Beautiful Ground

Today I saw one of the most beautiful sights of my life. Here’s what happened.

I had class at Toyota today, and someone in my class invited me to come see her dance group after class. So I ended up leaving Toyota at around 6:50, about an hour later than usual (isn’t it weird how cool things happen whenever I commute between Nagoya and Toyota at unusual times?). When I got on the bus to go to the subway station, I had my iPod out, like I always do, and I was listening to Cornershop, probably one of the chillest bands to ever come out of England. The bus went through a residential neighborhood and came out of it onto an open highway surrounded by rice paddies just as the sun was setting, and just as the epic orchestral part on “Brimful of Asha” was starting. The sky was a little cloudy, but what you could see behind the clouds was just entirely purple. And the image of the clouds covering a giant purple sky was reflected on the wet rice paddies. Everything I could see, from the rice paddies on the ground to the clouds in the sky, was purple. It was absolutely beautiful, and uniquely Japanese. I’m sorry that I’m describing it without showing a picture, but I didn’t have my camera with me, and even if I did I don’t think I could take a good picture from inside a moving bus. But next time I will bring my camera, and if I stay longer at Toyota I’ll try and capture this image so I always have it. Although I don’t think I’ll forget it.

Take Out The Trash

Many people who spend a long time in a foreign country receive a question that goes something along the lines of “what was the most difficult thing for you to get used to?” People will usually respond by saying something about how hard it was to get used to the language, or to cultural differences, or making new friends, and I can say from personal experience that these are all true. But many ryuugakusei will tell you that when living in Japan as a foreigner, these pale in comparison to the horrors of the Japanese garbage system.

The way garbage works in America is pretty straightforward: when you have trash, you throw it in a trash can (although even this is a bit too complicated for some people). The Japanese garbage system, in comparison, is mind-numbingly complex. For one thing, you have to take out different kinds of trash on different days of the week; Tuesday is recycling day, for example. And you have to divide each category of trash for each day into several sub-categories that have different bags, for example plastic and paper. But wait, you might be saying. This isn’t that different from recycling in America. Oh, but it is. For one thing, recycling is your only option for certain kinds of trash, and you can only take it out on Tuesday. So if I decide to have a bottled drink on Wednesday, unless I can find one of the rare public trash-cans outside, I have to wait a week to throw it out. And that’s another thing: trash cans are hard to find. If you’re in an area with lots of convenience stores, or near the cafeteria at college, for example, then it’s not a problem, but it’s nothing like America where there’s a trash can on every corner. And even when you manage to find a trash can, you can only put certain kinds of trash in it. Some kinds of trash can’t even be taken out at all; for example, paper cartons have to be opened up, dried out, and taken to supermarkets. Certain kinds of bottles have to be crushed with their caps removed before you can throw them out. I don’t even know where you’re supposed to put the caps.

Now you might be saying, “but can’t I just throw whatever trash I want in a trash can and let the garbagemen deal with it?” Well, yes you can, and I’ve done it a few times, but it’s very very frowned upon. If someone sees you doing it, they will immediately think badly of you. And if a cop catches you, for example, putting a non-dried-out paper carton in a garbage bag with other paper trash in it, it’s a huge fine. Even if you put a recyclable metal can in with plastic recyclables, you can get fined. Your only options in Japan are to go crazy trying to sort out your trash, or to pay a huge sum of money for doing it wrong.

Now, of course, it’s hard to actually get caught by the cops for sorting your garbage wrong, and it’s really inconvenient to carry your trash with you until you find a trash can, so you may think that people disobey the law and litter all the time. Especially since in order to obey the law, you have to put a huge effort into taking out the trash. But this actually isn’t the case. When I first got here and was completely confused by the garbage system, I searched online for some straightforward instructions. The first hit I found said that the garbage system “takes some time to get used to but will make your life easier in the long run.” I didn’t believe it at first, and I still kind of don’t, but I do see the advantages to the Japanese garbage system now, and the advantages are actually huge. It hasn’t made my life easier at all, but I now realize that it’s a far superior system to what we have in America. The website for my study abroad program says that “your culture is a part of your identity at such a deep level that it is largely unconscious.” And the Japanese garbage system is definitely a deeply ingrained part of Japanese culture. In Japan, garbage is a BIG deal, as it should be. Because everyone is raised being taught that you have to always be careful when you deal with your garbage, everyone is careful with their garbage all the time. Even though there are hardly any trash cans outside, no one ever litters, because garbage is something you have to be careful with. When I was in Osaka, I came across a man-made lake that was, by Japanese standards, overflowing with trash, but after seeing it I realized that I had seen less trash than I would on any beach in LA. And that was one of the only times I’ve ever seen litter here.

Not only does the Japanese trash system force people to be considerate with their trash, it also forces them to recycle, which is great. In America, lots of people don’t recycle because it takes more effort. But in Japan, people put effort into sorting their garbage anyway, and recycling is their only option for some types of garbage. And what about the garbage that’s not recycled? Well, a lot of it is burned; one of the other daily categories for trash is “burnable trash.” Burning trash is illegal in America because it’s bad for the environment, but the only reason that’s true is because the average American would have no idea what they were doing if they were burning trash. In Japan, people know what can and can’t be burnt, and they put burnable trash into special bags for professionals to burn in a safe way. It’s way better than sticking it in a landfill.

So… yeah. That was a fairly long post. Hope you enjoyed reading about garbage.

On an unrelated note, I keep realizing how cool my neighborhood is. I just found an awesome record store near my building that has tons of rare LPs. I went in there today and bought a David Bowie LP and a rare album by Adam and the Ants for 500 yen each ($5). I also spotted albums by Curtis Mayfield, the Ramones, and Bob Marley, and the guy who works there (who is totally awesome) was blasting T. Rex on an LP player while I was in there. I had to get out of there as soon as possible, because I knew that the longer I spent in there the more money I’d spend. Ironically, I don’t have anything to play these LPs on, but that will probably change soon.

Breaking the Language Barrier

I’ve heard that in order to be truly fluent in a language, you have to be able to hear a word in that language and immediately imagine the object that it signifies, rather than it’s translation in your native language. So for example: the Japanese word for apple is “ringo.” If I were fluent in Japanese, then when somebody said “ringo” I would immediately imagine an apple in my head, rather than imagining the English word “apple” first and then imagining the object. (Well, either that or I’d imagine the drummer for the Beatles). I’m definitely not there yet. But I’m closer than I was when I got here.

There have been a few times when someone has asked me a question in Japanese, and I immediately responded without having to think about what to say. Whenever this has happened, I’ve been incredibly surprised afterwards that it came naturally to me. This is definitely an improvement, but there are some things that make the process more complicated.

One of them, the one which every linguist knows about, is Japanese loan words. Japanese has taken tons of words from English, but because of the Japanese sound inventory, the pronunciation of just about every English word has to be altered, sometimes to the point where they’re almost unrecognizable. For example, the Japanese word for computer is “konpyuutah” and the word for supermarket is “supahmahketto.” There are some advantages to the fact that Japanese takes so many words from English. For one thing, if you know the basics of Japanese sentence structure and sound patterns, then you’d be surprised how far you can get by saying English words with a Japanese pronunciation. The downside is that sometimes when English words enter Japanese, the pronunciation changes so much that they’re unrecognizable to English speakers. I remember one conversation I had with a Japanese student where I understood everything except for one word: “riterashii.” After asking what that word meant, I was told that the English word was “literacy.”

The other thing that’s been difficult in this process is that as my Japanese is getting better, my Spanish is getting worse. Spanish is the only other non-native language that I can speak well enough to survive in a different country, but as my mind is changing in order to think in Japanese, I’m becoming less able to think in Spanish. I know this because there have been several times when I’ve tried to think in Spanish in order to practice and see how much I remember, and I’ve immediately started thinking in Japanese without completely realizing it. Right now, when my mind tries to think in a foreign language, it automatically goes to Japanese, simply because I’ve been using it more. I imagine that by the time I’m done studying abroad my Spanish will be almost entirely gone, but that at some point later on I’ll be in some situation where I’ll have to speak Spanish and it’ll come back to me.

Also, my reading’s improved a bit, but it’s still way below average. Anyone who’s studied Japanese will tell you that reading and writing it are WAY harder than speaking and listening, and they’re completely right. As of now, I can read the phonetic symbols faster than I ever could before, and I can recognize several more kanji, but if you were to stick a written Japanese paragraph in front of me there’s no way I could read it, even if I could understand it if it was spoken to me. The thing that makes me kind of optimistic is that my reading’s already improved a tiny bit in a few weeks, so it will get better. Still, I don’t expect to be able to read everything, or even half of what I see, by the time I’m done.

On a completely unrelated note, I went to see the Sparta Locals, a Japanese punky indie band, a few nights ago at this tiny punk club in Nagoya. It was crazy. I’d seen them in the States already, but seeing them in Japan was a little different. For one thing, the whole audience could actually understand the lyrics, so everyone sang along. But the weirdest thing was that in between songs, the audience was COMPLETELY silent, to the point that you could hear the musicians tuning their unamplified instruments. But while the band was playing, it couldn’t have been more different; everyone was pogoing, moshing, and going crazy. Oh, and guess where I bought the tickets from. That’s right. A convenience store.