It's Just Because Of My Big Ol' Bootay, Isn't It?

At dinner last night, Seth said to me, "Oh, you'll appreciate this: One of your students came to my class and he was telling the other students about you." I said, "Yeah? What did he say?" Seth replied, "He said you were really nice and that you reminded him of Jennifer Lopez."

Stop laughing. Me and JLo gots the big, ol' Mexican T & A thing going on--though I think I'm a bit smarter, a better singer, and a better dancer. Also, I wouldn't give Ben Affleck the time of day. (I mean, diid you see Pearl Harbor, for chrissakes?)

Here's the thing about Westerners in Japan: Honto ni, the average Japanese person has zero contact with actual Westerners. No, the only "contact" that many people here have is via the media, which broadcasts Western (read: American) culture at them twenty-four seven. This leads to things like average-looking people like me being compared to people like JLo.

You might think I'm making this up, but it was actually one of the things that The Kaisha recruiters mentioned during the group interviews and orientation sessions. (Too, I had heard it from others, from other quite average-looking American men who spent time in Japan and came home having been told--and maybe even believing--that they looked like Harrison Ford or, in one case, Alec Baldwin.) The mention of this was part of a larger discussion about the generosity of the Japanese toward guests and how it was absolutely against Kaisha rules (and common sense and common decency) to take advantage of this. (Not that it stops a lot of the boys who come here and are confronted with a bevy of wide-eyed, adoring twenty-two-year-old twelve-year-old women.)

Honto.

Last night at dinner, for example, one of the Japanese teachers explained that "cute" was the word that all Japanese women, regardless of age, appreciated most as a compliment. "What about beautiful?" one of the Westerners asked. "Well, that's okay," he was told, "but "cute" is better."

One learns, pretty damned quickly, how to curb one's gag reflex over compliments like this. No one would understand the sarcasm. They often mean well here, and you just can't sarcasm earnestness out of a person--or an entire culture.

Oh, and I mentioned Pearl Harbor, right? Well, for some reason, I had a discussion with Jun about this movie and he told me that he had taken a girl to see it. I said I had never seen it. (I actually haven't.) He told me that it was really bad, but that during the movie, the girl had started to cry. Since he wanted to get to know this girl a little better, he had fake-sniffled a bit, to convince her that he was really touched by the same parts of the movie she was. I asked him if it worked, and he, Jun-like, said, "Yeah, of course." (See also: Jun looks like a model and sounds like one of The Beatles.) I told him that he should move to the States, because not only would he not have to fake-sniffle at the moving parts of movies, but that it might actually result in his losing points with girls. Also, he would probably be safe in mocking the girl after the film for having expressed any emotion at, say, E.T. phoning home. He didn't believe me.

I probably wouldn't have believed much of Jun's stories except that I had just finished a private lesson with a student who asked me about dating in America and who told me that movies were not a preferable first date in Japan. This was news to me, as I figured that movies were a kind of universal first date pick. ("Why?" she asked. I explained, "Because you don't have to really talk to each other.") She told me that she only took guys she wanted to get serious with to movies because it was at the movies that she really showed emotion. She thought that if she cried at a movie and he didn't, that then she'd both lose face and have to end the relationship.

I was, like, wow. You want men to show emotion at movies? This is an alien concept to me. And then, about an hour later, there was Jun, telling me that, yes, men know they're supposed to show emotions at movies (and, yes, they know enough to fake what they don't feel).

So...

Just a bit of miscellanea to round out this entry:

One of this week's lessons was on how to persuade people. One of the students, a new student, asked me if "Come on!" were informal English. I explained that it was informal, but not uncommon to use with friends and family members and even coworkers, though you'd have to use another phrase with your boss. I thought for a moment and came up with a more formal, "Please reconsider this." He was still taken aback at "Please reconsider this," and I asked him why. He explained that the Japanese would never use such a phrase because it might make the other person feel bad. I was, like, listen up, kid: If you're going to do business in America, there's a certain kind of vibe you're going to have to get used to. People in America don't wield power the way they do here. We actually, in America, like to pretend that we're all equal. That leads to a lot of behavior that probably bewilders the average Japanese person. We, for example, shake hands with everyone, even superiors. We don't bow so that we show our relative positions by degrees. (And I can't tell you how many Japanese people (including upper-management Tokyo businessmen types) that I've bewildered by automatically extending my hand in greeting.)

One of the upcoming lessons this week is "Talking About Crime." I asked, as I assigned homework, "Do you know anyone who's ever been arrested?" Not a single person, in a single class, knew anyone who'd ever been arrested. I also shocked a group of students the other night when I explained about my alien registration card (ARC). "What's that?" they asked. I explained that I had to register with the government and carry a card around with me at all times. If the police stopped me and asked for my identification--which they can do at any time, for any reason--I could, were I not to have remembered my ARC, be arrested. They had never heard of such a thing. In fact, many Japanese don't have a single form of picture ID. One of the teachers at the Kaisha school told me that she had never had an ID with the exception of her passport, which expired years ago.

I was on the train the other day and I saw, at one of the stops, a "Wanted" poster. There are, in some stations, some posters that seem to deal with the sarin gas terrorist attack. Many people on the subway had been made ill, and if I recall correctly, several people died. As the train pulled out of the station, I thought: I am a single event away from my fate being tied to everyone else's on this train. Then it suddenly struck me that I wasn't even a single event away from the same thing.

Ben remarked to me today, "I'm never going to drink again." I laughed. He continued, "I say that every time. I'm going to have it put on a t-shirt." I said, "Then it can be your drinking shirt."