I refrained from nicknaming Mr Fujimoto: he seemed a quiet and kindly soul, and had come to work specially armed with a travel brochure about New Zealand so he would have something to talk to me about.
My initial meeting with the Board of Education was cut short when Mr Fukumoto stormed out of his office and ordered Mr Tokunaga to escort me to the mayor’s reception room at once. Everyone fell silent, and I was whisked away.
When we met Mr Kitahashi, the mayor, Mr Fukumoto spoke haughtily in formal Japanese, pointing at Mr Tokunaga and shaking his head scornfully. Mr Tokunaga hung his head in shame and blushed. The mayor, though, appeared unconcerned, and sat me down for a good question and answer session about New Zealand vegetables and golf courses. We hit it off immediately.
Mr Kitahashi was a sprightly man and very skinny. When he spoke, he bobbed his head, wobbled like a string puppet, and arched his thick bushy eyebrows. He proudly showed me a desk calendar of New Zealand mountain scenes and I presented him with a silver-fern pin. He clapped his hands, and with a flourish attached the pin to his suit lapel.
The town photographer was summoned and ordered to take formal photos of the occasion. I smiled, the mayor beamed, Mr Tokunaga coughed and Mr Fukumoto frowned. Another hasty round of tea was served and I was ushered out of the office by Mr Fukumoto, who was determined not to take up any more of the mayor’s time.
Mr Tokunaga breathed a huge sigh of relief. It seemed the day’s formalities were at an end. Carrying my suitcase, Magnum PI escorted us to the town hall car park. He was impressed with the suitcase’s weight and flexed his muscles, saying again how much he was looking forward to going drinking. He bade us farewell and Mr Tokunaga started the car. This turned out to be the Board of Education’s ‘number one vehicle’, which Mr Tokunaga seldom drove. He apologised as he crunched gears and bunny-hopped out of the car park. We spluttered slowly down the main road, crossed the bridge and were again in concrete-grey Tondabayashi, with its skyline of Stalinesque apartment blocks and ever-present Disney tower.
I was becoming concerned that we were heading back towards the bus terminal and feared that my apartment might overlook the hustle and bustle of Tondabayashi Train Station. My fears were allayed when Mr Tokunaga veered down a small side-street and the scenery changed dramatically. We were now surrounded by ancient wooden temples, ware houses and ornate seventeenth-century buildings.
I had read about this place in a dusty, twenty-year-old Osaka guide-book I had tracked down in my local library before I left New Zealand. An historic suburb in the heart of Tondabayashi, Jinaimachi had started life as a monastic settlement, and developed into a sizeable and important point in the Buddhist pilgrim trail to the Koya-san temple complex in neighbouring Wakayama. Very little had changed in the four hundred years since. The intricate labyrinth of winding, single-lane streets designed for horse and cart was proving a nightmare for Mr Tokunaga. He sweated, coughed, and at narrow corners slowed to a crawl. Several times, oncoming traffic forced us to back up around a corner and wait our turn.
My new home was, apparently, smack bang in the middle of Jinaimachi. I was ecstatic – there were no ugly concrete buildings, smelly highways or diesel-soaked bus terminals. I would be free to wander the cobblestoned streets, visit temples, poke around in ancient cemeteries, and meet a Mr Miyagi who would teach me karate. Yes, I thought, this should work out just fine.
Tokiwa Mansion was a square building with only ten apartments. Mr Tokunaga sped up the stairs. Dragging my suitcase, I trailed behind him to the third floor and nervously entered my apartment. My immediate reaction was surprise. I had been led to believe by previous English teachers in Japan that I would be living in a small, sunless, grimy shoebox. This could not be further from the truth.
Mr Tokunaga coughed and began a lightning-fast tour. Inside the front door there was a typical genkan area, where shoes were to be removed before you stepped up on to the lino-covered hallway. This hallway led to a bedroom on the left, a bathroom and toilet on the right, and a kitchen straight ahead. I followed Mr Tokunaga through the kitchen into the living area. A large television set sat in the corner. Other than this, the room was completely empty.
Mr Tokunaga coughed and apologised for the smell. The walls, he explained, had just been repainted. The room looked brand new. New tatami mats covered the floor, and the walls were a fresh shade of olive. The bedroom, too, had freshly painted walls and new tatami mats. It was also empty, except for a thin pink futon mattress and some carefully folded pink flowery blankets.
This, Mr Tokunaga explained, was my bed. Western beds were forbidden in the lease as they would damage the precious tatami mats. I shrugged; apart from the girly colour, things didn’t seem bad.
Back in the kitchen, Mr Tokunaga was busy explaining how to use the kitchen taps, power sockets and light switches. I was not paying much attention. I had spied a balcony through the living-room window. I stepped outside. The heat and humidity were sweltering but I barely noticed them: the view was breathtaking. Immediately in front stood an old wooden temple with a steep tile-covered roof and an ancient cemetery. Beyond lay a panorama of warehouses and monuments, and on the horizon loomed the Kanan mountain range.
Mr Tokunaga, however, did not have time for temple-gazing. He had the bathroom to explain. The washing machine stood on cinder blocks in the corner. Mr Tokunaga pointed out the on/off button and where the clothes and washing powder should go. Next came the extractor fan, bath taps, shower taps, shower nozzle, toilet flush, and bathroom cabinet door – and then he announced it was time for us to leave.
I was shocked. ‘Ummm…I’ve only just arrived,’ I said. ‘Surely I should unpack and freshen up a little?’
Mr Tokunaga pondered this request for a few seconds and then agreed that I could change my clothes. Time, though, was of the essence: we still had much to do. I raced into the bedroom and rattled through my suitcase. I had no idea what lay ahead of me for the rest of the day, but if I were scheduled to meet the Emperor of Japan, he would need to make do with my wearing shorts and a T-shirt.
It felt great to be out of my suit and tie, but Mr Tokunaga did not intend to let me relax and enjoy my new-found freedom. It was time to go shopping.
Daiei Supermarket was a massive white three-storey building only 300 metres from my apartment. If I leant dangerously over my balcony railing and stood on tiptoe, I could just make out its large flat roof, and the two bright orange circles that were the chain’s emblem. It was, in fact, more than just a supermarket. The ground floor was devoted to women’s clothing. The first floor contained men’s clothing and a video arcade. The third floor had appliances, furniture, electronic goods and a pet store; in the months that followed I would often spend time perusing the stereo section, with its distinctive odour of dog hair and kitty litter.
My maiden shopping trip with Mr Tokunaga, however, was spent underground – the basement of Daiei Tondabayashi was a massive food store. From the moment I stepped off the escalator, foreign smells, sights and sounds scrambled for my attention. A pair of elderly kimono-clad women with bright pink plastic buckets happily welcomed shoppers, bowing obsequiously and joyously thanking everyone for having entered the store. It all felt very religious.
Mr Tokunaga had no time to spare for such pleasantries. It soon became clear that he had been charged with setting me up with the necessities I would need until I figured out how to shop for myself. We raced through the vegetable section, thankfully avoiding strange-looking radishes and chilled pickles, to rows of brightly coloured bowls of instant noodles. I was unable to figure out any of the flavours. The red bowl displayed a devil’s pitchfork, the yellow bowl had a one-eyed ghost, and I was puzzled and concerned as to why the brown bowl was decorated with a cartoon of a fried egg. Mr Tokunaga chose one of each.
The canned-food section was completely devoid of baked beans or anything else familiar. Instead, the shelves were lined with cans of eel and mashed salmon that looked, on the labels, remarkably like cat food. M
r Tokunaga gave me several cans, assuring me they were a particular favourite of his son.
A giant sack of rice landed in my trolley, crushing my spicy prawn-flavoured chips. It was followed by plastic buckets, and a green bottle that I guessed was dishwashing detergent.
I was becoming dizzy. In a few blindingly short hours I had experienced a three-hour train ride from Tokyo, a lengthy train ride across Osaka, a sweaty walk along a murderously busy road, a meeting with a mayor and a hasty attempt at making up nicknames for all my new co-workers, and now I was shopping for food whose names I could not translate. Large fish with bulging eyes and gaping mouths filled the frozen food chiller. I felt faint.
My first-ever grocery bill in Japan had managed to consume a large chunk of my small stack of Japanese yen. Mr Tokunaga, though, was not ready to stop just yet. It was suddenly imperative that we purchase enough plates, bowls, cups, glasses, mugs, knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks and saucepans to fill the cupboards in my kitchen. Before I knew it, I was the proud possessor of a swag of greenish-brown crockery and more cutlery than I could ever need. Mr Tokunaga thoughtfully added a large frying pan to the pile, and I blanched as my yen whittled down even further.
We staggered back to my apartment. I checked my watch: it was nearly four o’clock and I was exhausted. In the nine hours since I had left the Tokyo, my eyes had absorbed countless new sights, my nose had experienced both pleasant new smells and overpowering traffic fumes and fishy odours, my ears had been assailed by piercing train whistles and honking traffic, and I had been completely immersed in Japanese language. My body was coated in sweat, and my legs were battered and bruised. I fancied nothing more than a cold shower and a lie-down.
I smiled politely at Mr Tokunaga as we finished unpacking my groceries and placing my new crockery in the cupboards. I mentally prepared myself to say my goodbyes for the day, and tried to remember some formal Japanese words of thanks and gratitude.
Mr Tokunaga looked at his watch. ‘Hmmm,’ he muttered, ‘we do not have so much time. My family will be waiting.’
I was confused. Surely his family wasn’t coming for dinner?
‘Tonight is a festival,’ he went on.‘Very, very big festival. We will go with my family. The festival is very far though. In Osaka City. We must take a train soon.
‘We do not have so much time,’ he repeated.
The Tenjin Matsuri festival, I learnt, took place every year along the banks of the Okawa River and was one of Japan’s biggest festivals. Over two consecutive summer evenings, nearly a million people lined the river to watch fireworks displays and festival barges, parade in bright summer kimonos, eat food and play carnival games.
Mr Tokunaga’s wife and son were waiting patiently at Tondabayashi Station. Kenji was a large high-school boy, who looked shyly at his feet and seemed to want to hide behind his mother. Mr Tokunaga had prepared another detailed train timetable; his wife sighed as he pointed where we would need to disembark and change trains. He had cleverly purchased our return tickets earlier in the day. He smiled proudly and tapped his nose. There would be many, many people at the festival, he explained, and on the way home they would all queue for train tickets. This would take time, and he had saved us valuable minutes so we would not miss our trains.
The train was filled with festival-goers. Teenage girls in pink and green kimonos tittered, chattered and posed for cellphone photographs, beaming and displaying the ‘V for Victory’ sign. The carriage was immaculately clean, without a sign of graffiti, broken light bulbs or punctured seats.
When we arrived on schedule, Mr Tokunaga visibly relaxed. His busy, precise day was at an end. His wife was now in charge of getting us home on time so he was allowed to eat, drink and be merry. He would, he insisted, treat me to every kind of festival food on offer, and we dived into the mass of people in search of Korean pancakes.
I had never before seen so many people in one place at one time. The crowd stretched for miles. Once you had joined it, you could only be swept along: there was no place for idle gazing and standstill moments. If you wanted to escape, you had to push and shove your way to the side. Despite my colossal height, I was shunted, bumped, poked, prodded and stepped on. The worst offenders were bent-over elderly women, who viciously barged into people with their shoulders and elbowed their way to the front of food-stall lines.
I was doing poorly at navigating my way through the crowd. Mr Tokunaga, however, seemed to be a veteran. Still clutching his briefcase to his chest with his left hand, he returned, triumphantly carrying four plates of Korean pancakes and two cans of chilled beer. When I announced that I had never sampled Japanese beer, he was aghast. After scoffing his pancakes, he sped off to find me a selection of beers, some fried chicken and a punnet of octopus balls.
Kenji and I slowly ate our pancakes at the edge of the crowd. Mine seemed to comprise chillies and spinach baked in a thin batter. Kenji finished his pancake quickly and looked around hungrily. Like a mother bird, Mr Tokunaga hastened back and handed him a plate of fried chicken wings. My first beer was replaced with a second.
Mr Tokunaga was now red-faced and beaming. He had managed to purchase some very good octopus balls. These, he claimed, would be a good experience for me. They were typical festival food, and a trademark dish in Osaka.
Slices of octopus tentacle were encased in thick fluffy balls of fried batter. The balls were coated in a sweet brown sauce, and dusted with dried bonito and seaweed flakes. I regarded them suspiciously. Apart from not being the world’s biggest octopus fan, I was unsure how to go about eating them. They were the size of golf balls and I doubted I could handle them with my small pair of chopsticks.
Mr Tokunaga proceeded to stuff an entire octopus ball in his mouth. His cheeks swelled to freakish proportions, his eyes lit up, and he gave me a satisfied thumbs-up. With an adventurous gulp, I mimicked my new boss and stuffed one of the largest balls into my mouth.
My head nearly burst into flames: the octopus balls were straight out of the fry-pan and scorching hot. I gagged and coughed. Tears leaked from my eyes. My taste buds felt as though they’d been seared from my tongue. I gulped down a can of beer to douse the third-degree burns, while Mr Tokunaga cheerfully sped off into the crowd to buy us some okonomiayaki, which he claimed was Osaka’s most popular meal.
Okonomiayaki, which roughly translates as ‘as you like it’, turned out to be savoury pancakes, but quite different to the Korean ones. The batter was thick, and enhanced with shredded cabbage. Strips of bacon, shrimp and octopus were embedded on the top, and the whole affair was lathered with the usual sweet brown sauce, bonito and seaweed flakes – and topped with sweet mayonnaise.
Mr Tokunaga took photos of me as I messily cut up my pancakes with chopsticks and eventually managed to get a chunk into my mouth. Once I had finished, he shyly asked if I would have a photo taken with him. Kenji received detailed instructions on how to use the camera, and Mr Tokunaga fussed around making sure the flash was adjusted to the right setting.
With our evening out now safely documented, Mr Tokunaga announced it was time to go home. After managing to locate his wife in the crowd, he pushed a path through the throng and we suddenly emerged outside the train station, where, true to his predictions, people were already queuing to buy tickets. An hour and half later we stepped out on to Tondabayashi Station. My watch read 11.30 p.m. and the station thermometer recorded the outside temperature as 30 degrees. The Tokunaga family escorted me to my apartment, where Mr Tokunaga finally bade me goodnight.
Alone at last, I took a leisurely cold shower, unfolded my pink futon and settled down for my first night in Japan underneath a pink blanket decorated with flowers.
2
Summer holidays
I had come to Japan to work as an English teacher in the government-sponsored Japan English Teaching programme – JET. My application had been lodged nine months before my departure, but it was only two months before arriving in Japan that I had learned where I would be working. The
re was a vacancy at the Kanan Town Junior High School, and I had been selected to fill the position.
I was the only foreign teacher in the school. In fact, I was the only foreigner, or gaijin, in the town of 16,000 people. I would be teaching seventeen classes a week of students aged from twelve to fifteen. Their English abilities would range from poor to non-existent. I had never before stepped inside a classroom as a teacher, and apart from being a native English speaker was completely unqualified for the job.
I would not be teaching alone though. Rather, I would be an assistant to the Japanese teachers. My role would be to provide correct English pronunciation, explain colloquial expressions, and provide a novelty factor that, it was hoped, would inject some entertainment into the classes.
I was looking forward to my new job, and eagerly awaiting the start of the school term. I would have to wait though, as I had arrived in Japan at the beginning of the eight-week summer holiday period. This had not been a miscalculation on the part of the Japanese government, but an attempt to give me and my fellow JET teachers time to acclimatise to our new homes.
The Kanan Town Board of Education, however, was keen for me to get set up and ready. I was requested to spend my weekdays in the board’s office, studying Japanese and preparing lesson plans. I was welcomed warmly by people throughout the town hall, and affectionately dubbed ‘Mr Hamish’ by my new colleagues.
An English-speaking assistant, Mrs Isoi, was assigned to help me sort out the logistical necessities of my new life. She, Mr Tokunaga and I spent a week setting up bank accounts, pay accounts, tax accounts, electricity accounts, gas accounts, telephone accounts and the all-important gaijin card. This photographic ID is essential for any foreigner living in Japan and I was required to carry it with me at all times.
I was now ‘set up’ brilliantly – a fully functioning member of society with a job, an apartment, an ID card, a personalised wooden stamp and automated bill payments. It was time for me to kick back, relax and enjoy the holidays.
Under the Osakan Sun Page 2