bekolay.org

It's probably clear by now that I don't really have a well-defined purpose for this blog; thus far I've attempted to amuse, educate, editorialize, and swear in front of my mom. Today, old man Bekolay is going to tell you a story. So take a seat, brew yourself some tea, and prepare for a journey into the deep dark recesses of my memory.

Me, circa 2006. Yes, the doors in Japan are this tiny!
Note: normal Japanese doors not at all tiny in any way.

I spent a year in Tokyo, from September 2005 to August 2006, as part of Kokugakuin University's K-STEP program. A lot of fucked up things happened during that year, but if you were to ask me what was the most fucked up (which, amazingly, no one has asked) I would have to say it was the 8 day-long homestay that I did in Seto.

As tends to happen, memories fade over time, but I can assure you that these events happened. My translations are what I thought things meant at the time, but who knows how accurate they actually are.

The arrival

I arrived in Nagoya at around 4 a.m., having tried to save some money by taking the night bus.

I'm not entirely sure what prompted me to do the homestay, but part of it was to see a bit of Japan that was not Tokyo. Looking at the architectural excess that is the JR Towers, pictured on the right, did not give me the distinct impression that I was not in Tokyo any more.

But that meant Nagoya would probably also share another interesting feature of Tokyo: not far from this would be some old, forgotten buildings to serve as profound contrast.

Jackpot.

I always imagined that buildings like these housed old hermits that would refuse to sell their little plots of land. Incredible monuments to consumer excess -- like the JR Towers -- would rise around them, and they would look from their window and shake their heads. Real estate agents would visit constantly trying to get them to sell their choice plots, but they refused, and the entire community would avoid those roads with such an eyesore of a building, until eventually the old hermit would die and "progress" could commence.

I had another few hours until the trains started running to Seto, so I grabbed a beef bowl at the only place near the station that was open and not McDonald's. It was only me for a while, until a salaryman wearing the requisite all-black suit took a seat and bellowed an order that I did not at all understand. I wondered if he was on his way to work or just coming home from it.

I somehow made my way by train and foot to the Seto City International Center (featured also in a picture on Seto's Wikipedia page). I found the right office, and made small talk with the cute girl who was to introduce me to my host family. I was relieved that she spoke decent English, but reminded myself that the other part of this trip was to learn some goddamn Japanese. My host family, for better or worse, did not speak any English.

The first day

That hole in the paper curtain of the glass doors is approximately where my head would be when I slept.

The part of the homestay family that I got the most exposure to was the mother and one of the daughters, who was my age. It took the span of the car ride home to know that something was up: the mom worked most of the day, so it was going to be me and the daughter alone together for most of the eight days.

This wasn't necessarily unpleasant, as it meant I would get a ton of one-on-one conversation experience -- or at least, I would have, if either one of us were able to keep a conversation going for longer than two minutes.

We spent most of the first day in the car together -- me and the daughter -- running various errands. I really did try my best to keep a conversation going, but whether it be my weak Japanese or the fact that she was super boring, there was a lot of silence. I questioned what the fuck I was doing there, but that was not really that unusual for my year in Japan.

The dog

If there was a real relationship that I formed over the homestay, it was definitely with this adorable dog.

I've never had a dog, or any kind of animal that will do tricks on command, but I've always found it kind of awkward giving commands to dogs.

I say "Sit! Roll over!" and make some explanatory gesture with my hands.

They give me a funny look and wag their tails. Yet I'm the one that feels like an idiot.

That idiot-feeling multiplies by a bajillion when you're giving the commands in a language you're not fluent in. "Suwatte! Whatever-the-fuck-roll-over-is-in-Japanese!" *Awkward hand wave*

But that little dog actually did the things that I sort-of said. So we became friends.

The kid

It was probably the second day that the daughter realized that she was going to need some help wrangling me. Perhaps there was originally the thought that I would be a prospective mate for her and was judged unsuitable, or perhaps the homestay thing was all her mom's idea and she didn't really have any interest. In any case, she seemed to realize that she couldn't keep my entertained, so she brought in the big guns: this kid.

He was another daughter's son (I'll just call her daughter two (electric boogaloo) because I definitely don't remember any of their names). I'm not sure his actual age, but he was probably two or three -- able to speak, but not yet in school.

Now, I'm not really comfortable around kids. They're cute enough, but they don't really have a lot of music suggestions to share, and they don't think it's funny when I ironically call something "Kafka-esque."

Add in the fact that this kid knows Japanese better than I do, and you've got perhaps the most awkward exchanges ever known to humankind. People have claimed in the past that I'm awkward, and I stare them down, say "You don't know what awkward is" and then have a seizure as the memories of interacting with this kid come flooding back.

Most of those eight homestay days looked like this:

• Get up at around 9, try to stay in my room as long as possible.
• Inevitably get called for breakfast. Eat.
• Continue sitting at the table watching terrible Japanese chat shows while the kid jumps around and hits me with a little plastic samurai sword.
• Share desperate looks with the dog.
• Supper.
• Have an amazing bath (my god the baths were amazing).
• Shake myself to sleep.

There is an odd phenomenon that I've noticed in Japanese families: children are very rarely disciplined. The parents may be annoyed, embarrassed, and frequently depressed about their children's behaviour, but the smack isn't laid down. Instead, kids go on being rambunctious little bastards until the sixth grade, when entrance exams start, and they are told that they have to study all day and all night to get into a good junior high school, or else they won't get into a good high school, which means they won't get into a good college, which means they won't get a good job and they'll die penniless and alone.

After sixth grade, they behave. Or they're just depressed, whichever. The point is they stop bugging me.

The drinks

One of the highlights of each day was that supper would always involve the consumption of a beer or two; refreshing, of course, and conversation would be a bit freer as I imagined that my Japanese was better than it was, and the homestay family would find it hilarious.

One day we were joined for supper by the brother of the family. He was actually a really cool guy, a factory worker I think, or some other type of job involving manual labour. I had been watching the Baseball World Cup (which Japan actually ended up winning), because really what else was I going to watch, and we had what I thought was a decent conversation about it. I felt pretty good for probably the first time on the homestay.

We kept drinking even past supper, and he seemed to enjoy himself. Perhaps too much.

And then a few minutes later...

Awww

The movie

On one of the nights, we went to a video store with some of the daughter's friends to rent something to watch. I saw this, which made me giggle, but I realized that the humour would probably not translate to Japanese, so I didn't suggest it.

The title, "Basu otoko," translates to "Bus man," which I assume was an attempt to piggyback off the success of "Densha otoko," or "Train man," a very successful Japanese movie.

Instead, they picked up the Tim Burton / Johnny Depp version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A fine choice.

Unfortunately, when we got back, we watched it in Japanese with no English subtitles. So much for my two hour reprieve from Moonspeak.

The misunderstandings

When you spend most of your day sitting around, watching television that you don't fully understand, and dodging toys wildly thrown from a surprisingly strong kid, you take pretty much any opportunity to do something to occupy your mind.

One day, the mom was heading to her mom's house (the grandma) and asked if me and the daughter wanted to come. I said "Sure."

She was a very nice old lady, but like a lot of the Japanese elderly, she was way too spry and active for her own good. As the three of us under-50s sat on the couch, the grandma was cooking us up a nice lunch and cleaning the kitchen simultaneously.

"Can I help?" I said. Or, that's what I thought I said. I think it probably came out more like "Am I able to help?" which is a weird thing to yell at someone as they're working in the kitchen.

"What?" she yelled back.

"Um... can I help?"

She walked into the living room. "What?" She turned her gaze from me to the mother, a move that anyone trying to get by in a foreign language knows is a huge diss.

"I think he's asking if he can help you," she translated from my broken Japanese.

"Oh. No, that's okay."

Another time, daughter two had come over to help watch the kid and do some chores around the house. When she was folding some laundry, we had the following exchange.

"Can I do something?" I said. Or, that's what I thought I said. Pronouns aren't really used in Japanese, so what daughter two thought I said was "Can you do something?"

"What do you mean?" she replied.

"You know, housework."

She brightened up, and with a huge smile replied "Oh yeah! I'm pretty good at cleaning up, though I'm not a really good cook."

"Oh, uh... I mean, can I help out by doing some housework?"

The smile left her face. "Oh. No, that's okay."

The family gathering

I'm not sure if this gathering was really in my honour or not, but on the second to last day, everyone in the family got together and had a huge meal. Everyone that I'd previously met, plus a few other random family members, crowded into the grandma's house.

One of the younger female cousins (who was pretty sassy) was playing a teach-yourself-English DS game. She was having some trouble with one part, so she asked me if I could do it.

Do it I could. Being a native English speaker with no significant hearing difficulties, writing the spoken English sentence in English was no problem. My captive audience of most of the people there seemed very impressed, and in a sick way, I was kind of happy to hear that praise. "Yeah, motherfuckers, when I'm not making a fool of myself in Japanese, I speak a language fluently! It's called English. Let me teach you of its ways."

Later on in the evening, probably about midway through dinner (and perhaps three or fours beers in) I had a bit of a moment with one of the uncles, the father of the cousin who I summarily crushed in the English-DS-game challenge.

"I should have taken you to the castle that's around here. You know, Oda Nobunaga occupied it for a time." He looked at his daughter. "You know why he's important?"

She shook her head. I said, "He was the first daimyo to use guns strategically in battle."

He smiled. "See, that's why I like you foreigners, you're keeping Japanese history alive. My stupid kids couldn't care less."

That translation makes him seem like kind of a dick, but he was an incredibly nice, warm guy and his kid clearly knew he was joking.

After the meal, everyone was loud and boisterous, and I was being bombarded with questions about what I thought about the meal, Japanese food in general, my time in Japan, what things are like back at home, and so on. I tried my best to answer, but even with my false alcohol-granted confidence, I couldn't come up with responses nearly as fast as questions were being asked.

It was at about this point that the following picture was taken.

The daughter is the girl in the top left, giving two peace signs. The uncle is to her right. The mom is to the left of me. The grandma is the farthest on the left. The cousin is the girl on the far right. I'm the white guy.

Now, I've been in a lot of pictures in my day, and a lot of those pictures are pretty fucked up. Look through the pictures that I'm tagged in on Facebook and you're probably going to ask yourself "What the fuck" at least once.

Well forget all that stuff, this is by far the most fucked up picture I've ever been in. In fact, this post was inspired by me stumbling upon this picture recently; I don't think I've ever actually shown it to anyone before, and I thought to myself "How can I ever explain how fucked up this picture is?"

The departure

I really wish I still had those shoes.

The eighth day was my last. I had booked the night bus again, so I had to be back in Nagoya by 10 p.m. or so. My homestay family didn't need to know that. I had them drive me to Nagoya once I got up.

It wasn't that they were unbearable to be around or anything, but when I compared another day as described in bullet points above with a day of walking around Nagoya, which I hadn't really explored much on the way out, I had to opt for Nagoya. Also, they were kind of unbearable to be around.

I locked my suitcase in a locker at the station, and walked around for a good eight hours, listening to music. Nagoya has an area analogous to the Akihabara district of Tokyo, which I checked out, but left unimpressed.

Eventually I found a bookstore and flipped through a book called "How to Make Out in Japanese," a Japanese-English phrasebook strictly for use in the bedroom (I had no need for it while in Japan, but now I wish I'd gotten it because it had some hilarious phrases). Eventually I found an English book section, and read The Little Prince cover to cover.