32, born in Chicago, served in the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast and Madagascar.
I don’t know why I’ve held Japan to a different standard than I have the other great places of my life. Moving around as much as I do, I’ve noticed that it takes me at least eight months to get settled in a place enough to make friends and have a social network to the point that the place begins to feel like home. That’s how it worked in Africa, and that’s how it worked in Dunsmuir, California, the logging town in the northern mountains that I settled in after the Ivory Coast war, and where I wrote Whiteman. Really, in both places, I spent months and months completely isolated and almost desperate for companionship. Then right at month eight, everything came together. In Africa, I learned to speak Worodougou after eight months of being the village whiteman fool, and in Dunsmuir, I went for long walk in the woods after long walk in the woods before I suddenly found myself surrounded by a community of like-minded souls.
Well, my stay in Japan is only five months long, so everything has had to move at a quicker pace. What is five months really? One short growing season and nothing more, a prelude, just the beginning of something. So why have I been so freaked out here about my--admittedly harsh at times--isolation? I chose to live in Nemuro after all, probably the most xenophobic community in all of Japan because of the question of the Northern Territories, which, as I’ve said to no end, I can see from my window. Nowhere is the anti-foreigner sentiment stronger with all the propaganda billboards and protests and whatnot, not to mention that many of the families expelled from the Northern Territories by the Russians in the late ‘40’s settled here.
I haven’t written in awhile. Here’s why: Four months into my stay in Nemuro, I suddenly have two good friends. They both came out of nowhere to bite me in the ass and turn my assumption about Japan being a closed society on its head.
First is Hideki. Now I could have presented myself at the local high school and gotten involved in teaching English and had all the natural associations that that would have brought me, but after a six month stint as a high school English teacher in Madagascar, I have had my fill for life of teaching English as a second language. The students made very little progress and I spent all of my time in Ambohimahasoa walking through town with everyone and their brother shouting at me, “How are you fine, how are you fine.” Sure, Madagascar is a bad example as none of those poor rice farmer kids would ever need English enough to make a real effort studying it, but the point is, I did not want to spend my days here being laughed at by high school students, I wanted to carve out an alternative niche for myself. Now I know legions of ESL teachers would take me to task for this, but at the same time, I think they also know what I'm talking about. If you have a passion for that sort of attention, then that’s that. I don’t. Also, teaching English to Japanese would have undercut my stated aim: getting to know the Ainu.
Now I have gotten to know the Ainu to the point that I am rather Ainu-ed out. Here’s where Hideki comes in.
My plan for meeting people in Nemuro has been the same from day one: get outside, smile, try to strike up conversations, see where that would lead. If you’ve kept up with my blog, you’ll know that that strategy led to some good exchanges, but also to police arrest and interrogation, to constant police harassment, to shunning by the locals, to catcalls from the punk kids in the park. Still I persisted in being a visible presence here, even though I am a lowly gaijin who looks Russian enough to be a real Russian, which the people of Nemuro hate more than anything else in this world. I have been harassed by the police on my walks and bicycle rides so relentlessly that anyone who approaches me these days I assume to be an undercover police officer about to ask me for my papers. And no matter that the police have been polite and professional every time, it is not a nice feeling to be continually singled out for questioning.
Everyday I have my lunch at the supermarket. I get a plastic bento and sit in the cafeteria and eat. Dozens of old folks do the same, and in that way I’ve become a regular. Well, six weeks ago a young guy came and sat at my table and began to speak Russian to me. When I responded in English, his eyes lit up and he said, “You are not Russian?”
“American,” I said.
“Oh then you are a tourist.”
“No I live here.”
The young man was Hideki and we left the supermarket and went on one of our first long walks through Meiji Park. My Japanese has become almost conversational somehow (the somehow being, as always with languages, through night after night of studying and hard work), and between English and Nihongo (Japanese in Japanese), Hideki and I found a language of our own. Now he’s asked me to promise to not give him away and get him into trouble, so a lot of what I’m going to write about now is facetious and phony. But what’s not phony is that Hideki is part of a branch of the Japanese armed services stationed here in Nemuro. Let’s say he is with the Coast Guard. But the reason Hideki and I met is rather hideous: Hideki is part of a detachment of his branch of the armed forces who specialize in the Russian language. His unit walks about Nemuro in plain clothes, approaching Russians here from the Northern Territories for shopping. They try to befriend the Russians and find out what they are really doing here. It’s a garbage cloak and dagger maneuver, and I say garbage, because I highly doubt that any of the Russians here are doing more than shopping, buying food and televisions to take back with them to their grim lives on the grim and un-developed Kuril Islands, 6000 miles from any real home they know in the Russian government‘s attempt at populating and controlling the Kurils. So Hideki went to work that day looking to bag a Russian, and instead he found me. Hideki speaks very good English and is a polyglot like I am. If I had been Russian, he would have pretended to be interested in the Russian language and culture to ingratiate himself, and then he would have done his subtle interrogation. But in me he found an unexpected release, and we spent that first day in the park with Hideki unloading himself to me in English.
First of all, Hideki is a terrible soldier. That’s how he himself describes himself. He hates his job and feels dirty hoodwinking the Russians that he’s assigned to spy on. The Japanese economy is bad, and he only keeps his job because he feels there are no others to be had. He in fact loves Russia and the Russian language, and he hopes to settle in Moscow one day. To this end, he has a Russian girlfriend who lives on Kunishiri Island, one of the Northern Territories. If his officers were to find out about it, shit would hit the fan for him.
Hideki lives by two stated tenants: the first is that he serves in the military only for a paycheck and the second is he learns languages primarily to meet women. He's a really funny guy.
Since Hideki can’t be seen associating with me, we meet either in my apartment, or in the park after dark. My friendship with him has helped me reconcile myself to Nemuro in so many ways. For example, Hideki is stationed in Nemuro for a six-year stint. He has already been here for seven months, three months longer than I have. And yet, even though he is Japanese, he feels completely isolated here and has no friends. So he’s taught me that it’s not because I’m a gaijin that I’ve felt isolated, but because Nemuro is that way. We spend a lot of time together. Both of our language abilities have improved immeasurably. And like I said, Hideki is self-proclaimed terrible soldier. One of his favorite things to do is tell me all the military secrets floating around the base that he knows he’s not supposed to reveal. Maybe I’ll work them into a novel someday, or not, but it’s been a real eye-opener on US-Korea-Japan-North Korea-Russia relations. About who shares secrets with whom. About whose listening to whom and for whom. About who flies over whose airspace. There are three main listening posts in Hokkaido, and one is Nemuro. The Americans built the post during the occupation, and the Japanese have manned it since. The other two are at Wakkanai and Otaru. One secret, for example, is that for how much the Japanese want the Northern Territories back, they have also been paying the Russians quite a chunk of change for fishing rights around the islands. In this way, the Japanese themselves have guaranteed that the Russians will never give the islands back. The politicians in Tokyo say one thing to the people, but then turn around and write the checks. While the families displaced by the Russians from the territories think that their return in being worked on by Tokyo, Tokyo knows that they’ve made it so that the islands will never be returned. Money and manipulation. Some Japanese businesses are getting rich off of resource exploitation in the Northern Territories.
So that’s Hideki. I’ve had a rental car recently, and because he’s uncomfortable going out with me in Nemuro, we’ve been exploring other little towns in this eastern corner of Hokkaido. Many are the nights when we gorge on yakitori and beer, laughing and laughing at ourselves and each other for the silliness of our broken Japanese and English phrases, for our subterfuge and especially about how we miss our girlfriends, mine back home in Austin and his beautiful Russian girl far away on forbidden Kunashiri Island. Can life really be this strange, fun, and weird?
My other friend is Midori, a nurse in Sapporo. I’ve been going back and forth to Sapporo since August, ostensibly to study the Ainu at Hokkaido University, but really to get out of Nemuro and have fun. It’s a long bus ride to Sapporo, eight hours overnight, and I stay at the Sapporo youth hostel. Now that autumn has settled in and the land is afire with both the cold and the amazing colors (Canada, you have nothing on Hokkaido for vibrant fall colors), the youth hostel that was always packed with bearded Japanese bicyclists this past summer, is so empty that I always have a room to myself. So not only do I get a cheap night of relative luxury--the hostel has a hot spring bath in the basement, pure decadence when you have it all to yourself--but I have a nice companion to enjoy the Sapporo night life with.
I have met many people in Sapporo, and as with them, I met Midori in a bar. There are half a dozen foreigner-themed bars in Sapporo, and any night of the week, you can get a Guinness and be fairly certain that within a few minutes a Japanese girl who wants to meet a foreigner will sidle up to you for a chat. Mostly, these girls have a foreigner fetish that is so strong it is kind of wierd. It's aggresive and makes me feel as though gaijin is the only thing I am. But Midori was different. She gave me her card, for example, kept covering her mouth with her hand because she was so embarrassed to speak English. Midori is looking neither to ’bag’ a foreign guy, nor for a way to get out of Japan. She just wants to practice English. She works in a home for the elderly and doesn’t make a lot of money. Still, she manages to travel abroad every other year.
What I like about Midori is that she wanted to get out of the bar as soon as possible, to head to an izakaya where we could just sit back and talk over plate after plate of delicious fried foods. And unlike most of the Sapporo people whose eyes go blank once I start droning on about the Ainu, Midori is fascinated. Like most Japanese, she knew about as much about the Ainu as most Americans do when we first met, i.e. nothing. Now she’s the one scheduling our visits to Ainu museums, setting up meetings with Ainu elders at the Ainu Pirka Kotan south of Sapporo. And while I am really happy to share my love of the Ainu culture with both Hideki and Midori, what I am happiest about in both relationships is that I now have guides in my exploration of Japan.
Japan often happens behind closed doors. In a place like Sapporo, it happens behind closed doors seven or twenty stories in the air. Every building is a maze of shopping, restaurants, entertainment. It’s has been an adventure everyday since I made my friends, sliding open the door onto a new place, hearing the laughter of the people, the smells of the cooking pour forth. Then we slip off our shoes and go inside to it.
Hideki and Midori are constantly giving me gifts, and vice versa. Cookies, CDs, dolls. It’s a fun thing when I am away from them, shopping and looking through all the knick knacks everywhere, spotting something they might like, presenting them with it.
You know, I have been lazy about my blog because I have had better things to do. Hideki has been teaching me dirty Japanese words this week in exchange for dirty English words. I’m seeing him in a few minutes. I think I’m going to leave off here in a second to get ready for that.
But a last note: I’ve noticed that both Hideki and Midori become shy speaking to me when other Japanese are around. Hideki’s voice drops to a whisper, and Midori looks down, covers her mouth, and averts her eyes. I’ve learned to work on their terms about this. I also speak softly when other Japanese are around, so softly, no one can hear what language we are speaking but us. Whenever I can, I lead us to private booths. Rather than this upsetting me about being a gaijin, it has only shown me how special these friends of mine are. Willing to go against the norm in a place that shuns that, willing to overcome the colossus of culture.
Japan has its share of xenophobic people, as any place does. It also has open, caring, inquisitive people like Hideki and Midori. It took some time to find them. It was worth the wait.
