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This was an email I sent during my last visit to Japan, with some names changed, which I was reminded of by my last post and its comments, particularly the one by koimistress.
Disclaimer: I can't vouch for Koji's take on swearing, as I'm too shy to double-check with any native speakers. (i wasn't the one who started that conversation.) I also don't think the New Koyo is a typical Japanese hotel, but rather a typical international backpackers' hotel, if you take my meaning.
#
I failed to make it to any dojo in Tokyo. I forgot about the lost day, and spent my first few days thinking that Thursday was Wednesday, until I got to Saturday (which I'd thought was Friday) and realized that not only was it Saturday, but if I wanted to make it to a class I had to dash back to the hotel and grab my letter of introduction, gift chocolate truffles, and gi, pronto. Just as I came back into the lobby, the skies went black and the rains came down.
Given that it was a ten-minute walk to the station, then a probable forty-five minute search for the dojo (it takes forty-five minutes to find anything in Tokyo that isn't a national landmark) with no rain gear but one of the hotel's teeny umbrellas, I gave it a pass. Everyone else gave their evening plans one too.
In the New Koyo (the cheapest hotel in Tokyo) clumps of disconsolate backpackers huddled in the lobby and shared travellers tales. Someone brought in a bottle of sake, a big one. Then someone went and bought another from the corner store. We began quizzing Koji, a young guy who was working at the hotel, about Japanese swearing. He was willing to oblige.
"We don't have the sort of curses you do," he said, adjusting his glasses. "I mean, we have sex words, like 'chinka'-- that means dick-- but words like motherfucker--" Everyone giggled, because Koji looks so innocent but said it with such a total lack of self-consciousness. "--We don't have words like that in Japanese."
One of the backpackers, a Chinese guy from London (lots of those traveling Tokyo right now, apparently) said, "But you must have some insults. What do you say to someone if you're picking a fight with them?"
"Oh, we have words for that," said Koji. "But they're more like threats. When we want to fight someone in Japan, we don't tell him we're going to fuck him. We tell him we're going to kill him."
There was a pause while everyone contemplated what that might imply about all of our cultures.
I was eating a bento at the time-- I had bolted the half-block to the corner store for it, because I had suddenly noticed that I'd forgotten to eat lunch and was drunk as salaryman on the last train home, and didn't want to wake up the next morning with an authentically Japanese hang-over-- and, having drunkenly forgotten the topic of conversation and drifted off into a far corner of the Rachelverse, picked up a delicacy from the bento box with my chopsticks and announced, "I love Japanese sausages."
I was momentarily baffled by the ensuing howls of laughter.
#
The day before I'd visited Asakusa, which is supposedly an old-town section of Tokyo with shops selling authentic Edo-period products. All I can say is, I was not aware that Hello Kitty was of such ancient vintage.
I also saw the inside of a Tokyo apartment owned by Japanese Deadheads, which looked just like every other Deadhead apartment I've seen except that some of the CDs were labeled in katakana, and there was a sticker on the outside of the door that said "Tokyo Hemp League."
And I was taken to a McDonald's, and found that the breakfast bagel is odd but kind of good in a trashy way. All this has been courtesy of the New Koyo crowd, several of whom have lived in Japan and are back for a visit, and most of whom are quite cool people. It's definitely a college dorm vibe, but hey, I liked college.
One of the women there is from Bombay. I soon was explaining why I'd spent so much time in India. "I am a Sikh," she said in her very proper accent. "I do not believe in these gurus. But you know, it is very funny. No one I know in India follows these gurus. But all these Westerners are just flocking to India for them"
"It is funny," I said. "I went to Harajuku today, and I saw all those kids in those bizarre punk costumes, and six Elvis impersonators break-dancing to American pop songs. One of them had a two-foot pompadour. So here I am from America, because I'm fascinated by Japan, and there they are in Japan, and they're obviously just as fascinated by America."
"Yes," said the woman from Bombay. "I went to Harajuku last week. You certainly will not see anything like that anywhere in India. Not even in Bombay. Not even in New Delhi."
She smiled. The French hotel clerk was typing email in hiragana beside us. Another Londoner, a black guy, sat across the table, crocheting his dreadlocks. His white friend or maybe boyfriend, also in dreadlocks, was reading a copy of "Marie Claire" someone had left on the table. The rain continued.
Disclaimer: I can't vouch for Koji's take on swearing, as I'm too shy to double-check with any native speakers. (i wasn't the one who started that conversation.) I also don't think the New Koyo is a typical Japanese hotel, but rather a typical international backpackers' hotel, if you take my meaning.
#
I failed to make it to any dojo in Tokyo. I forgot about the lost day, and spent my first few days thinking that Thursday was Wednesday, until I got to Saturday (which I'd thought was Friday) and realized that not only was it Saturday, but if I wanted to make it to a class I had to dash back to the hotel and grab my letter of introduction, gift chocolate truffles, and gi, pronto. Just as I came back into the lobby, the skies went black and the rains came down.
Given that it was a ten-minute walk to the station, then a probable forty-five minute search for the dojo (it takes forty-five minutes to find anything in Tokyo that isn't a national landmark) with no rain gear but one of the hotel's teeny umbrellas, I gave it a pass. Everyone else gave their evening plans one too.
In the New Koyo (the cheapest hotel in Tokyo) clumps of disconsolate backpackers huddled in the lobby and shared travellers tales. Someone brought in a bottle of sake, a big one. Then someone went and bought another from the corner store. We began quizzing Koji, a young guy who was working at the hotel, about Japanese swearing. He was willing to oblige.
"We don't have the sort of curses you do," he said, adjusting his glasses. "I mean, we have sex words, like 'chinka'-- that means dick-- but words like motherfucker--" Everyone giggled, because Koji looks so innocent but said it with such a total lack of self-consciousness. "--We don't have words like that in Japanese."
One of the backpackers, a Chinese guy from London (lots of those traveling Tokyo right now, apparently) said, "But you must have some insults. What do you say to someone if you're picking a fight with them?"
"Oh, we have words for that," said Koji. "But they're more like threats. When we want to fight someone in Japan, we don't tell him we're going to fuck him. We tell him we're going to kill him."
There was a pause while everyone contemplated what that might imply about all of our cultures.
I was eating a bento at the time-- I had bolted the half-block to the corner store for it, because I had suddenly noticed that I'd forgotten to eat lunch and was drunk as salaryman on the last train home, and didn't want to wake up the next morning with an authentically Japanese hang-over-- and, having drunkenly forgotten the topic of conversation and drifted off into a far corner of the Rachelverse, picked up a delicacy from the bento box with my chopsticks and announced, "I love Japanese sausages."
I was momentarily baffled by the ensuing howls of laughter.
#
The day before I'd visited Asakusa, which is supposedly an old-town section of Tokyo with shops selling authentic Edo-period products. All I can say is, I was not aware that Hello Kitty was of such ancient vintage.
I also saw the inside of a Tokyo apartment owned by Japanese Deadheads, which looked just like every other Deadhead apartment I've seen except that some of the CDs were labeled in katakana, and there was a sticker on the outside of the door that said "Tokyo Hemp League."
And I was taken to a McDonald's, and found that the breakfast bagel is odd but kind of good in a trashy way. All this has been courtesy of the New Koyo crowd, several of whom have lived in Japan and are back for a visit, and most of whom are quite cool people. It's definitely a college dorm vibe, but hey, I liked college.
One of the women there is from Bombay. I soon was explaining why I'd spent so much time in India. "I am a Sikh," she said in her very proper accent. "I do not believe in these gurus. But you know, it is very funny. No one I know in India follows these gurus. But all these Westerners are just flocking to India for them"
"It is funny," I said. "I went to Harajuku today, and I saw all those kids in those bizarre punk costumes, and six Elvis impersonators break-dancing to American pop songs. One of them had a two-foot pompadour. So here I am from America, because I'm fascinated by Japan, and there they are in Japan, and they're obviously just as fascinated by America."
"Yes," said the woman from Bombay. "I went to Harajuku last week. You certainly will not see anything like that anywhere in India. Not even in Bombay. Not even in New Delhi."
She smiled. The French hotel clerk was typing email in hiragana beside us. Another Londoner, a black guy, sat across the table, crocheting his dreadlocks. His white friend or maybe boyfriend, also in dreadlocks, was reading a copy of "Marie Claire" someone had left on the table. The rain continued.
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From:
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"Yes," said the woman from Bombay. "I went to Harajuku last week. You certainly will not see anything like that anywhere in India. Not even in Bombay. Not even in New Delhi."
She smiled. The French hotel clerk was typing email in hiragana beside us. Another Londoner, a black guy, sat across the table, crocheting his dreadlocks. His white friend or maybe boyfriend, also in dreadlocks, was reading a copy of "Marie Claire" someone had left on the table. The rain continued.
I love that -- that's just awesome. That's like a short story or novella even in miniature, or something.
From:
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And we went to an all-you-can-eat pasta viking there too. It's called a viking because that's shorter than 'smorgasbord'. The restaurant was blasting hip-hop so loudly that all communication inside had to be done in sign language, and serving authentic Italian pasta. The hip-hop tended to be thoroughly, thoroughly filthy in its vocabulary, but no one was registering that any more than an American restaurant crowd would register swearing in Japanese, so the waiter was very confused by the fact that every so often we would just fall over laughing. And the DJ earned my total admiration by being a Japanese man with platinum-bleached, waist-length dreadlocks.
There's just nowhere like it.