I Didn't Know I Was Japanese Until...
Last May (yes. two months ago) I went to Japan to see what my dear old Father was up to. I just wanted to basically find out if he had recuperated nicely from his heart problems. The last news I heard from him was that his heart had at one point stopped beating and he was rushed off to a hospital so I just wanted to check if his living condition was going to help him in his next heart failure. Thankfully I found him living in very comfortable conditions with another family. But I'm getting ahead.
I got to Kyoto from Dubai after a nine hour flight and was excited to be in Japan again. Of course the first thing I could think of was to find a smoking area. I had to go past the H5N1 additional clearance check of course. I was a little freaked out how everyone took to wearing those face masks. I tried my damnedest not to cough or appear sickly so I can quickly escape to the train station.
I had to get to Yokohama from Kyoto by train. All the flights were full so taking that blasted train was the only option. Expensive shit, Japanese trains.
Anyway, having lived in Bacolod, then Manila, then Dubai for all of my life, the first thing I noticed was that people sort of looked like me. And that felt good! I swear. As I sat on my two hour train ride from Shin Osaka to Shin Yokohama, I couldn't help but look at the guys my age, compare facial bone structure, and can't help but feel just a little bit ecstatic at being surrounded by these people eating their train ramen bento boxes.
So this is what it feels like to look like everyone else. Nice feeling. Granted I don't have that high flying hair style other twenty somethings in the train had, but it feels nice to be... just one of the usual people!
Of course the illusion shatters when people start speaking to me in Japanese. Whenever someone does I smile, lower my eyes, say Sumimasen, and apologize for not speaking in Japanese.
It's that confused look they have that tends to stick there for 30 seconds or so that makes the feeling really awkward.
Yes. I don't speak Japanese. I don't know how to write. I know a little, but not significant.
So when I met my other "family" later that night, they were as surprised by the fact that me, someone called Reijiro, didn't know how to speak Japanese. They weren't appalled, but it was a kind of curiosity. Like a ridiculous concept.
Sometime during my whole stay in Japan they had all fixed me up with Haruka, a pretty law student my age who spoke impeccable english. After telling her I was gay, we became really good friends and she started encouraging me to stay in Japan. I said, well, why not? And she goes. But you'll have to learn Japanese you know.
So that got me thinking. Manila makes me happy, but Yokohama, the five days I spent there, made me feel something. It made me feel like I actually belonged.
Maybe once I'm done with business school (sometime in the future) I could live in Japan? It would be a great experience. Gay sex everywhere, good looking people, enough eccentricities to please me, family, and a non-desert non-muslim-majority environment.
But the economic crisis has hit Japan hard as well. As I was dodging the hurtling Japanese commuter public in Shibuya station, I noticed a lot of free pamphlets with job listings strewn all about the station. Maybe it's always like that, but Haruka told me that it was indeed difficult to get a job now.
Once the crisis is over. Maybe then yes?
Of course, if you read this post and you're a friend from the Philippines, you already know the whole drama sci-fi freak show that envelops la familia Sato right? That's what I hope to avoid. But hopefully when I start to live in Japan for a couple of years, I'm shielded from all that infighting within the Sato families.
By the way my dad lost millions because of this financial crisis. I think at one point he had 10M yen in diversified
stocks invested primarily in emerging Asian markets. Eh you know how those markets are now right? THat 10 M is now just about 2 M. Yep. 8 M gone. Just a side note. He seems pretty okay though. ;) But I worry about his financial decisions, which, based on his decision trends, are a little uninformed most of the time.
So to end this, I made a commitment to visit Japan at least yearly to try to absorb as much of my ignored roots as I can. Thankfully when I got back in Dubai, they opened the very first Kinokuniya bookstore in the Dubai mall, with its very own section on Japanese literature. I got a really nice book there published by the Japan times: a textbook on how to read, write, and speak Japanese.
