Frisk - Direct Translation Impossible: Tales from the Land of the Rising Sun

F or introducing me to Japan and making me want to learn everything about it

F or always giving me a place to come back to

F or helping me realize how little I knew

F or five of the best years of my life

F or making a foreign country feel like home

F or suffering all of the stories that started, When I was in Japan

F or letting me go

H ello everyone . My name is Chad. I am from America. I am twenty-eight years old. I play baseball and tennis, and my favorite fruit is pineapple. My hobby is reading books. Nice to meet you.

Ugh, youre thinking. Anyone can publish a book these days.

Its a simple opening, yes. But it had to be. Its the self-introduction I gave thousands of times when I was living and teaching in Japan; if it had been any more complicated my students wouldnt have been able to understand it.

Japan and I first met when I was fourteen; we have been inseparable ever since. I studied there during college, and then moved to a city called Hamamatsu after I graduated. I lived in Hamamatsu for five years, teaching English in elementary and junior high schools. I stayed with Japanese families. I spent hours untangling lines and hauling kites at Japanese festivals. I rode the Tokaido, Sanyo, Hokuriku, Joetsu, and Kyushu Lines across the country. I became friends with teachers, chefs, bar owners, teenagers, journalists, sarari-men, office ladies, hairdressers, baristas, x-ray technicians, DJs, and Irish people.

Japan reshaped me. I didnt used to eat cooked fish, but now I eat sashimi all the time. I love naked hot springs, and an anime called One Piece is my favorite TV show. I prefer sitting on the floor to a chair, use chopsticks at every opportunity, crave mochi at odd hours, bow to people from my car or on the telephone, and occasionally gather my thoughts in haiku.

I dont remember who I was before Japan.

When I tell people I lived in Japan for five years they almost invariably say something to the effect of, Wow, thats really interesting. Then they look off into the middle distance and try unsuccessfully to imagine what it must have been like. Whats the appeal of Japan? Isnt the language impossible to learn? Dont they write up and down? Dont they eat fish for breakfast?

What would it be like to live in a place like that?

Nobody has the foggiest idea.

I decided to take Japanese on a whimor, more specifically, on my moms whim. I was a freshman in high school that had to pick a language elective and had no idea what to do. Summer vacation ticked away. Back to School Night rolled around, and I still hadnt decided.

My mom had seen enough.

You have to choose something, Chad.

I know.

The school offers Spanish, French, German, or Japanese. Which one are you going to take?

I shrugged. None of them got my motor running.

Mom sighed, Japanese looks interesting. Why dont you give it a shot?

Japanese? Why would I take Japanese? I loved Pokemon, sure, but so did everyone else. Still, I had even fewer reasons to take French.

Okay. Yeah. Sure, I replied. Why not?

It didnt seem like a life-changing decision at the time, but I guess life-changing decisions dont make themselves known right away.

I clearly remember my first class. I entered the room and searched for a seat, entranced by the calligraphy and ukiyo prints on the walls. The bell rang and a tall, young-looking white woman stepped to the front and started delivering instructions. In Japanese. I had no idea what was going on. I looked around, hoping to pick up some cues from my classmates, but all I saw were wide eyes and slack jaws. The teacher kept saying things. It was clear she wanted us to do something, but it wasnt clear what. We sat for a moment, leaking nervous giggles as we waited for the English to come. It didnt. She kept talking, eventually adding some gestures. To this day I have no idea what she was saying. Stand up! Look at the board! Sit down! We just tried to follow her hand gestures and make it through the hour.

The language was the most bizarre string of noises I had ever heard. Ohayo gozaimas1. What the hell was Ohio goes I mahss supposed to mean? Do that many Japanese people live in Cleveland? I thought Japanese was the stupidest thing I had ever heard.

Japanese would continue to sound strange to me for the next decade. Fortunately, however, after a few months it ceased to be just a bizarre string of sounds. It changed into a string of magic words, and I needed to learn them all2.

School was never very difficult for me. I teetered on the edge of a nervous breakdown if I ever got less than 95% on a test. I was essentially equally capable in every subject, but for whatever reason I (thought I) was particularly good at Japanese. I learned the alphabet (the syllabaries to be exact (there are two)) right away, and memorized all of the kanji on the walls. I listened to the teachers pronunciation and practiced at home until I could copy it. I worked out grammar patterns before she taught them to us, and all in all was pretty proud of myself.

I got great grades and the big head that went along with them. It was a trick, though. My grades fooled me into thinking I knew things, when in fact I didnt know anything at all.

E very other year , Spann Sensei took a group of students to Japan. When I was a sophomore, I was one of them. I had never left America beforeI had never even been out of state without my parents beforebut I wasnt that nervous. My Japanese was pretty good, after all, so I would be fine. Thats what I thought. I had yet to realize that test scores dont mean anything. I put on the group windbreaker, said my farewells, and got on the plane.

Looking back, I wish I had spent the flight savoring my self-confidence because it was soon to disappear.

The trip was divided into two parts. The first part was group sightseeing in Kyoto, which was amazing. Im not sure theres anything more exciting than exploring a foreign country with a group of friends. Everything was strange, and I looked upon it all with wonder, even those things that today strike me as totally uninteresting. If I could recapture the joy I felt upon learning that Japanese toilets have seat warmers, I would probably die on the spot.

I still have very clear memories from that trip. Lines of tour buses. The green wall of hedges leading to the precincts of a dark wooden temple called the Silver Pavilion. Vending machines filled with unfamiliar drinks and coins of actual value rapidly disappearing into them. We went to a shrine called Heian Jingu, where I had myself photographed pretending to meditate on a rock. We went to a theme park called Nagashima Spa Land and had the entire place to ourselves because it snowed until mid-afternoon. The Steel Dragon wasnt running, but we rode the White Cyclone about twenty times instead.