko was fantastic, especially for Jessie, who discovered a natural gift for the Japanese banjo. could walk around my yard without a shirt on, he said I can do whatever I want and it won't surprise people, because I'm expected to be different. The Japanese are confused, he said, when gaijin act Japanese. Mr. Saitoh's views are extreme in one sense, I've found, but from the looks we get riding our bikes around town, it's not hard to imagine the interesting things the elderly and children are thinking about us.
Most people between the ages of 10 and 60, however, are similar to Yoko, and are relatively aware of the rest of the world, and particularly, the United States. And that's a good thing, because if not for their interest in us, it would be nearly impossible for us to meet the locals. Although we've become accustomed to not knowing what people are saying, not knowing the language is, as you would imagine, quite limiting.
But, we're trying to do something about that. We are taking Japanese lessons each Saturday morning through the Minami-Alps City International Exchange Association and are practicing what we learn on our friends as much as we can. It's a difficult language, with three alphabets and many differences in
sentence structure, etc. but we're doing our best!
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