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Tokyo Notes & Anecdotes: Natsukashii
by Bruce McCormack
400 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #99-0070; ISBN 1-55212-320-0; US$32.50, C$37.50, EUR26.50, £19.00
Tokyo Notes & Anecdotes: Natsukashii is Bruce McCormack's story of living and working for ten years in tumultuous Tokyo, Japan. How he came to terms with it and with his gaijin (foreigner) self is informative, funny and poignant.
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about the book about the author preface sample story reviews catalogue info
About the Book |
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About the Author
After living and working in England, Iran and India, Bruce McCormack returned to Canada and settled in Montreal, where he got a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics from Concordia University. In 1987, he headed off to Japan, just in time to catch the last years of the Japanese 'bubble economy.' He worked at a Japanese company and seven universities during his decade in Tokyo. He also did a lot of thinking and writing about The Land of Wa (meaning 'Harmony'); hence the thickness of this book. He loves to travel and has visited close to 30 countries. He currently lives in Victoria, B.C., on Canada's West Coast, where he writes, teaches, hikes, and sings in the Gettin' Higher Choir. As far as he can tell, laughter and singing are the best cross-cultural bridges we have for bringing people together across borders.
Preface
Japan is a remarkable country, and it's been very good to me. But blasting around like an overheated molecule in the pressure cooker of the Tokyo subway system does not come naturally to a Canadian used to blue sky and wide open spaces. Eventually, I began to feel like I was evolving into some kind of mutated hybrid rat/robot, rehearsing for the next sequel to The Fly.
I wrote Tokyo Notes & Anecdotes: Natsukashii because living in Japan changed me dramatically, and I needed to continually process what I was going through. I also realized that I wanted to share my often wonderful, sometimes zany and occasionally bizarre experiences, as well as the many changes in my feelings about Japan. But it's not just a book of my own impressions. It also includes those of many friends and colleagues I met and worked with during a decade in Tokyo.
On my trips back to Canada and the U.S., I always found that everyone - friends, acquaintances, barbers and bank tellers - was intensely curious about life in the Land of the Rising Sun. Most people on the West Coast knew someone who was working in Japan - a cousin, a neighbor's daughter, a friend of a friend - or they'd hosted a Japanese homestay student. They often hadn't read any of the excellent academic books now available on Japan's society and economy. Though they were very interested in all of that, the question they almost always asked was simply, "What's it like living there?"
This book is a long answer to their question. It's a chronicle of my journey - amusing incidents, everyday routines, reactions to inexplicable happenings, and wonderful encounters. It's also the story of my volatile evolution from infatuation through waves of culture shock, and on to a sense of acceptance and appreciation of a country and people I've grown very fond of.
Wonderful books have been written about life in rural areas of this great country by people who might as well have been on a different planet from me, so different are the stories we have to tell. In actual fact, many Japanese would probably say that Tokyo is not the Real Japan. That being the case, perhaps this is a book about the Unreal Japan - especially the one inhabited by a gaijin (foreigner) like myself. But I wasn't alone in this unreal place called Tokyo; thousands of others shared it with me, and our experiences were certainly real to us.
I trust these stories will give the reader a very real sense of what it's like to wander the subway labyrinths of this enormous techno-megacity and endure its horrendously cramped trains. I hope it will shed a bit more light on what it's like to live and work as a gaijin in this complex society, one in which you will always be an outsider, however long you stay. I trust it will convey some vivid impressions of Tokyo life, of what it's like to ride on its urban and social roller coaster, to come home utterly exasperated one night, and totally delighted the next.
I also hope it makes a contribution towards showing a Japan with a human face, a face that can be very hard for outsiders to see. To a considerable extent, that's because the Japanese people are so concerned about saving face - their public face, that is. Knowing this, I have often used pseudonyms to safeguard the privacy of friends, colleagues, and even employers.
For Westerners, this concern over 'face' can be quite a challenge. Many eventually leave this country with a great sense of frustration, and I might have done so as well had I left at an earlier time. But on the other side of the formidable cultural barriers that have confronted me in Japan, I've been privileged to discover many endearing qualities in the Japanese people. Given how stressful their lives are - dealing with a system that binds them in so many ways - I consider their kindness and generosity to be a small and wonderful miracle.
One more thing - I chose the word Natsukashii (naht - su - kah - she) as the book's Japanese title because it came to me in a dream one night that the title should include that word. It refers to a sentiment much valued by Japanese people, who often say natsukashii when remembering something nostalgically. It evokes both pleasure and a measure of sadness, and there's no word in English that better describes my feelings about Japan.
I'm afraid I've gone on so long that we're going to have to run for the train. But that just means it's a normal day - on your marks, get set, Tokyo!
Chapter 1
CLAUSTROPHOBICS NEED NOT APPLY
Japan The Cultural Blender
On the evening of my arrival in Japan in the fall of 1987, my destination was a city called Sendai, two hours north of Tokyo by shinkansen - the famous 'bullet' train. Krista had already been living there for a year, and we weren't sure at that time where we'd locate. I might join her in Sendai until she finished her contract, or live in historic Kyoto for awhile. But succumbing to the frenetic magnetism of Tokyo was a fate I imagined I could avoid.
Even though I was exhausted from the flight, my memory of that first night in Japan is crystal clear. Signs in kanji (Chinese characters) were everywhere. I was entering an alien universe.
In those days, you had to take a five-minute bus ride from Narita Airport to catch the train to Tokyo, because the last stretch of the train line hadn't been finished yet. The authorities were doing battle with farmers whose land they'd appropriated to build Narita Airport, a fight that still goes on in one form or another to this day. I remember that the bus was packed, and the silence was like that in a reference library.
I then took the Skyliner - a one-hour express train into downtown Tokyo - and soon found myself in Ueno Station, an enormous maze filled with people going every which way. Up to that point, things had been relatively easy. Now I was suddenly swimming in kanji signs and at a total loss as to which way to go.
A complete stranger kindly went out of his way to walk me a great distance through a sequence of passageways and staircases right to the entrance of the shinkansen. He then dashed off, quite unaware that one day he'd wind up in my book, having been instrumental in forming a very favorable first impression of his country in my mind. It was early in my time in Japan that I first heard the expression, "You've only got one chance to make a good first impression." In my case, Japan passed that test with flying colours.
Feeling safe and excited, I hopped aboard this country's high-tech iron-horse marvel for the first time and headed for Sendai, so Krista and I could plot our future together in the Land of Wa (meaning 'harmony').
Unlike Tokyo, Sendai is a fairly manageable size, and I liked it immediately. Krista normally rode a bicycle to work, but if she chose, she could walk home in 45 minutes. In Tokyo, walking home from work would probably take most people a couple of days.
So on the morning after my arrival, Krista gave me a key and dashed off to work on her bicycle. I puttered around her apartment for awhile, captivated by how tiny everything was. The minuscule bathroom brought the expression 'water closet' to life. But soon I, too, was out the door, eagerly awaiting more first impressions of Japan and Japanese life.
I didn't have to wait long. Barely had I gotten onto the nearest street when something came around the corner and embedded itself in my memory for all time. It may well be the best image that's ever crossed my path of the cultural incongruity a Westerner encounters here. On my first morning in Japan, no less - very Zen.
At first there was just this familiar song - the melody without the lyrics - which I couldn't quite make out, but which was drawing nearer and nearer. I stopped walking and glanced down the road towards the next corner, to where the sound was coming from.
Then two things happened at once. Just as I recognized the melody - Camptown Races by Stephen Foster - around the corner came this huge garbage truck loaded up with what seemed, thanks to the mood created by the music, to be a kind of cartoon caricature of happy-go-lucky workers, like you'd see in a kid's storybook.
Everyone - including the Japanese I guess - knows this familiar upbeat melody with the "doo dah" chorus: "Camptown ladies sing this song, doo dah, doo dah... Camptown racetrack five miles long, oh, doo-dah-day...!"
Into full view now came six Japanese garbage men - smartly dressed in crisp blue uniforms - hanging onto the back and the sides of their truck, while this very un-Japanese melody blared across the neighbourhood from a static-plagued loudspeaker on the dashboard.
The truck suddenly stopped. The men jumped off and diligently collected our neighbour's garbage, working with a great sense of purpose.
Every 30 seconds or so, the melody would come to an end, and then start right up again. I was mesmerized, and watched in total fascination as these guys made their way down the street, house by house. After the fourth or fifth round of their musical accompaniment - "Oh doo dah day" - the truck, its workers and its upbeat melody rounded the corner and disappeared from view. The song hung in the air a few more moments and then faded away.
It was my first contact with the cultural blender of modern Japan. You come here with your head full of images from books and movies and expect things to be Japanese. Instead, what you encounter is this curious mix of traditional Japan superimposed on cultural motifs like heritage Americana.
I was later to learn that the purpose of the song is to alert people to the truck's presence, in case they've forgotten to put out their garbage. "Of course," I thought, "just like ice-cream trucks back home play a melody to draw the attention of children." But on my first morning in Japan, I actually concluded it was designed to keep up the workers' spirits. It seemed to be doing a fine job of it too, the way they were going at that trash like men on a mission. Talk about diligence.
As for the Camptown Races, it's a good old song, though it beats me how they could listen to that melody hundreds of times a day without going berserk. I suspect that from now on, whenever I hear it, I'll see those Japanese garbage men in my mind's eye, hanging onto the back of their truck in the light of a Sendai morning.
Reviews
A decade of anecdotes to order
Wisdom winds through McCormack's 'Tokyo Notes'
[Tokyo Notes & Anecdotes: Natsukashii] is advocated reading for anyone with a more than passing interest in Japanese culture and what it is like to live here as a foreigner. I loved [this] book. It's so balanced, fair and wise . . . observations are fresh, funny and illuminating. Check it out.
Angela Jeffs, The Japan Times: Aug. 20,2000
Direct link to the complete review in The Japan Times
To contact the author directly, call (250) 472-3570 or e-mail cbmccormack25@telus.net
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