Gaijin Privilege

Or the Foreigner Discount– whatever you might like to call it.  It’s one of the almost unavoidable upsides to living in the middle of nowhere over here.  Whether it’s bars that charge you less, students that bring you beer and watermelons, or the barber giving you a bag of apples that easily cost more than your haircut– it’s hard to miss out on Japanese genorosity.

The oddest thing about it, though, is that there’s really no way out of it, at least without making a scene.  Like a Chinese-Finger-Trap– fighting it only makes it harder to escape.  Insist to pay your own way, they simply insist to pay for you with even more passion and fervor until, in the end, you simply have to bend over and take it, and have genoristy thrust upon you.

Japanese genorosity struck another deep, uncompromising blow following the Kimimachi Marathon last weekend.  A doctor, a good, professional man insisted on picking up our sushi bill.  The bill was 6000 yen, which is really not bad when you consider that there were a total of six people, a couple large plates of sushi and several drinks on the bill.  In fact, the bill may have already had a bit of gaijin priveledge calculated into it.. I’m not sure.  Regardless, it was a bit big even for one doctor to just decide to pick up and pay, but he insisted on doing it anyway.

Not that I can complain, mind you.

It’s something that has taken me some time to get accustomed to here– the sense of genorosity.  There seems to be the implication in our upbringing that a good relationship with other people starts by keeping the scales of indebtedness balanced.  If someone does something generous for us, we feel a compelling desire to return the favor– to keep things at zero.  We treat the kindness of others like student loan, instead of as a gift.  Once that instinct sets in, it is very difficult to overcome.  Being here amongst sometimes very one-sided forms of genorosity makes in easier to convert to the ‘pay it forward’ world view.  While you may never be able to repay someone’s kindness directly, taking out your necessity to be kind on innocent by-standers serves the same purpose.

When I left Japan after my study abroad, I asked my host mother what I could do to help repay her kindness.

“Be helpful to those foreigners who are in your country,” she said.  It was both a request and advice all rolled into one.

Zero is essentially nothing.  Keeping things at zero, therefore, is the desperate attempt to achieve nothing.  Using Gaijin Privilege as a catapult for doing kindness to others, though– has helped me achieve enough so that I never have to worry about repayment.

Horoscopes are Bullshit

Which I’m sure you already know, but hey, it’s true.  I accidentally switched on the TV yesterday morning during the Japanese morning news cycle presentation of horoscopes to be duly informed that my day would, in short, suck.  Specifically I was informed that nothing would go right, and I would be drowning in my own mistakes throughout the day.  Thank you, Fuji Television.

Fortunately, you should always be wary of fortune telling provided by a computer-animated flying pig (the symbol of Fuji TV’s morning news program).  Yesterday was precisely the opposite.  Work went well, I got to play a solid two-hours of table tennis (usually impossible because the number of people coming to play table tennis has skyrocketed in the past year… while the number of tables has not).  And– Naoki came and insisted on making me dinner.  This is the same Naoki who pulled my weeds and cleaned my kitchen.  So much for horoscopes.

Over the last few weeks I’ve also picked up playing taiko in earnest, had my car break (d’oh), and gotten to where I can swim 700-800 meters without much problem.

Now all I have to do is survive my measely 4k this weekend, and the patiently wait for ski season to begin!

“To deny there is a connection between the violence in media and violent behavior is to deny that art has meaning.”

–Professor Reibman

 

Professor Reibman was perhaps the most ancient professor on campus, and he fit the ancient professor status to a ‘T,’ complete with spectacles, beard, and bow tie.  He looked more like a cartoon character than the kind of person who discussed violence in American cinema.  Still, his class, which showed a ‘violent’ movie every other week, was not lacking in popularity.  The above quote was the principle he always fell back on in class to defend the notion that violent media produces violent behavior.

 

This weekend I saw the Japanese film Battle Royale for the first time, and I am left wandering… if Professor Reibman is right… why aren’t the Japanese people stabbing each other left and right?  Battle Royale, a film where 40 Japanese students are kidnapped, taken to a deserted island and forced to kill each other until only one remains, is not lacking in spilled blood, severed heads, or slit throats.  It’s one of the highest grossing the films that the Japanese have ever produced.  The Japanese government made efforts to block its release, which only served to peak curiosity and draw more people into the theater.  And yet, more innocent impressionable Japanese youth have been killed by imitating Japanese food eating competitions than have been killed from watching Battle Royale.  Grand Theft Auto III, the American game that celebrates hijacking and cop killing is no less popular in Japan than in the U.S.–and the Japanese tend to wreak more havoc in the game because they try and drive on the left .  But I don’t have to worry about anyone in Japan breaking into my car, house, or classroom.  The pillar of Japanese kindergarten cartoon characters, Anpanman, willfully decapitates himself every episode to help feed someone (his head is filled with bean-paste).  But I’ve never heard of Japanese kindergarteners accidentally cutting their heads off while trying to imitate their bean-paste filled cartoon hero.

 

So why aren’t the Japanese a bunch of student killing, car hijacking, self-decapitating terrorists?  Why is it that American schools feel the need for metal detectors, combination locks on lockers, and overweight security guards?  Why is it the only thing to protect my Japanese school from invasion is a long “criminal broom” which, in theory, is supposed to pin an assailant against a wall?  (In reality, it seems to be nothing more than a defense measure in name only.)

 

Japanese like to say, “Japan is a safe country.”  True.  It very much is・but why?  Maybe in part it’s because there is an assumption that media does not equal reality.  Media is used as a means of an escape from the fact that you live on a small island next to North Korea working overtime with no insulation in your house.  A Japanese friend put it well, “I like Grand Theft Auto because I can do things that I can’t do in real life.”  He doesn’t play the game in hopes to be a drug-dealing gangster, he plays it to escape. 

 

Maybe in part, it’s because Japanese are more willing to give other people room to be themselves.  The Japanese I’ve met that felt the need to tell people how to live their lives have been very few.  Excepting career and high school choice, even parents seem to be lenient enough to let their kids get away with more.  There is an unstated assumption that, as a human being, you’re capable of making your own decisions about how to act and how to treat others.  I remember the exact opposite mantra being drilled into my head when I was in school:

 

“Explain things to people as though they’ve never heard of what you’re talking about.  Explain things to people like they池e stupid.”

— Every Teacher I’ve Ever Had (except Biehl, Cody, and Jack)

 

The assumption that everyone except you is too stupid to understand anything, and that you are somehow uniquely enlightened to explain it (blame this on the cult of self-esteem) can only lead down one path–people belittling each other and frustrating each other. That frustration must find an outlet.  The assumption of stupidity serves not just to divide people, but to divide them permanently.  In search for that outlet, it would not be surprising that life might imitate the violent art so prevalent society.  But, who then are we to blame the art?  We do so only because it is easier to blame the art than to change our behavior.

 

People often ask me why I’m in Japan.  I’m not in Japan because I like green tea and onsens.  (Okay, I do like onsens).  I知 not here because the food is healthy (try a Dixie Burger sometime).  I知 certainly not here on a moralistic crusade to educate these hillbilly barbarians.  (There are plenty of those back home).  I知 here because I have room to live.  Not just live, but to live without feeling suffocated by my surroundings.

 

And, even though I live in Japan, I don’t have to fear being kidnapped and sent a deserted island to kill people, just because one angry person in my town watched a bloody movie.

Do you have any pears?

This was asked to me point blank last Friday at an old ladies’ house in town.  All I did was drop by to leave my card for one of her family members–  and BOOM– “Do you have any pears?”

Needless to say, I wound up walking away with a bag full of pears and apples, a feat only topped by the time I went to the barbers in town, and walked away with a bag of Aomori apples that easily cost more than my haircut.  Earlier this week I felt a bit of deja vu when my English teacher suddenly turned to me and said, “Would you like to eat…. stars?!” with an immense light-reflecting smile frozen to her face.

The stars turned out to be rice crackers, and I was slightly disappointed.

So, what have I been up to lately?

– Last week I carved 8 pumpkins with the kids of Nibuna Elementary.  Despite having incredibly cooperative and kind teacher supervision, I learned that 6-year olds wielding sharp objects is still unsettling and scary.  Their pumpkin turned out equally unsettling, an incoherent jumble of body parts and shapes, and random cuts that made the vegetable look like it had just escaped a North Korean labor camp.

– I swam a solid 800 meters (half mile :)) last week.  I kick ass.

– I have sworn off fried and fast food after having seen ‘Super Size Me’ over the weekend.  I predict that this will last one week, but I’m going to have a hard time turning down a Dixie Burger tonight.

– I went to watch the best table tennis in Japan two days in a row– and liked it.

– I’ve been running twice this week as the race is getting closer everyday.

– I’ve made two kids laugh so hard they were crying this week.  This was entirely intentional.