Monday August 28, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-28 03:47 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥5000 inkan
¥600 name rubber stamp
¥12630 JQS plane
Tokyo-Oita
¥1052 groceries
¥310 beer
¥19 consumption tax
¥19611 Total

Notes from 2009

inkan

Inkan

Now that I’ve been paid, I have to repay several expenses that the school covered for me. My most important purchase is my inkan, the seal I affix to official documents (like bank withdrawals). Using my inkan makes me feel like I’ve stamped a royal decree. My inkan is rather unusual because it has romaji (roman letters) on it. Most inkan for foreigners have their names written in katakana script. My full name wouldn’t have fit, so Murakami-sensei had it made for “M Stevens”. As there is no katakana equivalent for the “M”, she gambled and had them put it in romaji. It’s perfect because I’ve always formally signed my name “M Sinclair Stevens” and informally, used just “M”.

I think Nakagawa-sensei provided the little case for my inkan, which I carry with me in my purse at all times.

I also get a rubber stamp of my name for use on school reports. Both the inkan and the rubber stamp have a little indentation so that you can tell which is right side up without looking.

The teachers all have their own rubber stamps and for each class there is a box of student rubber stamps. Whenever a teacher is making up reports (all done by hand), they use the rubber stamps so they don’t have to write each student’s name. They do have computers in this school but they are not used for the huge amounts of paperwork that the teachers generate.

Spelling My Name

Back in year 1, (1989 is Heisei 1–the first year of the new era which began on January 8, 1989), my family name, Stevens, was rendered スチーブンス, (pronounced SU CHEE BU N SU). Then in the 1990s, many katakana equivalents were changed including the spelling of my name, which is now スティーブンズ (pronounced SU TE-EE BU N ZU) so that when I went back to college to study Japanese I no longer knew how to spell my own name.

 

Sunday August 27, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-27 05:01 pm by M Sinclair Stevens
  • Reunion dinner for teachers who visited Austin.

Reunion Bath and Dinner

This evening Murakami-sensei asked that I go with her to a dinner reunion of teachers in the private school association who had chaperoned the summer trip to Austin. Akamine-sensei offers to watch JQS; she has a son the same age that he can play with. She picks us up and drops me off at the hotel on Beppu Bay where the dinner is being held.

Murakami-sensei is not in the lobby and after waiting awhile, I ask the receptionist what room the group is in. Murakami-sensei is not there either. However, three men in hotel yukata (summer kimono) greet me enthusiastically and say that they are on their way to take a bath before dinner. They leave me alone to change and to wonder if we are all going to take a bath together.

Three guys in yukata.
These are the three men, strangers to me, that I got into the elevator with wearing only a “bath robe” (yukata). After our baths, we women change back to street clothes but the men remain in yukata for our dinner party.

As the four of us get into the elevator, I think, in the US there’s no way I’d get into an elevator with three men I didn’t know wearing only a thin, cotton bathrobe. When we get to the third floor, one of the men points me in the direction of the women’s bath.

Whew! A separate women’s bath. And it’s beautiful, overlooking Beppu Bay with a little rotenburo (outside bath) on the balcony. The best part is that the rinsing off station has shower heads with hot running water. (How I wish our apartment had hot water!) I treat myself to a luxurious shampoo before slipping into the tub for a good soak. Murakami-sensei shows up and we bathe and chat together before going down for dinner, drinking, and my first attempt at karaoke.

Murakami-sensei and I are feeling no pain after bath, dinner, and karaoke.
Murakami-sensei and I are feeling no pain after bath, dinner, and karaoke.

2009-12-10. I find a letter describing this same story.

Postmark: Beppu August 1989

JQS says he doesn’t feel like he’s in a foreign country. His life is pretty much the same. I don’t agree at all. The difference really hit me in the elevator a couple of days ago I went to a hotel in downtown Beppu for a reunion dinner of some Japanese teachers who had gone to Austin last year. Ms. Murakami was suppose to me me there with two other Austinites. I did some shopping first and got to the hotle a little earlier than scheduled but frazzled. I didn’t see anyone I knew and the hotel clerk didn’t speak English. “Eigo no sensei?” (English teachers?) I muttered, not having the slightest idea what to say. The clerk’s face lit up and he motioned me to follow him up to a room on the fifth floor.

No one was there but shortly afterward two men in bathrobes (yukata — summer kimono) showed up and introduced themselves. The could speak only a little English but they did manage to ask me if I wanted to take a bath before dinner. Now there’s nothing I desire more after work or shopping than to take a bath. Ms. Murakami had mentioned that the hotel had a hot spring bath and to bring a change of clothes. So I agreed and they got out a map of the hotel and showed me that the bath was on the third floor. In the picture it sure looked like the mens and womens baths were all together but it was too late to raise demurrers. And though I don’t usually mind nude bathing in mixed company it’s a little different when it’s with people I wokr with.

They left and I changed into a yukata. It was in the elevator that it occurred to me that I’d never get into an elevator of an American hotel wearing only a thin bathrobe (me, not the elevator). As it turned out, the baths were separate. The womens bath was a huge pool that I had to myself. looking out onto Beppu Bay. Best of all it had a hot shower, shampoo, and cream rinse. It was wonderful. I was still relaxing in the bath twenty minutes later when Ms. Murakami found me. I went with her to have another bath, this on on the roof outdoors. Then we had dinner.

After dinner, each person had to give a speech. Then they hauled out a VCR and a mike. Japanese men love to sing songs in front of each other. One man got up to sing. A music video, with the workds in subtitle, played the accompaniment. It’s hard not to laugh at them because they take it so seriously. I had to leave early because [Akamine-sensei] who was babysitting JQS was picking me up. They insisted that I sing before I left. Now I can’t sing. And they searched in vain through their video collection finding songs I didn’t know. In the end I agreed to sing, a cappella, the only song I could thing of the words to because it comes on the Kamegawa PA system every night at 9PM and JQS and I sing it at home: Home on the Range.

Notes from 2009

I find it interesting that not only did I not know use the word karaoke (which is today in the English dictionary) but that I had to explain what it was in such detail.

 

Saturday August 26, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-26 06:24 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥1350 Echoes Restaurant
w/JQS, Murakame-sensei, Akamine-sensei
¥2039 black school shoes
¥1000 book: Even Monkeys Fall from Trees
15:44 Haruya Shoten
¥620 book: Once Upon a Time in Japan
15:44 Haruya Shoten
¥200 book: Flambards
16:09 Parco
¥1400 book: The Wind in the Willows
16:09 Parco
¥500 books on tape: Peter Rabbit
16:09 Parco
¥100 machine drink
¥97 consumption tax
¥460 train: Oita-Kamegawa
¥160 bread
¥4500 JQS allowance
¥12426 Total

Notes from 2009

Payday

My first weekend after my first payday. By keeping careful records all month, I have a good idea of how expensive it will be to live in Japan and how much money I’m actually making. My salary is $35,000 a year (¥360,000 a month), about 40% more than I was making in the US plus it’s tax free. I get paid in yen and I’m exempt from Japanese income tax because I’m a teacher and from US income because of the Foreign Resident Tax Credit. I do pay into the Japanese retirement system and private teacher’s association dues. I live in the school dorm and my rent is a paltry $140 a month, about 1/3 of my mortgage payment in the US. I don’t have a car so my transportation costs average about $10 a week in train fare.

I could spend ¥12,000 a day and still have money to spare. In the first 26 days of August, I’ve spent ¥104,213, or about ¥4000 a day.

JQS has a half day of school on Saturdays and so does my school. However, JET participants were not required to work on Saturdays so I usually used the morning to do my laundry and housework. When school was out at noon, JQS and I went with Murakami-sensei to Oita (where she lived) to have lunch and shop.

English-language Books

English-language books purchased in Oita City. August 26, 1989.

Now in the days of Amazon and Amazon.jp, it’s almost impossible to imagine or remember how difficult it was twenty years ago to obtain English-language books in small town Japan. We were hungry for reading material. Beppu itself had no English-language books available at that time. Murakami-sensei showed us a bookstore in Oita which had a small section of English-language books. (I just Googled the name on the receipt and discovered the bookstore is Haruya Shoten.) We also found some English-language books on the basement floor of Parco department store next to one of my other favorite stores, Muji. We had a book swap at the Oita Foreign Residents club–but those consisted mostly of current fiction: mysteries and romances–stuff I don’t read. And it was a long walk from Oita station, so I rarely bothered to go there. Friends sent us books from the US and I discovered Daedalus Books, which, at the time, had cheap, flat rate international shipping charge no matter how many books you ordered.

Mexican Food in Japan

Echoes is the “Mexican” food restaurant that Murakami-sensei wanted me to try. She was very excited by the nachos which were nothing but bland melted cheese on Frito corn chips. It was terrible. I’m trying to remember if I was polite about it but I regret to say that I probably wasn’t.

School Shoes

I had to have indoor shoes for school. I had been wearing the guest slippers all week. I bought the cheapest, plain black vinyl shoes I could find. My indoor shoes actually had a little heel. They looked liked ordinary shoes but I they could never be worn outdoors. M2 has the best shoe story ever.

 

Wednesday August 23, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-23 02:25 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

  • 8-12: School. First day students are at school.
  • Self-introduction to staff and then to student body.
  • 14:00. TV delivered to apartment.

Postmark: Beppu August 23, 1989

1000 cranes–well, one, anyway. If I write 1000 aerogrammes this year, I guess that will be my 1000 cranes.

Okay. Are you the one that ratted to CNN and told them that I wasn’t receiving any news broadcasts in my “remote village” in Japan? Or did you, perchance, write to my school and tell them that it was an international disgrace that their AET was completely ignorant of current world affairs? I remember telling Tonai-sensei only yesterday, as we stopped in at his house for a peach and a bicycle how glad I was not to have a TV. “If we had a TV, I said, “we would never study.” And given how slowly our studies are progressing, that would be disastrous indeed.

[Did I register the look of concerned shock on Tonai-sensei's face at my offhand remark. I didn't yet understand that when he said, "You should have a TV." that he meant "We think you should have a TV and so we're getting you one."] And so today, Tonai-sensei came to my desk and whispers, “Kocho-sensei [the principal, ever known only by his title] thinks you should keep up with the news. So someone will deliver a TV to your apartment at 2PM. Is that a good time for you?”

So there it sits in the corner–an incredibly beautiful, brand new Hitachi 20-inch color TV with stereo sound and a bilingual switch on the remote. Dare I demur?

Tonai-sensei spent 2 1/2 hours reading the television schedule to me, line-by-line–even after I pointed out that I’d be at work for most of the shows he was explaining to me. However, I dutifully watched the news at 6:30. Some guy kidnapped three little girls and then videotaped their nude dead bodies. The Japanese are unhappy about their 3% consumption tax and want to overthrow (or perhaps already did overthrow) their government in order to repeal it. And the Japanese are unhappy that more Vietnamese boat people have landed in Okinawa.

We did watch “Little House on the Prairie” because it was the only other bilingual program that we found. [...]

Today I had to give an introductory speech, in Japanese, first to the other teachers in my staff room and then to the entire student body. I had practiced it quite a bit but when I faced all those people, my mind went blank. I muddled through it. Oh well, no one seems to care what I accomplish as long as I try.

Tomorrow, I give my first class. My team teacher can’t be there so I’m flying solo the first time out.She spent about half an hour telling me not to become discouraged if the students say absolutely nothing during the whole class. Remember, I’m teaching conversational English. But, as you well know, I’m good at monologues.

 

Monday August 21, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-21 11:22 am by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥870 deli: sashimi for 2
¥270 train
Beppu – Kamegawa
¥291 groceries: orange juice
¥320 laundry bag
¥44 consumption tax
¥1795 Total

  • From today through 8/24, school day for JQS.
  • 09:00-12:00. School day for MSS.
  • Pick up alien registration card.

 

Sunday August 20, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-20 04:16 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥3240 Train
Hita-Kamegawa
¥260 groceries
¥7 consumption tax
¥3507 Total

Postmark: Hita

Yesterday JQS and I took the train two hours west to the town of Hita where another AET (Assistant English Teacher) lives. Amy Thomas is from Toledo; like me, she is assigned to a private school. Her school found her a house and it’s like a mansion–especially by Japanese standards–and only ¥20000 a month rent (about $150, which is cheap).

The kitchen is larger than the one in your apartment. It’s a big L-shaped house. One wing has two tatami rooms: a 6-mat room and an 8-mat room with a tokonoma [display alcove].

traditional Japanese house, Hita 1989

The other wing has the kitchen and a 6-mat room that’s surrounded by an enclosed wooden porch overlooking a Japanese garden. There are two more rooms upstairs.

traditional Japanese house, Hita 1989
This is a very poor photo because of the back-lighting but I wanted to remember the huge porch and the lovely Japanese garden, complete with stone lantern and decorative rocks.

This house is so great. I wouldn’t mind having one just like it in the states. [...] There is this incredible sense of spaciousness that is totally lacking everywhere else I’ve been in Japan. All I want to do is to look out the windows into the garden and let all my pent up feelings of claustrophobia float away.

Anyway, we came up to Hita to visit Amy and be American for a little while. We had a barbecue and rented two American movies. Amy has a TV and a VCR. Basking in the glow of the television, I realized that all sensation of living in Japan had momentarily faded. It felt just like an ordinary evening at home, drinking beer, talking about not much in particular, and watching movies on the VCR. [...]

A breeze is blowing through the house. It is sunny and warm like a May day in Austin. Amy is reading. I am writing to you. And JQS is watching another rental movie. [...]

 

Saturday August 19, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-19 04:12 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥3240 train
Kamegawa-Hita
¥100 machine drink
¥600 video rental
Ferris Bueller, The Hunger
¥500 omiyage for office

Postmark: Beppu August 19, 1989

Today JQS and I are off to another small town, Hita, where another AET (assistant English teacher, like me) lives. We’re going to barbecue and shop and act American!

As you can tell by all the edits in this letter, I’m dying here without my Mac. The first thing I’m buying on payday is a word processor. So watch out. The next letter may be in kanji.

Postmark: Beppu, August 26, 1989

[On Thursday] I told Tonai-sensei and Murakami-sensei that I was going to Hita for the weekend so they wouldn’t plan anything for us. They exchanged worried glances but said nothing.

However, [yesterday] they were armed with maps and train schedules. Murakami-sensei had called the bus station and the train station to check routes and prices. Should we take the bus (for which we needed reservations) the express train (which is more expensive than the local train but goes straight through), or the local train (which is slow and requires that we switch in Oita City)?

You understand that I have no say in this decision. Whatever they decide for me is what I will do. What we sometimes mistake for kindness is closer to a sense of duty and with it comes many obligations. They are in charge of me. If I get sick or lost or do something stupid, I make them look bad. In turn our school, the JET program, and even the prefectural government could look bad. They have to do what they can to keep me out of trouble and, in turn, I also have an obligation which involves giving up a lot of who I am and what I want for the good of the group.

After two hours of pouring over train schedules, drawing diagrams of the Oita train station, practicing phrases in Japanese such as “I’d like two tickets to Hita.” and “Excuse me, is this the train to Hita?” I think we are all set. Maybe I’m not a good student because my teachers evidently had second thoughts (which they did not share with me) about letting me go it alone.

Today Tonai-sensei drives us to the Kamegawa train station and transacts the purchase of the tickets for us. When we get to Oita station, we are surprised to find Murakami-sensei waiting on the platform. What a coincidence running into her. Where is she off to? Nowhere. On her day off she is compelled to buy a ticket to meet our train and wait with for us 40 minutes until we are safely on the train to Hita.

As we are finally away, I think “Free at last! Now I can kick back, act American, and not watch everything I do and say.” When we get to Hita, I spot Amy at the station. I run over to her and standing behind her is her teacher, Kajiwara-sensei. He thought that since I was coming to Hita, he’ spend the weekend with us showing us around town.

Journal

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 almost two hours from Oita. The train is packed and we have to stand for a long time. The farm wives and grannies express pity for JQS and encouragement, alternating between saying kawaisoh [poor little dude] and gambatte [hang in there]. One offers him some candy.

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-story and is two formal rooms, an eight-mat room and a six-mat room. The other wing, which is two-storys 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.

Hirose Museum Hita

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” *.
Note: We have conflicting memories on which videos we watched. We both remember “The Hunger” but JQS remembers watching “Innerspace” and I wrote down “Ferris Bueller” in the daybook. Maybe we watched all four or maybe we watched two of them on another visit.

Note from 2003-11-12

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”–swearing 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.

 

Friday August 18, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-18 06:30 am by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥600 JQS school health certificate
¥600 Total

  • 9-12: School.
  • Tonai-sensei and his wife drive us to Bungo Takada.
  • Dinner at the Hayashi’s house.
  • Bon odori.
  • Spend the night at the Hayashi’s.

Postmark: Bungo Takada

[...] I spent the night dancing in a circle with about 1000 other people at the Bon Festival. Bon is a Buddhist festival for the souls of the dead–sort of like All Soul’s Day, I think. But there was not much religious presence at the bon odori [bon dance]. It’s basically an excuse to party.

One of the Japanese teachers of English, Mr. Tonai, has inlaws who live in Bungo Takada, which is renowned locally for its bon odori. [Note 2009: Tonai-sensei always referred to them as his wife's brother's family...so to me they will always be "Tonai-sensei's wife's brother's family. In English, however, they are the Hayashi family."]

Bungo Takada is about a 50-minute drive north of here through beautiful mountain countryside. The greenery reminded me of the area around Seattle but the character of the place is closer to that of the drive between Santa Fe and Taos. At any rate it was great to get out of town and be able to see things at a distance. After awhile, these little winding streets make one very claustrophobic.

[The Hayashis] have a huge house in the middle of the rice fields–so it was very quiet. They had prepared a feast for us.

At the Hayashi house in Bungo Takada
At the Hayashi family’s house.

When the Japanese entertain, they go all out. They spare no expense. Whether someone is visiting us or we’re out with them, they are continually buying us little gifts–usually of food–and sometimes not so little. For example, the Japanese are crazy about French pastry and there are dozens of pastry shops around. It seems to be the one Western food they make that actually tastes like Western food. Anyway, they also buy this French-style gelatin that is expensive for Jello but comes beautifully wrapped. (Wrapping is a big deal here. If you get a present from a Japanese, don’t trash the wrapping! Not that I would anyway. I’ve always been a paper saver and the paper here is gorgeous.) They are keen on “coffee jelly”, basically coffee-flavored Jello. I actually like it and I’ve never cared much for Jello. Is this a European thing? [...]

After dinner, Mrs. Hayashi dressed me for the bon odori in a yukata (summer kimono), obi (sash), and geta (wooden sandals).

Dressing in yukata for Bon Odori

Then we went to the Bungo Takada town square. They had set up a stage festooned with lanterns, a taiko (large traditional Japanese drum), and some singers. About 1000 people, all dressed in yukata were dancing in long lines circling around the stage.

Bungo Takada Bon Odori

This wasn’t some free-for-all disco dance. Everyone was doing the same dance together. Every neighborhood and office in town had it’s own team. Basically it was a huge dance contest. The Hayashis talked JQS and me into joining their team.

Bungo Takada Bon Odori
Notice that the other women are wearing tabi, white “socks” with a toe for wearing with geta. At US size 7 1/2, my feet were too big so I had to go without–like the men.

I couldn’t figure out the dance at all but it was still a lot of fun. We danced for about two hours and in that time circled the stage only four times.

After dancing we came back to the house and ate and drank numerous liters of Kirin beer. They gave me my costume so some day I can show it off to you guys.

Notes from 2009

Mrs. Hayashi and Mrs. Tonai made a photo album for me with all the photos from our visit. They wrote cute Japanese captions which I couldn’t read at the time. Today, twenty years later, I finally understood one of their messages: 「あの時の，ありがとうは、忘れない。」”For that time, thanks. We won’t forget.”

Thank YOU. I won’t ever forget, either.

 

Thursday August 17, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-17 04:11 pm by M Sinclair Stevens

Accounts

¥2632 Kotobukiya (w/Tonai)
¥950 16:13 HIHひろせ
film 48 prints 400 ASA (@14¢)
¥350 2 single ice cream
¥106 consumption tax
¥600 unaccounted
¥4638 Total

  • 9-12: School.

Postmark: Beppu

[...]Living here is strange in ways I had not imagined. It’s not the differences in clothing, food, housing, or custom that bothers me. I’d read enough about them to be prepared–and some I prefer to the American way of doing things. Plus, I’m used to not having a dishwasher, air conditioner, television, couch, or a washer/dryer. I’m used to spending a lot of time at home alone, reading or writing or puttering around the house.

The difference is that if I started getting stir crazy in Austin, I’d hop in my car and drive. I might go up to the Arboretum to get ice cream at Amy’s and visit my cows, or go see a movie. Or I’d drive down to Town Lake and watch the bats. I miss my car and I miss movies! I miss reading reviews about movies. I wonder if it’s possible to get a subscription to the Chronicle delivered in Beppu.

I don’t know if it’s like this elsewhere in Japan but living in Kamegawa is like living in a village. (Kamegawa is our little suburb north of Beppu. We live in Kamegawa-chuo-machi [亀川中央町] literally turtle-river-center-of-town, or simply, central Kamegawa.) This is very much a neighborhood in the way that has vanished in the U.S. Most shopkeepers have their houses above their shops. There are green grocers, fish markets, bakeries, and cake shops. Amid these are the rice shops, tea shops, barbershops, and public baths. All the shopkeepers are nice to us. I enjoy going marketing although it takes about an hour out of every day.

[...] One of the Japanese teacher of English, Tonai-sensei, and his wife just took me shopping at the discount store [Kotobukiya] downtown. “Welcome, K-Mart shoppers!” It’s curiously the same although it remains distinctly Japanese in its modernized versions of traditional Japanese goods. I never thought I’d be happy to see the inside of a K-Mart lookalike, but hey–I’m adaptable. Madonna was playing over the store PA and she sounded great!

Housework is very labor-intensive. I go marketing about every day, as does everyone else. One reason it to buy the freshest possible food. (There are almost no frozen foods in our market.) The other is because I can’t carry more than a day’s worth of groceries the 10-block walk home. On Sundays I clean house. This involves chiefly washing the futon covers and airing out the futons. Neguro-san (my neighbor/dorm housemother) lent me a vacumn and it is a godsend for vacumning up the spiders and dust.

Notes from 2009

Inari Sushi

I discovered I really like inari sushi. It was cheap and yummy. But I had no idea what it was made out of. The little “bags” looked like chicken skin. At Kotobukiya, I saw a large display of inari sushi and got the chance to ask Tonai-sensei what they were. It turns out to be deep-fried tofu pockets, abura-age. Now I can just do an internet search and get recipes, photographs, and how to make it demos via YouTube. How strange our difficulties and confusion a mere twenty years ago must seem to people of the 21st century.

Waving vs. Beckoning

I remember wandering the aisles of Kotobukiya and seeing Mrs. Tonai waving to me and JQS from the other end of the store. We smiled and tried to look attentive and figure out what she wanted us to do. This was our first encounter with the beckoning gesture that we foreigners confuse for a wave (although they are quite different).

 

Wednesday August 16, 1989

Posted in diary on 2009-08-16 08:25 am by M Sinclair Stevens

Postmark: Beppu

A full moon is rising in the east. I see it as I sit here writing at my desk. Each of my tatami-mat rooms has a sliding glass door, which serves as a wall, and window, and door. I moved my desk against the sliding glass door of my room so I could see the sky and a patch of green which are the trees of a hill to the south of our apartment. And now I watch the moon rising [...]

moon rising over Beppu Bay, August 1989

For some reason, my sense of direction has become totally reversed so the rising moon seems like a setting moon. When I look out my window, I get the same directional sense as looking toward the parking lot of my condo. When I go to the roof and look across the bay to Oita city, I feel that I’m looking north toward Town Lake or the capitol building. In fact, it is just the opposite. Kamegawa (the suburb of Beppu where we live) is north of Beppu proper. [...]

But Japan is totally disorienting. Today was gray, cool, and gloomy. Or perhaps my mood was gloomy and transferred that feeling to my impression of the weather. I should have been relieved that it was so cool–like a rainy Austin day in March. I actually turned the fan off and closed the windows because of the chill. But my spirits sank contemplating a winter with no heat if it’s this cool in August.

Today JQS and I had no excursion planned. I have no one to meet, no functions to attend. I have met the Consulate-General in Houston, a variety of ministers from the ministries of Education, Foreign Affairs and Home Affairs, the governor of Oita prefecture, the mayor of Beppu and innumerable bureaucrats. So a day of home study looms before us.

I don’t think I can fit all that I need to learn into my little brain. I have spent the day trying to learn the second syllabary of Japanese characters: katakana. I only learned the frist 20. That is, I can read them. But I can’t write them. I am learning to write the other syllabary, hiragana. The two syllabaries–phonetic symbols–are used primarily to form endings of words or to write foreign words. So I can’t really do much with this scant knowledge, even though it seems like a tremendous effort to have learned this much.

An unnerving sense of isolation sets in. I’ve no news of the world (I can’t read the headlines; I can’t understand the TVs I pass in the department store) nor of home. I can’t use the phone, or drive a car, or buy stamps at the post office, or get money out of the bank, or do anything without asking for help.

Well, that’s not entirely true. I can get lost in my neighborhood, I can take the train to other towns and get lost there. (Ask [...] about our misadventures in Kitsuki. I wrote her about them the other day.) I can buy groceries. The salespeople are great! It’s amazing what you can do without language here. No one in America would treat foreigners with such understanding and good will.

I didn’t mean this letter to be such a downer. It’s frustration, more than homesickness, that I’m feeling. Japan is here; I’m in reach of magical treasures but I can’t unlock the glass case. So I press my face against the pane.

Guess who has a plant right here in Oita-ken? Texas Instrument! So if I do unlock the knowledge of Japan, maybe I can get a job with TI. Or maybe you can and come to Beppu to visit.

I sound worse off in this letter than I feel. But today I felt like a visitor to Austin who was stuck in an apartment off Burnet Rd with no way to get to the capitol, 6th Street, Manuel’s, Town Lake, the Arboretum, or Amy’s Ice Cream. Go give my cows a hug for me. I miss you both.

 
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