Wa

“Wa” is, of course, the subject marker in Japanese. Often, when someone wants to ask a question, they will just say the subject and "wa," and the llistener, in Japanese anyway, generally understands what information is being elicited. For example, if I want to know where, say, the New Guy is, I'd say to someone, "New Guy wa" and that means "Where is the New Guy?" Or if we were talking about going drinking, and I wanted to know if Wonder Boy were coming with us, I'd say to Wonder Boy, "Wonder Boy wa" and that would mean, "Are you coming with us, Wonder Boy?"

It works the same way as it does in English. Only we don't use the "wa."

Let's try.

Dinner Wa...

Dave calls. In his part of the world, it’s morning. In my part of the world, it’s evening. The last time we spoke was about nine hours ago and it was his evening and my afternoon, and I was heading off to the grocery store with thoughts of what to buy for dinner.

“What did you end up having for dinner?” David asks.

Ah, I had gone to the bakery in Higashi-Mukojima and found that they had my favorite bread for sale. At four dollars for a half loaf (about the size of three large bagels combined), the wheat and raisin bread is, in the land of bland, white bread, a kind of extreme fiber-tastic treat. I had that--yes, half a loaf--for a pre-workout dinner. For my real dinner I had rice with natto and a raw egg on top.

That’s right, natto and raw egg. Welcome to Japan.

Want the recipe? Take a large cup of rice, add several tablespoons of natto (fermented soybeans), a raw egg and a bit of soy sauce. Mix it up and eat it with a spoon.

Follow with several Morinaga chocolate ice bars (not ice cream, but a lot like chocolate popsicles) for dessert.

Sugoi yummy, ne?

Gym Wa...

Masayuki, an absolutely stunning gym boy, was at the gym tonight. Masayuki is my new gym boyfriend, the boy at the gym who you could never date but who you hope will be there when you go to work out so that you might have something to distract you from the fact that, yes, sometimes working out can be supremely yawn-inspiring.

And Masayuki wa...Masayuki is a proper gym-boyfriend. He’s about twenty-two and he looks like a little porcelain doll, all perfect skin and dark eyelashes and shy smile.

Man, there’s a gym boyfriend for you right there.

Sugoi yummy, ne?

Eh-to ne...

I left the gym a bit early because I wanted to head over to the supermarket across from my apartment building for diet Coke and some yogurt. (They close at eight p.m., as do all the proper grocers in Higashi-Mukojima--and, god, don’t get me started on that one.) Unfortunately, I took a wrong turn (thinking that I was taking a shortcut that I’ve taken before) and I ended up on an unfamiliar street.

Now, I’ve written about how Tokyo is big and confusing, but one would think that, after six months, I would know my little neighborhood. However, if one thought that, well, one would be wrong. Because even my little square kilometer of Tokyo, if one takes a wrong turn, can be big and confusing.

So there I was, lost and confused.

And it was dark.

And it was cold.

And I was hungry.

And like I always do when I am lost in Tokyo, I kept walking. I don’t succumb to confusion on the street because although Japan is comparatively safe--and Tokyo somewhat ridiculously safe for a large city--and I could have easily have played dumb gaijin (I wouldn’t have been playing really), I didn’t grow up in Japan. What that means is: Where I grew up, lost and confused equals victim. So even now, when I am confused, I play like I’m not.

I kept walking.

And walking.

And walking.

And I felt like maybe I should have been dropping a trail of bread crumbs behind me. And I’ll tell you what: I have never been so grateful for a cryptic English sign as I was when I got to the end of the unfamiliar street, looked up and saw a large reflective street sign that had an arrow pointing one direction that said Kameido and an arrow pointing the other direction that said Senju. Okay, so the names are familiar, but I couldn’t tell you which direction Mukojima lies in relation to those two places. Anyway, I picked one (Senju, which didn’t require me to cross a busy street) and I kept walking. Luckily, it turned out that Senju lay in the right direction, because I soon found my little street and my little grocery (which was just closing up, of course, but I still had time to grab some yogurt and a bunch of bananas and some diet Coke and the above-mentioned Morinaga chocolate ice bars) and I came home safe and sound.

And you know what I would have done if I had been properly lost?

Well, after deciding that I had met the criteria for being properly lost (maybe when I started to run into trees or mountains or people speaking Tagalog or something) I would have hailed a cab and crawled into the backseat and let the cab driver figure it out. This is, in fact, my standard fallback for the problem of being lost. And here I’ll just add that I’ve never had to use it. When I told the Ex-Student that I would do this if I had to, he said, “That’s a very adult solution.” But you know what? With a 2% chance of understanding any directions that I might be able to elicit? It’s a damn good solution as far as I’m concerned.

Purpose Wa...

We are drinking all night and I ask the Handsome Businessman to ask me a question. That sounds funny, doesn’t it? But I do this for several reasons: One is that people here won’t ask questions because they’re afraid to be rude. Another is that I am his teacher and it is generally unacceptable to question one’s teacher. Another is that I want to jump start a conversation that is lagging.

Honestly, this is what I say:

“Now you ask me a question.”

And he says, “Okay.” And pauses. Then he asks:

“What is your purpose in coming to Japan?”

Ah.

Good question, I tell him. I can’t--don’t--won’t answer this question. Instead, I ask him, “What do you think my purpose is for coming here?” He says he doesn’t know, so I try another approach. “Why do you think foreigners come to Japan?” I ask.

He says they come to learn the language or because they are interested in the culture. “But,” he says, “I don’t think that is your purpose for being here.”

I want to (but don’t) tell him of my healthy contempt for people who come with the goal of adopting another culture. I say that I am contemptuous, but really, I feel sorry for them. I’m glad that I’m not one of those poor lost souls who have so lost touch with their own culture that they desperately seek out what looks like something--anything--appealing about another culture. I am not the clueless gaijin who comes to Japan and a year later is wearing a kimono to events where actual Japanese women don’t wear kimono. I’m not the clueless gaijin convinced that she’s going to become the master koto player. I’m not the clueless gaijin who thinks he’s going to be the one the karate master teaches all the secrets of Japanese martial arts to. No, I have a culture, and though I am interested in Japanese traditional culture, I don’t need to adopt another culture to fulfill some need in myself that wasn’t being taken care of at home. That’s not why I’m here.

So, what is my purpose for being here?

There is a scene in Billy Bathgate, E.L. Doctorow’s novel about Chicago gangsters in the 1920’s. The novel’s narrator is a young man, Billy Bathgate, who has managed to finagle his way into the organization of Chicagoland goodfellas. In one scene, Billy sits at a bar watches as the gangsters’ accountant pours himself a glass of seltzer, drinks it, washes the glass and puts it away. The accountant wipes away the ring the glass of seltzer has left on the counter, leaving absolutely no trace of his actions behind. The narrator watches this scene silently and comments that never before had he realized that he was not necessarily the subject of his own experiences.

That may also be true of my purpose for being in Japan. That is, maybe I am not the subject of my own experiences in Japan.

The Ex-Student Wa...

Many people are curious as to why I chose Japan. I tell them the truth and the truth is too simple for them to believe.

I came to Japan because when I was a child, I studied about Japan in school. That’s it.

What is my purpose for being in Japan? To come to Japan. That’s it.

The Ex-Student doesn’t believe this and has questioned me over and over. “If you had studied about, for example, Brazil, you would have gone there?” he asks.

“Yes, perhaps,” I answer.

“Really?”

“Really.”

That’s it.

Maybe I’m not here to change my own mind. And it’s not that I haven’t changed while I’ve been here, because I have. But maybe...maybe I’m not the subject of my own experiences.

In fact, I would hate at this point to believe that I am.