Humanity

I was pondering (as philosophy majors are prone to do) a conversation Kelli and I had with a Greek man back in November.  We did our TEFL training in Hania, Crete.  We often would go down to the harbor at night and eat dinner under the shadow of the old Venetian buildings.  Our favorite restaurant was run by George.  We met George on our first day in Hania, when he accosted us in front of his restaurant, inviting us in so fervently that we couldn't say "no."  Soon, we learned how to say "no."  Anyway, a few weeks later we sat at Georges restaurant, eating souvlaki and sipping raki.  We had noticed some time before that all the street dogs were sleek and healthy, often being fed right in front of restaurants by the staff.

"George," we asked, "why does everyone take care of the dogs?"

He thought for a second, puffing on his cigarette, sipping his raki and gazing over the harbor.  In his good, but somewhat broken English he replied, "It's humanity."

That conversation left the most indelible mark on my memory of all my time in Greece.  Later that week were were eating at a taverna when a beggar came in.  The proprietor--drunk to the point of lurching--talked to the man in Greek, then stumbled back to the kitchen.  In a few moments he returned with a bag containing two cucumbers and a tomato.  He offered it to the rather well dressed beggar.  The beggar declined, pointing at a customers bowl of soup.  Agitated, the owner of the restaurant offered the vegetables again.  The beggar began to yell, pointing at the soup.  Yelling back, the owner threw the beggar out.  Muttering, the owner eased his way back to the kitchen.  Everyone was a little surprised by the exchange.  Obviously the beggar wasn't too hungry if he was willing to turn down hospitality.

Even businessmen in Greece take care of people in need.  It is part of the culture.

I've thought an awful lot the past few months about George's words: "It's humanity."

It wasn't until I was in the genkan (entryway) the other day that I finally understood why George's grammatically incorrect statement had hit me so hard.  I had thought he meant "It's humanitarian."  But to me it meant "It's my humanity."

It is my humanity that makes me care for beggars and street dogs.  Mercy and compassion are part of being truly human.  Never in my experience has a language barrier led to more conviction.

My heart is a lot softer now after those two Greek restaurants.  I don't have to give people exactly what they ask for nor am I supposed to cynically believe they are trying to take advantage of my generosity.  I just need to give of what I have to meet their need.  It's humanity.

The Police Chief with Pink Slippers

In America, families can be divided into two basic categories: the ones who ask you to take your shoes off when you come in, and the ones who don't.  The families of the former category would be enamored with a certain trait of Japanese culture, the genkan.  The genkan is the entryway.  In our house it is about 3 feet by 3 feet of tile right after you step through our front door.  There you take off your outside shoes, step up onto the wooden floor (without touching your socks to the tile), and then walk around barefoot or in slippers.

The Japanese home has a few levels of cleanliness or purity.  The genkan is the transition from the dirtiest (outside) to the cleaner interior.  Most  homes have wooden floors with small area carpets or a tatami room.  Tatami are traditional small handwoven straw mats.  To this day they are hand made.  You are never supposed to walk on carpet or tatami with shoes, so you have to take your slippers off if you want to step onto a carpet.  When nature calls and you have to step into the toilet room, some homes provide bathroom slippers.  You slip of your slippers outside the bathroom and step into the bathroom slippers as you enter the toilet room.

Oh, and it isn't just homes that have a genkan.  Public schools, some businesses, and even medical clinics have genkan.  Wherever you go, they provide little slippers for you to use.  Should you ever visit, try to bring your own slippers.  The public slippers are slicker than snot. Seriously.  It's like trying to walk on banana peels that keep falling off your gargantuan, gangly American feet.  I have yet to make it up a staircase without having to walk like an Egyptian: two steps forward, one step back.  Maybe that's why they're called slippers.

For a few weeks all that taking off and putting on shoes makes you a little crazy.  I've never accurately counted, but I think some days I switch shoes at least 6,200 times.  It took about two days to begin hating shoes with laces.  I bought sneakers for indoor shoes.  Guess how they are held shut.  Laces, don't make me laugh.  Velcro, still too much work.  My friends, I purchased...wait for it... zip up shoes.  Oh yeah.  Easy on, easy off.  I'd be the envied at any nursing home.

Most people don't take shoes with them wherever they go.  Some people leave a pair of indoor shoes at their work.  Well what happens when someone goes to a public event where they have to dress nice and don't bring their own indoor shoes?   Men in dapper business suits might be wearing bright red slippers or white velcro tennis shoes.  When the police chief goes to a kindergarten, that's when you see the chief of police in uniform, sitting on a tiny folding chair, wearing Hello, Kitty slippers.  If that doesn't cut down on genkan resentment, I don't know what will.

Murder in Mizusawa

Earlier this week there was a murder a few blocks from our house.  Apparently a 68 year old man stabbed a 70 year old co-worker in his home.  We walked past the house when we found out, to see what was going on.  Real life Japanese CSI everyone! Come watch!

 A news van was there, with a camera set up across the street from the house.  Police cars were everywhere.  But life went on as usual, with kids and old ladies riding by on bicycles.

You would think everyone would lay low until they found the murderer, but that isn't the mindset here.  It is so safe that I don't think people feel fear.  We certainly didn't feel threatened; we were standing across the street in the dark.  Violence is such a rarity, that it is viewed more as an abberation and tragedy than it is something fearful.  This murder just left people shaking their heads.

It turns out the 68 year old wasn't caught in the act, but they are pretty sure he's the one.  The man who told me about the case was laughing while he explained.  The suspect denies that he did anything, but the police have testimonies from cab drivers, one saying "I dropped him of at the house," and another saying, "he called me to pick me up from the house."  Rules for Murdering People 101: Not having your own car makes it hard to establish an alibi.

Sports Day!

School schedules have been horribly inconsistent this past month.  Every day the students and teachers have been preparing for Sports Day.  I had no idea what to expect, other than shouting and drums that I could overhear from the field during preparations.

Sports Day is a Japanese tradition.  Elementary schools (shogaku) through high schools (kookoo) have sports days.  The student body is divided up into colored teams and are pitted against each other in several wacky events. 

To be honest, the day started off pretty hum-drum.  All the seventh grade boys raced the 200m, then the girls raced the 100m, and then the eighth graders, then the ninth.  I ran track in high school and the 200m was my favorite.  I was excited to watch! How fast were these kids?  What would their times look like?  Wait, where's the clock?  Where are the timers?  What the heck is going on here?!?!?!

Heat one blazed around the track and across the finish line.   Then each boy dropped a card into a box.  What?  Who won? 

Heat after heat ran, and heat after heat finished without a mention of winner or loser.  Each kid just walked up and dropped his card into a numbered box.  Maybe I'm biased, but if it isn't timed, it isn't a race.  Races need winners.  I timed a few heats, but started getting stares from the families around me.  I guess my watch beeped too loudly.

Every event at Sports Day is a team event.  Winning a race as an individual only scored team points, not individual accolade.  Once I realized that this was all about cooperation and team standings, I was able to settle down and enjoy the remaining events.

There was the event where all the boys took the field, and did stretches to the drum.  Yeah, it started off slow: Boom, arms to the front, boom, arms up, boom arms to the side.  Whee!  Here goes my Saturday!  Then they started the teamwork thing again.  First there was the tower.

Then came the human pyramid.

Wow.  Kids working together and trusting each other like that is awesome to see.  Next up came team dances and cheers.  Again, seeing so many kids choreographed, moving in unison was a sight to see.

The last events were the relays.  The goofy fun relays.

The girls competed in the Centipede relay.  It was like our three legged race, but amped up three notches.  To keep rythm the girls yelled "ichi,ni,ichi,ni..." (one,two,one,two...).  Chanting duty fell to the back girl.  Watching teams trip made everyone cringe.  There were dozens of five girl pileups, but  thankfully no one was hurt.

I'm not sure what the boys' relay was called, so I named it the Wedgie relay.

The whole darn race was cringe worthy for me.  How is the top guy not getting racked?  A few teams biffed it in this race too. Again no one was hurt.

In the end, the green team won.  Each team recieved a speech from the principal, with trophies and banners going to the top three teams.

Sports in America seem to revolve around individual stars.  In Japan, only the team matters.

Alien

No, Sigourney Weaver does not play a role in this post.  There are no acid bleeding, inner mouth biting, face sucking aliens in this post.  I'm talking legal alien.  Sort of the New York cab driver stereotype for alien.  You know, they don't speak our language, they don't understand our culture, and they do really awkward things sometimes.  That is closer to the type of alien I mean.

Well, now I'm it.  I'm the guy who doesn't speak the language, who doesn't understand the culture, and inadvertently does all sorts of rude things.  The Japanese word for foreigner is gaijin.  It is an interesting term.  If you don't look Japanese, your gaijin.  If you don't speak Japanese, your gaijin.  If you are Japanese, but you're just way too weird, your giajin.  These are the outsiders.  No matter how long you live here, no matter how well you integrate into society, you will always be gaijin.

Our first day here we went to the local city hall and registered as aliens.  We had to wait two weeks to get our Alien Registration Cards (typing that just made me think of "Men in Black," which is fairly apt, because sometimes people look at you like your an eight foot tall cockroach with googly eyes).  Until we recieved our official Alien Registration Cards, we couldn't open a bank account, get cell phones, or set up the internet.  Luckily the gas, water and electricity companies didn't require it.  April would've been a dark, cold, showerless month.

After the wait, we got our cards.  I am now an official alien.  I'm so proud I think my heart might burst out of my chest.

Eastern Germs vs. Western Antibodies, Round 1

There were two things the other teachers warned us about when we got here.  First, for the first month we would be so overwhelmed and taking in so much information we would be constantly tired, but each month it would get better.  Second, be ready to be sick for the first two years we are here as our bodies build up antibodies to local germs.  Uh, our contract is for two years.  Blast!

How did their first prediction pan out?  Eerily accurate.  How about their second?  Well, Kelli got a cold last weekend.  When Kelli asked our sponsor whether it was worth going to the doctor or just buying over the counter medicine and trying to fight it that way, he told her it would be cheaper to go to the doctor and get a prescription.  Sometimes, no matter how much you trust someone, there are things that just sound too good to be true.  Kelli decided to take his word for it and she went to the doctor.

She went to the doctor and got five prescription medicines for five days.  Oh yeah, in Japan they have nationalized health care.  We pay about $50 a month in insurance.  Kelli's visit to the doctor: about $12.  Her medicine: about $15 more dollars.  Not to shabby.  Now that I'm getting her cold, maybe I'll voluntarily go to doctor for once in my life.  I'll even get to see an actual doctor and not just a Physicians Assistant!
 
In this case, the nationalized health care worked to our benefit.  Maybe I'll go to the doctor on Saturday after a special event, Sports Day....

Signatures and Writing Systems.

The sheer foreignness of Japan is sometimes overwhelming.  Our first week here we had to begin the process to get our alien registration cards.  That same day we went to the hanko store.  I had never heard of hankos.  They are small circular stamps that are your legal signature.  Do you want to see my John Hancock in Japanese?

That's it.  That is my signature here.  What happens if you need to sign a document and don't have your hanko?  You have to go get your hanko.  Some of our paperwork couldn't be finished until we had this little guy. 

You always use red ink.  Historically only samurai used red ink, but today everyone does.  If you are wondering why it doesn't have English letters you have to understand Japanese writing.

Japan uses three writing systems.  The one you are probably familiar with is the Chinese characters known as kanji.  There are tens of thousands of kanji, but the Japanese Ministry of Education has defined 1,945 as the set for daily use.  Kanji change pronunciation based on context, one kanji is usually built from several other kanji, and then you can have two kanji together to form a single word.  I know the kanji for mizu (water). 

After the kanji there is the hiragana alphabet.  There are 46 basic syllables in hiragana, plus combinations and glides.  Hiragana is for Japanese words other than the 1,945 kanji words, and for students to spell out all Japanese words until they learn the kanji.  That writing on my hanko, that's not hiragana. 

It's katakana.  Katakana is an exact duplicate of hiragana, but with different symbols.  This alphabet is used for words adopted from foreign cultures, such as Dutch, French, and English.  They also don't use spaces between words.  And certain symbols have multiple pronunciations based on whether they are part of a word or particles (brace yourselves; there will sometimes be grammar words).  All three systems are used often used in the same sentence!  This image is a fair example of what the page of a book might look like.

Japanese syllables are always either a vowel, or a consanant followed by a vowel.  The word "salad" in Japanese is "sa-la-da."  Adopted words often get extra syllables when the extra vowels are added.  My name is pronounced "ne-i-to."  Those are the three symbols on my hanko.  Easy enough huh?

Who Put the Steering Wheel Over Here?

Have  you ever been kind of zoned out and gotten in on the wrong side of your car? No?  If you ever live in Japan, I guarantee you will.  Our school provides us with a little Mazda to drive.  Our first driving lesson was a kick in the pants. 

First, the steering wheel is on the right side of the car. D'oh.

Second, the gearshift and pedals are laid out the exact same was as in our car, so first is up and away, reverse is back and close.  Left foot: still the clutch.  The blinker and windshield wipers, those are flipped.

Third, the roads are narrow.  Two lane highways are about one and a half of our lanes.  Other two way roads are about one to one-and-half lanes.

And last but not least, our car had a loose hose (we found out this week) that made it underpowered and jerk incessantly in first and second gear.

It's okay.  No one died.  A turn or two might have been made into the oncoming lane.  More than a few turns were indicated with nothing more than a cheerful wave from the windshield wipers.

The biggest saving grace with learning to drive was that the top speed limit is 50kph.  That equates to 31 miles an hour.  I finally figured out why Japan's government didn't want to question the president of Toyota.  Over here stuck gas pedals only led to a few medium speed collisions.

The only place the speed limit is higher than 50 kph is on toll-roads.  There it can be up to 100 kph.  Do the math and that adds up to 62 miles an hour.  Wheeeee.  We're flying now. 

Honestly, my fear of being pulled over in a foreign country where I don't speak the language is already being pressured by the desire to get where I'm going while the sun is still up.  Going 10 kph over is only 7 miles an hour.  Oh well.  I'll buckle down and drive safe.

I better sign off.  I need to putter off to the grocery store.

Nebuta

Let's start off with a bang.  You know that overwhelming sense of wonder you get when you see something totally astonishing?  It seems like the older we get the less often we get totally blown away by something.  Well, nebuta will totally blow your socks off.

That dragon is coming right through the wall!

Okay, I was underwhelmed when I saw this.  It was kinda cool, but it had no context.  I think dragons are cool, don't get me wrong, but this looked like a high school art project.  I had no idea what waited in the big dark room beyond...

Giant floats!  Americans, take note: your floats just got served.  Do you see those little lines in the big guy's arms?  Those are the wires that give the entire thing its shape.  After the wire frame is built, it is covered in paper and painted.  These 15 foot tall floats are lit from the inside.  Pictures can't compare to the feeling of being in the presence of something so....neat.  What artistry.

The themes are all from Japanese mythology.  When I have time to research more, I'll post about mythology.

Maybe your thinking, "Nate, what is so impressive about giant paper mache thingies?"  I think they inspire awe because of their delicacy.  Do you see those fins on the dragons' noses?  Those are wire frames covered in paper.  One float had a couple holes punched through the paper.  The fact that most of them didn't reflects the Japanese gentleness.  these floats have been drug down the street by teams of people (we got to pull one) year after year.  They were crafted from such basic materials, but formed with such care and artistry it is hard not to be impressed.

Here's to Japanese artistry!