Hi all,
Taken from Fushimi Inari.
The other day I realized that Kyoto is really big. Also that it’s really small. Almost everything I’ve done, everyone I’ve met, and everywhere I’ve gone in Japan has been in Kyoto. And you can see it all in this picture above.
A few take-aways from my first week on the job:
Vocab that I memorized in preparation for my job as a sake sales-clerk.
- Interacting with people in another language is at the same time harder and easier than it is in your native language.
- One way or another, 2osomethings are the same the whole world round. He may have spoken faster and used more slang, but my selling-partner I work with on all my shifts.
- Saké. Some people like it. Some people hate it. Very few of the people who hate it have ever actually tasted it, as is apparent by their happy surprise when I finagle them into trying a sample or two.
- Proudest moment: somewhere in between getting a wine sommelier who literally turned his nose up at me to eventually buy the biggest bottle of our most expensive saké, having two self-described saké-hating Australians (one even refused to try samples at first) buy 6 bottles from us, or successfully interacting with a older, drunk man from Osaka. I even made a few jokes.
- I’ve been asked for a picture three times now. I’ve probably had my picture taken far more than that, though. I’ll often look up and someone will have their phone out, taking a picture of me giving out samples.
- “Wow. So, were you born in Japan?” “What? Oh, no I was born in Arizona. In America.”
- I don’t think I’ll ever ever get over the double takes that people do when walking in the market and they see me.
- I’ve come to really like saying “our saké,” and “well, we do things this way.”
- I’ve counted three times where people never look at my face until halfway though a sip of saké, and then they almost spit it out. “What! I thought… Wow, you’re not Japanese. Hello.”
- The best part of the job is that people interact with me without any reservations and look me straight in the eye when asking about saké. I guess specialization and professionalism out-trumps unfamiliarity and timidity any day. Except when it doesn’t. It only happened once, but I did have a younger Japanese woman take a sake bottle out of my hands when she thought I wasn’t pouring correctly. Learn something new every day.
- Even two or so hours after I’m done working, my foreigner radar is still pinging. Because it’s my job to seek out foreigners and speak English to them (even thought about 50% of my talking is in Japanese), I can’t help but unconsciously pick them out in the crowds on the way home.
I actually ended up drinking with someone who bought saké from me. He’s a good friend now, although I’m not sure I’ll ever get a chance to meet him again. We went to my favorite jazz bar, where he told me about how he was studying computer science at a masters program in Korea.
The bartender almost knows me there now. His part-time helper definitely remembers me because of my Japanese, but she wasn’t working there that night. I suppose I left a different kind of impression on the other part-time bartender because I was curious about their saké. I thought I was making a fool of myself, but it turned out my questions were a little too specific and she had to go back to the bartender and ask him my questions on my behalf.
We had a good time and ended up going to a convenience store to try out different snacks later. I got back around 12am but it wasn’t until the morning when I realized that I had left both my scarf and hat back at the bar.
They say you leave things behind when you don’t want to leave. It also may have been because its been getting so warm. We’ll see I suppose.
I didn’t realize I would ever be in a situation like this, but this Saturday I ended up catching up on some reading while watching some pots boil on my kyudo sensei’s stove.
It was his birthday this Saturday. The same three person-or-so squad had gone to kyudo with sensei, practiced, and then helped clean up the dojo. After that we usually come back and have lunch with sensei and go home. But not Saturday. Sensei likes parties, and he had saved three sizable chunks of venison to put in a curry hot-pot for his birthday. We were going to continue birthday prep till about 5:30, but everyone else had gone out shopping. So it was up to me to make sure the pots didn’t boil over as we pre-cooked the venison for the hot-pots.
Everyone congratulated me on not letting my concentration slip after they returned, and we all went up to the third floor of sensei’s house to set up the big, low tables and chop all the vegetables. For some reason I find it really hard to talk to my fellow kyudo friends (sensei too, but that’s because I can hardly ever understand his slang). It’s just hard to get the words out in time, and correctly. Making food always seems like the best way to break down barriers like that, and that day was no exception.
By the time everyone else arrived, there were about 15 of us sitting on the ground around the big, conglomerate table. With two hot-pots full of venison-wiener-cabbage-pea curry and plenty of drinks, I can safely say it was a good party. Sensei could probably tell I was pretty tired from the day of kyudo and Japanese, and he clapped me on the back as he walked in: “Nice job watching the meat. This is all thanks to Jesse, you know!”
The pots were great but the real star of the show was this massive citrus fruit that sensei had been saving for about a month.
It’s called a banpeiyu, and yes, it’s bigger than your head.
“This is important stuff you know. Important part of communication. My friend lugged this all the way from Kyushu.” Sensei mimed lugging it under his arm to everyone’s laughter. I had told him previously that day that my major was communications (rhetoric is too much to explain for me even in English), so spent a large part of the day detailing the importance of communication to me, and what counted as communication.
When it debuted at the party everyone was overjoyed. It took quite a lot of effort to peel, though. Or even get started…
But it was worth it in the end. It had a really mild flavor and the effort that everyone went to to peel it brought us even closer.
At the party everything loosened up a bit and I was able to talk with my fellow kyudo students pretty freely (some of whom were about 40 years older than me). There was a great variety of drinks, but I of course found myself attracted to the saké. This interested everyone else, especially since I was the only one who drank any of it that night. I whipped out some of my vocab and actually succeeded in stunning a good portion of the room. Sensei got me talking about the differences between archery and kyudo, even though I did have to shout answers to him from across the room. I admitted that I really did want to buy a bow before I went home, to everyone’s great enjoyment. Still thinking about it.
One of my Japanese professors told me a while ago that no one’s ever completely fluent in the entirety of a language, but we can come close to complete fluency in certain situations and topics. Sometimes it just takes a bit longer for me to stumble into a situation where I happen to be more fluent.
I had to leave the party early to get home on time. I shut the door as everyone said their goodbye in unison. By the time I got to the first floor and was putting on my shoes, my ears were still ringing from the party. The relative silence and darkness of the first floor was quite a contrast. But as I was putting on my shoes, I heard someone shuffling. I looked up and saw sensei. “Hey. Oh, still putting on your shoes?” I laughed and said yes.
“Hey thanks again for the meat today. That’s an important part of communication, you know. Food. Gifts. Actions. Hey, do you have an umbrella?”
I’d gotten my shoes on and I was headed out the door.
“Yeah I’ve got one. Ok, I’m headed out.”
“Ok! Take care. It’s rainy out there so be careful.”
I stepped out into the rain and shut the door. That really got me. Sensei left his own ongoing party to come down and see me off, all the way down to the quiet of the first floor.
Even though I had a great time, it’s tiring to interact in Japanese like that all day. Sometimes it’s easy to forget when you feel tired or lonely that other people are there too. And sometimes, the people you least expect to notice will know just what to do.
I had a really great, Japanese experience a few days ago. My commuter pass had fallen out of my pocket on Friday and I decided that it was best to get a new one as fast as I could. Sometimes it’s best to know when to call it quits and when to move on. I went to the station to report my case and apply for a new pass.
“Hi, I lost my commuter pass a few days ago and I was wondering if I could buy a new one.”
“Oh. It hasn’t been reported found or anything?”
Oh, no. Not that I know of.”
“Huh. That’s unusual.”
Unusual. That a pass wasn’t found a turned in in the space of a day. That sounded more unusual to me than the other option. But believe it or not, while I was filling out the application for another pass, I got a call from the AKP office saying that my pass had been found and returned to the AKP office.
As soon as I got off the phone, I tole the station-worker my news. She and a few other people in the office who overheard our conversation “yay’d,” congratulated me, and gave me a knowing smile.
So maybe I am starting to miss this place a bit already. The hardest part might not be leaving, but convincing myself to stay present till I leave.