Thank you for NOT saving me from embarrassment!

image from leadershipturn.comI was embarrassed…very embarrassed. I was frustrated…very frustrated. I learned something crucial in this next incident: in order to save you from embarrassment and an awkward situation, Japanese people in general rather not say anything at all!

During the hot and humid weather of September, I had to wake up one Saturday morning and join one of the schools I regularly visit for their annual undokai, commonly known for foreigners as the sport festival. I recall that Japan was going through a heatwave. After a day of hard work, cheering and sweating, it is customs for teachers to get together after the festival in for a famous enkai[1].

My coworkers and I got to the hotel where the celebrations were going to take part. I wore jeans and a nice shirt that would give me a sophisticated look but yet still casual. There was a draw to decide where everyone was going to sit. Fortune decided that I would sit right in between my two bosses. I said to myself:” Great! What am I going to say now?! Well it is a good opportunity to connect with them.” Until half of the evening I was mingling and talking with my bosses and other coworkers while they kept on filling my glass with beer.

The joyful guests started having mini presentations and games involving everyone in the room. One of the presentations was a choreography that the kids had done earlier in their endokai. My bosses urged me to join since they had seen me performed the choreography before (I had seen it several times already). Since it was out of the question to disappoint them, I reluctantly stood up, gave my camera to one of them to take pictures and started performing along with the other dancers. After 2 or 3 minutes of dancing the music came to end simultaneously ending my own torture.

I sat back where between my superiors and got my camera back. I realized that not knowing which button to press, my boss had made a movie instead of taking pictures. And this is what I saw. A couple of Japanese performing a dance along with a foreigner whose underwear was showing throughout the whole thing! Aaaaah! First reaction, DELETE! Second reaction, pull on my shirt and rush to the bathroom in order to remedy to the situation. Needless to say that I was fuming and all I wanted to do at this point is to rush back home.

The third reaction to this event was to throw out any underwear I did not like or that were not low rise. In a way, it cleaned up my drawers as well. After “Operation Getting Rid Of” was completed, I sat down and thought about what happened couple of hours before. By not telling me about my ‘wardrobe malfunction’, the people around me were being nice to me and were trying to save me from being uncomfortable. Embarrassment and shame are two of the worst concepts for Japanese to experience. As long ago as in the Edo period, when the Samurai were still prevalent in Japan, if one would be embarrassed, shamed, or a loser, they would comply with the Bushido, the code of the Samurais, and transpierced their body with a sword thus committing suicide to restore their dignity.

Of course, I will not commit suicide. Yes, my pride took a hit. I learned in this experience another aspect of Japanese’s way of thinking and way of dealing with certain situations. If I had been told that my underwear was showing, I would have probably not known about another intricacy of the Japanese culture. At least not yet!

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[1] Big party organized by offices in Japan, where a lot of alcohol is involved. It is a bounding time with coworkers in an outside setting.

Meeting of a life time

2 weeks ago I went to Hiroshima. It was thanksgiving. I must admit that at first I did not reflect about the meaning of thanksgiving in my life as I traveled to my destination. My mind was solely focused on getting there and making new discoveries. Indeed. On that beautiful and sunny autumnal day, I met Strength in person.

62 years ago, in a city called Hiroshima precisely on August 6th 1945, Ono-chun[1] is helping her mother with some chores in the house. Her younger sister left couple of minutes ago to head to school. Ono is 7 years old. She is thinking about meeting her other friends at school and play with them before being imprisoned in the classroom. Her mother interrupts her thoughts and requests her presence in the basement. The child runs to the basement and helps her mother lift a box. A big explosion. A big noise. She is thrown on the floor. Everything is dark. Nothingness...

When she opens her eyes, everything around her is in disorder, burning. She wakes her mother up. There is blood on her forehead. They walk up of what is left of the staircase and realize that these ruins were a moment ago their house. Everything is gone. Everything outside the ruins is also gone. All little Ono and her mother are obsessed about is finding her sister…

Today, Ono-san is 69 years old. The souvenir she keeps of this day is her sister living the house with a big smile, waiving and saying joyfully: “Ja mate![2]”. The lady does speeches about what happened to her that day. And this is how a black girl met a survivor of one of the biggest horror that ever happen on this Earth.

After hearing her story, my main question was what kept this woman alive. I mean mentally alive. As she narrated her story everyone was transported on this fatidic day. There was no anger in her tone. Only a disconcerting calm and peace aura surrounded our speaker. During her speech she did not focus on the WWII and the bombing. Surprisingly, she talked about other places in the world that are testing bombs such as India and North Korea. She is an active advocate who travels year around to different countries in order to do speeches and take part in citizens’ actions against war and bombs.
Her full time job is to visit universities and talk to youth about the consequences of possessing bombs.

When I asked her in the question period her motivation to live she simply answered:
“Some people live with anger in their heart but I think that this emotion eats you from the inside because it is a dark energy. Some people get trap in the past, but what happened is already done. My motivation to live lies in the hope that Hiroshima’s story never repeats itself. I live with the hope that future generations will learn from their ancestors’ mistakes. I live with the hope that one day their will not be one single nuclear bomb on this planet. I am thankful I am still alive to help in the accomplishment of such a mission.”

It could have been a reflex for Ono-san to let her soul die after such a tragedy. Yet, she decided to stand up and use this event as a trigger to advance in her life. She showed me strength on that day. She taught me to always turn bad situations into positive ones. The same way the city of Hiroshima beautifully resurrected. I came out of the conference room profoundly touched and humble. Despite all that happened to her, Ono-san was still thankful. On this Thanksgiving Day, Ono coerced me to think about my own blessings and the true meaning of this holiday. For the first time in my life, I experienced a thanksgiving to the core. I was thankful I met her.
[1] Chun is how Japanese refer to kids
[2] See you later!

How to be away and home simultaneously? A case study of the US military in Japan

I definitely knew that my trip to Japan would teach me a great deal about South East Asia and the Pacific region. I did not think one second that I would also learn quite a bit about the United States of America.

During my second trip to Tokyo prefecture, not to confuse with the city of Tokyo[1], I halted in the city of Fussa to visit a friend. Thus I had the opportunity to take a look at the US air force military base, also called there Yokota. This was a trip within trip: for two days, I was back in America[2]!

I was driving on the road 16, route that brings right in front of the base. It was a surprise to see that to get in the base, I had to go through a “border”. First I had to register on the base and than I had to show my passport, my gaijin card[3] and go through a search of my car. In addition, my friend, let us call him M, still had to sign me in the base. As I am Canadian, I went through the process very easily. Within about 20 minutes of administration work, I left Japan to be in the United States.

Younger, I traveled quite a bit through the US, particularly in the southern areas. I was than able to compare Yokota to my souvenirs of the United States, at least what I knew of that country. It was a shock for me to realize that I was not in Fussa-shi anymore but in Virginia. The houses were all like what I have seen in Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. The streets were just like in Florida. M also offered me to choose between Subway, and another steak place for dinner. In the grocery store it was not possible way to find soba or any Japanese character. It was all about the Miracle Whip, the chocolate chip cookies, the Skippy peanut butter and even a sugar pie (one of the food that leads me to gluttony). In the morning I had a heart attack served in a plate: scrambled eggs, bacon strips and two mega wafflers drowned in a liquid filled with glucose-sucrose that was suppose to be maple syrup. The television was a military channel that only showed American related topics, of course in English. Even the electricity plugs were “American”. The only Japanese I saw on base were a couple working here and there…but I found that they do not even live on base. Of course!

M had lived in “Japan/the replicat of the States” for almost three years. Although he loved to dance which lead him to Japan’s sin city, Roppongi, and other hot spots, he never left his base to explore what Japan really had to offer. As he said himself: “Why would I get out if I have everything here?!” It is with this frame of mind that M never learned much Japanese, never experienced an onsen and barely had an appreciation for Japanese food.

The military forces, which have been present in different areas in Japan since the end of World War II, were extremely efficient at reproducing a home environment for their soldiers. Indeed, I understand how hard it is to be in a constant state of uncertainty regarding our next move. Militaries spend a great deal of their career being sent to different missions. They probably need land marks to keep going, with or without family.

I ask myself if it is the most beneficial thing to exclude the soldier from the reality of their environment. I believe that creating this type of environment for the soldiers makes it easier for their superiors to control them as they are not aware of what is really happening outside. They miss a big part of the picture by not knowing the culture, the people, the geography they are surrounded with, outside of the base. The Americans, along with other countries, are fighting in Kabul. Do they really know the culture of these people? Did they take the time to get deeper on a personal level and understand the intricacies of these populations? By creating a cocoon for the soldiers one is subtlety saying that this is the right way of doing things….dangerous path to take as it has the strong potential to lead to intolerance.

But again, many military argue that they are not put in place to learn about other cultures but instead for the greater good of creating a better society by promoting democracy blablablabla…. Yes! And now how do you intend doing so without truly knowing your counterpart? That leads me to think of an invasion and the coercion of ideas pushed upon people.

Solutions: not only training and how to set up a hospital quickly, fire guns and jump off of planes but also extensive training and courses on different culture, having guest speakers from “the other angle”. Hence I am saying that there should be much more openness and actual knowledge of the country visited. More initiative to understand what one is not. This is how one could actually talk about the greater good…
[1] Tokyo city is located in Tokyo prefecture
[2] I do not mean America as the country because there is no such thing! I mean as the continent.
[3] Gaijin means foreigner, thus this card is given to legal foreigners living and working in Japan.