The most striking aspect of Japan, right from the moment I arrived, was how different from the UK it wasn’t. People talk about culture shock and in particular how Japan ‘just does things differently’ (often with an almost-patronising ‘isn’t this quaint’ tone) but I was astounded — and greatly reassured — by how at home I felt right from the beginning.

A large part of this was the food. Something like toast and butter with coffee at breakfast (particularly popular in my Japanese ‘home town’ of Toyohashi) or a classic spaghetti bolognese, potato gratin, etc. were not what I thought I’d have easy access to but there they were, on the menus of countless restaurants and making me feel as though I was still in Cambridge!

Walking into a supermarket or convenience store and seeing the same Casillero del Diablo wine and Snickers chocolate bars as in the UK equally set me at ease.

Perhaps it is a matter of perspective. I may have been picking out what felt familiar to me and holding onto those for reassurance rather than focusing on that which was unfamiliar and being unnerved by it. I’m not sure.

I do distinctly remember on my second day in Japan standing at a pedestrian traffic light and noticing those little ‘bobbles’ on the concrete that we also have in the UK and sincerely wondering if I was part of a reality TV show to see how long I would notice that I was actually just still in England and everyone around me was an actor. It felt that something as fundamental as the patterning on concrete was a giveaway in a sense (a clue that no-one had noticed and which would blow the ruse), but of course I was really in Japan and the concrete patterning really was just like back home and this really did reassure me that I was still very much in my comfort zone.

There are many other ways that Japan felt like home, such as the personality of the people I encountered. Something about the etiquette and acknowledgement of others was very similar to how I experienced people treating each other in England. One theory about this is that because both countries (Japan and the UK) are islands, and of similar size, certain alike aspects of human etiquette independently emerge from the proximity of the people living there. I’ve always liked this notion, though I prefer to keep it as a ‘nice idea’ than something rigorously and scientifically true!

Despite these examples, I think that the largest factor for feeling so culturally comfortable in Japan was the incredible family at whose language school I taught. Rie Goto was my boss, hiring me to teach English at her school and she has a husband and three daughters. The family would involve me in their activities as much as possible, but were always sensitive about if I had other things I wanted to do, or was too tired, etc. I lived in a flat just down the road from them so was independent, but always had this support network. It was incredible.

To flip the script on my post so far, it really is quite unreasonable for me to fire off about not feeling culture shock in Japan, and act like it was all down to the availability of Snickers in the supermarket, when the host family and their wonderful level of welcomingness were the true reason!

This picture was taken in my final week in Toyohashi on a night out with the older students. The girl next to me is Emma, who I was training to take over from me at the school, and the two in the middle at the head of the table are Rie and Hiro.

In the second part of this post, but keeping with the same theme, I would like to tell a story about how welcomed and accepted I felt in Toyohashi on a particular occasion at this time of year. I should explain that Christmas itself is celebrated in Japan, but in a unique way. It is observed in a non-religious sense with shops selling Christmas-themed goods, decorations being displayed, and many families ordering a Kentucky Fried Chicken meal on Christmas Day (the long-reaching result of an exceptionally effective marketing campaign by KFC in the 70s). The story I am going to tell is not set at Christmas. It happened at the New Year, which is when Japanese typically have winter holidays. That ‘Shōgatsu’ holiday period is a reasonable equivalent to the time that UK people have away from work around Christmas Day.

It was New Year’s Eve, 2010, and I had planned to go to one of my favourite local restaurants to see the year in. ‘Karubi’ was a Korean barbecue restaurant about 10 minutes walk from my apartment where I would order an enormous plate of various delicious meats and sit at my table for hours barbecuing and eating it, drinking beer, and generally reflecting on things, with my laptop or a book. Often I would come here after work and post-process my lessons — what I had done well, what I could improve, and so on. I enjoyed teaching and felt that analysis in that way was a very important part of the job, so I would relax with it over food after a long day.

However, as I approached the restaurant (at about 11pm) I saw that they were closing up. Although Karubi usually stayed open until 2am, I should have realised that on New Year’s Eve that may not be the case.

It didn’t bother me and I walked back to my flat, thinking that I would pick up some food from a convenience store and have that at home.

‘DONG.’

Was that a bell?

I kept walking, thinking about what I would eat tonight.

‘DONG.’

It’s definitely a bell!

Following this sound seemed much more entertaining than food so I changed course and went north-westwards in the direction from which I could hear it coming.

‘DONG.’

The bell was getting much louder and I knew I was closer and closer to the source.

After about 20 minutes walking from where I had been when I first heard the bell, I came to a familiar temple that I had seen before when exploring the local area. There were huge crowds of people in the temple grounds and a few fires burning.

I moved closer to get a better view and a tiny child called out ‘James! James!’.

It was one of my kindergarten students.

His parents looked slightly confused and the child explained (or did his best to) that I was the English teacher at the kindergarten. I realised that everyone was in a queue for something, so I said to the parents something like ‘koko, ii desu ka?’ (≈ ‘is here okay?’) and joined at the back, a few spaces behind them.

People around us were eating various snacks (not convenience store snacks — these were temple-produced traditional ones!) and the fires were keeping everyone warm.

But I still didn’t know what we were queuing for.

‘DONG.’

The bell kept ringing.

At some point the queue had moved enough that I could see the bell, on a wooden platform, being rung.

I was queuing to ring the bell!

It suddenly occurred to me that a gaijin (foreigner) doing this might not be the most diplomatic thing in the world so I caught the attention of one of the official-looking people and said in somewhat broken Japanese, with a big bell-donging gesture, words to the effect of ‘am I allowed to ring it too?’. The person made it absolutely clear that of course I could, in fact I should!

I can’t quite express how accepted I felt in this moment, standing in a queue with lots of people who I couldn’t really see, but many of whom recognised me as the teacher of their children, or perhaps as a man who came to their shops/restaurants, or maybe even just as that English guy they had seen cycling around Toyohashi. The feeling was that I was one of them, a Toyohashi resident, and I was absolutely going to be joining them in ringing that bell.

‘DONG.’

Time passed and it must have been about 1am that I got to the front of the queue (though it didn’t feel like a long wait) and I was ushered up the wooden stairs. I waited for my instructions, which were in Japanese but I later found out approximate to something like ‘make your new year’s wish as you ring it’ and I hit the big wooden ringer into the very large bell, ringing it just like I had heard from across town near Karubi.

The bell I rang was similar to this one.

I stepped down from the platform and was given a traditional snack by one of the officials (possibly they were monks).

I walked home eating the snack, then went straight to bed, reflecting on the most unique new year’s celebration I had ever experienced.

We wish all Calderonia readers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

ADVERTISEMENT

SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.