The Challange of Living in Japan

Wes asked me a few days before we left why I was looking forward to being back in Japan, and I was thinking about the answer. Partly of course there are specific sights, sounds, tastes, experiences that I enjoy here. But it’s also that being here stretches and engages me mentally—not only in terms of my specific research, but just negotiating daily living and routines is challenging and gives a real feeling of accomplishment. For example, I’m incredibly proud that I was able to successfully open a bank account all by myself and all in Japanese with no help.

Just dealing with the language in and of itself is tiring—I don’t always understand and am often half guessing based on context. For example, when we were doing the alien registration, she asked if we needed a certificate showing that we had applied for our ID cards (since they won’t be ready for 3 weeks). She started listing things it would be needed for like ginkoo kooza. I had no idea what kooza was, but I recognized “ginkoo” as bank and knew we would be opening a bank account, so I said “yes”, and then later looked it up and verified that kooza does mean “account”. And so now I’ve learned another vocabulary word. It’s the same way with the kanji—Chinese characters. Some I recognize, some I guess, and some I just don’t know. It requires a certain amount of tolerance for ambiguity as well as a willingness to make mistakes and make a fool of yourself. But that’s all part of how one learns. And of course it’s tough on Wes since he not only can’t communicate verbally, but is completely illiterate—even for things like signs or the names of products in the grocery store.

It also makes one more sympathetic with some of the strange things the Japanese do with English. Yesterday we bought a sort of hanging clothes rank for drying our laundry. Here is what the label said: “Traditional laundry in japan are so soft as to calm down our minds.” Who knew that laundry could have such therapeutic effects!

Today (Sunday) we went over to see the Tsukuba Science Museum. First floor is various hands-on exhibits illustrating various physical principles and the second floor is devoted to space exploration. Unfortunately all of the explanations are entirely in Japanese, so it was of limited interest for us. We also stopped by the city library and verified that they do have two book cases of English language books. Also Chinese and Korean. In fact, looking at the names on the mail boxes at Takezono House, the majority are Chinese or Korean with a scattering of other nationalities.

Because Sunday is the one free day for a lot of people (many people still work a half day on Sat) and it was nice and sunny we also saw a lot of people out enjoying the parks, in the shopping malls, etc. There was even a group singing a cappella in one of the parks. And we found the “100 yen store” and picked up some cheap household goods. Tomorrow I think will be another quiet day at home, and then Tuesday I go into the University of Tsukuba to meet people.