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| Train leaving Tanigami station |
(Originally published September 5, 2007)
I followed Dian into the house,
made a quick stop at the “powder room”, and then joined her and her sons in the
living room.
Dian’s newest son, Shan, was on her
hip. Her oldest son, Jay, was on her
couch. She plopped me down at the table,
and in the way that only moms have, she managed to get a tray, two glasses full
of iced tea, and two coasters over the kiddie-gate with Shan still on her hip
and nothing hitting the floor. Jay, who
is about seven years old, wandered around behind us in the bored way that means
summer vacation is almost over.
Dian
speaks English in the house, and her husband uses about half and half. As a result, Jay understands English quite
well, speaks well enough, but now that he’s in school, prefers Japanese. He played shy for awhile, picking up one game
only to put it down, answering my questions with nods or shrugs. Shan, on the other hand, was ready for a nap,
so Dian pulled together two cushions on the floor and plop! Shan was
asleep.
After
Shan started snoozing, Dian went into the kitchen to make lunch (she invites me
to her house AND makes me lunch? This
woman is amazing!), and Jay made himself comfortable at the table. His socks were just peeking out under his
pants.
“Is
that a cartoon on your socks, Jay?” I asked.
He smiled and nodded.
“Pokemon,”
he said.
“Pokemon? Like Pikachu?
Doesn’t Pikachu mean ‘lightning mouse’ in Japanese?” He grinned and nodded, then got up to bring
me his giant, stuffed, bright-yellow Pikachu.
“Who’s
your favorite character?” He got up
again and got an encyclopedia-sized book of Pokemon reference. He flipped through it for so long I almost
thought he forgot my question, but then he laid the book flat and said, “This
one.”
I had
no idea what the little animal was supposed to be, but I nodded appreciatively
with some “mm-hmms! and ohs!” and then started flipping though the book on my
own. Jeffrey (my nephew of roughly the
same age) has become interested in Pokemon, and the last time he saw me he made
the effort to show me every one of his Pokemon collector cards, complete with
painstaking explanations. I saw a
character that I vaguely remembered from Jeffrey’s instruction and I said,
“Here, this one is my nephew’s—my sister’s son—favorite character.”
Jay
giggled as I continued, “And when my husband and I play video games, he chooses
Pikachu and he always beats me!” After
he heard this, Jay dropped the book and ran off to find his Nintendo DS. He played a Pokemon game while I watched over
his shoulder and laughed when he laughed, pretending like I knew what was going
on. Dian gave me a commiserating smile
over the kitchen counter.
After
lunch, we chatted about how to find jobs (she offered to put me in touch with
her HR manager), talked about import food stores, life in Japan, the geography
of the Kansai area, and loads of other stuff that’s just good to talk
about—especially when one is in the throes of culture shock. Shan woke up and ate some lunch of his own,
and when I offered to hold him so that Dian could eat her own lunch, she said,
“No, that’s all right. He’s a little
shy, anyway.”
The
doorbell rang, startling me, and Dian ran off to the front door. Jay and I stared at each other across
Pokemon. Dian came back, removing Shan
from her hip and putting him on the floor.
“The
recycle-man is here,” she explained quickly.
“I called him to come pick up some things—I need to get it all
together. I’ll be about ten minutes. Will you be okay? Shan should be fine with Jay, anyway.” I nodded, and she dashed back out the
door.
I
looked at Jay. He looked at me. I looked at Shan. He ignored me. Jay started hanging off of the table and
doing backflips. I called him a little
monkey. And then it happened. We bonded.
Suddenly, after the accusation that Jay was acting like a small primate,
we were laughing and giggling together like old friends.
I
grabbed Shan and tossed him in the air while he giggled and kicked; Jay
methodically laid out his Pokemon cards to display to me. Shan inspected my necklace, then decided to
try and strangle me with it; Jay grabbed his toys and ran around like he was
shooting at me, at the wall, at the T.V., at anything that presented a target. When Dian came back in, I tried to put Shan
down, but he pulled himself up against my leg and made little demanding sounds
until I picked him up again, and Jay was tugging on my arm to ask me to play
Jenga with him.
Dian
looked at Shan, looked at me, and said, “Huh!
You’ve made a new friend!” And
then she pulled up a chair to play Jenga.
As I
was riding the train home (again without mishap) staring straight ahead of me
like any good Japanese citizen, I was thinking about how similar those two boys
are to my nephews. I made Jay laugh
hysterically when I addressed him jokingly as “Jay-san,” a title of
respect. Shan giggled any time I tossed
him in the air and waved goodbye to me, safely perched once more on his
mother’s hip.
Definitely
different cultures, I thought—but laughter is the same in any language.
~~~~~~
When I first re-read these two posts, I didn't have any particular memories of this whole incident. Thinking back on my year in Japan, I don't know that I would have remembered this and shared any of the anecdotes unless something in particular jogged my memory. That's why I'm so glad that I wrote it… reading it again made me recall it vividly, right down to Shan's navy blue onesie and the necklace that he was trying to strangle me with--a lime green "pineapple-ish" stone my niece picked out for my sister to give me for my birthday before I left the states. Photos are definitely a good way of keeping memories of a person or place, but they don't capture it all, do they? And you don't think to take photos when stopping in to meet someone for lunch at their house… and if you do, that just seems borderline rude, no? If anything, I'm disappointed in those small details that I never thought to record, because they were so mundane. Hopefully this exercise in re-posting can help me fill some of those gaps!
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