Hunkabutta Archives
10.10.03

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I remember this one time as a young boy in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb, driving around in the back seat of my parent's navy blue Hyundai Stellar. We were on our way home from my uncle's house when my mother saw a big East Indian family sprawled out and lounging on their front lawn. Saris and bindhis, exposed flabby midsections, the kids playing Frisbee, they had the whole thing going on. They even had a picnic table set up. The father's belly was big and distended and he was wearing a greasy white sleeveless undershirt.

My mother just took all of this in and clucked her teeth and rolled her eyes. She hated this kind of thing. She just thought it was so unsightly. You see, in the Canadian suburbs, you're only supposed to hang out in the back yard, never the front. The front was only for show. It was very public. So, this immigrant family was really breaking some major protocol and stood out quite badly.

Me being the self-righteous kid that I was tried to defend the immigrants. I said something like, "They don't mean anything by it. Where they come from people probably still do sit out in front of their homes and actually 'talk' to one another. You know, talk to people walking by. You know, like neighbours. We just never talk to anybody. We just like to pretend like we're the only ones living here."

Yeah, well, that might have been so, but my mother was having none of it. She still thought it was dreadful.

Well, the funny thing is Mom, here I am, nearly 20 years later, living in Japan, and now I'm that fat Indian guy eating chicken on my front lawn and offending all the neigbours. I'm an immigrant, I'm a foreigner, and I'll never be able to go back to Canada and look at all of those Chinese and African and Indian and whatever people again in the same way. Because now I can not only just sympathise with them, I can empathise.

Karen and I haven't committed to staying here for the long haul, to truly immigrate, so we haven't really made that much of an effort to adopt local customs. We take what we like and leave the rest. I find that newly arrived people often go overboard in this respect and try to be more Japanese than the Japanese themselves. But eventually they come to realize that to some degree you have to be true to who you are and where you come from.

Anyway, I shudder to think at some of the things that Karen and I do to offend the neighbours. I'll give you one example that we always fight over: Hanging the futons out over the front hallway railing, in public, instead of off of our own balcony.

Karen insists on hanging them out front where everyone can see how gross and sweat-stained they are because that's where the sun is shining the brightest. I just want to use the balcony, shade or no shade, like everyone else.

I can just hear Mrs. Sato from down the hall talking to her neighour right now, "Ohhh, those damn Canadians. Look at that. Their putting their shitty yellow futons out over the front railing again! Don't they have any shame? I don't want to look at their crappy bedding!"

Tokyo is a long way from Mississauga, and my parents got rid of the Stellar years ago, but people still have the same problems fitting in no matter where you go.

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10.06.03

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A few weeks ago the cicadas, those giant bugs that make astoundingly loud whirrrring sounds, started to die and drop out of the trees, scattering onto the walkways and streets, and to me that could only mean one thing: Fall was just about here.

Like a lot of people, Fall is my favourite season, but I especially love it in Tokyo. I couldn't imagine nicer weather; it's sunny and dry and just a little bit warm. Kind of like a good friend.

The recent sight of all of those cicadas sprawled out on their backs got me to thinking about some other signs that Fall is coming here in Tokyo:

1) A wide variety of Fall jackets appear on people.

In a few months time, after one style begins to dominate as the 'in look', a critical mass will be reached and then suddenly everyone will be wearing the exact same jacket. Last year it was a light parka with an Inuit-style furry hood.

Everyone will buy a brand new winter jacket, and then by January or February the stores will be full of cheap knock-off varieties. People will start to look around and say to themselves, "Hey everyone's got the same type of jacket as me." At that point 75% of the people will run out and buy their second winter coat of the season and once again people will be wearing a wide variety of jackets.

2) Half of the cans of coffee and tea in the vending machines on the streets are now switched to hot, instead of all cold.

3) Oden (a kind of seafood/turnip/tofu stew) stalls start popping up on street corners. These are usually just little carts with a propane burner and a couple of stools.

4) Your laundry just doesn't seem to dry as quickly as it used to.

5) You decide that it's time to turn on the seat-heating function on your ultra high tech toilet.

That's all that I can come up with for the moment. I'm sure that a few of you old Tokyo hands will be able to think of a few of your own.

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10.02.03

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The other day while studying kanji, which are Chinese characters used in written Japanese, I was thinking about how they must be read 'in one quick lump'. You all know what those crazy Chinese characters look like. You see them up on restaurant signs and in the instructions that come with your new TV and you think, 'How in the hell could anybody ever read or write this stuff, let alone remember all the little picture things?'

Although they are a kind of pictograph, kanji are usually read phonetically. However, they often stand alone and sometimes contain multiple syllables. So sometimes, one Kanji, which is one 'picture', can stand for one whole word.

I was thinking about how different this is from the Western writing system, which is purely phonetic, meaning that we sound out our words based on the phoneme (sound) that each letter represents. Then I had a realization: nobody past an elementary reading level actually does sound out words. What we do is memorize the shape and meaning of each word. If we didn't do it this way it would take us forever to read, and in many languages, such as English, it's essential to do this because it's not possible to sound out a lot of words (e.g., you can't sound out 'enough').

So in a sense, we read our words in much the same way that Chinese and Japanese read kanji.

The same day that these thoughts were going going through my head, Karen sent me this interesting little email, I don't know where she got it (sorry to all of you non-native English readers out there who may have a problem with the message below).

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't
mttaer In waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny imrpoetnt
tihng is that frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset
can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs
is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a
wlohe

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09.29.03

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Today I auditioned for a wedding pastor job at the Ambassador hotel in Tokyo Disneyland. It went well, but unfortunately I don't think that I'll be doing weddings there any time soon. It turns out that even if I make the cut, I'll only end up at the bottom of the list of 'substitutes.' I guess Disney likes to keep a big stable of ministers on hand in case they need them.

The actual audition was a good exercise -- i.e., ministering under pressure. As usual, it was a surreal experience, kind of like Flashdance with priests instead of dancers.

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