An American in Asia: His Quest for Cosmic Truth (or at least a Decent Espresso)

 

I felt no culture shock, moving to Japan. In fact, I had an inexplicable feeling of familiarity. Japan, or Nihon as they call it, is economically on a par with the US and for the most part, day-to-day life is much the same.

Ultraman statue

It took a while for the differences to sink in and, when they did, Japan had already become part of my personality. Only now, in hindsight, can I see the effect a life in Japan has on an American expat.

Excepting the Native Americans, the U.S.A. is a country of immigrants. Americans are primarily the descendents of people who left home and family to strike out on their own in an unknown land.

This makes America is a distilled population of loners, outcasts and weirdos. All the folks who left home, were dragged from home, broke tradition or the law and didn't inherit the family business. In many ways that's made the country great, and certainly is the reason for our obsession with freedom and independence.

Stone Buddhas in a graveyard.

Yet, there's a good deal to be said for dependence and working together, and I learned a lot about that in Japan. In what is historically a farming culture on an archipelago with lots of volcanos and little arable land, vast importance is placed upon working together.

If you have too many hunters, you scare away the game. But you can never have too many hands if you want to build a barn or take a few billion little seeds off a field of plants and get them to a market. People place a lot of importance on taking care of each other in Japan and though it takes some getting used to, it's a good influence on an American character.

Tokyo from the office of Adobe Systems. I flunked a guy there and he lost his job.

If I'm with a group of people in the States and we want to go for a drink, everyone figures out who is the group leader, usually the guy with the wheels, and tries to convince him of their choice of venue. He usually tallies the votes, vetoes a couple of things and makes the decision in less than 5 minutes. In the same group in Japan, everyone politely listens to everyone else's opinion. If you don't speak up, you will be asked. Then the decision is made together as a group. No one person is willing to step up and make the decision for the whole. If the decision is bad, there is no one to blame. If it's good, everyone is happy with themselves. And it takes friggin' forever. Whenever I'm in a group of Japanese and a decision has to be made, I find a convenient place and sit myself down. Hopefully I've brought a book to read. And no matter what, I very definitely do not voice an opinion that goes against the group. If I did this, it would awaken another 10 minutes of discussion and I still wouldn't get my way. Always agree with the group.

Always nice to know you can get a marmot when you need one.

This sounds anathema to the average American, but it's not that bad. Usually you'll end up at a good restaurant even if it's not your first choice. And you'll be there with mostly happy people. It actually pays to think of others. Go figure. I spent 4 years living in Tokyo and they were all pretty awesome. I worked mostly as a teacher, with a disastrous stint as a translator, and I flirted with the possibility of marriage but never quite got there.

In a big expensively designed meeting room, wearing a suit.

My Dad's a teacher and it's a wonderful job. Think about it. Doctors make lots of money but every day, dawn till dusk, they are dealing with sick, coughing, sneezing, hacking, runny-nosed, bleeding, crying patients and not one of them is happy to be there. A teacher on the other hand, is dealing with people who want to learn. Unless it's a public school. For the most part, everyone a teacher sees in his day is looking to change their mind for the good. Students come from all walks of life and they bring a million different questions and influences to the class. And they all want to make their minds better somehow. Students are the nicest most interesting group of people you could ever hope to meet.

Oishi san was my boss at my first job in Japan. There's really no describing her, but vampire is a word that often comes up. I once sat across a table while she scarfed bowl after bowl of raw chicken livers.

Of course the subject I taught was English and many people might say that's a lark and any fool could teach their native tongue. To them I would reply: "Give me a clear explanation of the difference between 'a' and 'the'." It's not easy. They don't have any equivalent to those words in Japanese. I taught English for 5 years and every day someone asked me a question that stumped me for a few. And it was my favorite part of the day. I have been forced to think about my own language on a level that few ever do. Sometimes it ended up with all of us scratching our heads and thinking, "Yeah, why the hell do they say that in English?" I have to say it's a really unfortunate choice for a global language. Something with simple and consistent laws of spelling and grammar would have been better. But since the internet currently consists of 80 per cent American English, we're stuck with it. I guess it's lucky that Silicon Valley didn't happen in Nunavut or we'd all be learning 250 different ways to say 'snow'.

The staff at Organic Cafe in Nakameguro, my favorite coffee shop in the universe.

I lived in a neighborhood called Nakameguro. It was the equivalent of living in a cheap area five minutes from Soho in New York City. It was close to Shibuya with all its clubs and shopping centers. It was right next to Daikanyama, which was the place to go for the most fashionable clothes by unknown designers. Man, I miss the clothes in Japan. A man could dress like a model and no one would think he was gay. No one would ever wear a jacket that didn't come with the pants. The ties match the shirts in really imaginative ways and even the imported American t-shirts and Converse All-Stars are somehow made to look sophisticated.

OK, this coat is my favorite: Looks normal enough but it's black corduroy with stripes on the sleeves made from strips of cable-knit sweater sewn in. The inside is cornflower blue satin. On the back is a fluffy blue Japanese cloud, and on the front is a decal of the symbol that means both 'empty' and 'sky'. It's Fashion baby, Yeah!

It annoys me no end how little Americans care about their appearance. People call it vain or petty, but clothes are more than decoration. They are your first means of communication. The way you look determines who you meet. If you want to talk to hippies all day, you'd better not wear a tie. And if you want to talk to intelligent hippies well you'd better have something more imaginative than a tye-died bear on your shirt. By the same token, the proper attire will scare away all the heinous folks that you don't want to talk to, including hippies and other folks who claim fashion is frivolous. Life is short and you don't have the time to sift through all the masses for the people who are really going to matter to you. Clothes do this job for you every moment of your day. And if you put imagination and fun into it, good people are going to gravitate towards you.

So I loved that aspect of Japan. Everyone cared about personal appearance and every day I saw someone who made me rethink my ideas about design and color. Fashion in New York, London and Italy is a serious business. But fashion in Tokyo is just fun. The more fun you're having with it, the cooler you look. Fashion in Paris, I don't know. It's French, I guess.

This phone is 8 years old and it came free with the calling plan, but it's still 10 times better than anything in America at half the weight. It took all the photos on this page.

I walked by Tokyo Tower every day. It's 333 meters tall.

In between I taught at an English conversation school with students from age 7 to 77. I then worked at a consulting firm and cruised around Tokyo teaching Japanese employees of foreign-owned companies at their offices. I'm far from being a businessman but that job suited me eminently. I woke up damn early, showered and donned a suit. Then I changed again because maybe I didn't feel like wearing a purple shirt that day. Mornings are always a little fashion show for me. I'd walk to the train and ride to my first client's office and teach them whatever they needed to learn for an hour or so. Then I'd have an hour or two before the next lesson in another part of the city. Either I'd read in a cafe and take a train, or if it was a nice day I'd just walk the few kilometers to the next lesson. It was awesome. When I wasn't teaching I was walking or reading or drinking coffee or just looking at something I'd never seen before.

Buddha loves a good ice cream.

I quit that job to work as a translator at a company called WiseStep. My girlfriend was uneasy with that decision but she never said anything. The guy who hired me knew my level of fluency but convinced me that the company was willing to train me on the job. It didn't work out that way exactly. In fact there was no training. My training consisted of the client complaining to my boss and my boss getting mad at me for something I had no idea about. After six months of this they fired me without ceremony. Two other guys who got hired around the same time saw this and both of them quit before it happened to them too. I've heard since then the company has gone through quite a list of people. None of this makes me feel any better about it though. Getting fired is a trauma at any time, but it packs an extra punch when you live alone in a foreign country.

Outside a Nakameguro cafe.

The end result is that after working 12-14 hour days for 6 months with nothing to show for it, I was very demoralized. Right around that time my really cool girlfriend and I broke up, for no clear reason. At that point for various other reasons it seemed like Japan was pretty empty of meaning for me and it was time to head home. Or rather it was time to head somewhere other than Japan and America seemed like the logical choice.

Near a lake haunted by a jealous Princess. All couples who walk there are fated to break up.

I didn't go directly back to America though. It felt too much like a beaten dog and I couldn't go home like that. So I went to Kuala Lumpur for a month. It seemed like the thing to do. After I got back to the States I tried living in New York. I'd always loved that city. Walking down the street there seemed to be so much potential energy flying around. There was a feeling like anything could happen.

I don't know if it was because of the World Trade Center disaster but New York was just gloomy. I wasn't in the country when it happened but I caught the gist of it in Tokyo. Anyway, after trying New York for 3 months I still felt bad. Just about as bad as I ever have. The moment I got the idea to return to Asia and live in Bangkok, my spirits completely lifted and I was back in the flow. I can't speak a word of Thai, but guess what? Igot a job teaching English to Japanese expatriates.