Tokyo, 1981. I’m crossing the michi in Roppongi, a very trendy area in central Tokyo when a man, crossing in the opposite hōkō suddenly reverses course and stops me as I take a step onto the sidewalk. He throws his arms around me and gives me a big haggu saying, “My Sister!” (I don’t have any brothers at all and certainly not in Tokyo.) I reel back a bit in surprise and meanwhile, he gives me a huge hohoemi and says in very accented English. “Oh, I felt so hōmushikku when I saw you and you look just like my sister!” I’m a little shocked that a stranger has hugged me, but he seems so happy that I try to remember that I am not Japanese and come from a culture where hugging happens. Maybe he does, too?
Okay. I smile back and ask him where he is from as one does in the foreign community in Tokyo in the 1980’s. He says he is here on a mijikai ryokō with a delegation from Palestine. Oh. Awkward. I tell him that I am Jewish and have a sister living in Jerusalem. This doesn’t make him grin any less. In fact, he is smiling even bigger.
I’m curious so I gingerly ask him if aren’t we perhaps actually enemies. I haven’t been paying attention to world events, but Jews and Arabs… aren’t we enemies? He laughs and says, “No, no, not at all. We are of the same Semitic race. You look just like my own sister. I’m so happy to see you.” We chat a bit more. It’s all very friendly.
The next day, to my huge surprise, I read about Arafat’s visit to Tokyo in the newspaper and realize I’ve met a member of Yasser Arafat’s delegation, i.e. a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). True story and not one I’m likely to forget. It shaped me…not just a little bit….
Not everything Japanese in nature happens in Japan. As it so happens, this happened to me in New York City.
I studied Okinawan karate for many years. I was a member of a group called the Cyberdojo in the early days of the internet when a listserv was the best way for a group of like-minded people to have a discussion. This gurūpu was made up of karateka from many different ryū and beliefs. Arguments would ensue regularly and those would often be the best discussions. Though I was a shoshinsha from their point of view I did have something of value. I spoke and read Japanese. And I soon became the go-to person for language issues. I regularly corrected as politely as I could.
There had been a jiken in my own dojo that had my children looking at me incredulously. Their well-meaning sensei regularly introduced Japanese words. Most of the time he got it right, but one day he said this to the children’s class.
“Everybody must have GERI!”
My son couldn’t believe his ears. I winced. He’d meant to talk about obligation which is giri. Unfortunately he’d mispronounced it and had just told the class that they all must have diarrhea. He expounded on this. Painful.
But back to New York City where I was sitting in the guest area of a famous dojo. I was speaking with the head instructor who was looking for a honyakusha for his book. I really didn’t want to do it. I’d just finished a translation and found it very tiring. But a mutual friend had introduced us and I was feeling the giri. He asked me to set a price and I set it high, hoping he’d refuse. He did not.
At a certain point in our conversation he turned to one of his students and said we should take a small kyūkei and have something to drink. And he asked me what I’d like.
I automatically gave the proper Japanese response since we’d been chatting in Japanese. I replied, “Nan demo ii desu.” This is always the right response. But he wasn’t satisfied. He asked again and I said that I’d have whatever everyone else was having. Again, this is a proper response.
But Kaichō himself was not responding as I would have expected. He asked me yet again. And there we were dancing around each other totally out of sync.
And suddenly, it hit me. Though we were speaking in Japanese we were in America. I was giving a proper Japanese response, but Kaichō was behaving as an American would and making sure I had exactly what I wanted. In other words he was behaving as if we were in America and I was American. Which we were and which I was. Oops. How embarrassing! It had taken me way too long to realize this and once I did, I replied that I’d like coffee with a bit of cream and no sugar. (I would have never said this in Japan and saying it to a Japanese man felt WEIRD.)
And Kaichō was much relieved when I answered this way. Butsukarimashita, ne!
gurūpu – グループ group (taken from English)
karateka – 空手家 a person who practices karate
ryū – 流 style. Used for different karate styles, ikebana styles, tea ceremony styles etc.
shoshinsha – 初心者 beginner. Literally first heart person
jiken – 事件 an incident
geri – 下痢 diarrhea
giri – 義理 obligation
honyakusha – 翻訳者 translator
kyūkei – 休憩 a break, a small rest
Nan demo ii desu - 何でもいいです “Anything is fine.” This is the politest response to someone offering you something to eat or drink. When you respond this way, you ensure that they are giving you something they actually have available and think is a good choice.
Kaichō – 会長 the head of an organization. Can also be used as a title much as we refer to a physician as Doctor.
Butsukarimashita, ne -ぶつかりましたね This is an oops expression. Butsukaru means to bump into or collide with someone or something. In this case, it is in the past tense and the “ne” after it softens it. I used it here to sum up my feelings having done this dance around what drink I should choose!
It’s both easy and muzukashii to celebrate American Thanksgiving in Japan. The easy part is finding a day for it. As it happens, there is a Japanese national holiday called Labor Thanksgiving that falls in November. So finding a day to cook and celebrate is easy. A nice coincidence!
Almost forty years ago I was living in Tokyo and regularly celebrated Thanksgiving with two other kazoku. Though we all lived in Tokyo, we were located far from each other at different ends. The three of us women were all Amerikajin and our husbands were Japanese. They had little in common but were resigned to American celebrations with us and the kodomotachi.
The year I hosted it required some amount of maneuvering. Japanese homes didn’t come with ovens, but we’d recently bought a very small one. How would a turkey even fit into it? That is, if I could even find a shichimenchō. It wasn’t a food that was eaten in Japan back then at all. So, I’d have to get on the train and go to the market that catered to the rich expat community. There were a couple, but Meidi-ya was where I thought I had the best chance.
So, I took a ruler and measured the inside of my ōbun. Then I stuck the ruler in my bag. Yes, I was going to have to measure any turkey I found! Stealthily of course. It would be a little embarrassing in front of the expat shoppers who all had American-style housing with big ovens, I imagined. So, there I was looking at turkeys, glancing around, and slipping the ruler out of my bag. Done! I had a nice five pound turkey.
Just big enough to bake five croissants!
But wait! How did I even know if it was a turkey? Maybe it was really a chicken. I’d never seen a five pound turkey in America. Did they have turkeys that small? At any rate, I bought it, cooked it, and it was a success.
The Japanese husbands politely ate their meal each year. After one such dinner, when we were walking back to the train station one of the Japanese husbands turned to the other and said, “Do you want to stop for ramen?” I guess it just didn’t feel like enough for them, though we all felt stuffed. And my own mother would put soy sauce on the table for my husband at the Thanksgiving meal, knowing that the entire meal was not his favorite.
My very first Thanksgiving in Japan was when I was in the Associated Kyoto Program (AKP) in the autumn of 1976. Our director had secured an invitation from the American Consulate in Kobe (Now relocated to Osaka) to join them for their celebration. Nobody said anything about how we should dress and most of us were in our jeans, flannel shirts and hiking boots. We took the train to Kobe and it started to rain. By the time we arrived at the Consulate, we were soaking wet… and still dressed in our jeans and flannel shirts. You might imagine the state of our hiking boots!
We entered the ballroom (I swear that is what it looked like!) like a swarm of maggots. The other guests were in evening gowns and fancy dress. They were older established types and people of status. We were in elite company.
More importantly to us was the incredible spread of food. Most of us made a beeline to the buffet tables. It was a little surprising to see sushi at Thanksgiving but it was an array of food the likes of which you’ve never seen before. (Sorry, but that is how T–P would describe it and he’d be right for once in his life.)
I got a little curious about OUR impact on these fancy folks. I went on Facebook to the alum group for AKP and asked. Had any other years gone to the consulate for Thanksgiving? The answer was no. I guess the Consulate didn’t invite our program back ever again. Can’t really blame them….
muzukashii – 難しい difficult
kazoku – 家族 family
Amerikajin – アメリカ人 American (person or persons)
kodomotachi – 子供達 children, i.e. more than one
shichimenchō – 七面鳥 turkey
ōbun – オーブン oven. There is no V sound in Japanese so it usually converts to a B sound.
In the United States being called futsū or just ‘average’ is not a compliment. We are to always aim for the stars, be better than others, kagayaku, stand out, and/or get noticed. But if you’ve read anything about Japan you’ve heard the saying “deru kugi wa utareru” meaning that the protruding nail will be struck down. If you consider this literally, a nail does need to be struck down so that it can do its job properly so that whatever it is part of will work as it should. Imagine a bench with a nail sticking out of it. But this expression is not meant literally. Obviously. Right?
And once again, if you know anything about Japan, you know that the group is more important than the individual. That has been said ad nauseam but it certainly has been true, traditionally. For those of us who don’t particularly care about standing out and are happy to be part of a crowd Japan is a true refuge (though if you are kinpatsu that doesn’t work out very well for you). Being dark-haired myself, I was always amazed by the attention that my blonde friends would draw back in the 1970s and 80s. I was really happy to be more of a heibon type and not draw attention solely due to my appearance.
Miyako Harumi was a very popular singer back in the day. But in 1984 at the age of 36 and at the height of her career she announced her retirement saying that she just wanted to be a regular middle-aged woman saying “futsūno obasan ni naritai.” Her words caught on and it became a topic of discussion. In fact if you google this phrase the first thing that comes up is Miyako Harumi. For the most part, she was admired for expressing this sentiment. (By the way, it didn’t last; she announced her full fukkatsu in 1990 after having tentatively tested the waters for a few years.) So maybe futsū got boring for her or she realized she had options.
Miyako Harumi – One of her more popular songs
There used to be a popular magazine called Heibon or “Nothing Special.” Can you imagine a magazine like that in the United States? When I’d question the choice of title and express the idea that it was a weird name for a magazine, people would just look puzzled. Because being heibon was an aspiration for many. Not sure if it still is, though. I’m guessing the concept looked more attractive after the war when it would be an indication of upward mobility to be heibon.
After all, the magazine was first published in 1959 and went through several iterations before publishing the last issue in 1987. Coincidentally (or not) during the bubble era. The publishing house Heibonsha still exists. I doubt they’d ever see a need for a name change at this point.
I guess Japanese people see words differently than we do. It’s like how they named a drink “Pokkari Sweat” and saw no problem with it at all. Sure, it is combining a Japanese word with an English word and any English word can be fashionable. But when I explain that we don’t want to drink something called Sweat, I just get those puzzled looks. And they patiently explain to me that it is a sports drink, which I do understand. But, still.
I have digressed, but I have to admit that Japan impacted me to the point where I don’t mind being unremarkable in the world than most Americans would feel comfortable with. I’d rather be the brick layer than the castle designer. I’m happy not to stand out and to just play my futsū role in daily life and never get involved in a one-upping conversation! Futsū de ii desu.
futsū – 普通 average, normal, usual, regular
kagayaku – 輝く to shine or sparkle (verb). This is used for stars in the sky but can also be used for people. For example a bride on her wedding day (one hopes.)
deru kugi wa utareru – 出る釘は打たれる The nail that sticks out gets hammered down. Every single Japanese person knows this one.
kinpatsu – 金髪 blonde hair
heibon – 平凡 ordinary, unremarkable, common
futsūno obasan ni naritai.普通のおばさんになりたい – “I just want to be a normal middle aged woman.” The famous words of Miyako Harumi when she retired from her singing career.
fukkatsu – 復活 revival, or comeback
Futsū de ii desu – 普通で良いです “I’m fine with [being] the usual.” A useful expression when you’re given too many choices or just want to blend in.
These streetcars no longer run up Kawaramachi Street
When I think about changes in Nihon since 1976 there are many that are technology-related. That happens. But there are also some that kind of blow my mind because they are such a huge cultural henka.
When I first came to Japan the word “hug”did not exist. Hugging itself did not exist. I’m going to prove it with this photo from my dictionary. See? Hug or hagu isn’t in the dictionary. The kotoba did not exist and people did not hug each other. Bodies were not touched in public in the way that hugs are done now. Imagine my shokku in 2016 when my (ex-)brother-in-law met us at the eki in his small town with a hug after not seeing me for over 30 years. That was different.
So if hagu as a word didn’t exist, how did the action of hugging get communicated? What I am trying to say here is that the concept of hugging in a friendly manner didn’t exist. Yes, there are words for a couple embracing. There is a word for picking up a child and holding it. But I can’t think of a word that equates to hugging as a friendly aisatsu.
So, I tried to research how this word ended up in Japan and when. I failed. (I didn’t try very hard and I should really ask a sensei of linguistics.) But what I did find was a premise that soccer brought hagu to Japan! When foreign soccer matches became popular television viewing, Japanese people would see players hug after successful matches or when scoring. And… that needed a word apparently. The other theory is that Americans would be seen hugging on the streets of Tokyo and that kind of culture gradually became popular amongst trend-setting young people.
I never once hugged anyone in my host family. And when I left Japan the first time and my boyfriend accompanied me to the kūko, we did not hug goodbye. It just was not done in public. And in 1988 when we moved to America and my ex-husband’s family saw us off at the airport, again, nobody hugged. We bowed. And cried. But, no hugs.
It’s probably a nice change for skinship’s sake! Sukinshippu? Oh, that’s a whole other post!
Nihon – 日本 Japan
henka – 変化 change, [noun]
hagu – ハグ hug
kotoba – 言葉 word or phrase
shokku – ショック shock, as in big surprise
eki – 駅 train station
aisatsu – 挨拶 greeting(s)
sensei – 先生 teacher or professor or doctor etc.
kūko – 空港 airport
Sukinshippu – スキンシップ A pseudo-Anglicism describing a close relationship like the one between mother and child. Or the act of getting closer by hanging out together. When I first heard this term and told people it didn’t exist in English they were shocked… simply shocked. Then what do you call it, they asked? Good question.
I was ecstatic when a Mr. Donut came to Kyoto and it was in easy bike-riding distance to my geshuku. With all that good Japanese food and pastry, you might wonder why I’d be so ureshii. Well, (as they say in Fiddler on the Roof) let me tell you.
At a certain point in your stay in Japan, you get cravings for tabemono from home. It might be a craving for a food that you genuinely miss, but sometimes it is for something really silly or minor. Certainly there were no donuts in Kyoto back then that were American style. You could find small soy milk donuts at the Nishiki Market, but I could not relate.
It wasn’t like I had really patronized donut chains in the US, but in my last year of daigaku, I lived in a house with one of my professors, and each Sunday morning he’d go out and pick up a copy of the Sunday New York Times and a box full of donuts. So, who wouldn’t indulge given that combination?!
My children want to correct me when I say Mr. Donut. First off, they are so used to Dunkin Donuts that they doubted it existed. But I remember when I lived in the Boston area and you’d see both chains.
Must. Be. Cute.
Back to Kyoto. One of the great miryoku of Mr. Donut on the corner of Kawaramachi and Imadegawa street (university student territory for sure) was a bottomless cup of coffee. Refills! That didn’t exist in Japan at the time, though it was normal in America. Sure, it wasn’t the best coffee, but sometimes with coffee quantity is what really matters. The donuts were fresh and oishii. My favorites then were the French cruller and the cinnamon donuts. When I have a certain repetitive dream of donuts (blush) it always involves cinnamon donuts. And finally, it was open at all hours. If I am remembering correctly, it might have been a 24 hour operation. That meant that when I had jet lag and was up at 2 AM, I could have breakfast there.
When I moved to Tokyo my donut habit continued. Sweet potato donuts! Mr. Donut was getting into the local scene and Japanese flavors began to show up. I was a fan and so were my kids. In fact we talk about the sweet potato donuts to this day. When I look at today’s choices in Japan, though, I think they are very overdone and way too sweet. But, that is just me.
If you travel to Japan, don’t be shy about trying out a chain restaurant from the States. There will be surprises for sure!
geshuku – 下宿 lodgings
ureshii – 嬉しい happy
tabemono – 食べ物 food
Nishiki Market – 錦場 Google it, if you don’t know it. It’s a famous food shopping street in downtown Kyoto. It might be more famous for being crowded than for food at this point, but admittedly, you have to visit it.
Who me? Was I a kahogo mom? My daughter and I were touring the after-school care center she’d be attending. She was in first grade and I was a working mother. The local government ran these gakudō kurabu so that kids didn’t have to be home alone after school got out. They accomodated first through third graders. Any child older than that was on their own. And this Gakudō Club made sure they were ready to be on their own by then.
They were just getting ready to have oyatsu and invited us to sit down with them. We were served glasses of cold tea by a second grade boy. Some of the girls were peeling the ringo that we’d eat. Yes, you read that right. In Japan apples always get peeled and a knife is used to do it, hopefully in one strip as you’d go round and round. And there in front of our eyes CHILDREN were using knives.
“Oh, doesn’t Shana know how to use a knife to peel an apple?” asked one worker.
“She’s SIX,” I wanted to respond indignantly. Instead I just murmured something about different customs. We’d just moved back to Japan after three years in America.
My daughter was wide-eyed at that one. And she could see these kids were really takumashii.
After we had our snack it was time for chores. Another surprise. The kids went in to clean the bathrooms!
The head of the center explained to me that these kids had two working parents so they needed to learn life skills so that they could help around the house. There was no coddling here of either children or parents. They were raising self-sufficient kids. Everything they did was based on learning a skill. So different from after-school care in America where kids were more apt to get extras such as art lessons or drama.
The children would go home at 6 PM. Parents did not pick up their kids. Some parents still wouldn’t be home, but the kids all had house keys. The kids walked home, often in the dark. They’d walk in groups, dropping each kid at their home and cheerfully saying goodbye. As luck, or no luck would have it, my daughter lived the furthest from the center and would be walking the last three blocks by herself. Gulp.
The second furthest away was another first grade onna no ko. Her mother was divorced so it was just the two of them. And her mother worked late, so sometimes she’d come back with my daughter. One evening she announced that she’d cook bangohan for the four of us (my son was two years old at the time). A six year old was offering to cook dinner for us… Okay.
And she did. Eggs, I think, and maybe a salad. She managed the whole thing on her own without my help. Very sugoi! My own daughter was amazed.
Now, what can we learn from this? I tried hard not to coddle my children and they both did their own laundry from the time they were in first grade or so. When my son went off to daigaku he was shocked that there were students that had never done sentaku before and didn’t know how to use a washing machine.
And this is just another reason why I am so deeply grateful that I got to raise my kids in two different cultures!
kahogo – 過保護 overprotective
gakudō kurabu – 学童クラブ after school care for kids with working parents
oyatsu – おやつ a snack, used mostly for children. Adults might take a midafternoon break and call it “osanji” or a “3 o’clock.”
If you want to know the deep dark mysteries of Japanese bunka and all of the intrinsic intrigue of the Orient, just look to a piece of tōsuto.
No… I’m just joking. But I do have another toast story to tell.
When I worked as a honyakusha in Tokyo I had a myriad of small jobs to do, some more interesting than others and some more fukuzatsu than others. There were the instructions for building a bridge in Malaysia. That was a terribly mismatched ask. What do I know or understand about engineering? I had no business working on that translation. Then there was the hon I translated called Dead Speak of War which was a book of wartime photos of… you guessed it… dead bodies. I was to translate the captions. They were pretty simple captions like “Dead man under a tree” etc. But they said they weren’t going to give me the photos… just the text. This was a huge problem because the Japanese language has no plurals. I needed the shashin so I could know if it was one body or more. It may have been “Dead men under a tree” for all I knew. Atama ga itai!
In comparison, the job for Nikko Hotels seemed relatively kantan. I was to translate memos between the head office in Tokyo and the newly opened branch of Nikko Hotel in New York City that was owned by Japan Airlines. Memos… how hard could that be? And indeed it was one of my easier jobs until…. tōsuto.
American ToastJapanese Toast
A translator is supposed to be invisible. The translator’s job is to faithfully transmit the contents of a document just as it is. Now, a literary translator has some latitude. They can even use footnotes… judiciously of course. But a business translator has no business doing any interpreting of the content. The facts, ma’am just the facts. And this is how I got caught squirming in the Great Toast Debate.
It started with a complaint. Japanese kankōkyaku in New York City said that the toast at the hotel was burnt. Consistently, burnt. Headquarters sent a memo ordering the kitchen staff in New York to stop burning the toast. New York replied that the toast most certainly wasn’t burnt. But monku kept coming from the Japanese tourists. The toast was burnt on BOTH sides, they claimed. Headquarters sent yet another request to the kitchen staff. New York was annoyed. And, adamant that the toast was properly toasted. (And delicious.) They were not receiving a single complaint from any American patrons of the hotel. They rested their case.
Tokyo was not happy. They demanded to know exactly how the toast was being toasted and why they were toasting it so it was crisp on BOTH sides. New York was baffled. Because… because…. IT IS TOAST!
The thing is, I could have solved this in a second. The New York staff had no idea what Japanese expectations of toast were. And Tokyo had no idea what American expectations of toast were. (And there was no Google around back then.) But I was a young translator and did not think I had any options. I tentatively wrote a note of explanation and included it with one of my translations. There was no response.
So, I’m finding it amusing that Americans are now discovering Japanese “milk bread” and the joys of Japanese toast.
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I will now spare you a Toast – Part 3 about how my American (a New Yorker) mother learned that she could order toast in Japan easily by putting an “o” at the end of the word—and then proceeded to put “o’s” at the end of every English word any time she felt a need to communicate while in Japan….
bunka – 文化 culture
tōsuto – トースト toast
honyakusha – 翻訳者 translator
fukuzatsu – 複雑 complicated, complex
hon – 本 book
shashin – 写真 photograph
Atama ga itai! – 頭が痛い Literally, “my head hurts.” Also used for “What a headache!”
Why is it that there are some memories that stay so vividly in our mind, though there is nothing particularly notable about them?
I wonder if it is the combination of elements that are forming the memory? I think of a day in the autumn in Kyoto, when I walked down from my apāto in Midorogaike and into a kissaten that was one of the few nearby at that time. I didn’t go there very often, perhaps because it was not the cheapest place I knew. But they had the most oishiishinamon tōsuto on that very thick Japanese pan, crisped to perfection and then with butter and an even layer of cinnamon sugar.
When I think of the perfect cinnamon toast this place comes to mind… and I regularly ordered cinnamon toast at coffee shops all over Kyoto.
Grumpy Grandma Note Follows
(Unfortunately--in my opinion--simple toast is hard to find now! There seems to be a tendency to dollop it with whipped cream, anko, sequins (okay, just kidding) etc. I had to go into an old-style coffee shop--i.e. not a cafe--to find what I wanted during my trip back in 2016.)
As I slowly savored my toast in that Midorogaike coffee shop and gazed aimlessly out the mado and around the room, the BGM changed to Barbra Streisand singing, “Woman in Love” and it created the perfect moment for me.
But why? I do not remember if I was in love with anyone that day or even if I had a crush. But the moment is inscribed in my memory forever it seems.
apāto -アパート apartment
kissaten – 喫茶店 coffee shop, but now refers to an old style coffee shop as opposed to a cafe. Us old folks like this style much better. Hipsters do not. Yet.
I’m so grateful that Japanese satsumaimo have appeared on the scene in America. My Whole Foods has them and my local Japanese farmer has them as well. If you haven’t seen them, the most notable feature is that the inside is a pale kiiro rather than orange. If you scratch the surface of a satsumaimo you can see the color inside and assure yourself that you have the Japanese variety.
Satsumaimo sings in the season. Literally. One of the more nostalgic sounds of autumn and upcoming fuyu comes from the trucks roaming city and suburb streets selling roasted satsumaimo. In the winter you buy it as you walk home from the train station, firstly to warm your te as you walk and secondly to eat. Roasted satsumaimo are the best.
And then there are the daigaku imo that you see being sold in tiny shops that may or may not sell other sweets. I’ve never liked them, but I know they are pieces of sweet potato deep fried and dipped in sugar or honey. Why daigaku, which means university?
It turns out that they were first sold near universities in Tokyo or areas where university students lived. Students back then were notoriously poor and couldn’t afford much. So this was an affordable and filling snack for them. These days students seem much wealthier, but everyone still likes satsumaimo.
One of my children’s favorite books featured satsumaimo and a farting contest. Because if you eat a lot of them, you get pretty gassy. In this book the children eat as many as they can and then use their onara to rise into the sky.
Last week I was in Cambridge and had access to an Asian pastry shop. And yes, the only thing I wanted was sweet potato pastry. Note the black sesame seeds that you also see on the daigaku imo. They just seem to go together with satsumaimo. Tengoku!
satsumaimo – サツマイモ sweet potato. Literally a potato from Satsuma
kiiro – 黄色 yellow
fuyu – 冬 winter
te – 手 hand or hands
daigaku imo – 大学芋 sweet potatoes deep fried with either sugar or honey. A favorite treat of students
onara – おなら fart
Tengoku – 天国 Heaven. Used in this case much as “heavenly!”
