When people ask me about Japan, I don’t talk about the weird inventions or crazy fashion, I talk about the people and their unique hospitality because, for some reason, this aspect never receives enough attention.
Any trip or extended visit to Japan will almost certainly be met with an opportunity to meet some of the most polite and dignified people in the world. In fact, being there forces you to become more patient or more anxious, depending on where you come from because of the fanfare almost every encounter entails.
Most newcomers to Japan are enchanted by the way you are greeted when you enter a store or restaurant. Employees will shout “Irasshaimase” or “welcome” in unison and, when you leave, regardless of whether or not you purchased anything, they will also tell you “arigato gozaimasu” or thank you.
When you leave or enter an office or someone’s home, you also must say something that basically means you are rude for entering and “sorry to have bothered” you when exiting.
In fact, there are many formalities in Japan and I am not going to pretend I understand even half of them. Once you stay there long enough, though, special phrases and gestures like bowing even when you are talking to someone on the phone become like second nature.
‘You’ve gotten fat, haven’t you?’
Saying and doing these pleasantries will almost certainly gain respect from Japanese people, but also a pat on the back for attempting to make an effort to learn the language and culture. You will also be told you are fluent in the language even if all you know is “thank you” and “please”.
I first lived in Japan nearly eight years ago, while teaching English, and stayed on and off the next three years. I arrived in a small fishing village on the coast of western Japan where perhaps a handful of people spoke English. Without much knowledge beyond knowing how to count to 100, I relied on speaking very slowly and in the basic English people learned at school.
When I learned my first sentence while eating at a restaurant - “water, please” - I felt as if had unlocked a secret code. As simple as that sentence was, it revealed a completely new world to me.
I got a lot of questions like “How old are you?” So people knew which level of politeness to address me in according to whether I was older or younger than they. I was also asked very directly whether I’d gained weight if I hadn’t seen someone in a while whether we were close friends or not. Japanese people will literally comment: “You’ve gotten fat, haven’t you?”
A good friend recently wrote to me and told me his wife had gained a lot of weight. He wrote affectionately: “My wife is very happy, but has gotten fat. She weighs 55kg now.” I suppose, by Japanese standards, about 90 percent of South African women would be considered overweight.
‘What a silly foreigner’
Japanese people are generally obsessed with being small. For most, being small comes naturally but, as another Japanese friend said, some of the women are so skinny that they look like the Disney character Bambi. What is cute or attractive in Asia is not necessarily what’s attractive in Africa. Curves are definitely out, but bones are meant to stick out. In the back of magazines, you will see ads for diet pills in which a girl of average height in the “before” picture weighs 50kg and shows an “after” weight of between 37kg and 40kg. Her hips, thighs and butt have been replaced by jutting bones.
Not long ago, I returned to Japan and visited an upscale entertainment club where rich Japanese businessmen go to have drinks with girls who are paid to talk to them. It is an accepted form of entertainment in Japan, and the hostesses do not engage in anything beyond talking and flirting. Every girl was as thin as a pre-pubescent 12-year-old, except for one, who could have rivalled any shebeen queen.
She told me the men appreciated her figure because she was a real woman and not a girl. In fact, as I watched her sit at various tables next to tipsy men and laugh a deep belly laugh instead of a shy giggle while coquettishly covering her mouth, she was the club favourite. Bizarrely, though, she carried around a small photo album to show pictures of her younger, thinner self.
Japanese love to have a good time and are great fun once they loosen up. They are often childish and somewhat naive, but love to drink. Japanese have the perception that foreigners are heavy drinkers and they enjoying knowing if you are “strong” or “weak” at drinking. They can seriously give South Africans a run for their money when drinking and they love it when they come across someone who can keep up with them. But, just because Japanese love to drink doesn’t mean they have a high tolerance level. It is not uncommon to see Japanese men passed out waiting for the last train at night.
Drinking breaks the ice and it gives people an excuse to speak to you even when they would never dare try while sober. Many foreign girls will tell you they’ve had marriage proposals from their co-workers and curious men at bars who like to practise their English. You would think it would make it awkward at work the next day, but there is an unsaid rule - whatever is said by an inebriated colleague at an office party, which is often an overnight affair where people go to hot springs and then change into robes, is forgotten the next day.
That is, unless you felt you were being sexually harassed, which sometimes feels that way when your boss, who is dressed in a robe that exposes too much of his legs, leans in and tells you that you are pretty.
Because I lived in a small town, seeing a foreign person or - even better - making contact with a foreign person was like seeing the local circus freak or the most popular person in town. Even though you haven’t starred in a Hollywood movie, you unwittingly become the local entertainer.
People will invite you to their homes for dinner and they will also push their young children towards you and force them to say the few words of English they’ve learned at cr�che. “How are you? I am fine. How are you?” they say, and then you are supposed to tell the child and the mother how great their English is.
I guess it is good karma because I am sure that is how Japanese people feel when you first speak to them in your pigeon Japanese. Even when my Japanese was atrocious, it was always nice to be told that it was great.
But there is also a downside to the newfound stardom; privacy doesn’t really exist while living in a small town in Japan. When walking on the street everyone stares - I mean everyone - mothers, children, old people, and some even point at you. When you look in their direction, though, eyes shift. I even had people peer into my trolley at the supermarket to see what I ate.
During my first week there, though, someone took their curiosity a little too far. I lived on the first level of a block of flats and hung my laundry on the veranda to dry. After washing a load of underwear, I hung them outside. When I went to fetch them a few hours later, someone had stolen every single pair of undergarments and my swimming costume. Afterwards, I learned about the bizarre fetishes people had there. At the time, there were vending machines purporting to sell girls’ used underwear for around R350. I preferred to imagine that the wind somehow blew mine away.
But, once I began to wet my feet in Japan, I discovered a new world with the help of patient friends willing to spend time with someone who communicated like a five-year-old. I never had anyone laugh at me for making a mistake, though. Most people listened tolerantly, even when I was talking gibberish.
On one occasion, a friend came to my house and discovered I was washing my clothes with fabric softener instead of detergent. She didn’t laugh, even when I told her I had been using it for a year. Since everything was in Japanese, I went by the picture on the bottle, which showed a drawing of clothes and a washing machine.
I am positive that many people must have said to themselves, “What a silly foreigner,” but they never let me know. One night, I went to the house of a family to whom I had been teaching English once a week.
Before I arrived, I’d been eating strawberries dipped in chocolate. After the lesson finished, I got into my car and, as I looked into the rear view window to reverse, I caught a glimpse of my face - my mouth was covered in chocolate. No one had told me and everyone had kept a straight face throughout the entire lesson. When I left Japan, they gave me chocolate as a goodbye gift.
Sadly, though, most people don’t have the chance to establish real friendships with Japanese people because the language barrier and the intense shyness of the Japanese gets in the way.
When people think about Japan, they often think of the strange gadgets developed there that make life more convenient. Or perhaps they think of geishas and sushi or even green tea, but it’s the people who are complex yet have a sense of compassion that will make the most lasting impression.
The other thing I tell people most often about Japan is that, if you have the chance to make a Japanese friend, you will have a friend for life.
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