Presents received – can of coffee
Perhaps it was the onset of madness, or just a sign that I had become less self-conscious about being apparently the only gaijin cycle tourist in the whole country, but I had begun to talk to myself rather a lot, and not just in an effort to practise my grammar. I now kept a running commentary for most of the day, which is all very well if your ramblings are confined to the inside of a car or crash helmet, but decidedly eccentric from someone as audible as the average pedestrian, and I received a few strange looks from the locals as I made my way through Mié Prefecture. Here my primary topic for soliloquy was green tea, as there were rows of tea bushes on every available plot of land, all pruned into perfect Swiss roll shapes and curved like the cells of a lilo to allow the maximum amount of sunlight to each leaf.
Mr Heaven Valley had recommended Mié for what he described as its ‘saw-tooth coastline’, and it was nice to breathe some sea air without high rises or main roads to get in the way. By pedal power I would only be able to take in two or three such teeth, so went to Kashikojima to catch a sightseeing boat, which passed row upon row of submerged oyster cages before stopping off at a workshop for cultivated pearls.
In their natural form, pearls take shape within the oyster around a grain of sand, but at the turn of the twentieth century, Japanese researchers – two of whom worked in this same area of Mié – came up with the modern technique for growing them artificially. As demonstrated by the workshop’s employees, this involves carefully prising open the shell, inserting a small bead, and placing the oyster back in the sea to work its magic. After two years or so, you end up with a pearl that looks like the real thing, but consists of a thin natural coating around an artificial core (if I was particularly clever, I would use this as an ingenious metaphor for my trip, or for the Japanese psyche, or even for my own psyche, but poetic imagery has never been my strong point, so if you happen to think of a good one, please drop me a line).
‘You will have to hire a cabin,’ she insisted.
‘How much will that be?’
‘Between five and six thousand yen.’
‘And then I can pitch my tent next to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t there anywhere I can just camp? I mean, it seems odd to hire a cabin when I’ve brought a tent with me.’
‘No, there isn’t.’
I had been trying to make out what was on the noticeboard behind her, and pointed to the last item on a handwritten price list. ‘But it says there, “Single motorcycle – ¥1600”.’
‘I’m afraid that’s just for motorcyclists who want to have a barbecue during the day,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘It’s not a camping rate.’
It was hard to imagine bikers paying sixteen hundred yen for the privilege of having somewhere to eat lunch, but then again, perhaps this was another establishment that discriminated against those of us who did not arrive using motorised transport.
‘Are there any other campsites nearby?’ I asked.
‘There’s a youth hostel up the road.’
The receptionist produced a map, and was in the process of giving me directions when an older man appeared beside her.
‘Is there a problem?’ he said.
‘I was wondering if I could camp here for the night. I’ve only got a bicycle and a small tent.’
‘Certainly. That’ll be sixteen hundred yen.’
‘Oh,’ said the receptionist, before falling silent and bowing apologetically, as her supervisor had me fill in the paperwork and hand over the money. My pitch was surrounded on all sides by noisy families with barking dogs, and in a position the rising sun would reach early the next morning, but I was glad to have scored another victory against bureaucracy, even as I watched the timer tick inexorably down on another pay-per-minute shower.
The sightseeing boat from Kashikojima had been an elaborate modern replica of a Spanish galleon, and despite Mié having no discernible connection with the country, two of the other passengers worked at a nearby holiday camp called Shima Spain Village. Miss Blessing Effective Child and Miss Freedom Beauty Child were spending their summer as Spanish waitresses, Spanish ticket vendors, Spanish chaperones, even Spanish singers and dancers. They were understandably reluctant to give me a demonstration of the latter, but today being their day off, we swapped keitai numbers, and having settled in at the campsite I caught the train back into Ugata to meet them for dinner. Miss Freedom Beauty Child normally worked at a department store in Kyoto, and Miss Blessing Effective Child had been attending university in Canada for a couple of years, returning to Japan occasionally to save more money. Seeing as they were both working in a service industry, I asked for a lesson in sonkeigo and kenjogo (尊敬語 / 謙譲語), sonkeigo and kenjogo being the minefields that are honorific and humble Japanese.
While Japan does not have a class system in the same way as the UK, one’s social or professional status is probably more important, and certainly more formalised. You will recall that I mentioned the plain and polite forms of Japanese, and how tricky it can be to decide which one to use. Well, there is at least one more layer of politeness to negotiate if you are to avoid causing offence, and despite the fact that it can be heard in all kinds of situations, like the plain form, it rarely crops up in Japanese lessons aimed at gaijin, only appearing in textbooks when the student is at a fairly advanced level. For example, should you be their customer, a shop assistant, receptionist or elevator attendant will not just be polite towards you, they will be very polite – in other words, they will use sonkeigo and kenjogo rather than the polite form – and when you are addressing your boss, your child’s headmaster or the Prime Minister, you will do the same. This means learning several different verbs for the same action, not to mention conjugations of those verbs, and all kinds of prefixes and suffixes, and to further complicate matters, sonkeigo and kenjogo can change depending on whether you are talking to a superior, talking about a superior, referring to your own actions when talking to a superior, or referring to their actions.
In practical terms, the studious gaijin should start off by listening to what is said when he or she buys something at a conbini, pays to enter an onsen, or joins a guided tour. Not that it is possible to translate with any great accuracy, as English does not possess a direct equivalent to sonkeigo and kenjogo, but here are a few variations on the theme:
ASSISTANT AT MOST SHOPS IN THE UK
Next.
(Keys price of item into till. Extends upturned palm while gazing out of window. Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till. Puts items in bag. Hands bag to customer.)
Next.
ASSISTANT AT SOME SHOPS IN THE UK
All right mate? I’ll do you next.
(Keys price of item into till.)
Two pounds.
(Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till.)
Ta. D’you wanna bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag. Hands bag to customer.)
There you go. Cheers.
ASSISTANT AT TINY MINORITY OF SHOPS IN THE UK
Who’s next, please?
(Customer arrives at till.)
Hello.
(Keys price of item into till.)
That’ll be two pounds, please.
(Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till.)
Thank you. Would you like a carrier bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
Here you are.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Have a nice day.
ASSISTANT AT SOME SHOPS IN JAPAN
Welcome to our shop.
(Customer arrives at till.)
I’ll take care of this for you.
(Keys price of item into till.)
One item at four hundred yen. That will be four hundred yen, please.
(Receives customer’s money.)
Five hundred yen. Thank you.
(Puts customer’s money in till.)
That’s one hundred yen change. Would you like a carrier bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
Here you are.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Thank you very much. Have a nice day.
ASSISTANT AT MOST SHOPS IN JAPAN
Welcome to our shop.
(Customer arrives at till.)
I shall humbly take care of this for you.
(Keys price of item into till.)
That is one honourable item at four hundred yen. I humbly beseech you to provide me with four hundred yen.
(Receives customer’s money.)
That is five hundred humble yen.
(Puts customer’s money in till.)
Please do me the favour of receiving one hundred yen in change. Does the honourable customer require an honourable plastic bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
I hereby hand over your honourable item.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Thank you very much. I humbly prostrate myself in the face of your honourable custom.
Because so much importance is placed on respecting authority and knowing your place within the social hierarchy, the Japanese are incredibly interdependent, and exist in such a state of harmony that even in big cities, good manners and politeness are commonplace, and there is very little in the way of crime or anti-social behaviour. Indeed, and as evidenced by my experience at the Everglades campsite, most of the trouble I had encountered over the summer was the result of a Japanese insistence on sticking to the rules, and not any inherent rudeness on their part.
‘But don’t you think that will all disappear?’ I asked Miss Blessing Effective Child. ‘Since Japan opened up, more and more foreigners have been coming here. Even if it’s just as tourists, we still bring a philosophy of individualism, and the Japanese must be influenced by what they see in films, on the internet and so on.’
‘I don’t think so. The school system is still the same, the language is still the same, and we’re still very proud of our country.’
‘What if young people get tired of traditions and start to ignore them? In England we’re becoming more like America, and in Japan, because you’re not as isolated as before, attitudes are bound to become more westernised.’
‘Maybe some things will change, but not all of them. I’ve been living in Canada for two years, and even if I stay there, I’ll always feel Japanese. Also, when foreigners come to Japan, they start to behave in the same way as us. They send their kids to Japanese schools and take part in Japanese festivals. They bow when they say hello and use chopsticks when they’re eating.’
This was true, and I intended to take many such customs back to the UK: kneeling on the floor instead of slumping on the sofa, for example, taking my shoes off in the house, and not starting a meal until everyone else at the table has been served.
‘Since you came to live here,’ Miss Blessing Effective Child continued, ‘what has surprised you the most about Japan?’
‘That’s a tricky one. You expect it to be different when you move to a foreign country and I think I’ve managed to take most things in my stride. As for something that has genuinely surprised me, though, I’m not sure.’
All of this English and sociology was shutting Miss Freedom Beauty Child out of the conversation, so we reverted to Japanese, and after a quick photo call, she and Miss Blessing Effective Child headed back to Spain on their staff shuttle bus. My train came on time, the Mariposa was still where I had left it outside Anagawa Station, and I arrived at the campsite late enough to have violated the curfew, sneaking in under a chain which had been drawn across the entrance.