Emails from Kirsten & Naoto
April 2003

Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2003 03:31:26 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: one strike and you're out

Dear Friends and Family

Well, spring is being announced in full-throated symphonies by our local, resident, rice-paddy frogs. Cherry blossoms are evoking thoughts of evanescent life, and children are donning their sailor suits to go back to school.

Oh yes, and my classes are starting.

Mia has learned to go down the stairs by herself. Her favorite book is a collaboration between Eric Carle and a Japanese children's book author. It is really cool. It is basically the same story. It is in English if you read from the "front" page to the back. It is Japanese if you read from the "back" to the front. The languages meet in the middle.

Naoto is readying himself to go back to full-time house husband.

Japanese tv has the weird thing where they change their television shows every once in a while. Mia's morning shows have changed their characters and songs, so we are trying to get used to the new ones. I am not liking the new ones. Why is it so hard for me to accept change?

The only good thing about the changes in the shows I have found so far is that a former Japanese sumo champion originally born in Hawaii is playing this demon character on a show about Japanese tradional culture for kids. He isn't a scary demon, but it is really cute to see him. (for those of you who would know, it is Konishiki, he is called "koni-chan" and always intones these traditional japanese sayings (kotowaza) in this Kabuki-esque voice. It cracks me up)

One strike and you're out!

So there is much debate about the nature of ethics and morals in Japan as compared to the U.S.

I think most people would agree that U.S. ethical and law codes are based on Christian principles imported from Europe. In Christianity, the emphasis for good behavior is put on two things, as I see it (Amy tell me where I am wrong, please) One is to be a good person for the sake of being a good person. The second is to be a good person so you can get into heaven. Either way, the "spring" if you will, for the good behavior supposedly comes from inside a person.

On the other hand, Japan never had a large enough population of Christians to influence their culture in this way. Japanese ethics, it can be argued, comes more from Confucian ideas than anything else. Shinto (http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2056.html) never really had ethics per se, just guidelines about how not to dirty yourself spiritually.

Next came along Buddhism with a dash of Confucianism for good measure (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/TOKJAPAN/NEO.HTM)

Confucianism stresses the importance of correct actions in the contexts of relationships. "Honor your father and mother", "Honor your samurai lord", etc.

So it is said that often pressure to do right in Japan comes from societal pressure.

I am not here to say which is better or right or wrong. However, I have noticed that penalties in Japan seem to be stricter than in the U.S.

Even before the whole war on drugs thing, it was very very bad to be caught in Japan in posession of marijuana. Japan is also one of the few countries that still uses the death penalty.

And (here comes the whole point of this little essay) if you are caught going 15 miles above the speed limit by a mechanical picture-taking device at 3:00 a.m. in the morning, you must pay 800 DOLLARS! You must also go to the police station, the court, and take a little class and pass a test or lose your license for a month.

Yes, Naoto got a speeding ticket. Yes, he is in the dog house.

love and light,
Kirsten

p.s. pictures of Mia in her favorite towel and Naoto and his neighborhood posse playing with their basketballs

Click on picture to enlarge.

Click again

Date: Sat, 19 Apr 2003 03:32:20 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Peer Pressure

Dear friends and family:

The Gumyo wind has returned with Spring. It blows our drying futons off our balconies, it makes Mia lose her balance, it causes plastic toy trucks to tumble wildly across vacant lots.

Oh yes, it also whistles loudly through all our windows and rattles the rain shutters. I can't help anthropomorphizing it a little.

I am breathlessly awaiting the birth of my niece, and we just found out Naoto's best man/best friend is about to have a baby as well. Life seems to be springing up all around.

In the midst of this, school has begun. This was my first week of full classes. I found out that I have some of the same baseball boys from Conversation class last year in Conversation 2 this year.

This should be interesting.

Peer Pressure

Japan is a land of conformity, or so most people will tell you. I hear a lot of "Japanese do this," or "We Japanese are this way" kind of monolithic explanations I don't think Americans would be so quick to offer.

This need to belong to the majority is never more apparent than in school and in Naoto's and my personalities.

Let's start with school.

Did I mention the baseball boys? This is not only in Japan, I realize, but it is amazing how a few people can set the personality of a class. Right now I have a class that I feel can go either way; either into bad attitude hell where I have to yell at them every class, or into get up and do the pair exercise teacher asked them to do with minimum fuss. I much prefer the latter, of course.

I have met with this class two times. The first time there was a preponderance of Baseball boys and English haters. (English haters are students who have been force fed English their entire school careers by overly strict teachers. They believe or use as an excuse their own "inability" to learn English when it is really a lack of meaningful practice.)

The class was very difficult. The second meeting, for some reason, there were only two Baseball boys and a bunch of normal guys. That class was great. It was very interesting to watch the Baseball boys in the second class start to try and assert their "anti-English coolness" and then back down when most other students basically did the excercises with little fuss. I am hoping the Normal guys win out.

Moving onto Naoto now. I often think of Naoto as a salmon. (even though one translation of Suzuki is sea bass) I think of him this way because he seems to enjoy immensely swimming upstream (or against the current of popular Japanese custom/culture).

He was the lone anti-Ichiro Japanese in Oakland attending baseball games. He didn't wear the regulation black suit/white tie to his friends' wedding. He disdains cell phones because everyone has them.

Yet, today, I caught him about to buy a cute, Japanese animated-character lunch box for Mia in a store. As this was very atypical behavior for Naoto (one because he doesn't usually buy into commercialized merchandise and two because he's cheap and we've been using tupperware just fine so far), I asked him why.

He told me that he was embarrassed at playgroup because all the other mommies brought their childrens' lunches in cute lunch boxes.

Naoto? Naoto are you still in there?

It reminded me of the two years I spent in Utsunomiya teaching English. At the end of just 2 years, I found myself seriously upset that I didn't have a matching ski outfit for the school ski trip. If any of you know me at all, you would know that is out of character for me.

That's why I say I will only be in Japan for a MAXIMUM of 4 years. I am afraid of getting lost here. The woman I want to be is hard to manifest here most of the time.

She gets stared at and feels strange for not having matching ski outfits or cute lunch boxes.

love and light,
Kirsten

p.s. Mia's current exciting toy is a toy stroller we got as a hand me down. Here's a picture at our railroad crossing on a windy day.

Click picture to enlarge

Click this one, too

Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 04:33:10 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Linguistic competence...or lack thereof

Dear Friends and Family

All the B.O.L.'s (bonneted old ladies) are out in force these days. They are helping their farm-hatted men plant rice in the flooded fields. I have seen a variety of interesting machines used in this process. Some are like wheelbarrows with shelves. Some are riding tractors with revolving planters. The roads around our house are covered with huge clots of mud and dirt from where the riding tractors go in and out of the rice paddies.

Used to be people broke their backs slugging through calf-deep muddy water to plant the little green blades of rice plant. I am glad to see there is some progress. (now if Japan could only discover central heating...)

Mia is out of the age period where tremendous strides are being made. However, her continually improving skills still amaze me. I saw her open a CD case by herself yesterday (one that stumps me, usually) Now she can scoop up rice with a spoon and manuever it into her mouth on her own. The next thing you know she'll be embroidering tapestries or doing open heart surgery. No, really.

Linguistic competence...or lack thereof

There is a debate going on in my Married to a Japanese guy list. They are trying to define "bilingual" to everyone's satisfaction.

My own personal definition of "bilingual" is "you may not be able to understand the evening news in that language, but you can sure hold a conversation."

I have recently become aware of how stilted and abrupt I must sound in Japanese. There are many "set" ways of saying things here. Sometimes I just can't remember what to say or I end up remembering 10 minutes after the appropriate place in the conversation.

Whereas I mean to have this kind of conversation:

My son was just bitten by our dog.
Oh my goodness, that's terrible. What happened?
The dog is blind and old. He just went crazy.
You must have been so scared. Wow, is Nikita okay?

It sometimes ends up like this:

My son was just bitten by our dog.
Oh (while kirsten processes this in Japanese) Oh!
Yes, our dog just went crazy.
Oh, I hope he's okay (meaning the son, not the dog).

When I walk away from the situation, I realize my response was not entirely appropriate or extensive enough. My problem is not that I don't know how to speak Japanese, I just don't know how to get the Japanese I need from my brain to my mouth quickly enough. I guess I would be bilingual if you add a 10 minute handicap to all my conversations...

No wonder Americans are considered abrupt and direct!

Also in the same vein, one of the biggest problems I had with my first year baseball boys in conversation class revolved around the following conversation pattern I was trying to teach.

statement, reaction, question.

For example:

I went driving last weekend. (statement)
Oh really, (reaction) where did you go? (question)

The problem was that they could never come up with a question. I thought it was a lack of question-making grammar, so at the time I dive-bombed them with grammar drills.

However, I realized near the end of term it wasn't a lack of grammar. If I gave them a question in Japanese to ask, they could ask it in English.

What was the problem, then?

Oh yes, how could I have forgotten? They are ADOLESCENT BOYS! Of course they don't know what question to ask. They probably couldn't hold a conversation with a non-adolescent boy to save their skin.

I would ask them, "well what would you ask in japanese in this situation," and they would say "I dunno."

How do I teach conversation if they can't hold a conversation? Talk about beating your head against a brick wall.....

love and light,
Kirsten

p.s. mia likes to help naoto hang up the laundry. she really wants to do everything housework-related that we do. She will scream if I don't let her use the broom when I sweep. She loves to flap blankets out the window (getting rid of Japan's ever present dust- I swear, this country erodes at a much higher rate than the U.S.)

Click on picture to enlarge

From: Naoto Suzuki
Subject: RE: Linguistic competence...or lack thereof
Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 21:11:54 +0900

Hello everyone, this is Naoto. In case you don't know me, I'm Kirsten's husband.

(Kirsten said) "I have recently become aware of how stilted and abrupt I must sound in Japanese. There are many "set" ways of saying things here. Sometimes I just can't remember what to say or I end up remembering 10 minutes after the appropriate place in the conversation."

That's why I always have a disadvantage when I and Kirsten fight. (We usually fight in English.) 10 minutes after lost in the fighting, I always think, "What Kirsten said is wrong! I can protest now. But it is usually too late. I need 10 minutes after each sentences especially when we fight.

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