I suppose the weather improvement it must have been good news to all the health nuts out there who want to kill skin cells with poisonous solar rays. yet, for the people like myself who don't care about tans because they are smart enough or already have a perma-one, the warmth is still a kind of hellish nightmare. Why? Because when it gets warm in Japan, it brings out the pests--and I ain't talkin' about insects (although come to think of it, they are becoming a bit of a problem, too. Ugh!).
In my eight-storey apartment complex live two students. One lives in the unit across from my door, while the other lives directly above me. It could have been worse, but I live in a wing, so I don't have neighbours beside me at all.
Still, these two little @#$%!s have bragged to their friends and enemies in all seven of the junior high schools I teach at here in the city that they know where I live. Former students, now in high school, have told their friends who told their big sisters (that, I don't mind).
Why everyone wants to know me and my home is beyond fathoming. I'm hardly the only foreigner in the city (in fact, just next door the Japanese fellow who runs the local Catholic church gets all my mail written in English, because the post office assumes that all Catholics must be foreigners!), and I'm hardly the only foreigner here of any colour (there's an Asian farm school that invites farmers from all around the world--India, being one of the countries--to learn Japanese rice farming techniques. It involves a lot of urination). The only explanation that comes to my mind - so as it is - is that the Japanese want to learn more about me and Canada.
Yes, I'm Canadian, and to tell the truth, I've never met a Canadian who was as interested in Canadia (???) as the Japanese appear to be. (I know the real word - it's Canadidia) (???).
Do any of you recall me telling you about the old lady who used to call me up on the phone and terrorize me by speaking Japanese? I swore to what ever kami (gods) I believed in that day that I'd get back to you on that one. Turns out that the old lady is actually a 14-year-old boy with a retainer and a high voice. In short, a student. At least he's kept my phone number a secret. I've not been so lucky with my address.
I have been inundated with 'guests' who have as much knowledge in English as I do with Japanese. Brrrrr. When did it get so cold? In every visit, I can sense their shock and awe as they enter my apartment and notice I have more Japanese objets d'art than their family has.
"What do you like Canada?" they ask. Experience has taught me to realize this means: "Where is your stuff Canadian?" Hmm, I could have sworn I gad some stuff Canadian. When I arrived in Japan I had six boxes of stuff--apparently all clothing made in Korea or Taiwan, or some other polyester country.
Since I don't have any stuff Canadian to show them, I usually end up telling my pest, I means guests, all about stuff Canadia.
I tell my visitors about how a Scottish-born dude who moved to Canada when he was 23, and therefore must be Canadian, invented the telephone (Alexander Graham Bell) and then ask the guests why the Japanese word for telephone (denwa) is not a Katakana word. Wha-?
Y'see, after 1867, when after 300 plus years of keeping all foreigners out, Japan opened up its ports to foreign tourists and traders, it brought the telephone over... sometime after 1876 when Bell invented it. Since it's a foreign invention, the telephone should be a katakana type of word. The idea is that Japan wanted its populace to always know which words were foreign-grown (written in Katakana), and which were home-grown, like all Japanese words in Kanji (which is based on the Chinese pictographic alphabet). It's all screwed up. Just like English.
Anyhow, the word for telephone should not be 'denwa' but rather 'te-re-fo-no'... or some other bastardization Katakana. No one in Japan could offer me a decent explanation for this word usage, least of all my junior high school guests. If you think THIS explanation is tough, you should put yourself in their shoes (actually, they didn't take off their shoes when they entered my apartment - buggers!) when I explained it to them in broken English and Japanese.
Next I talked to them about hockey while skating around my apartment in my socks. White it's not a Canadian invention, hockey is widely associated with Canada because most Canadians think we invented it. Anywho, the respect these kids showed me by their silence showed was deafening.
Removing my Sega video game system and Nintendo Game Boy from their hands, I then proceeded to blow their minds regarding baseball and basketball. Rumour has it that Canadians were playing baseball 12 years before American Abner Doubleday 'invented' it. As well, James Naismith - a Canadian - invented basketball.
The shock is always too much. they get up from my couch and chair, say 'herro' and leave.
It does my heart proud to know there are people here in japan with a new respect for Canada. I was also recently told that the double bed I was given (instead of the crappy futon that made my back hurt more than usual) was a gift from a local family to help the friendship between Canada and Japan. While I almost said that if they really anted to help relations between Canada and Japan, they should find me a woman, I instead I smiled and said: "Oh, I didn't know there was a problem.
Somewhere on a pedestal for public viewing,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is by ska-rock band Madness - FUN.
