Japan, part 1

My dad went on a mission to Japan when he was 19.  He and my mother lived there for two years before I was born, and my older sister was born here.  My folks are now on their second two-year mission.  I grew up eating Japanese food, learning Japanese children’s songs, and living and eating with Japanese students my father would bring home from his language school for Japanese people.  I thought I knew something about the Japanese language and culture.  The little I’ve learned here has shown me I knew next to nothing at all.

Take food.  I have yet to see chicken teriyaki on any menu in any restaurant where we’ve been.  Instead, Dad and I go to a restaurant and end up with whole fish for me and raw egg on top of raw salmon and rice for him.  With green onions.  Even Dad said, “Well, this isn’t what I expected.”  At the hotel where we stayed in Hiroshima there was a breakfast buffet.  “Ah,” thought I, “pancakes and waffles.”  But I actually wondered, what do Japanese have for breakfast?  It can’t be rice and tofu, can it?  Yup.  Boiled tofu and rice gruel were two big items.  They also had bacon—warmed bacon.  They don’t cook it, they just get it warm and then eat it all soggy and fatty.

And what about after you eat?  Don’t eat too much, or you’ll end up facing this:

That’s not a urinal.  It’s for number two, and since I only poop flowers in Moab, I wasn’t about to give this a try.  What are you supposed to do with your shorts?  How would you balance squatting over this thing and keep your underwear clean?  Is this why the Japanese live so long and are so thin?  Because even when they drop a deuce they can “feel tha burn!”  (In the thighs, I mean.)  How are you supposed to play Words With Friends with this as your bm option?  And even worse, the restroom sinks have only cold water, no soap, and no paper towels. There’s no way you’re staying that clean hunkering down over this monstrosity.  The lesson: bring plenty of Imodium AD or wait until you get to your hotel or apartment.

Because the toilets in homes and hotels are glorious.  Heated seats that automatically rise when you walk in.  Bidets that help you stay nice and clean.  Here’s the bidet controller at my parents’ apartment:

As you can see, the bidet has three settings.  The first will gently clean your toosh with a light stream of warm water.  The second uses a bit more water pressure and is for more stubborn remnants—the kind that might later become skid marks if you took it too easy.  And the third setting launches you off the toilet and lets you ride the wave.  The fire department will be angry with you if you use it too often, because it reduces the water pressure system wide and makes local fire hydrants ineffective. I’ve not tried that setting because the ceilings are low here, so I have no information on how you land, or why the walls are yellow with brown spots.

Besides the entire digestive and excretive process, Japan has more very interesting history.  For example, they have blue-skinned dragon warriors:

Who must hit massive home runs in these batting cages:

Compared to the Samurai Blue Man Group, regular people are just nothing, so the deer just let you walk right up and pet them.

Japan has been around for a long time, too.  I visited a shrine that was originally built in the sixth century.  It’s on an island off Hiroshima’s coastline, and I took a shuttle boat down there, where we passed these, which must be the remnants of a long-ago statue of a giant with very skinny legs and funny ankle jewelry that acted as a warning to invaders to stay out of Japan, like that four-toed foot in Lost.

The language hasn’t been as tough as I thought, but that’s just because they print most things in English, too.  Happily all subway instructions are given in both languages, so it’s pretty easy to find my way around.  But it started out as a real barrier when I went to the home of one of my dad’s former students and met his adorable and sociable seven-year-old grandson, Koki.

Now, Koki speaks a little English.  He said, “Hello” when we met, and he later learned to say, “Rincun,” as my name.  (Seriously, I’m not trying to be funny.  They have no letter ‘L’ in Japanese.)  He just would go up and talk to anybody, and he walked right on up and started talking to me.  “It’s all clicks and buzzes from here, Junior,” I said.  He looked at me and rambled on a bit more, in what I'm pretty sure translated as, "It's all clicks and buzzes from here, werido."  So, he ran off and came back with the Japanese word I know better than any other.

“Nintendo.”  We soon discovered that we both knew two important Italian words, too: “Mario” and “Luigi.”  It was our first bit of common ground.  We built on that ground later in the car on our way to Hiroshima I taught him two great words in English, “Angry” and “Birds.” We parted as friends who had given each other numerous high-fives as ugly pigs were destroyed with exploding eggs.

That kind of instant camaraderie and understanding really makes you think, “Are our differences really that big?”  Why all this senseless violence and war in the world, when we ought to be able to get together with our Nintendo DS and our iPad, and let the programmers bring us together for only 99 cents, or $1.99 in HD.  Would that be too much to pay for world peace?