When You Are Engulfed in Flames (23 page)

January 27

It might be different for actual Japanese people, but as a visitor I am regularly overwhelmed by how kind and accommodating everyone is. This woman at our local flower shop, for instance. I asked her for directions to the monorail, and after she patiently gave them to me I decided to buy a Hello Kitty bouquet. What it basically amounts to is a carnation with pointed ears. Add two plastic dots for the eyes and one more for the nose, and you’ve got a twenty-dollar cat. “Cute,” I said, and when the florist agreed, I supersized the compliment to “very cute.”

“You speak with skill,” she told me.

Drunk with praise, I then observed that the weather was nice. She said that it certainly was, and after paying I headed for the door. Anywhere else I’d say good-bye when exiting a shop or restaurant. Here, though, I use a phrase I learned from my instructional CD. “Now I am leaving,” I announce, and the people around me laugh, perhaps because I am stating the obvious.

January 30

Following yesterday’s midmorning break, the teacher approached me in the hallway. “David-san,” she said, “I think you homework
chotto
. . .”

This means “a little” and is used when you don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings.

“You think it’s
chotto
what?” I asked. “
Chotto
bad?”

“No.”

“
Chotto
sloppy?
Chotto
lazy?”

The teacher pressed her hands together and regarded them for a moment before continuing. “Maybe, ah, maybe you don’t understand it so much,” she said.

I used to laugh at this Japanese indirectness, but now I see that there’s a real skill, not just to using it, but to interpreting it. At 11:00 we changed teachers. Miki-sensei walked in carrying her books and visual aids and went on to explain how to ask for things. If you want, for example, to borrow some money, you ask the other person if he or she has any. If you want to know the time, you ask if the other person has a watch.

I raised my hand. “Why not just ask for the time?”

“Too much directness,” Miki-sensei said.

“But the time is free.”

“Maybe. But in Japan, not a good idea.”

After school I went to the Cozy Corner with Akira, who spent many years in California and now works as a book translator. We both ordered
shotokeki,
and as we ate he observed that, as opposed to English, Japanese is a listener’s language. “What’s not being mentioned is usually more important than what is.”

I asked him how I’d compliment someone on, say, his shirt. “Do I say, ‘I like the shirt you’re wearing’ or ‘I like your shirt’?”

“Neither,” he told me. “Instead of wasting time with the object, you’d just say ‘I like,’ and let the other person figure out what you’re talking about.”

Our teachers offer much the same advice. Give them a sentence, and they’ll immediately trim off the fat. “No need to begin with
I,
as it is clear that you are the one talking,” they’ll say.

The next session of Japanese class begins on February 8, and I’ve just decided not to sign up for it. Should I announce this in advance, I wonder, or would that be too wordy and direct? Maybe it’s best just to walk out the door and never return. I’ll feel guilty for a day or two, but in time I’ll get over it. The way I see it, I came here to quit smoking. That’s my first priority, and, as long as I don’t start again, I can consider myself, if not a success, then at least not a complete failure.

January 31

Four weeks without a cigarette.

Given the state of my Japanese it seems unfair to criticize some of the English I’ve been seeing. A sign outside a beauty parlor reads “Eye Rash Tint,” and instead of laughing, I should give them credit for at least coming close. What gets me are the mass-produced mistakes, the ones made at Lawson, for example. A huge, nationwide chain of convenience stores, and this is what’s printed on the wrappers of their ready-made sandwiches: “We have sandwiches which you can enjoy different tastes. So you can find your favorite one from our sandwiches. We hope you can choose the best one for yourself.”

It’s not that horribly off the mark, but still you’d think that someone, maybe someone in management, might say, “I’ve got a cousin who lives in America. What do you say I give him a call and run this by him before we slap it on tens of millions of wrappers?” But no.

Among Hugh’s birthday gifts were two handmade teacups I bought at Mitsukoshi, a department store. Included in the box was a profile of the craftswoman, who has, for many years, been enchanted by “the warmth of Cray.” I thought that this was another craftsperson, the beloved Cray-san, but Hugh figured out that what they meant to say was “clay.” The sentence, in its entirety, reads, “With being enchanted by the warmth of Cray and the traditional of pottery over the period so far she is playing active parts widely as a coordinator who not only produce and design hers own pottery firstly but suggest filling Human’s whole life with fun and joyful mind.”

February 5

Beside the Imperial Palace, there’s a park, with a big koi-filled pond in it. Hugh and I were just nearing the gate yesterday when a pair of young men approached, saying, “Yes. Hello. A minute please?”

Both were students at a local university and were wondering if they might show us the sights, “Not for money,” explained the larger of the two, “but to help improve our Engarish.”

“I don’t think so,” Hugh told him, and the young man who had spoken, and whose name turned out to be Naomichi, turned to his friend. “He is saying to us, ‘No, thank you.’”

Then I piped up. “Oh, what the heck,” I said to Hugh. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

“Are you saying, ‘Yes, please’?” Naomichi asked. And I told him that I was.

For the first five minutes of our guided tour, we talked about the ruined buildings. “If this is the shell of the guardhouse, where’s the place the guards were guarding?” I asked.

“Burned down,” Student No. 2 told me.

Except for a few walls, it seemed that everything had burned. “Why didn’t you build stuff with stone?” I asked, this as if I were scolding one of the three pigs. “If fires were a problem, and they obviously were, why not move on to fire
proof.
”

“Not our way,” Naomichi said.

“We did not then have the skills,” his friend added.

It was here that we lost interest in the park and began asking the students about their lives. “What’s your major?” “Do you live with your parents?” “How long have you been studying English?” While Hugh and Naomichi talked about the declining popularity of sumo wrestling, Student No. 2 and I discussed the majesty of nature. “What wild animals do you have in Tokyo?” I asked.

“Wild animal?”

“Do you have squirrels?”

No response.

I pretended to fill my cheeks with nuts, and the young man said, “Ah,
sukaworra!
”

I then moved on to snakes and asked if he was afraid of them.

“No. I think that they are very cute.”

Surely,
I thought,
he’s misunderstood me.
“Snake,” I repeated, and I turned my arm into a striking cobra. “Horrible. Dangerous. Snake.”

“No,” he said. “The only thing I am afraid of is moutha.”

“The snake’s mouth?”

“No,” he said, “
moutha.
I maybe saying it wrong, but
moutha. Moutha.
”

I was on the verge of faking it when he pulled out an electronic dictionary and typed in the word he was looking for,
ga,
which translates, strangely enough, to “moth.”

“You’re afraid of moths?”

He nodded yes and winced a little.

“But nobody’s afraid of moths.”

“I am,” he whispered, and he looked behind us, as if afraid that one might be listening.

“Are you afraid of butterflies too?” I asked.

The young man cocked his head.

“Butterfly,”I said, “colorful cousin of the moth. Are you afraid that he too will attack?”

Hugh overheard me saying this and turned around. “What the hell are you two talking about?”

And Student No. 2 said, “The wildness.”

February 6

I thought before coming here that every afternoon I would grab my iPod and my index cards and take a long walk. It’s what I did in Paris, and, as a result, whenever I use a particular phrase, I recall where I was when I learned it. Yesterday morning, for instance, I ran into Super-san, and when I asked how many children he had, I thought of the Boulevard Daumesnil, just as it reaches the Viaduct des Arts. It had rained heavily the day I learned Lesson No. 13, and the last leaves of the season, russet-colored and as big as pot holders, stuck to the sidewalk as if they had been glued down and covered with varnish. I walked for two hours that afternoon, and the phrases I learned stayed learned, or at least they have so far. I think it helped that I was smoking. Back in December, I could light a cigarette without thinking. Now I
don’t
light it and think so hard about what I’m missing that there isn’t room for anything else.

A bigger problem is that it’s difficult to walk here, at least in the way that I can in London or Paris. Take Ginza, a neighborhood of fancy shops and department stores. It’s the sort of place I feel guilty for liking, the sort that offers menus in English. There’s a stand there that sells black ice cream and another that sells pizza in a cone. On Sunday afternoons, the main street is closed to traffic and beautifully dressed people parade about in their finery.

Ginza is a mile from our apartment, and in order to reach it I have to cross umpteen lanes of traffic, often using pedestrian bridges. Then there are the elevated highways and overhead train tracks, the off-ramps and construction sites. It’s not just in this neighborhood, but everywhere I go. The arrangement of buildings is higglety-pigglety as well, the mirrored cube between the high-rise and the one-story house made of cobbled-together planks.

As a child I once found an ant, running a crazy path across my family’s basement. I meant to open the door and herd the thing out, but then I got a better idea and dropped him through the ventilation grate in the back of our TV. What the ant saw then and what I see now are likely very similar: a chaotic vision of the future, heavy on marvels, but curiously devoid of charm. No lake, no parkland, no leafy avenues, and it stretches on forever.

February 7

I tried on a swimsuit at one of the Ginza department stores and made the mistake of walking fully dressed into the carpeted changing room. The saleswoman saw me and called out in the only shrill voice I’ve heard since my arrival. “Stop. Wait! Your shoes!”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I needed to remove them, but after all this time I suppose that it should have. At a small shop I went to last weekend, I had to change into slippers in order to look into the display case. Then I put my shoes back on and had to remove them again to climb the stairs to the second level, which was designated as a sock-only zone.

Then there was our recent visit to the Asakura Choso Museum, the restored home and studio of the late, noted sculptor. Upon entering, you change into slippers, which are then exchanged for other slippers if you want to step onto the patio. Slippers are removed entirely for the second floor, but put back on for the third, and then changed again for the rooftop garden. The artist’s sculptures were displayed throughout the house, and though there were quite a few of them he could have completed twice as many if he hadn’t had to change his goddamn shoes every three minutes.

February 8

Yesterday was my last day of school, and once again I had second thoughts about defecting. Our first teacher was Ayuba-sensei, one of my favorites. With her we spend a lot of time repeating things, which is fine by me. Talking is the only part I’m any good at, and she’ll occasionally reward me with a little
“Ii desu,”
meaning “Good.”

At the end of the session, she moved her fingers down her cheeks, imitating tears. I started to think that I was making a terrible mistake, but then we had our break, followed by two hours with Miki-sensei. She’s a lovely woman, but I died a little when she handed out lined sheets of paper and asked us to write an essay titled
“Watashi No Nihon No Seikatsu”
(My Japanese Life).

My final product was fairly simple, but it involved no cheating and it was all written in hiragana. “My Japanese life is entertaining but very busy. My place is tall — 28 stories — and all the time I am riding on the elevator. Sometimes I go to the movies with my friend Hugh-san. Every day I do homework but always I make bad tests. Now I will go to England and talk English. Maybe later I will study Japanese.”

February 9

To celebrate the end of school, Hugh and I went out to dinner. I ordered the tasting menu, which consisted of eight courses, none of them large enough to fill a saucer. The second — a stunted radish carved to resemble a flower, a bit of fish, a potato the size of a marble — was served in a deep wooden box and accompanied by a hand-calligraphed sign. The presentation was beautiful, each plate a different size, a different shape, a different texture. The food was good too. There just wasn’t enough of it.

We ate at the counter, not far from a man who was just finishing a bottle of wine. “Do you mind if I light a cigarette?” he asked, and I told him to go ahead. “Have three, why don’t you, and blow the smoke this way?” I think he read my remark as sarcasm, but I was being completely sincere. Back when I was smoking myself, I was often irritated by the smell of other people’s cigarettes. Now for some reason, I love it. Especially when I’m eating.

February 12

Late yesterday morning, Hugh and I took our new swimsuits and headed to a nearby municipal building. There, on the seventh floor, is an Olympic-sized pool. I liked that I could see our apartment from the floor-to-ceiling windows behind the lifeguard stand. I liked the dressing room and the quiet way people moved about. The only thing I didn’t care for was the actual swimming.

As opposed to Hugh, who’s always had a bathing cap and a pair of goggles drying in the bathroom, I haven’t attempted a lap in over thirty years. Bike riding I can manage, but three strokes in the water and I feel as if my heart might burst. It took awhile, but I eventually got from one end of the pool to the other. Then I did it again and again, each length terminating in an extended howl. While groaning and panting, I gripped the edge of the pool and screwed my eyes shut, looking, I imagine, like a half-dead monkey. Out of everyone in that room, I was the only person with hair on his chest. This was bad enough, but to have it on my back as well — I could actually feel myself disgusting people.