Making Up Names for Ourselves in Sapporo

Recently, I visited Sapporo for its famous Yuki Matsuri (snow festival). This extravaganza of snow involves block after block of the city’s main drag sculpted with icy precision into giant tableaus that included a scene of a beautiful woman and a farm, a Thai palace, happy cartoons in a Hawaiian raft, and a ski jump featuring impressive shows of talent by skiers and snowboarders. Mixed in with the larger attractions were smaller snow creations of popular characters, friendly animals, dedications to various institutions. This artwork was surrounded by food stalls peddling local Sapporo specialties and the ubiquitous hordes of amateur photographers, all simultaneously blocking each other’s perfect shots.

A giant advertistment for Hawai'i. As if the freezing temperatures weren't enough.

For us, there was also a class of local sixth grade students.

The first group that approached us, three foreigners snapping pictures like everyone else, consisted of four bright-eyed and nervously giggling children holding pre-written questions in English so cute we couldn’t help but give them our time when they shyly asked if they “could have a moment.” The yellow vests they wore and the signs around their necks proclaiming “English activity” signaled to us just the kind of communication it is our job to encourage : Japanese going out of their comfort zones in attempts to communicate with people they don’t usually and to take part in the larger, global world.

The leader of the group, the one with the lamented card of questions in hand, asked our names and had us write them down in a little notebook. How charming! They then asked what country we were from, our favorite sport (this was my question, and I answered soccer, even though I don’t give two figs about any sport), and our favorite food. A different question of each of us – further charming. The interview took less than two minutes, and as the children thanked us, still giggling, we felt as though we had contributed just a little bit to their larger global education. Gaijin for the win.

Then, a second group approached us and asked the same questions. This was fine, because they were still cute and giggling and nervous, and I decided that since I had already committed to the soccer response, I would stick with it. They also thanked us and left.

And then a third group came up. And then a fourth.We tried to explain to them in Japanese that we had already answered two and three times before, but they didn’t seem to mind that this persistence would completely skew their results when they all compared notes later, so by the fourth group, I had changed my name to Abby, and then Mary for the fifth group, and answered pizza when they asked what my favorite food was (although this is definitely not a lie of the same caliber as telling them my name was something other than what my name actually is). With the fifth group, we tried to explain to the teacher accompanying them how many times we had answered these questions, but she tartly retorted, “Please use English!!” and we were again answering the same monotonous questions, and the giggling had ceased to be charming about two groups before.

We started employing evasive maneuvers to avoid them. We moved on to the next block of snow art, but they were everywhere, little clumps of four to five children eagerly scanning the crowds for anyone who didn’t look Japanese. This had definitively become racial profiling and was no longer charming. We avoided eye contact. We stared at the ground. We saw other foreigners being questioned and rejoiced that it was a) not us, or b) a group we’d already talked to.

When a sixth group approached, we told them we spoke German.

Snow owls

Now, I didn’t feel good about this, because the ALT inside me wanted to help them out, but my inner human being could not take one more round of asinine questions, the answers to which I was making up anyway. My name is not Mary. I’m not from the U.K. I don’t actually like soccer. I definitely don’t speak German.

However, there were interesting things about how the students responded to our answers. There being three of us and three questions, usually a group would ask each of us one question. To the students, if one of us was from the U.K., we all were. If one of us liked soccer or unagi-don, we all did. All but one of the five groups we talked to us assumed that the answers one of us provided applied to the whole group.

This was especially true of the question, “where are you from.” Because Japan is such a homogeny, the sixth graders did not think about the possibility that three people together could all be from different countries, which we all were. Although they could imagine that we could all like different food or sports, since they all liked different food or sports, they didn’t think that we could be from different places, because they are all from the same place. Only one group asked each of us each question and noted our different responses to each of those questions.

There are Japanese; there are foreigners. There are not really different kinds of foreigners, and especially not foreigners-hanging-together-but-from-different-countries.This perhaps illustrates their embedded view about the world as well as anything – namely, that there isn’t a lot of grey area in it. Although I applaud the students’ attempts at communicating, and especially the school for arranging such an activity for them to experience, I’m not sure how much they could really learn from Abby and Mary, who both like soccer and are from New Zealand. On the other hand, maybe just meeting Abby and Mary is enough.

Asking Dirty Questions - A Compare and Contrast

Obama was recently re-elected for his second term as president of the United States. In his sweeping acceptance speech, he makes a remark about how citizens of America can make their own futures happen if they work hard, no matter if they are black or white, gay or straight, abled or disabled (fast forward to around 21:20 for the quote).

With one statement, Obama banks on the underlying assumptions of the country that Americans are a) diverse, and b) capable of creating opportunities for themselves where there may not otherwise be any. I think most Americans would agree that these two ideas are, at their core, true – at least idealistically if not also practically. We want to, and do, believe in our iconic melting-pot-ness, and we further believe in our pull-ourselves-up-by-our-bootstraps-ness. We like to believe that these ideas can work together for the creativity and innovation we value so highly in an economy that is continually being shaped by new ideas and the new-thinking people who have the ideas and the gumption to realize them. We like to believe these two things together are the best system.

In a country like Japan, however, these fundamental “truths” remain not so self-evident. I really do appreciate when my JTEs ask me questions, and although most often these questions are about whether or not a particular grammatical structure works in a particular sentence, sometimes, the more interesting times, they genuinely ask me a question about where I’m from, about the kind of world I’m used to and they aren’t, about things they don’t understand. Like about a society seemingly preoccupied with diversity, and moreover, the labeling of that diversity.

My JTE had watched Obama’s speech and had latched onto that first truth – he quoted Obama’s line with the parallel stereotypes and then asked me, “Is there really so much discrimination in America?” Is there really so much disunity between groups that such delineation, opposing pairs of words positioned together suggesting the desire for greater unity between them, even becomes necessary, especially at a time of celebration, like the election of a national leader?

I immediately answered yes.

In such positioning of words, although a rhetorical device intended to be emotional and inclusive, I think there is a further assumption that Americans don’t want to think about. We prefer to focus on the feel-good intensity of the reconciliation of differences, but when confronted with the same rhetoric, my JTE saw the emphasis not on hoped-for future cooperation, but on the existing differences themselves.

In a homogeny like Japan, he said, such rhetoric wouldn’t be necessary, because people do not divide themselves into subgroups clamoring for individual recognition, for equal validation. There isn’t the truth of diversity, and further, there isn’t the truth of one’s own merit being able to change the course of the greater society. In Japan, people do not fight to change greater society – society conforms individuals to itself. For example. at one of the high schools I teach at, when first-grade students enter the school, they go on a weekend getaway that is designed to give them a crash course in “moral” education, just to make sure they are clear on what is expected of them for the rest of their lives, even though all of them have had such moral education classes since elementary school. It’s done so everyone enters on the same page, with the same barriers to free-thinking and innovation in place before they even start their regular schedules. Nipping any potential deviations in the bud, so to speak. It’s what my American fundamental truths want to call brainwashing.

Or it could just as easily be my American need for free speech, stemming from free thinking, talking.

2012 Ballot

Either way, it’s me recoiling from the ideas of not cherishing diversity and not encouraging individual effort in the belief that what I think matters and that I have the power to change a broken system. We do not view ourselves as the problems, but rather the solutions to the problems, perpetrated by society.

This is not the Japanese outlook. If society falters, it is the fault of certain individuals who have strayed from the course. Always this is viewed as negative. Because of this view, Japan has even more recently elected its eighth prime minister in seven years, the second elected in the year and a half I have been in Japan. There is some expectation that if society has a problem, it is the duty of the people to replace the figurehead. However, this does not actually address any of the real, underlying problems that led the previous leader, or the one before that, to his socially perceived failure. It merely shuffles around the cabinet, causing further confusion and a greater slowing down of possible solutions, a move which would seem to me counterintuitive to fixing what the problems actually are. There is too little focus given to the whole, which causes the people to lose sight of the forest for the guide who claims to know the best path out.

I’d like to believe that one or the other contrasting system could be objectively better, but that is not a luxury given to systems run by people who have flaws and who fail, which both systems inherently have. Which is better is not a question solved by the emphasis on – or lack of – diversity, or by individuals – or group – who believes they can better the system for everyone by addressing its perceived problems. It will never be as simple as choosing one over the other, but hopefully, by encouraging honest dialogue, like the one initiated by my JTE, we can find ways to better appreciate the strengths of both, especially the one other to us, and improve the world’s system for everyone.