Tatemae vs. Honre

I was probably as low as I could possibly be when I went out for Izakaya with Atsuko and Teruzo. I was brought to this country with the promise of pay and now the company had collapsed, leaving me without pay and now my wallet had been stolen. It seems to me that the reputation of Japan has very little to do with its true nature, but with the image that Japan has portrayed through the years. Japan is obsessed with respect and honor, but beneath it all they are rude and pushy, just like every other culture. There is a tremendous air of evasion in this culture: anything goes as long as you pretend not to see it.

When you walk down the street, people lower their heads so they won’t see you and proceed to walk wherever they want. If they don’t see you then you aren’t there and they won’t be at fault if they run into you. At first you think it’s cute when the short, hunchbacked grandmothers are walking with their sunvisors lowered to the floor, but when you multiply that image into an entire population not looking, it’s impossible to get anywhere without a collision. So you too lower your head or text while you walk, and then it’s not your fault either. Evasion is an embarrassing contagion.

This theme in Japanese culture was most obvious to me when Nova started to collapse and everyone pretended that everything would be okay. The Japanese staff were paid late months in a row and denied their annual bonus, but they frowned for a second and said, “So desu ne” and continued to work for free. They put on their genky face and laughed with students, while they had gone without and waited for months for their salaries. It was shocking to me. For my Japanese staff, leaving or standing up for themselves was never even considered because they thought higher ups must know what they were doing and things would work out eventually. Well, Nova is now officially closed and they still haven’t received their wages from August which were due on September 27th. I started looking for another job immediately when I saw these signs, but most of the staff just ignored the symptoms of disease in the company. When I talked to my students about it, they said how angry they were with Nova, but they continued to come to classes and expected to see their teachers there, like the situation could just go away if they pretended not to see it. At points, I wanted to scream just to make the lunacy of the situation clear. I asked everyone out loud one morning when Mark hadn’t been paid for 3 weeks why we were here. They all looked at me like I was crazy and I stayed at work that day. I wish that I’d had the sense to walk out then- but the situation was so surreal. I couldn’t imagine that this was real and no one else was running out of the door.

When I was at dinner with Atsuko and Teruzo, I was venting about all of these terrible realizations and they told me that Japanese even have a word for this falseness- it’s called Tatemae. Tatemae is a fake feeling or attitude that you present to the world to hide your real feelings or intentions, called Honre. Funny, I just realized that Honre sounds like honor, which is the thing they hide behind falseness. On an individual scale, I have found Japanese people to hospitable and warm, but on a large scale they are very cold and irrational. For example, their society makes it almost impossible to be a foreigner and be independent: you need to work a month before you get paid and you have to have a lot of money and a Japanese sponsor to find a place to live. But, people fall over themselves to be nice to you in small ways: they invite you to parties and offer to lend you money, but it doesn’t breed self-esteem but indebtedness. You are dependent on someone to help you always, so you can never really be an individual.

Rebound

These last couple weeks have been an extremely intense soul search, where I’ve been constantly assessing my actions and choices to remain in Japan. Second guessing yourself creates a limbo like bog that you can’t escape. It paralyzes your ability to make the choices that would stabilize you because they would commit you to the environment you might want to escape. Knowing that I can go home at any time has been poison for acceptance and dealing with the problem. There is a time to run and there is a time to fight, but knowing which is which is extremely difficult to decide.

I decided to stay at least until Christmas to give myself some time to be sure, and now it seems that things are getting much better. I have a handful of really great friends to thank for that, namely my dear friend Fernando. You meet people traveling that talk a lot and plan a lot, but you never get your hopes up because they usually turn out to be full of it— I must say, that goes for most people. Fernando has been the greatest gift that I have gotten out of this experience so far because he is such a happy and generous person. He is the kind of person that offers to help you move and get a car to borrow that day without any solicitation. He is the kind of person you call when you wallet is stolen to help you talk to the cops. He is the kind of person that will come to the store with you to help you buy medicine if you are sick.

So last night I had the adventure that I’ve been needing: the one that lets me know that I’m doing the right thing. This was the adventure that reminded me that things are going to happen all the time if I give myself time. It started at the Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Art, where there had an exhibition on Rembrant’s etchings. They were fantastically intricate and exciting. Though many had a religious theme or depicted a troubling view of man’s nature, they were beautifully crafted and very exciting to see. I needed some time alone to listen to music and be inspired by great art!


Later that night, I went to another party in Tsurumai Park: a local park with beautiful statues and gazebos where the gaijin like to gather for drinking parties. That’s one thing I love Japan, and most every country in the world: they do not mind people gathering in public to drink. I remember going to Paris and seeing kids gather at Sacre Couer to drink wine and play music while looking at the skyline of the city. I was so jealous that we were not legally allowed to gather and drink in a positive environment like that instead of a crowded, loud bar that usually doesn’t yield any good conversations or real moments. So finally I live somewhere where we can drink in public and play soccer or relax in a gazebo without having to worry about police. I hung out there for a few hours, talking with my friends and playing a little soccer until I decided to try to go to Sakae to meet Fernando.

He had called me about a rave about an hour from Nagoya and I was so excited about the possibility of going on an adventure with him and his brother. Well, I was thrown into a fountain because I didn’t think my friend Aaron would actually do it, so I met Feru and Ricardo at my place with their lovely girlfriend Sawako. We left Nagoya at 1:30 in the morning, dancing like crazy inside and outside the car, and didn’t arrive at the rave until 2:30 or so. In order for us all to communicate, we go between three languages because Ricardo refuses to speak English, I can’t speak Japanese and Sawako doesn’t speak Japanese, so Feru and Ricardo speak Spanish and Japanese, Sawako and I speak our perspective languages, but Spanish to each other. It was such a trip. We parked the car and brought our Asahi and Grapefruit Chu-Hais, climbed a small levee and saw the party on the banks by the river. There were a few DJs that rotated in and out and a hot dog stand that sold Zima, which so typically random of the Japanese. The music was great and the people were crazy and we all danced until the sunrise and the moon shared the sky. It was a beautiful morning, clear and warmer than it has been here the last few weeks. I feel like the weather here is a great analogy for Japan as a whole: you can never tell what it’s going to be like or prepare properly, unless you are Japanese. It is either unbearably miserable or it is gorgeously clear. On those days, everything falls into place. You can air your futon and dry your clothes with no problem on those days. On the other days, you curse the logic and the silliness of the culture and your clothes mildew.





As the morning grew brighter and the scene got old, we piled into Ricardo’s car and went to the “convenie” to pick up tasty snacks and drinks and make our way to the beach. We drove for about an hour through industrial Japan, with its factories, smoke stacks and crowded apartments airing their laundry. We arrived to the beach and I actually laughed out loud at the Japanese “surfers” trying to surf on the smallest waves I’ve ever seen. They weren’t even breaking. They were so small that I wouldn’t have even been able to body surf them and these guys are out there trying to surf.



We sat on the concrete peer and watched Sawako soak herself in the waves and then fell asleep for an hour. When we woke up, Ricardo’s battery had died from leaving the car on so we had to get a jump to go home. By this time it was like noon, so we headed back to Nagoya. Before dropping Sawako off, we went and had Taiwanese food together at a restaurant near the house of Feru’s tia. I had a delicious ramen and tofu with hot chilli oil. It was really nice to feel part of a crew again, to feel so content with the friends around me that I forgot for a moment how much I miss my friends back home. It felt good to laugh and dance and ride around in a car on such a beautiful day. Leaving today, I felt better than I have felt in weeks, and I know its because I had so much fun and because I got to see the ocean.

shinkansen from hamamatsu

the clock ticks unmercifully and i stand frozen before the mirror, noticing the wrinkles and the silver streaks in my hair. i am not immortal, as i once thought i myself to be. i am also not an artist- i am a shadow of an artist.

i put on my sunglasses for the train, hiding the circles under my eyes from this florescent light.
the cold circles around my neck, burning my ears in the morning. my walks to the station are not beautiful. there is no sanctuary here. everywhere i look, all i see is evasion.

there is a silver tint to the scene around me, as if the mountains were washed in misty blue watercolors, but there is no glory in this landscape. i rush past the sprawl on a man-made bullet, but i am uninspired by the scene around me even washed in silver and blue, i am unmoved by the pillars of industry and the streak of uninspired aesthetics.

words of the duke

so i'm reading a lot of plays right now and i stumbled upon some very meaningful words by william shakespeare. it's very relevant to my current situation.

When remedies are past, the griefs are ended
By seeing the worst which late on hopes depended.
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone
Is the next way to draw new mischief on.
What cannot be preserved when fortune takes
Patience her injury a mockery makes.
The robb'd that smiles steals something from the theif;
He robs himself that spends a bootless grief!

-The Duke, Othello

handa city festival

My Nova branch is located in a small city called Handa and since I started there I have been told about the Handa Festival. Every five years, the city has a 2 day festival where they parade 31 handcrafted floats down the main street of town. Now, being a native Louisianian when you tell me parade and floats, I get a certain idea in my head. This was nothing like that. These floats are about 2 stories tall and are carved out of wood with huge embroidered tapestries draping over the sides. They are adorned with red tassels, lanterns and traditional Japanese pictures. Each float has a small stage at the front for a puppet show, which they performed at the end of their parade down the road. They are not motorized, but build upon wooden wheels. In order to move, crews of young men dress up in traditional Japanese outfits and tow the floats down the street with ropes. There are about 30 men in each crew, one of whom runs around yelling and sometimes hitting the others to get them excited. And so we spent the day and all 31 floats paraded down the street.






Brandon, Yuika, Ryan and I walked around Handa and drank Asahi while I should have been at work. We dressed up in Japanese clothes and admired the line of Japs lined up for the Vinegar Museum! (yes, y’all…a museum for vinegar. Apparently that’s a point of pride for Handa). There was amazing food: Tacoyaki (octopus bread balls), Sobayaki (grilled soba noodles), squid on a stick, Yakitori and Yakiniku (meat or chicken on a stick) and others lining the streets. I tried Yuika’s favorite fair food and was less than impressed: octopus flavored cracker folded in half with egg, soba, sauce and mayonnaise in it. Yuck…proof that “When in Rome” does not always work out well. The floats gathered in a large stadium by the hospital and each crew performed a puppet show. One that Yuika told us about was the story of a man who saved a magic turtle. As a reward he gained entrance into a sea kingdom. While it was difficult to understand the stories, the overall experience was unreal. This is one little, tiny city in the middle of nowhere Japan and it has such pride in its history. Its pretty remarkable to realize how old the world is and how vast.

trials and triumphs

The last few weeks have been a mental battle between comfort and self-actualization. I was ready to pack up my things and admit defeat because I wasn’t sure that staying in Japan was worth the effort. I am not a passive person, but if I am to fight to get something I have to be sure it’s worth having and this usually takes me a long time. I can’t ever seem to make up my mind. I spend countless hours deliberating on whether I should go out or not or what to write on a piece of paper, so deciding whether I wanted to stay here was a real battle.



Then I sat down with a student names Yukiko, an older woman with a glorious smile and crow’s feet from her years of beaming smiles. She has been a traveler for many years and has been all over the world, including Turkey. Sharing our experiences back and forth made me realize just how important this time is to me. I want to be here! I want to experience Japan and explore the rest of Asia while I am young. I refuse to quit now that I am on the threshold of such a goal- not when the only thing holding me back is a small wall. Someone once said that the wall does not stop you- it stops all the others who don’t want it as much as you do.

I have always been taught not to be a quitter, but I don’t think I understood that you have to want what you are fighting for and then the battle becomes glorious. Strife breeds character and pride. Difficulty yields wisdom and strength. Things usually come really easily for me and I shrink away at the first sign of difficulty. I fuss and fume and get upset that things aren’t going my way, and I often cut ties to those things and run away. I have realized this in myself this year, and with that in mind I have carefully weighed why I am here and decided that this experience is worth fighting for.