This was written on Sunday 13 however I have been debating whether to post it or not...
Today was Mothers day in Japan. But first of all allow me to apologise for not posting in a few days. It has been a crazy week, and when I say crazy I actually mean difficult:
At the beginning of the week (Monday 7th) Okosan (Mother) had imposed a language lockdown upon us, feeling that too much English was being banded about the place. This was fine by me, I have needed a good excuse to start learning Japanese properly. But that has made things a little more difficult, you might even say tense.
So I have been wandering around in my own little Japanese dream world seemingly oblivious to everyone and everything. All that changed on Sunday... I awoke tired and hungry, it had been a busy evening and I had missed dinner due to being late for calligraphy class. Incidently caligraphy class consisted of only me and the teacher this time round, which seemed a bit strange. However it soon became apparent that again I was to be some new prize to show off to friends and family. The teachers sister comes in with her family of four then her 24 year old son from Tokyo with his 3 pals. But I like feeling special so I was quite happy. We had some good conversations in Japanese and English. Although I made a couple of blunders, due to the barrage of Japanese words in the week. When asked why I had come to Japan I said because it was "difficult" instead of "different"... whoops and then when the son was drawing me a picture I said it was "slow" instead of "good"... whoops again. When I left one of them said "please don't hate Japan!". I walked away feeling a little confused at this statement, but I was too tired to worry about it so just went to bed in the hope of making some sense of it in the morning.
Oh yes, the morning I had almost forgotten about that. I struggled through the "eggplant picking" part of the morning and as it was drawing to a close I decided to try and correct my (by now remembered) mistakes of last night by refering to Mr Sakaki for the correct answers. Big mistake. Mr Sakaki and Okasan both appeared to be in particularly bad moods. Previously Okasan (who has been nothing but pleasant up 'til now) had rummaged through our rubbish for something to smash on the floor after an exchange of raised voices with Mr Sakaki. However I had not been aware of this news when innocently asking for help with my Japanese.
It should now be pointed out that Mr Sakaki is keen to improve his english and is therefore more than happy if I speak english all the time. He turned on my request, saying that I should worry more about working harder and faster before I learn Japanese. I was fairly taken aback but thought it fair enough as I had had a late evening and probably wasn't up to my usual standard. The real knockout blow though was when he followed up with the threat of moving me to another farm... This completely took my breath away. Mr Sakaki does have a way of saying extreme things and then following them up with a little giggle so that you know he is joking, this time there was no little giggle...
1 comment:
This is a very brave post on your part. I couldn't really work out what you could possibly have 'done wrong'. Did you miss dinner in order to get to your caligraphy class on time?
Families fight!-and it would appear to all extent and purposes that you have been living as 'family' -not easy to live all on top of each other. I believe that the Japanese work ethic is quite something -in all her tests, for example, my daughter is expected to get percentages in the 90s and anything less is seen as due to not applying oneself.
I don't know what you could have done to cause offense and feel for your bewilderment and confusion. You are going to have to forgive yourself and start each day with a good attitude - you are in Japan, you were bound to commit some faux pas sometime. Pick yourself up and be humble and strong. Hopefully it is just a hiccup.
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