The Japanese were the first to miniaturize music. In 1979, Sony offered the Walkman TPS-L2 to the general public in Japan. It caught on in Japan largely as a way to pass the time during Tokyos infamously long train commutes; a boon to the sanity of the hapless salaryman who is twice daily subjected to the relentless, cramped quarters that characterize the cars of the Tokyo metro system. Listening to music over headphones gives you a sense of isolation from the people around you, and even if its just in your head, it still relieves the feeling of being boxed on from all sides by anonymous bodies for ninety minutes at a time.
Foreigners can never be a real part of Japanese society, but I feel distinctly Japanese when I tune out all the other bodies on the train through my headphones.
With my head buried in a motorcycle magazine sent from home, dreaming about better ways to get to work, and my ipod earbuds nested in my ear canals, I rode the Chiyoda line on its southwest-bound stretch towards Tokyo to work early one sunday morning. Absorbed in the mechanical intricacies of a motorcycle with the price tag of a Lexus, I didnt notice at first the woman standing in front of me who was trying to get my attention.
"Excuse me, do you speak English?", she asked. I looked up, removed my earbuds and closed my magazine . "Yes, I do...", I replied, stretching my vowels like an accordion player stretches his bellows, hoping she would detect my retincence to talk to her through my intonation. A lot of Japanese people will try to make conversation with you either on trains or on the station platform so they can practice their "English" for free. At first its endearing, but with time, you start to feel like an animal in a zoo, as it seems as if they dont realize that non-Japanese are, indeed real, living human beings like themselves. The Japanese are typically not very worldly.
"Is Japanese OK?", she then asked in Japanese. I was intrigued. "Yes, Japanese is fine", I replied in Japanese. Her face lit up, "I am Michiko Harada, pleased to meet you!", she beamed. "Makkaashii Kuin" I said, as my name is rendered in Japanese, pleased to meet you too.
She was older, in her late fourties or early fifties. The twilight age at which many women who have managed to get by on looks alone begin to realize gravity rides everything, and start to desperately overcompensate, chemically filling up every crease in their faces with powders and liquids and gels like bondo in an old dented Camaro.She was one of those women. She mightve been attractive in her younger years,but each passing year has been accompanied with another fraction of a milimeter of makeup, giving her skin a powdery, matte effect.
"Well, Im very sorry to bother you, but I run an English conversation school in Aoyama, it is called the 'Hana kurabu'; in Japanese, that means -"
"Flower Club, I understand" I said, starting to wish Sony would make a more effective social isolation device than headphones. "Wonderful! You have such skillful Japanese! Thats tremendous!"
"No, its really not" I mumbled. Warning bells were going off in my head. She was one of those "faaaabulous" people, the type who overuse superlatives, and have dogs the size of a five pound sack of sugar with annual grooming bills the size of a semesters tuition at Stanford.
"Well, anyway, I was wondering, since you are a foreigner, do you happen to be aquainted with any English teachers? My current teacher, Matt-san is going back to New Zealand soon".
"I cant imagine why. Yes, I know a lot of English teachers, I work at an English school now. I can ask around for you if youd like"
Her face lit up so fast I thought her makeup might fall off. "Its my lucky day! I was so worried! So, when would you like to come to my school? Just to take a look, maybe we can talk about hours and pay and all that kind of thing".
"Me?", I said, wondering what I had missed between the part when I said "Ill ask for you" and the part where she hired me.
Neuroscientists, philosophers and self-help authors have all said that there are small delays between the stimuli that your senses register and when those stimuli hit your brain. Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintainence claimed that due to this delay, what we percieve is all in the past, and since the past does not exist objectively, what we percieve is not, in fact, real. Stephen Covey, author of The seven habits of highly effective people, talked about a similar delay between cognition and response, and in that fraction of a second, we determine our responses to a situation, and by being aware of our automatic responses we can become less erratic, more responsible people. I failed on both counts.
"Sure. Sounds good, when and where?". Somewhere halfway around the world, Stephen Covey felt a psychic twinge of dissappointment in the deepest recesses of his mind. Not that it mattered, because apparently nothing is real anyway.
From a Louis Vuitton bag that probably cost about half of what I make in a month, she removed a Louis Vuitton wallet that cost about as much as I spend on my rent, utilities and cell phone bill combined. She presented to me, in typical Japanese fashion, an unremarkable business card in an elaborate ritual, with the card held out in front of her in both hands, in a half-bow, the jostling of the train not permitting a proper bow. I graciously accepted, sliding it gently into my plain brown leather wallet that I bought when my old one could no longer hold bills or my drivers license reliably.
"Would thursday be alright? My school is in Aoyama, it is callled 'Hana kurabu', you can get to it on the Chiyoda line, if you get off at Omotesando station I can meet you there".
On thursday, I found myself on Omotesando, the Champs-Elyssees of Tokyo.
"Oh my, your suit is very nice! Youre wearing a colored shirt! So many Japanese salarymen wear white shirts with their suits; Yes, colored shirts, its a very handsome look, dont you think? Well, shall we go to the Flower Club? Its quite close. We can drink some coffee or tea there. Which do you prefer, coffee? Tea?". Human language is at its core, a means of expressing relationships of ideas. The human brain doesnt work in linear ways the way speech does, but since we can only express one sound at a time, our minds structure spoken language linearly. Some people, for better or for worse, struggle with that physiological barrier to non-linear communication. Some have a dozen ideas that want out, but invariably reach that bottleneck that is the human vocal tract, and as a result, stutter and try to start the same sentence five times in five different ways, desperately attempting to say everything they want to at once. Others just let loose, throwing continuity to the wind.
We walked up three flights of stairs and down a walkway to a grey metal door. Printed on a magnetic strip the size of a bumper sticker was a sign advertising dried and live flower arrangment classes. She peeled it off and replaced it with one that advertised English conversation classes. "We have an English school here!" she said and smiled, as if it was the first time shed mentioned it.
The school was a one room affair converted from a studio apartment. It was tidy, its shelves populated with dried flowers arranged in small vases and small porcelain figurines of animals and children. "Would you like to see my photos? Ill show you some photos of my friends!" Bewildered, I watched as she rooted around in her closet, removing a photo album and placing it on the table in front of me. She opened it, pointing to a photo of a group of people eating in a backyard somewhere. "Thats prime minister Koizumis ex-wife. This is his son. Shes bitchy!". She smiled and turned the page. "This is my friend, shes a member of the national assembly. Dont you think shes fat? Kind of ugly, too". "Certainly is" I said without much conviction as I swirled the dregs off my coffee around the bottom out my cup.
Four hours later, we sat in a coffee shop on omotesando drinking the most expensive latte I have ever laid eyes on. I had been speaking Japanese for over six hours, and my head was beginning to hurt. I swirled the dregs and foam of a ten dollar coffee around the bottom of a bowl shaped mug and wished I was at home, sleeping. Sensing this, she again reached into the brown Louis Vuitton bag and removed a one thousand yen note. "Here, Ill pay for your return trip", she said. Good Japanese manners dictated that I refuse twice before accepting her offer. "Thanks a lot, Ill give you a call sometime, I have your business card" I said, slipping the note into my back pocket as I stood up. One of the perks of being a foreigner in Japan is that you dont have to observe good Japanese manners any more than dogs have to observe the etiquette rules that dictate which fork to use first. If you do, its a miracle, if you dont, its nothing shocking. "Thanks for the coffee" I said, bowing, then turned on my heel and walked towards the Chiyoda line.
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