As a part of the ‘Japan YouTube community’ (though somewhat reluctantly) I’ve encountered a lot of the videos that people have posted about racism in Japan. I don’t really agree or approve of a lot of these videos, because they are almost always very negative and extremely one-sided. Personally, I haven’t experienced much racism while living in Japan. While many Japanese people do seem to be somewhat shy and nervous around gaijin, I don’t consider this racism. As someone who grew up in the United States of America and in a family that is very interested in different cultures, it is not always easy to try and understand the perspectives of people who have spent their entire lives in one of the most homogeneous countries in the world.
Japan always seems to get a lot of criticism for it’s ‘insular mindset’ and inability or unwillingness to try and relate to foreigners. The JET Program itself was created as an attempt to address these criticisms, criticisms that I often find unfair. Many of the Japanese people that I have had the pleasure of meeting are very open to learning about different cultures and different people. Most of the time, Japanese people consider me strange not because of my own culture, but because I am so interested and invested in learning about Japanese culture.
Of course it is difficult to live in a rural area of Japan around people who do not speak the same language and have not traveled outside of the country. It is also very difficult to be the one person who looks different from everyone else. At least for me, it has been very hard to adapt to being stared at all the time – it makes me feel like I am living my life underneath a microscope. This is not necessarily racism and it is not necessarily a bad thing.
Yesterday, I braved the crowds at Asakusa’s Senso-ji temple to witness a time honored Japanese tradition – shaking babies. No, I don’t mean the sort of behavior that results in Shaken Baby Syndrome, but the infinitely more entertaining one type that involves young sumo wrestlers.
Every year on the 4th Sunday of April, Senso-ji Temple at Asakusa holds a nakizumo festival, where young sumo wrestlers stand in a traditional sumo ring and compete to see who can make a baby cry the loudest and longest. A referee watches and yells, “Nake nake nake! (Cry, cry, cry!)” until finally declaring one baby the winner. The cries of the babies are supposed to bring good fortune to the children and drive away evil spirits. This type of festival is held in a various locations around Japan…in Asakusa, it has been going on for 400 years.
I was a little disappointed that they didn’t recruit full-grown sumo wrestlers to scare the kids into crying, I would have loved to see a big sumo wrestler holding a tiny baby. Instead, we got two sumo-wrestlers-in-training. Neither one of them looked much older than 15 to me. It was quite entertaining to watch these two chibi-sumos try to make the babies cry – one was fond of throwing the kids into the air (which they seemed to enjoy more times than not) while the other was trying to be very nice to the babies (which only seemed to make then cry harder). That’s babies for you, fickle creatures indeed.
When neither of the sumos could make a baby cry, the judges busted out some silly plastic oni (demon) masks and wore them in front of the babies – which made the audience burst out into laughter and the kids burst out into tears. Can anyone say, ‘Traumatized for life’?
Every person why applies to the JET Program knows that they are going to be assisting in teaching English in some way during their time in Japan. The title ALT can mean anything from BigDaikon‘s infamous ‘glorified tape recorder’ to being given the responsibility of designing and teaching all of your classes (which is my situation…lots of work and a steep learning curve, let me tell you!). But something that I definitely DID NOT expect to find myself doing was giving JAPANESE LESSONS.
One of my schools has a heavy ‘international’ focus. Part of this involves the school not only sending students to study abroad (in places like Switzerland as well as the US). It also means that every year a new international student is brought to study at the school and live with the Japanese students in the dorm. Last year’s student was an extremely smart Korean girl who not only spoke fantastic Japanese but near-fluent English as well. She came to speak with me every day after school and I really loved listening to her whip out slang from episodes of Gossip Girl. Seriously, I had to start watching the TV series so that I could keep up with her…and to be able to field her many questions about American culture and teenagers. No, not all American teenagers are drug addicts. No, American teenagers do not leave school and head directly to the nearest swanky bar and knock back martinis. On a side note, this is probably the only time in my life that people will tell me that I look like Serena van der Woodsen.
But, I digress.
The new international student is an equally bright boy from Vietnam. Yesterday, my favorite English teacher came to my desk and asked me if I would help teach him Japanese every Wednesday after school. My initial reaction was something to the effect of:
“Are you joking? No one should ever learn Japanese from me!”
Sounds like a case of the blind leading the blind here…or more accurately, a retarded blind person (namely me) leading an unsuspecting victim off a cliff. The reason why this situation came about is because the new exchange student can’t speak any Japanese but CAN speak excellent English. So, the Japanese English teachers have taken him under their wing. Unfortunately, none of the English teachers have any experience teaching Japanese (or taking Japanese lessons, obviously). And thus they turn to me – the retarded blind person.
Now, before you go off criticizing the Japanese education system or the JET Program, I want to say that this isn’t really a bad idea. Not only do I have a large amount of Japanese language textbooks lined up of my bookshelf, I have also taken three years of Japanese lessons. More importantly, my role here is more to provide moral support and a break from his mandatory three hours of sitting in the library studying Japanese from a textbook every day. I know exactly how much fun sitting alone in a room with a Japanese textbook for hours can be…NONE. On top of this, these lessons take place after school on a purely volunteer basis. Today was our first Japanese class and I made it clear that, while I would be helping Sensei teach him Japanese, I would also take the role of a student in this class. I will be doing all of the homework and tests alongside him.
I have to say, I have enormous respect for this kid and his determination. He can’t speak any Japanese. At all. Other than two months of studying from a textbook, he hasn’t taken any Japanese classes. He can read hiragana, some katakana, and no kanji. And yet he was brave enough to come to Japan and study abroad in a Japanese school for a year. When I was his age, just going to my private Japanese tutor’s house every Sunday was enough to make me a nervous wreck. AND, when it comes to our Wednesday classes, he is not only trying to learn Japanese from scratch but he is also having it explained to him in English, another foreign language! Writing this fills my head with terrifying images of me being taught Japanese in German. Terrifying, I say, absolutely terrifying!
We’re starting from Chapter 1 and 2 of the first volume of Genki, the textbook series that I used during my first two years of Japanese classes in university. This chapter covers the most elementary basics of Japanese grammar, like:
__X__ は__Y__ です。 As in: 私はコンスタンティンです。
What really surprised me is that, halfway through an explanation about conjugating Japanese verbs, I realized that I’m not as inept as I thought I was when it comes to Japanese. Don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely inept – just not completely inept. I tend to think that I can’t speak Japanese until I open my mouth and Japanese pops out. Looks like this is another lesson in “Constantine needing to relax, stop worrying, and just do it.” That’s my life, a perpetual Nike advertisement.
Still trying to get rid of the last remnants of the cold that I caught while traveling with my father these last few weeks, I had a funny moment where I emerged from my apartment and was completely shocked to discover that not only is it sunny today but it is also freaking WARM. Granted, I try to keep my apartment as dark and cave-like as possible to protect my vampiric gaijin-whiteness from anything that even closely resembles direct sunlight, but I thought it was at least safe to assume that since yesterday it was pouring rain and freezing cold that today would be somewhat similar. WRONG.
So, half-blind, I stagger over to the grocery store (no, there are no conbini here) to buy more fluids. People who know me are aware of the fact that I need to consume bizarrely large amounts of water/tea/diet soda everyday because my body tends to dehydrate like a Sham-Wow in the middle of Death Valley. This also means that I get extreme hangovers every single time I drink ANY alcohol WHATSOEVER. But, anyways…back to the fluid-seeking expedition. Let me just take the opportunity to state the obvious and say that I am not a Japanese girl. This means that I have not been raised to feel that it is necessary to put on a full face of makeup, curl my hair into some ridiculous up-do, and wear ankle-braking high heels for a visit to the grocery store to buy precious, life-giving water (or in my case, CC Lemon Zero, which is probably slowly giving me cancer). However, I am aware that I probably committed at least 5 Japanese faux pas by venturing out into public in workout clothes and hair THAT WAS STILL WET FROM THE SHOWER. For shame, Constantine! Still, I don’t necessarily know if that merits me being suspiciously stared at by everyone in the grocery store like I am about to break open a deadly vial of the ebola virus and kill them all.
After that humbling experience, I returned to my evil lair of doom and proceeded to waste away an hour of my life following various YouTube links. I am confused and disturbed by the seeming extreme popularity of R&B music videos from Korea…
About a 30 minute train ride outside of Tokyo is the city of Kawasaki, a typical Japanese suburb that sports a large train station/depaato and many neon-clad pachinko parlors. Every year on the first Sunday of April, Kawasaki is invaded by a flood of gaijin, Tokyo’s LGBT community, and curious onlookers to participate in (or just scratch their heads at) the Kanamara matsuri, the Iron Penis Festival. Each year, the Wakamiya Hachiman-gū Shrine (若宮八幡宮) parades Kanamara-sama, an iron phallus over 3 feet tall, around the streets near the shrine. Wakamiya Hachiman-gū Shrine is a Shinto fertility shrine and hosts a plethora of penis-shaped objects in various places around their grounds.
According to an old legend, a demon fell in love with a beautiful (but relentlessly pure) young virgin. Upon hearing of her engagement to a young man, the spiteful demon crawled up inside her and proceeded to bite off the penises of both her first and second husbands when they tried to ‘seal the deal.’ Logically, the best solution was for the people of the village to make an iron phallus to deflower the girl. Upon chomping down on the metal penis, the demon broke his teeth and evacuated the girl’s vagina.
Oddly enough, this story reminds me of a Tanith Lee short story called ‘The Weasel Bride’ from her collection Book of the Dead which I read, I kid you not, when I was 12 years old. Guess that’s what I get for liking to read unicorn books. Upon googling this short story, I discovered that this legend seems to reappear in a variety of cultures, not just Japan. Is this just an expression of male castration anxiety (ala Freud), intimidation of the all-consuming female vagina, or was there actually a sub-species of women with toothy vaginas that became extinct (presumably due to the troubles associated with procreation)?
I heard about this festival from my friend Bluesheeft, who attended it last year. Not wanting to pass up the opportunity to observe this festival myself, I headed out to Kawasaki yesterday with my friends 7thwave42, TheDutchGaijin (fresh off the boat from the Netherlands), and of course Bluesheeft and his mother (it’s not what it sounds like). I thought that this event must be fairly unique, but after mentioning it to several Japanese people they informed me that this sort of event is fairly common in the rural areas of Japan.
Of course, we were treated to many drunk people (foreign and Japanese), a Japanese surf/rockabilly band, and plenty of girls sucking on penis-shaped candy and having their photos snapped by sketchy Japanese men and their high-tech cameras. So, this is what those creepy guys ogling telescopic lenses at Yodobashi Camera do on the weekends.
I had a drunk old Japanese man fondle my hand and tell me that I should go and pray to Kanamara-sama in order to thank him for making men ‘genki,’ particularly Bluesheeft, who he assumed was my boyfriend. At least, I think that is what he said. I only understand 50% of what people say to me in Japanese and when alcohol gets thrown into the mix that number significantly decreases. I then had a run in with a bitchy peroxide blonde touting massive cleavage and penis candy who thought I disapproved of her amateur porn star photo shoots. I honestly didn’t and this only reinforced my fear of women. They are scary, scary creatures with claws. I also saw enough drunk American men running around the festival to make me renounce my nationality and claim I came from Canada.
If you are in Tokyo next April and want to experience something interesting, I highly recommend you check out the Kawasaki Iron Penis Festival.
How to Get There: The easiest way is to take the Keikyū Daishi Line (京急大師線) from Shinagawa Station (easily accessed by the JR Yamanote Line) to Kawasaki Daishi Station. This will place you right by the Wakamiya Hachiman-gū Shrine, which hosts the Kanamara matsuri.
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