Cultural Contradictions.

“Does Japan have any contradictions?”

My brother asked me this a while ago. I shrugged in reply, not sure where he was going with this.

“You know like how America is obsessed with freedom but has more people in jail than China.”

Ah yes. Cultural contradictions. Like how Americans spend time and money on their front lawns and then hide inside their homes.  Japan has them in spades. They love nature here, and also everything being individually wrapped (and I mean EVERYTHING. I've opened a bag of peanuts to find bags of peanuts inside.) But the most obvious contradiction is their relationship with gambling.

Ask a Japanese person about gambling and they all say the same thing “Gambling is illegal in Japan.”

What about pachinko? 

“Eh… that’s different.” My boss told me gambling with pachinko works something like the electoral college system does in America, its participation by proxy. If you win at pachinko, all you can do with your tub of ball bearings is trade them in for a Pikachu doll or a tea set. You leave with your doll, confused by the whole experience. Why was it so stressful? Why were there people chain smoking at eleven am? What just happened to your money? But on you way out a man from the small store next door calls you over and offers you a nice stack of cash for your doll. You hand it over and thus, gambled by proxy.

Contradictions are everywhere, and not just perpetrated by the Japanese. Most of the ex-pats here pine for the home they’ll never return to. I'm guilty of this as well. I spent last Saturday with a man from Holland complaining about how lousy the beer is in Japan while we drank delicious shochu- Japanese moonshine- that his wife had infused with sour plums. We always want what we can't have. Maybe that's the contradiction of desire.

Safety is a contradiction in Japan. Japan is a very safe place, but never have I felt more consistently in a state of danger. Takayama is supposed to be very safe, it's not near any fault lines or in danger of being hit by a tsunami, yet they use emergency broadcast speakers every day, a safety feature that would do little to save my English speaking ass. And yet, when Mt. Ontake erupted, less than 30 kilometers away, all my Japanese friends told me not worry, we were upwind from the deadly plumes of ash. Finally, a genuine threat, and for once I felt safe.

There’s even a religious cult (hey that’s what the locals call it) that is centered in Takayama because its perceived safety. They picked a city an island plagued with tsunamis, typhoons, earthquakes and volcanoes, for safety. Maybe they worship the contradiction.  

One of my students, an incredibly gifted girl explained it to me.

“Do you know this place?” she asked, and drew its recognizable roof and the peach atop it. I nodded. It was hard not to know it. The temple is huge and is visible from almost everywhere in the city.

“They believe it is like the story of Noah, do you know it?”

I feigned ignorance and sat in amazement as a Japanese high school student told me a parable from my own culture.

“Noah got two of every animal and put them in his boat . It rained, and everyone died, but Noah and the animals were safe.”

I got chills. I’m not religious, not in the least, but it was amazing to hear a story I'm familiar with told to me by someone who didn’t grow up knowing it. It gave it a certain magic that fairy tales possess. 

“They believe their temple is the boat.”

Wow. Bravo. A perfect parable. Made magical to me because it was told in a foreign land. Contradictions abound.

But what do you think? I asked her.

“Well, Takayama is very safe.”

“Yes, yes, yes but do you believe these people were chosen by god to be safe in their ark?” Hey, its not often you get to talk about metaphysics with a high schooler. She smiled devilishly. This is what she had been waiting for. 

“No. I think they’re just the animals.”

I just set her up for the punchline. This enchanting story of religion and survival was just a rouse, another brilliant contradiction,  made sweeter for involving a familiar ancient religion and the fools that believe it.

Joe Darris Mitchell lives in Japan with his darling wife. If you liked this, why not read more about foreigners or the floods he barely survived?

Japan: Land of the Landlords

There's a wasp nest growing underneath our window sill. We showed our coworker and she examined it, hear face close enough to let the wasps crawl up her nose.

"Oh, those are good ones. They'll leave soon, don't bother Iwayam-san"

This coming from a woman I have seen destroy moths with a broom in one hand and a can of raid in the other.

Wasps below our kitchen window. The author apologizes for shakiness of the photo, but being a rational human being, fears these stinging demons and could not hold still for a clean pic.

 They view bugs differently over here, but I guess I'll take her advice, our landlord already avoids us needy Americans. Not that I blame him. I made the mistake of asking my landlord how to work the remote for the TV so I could watch the World Cup. After fifteen minutes of fiddling with the controls and mumbling to himself in Japanese, he called for help.

“The TV man can come today?” he asked.

Yeah that’d be great! What time?

“Soon.”

Sure, yeah, how soon?

“That’s him now.”

The TV repair man was already strapping on his tool belt and leaning a ladder against the house. I have no idea how he moved so fast. He was a skinny old man, who looked like he’d been working with electronics since their invention. That didn’t stop him from climbing up the ladder, setting a foot stool on the slanted tile roof, and prying open the cable box.

He plugged and unplugged cables and yelled at my landlord in Japanese. My landlord would poke his head out of a different window or door each time and reply in the negative. Undeterred, the old man perched atop his foot stool continued trying connections. I reviewed the steps for CPR in my mind. Step one, survey the scene, if the scene is safe, proceed to step 2. I doubted a tiny man being electrocuted on a metal ladder would qualify as safe but I kept my hands out my pockets and ready to catch him if he died fixing my TV.

The two men yelling at each other through my home was quality entertainment for the whole neighborhood, and soon the owner of the house showed up to enjoy the show from a front row seat. He’s different from my landlord. My landlord is named Iwayama (Iwayama-san to us) and regularly brings us Iwayama-sauce to put on the 94 year old Iwayama-mama’s vegetables. Iwayama-san is one of the kindest and most generous men I’ve ever met. Evidence being how hard he was working for me to watch TV right now.

The owner of the house is a little different. Raquel thinks he had the parking lot repainted because we weren’t parking perfectly and rather than confront us about, it’d be more polite just to get the whole thing redone.

He stepped out of his truck, placed his straw hat on his head, hid hands on his hips, and craned his neck to watch the other two men scramble to get the useless American’s TV fixed. I got the sense the owner looked at my landlord’s inability to fix the TV with as much endearing amusement as Iwayama-san felt towards my own inability to do something as simple as watch TV.

The show went on. The TV repairmen poked around various wires while Iwayama-san poked his head out of various windows. I tried to compliment the owner’s home, but all either of us really wanted to do was watch the other two work and maybe see one of them fall off the house.

Eventually the TV repairman decided it wasn’t the cable, but the TV. The owner vanished and reappeared seconds later with another TV (Seriously I don’t know how they move so fast. Instant Transmission?)

The three men took turns fiddling with the remote until they got it to work. They flipped through the channels, and I quickly realized how pointless this all was. Everything was in Japanese. My brain malfunctioned as I watched game shows about eating Udon and anime about old people and their grandchildren. I had wanted the TV for The World Cup, but that would only be on for another couple of days. I felt terrible, I’d put these men through so much work, and risked one of their lives just for a couple of soccer matches? I don’t even care about soccer!

That was fine with the owner. The mystery solved, he vanished and took his TV with him.  

I tried to tell Iwayama-san to forget about the whole thing, but he would hear none of it. He vowed to return a few days later with a new TV.

But I don’t even watch TV in the states, just movies!

“Ah. You need a DVD player as well?”

No, I don’t need a TV at all, don’t worry about it! Please!

Iwayama-san nodded his understanding and returned three days later with a TV he’d found on Ebay, a DVD player, and a Star Wars DVD. I thanked him profusely, as he also brought more vegetables and a flyer of upcoming events. He’d circled which ones he thought we’d be interested in. He nodded a ‘you’re welcome’ and asked, if we need anything else.

Well, my bicycle tires are a little flat.

The bicycle tires are all flat here. In Austin, I’d be yelled at by dudes in jean shorts and fixies for riding 6 psi under, but here flat tires are embraced. It’s maddening, but I was sure that since the house came with bicycles, there had to be a bike pump somewhere. No such luck. Iwayama-san grimaced, then nodded and promised to return.

I sighed. Two points for the useless American! Now I’m terrified to ask him for anything, I don’t want to ruin his fascination of foreigners, but the car is making a weird sound (the last teachers drove it to Tokyo), and there’s slugs in the bathroom.

Aw well. I dealt with worse in the states, I’ll accept fresh vegetables as hush money. 

Joe Darris Mitchell lives in Takayama, Japan, with his darling wife and the occasional cricket (he throws them outside if they get too loud). If you enjoyed this post why not +1 or check out his Instagram at the top of the page?

 

Sumo

A Shinto pavilion hangs in the air above a ring of straw, buried in 2 feet of clay. Two hulking men, wearing only silk mawashi beat their chests and hurl salt in the air. Another man, dressed in an elaborate silk robe armed with a sword and fan waits for the men to lunge at eachother, and for a fingernail or a follicle of hair to hit the sand.  

According to the pamphlet I purchased, the Japanese people wouldn’t exist if not for Sumo. The Japanese won their island when the god Takemikazuchi bested another rival tribe’s leader. Legends aside, Sumo dates back 1500 years. Sumo is the oldest unchanged sport in the world, rivaled only by another of my favorites, the Highland Games. The Superbowl hasn’t even around for 50. Shit the Olympics have only been around since 1896, and they’re always changing the events. Sumo wrestling has more history than most governments. Sumo has changed its rules less than most religions. Nearly every breed of dog, cow, and chicken have existed for less time than Sumo wrestling.

So, steeped in history, I arrived at the Sumo Tournament in Nagoya in awe.

The tournament was inside an air-conditioned stadium, so maybe it’s changed a teensy bit. We arrived early to find skinny rikishi grappling in the ring. These weren’t those goliaths you know from tattoos and the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon, these were skinny dads and fat college drop outs who just loved to wrestle. They didn’t throw any salt or stomp around the ring. Their referee wasn’t even allowed to wear shoes. These were the up and comers and the old timers who either never made it big or joined too late to have time to build the physique of a master rikishi, the yokozuna.

There have only been 71 yokozuna, or Sumo masters since the title was created, sometime before 1749. The title of yokozuna, is older than the office of the president of the United States (The history of Japan never ceases to amaze me). Since 1909, the only way to become a yokozuna is to win two tournaments back to back. A difficult task made nearly impossible by the other prizes rikishi vie for. Rikishi can earn another title, sort of like streak-breaker, if they beat the last guy who won and the current yokozuna. So not only does the rikishi have to win one tournament, he has to win the next, with 41 boulders of muscle trying to throw him to the ground. But once a rikishi becomes a yokozuna, nothing can take that title from him. If he begins to lose, he is expected to retire from Sumo.

Currently there are 3 yokozuna. So we’re in a golden age of Sumo, at least that’s what Ko said, the man who sat down next to us with his wife and son. He vanished after a moment and reappeared with three skewers of tender chicken. One for his family, two for me and my wife.

“Do you like chicken?” he said in American sounding English.

“I do like chicken,” I said, pulling my eyes away from the ring. The big guys were coming in, the Makuuchi, the 42 rikishi who are currently the very best Sumo wrestlers in the world.

“Ah,” Ko pushed the skewers of meat towards us. We did what we thought was polite, and took one to share. It was delicious. Tender, sweet and salty. Think the best teriyaki you’ve ever had. I wasn’t missing nachos just then.

Ko was confused. He stared at the uneaten yakitori, then at me. I looked at him, then the chicken. Tensions rose. I’m not eating that! I thought. Ko looked from the chicken back to me. That’s for your family!  I looked from Ko’s eyes to chicken. Eat, EAT DAMN YOU! Ko finally ate the skewer. Thank god. We’d stuffed ourselves at the train station earlier. Still, we’d made enough eye contact to last a life time in Japan, so we were fast friends.

“So… do you like Sumo?” I asked.

Ko’s grin was so big it spread off his face, “Yes, you could say I like Sumo…” he proceeded to tell me if its history, its strongest players, the current up and comers, home town favorites, as well as which wrestlers he didn’t care for and why. He’d studied English in Chicago for three years and I’m pretty sure he bought us that yakitori so he could talk about Sumo and practice English at the same time.

The crowd cheered and we looked up from our beers.

“Eh… that’s Endo. He’s a crowd favorite, but I like Tochinowaka,” Ko said.

“Why’s Endo the favorite?”

Ko tried to explain that he’d joined the sport late in life, after college, and was pursuing his dream at all costs, something the Japanese truly admire, but his wife cut him short. “He’s handsome,” she said with a smile, and went back to watching the match. Ko lost his wind. She must have been right. Endo won and the crowd went wild. Yay for pretty people not figuring their life out right away!

I pulled out my camera and asked if Ko knew this wrestler was.

 

“Oh yes, that’s Osunaarashi. He’s is the first Arabian Makuuchi.”

I had been taking pictures of the Makuuchi entering the stadium. They were stoic, unstoppable forces. I got the sense that if a puppy fell in front of them they’d rather it crush it than break stride. Osunaarashi was different. Like a scene out of a bad movie, a woman dropped her handkerchief, and with a smile and the flick of his wrist Osunaarashi returned it with a slight bow. That was very un-Japanese of him. He outranked everyone there except for the yokozuna.

“He’s only twenty-two, but has already defeated a yokozuna this tournament, he has real potential, but needs to refine his skill.”

Alright! He was a lover and a fighter.

Raquel had her sights on another. She came back from the gift shop with a towel of her favorite rikishi, the yokozuna, Hokuho.

“Why did you get that?” I asked, already offended she wasn’t supporting my boy Osunaarashi,

“Because I asked the vendor who was the best, and she said. Hokuko. Hokuho Ichiban! Hokuho number one!”

I admitted that was a compelling argument. Still I had my loyalties.

The tournament continued, the matches nonstop. At one point I met Santa Claus. He was there to get on TV. Turns out he’s British, lives in Japan, is a drinker and avid youtuber, and said I should start a channel.

“You’re good-looking. You could be popular.” I guess that means I’m on the nice list. When I told him I had a beautiful Latin wife his jaw hit the floor.

“She should have a channel. You both should be telling everyone what its like to be here!  You even have the multicultural angle.” Thanks Santa. Advice taken.

Soon only two matches were left. Raquel and I screamed like banshees.

Osunaarash was up against the yokozuna Harumafuji. They entered the ring and stamped about, pausing only to slap their chests and glare at eachother. The first five minutes of any of the Makuuchi matches are spent displaying strength and intimidating the other rikishi. Osunaarashi knew his stuff. His leg lifts were high, his chest slaps painful. Harumafuji had a better salt toss, but Osunaarashi’s didn’t look half bad. They each ran to their corners and wiped themselves down. It was time.

The match begun and was over before I could blink. Harumafuji started with a powerful lunge but my boy was ready, and deftly stepped aside and pushed Harumafuji to the ground.

VICTORY!

Only Hokuho remained. Raquel screamed until her voice was horse. The only person more excited for the bout was the six year old girl behind us.

“Hokuho!” they both yelled. “Hokuho!”

The yokozuna didn’t disappoint. He easily outmaneuvered Kaisei and had him down in the sand in seconds. It was a great night. We walked through Nagoya back to our hotel, having more fun than I thought possible at a sporting event, and we even go to take a rikishi home. Though I don’t like the idea of him touching Raquel when she gets out of shower.

Learn to speak Australian! (very EXPLICIT)

CAUTION: This post has Australians in it, so there is gratuitous use of the word cunt. Sensitive cunts are advised to tune out.   

Our first few hours in Nagoya were spent driving around in a sweltering car listening to our GPS yell Japanese instructions on how to get to Immigration. Somehow, we found the place, and got our residency cards.

Yay! We get to stay. Time to celebrate.  

We arrived at the hotel ravenous and headed out in search of food without showers. Bad idea. We found a restaurant in a basement and were served dumplings by the Chinese chef’s children, who were raised in Japan and spoke English. Energized by the globalism of the experience, we pressed on.

My wife wanted to go shoe shopping, and after 2 days of festival drinking, I was obliged to go with her. She thinks the women’s fashion in Japan is lame except the shoes. “It’s all tan and pastel pink, but the shoes are boss.” Unfortunately she was a half an inch too big for every pair of shoes she found. She doesn’t even have big feet. She’d squeeze into some sweet spiky platforms, stand and pout. Too tight. Eventually Raquel’s stench overwhelmed her and the salt flats growing on my shirt betrayed my misery, so we went back to the hotel.

We showered, napped, and went out to a bar called the Elephant’s Nest after hitting up the arcade next door.

The Elephant’s nest wasn’t very crowded, so we sat a table next to a group of gaijin. We caught them glancing at us, and not knowing how else to make friends, we glanced back. After a few sips of beer they asked us to help settle a bet. They wanted to know where we were from. “America?” We nodded. Their friend lost the bet, but he left before buying the next round. “Where do you think we’re from?” the two remaining gaijin asked, sidling closer.

“England?” I guessed.

“England? Do we sound like a couple of English cunts to you?”

That makes two times we have switched the Aussies and the Brits. They both hate it. We kind of love pissing them off. 

They guessed what part of America we called home by asking what kind of food we liked.

“Cheese steak?”

No.

“Pizza?”

Uh-uh.

“Bar-B-Q?”

Bingo!

“Texas! You cunts are from Texas? We fucking love Texas! You cunts like the Rangers yeah?”

We pretended to care about baseball but the charade quickly fell apart.

“So you’re saying this cunt here’s been to more baseball games than you?”

We nodded, but explained that we were going to the Sumo tournament the next day, so it’s not like we didn’t like sports or anything. They were going too, and that somehow convinced them we were sports aficionados “Oh yeah, what sports do you like? Rugby?” No. “Cricket?” Nope. “You cunts would love cricket!” They showed us videos of glove-less catches while I tried to think of something else to talk about.

The beers set in and we talked of travel tips to our homelands, of kangaroo steak and the beauty of Sydney, of the pros and cons of 6^th street and the Bar-B-Q hierarchy in Austin. They explained the rankings of cunts in Australia (Good and bad cunts are both good, as is sick cunt, in fact cunt is a compliment unless you’re called the dreaded annoying cunt). The conversation only grew heated when it turned to the metric system.

I agreed with them mostly, the metric system is superior in a lot of ways. I mean, who really knows how many feet are in a mile? What’s the relationship between gallons and tablespoons? Why are their two kinds of ounces? But I would not budge on my love of the Fahrenheit scale. Fine, use Celsius for science, but for the weather, Fahrenheit is ideal. Each degree of the Celsius scale covers too much sweat. Fahrenheit is more precise. Why does Celsius use negative temperatures when it regularly gets that cold? Zero degrees in Farenheit means you’ll lose a toe, plain and simple. And why only use numbers up to 45? In Fahrenheit, if its triple digits, you know it’s damn hot or you need to go to the doctor. The Aussies didn’t agree.

“In Celsius it’s hot if it’s over 30.”

“But that’s not really that hot.”

“Yeah but in Celsius 30 degrees is 30% of the temperature of the water boiling on your stove.”
Right because that’s what I compare shorts-weather to: a pot of soup.

“Why bother have days that are negative?”

“Well we got a right smart cunt here don’t we?” One Aussie asked the other.

They tried to talk to us about politics. It’s mandatory to vote in Australia, so it’s probably mandatory to talk about politics, but I deftly changed the subject.

“Whoa is this 1-Direction?”

“This cunt likes 1-Direction! You fucking cunt, you!”

We all laughed and finished our beers and agreed to visit each other’s countries once we got home. We hoped to meet again at the Sumo match, but being sports fans, they had much better seats than us, and we didn't see them again.

“I can’t believe these American cunts are going to’ve seen more Sumo matches than Baseball games.”

 

Yup. That’s me. The American cunt at the Sumo Tournament.

Joe Darris lives in Japan with his darling wife. Normally he lives in Takayama, but sometimes the schools close down for a week to give the teachers a break, and he gets to travel. If you enjoyed this story, please +1, and share with any Aussies you know. SUBSCRIBE if you want more!

Tune in Thursday to hear about the Sumo match that almost ended our marriage!

Gion Festival: Eating, Drinking, Collecting

Kyoto holds a false glamor. It’s a tourist town, filled with expensive cameras, sweaty foreigners, and overpriced souvenirs. I’m sure this is unfair, but that’s what I experienced. Kyoto’s power emerges, like a cicada from its mystical slumber, during the festivals.

During the day, Raquel and I went sightseeing like the tourists we were. We saw the Golden Pavilion overrun by Germans and hiked across the city to find Kiyomizudera Temple covered in tarps. The only thing I really liked was Inari Shrine.

Inari Shrine is home to more Torii Gates than any other place in Japan. There’s thousands of them, each paid for by someone (corporations included) eager to appease the gods. It might sound hokey, but I like it. Millions of dollars are spent to be part of this place’s power, and you can feel it. It’s not just me either, more people were praying at Inari than anywhere else I’ve been in Japan.

Walking up the mountain path, through the gates, is glorious. Tourists huddle here and there, and they add to the magic of the place. Because of their presence, you truly notice the moments when you round a bend and find no one. No family. No Germans. No National Geographic Photographers. All of a sudden you’re alone, with 1000 Torii Gates to yourself. When this happened to us, we’d do what any good tourists would do, I waxed philosophic about the timelessness and beauty and blah blah blah while Raquel shamelessly shot videos on her phone.

The real fun of Kyoto comes out at the festivals.

Raquel was eager for street food and I was excited to buy tallboys of Asahi “The Extra” and drink them on the street.

Crowds overflowed the Gion festival. People of all ages were dressed in Kimonos: beautiful couples, young women with exquisite hair and self-conscious men with that special look of pride and foolishness that only comes when a man knows he’s doing something to get laid. There were respectable older women taking pictures of floats, single twenty-somethings preening around for other single twenty-somethings, grandiose old men, adorable children and more beautiful women. There were so many people that one point that crowd simply stopped moving, completely, for 3 long minutes. No one seemed to know why, but we were all glad to escape the crush.

Everyone was there to see the floats. The floats are astounding. They tower over the crowds, decked in lights. Each is unique, hundreds of years old and home to the Kami, Japanese deities somewhere between a God and a spirit. Each float had a stamp, and for the low low price of 100 yen, I too could have a stamp in my notebook! This confirmed my suspicion that collecting is a deep rooted part of the Japanese psyche. Figurines, pokemon, stamps of the Kami, they collect it all. I, a former pokemaster, queued up with the locals. I got seven stamps before I got too drunk to continue, and I’m damn proud of that entire statement.

Meanwhile, Raquel was hunting for food. We bought ayu earlier (read more) but we also ate stir-fried noodles, crepe on a stick, tentacle on a stick, meat on a stick, and Raquel’s favorite,cucumber on a stick. It was lightly salted and served ice cold. She was in heaven.  

 

Other entertainment of the night included catching fish with paper nets, a task as impossible as it sounds. I am a pet addict, and could not pass up the opportunity. Drunk, I mangled my paper net in seconds. I resorted to dunking my bowl into the kiddie pool of dying fish. Victorious, the carnie (do you call them carnies in Japan?) bagged my catch and sent me on my way.

Raquel was not happy.

“What are you going to do with those stupid fish?” she fumed.

I laughed and boasted but quickly realized she was right. In my drunken stupor I believed I could get them back to Takayama without issue, but once there I’d need to buy a pump, a filter…

“Darling, do we have any big glass bowls or vases?”

“You are not putting those stupid fish in a Kitchen bowl.”

These fish were going to eat into my beer money. I needed to dump them, and fast.

Adults are for the most part, rational, sane human beings, so I targeted the exception: parents. “Sumimasen!” I’d yell to a dad already carrying a bag of fish and hold up my catch. They cursed me with cold smiles, then politely declined before their children realized I was offering them more heartbreak they’d have to flush down the toilet.

Then, I saw them. A young couple, sitting on the curb, holding plastic bags of water up to the light of a thousand paper lanterns.

“Sumimasen!” I said, and held up my bag of fish.

The woman hopped up and held out her own bag, eager to compare our catches. They had turtles. Perfect. Getting turtles at a festival is even more irresponsible than getting fish. This was my moment. I held my fish to my chest, then extended them towards her. From me to you. She scratched her head, careful not to mess up her perfect hair. I repeated the gesture, gave a little bow. Thank the Kami. She understood.

She slowly reached out for my bag of fish. I shoved them into her hands, desperate to be rid of the commitment and the guilt I’d feel at their eventual death.

“Arigato Gozaimas!” I yelled, and got the hell out. I glanced back and saw her boyfriend staring at the fish, terrified of all the time and money the little bag implied, of all the work and energy I had escaped, then I lost them to the paper lanterns and silk.

We stumbled back to the hotel, carefree, drunk on irresponsibility and “The Extra,” glad to have experienced Kyoto, and glad to leave.

 

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan with his wife where eats weird things, drinks too much, and generally makes an embaressment of himself. If you enjoyed this story please +1, share and subscribe for more! 

Notes on Teaching in Japan

I think teaching English is a lot of Westerners’ ticket into Japan. We’re inherently qualified, we feel confident in our abilities to speak our own language, and understanding Japanese is sort of a disadvantage because it allows the students to speak Japanese and not English (much like living in Takayama, a tourist town, allows me to speak English and not learn any Japanese). The few English speakers that I’ve met either teach English, or started out teaching English and then changed professions once they obtained a work visa.

I was a teacher in the States, and while I’m definitely not one of those holier-than-though teachers who think children are little miracles and the guiding light of our future, I do enjoy teaching the little bastards. I learned from my mentor, Jorgan, that teaching is a lot of fun, and that turning a roomful of animals into (somewhat) civilized human beings can be a very rewarding process. Don’t get me wrong, if my novel goes platinum I’d quit as soon as the school year’s over (speaking of which you can get it on your ereader at smashwords) but I don’t mind teaching, and can’t think of a way I’d rather pay the bills. So I think I’m a little different than the average English teacher, because I saw how things were done in the States. And believe me, there are more than a few differences between teaching in the States and teaching in Japan.

An American I met here summed it up nicely: “Japan and America are backwards.”

It’s true in a lot of ways. In Japan you drive on the opposite side of the road, vegetable gardens in your front yard is normal, sushi is cheap, and hamburgers are expensive. On the train, elderly people actually stand up so kids can sit down. In the States, I can’t count the times I’ve seen adults blithely ignore an elderly person on the bus while they yammer away on their phone. Men don’t even hold doors for women anymore. Some do, guys trying to get laid and pastors, but I think manners are generally thrown out the window when college starts.

That’s the biggest difference between Japan and the United States. In Japan, adults are very polite, and the kids are rude. In the United States, children are expected to be very well behaved, and the adults get a free pass. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve worked with some real terrors, but in general the kids in the States are expected to be seen and not heard. Getting school clothes dirty is a frowned upon, as is running around a classroom screaming “Ancho! Ancho!” with your hands clasped together and ramming them up your teacher’s ass-crack.

That’s all OK in Japan. The playgrounds have mud pits, where the children are encouraged to either roll mud into spheres (with their hands!) or dig trenches and generally make a mess.  “Ancho” is a real thing, and while its frowned upon, most of the teachers seem to think its endearing, like a kid yelling out the correct answer without raising his hand. In the States, if I high fived a student, there was a fear of legal repercussions, I probably could have been hung if a child’s hand found its way between my cheeks. Here, I’m expected to pick the kids up, twirl them around, endlessly rub their heads and let them crawl on me like a jungle gym.

The first day in the classroom was beyond enlightening. My boss finished his lesson (a nice euphemism for dancing around and chanting in English for 30 minutes) and left the room to go help with lunch. All of a sudden a 5 year old Japanese boy came running out of the bathroom butt-naked. As in nothing. No shirt. No underwear. He wasn’t even wearing socks. He started shaking his little wiener for the class to see and to my horror they all began to strip. Boys and girls just dropped trow and let it all hang out. Within a minute I was surrounded by a 30 naked Japanese children.

What was going to happen when my boss, or even worse, their actual teacher came back? My life in Japanese prison flashed before my eyes. Would I be confined to a wicker cage, or forced to kneel on pointed tiles as they laid stone blocks upon my thighs? Would someone stick bamboo shoots under my fingernails or did that task now belong to a robot?

 

My boss chose that moment to return. I clutched my passport and looked for the exits. I was on the second floor, but maybe I could shimmy down some bamboo. No such luck. I was trapped. Goodbye Japan, hello hari-kari.

“Today’s a splash day, would you help them get dressed if they ask?”

He turned and left without batting an eye.

Oh. Duh. They just had to change clothes. They’re just a bunch of naked kids, so what? They all paid more attention to my gold toenail polish than to each other’s naked butts. And rightly so. We’re all the same after all, especially at that age. After a little thought (and a couple of beers) it seems like a more natural view of nudity than we have in the United States.

I’ve been in the same position in Texas, a roomful of kids had to change into swimsuits to go splash around outside, but it was a much more frightening experience. The first grade teacher ushered out all the girls while she eyed me like mother hen eyes a fox. It was just us boys, but not one of them hurried to change. Instead they all scurried to the corners of the classroom to change clothes in shame. Is it really a good thing for a six year to have issues with his body image?

It’s not like there’s people naked on the streets in Japan. Again, I think Japanese adults look more put together and professional than American adults. I’ve never seen anyone in their pajamas at the grocery store here, something that’s commonplace in Austin.

There’s a shift in Junior High, when kids start to go through puberty I guess. My junior high students are very serious about school, and always tell me how tired they are from hours of school, extracurricular activities and the endless English classes (Japanese students are required to take English grammar tests that I’m sure I would fail). They don’t climb on me, or threaten me with anchos and they would never change clothes in public.

But the kids get to act like kids. They catch bugs, jump in puddles, and smear their teachers with all sorts of goop.

I think it’s impossible to go through life always being well behaved. Manners and customs have their place, but I think we all need to rebel against them to appreciate why they exist at all. It’s part of life, we have to exercise the animal in us, so we know when it’s time to shape up and act civilized, damn it.

I like that the kids in Japan get to be the animals. After all, they don’t know any better, they’re kids. They have plenty of time to mature, and they do. They grow from little ancho-ing banshees into incredibly polite adults, and isn’t that better than wearing pajamas at the grocery store?

Joe Darris currently lives in Japan with his darling wife. If you enjoyed this story, please share with your friends on your favorite social media!