Amy in Hita

Saturday August 19, 1989

Last Sunday Amy, the private school JET in Hita, called up and asked us over. I don't think that Hita is that far away, but it seems far because there is only a local train and that takes more than an hour from Oita.

Amy meets us at the station and we walk to her house. She has an old Japanese house with a garden to herself. I'm so envious. It's an L-shaped house with the kitchen in the corner of the L. One wing is a one-storey and is two formal rooms, an eight-mat room and a six-mat room. The other wing, which is two-storeys has two bedrooms upstairs, the kitchen and another room where she has the TV and her futon. She seems to camp out in this one part of the house and ignore the rest

Amy used to teach English in Germany and although she's travelled a lot more than I have, she seems to have a much more difficult time adjusting to the Japanese rhythm of things. Maybe it's because she has something "foreign" to compare it with and I don't. She doesn't seem to be happy with her house because it's old and too big and empty...all the reasons that I fell in love with it at first sight.

Her liaison comes over and takes us to the Hirose Tanso Museum and an old-fashioned restaurant. That evening we walk up to the video store and get "The Hunger" and "Daddy-Long-Legs".

Strange to Remember Now

A funny thing that happened when I was with Amy. After a month in Japan, I was desperate to speak English with another native speaker. But when I was with her that weekend, I "cursed like a sailor"--much more than I normally do.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if using very informal language, even rough language, was an attempt to force our relationship into an immediate intimacy--providing the illusion that we were old friends who could say anything to each other.

There are level of politeness in English, too; they just aren't codified by grammar. Even though people (well Americans anyway) like to pretend there are no rules, they're there and people obey them or break them to produce certain effects.

Related

* JBL recollects her own visit to Hita in Hita, Pottery Village

Posted by M Sinclair Stevens
August 19, 2003

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