There’s nothing like coming to Japan with a husband who is a Japan scholar. Jeremy studies Japan professionally. It’s his job. This country is what he does. And regardless of how long I’ve known him, during our time here I have found myself repeatedly blown away by his insane amounts of knowledge about this place. It’s not just a matter of language skills. Yes, he can read the public library guidelines to ensure that our books are returned on time, and he can understand a bus schedule at a glance. But it’s his depth of knowledge beyond the language that amazes me. The legend behind the statue that we’re seeing in front of the shrine. The reason a food has a fancy nickname. How the painting on a billboard actually includes a reference to a poem that most passers-by will miss. How a certain part of the city has changed in the past quarter century. It’s not just that he’s well read. He’s well experienced. He’s been a student in Osaka. A teacher in Osaka. A guide in Osaka. And a 20-year old in Osaka. (Yes, that last one is its own category.)
The kids and I benefit from Jeremy’s knowledge. Because of him, we get to skip over some of the stumbling that usually comes with living in a new place—any new place, not just a foreign place. We don’t show up to a museum only to learn that it’s closed every other Wednesday because Jeremy read that on the website in advance. We don’t offend everyone by eating while walking down a busy street because Jeremy already told us that walking while eating is typically considered rude. We don’t receive dirty looks from a bunch of naked elderly women because we dove into the hot springs without bathing first. Jeremy saved us from that faux pas, too.
Having stumbled through many a situation in China, there’s a part of me that absolutely adores this short cut. (And for the record, I still stumble in China. As appealing as the tidy categories of Japan as Jeremy’s and China as Jocelyn’s are, they are simply not valid. I never even came close to the breadth of knowledge in China that Jeremy has earned in Japan, and I never will.) You mean I can try out my sentence on a real, live Japanese teacher first before heading to the ticket stand? You mean I don’t have to cringe in embarrassment two days later when I realize that I should have taken my shoes off but didn’t? You made sure I would do it right the first time?! Sign me up.
I raise all of this because, and I’m sure you saw this point coming, this kind of stumbling through a culture is part of the learning. As wonderful and comforting as it is to have Jeremy there as our cultural gaffe safety net, it robs us of the experience of figuring things out on our own, and learning things the hard way. The kids and I need to be able to understand by observing, order food by pointing, and figure things out by trial and error. Eli and Mikki, too, have picked up on this dynamic. For her birthday, Mikki has requested a family experience: “I just want to get on a train and go somewhere that no one knows about…someplace Daddy has never been.”
Please understand that it’s not that Jeremy tries to serve as family teacher all the time. It’s his mere presence that does it. I have found that I am much more willing to speak Japanese my way—a loose series of nouns and non-conjugated verbs—when Jeremy’s not around to hear it. And from his perspective, Jeremy admits that he feels a constant pressure to guide his family through this experience. He loves having us here. But in the past, he’s only ever done Japan on his own. He amassed his extensive knowledge through living here independently. Autonomously. Anonymously. And I think we rob him of that.
All of this musing stems from the kids and my exploring of Kobe on our own last week. So let the reflection serve as introduction to this story:
The four of us vacationed on Awaji Island last week. On the last day, Jeremy needed to get back to work, but the kids and I were in no rush. Prompted by the notion that we needed to explore more of Japan on our own, sans tour guide, we decided to stop off in Kobe on the way home. Without Jeremy. We were equipped with Japanese and English maps, and a vague notion that Kobe had a cool harbor and a Chinatown that might be worth checking out. I told the kids that we would be navigating everything together, as a team. They were delighted.
When we first got to Kobe station, my heart sank. Gawd, all big stations in Japan look exactly the same! They are overwhelming. And everyone else always knows exactly where they are going. I started desperately looking around for maps and signs, only to be interrupted by Mikki, who declared, “I’m hungry.” Rule #1: Never try to navigate a new area with a hungry child. In the middle of the station, there was a food stand with a woman selling traditional sweet snacks. We bought some, but get this: Eli ordered his on his own in Japanese. This was the first time he’s ever done that. Maybe he, too, is nervous to try out his Japanese in front of Jeremy? We then proceeded to eat our snacks while walking around the station. Yes, we ate and walked at the same time. Declaration made: Today, we are doing things Mommy-style.
With tummy-rumblings gone, we stared at maps for a little while. It was Eli (who, gratefully, has inherited his father’s sense of direction, not his mother’s) who noticed that we needed to get to a different station in order to transfer to the subway, and it was the subway that would take us to Kobe’s Chinatown, our first destination. Once we knew where we needed to go, the signs just sort of fell into place. This is where Japan is unbeatable—relevant, helpful information where you need it to be. So we started walking, each of us finding signs one-by-one. Surprisingly, what worked in our favor was the concentrated attention to detail that usually causes Mikki to zone out to what a parent is saying while she is head down focusing on her bead craft. We told her we were looking for purple arrows, and all she found for the next 15 minutes were purple arrows. Eagle eye. Destination found.
We landed at a restaurant in Chinatown. The server was Japanese, but spoke some Chinese and understood some English. Rule #2: Always use all languages at your disposal in order to get your point across. The server and I soon developed a sort of trilingual form of communication.
a. Chinese food names are expressed in Chinese. No translating these.
b. The order itself happens in Japanese, the most polite of the three languages.
c. Kids’ questions are in English, with Chinese translation from me when necessary.
d. The server’s responses are in slow Japanese, with translation from me when necessary.
Food ordered. Needs met. Done.
After Chinatown, we hopped back on the subway to the main train station, and from there, walked to Harborland. Harborland is a large, fancy shopping area right on the waterfront. It’s good for window-shopping, strolling and snacking (though not at the same time, of course). But we did no shopping, and once we got to the harbor, we walked around for all of five minutes before snapping a quick selfie and then turning back. For us, this was not about the destination. It was about the getting there. The kids led the way…the entire way. They looked for signs. They studied maps. They tried paths, and when those paths led to nowhere, they turned around and tried others. They did all of the navigating, and on different occasions, with absolutely no prompting from me, each looked at me and said, “This is fun!”
We got home later that night, with “navigation day souvenirs” in hand, plenty of stories ready for Jeremy’s curious ear, and for my part, a vow to do this more. Be brave. Make mistakes. Break some rules. Embarrass yourself. And then go home and laugh about it with your Japan scholar husband.
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