10/10/10

I must be a bit lonely because I am starting to make up stories about three people I see on a daily basis.  It’s becoming comforting to regularly see these people. Their schedules coincide so well with mine that it feels like we are acquaintances.

Every morning, I pass a nice Japanese restaurant that would probably be considered fine dining in the States. The waitresses wear the traditional kimonos and serve everything on fancy trays, bowing before leaving the table. I pass this place every morning on my way to work because it is next to my apartment building.

The owner looks to be in his mid to late forties with gelled back, curly, salt and pepper hair. He looks like he could be Japanese, but there is an air of Spanish decent he exudes. Every morning, he sits outside the restaurant, smoking a cigarette while listening to a radio, blasting what sounds like something you’d hear on a Putumayo World Music compilation CD. Wearing his tweed pants and cotton button up shirt, he reminds me of the kind of guy you would see living on a remote, tropical island. The kind of man that romances young female travelers, speaking to them in Spanish with sensual phrases rolling off his tongue of how breathtakingly beautiful she is. The young girl melts as he says he never loved someone so much, while pouring her fifth glass of the finest red wine.  I call this restaurant owner, Rico.  I don’t know if that is his real name, but I say hello to Rico every morning when walking to my train stop. The days he is not working, I wonder if Rico spent the previous night playing Casanova to an unsuspecting foreign woman.

Then there is Chad, again, another made up name.  Chad is the other foreign resident in my neighborhood. I don’t see him often, but every once in a while we pass each other on the street. I don’t make eye contact because he is slightly attractive and I’m not feeling particularly attractive at this moment in my life.  I don’t even try to feel attractive here. I can’t compete with the petite Asian girls with their flawless skin, silky hair and oval, innocent eyes. But there is another reason I do not make eye contact with Chad, which are probably the same reasons he also refuses to acknowledge me in passing.

There is a strange unspoken social rule that I’ve discovered here in Japan. It seems that English-speaking foreigners who have lived here a while, make it a point not to address other foreigners when passing them on the streets. There is an uncomfortable avoidance of eye contact as if to say, “I’ve been here long enough to consider myself a Japanese resident. I will not acknowledge you because you think we have something in common. We do not! I speak the language and I’ve been here long enough to become a part of the culture. We have nothing in common. I am one of them now (pointing to the Japanese person, standing next to them, which they have claimed as their partner).

Ironically, if I pass a foreigner, I desperately find a way to divert my eyes and pretend some ridiculous advertisement poster I am walking by is much more interesting. I nearly feel a sense of panic, thinking this other English-speaking foreigner will want to talk to me. What if they think we could be friends just because we both speak English? Maybe I am arrogantly fearful the other foreigner will see me as a vulnerable, overwhelmed person, therefore destroying my facade of being a strong, independent woman in a male dominated country.  It is so challenging to feel acquainted in this country; that it becomes a daily exhaustive chore of fighting to blend in. So in other words, I understand why foreigners don’t want to associate with ‘rookies’ who are in the process of adjusting to the endless amounts of unspoken social rules that you could only know by being Japanese. Foreigners that come here work hard to find their own identity in such an unwelcoming community. Of course the foreigners who have been here a while wouldn’t want to take on the anxiety of those that just arrived in Japan. Why would they want the responsibility of making another foreigner feel comfortable when there was no one there to help them? Wanting desperately to fit in, it would be social suicide befriending another foreigner.

So I occasionally see Chad walk by and we pretend not to notice we are both Americans living in Japan. I’ve created an imagined version of his life story. Knowing nothing about him, I created this story based on how he dresses and carries himself.

Chad comes from Chicago. He is artistic, maybe a poet, a writer with some sort of theatrical background. He probably studied Japanese culture in College and dreamt of living in Japan one day. He met his college sweetheart at a house party. She is Japanese, but was only studying abroad one semester. They fell in love and stayed connected a few years before he found a stable job and moved to Japan. They are now very happy together. He is a banker who works in the foreign exchange market. His girlfriend is a petite, beautiful Japanese girl, living at home with her parents, studying to be a teacher. She hopes that one day Chad will fulfill her dream of marriage and parenthood.

The third familiar person is not someone I would ever befriend or want to talk to, but an intense, wild-eyed man I see every night when commuting home from work. I catch the 9:20pm train home. There are two stops between my work and home: Tsunashima and Okurayama. Every night, after the Tsunashima stop, this man walks through each train car as if he is a man on a mission. I’m not sure what his mission is, but his determined look tells me whatever it is, happens to be of utmost importance. 

He reminds me of the kid in grade school, with the cowlick that sat in front of you in class who never fully fit into any social group. This poor kid was the odd one who was teased for being super smart. Occasionally, this gawky boy would painfully try and have a conversation with you. In an attempt to be nice, you would smile and nod, but all you could focus on was the cowlick and wondered why conversation seemed so difficult for him. Eventually, as years pass, the gawky, socially awkward kid would grow up embracing the cowlick, growing it into a full-blown fro. Time passes and he evolves as the guy who stomps through each train car on a mission to do…something.

This guy’s name in my story happens to be Jap-Einstein, a mix between Japanese and Einstein. I added the Einstein part simply because his hair has the wiry, uncombed look Einstein wore. Because this guy has his train car-traveling mission pinned down to the second, I figure he may have a formula in his head to complete a grand plan to stop terrorists or find the hidden bomb that doesn’t exist. Jap-Einstein, once the kid with the cowlick, grew up formulating a plan to give meaning to his life. Whatever he is thinking is beyond me, but I can tell it is very important. Therefore, his quirkiness has become something familiar, something I expect every night as I commute home.  

Rico, Chad and Jap-Einstein are aspects of my life that give me consistency. They have become part of my daily routine. I laugh as I write this, knowing that if I ever actually sat down and talked to one of these men, my judgments of them will be completely wrong. I’ve come to enjoy the lives I’ve created for them. I would rather not spoil those images by actually getting to know any of them. They are perfectly fine as caricatures of my imagination that give me something to look forward to each day.