Life in Japan

I had forgotten how small thing are here. There is no such thing as “large, economy size”. You buy meat or fish in packages of 400 grams (about half a pound). I bought a box of cereal that had 4 servings. The “plus size” tampons would be regular in the U.S., and hand lotion and toothpaste come in tubes almost small enough to legally carry on an airline. (Not everything is small—fruit is large and juicy and delicious and expensive.) Cars are also small and very boxy, with no cargo space and a fore-shortened hood to fit into small parking spaces. There would be no room on the road for American SUVs!

Some things have changed though. Cars used to almost all be white, and now you see lots of colors being driven on the road. They no longer sell beer in vending machines. And there are no more elevator girls—the women whose job it was to stand, immaculately coiffed, in elevators, and push the buttons and announce the floors in this incredibly artificial, high-pitched voice. “They might as well be recordings,” we used to say. Now they are.

Another thing that has changed is that the Liberal Democratic Party no longer controls both houses of the Diet. This is only the second time this has happened since 1955 (they got thrown out for about two years around 1994, but then got back into power). In the last election, they lost seats to one of the opposition parties in the Upper House, resulting in complete gridlock. It's true that the Lower House can override the Upper House with a 2/3 majority vote. But because that hasn't been done in 50 years, it's considered to be really playing hardball and something to be avoided at all costs. They may have to though to get the budget passed.

On a lighter note, we’ve been reading “Dave Barry does Japan” aloud to each other in the evenings. In amidsts all the silliness, he does make some fairly astute observations about Japan.

My research has been going well too. Thursday I met with the Executive Director of a company that provides classes in public speaking. We talked for over an hour and she was a wonderful informant—very knowledgeable and articulate. She asked me about my previous experiences in Japan and I explained that I had taught English in Iwate Prefecture for two years. “Where in Iwate?” she asked. “Taro,” I said, assuming that she would have no idea where that was. (It’s a town of 8000 people. NO ONE knows where Taro is.) To my surprise, she said that growing up she had lived for 5 years in an even smaller town between Taro and Miyako. And the receptionist who had been coming in and out and bowing and serving us tea, and bowing and serving us coffee, was from Morioka, which is the capital of Iwate. There must, she said be an “en” (fate) that had brought me, out of all of the speech training centers in Tokyo, to this one, where we shared a common Iwate bond. This is what all the fieldwork manuals describe as “building rapport.” Sometimes it just falls right into your lap.

So things are going well. Monday I will be visiting a temp agency to observe some of the "business manners" training that they provide their staff and interview one of the instructors.