Maybe there are places in Japan just for Japanese people

I can remember everything.  Humanities class had just finished and most of the other students were already out the door.  My notebook and pen and some papers were still out on the wood-textured plastic row tables.  Jon was standing by the giant map - the ones that pull down out of a collection of other rolled up maps.  I used to marvel that Mrs. King-Kalnek could always pull exactly the map she wanted, and there weren't even listings on the tabs. She never ever made a mistake and pulled out the wrong map.  I'm positive.  The big map of Africa hung there because we were studying the ancient kingdoms of Ghana, Mali, and Songhay.  But it was a current map. John pointed and said, 'Hey Derek, say this country's name.'  As soon as I looked up at his finger I understood the joke.  But I said it anyway.  

"Nigger."

He was of course pointing to Niger.  Mrs. King-Kalnek whipped around and demanded, 'What did you say?' so quickly that I almost didn't understand her.  I couldn't say anything.  I couldn't move as she strode toward me.  I knew I shouldn't have said it, I still don't know why I did.  I was scared.  She stopped in front of me, looked me right in the eyes and said, calm as she could though I knew she was furious, 'Don't say that word.'  Her voice betrayed her and rattled.  Then, my memory gets hazy.  I can't remember exactly what happened.  I can't remember if she said more, or if I just said I was sorry.  I don't actually remember whether I said I was sorry or not.  I was sorry, though.  I am sorry.  

I start remembering at Jon's laughing.  He had run out of the room after I said it, but came back to wait by the door.  I think he wanted to see what was going to happen to me.  For some reason, he started laughing.  Mrs. King Kalnek snapped her neck to him and barked, 'Get in here.'  He came in.  She shouted, 'And you're even worse if you think this is funny!' without feigning control.  Then we left.  

I remember those words crystally clear.  "You're even worse if you think this is funny."  "You." She didn't condemn the word, and she didn't condemn the act.  She condemned me.  Just because of a word.  

Since that day, every time I hear 'nigger' I have the same reaction.  I freeze.  My body remembers Mrs. King-Kalnek snapping around and the intensity of her eyes.  The little black spots were dancing madly.  'It's wrong.  Don't say that word.  How could you say that word.'  That's what I think now about people who say it.  Mrs. King-Kalnek was entirely successful in passing her loathing of that word on to me.  On the other hand, she made me so scared of it that I never wanted to revisit it, or race at all, for that matter.  When I said 'nigger' in middle school, I didn't realize it's history, the power behind it, and the effect it had on people.  It was nothing more than a taboo word. But the strength of her reaction and the force in her eyes scared me from talking about it again. What if I, once more, were to say something without knowing the connotations and context? This is not limited to just words, mind you. What if I expressed an opinion or a thought or a joke that provoked the same visceral reaction?  I never wanted to see anyone look at me like that again.  She hated me in that moment, despite what she might have said later.  'You are even worse,' replays over and over.    After that, I felt it better to just leave the whole area alone.  Racism and racial slurs are all bad.  Don't explore it.  Just know it.

It's been a long time since the eighth grade, but I only started thinking seriously about stereotypes, prejudices, discrimination, slurs, and where I fit in, recently.  High school didn't really challenge me to explore it, and college certainly didn't, one 'History of the American '70s' class excluded.  But in that case I came from the angle of an impartial observer measuring facts with plastic gloves through a glass wall and thirty years.  I didn't feel it.  I suppose I had never been discriminated against.  No one had ever given me cause to get the eyes like Mrs. King Kalnek had almost ten years ago.  Then, I went to Wakkanai.

Picture, if you can, Ryan and I in a desolated town.  A town with a feeling like it had been quickly abandoned because of a plague, or zombies, or a plague of zombies...  There had been a summer festival about three hours before, so vendors' tents were still out and the streets were littered with papers and rubbish from the raucous gathering.  Clues abounded that quite recently the streets had been hopping.  But, the party had died suddenly and no one had stayed around to clean up the mess.  Pushing midnight, we strolled around looking for something to do.  When we couldn't find any dry alternatives, we decided to hit the bars.  (Really mom, we did try!)  Unfortunately, for humanity (not my liver), none of the bars would let us in.  At every bar, the same played-out play played out.  

Setting - Bar, dimly lit.  No one else in the seats.  Woman in tight black dress or man in flowing dark clothes behind wooden counter, Japanese.  American pops playing lowly on the speakers, barely audible.

(Door opens)

Barkeep:  いらっしゃいませ。 (looking down)   Note: いらっしゃいませ (Irrashaimase) is the standard greeting when a customer walks into a shop.  It is such an ingrained, habitual set expression that workers at stores are programmed to say it whenever a door opens.  They don't actually care if someone walks in or not.  If I brought a tape recorder with sounds of doors opening, I bet I could get a clerk to greet me 36 times before he or she noticed something fishy, like only one person in the store.

Derek:  今晩は。 (perfect Japanese pronunciation)  Note: 今晩は(Konbanwa) means 'good evening'.

Barkeep:  今晩は。 (decent Japanese pronunciation)  

(Barkeep looks up to find two immaculate, well groomed men, early twenties.  Conservative adjective for the Adonissi might be 'strapping'.  Upon sight recognition, barkeep quickly throws her arms up in front of her face in an 'X' shape, meaning 'no.'  

Derek:  なんで?  Note: なんで (Nande) means 'Why?'

Barkeep:  もうすぐ閉めるからです。Trns:  Because we're going to close soon.

  

Derek:  本当？！ Trns:  Really?!

Barkeep: (with much feeling) 本当です。Trns: Really.

That happened three times.  Ryan and I both knew the bar wasn't closing.  But, skeptical reader as I know you are, I will offer proof.  There was only one main street with bars and the like, and in our search Ryan and I walked up and down for a good hour and a half.  The bars, miraculously, were getting fuller and fuller.  Imagine that...  Also, we found out later, by contacting the only ALT in Wakkanai, that he has the same problem in that town.  Perhaps he is an awful guy, but I have a hard time believing that.  

Finally, on bar four, we managed our way in.  At first the man said no, but I really concentrated on my Japanese and pleaded our case.  I attempted to say that if he didn't have an excuse better than, 'We're closing,' or 'You're not Japanese,' Ryan and I were not going to leave.  In Japanese, he told me he was worried about his ability to speak English to us.  Take a moment and re-read that sentence.  Finally he let us in, and Ryan and I ended up having a pretty good time playing darts and talking to other people there.  The bartender even showed us his favorite Metallica videos.  Go figure.  

Being turned away because I wasn't Japanese didn't bother me most.  The prospect of not being able to drink at bars in Wakkanai didn't bother me most.  What bothered me most was my reaction to being turned away.  After the third bar, I might actually have believed a little bit that I wasn't good enough for the bars.  When I pleaded at the fourth bar, that emotion didn't spring from a dying physical need for alcohol, or a cry for a way to combat boredom.  I wanted to get in there and show them that I was a good guy!  I wanted to show them that Ryan and I were exceptional foreigners who were different than what they had encountered before.  I wanted to show them that I was more like them and less like me.  In the bar, I concentrated on my Japanese and made more of an effort to talk to people in Japanese than I ever do.  I even buried my gut reactions.  When I speak Japanese, I generally react in English.  Rather than switching to the Japanese equivalent, I stick to phrases like, 'No way!' or, 'Cool!' or 'That's fantastic,' in English.  But I withheld those.  Ryan had the same sort of feelings, too.  Ryan speaks a little Japanese, but since he just started learning a year and a half ago and didn't start taking real lessons until after our trip, his Japanese at the time was very much a noticeable process.  In the bar, he hardly said anything, even to me.  He told me, after we left, that he was afraid to speak English because the other people might not like it.  

In the span of merely two hours, Ryan and I had started to doubt our worth.  We kowtowed because we wanted to fit in.  We threw our language away to apologize for mistakes we assumed others like us had made.  We bought into the charade that we as ourselves weren't good enough.  I still can't believe we tried so hard to get into somewhere where we were so unwanted.  We believed the racists in Wakkanai.  

And now that I'm out of that place, and the inferiority spell is broken, it's hard not to think about those people without hating them.  Not for turning me away, but for making me feel those things about myself.  If I went back there, I think I would try and show them all just how different I am and how proud I am to be different.  And if a woman in a tight black dress or a man in flowing dark clothes tells me I can't come in, I know those inferior feelings would come surging up.  And the best way to bury those is to beat them back - force them down. I'd want to lash out real hard and real bad...

But I wouldn't.  Because I remember the eighth grade.  And I remember the mad-dancing eyes.  And I remember what it feels like to be 'you' and not know why.  

Maybe I'd try to get in and be myself, or maybe I'd just walk away.  I'm really not sure.

First is the Worst, Second is the Best, Third is Irrelevant for My Purposes

"Why the hell would we want to see the most northern point in Japan when we can see the second most northern point in Japan with more difficulty?"  I asked.  To me and Ryan, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable question.  To our Japanese friends, it took some explaining.  Clearly, the only reason that people come to this city in the middle of nowhere is to see the most northern part of the mainland.  That means the most northern part will be infected with all the people who we wanted to get away from.  You know, all them city folk with their new fangled phones, and their rock and roll music, and their Twinkies, and their science.  They'd just be a-gawkin at this 'n that, ta'in' pichurs n' laffin...  There would be fleets of busses whose insides looked like rocket ships complete with amenities and toilets and foot-rests and personal space.  There would be gift shops with hoozits and cloppits, bonkers and cadoodles, maybe even winkers and prots.  There might even be English...  Everywhere you go in Japan, you see English.  Most signs are bilingual.  (That means they like both ways equally, but I personally think that's bullshit.  I know they prefer one or the other...I'm on to you bi-signs...((shakes fist)))  I wanted to see a place that didn't have signs in English.  There must have been a time in Japanese history when all the signs weren't in English, right?  I mean, Japan is older than English, right?  Right?!  And, thankfully, for my sanity, Wakkanai was one such place.  The signs were emphatically not translated into English.  They were translated into Russian.  

WhAt?!

Yes, Russian.  The signs on stores and shops were emphatically translated into Russian.  Clearly, no place in Japan is just for Japanese people.    

But, beggars can't be choosers.  At least I had found that feeling that I didn't know what the signs around me said.  Truthfully, I understand what the Japanese says, but at least I could imagine that had I come here when I first came to Japan I wouldn't have known what they said.  And that's what I wanted.  (Don't worry.  That doesn't even make sense to me re-reading it.) 

 

At any rate, after a little sight-seeing near the station, Ryan and I got down to the real purpose of our trip.  It took about twenty minutes and a crowd of three different groups to find our bus station.  Five minutes was spent assuring them that I understood what I was saying in Japanese, another ten was spent assuring them that we indeed did want to go to the second most northern point, another four was spent once again assuring them that I knew the difference between 'most' and 'second most' in Japanese, and the final minute was them pointing to a bus stop fifteen feet from us, as the bus was pulling away...

Now, as you can imagine, busses to the second most northern point in Japan aren't very frequent.  This was also explained to me, as well as the fact that three busses to the most northern point would be leaving before the next bus to the second most northern point came again.  But, Ryan and I stood firm.  Finally, our rickety bus pulled up, and we got on.  Shockingly, other people were on the bus.  Of course, they all got off before the last stop.  Except for a pair of twenty-somethings like us.  These Japanese guys were living out of their bags.  Unshaven, unkempt, we had a nice drive to the last stop at the end of the line just the four of us.  Nobody said anything, but we all knew.  As the bus weaved in and out between the run-down, bad smelling factories and the food shops hanging on for dear life, we knew we were almost there, to the second end of the world.  And here it is.

Derek:  This is it?

Everybody in the world except Derek and Ryan: C'mon, Derek, what were you expecting?

This is Ryan at the second most north point in Japan.  Can you feel the excitement too?

There was also this dolphin thingy.

Now, my tone may be a little sarcastic, but that's just for your amusement, reader.  The truth is, I had a great time.  It was really quite a journey to get to the dolphin thingy.  Two hours by train from Kitakami to Sendai.  An hour plane ride from Sendai to Sapporo.  A six hour bus to Wakkanai.  The whole time, Ryan and I were talking, or just looking at the scenery go past us, or laughing at how strange we are.  Remember, anyone can go to the 'most something or other'.  Trips are designed around going to the most famous places in a city.  That's easy stuff, fed to you for your consumption enjoyment.  It's an altogether different trip if you want to go to the 'second most something or other.'  And, its probably cheaper too!

Also, I got to eat some delicious sea food ramen at a hole in the wall shop.  Now, if a Japanese person asks me what the best food in Wakkanai is, I have answer to give that might actually give him pause.  "Well, my friend, there's a little place up at the second most northern point in Japan...  Do you know it?  No?  Really?  Hmm."  Then again, he might just assume that it's the second best ramen in Wakkanai.

 

A view from the outside

A view from the inside.  Please note the fly-paper strips hanging right over the food-making area.

Fly sou~ er, I mean... Crab Ramen

Please recall that Wakkanai, the name of the place I went, sounds a lot like the Japanese word for, 'I don't know.'

Principal:  So, where are you going this vacation?

Derek:  I don't know.

Principal:  What?!

Derek:  I said, I don't know.

Principal:  No no... I heard you.  It's just that Chihiro Sensei told me you already bought your ticket.

Derek:  Yeah, I did.

Principal:  Well, what does it say on your ticket?

Derek:  I don't know.  

Principal:  Oh!  You can't read it, can you?

Derek:  No, I can read it just fine.  It says I don't know.

Principal:  How does the ticket know?

Derek:  How does the ticket know what?

Principal:  That you don't know.

Derek:  What?

I apologize.  But it was funny to me when that happened.

By the end of January I have to tell my school whether or not I'll be staying in Japan for the next year, that is, until the summer of 2010.  Last year's decision was much easier than this one.  At this point last year, I had only been in Japan for half a year, which really didn't seem like enough time.  As it turned out, it wasn't.  But now, a year and a half in, I have to decide about the next year and a half.  It seems like the stakes are a lot higher this time around, and I really am twisting in the current.  

I had intended to write a regular update email to my friend Eric, but what came out instead is interesting, to me.  Hopefully it will be interesting to you, too.  I sent it out over a month ago, and upon re-reading it, it's still a good representation of how I feel.  So, here it is, word for word:

The fact is, I am at a crossroads Eric.  The only reason that I wouldn't stay in Japan for another year, and maybe more, is because I would think I was wasting my talents and not paying my dividends.  Perhaps it is strange of me to think of myself as a commodity, but I feel like I owe it to so many people to follow the gold-paved path and make some bank (editor's note - money).  My grandparents and parents and relatives have invested in my education throughout the years, and, if I put my foot on the gas, I could probably have the 'successful,' 'easy,' life that they had always envisioned someone in our family finally getting.  I could be the realization of making more than enough money to be comfortable, and doing so without using my hands.  In fact, my whole generation, including my three cousins, are primed for that step in (excuse the sappy reference) the Polish-American immigrants' dream.

But, the truth is, I am comfortable now.  No, I can't care for anyone else, and at this rate I'll have to work my whole life, but I am quite comfortable.  I have no job stress, aside from the pressure to make ready-to-graduate Japanese high school seniors interested in English.  I have no living stresses.  I stay at work if I want.  I go home if I want.  I do what I want when I want.  I live in a really beautiful environment, besides the wolf-deer.  (editors note - When Eric came to Japan, for one day I had to work and I let him loose, alone, on my fair city of Kitakami.  He biked up into the mountains and there was 'attacked' by some sort of creature.  In his efforts to get away, he didn't get a good look at the beast.  He described it as some sort of hideous cross between a rabid jaguar and a fierce boar.  It turned out it was a deer.)

In general, I feel like in Japan I can be the person that I want to be (and hopefully really am) more than I ever could in America.  I feel free and easy.  I feel like everything I do, even shopping, is an adventure.  It's a wonderful feeling.

It's ok to make a new personality, to strip the American Derek to the bone and build up again with a 'Japanese' coat.  If I go back to America now, I'll just find my old coat and put it back on.  I'll lose that everyday sense of adventure that leads me to talk to strangers and climb mountains and travel on weekends and dance stupid and play ridiculous games in public and do shotty (editors note - blowing hookah smoke into other people's mouths) with other dudes and play in a band live for people (Matt and I have formed a Whitestripes cover band.  We've played for people, not in a club or anything yet, but we will get there soon...) and start a book group to read and discuss Brothers Karamazov or wear a penguin suit and look like a fool in front of 200 high school kids.  I can do all those things back in New York, or anywhere in America for that fact.  But I probably won't.  I understand that that doesn't say a lot about my personal conviction to be unique and explosive and chase what I really feel is fun, regardless of other people's perceptions, but if its the anonymity of living in Japan that I need to do so, then so be it, no?

Sometimes it feels like a cop-out, though.  I should be able to do those things in New York.  I always had fun in America, no matter where I was.  Before I left for Japan, I was so sad about leaving America.  Leaving my family, the house I knew, understanding what signs say, you, Jen...  But very quickly I forgot about all that.  Quicker than any transition I ever made, in fact.  All I know is that when I was on the plane from Tokyo to JFK for Peter's wedding, and I was 'leaving' Japan, I was very, very sad.  I was sadder than when I made the reverse flight a year before.  AND I KNEW I WAS COMING BACK IN A WEEK!  I can't even imagine what it would be like to leave for good.

Well...  Sorry.  I had intended to write a couple of funny/interesting stories, but I got lost in this one.  I promise I'll write again soon with water-cooler banter.

Derek

Bound For I Don't Know

Summer vacation amongst the JET community is an opportunity to put those hard earned yen to work.  Many people use the week off in summer, as well as some of their precious twenty vacation days, to tour other countries in Asia.  Flights to China, South Korea, Cambodia, and especially Thailand are all, of course, much cheaper from Japan than they are from everyone's home countries, half a world away.  People also use the break to return home.  In general, summer vacation is a great time to get out of Japan.  

But, when Ryan and I sat down to discuss our plans, our conversation never left the borders of Japan.  It didn't even cross our minds to go elsewhere.  For whatever reason, we can't bring ourselves to leave.  Maybe we love Japan too much.  Maybe everything that we have seen, eaten, touched, and experienced so far has been so impressive that we want to wring as much of it from this country as possible while we are here.  Every different area of Japan has a speciality food.  Ask a person from Iwate what food you should eat in Okinawa, and they will tell you 'anything pig and goya champloo,' even if they have never been to Okinawa.  Ask an Okinawan what you should eat in Iwate, and they will probably say Morioka reimen, even if they have never left Okinawa.  It's like every Japanese person knows exactly what foods are good in what area, regardless of their personal experiences.  And, perhaps, Ryan and I have bought into that. Maybe we really do believe that the best miso ramen is in Sapporo, and the best tskemen is in Tokyo.  And, maybe we really do believe that to 'experience' Japan, we have to eat all of these foods from all of these different places, and do all these things in all these different places. 

Or, maybe we don't leave Japan because we're not ready.  Maybe we feel like we haven't yet caught the Japan we were hoping for, and visiting some other country for vacation would be an acknowledgment of our failure.  After all, if we love Japan so much, why should we want to leave?  

When I first found out, back in New York about a year and three months ago, that Iwate would be my home, I looked forward to getting away from everything familiar and starting over.  As one of the most rural prefectures in Japan, I envisioned, however misguided I might have been even at the time, dark nights in a house with no other houses around.  I saw myself reading and writing and studying and retreating from people.  At the same time I was nervous about withdrawal from society but also relishing the cliche, semi-romantic hermetic lifestyle.  I quickly found out how wrong I was.  Delivered to my city of 100,000 people, two gigantic malls, a movie theater, a train station (bullet train included) connecting me easily to any major city, and even an amusement area called 'American World,' complete with batting cages, movie rental store, Baskin Robbins and a ferris wheel, my nights and weekends have been anything but monastic.  This schism between my expectations of a quiet and disconnected lifestyle and the reality of my actual lifestyle, which is scarcely discernible from the one I had hoped to leave in America, readily affects my travel plans.  It's almost like my life is too good, and too comfortable here.  My seamless transition has left me wanting more of a challenge.

Perhaps that's why, when my parents came to visit, I dragged them to a town in the middle of nowhere to see some run-down temples that we had to walk quite a ways for.  I didn't want to see the giant, touristy temples of Kyoto.  I wanted to find something tiny and secluded, something I could call my own discovery. 

Perhaps that's why, for this summer vacation, Ryan and I decided to disregard standard JET policy and travel against the current.  We chose a place that prompted people, Japanese and foreign alike, to exclaim, 'What?  Why?!' when we told them of our plans.  We chose a place whose name's pronunciation sounds the same as 'I don't know.'  We went to the northern-most point of Hokkaido, the most sparsely populated island of Japan, and then went even further. We went to Wakkanai.

To get to Wakkanai, we travelled through Sapporo.  Sapporo is a fantastic city, and not small by any means.  The first day there, we met up with a college friend of mine who is also on the JET program.  The whole weekend, unbeknownst to us, was Sapporo's summer festival weekend. We ate, drank, and were generally merry.  There's no real reason to bore you with those experiences, since that was standard city party stuff: karaoke, an all you can eat/drink lamb buffet, outside festival with dancing and singing competitions, playing guitar in the grass with a Japanese blues man, and meeting other foreigners and walking loudly through the streets.  So, I'll just show a couple pictures of that part of the vacation, collect my thoughts, and get into the meat of the vacation - Wakkanai - in the next installment.

In fact, this is all that you need to know about Sapporo.

The next two pictures are of the famous canal in Otaru, which is a city about forty-five minutes by train west of Sapporo.  There is a lot of European architecture along the canal, like the gas lamps that line the canal.  The canal was nice, although a little too romantic for Ryan and my tastes.  We had to do something manly after walking the length of the 'darling canal' together. We hung sheet rock and drank a beer.  

This is not baseball

健太郎　川原 was born in the remote hills of Hokkaido, hidden from people and tucked away, alone with his parents. It was there, in his little bubble of forest, that he played amongst nature all day: catching fish, chasing frogs, making spears and fishing lines from whatever it is that people make those things from. He learned to be quick like a fox, fearless like a serow, and alert as an owl. He had to be, because nature never lets you win like your parents might have when you were younger. You can’t reset the game and try it on an easier setting, or put in a code and skip to the final boss. Falling rocks don’t apologize like a popped collared tennis instructor might after he accidentally pelts you with a soft, fuzzy green ball. 川原 learned, emphatically, that everything that is done must be done at a frenzied pitch of concentration and focus. One misstep in the woods and you don’t eat for a night, or you break your ankle, or worse yet, you get lost and eaten by a ravenous wolf-deer. When川原 finally emerged from his bubble of forest to go to middle school, scarred, pocked, and with more than a few wolf-deer carcasses to his name, he needed something to throw himself into day and night; he needed to find a home for his unbridled energy. He found baseball.

出礼久 was born on an urban hill, in one of the most un-remote cities in the world, hidden from people because there were so many others to look at, alone with his parents. It was there, in the greatest city in the world, that he played in the concrete jungle all day: catching trains, chasing ice cream trucks, making super-soakers that shot ketchup and staying cool during summers with video games and ice cream. He lived in a bubble of protection, never believing that anything bad would happen to him, probably because nothing bad ever did. His parents let him win games when he was younger just like he lets kids win against him now. He learned that life is a series of games, and you choose which ones to play hard, and which ones to take it easy for. In fact, he learned that in some games you don’t have to play your hardest to win; as long as you won, that was what was important. He needed something that was elegant and difficult, yet didn’t demand too much of him at every second. He found baseball.

健太郎　川原 and 出礼久, improbable and impossible though it may seem, found themselves coaching the same baseball team. They often talked.

出礼久: Why isn’t Miyamoto pitching the first game of the single elimination tournament? Shouldn’t our ace pitcher pitch a game that we have to win?
川原: But in the bullpen two days ago, his control wasn’t very good and he wasn’t throwing as hard as he usually does.
出礼久: That’s because it was a practice bullpen session. He was working on his form.
川原: Yes, but he wasn’t working on it hard enough. It didn’t look like his usual form. He looked like he was taking it a little easy.
出礼久: He was taking it a little easy!
川原: Exactly.
出礼久: Right….exactly. We agree.
川原: Yes, we do.
出礼久: So, he will pitch tomorrow, then?
川原: No.

川原: What a great game that was, wasn’t it 出礼久?
出礼久: I thought parts of it at the beginning were very good. But it took a long time for us to score 31 runs, and it was hot outside. I am very sun burnt.
川原: The team tried their hardest! And the other team looked a little dejected after the fourth inning.
出礼久: Well, I think that’s because they were losing 16-0.
川原: I hope they learned their lesson, though.
出礼久: What do you mean? They only had ten people, and one pitcher. They had to borrow two players from the basketball team just to have enough to play.
川原: But their body language was awful.
出礼久: Did we really have to keep stealing bases after it was 25-0?
川原: Yes, it’s our job to run, and it’s the catcher’s job to throw us out.
出礼久: I don’t think the catcher had ever played baseball before. And, did you forget that it was 31-0?
…

Of course, not every Japanese high school baseball manager was raised in the forest, but for the most part, the teams seem to play that way. Every team that I have seen, and it has been quite a few now, is polished in terms of the extraneous, non game-related matters. The water coolers are always filled. After the 5th inning, both teams sprint onto the field with rakes to sweep and tend. Foul balls that leave the playing field are retrieved almost immediately by the first year students who are waiting by the exit gates in track-like starting positions. Everyone bows to umpires, everyone screams encouragement through the entire game, be it a 3-2 thriller or a 31-0, heat stroke inspiring epic. Every batter runs out every hit ball. I have noticed, on my team, that if a batter makes an out and has to return to the far dugout, he never runs in front of the other team’s infielders. He either curls back around through foul territory, or runs a lap around the outfield shallows. Bats and helmets are dutifully collected and re-racked, first base and third base are both coached by players who relay signs from the dugout. Umpires never have to ask for more baseballs, or water. In the unlikely event that the visiting team retrieves a foul ball and gives it back to the young home team retrievers, the bow given in exchange for the ball is deep and sincere. Everyone has a responsibility. And, as far as I can tell, everyone views their responsibilities as equal to any other responsibility, including the players who are responsible for playing the actual game on a given day. Running after foul balls is a position just like shortstop is.

The term I used earlier, ‘extraneous, non game-related matters,’ I have come to realize, is my bias. On my high school team, no one wanted to get the water for the starters. No one wanted to chase foul balls because it meant you weren’t part of the game. You were extra. You yourself were extraneous, a servant for the people with more talent. Everyone fought, tooth and nail, for playing time. But, in Japanese high school baseball, just being on the team and being at the game is playing time.

Japanese high school baseball is more like a way of life for three years than a club. The baseball team, even if it is not a very strong team compared to other teams (like at my school), is above the other clubs. They practice everyday, without fail. Baseball practice, of course, includes studying for school classes. While other teams get days off to study where they like and how they like, or just take a day off, the baseball team comes to school and sits in a room and studies together. The captain of the baseball team is the appointed ‘spokesman’ for assemblies and functions, such as greeting a new principal or closing and opening school ceremonies. Only the baseball team gets 応援, or cheering. Before the big summer tournament, entire schools gather in their stifling gymnasiums and practice cheers for two hours every day for a week. They sing the school song, they rehearse scripted cheers and dances, and they learn player specific cheers for each player who might be in the starting lineup that day. These cheers are all written on paper and expected to be memorized before the big game.

And there in lies the difference. High school baseball in Japan is a ‘big game’ sport, just like American football. In fact, it is more so. There is no regular season in Japanese high school baseball. There are two tournaments a year, each one being single elimination. All the other games that are played, and there are plenty of practice games (believe me), mean nothing. Every baseball team gets put into its prefecture’s tournament at random, without seeds or regard for won-lost records. This is why 川原 demands his team to be ever on high alert. With only one game deciding their entire season, he can’t afford for his players to have a let down in intensity and effort during that one game. They have to learn how to turn themselves on, even if the weather is bad or something happened in their lives that has nothing to do with baseball. They need to learn to forget about what they are feeling and do what they were programmed to do: catch grounders, chase foul balls, make plays, fill water coolers, and lay down bunts. One misstep and the entire season is for naught. It’s really quite startling to realize that half of all high school baseball students in Japan play (in American terms) one game seasons.

While I can see where 川原 is coming from, I don’t agree with it. I believe that in playing each game and practice at a fevered, constructed pitch, he dilutes the intensity of the games which are intrinsically more special. And, in teaching them to forget about the moment and focus on the physical aspects of the game, he robs them of enjoying a truly special game. A high school game with friends, teachers, and classmates watching (because they all are bussed to the stadium, even if it is 3 hours away) is a memory forever, unless a player is too afraid of making a mistake or too focused on thinking about getting water. Baseball is a game, not a way of life.

Where exactly I fit in on this baseball team has always been a tight rope act. I preach not over-throwing, staying within yourself, it’s a long season type things. I generally handle the pitchers, because K was not a pitcher and so does defer to me on pitching things. I help with mechanics and ‘being a pitcher.’ The biggest thing I am trying to teach is the concept of ‘adjusting.’ The pitchers just don’t seem to do that. They will keep on throwing the same pitch in the same spot, in the same sequence, because that is how they were taught to do it. They really believe that there is some flaw in them that makes their outside slider always get hit to right field. If, somehow, they ‘do it’ better, they will get better results, they think. I try to teach them to look at their results, and then make decisions from there. If their slider always gets hit after a fastball, they probably shouldn’t do that anymore. It’s possible that the ‘perfect game plan’ doesn’t work for them, and they need to find their own. You ‘win’ by looking at the results you get and changing or not changing. But, maybe winning isn’t everything.

川原: This is not baseball.
出礼久: What do you mean?
川原: This is 野球.
出礼久: Isn’t that just the Japanese word for baseball?
川原: No, they are different games.
出礼久: But the rules are exactly the same.
川原: There is more to a game than the rules.
出礼久: That doesn’t make any sense. A game is nothing more than a set of rules.
川原: Is a painting just colors?
出礼久: There is no ‘winning’ in painting.
川原: Should a painter paint for himself, or for others?

(After laying off a slider in the dirt, Kousuke cracks the next pitch, an outside fastball, to right field for a line drive single over the right fielder.)

出礼久: That was beautiful.
川原: Yeah, it sure as. Nice batting.

What I came up with on my first day of summer vacation

There was a man who went to work, dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum. He sat at his desk and waited to be busy, organizing papers and fighting lazy. The kids never came and the rain never stopped so he didn’t go outside and just sat at his desk. Dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum.

Lonely goes slowly when you’re the only office employee not laughing at jokes. The clock refused to go any faster than once round a minute no matter how often he looked at it. Twelve o’clock was eating time. Eat earlier than twelve, and he would finish earlier than 12:30, leaving way too much day. Eat later than 12, and his stomach’s protests would grow too obstreperous. (He found that word one day when he ate earlier than 12 and had too much day left. It was the word of the day on May 28th, 2001. It’s a synonym for vociferous, which itself was word of the day on December 24th, 1999.) Eat exactly at 12, and he would leave himself with the best possible balance of boredom and hunger. Mind you, this number was not an arbitrary choice based on changeable fickles of human comfort or faulty perceptions of impressionable and gullible sensory organs. Twelve o’clock was a rigorously proved, fundamentally deterministic and solid result of three days during Winter Vacation when he solved a two variable max/min calculus problem, taking two days to relearn calculus in the process. The office didn’t mind. He told them that the funky symbols, like ‘∮,’ were advanced English that he was studying for the benefit of the students. 　This one means, ‘cycle,’ he had said. '∮∮' means ‘bicycle,’ and '∮∮∮' means ‘cat.’ The English teachers’ responses were panegyrical. (Has not been word of the day yet.) After all, he was an English expert.

When he questioned his superiors about what to do with his apparent windfall of time, they said, ‘If you get bored, just ask for something to do.’ So, five minutes later, he asked. They said, ‘Oh. Ask again later.’

Keyboards clicked, feet shuffled, people puzzled, writers wrote, phones rang, wringers wrung, rings rang, runners ran, principled principals planned practical things, and all the while, the lonely assistant English teacher pondered how much more interesting the world would be if dolphins had thumbs. (Dolphins are one of four known species to be able to recognize themselves in mirrors.)

He imagined a world where the sea was not mankind’s swimming pool. A world where going tuna fishing was like trying to steal diamonds from a museum because the dolphins were amassed and waiting to protect their treasures. Of course Japan would be the most affected, what with their love of tuna and precarious position as an island nation surrounded by disgruntled, thumbed warrior dolphins. The war would start there. The first round would be an easy victory for the dolphins. The Japanese, with their superiority-over-dolphins complex, would simply march out to sea in regular boats armed with harpoons and the like. All the dolphins would need to do was swim under the hulls and unscrew the screws holding the ship together. Underwater ambidextrousness in the wrong hands is a powerful tool, the dolphins would teach the Japanese.

Round two would be a much fairer fight, with ship screws facing inward. And so the fighting would go for years and years, through ebbs and tides, with control flip-flopping like a dolphin out of water between the sides. During a lull in the action, the dolphins would demand prisoner release under the context that their flippered brethren were taken during peace-time and thus not able to be held under the Geneva Conventions. In addition, the public humiliation and torture of jumping through hoops for the sadistic pleasure of regular citizens who had nothing to do with the war furthered their case for immediate prisoner release, the dolphins argued. The Japanese prime minister quipped that if the dolphins could get to land-locked Geneva they were more than welcome to ‘have their fish back.’ Shortly after, the Great Dolphin Offensive of 2015 began.

It wasn’t just the boredom that was boring into the lonely ALT. It was also the weather. Muggy and humid, it made sitting still miserable. To combat the sweat and the heat, he found that he had to shut his mind completely off. If he let the calculus and kanji in, he’d also have to let the misery of each moment in along with it. The fundamental theorem of calculus smells like old wood, chalk, and Lilla’s hair, while 結婚 (marriage) smells like sweat and natto. (Miura Sensei was enjoying a particularly viscous batch of the stuff during lunch while the lonely ALT studied that kanji.) The knowledge is never separate from the moment it is acquired.
But shutting off the brain, even for a little while, is a dangerous game to play. Yes, it provides a reprieve from the physical environment, making the uncomfortable moments more bearable, but it also lets the body know that it don’t need to use the brain all the time to get through life.
There was once a man who went to work, dah dah dum, dah dah dum, dah dah dum dum dum. But today, he decided to talk more, rather than sit at his desk with his own thoughts, which were getting confused and jumbled. He struck up a conversation with an older teacher to his left, one whom he had not talked with much. In fact, he never really had seen her talk to anyone. She looked away slowly from her laptop. ‘I said, it’s a little hot today, isn’t it,’ he said.
‘Wouldn’t it be crazy if ∮∮∮s had thumbs? Oh! I’m sorry I can’t talk more now. It just turned 12 and I have to eat lunch.’

A Few From the Back Wall - Part III

A little bit of smut

The board was set. Food textures ran across the top, and food tastes ran down the left side, leaving a blank grid in the middle. That was where the learning lived. One by one, students came up and wrote a food in a suitable crossing. The cold and sweet square practically begged out loud for ice cream. It got it. Crunchy and salty? That’s a potato chip my friends. How about crunchy and sweet?
Sweet little Kanae had an idea. Usually a bit shy, she raised her hand because she figured she had this one nailed. Slowly and meekly she made her way to the front board. Looking down the whole time at her ordinary black shoes that covered her pigeon toed、yet common, strides, so that her face was blocked by her ordinary black hair, you could see her mind begging people to stop looking at her. She asked me if it was ok to write wherever she wanted. She asked in Japanese, of course. To sweet little Kanae, speaking English was nodding her head yes or no to an English question, even if the question was something like, ‘What is your name?’ I figured, since she had already overcome two fears, that of public walking, and public Japanese speaking, I’d let her get away with the English speaking.
After deciding for two minutes which color marker to use, she furiously contemplated whether she should remove the cap and put it on the back of the marker, remove the cap and put down in the little tray at the bottom of the board, or remove the cap and hold it in her left hand. She decided to hold on to it, probably so that her left hand wouldn’t have to make up something else to do.
‘So Kanae, what food did you pick for crunchy and sweet?’ I asked. She nodded: yes. But, she nodded in response very quickly. Indeed, her English was growing in leaps and bounds.
Slowly, steadily, she traced out the letter ‘c,’ with the patience and concentration of a heart surgeon. I gave her all the time she needed. After all, she was making sense. To her, the English language is nothing but squiggles and sounds, a code to hide a Japanese word. It doesn’t mean anything by itself.
Candy? Cake? Cookies? What was she going for? She moved her entire body one miniscule step over to the right so that her elbow could remain tucked firmly against her side as she wrote. She drew a circle. Except, in English, that means ‘O.’ Cookie! She was going to write ‘cookie.’ Cookies are definitely crunchy and sweet. Great job Kanae! She began to draw another circle. But this time, she left it open. In English, that means ‘C.’ So, on the board we had: C-O-C. C-O-C? That looks like brewing trouble. I was frozen though, because these squiggles and symbols, while meaningless to sweet little Kanae, have an intrinsic and instant power over me. She froze me deeper by writing a ‘K.’ All she needed to do was write one more letter, any letter, and the freeze would be broken. But, she finished. And there it was on the board. ‘COCK.’
Sweet little Kanae stepped away to look at it. She cocked her head slightly to one side. She knew that the symbols didn’t make sense. The code was broken. So, she went back to her desk to consult her codebook and fix it. As she pored over her dictionary, I started to laugh. Not a giggle, or a chortle, or even a snicker. This was a full body laugh, enough to draw the attention of everyone. Seeing my amusement, of course, every student jumped to their codebook to decipher the joy for themselves. Thank goodness they agreed with me that calling a male chicken crunchy and sweet is indeed as funny as I made it out to be. And thank goodness sweet little Kanae remembered how to spell ‘cookie.’
Later on, I told my friend Eric about what had happened. He asked me, ‘Well, which way did you fix it?’ I told him I didn’t know what he meant. He sighed, exasperated, ‘did you change the spelling to ‘cookie’ or did you move it to hard and salty?’