My weekday routine quickly fell into a pattern. I would wake every morning at 7.20, sweaty and dehydrated. The sun would have been baking Tokiwa Mansion for two hours, reducing my apartment to an oxygen-deprived oven. I would take a cold shower and swig an entire litre of chilled water. I would then fold away my pink futon, get dressed, and pack my bag for work.
Breakfast consisted of toast covered in Japanese peanut butter, a gooey golden spread that tasted nothing like peanuts. I would then watch television, and leave the apartment no later than 8.23, waving goodbye to my landlady and her two pre-school children, who were usually playing on the front steps of the building, and chatting with Mrs Okuda, the old woman across the road, about the weather. She would tell me it would be hot and that I should take care.
I would then walk eight minutes to the smelly, diesel-stained Tondabayashi Bus Terminal along narrow, twisting cobblestone streets that felt as though they had emerged straight out of mediaeval Japan. On the numerous days when I overslept or watched too much television, I would be forced to skip the scenic route and sprint like a maniac along one of the ugliest roads in the world, Tondabayashi main street.
My bus invariably departed at 8.33 on the dot. There were always the same passengers sitting in exactly the same seats. An intellectually handicapped man with crossed eyes sat in the front row reading the newspaper. A gaunt old man with a tattered baseball cap sat in the seat behind him, staring out the window. A chatty trio of elderly women sat behind him, having the same conversation every morning:
‘Good morning, my dear!’
‘Oh, good morning!’ (They act surprised to see each other.)
‘It’s hot today, isn’t it?’
‘It sure is.’
‘How are you?’
‘Hot.’
‘What did you have for dinner?’
The bus ride would take thirteen to fifteen minutes. I would get off near the town hall, walk through the rice paddies and past the concrete pond, and arrive at the Board of Education at the same time as everyone else. Mr Tokunaga would eagerly check that I was all right and had managed to cook dinner for myself. Mr Smiles would try to teach me a new Japanese word and George would comment on my choice of clothes. Magnum would ask if I’d been to any pubs the previous evening. The timid office ladies would serve me a cool glass of Coca-Cola, which they had apparently started purchasing especially for me.
I spent my days at the Board of Education reading novels and studying Japanese. Mr Fukumoto, the superintendent, had sternly stated that he expected me to spend the summer creating lesson plans and curricula for my students. Mr Tokunaga, however, quietly took me aside and confided that this would not be necessary as the Japanese teachers whom I would be assisting had already prepared the entire English syllabus for the year. I should wait until school started and work things out with them then.
This lack of meaningful duties left me with eight weeks to kill. My colleagues at the board seemed to be aware of my situation, and did their best to distract me and help me pass the time. From time to time, my novel-reading would be cut short by Magnum or Mr Fujimoto. Mr Fujimoto would casually glance at my book and ask what it was about. He would make a token appearance of being interested in my reply, and then produce his own reading material – usually New Zealand travel brochures – and ask me to pronounce place-names and give my opinion on certain tourist destinations. Magnum, on the other hand, would lean over my shoulder and laugh loudly, before announcing that he didn’t understand a single word of English.
Attempts at study were equally short-lived. Mr Smiles and Mr Tokunaga reacted joyously whenever I opened one of my Japanese dictionaries. Mr Smiles would be at my side within seconds, eagerly peering over my shoulder. He loved to voice his own translations of words and mime some of the more random connotations. Mr Tokunaga, meanwhile, would cough and provide me with a detailed history of the meaning and origins of a particular Japanese character.
On occasion, Mr Smiles would race off into Mr Fukumoto’s office to inform the superintendent of the latest word I was studying. The office ladies would giggle and Magnum would announce that he had never heard the word in his life before, and that Mr Hamish spoke better Japanese than he did.
Any visitors to the office would be paraded over to my desk and introduced. On one occasion I had just opened my Japanese language textbook when Magnum escorted a middle-aged woman to my desk. ‘This is Mrs Hashimoto,’ he explained, a big smile building beneath his moustache.
Mrs Hashimoto bowed and looked at the floor. I bowed in return and introduced myself. ‘That will be all,’ announced Magnum, and ushered Mrs Hashimoto away.
I found out later that the hapless Mrs Hashimoto had simply come to the Board of Education to request a form giving school uniform requirements for her eldest son, who had to purchase a short-sleeved shirt for Junior High.
Such interruptions rapidly became the highlight of my working day. I enjoyed chatting with Mr Fujimoto about maps and mountains. Mr Smiles was teaching me useful words, and I was learning more about Japanese kanji characters from Mr Tokunaga than I ever had at university.
Many of these interruptions developed into excursions away from the office. On one particularly hot day, Mr Ohashi from the Social Education Department approached and asked if I liked baseball. I had neither watched nor played a game of baseball, believing it an inferior sport to cricket. However, I smiled politely and replied, ‘Yes, I enjoy baseball.’
Mr Ohashi clapped his hands. ‘Follow me’ he instructed. I followed him to the car park, assuming he had a baseball bat and ball in the boot of his car. ‘We are going to watch baseball,’ he announced, opening the car door.
Mr Ohashi’s son, it turned out, was a member of Kanan Town’s junior league baseball team. This feisty bunch of fourteen-year-olds were the pride of the town as they regularly won the prefecture-wide competition. The players’ summer holidays and weekends were crammed with baseball practice and Mr Ohashi had decided we should go and watch so I could give critical feedback on the team’s performance.
We sweltered on the sideline for an hour and a half in bright sunshine while Mr Ohashi’s son and his team-mates practised catching and throwing. Mr Ohashi looked most uncomfortable in his suit. At the end, he eagerly inquired as to my impressions of the team, and whether I thought they would be able to win their upcoming tournament. ‘Yes, most definitely,’ I lied.
Word of Mr Ohashi’s outing soon spread through the office, and it became common practice for people to escort me on excursions. Magnum took me to the local convenience store, explaining where the beer fridge was located. George gave up a lunch hour to drive me to an historic temple. Mr Smiles took me to a prehistoric burial mound, and Mr Fujimoto took me to one of the local tea shops. A woman from the Social Education Department gave me a guided tour of the town’s fitness and pensioner centre. Mr Tokunaga and I spent a leisurely afternoon driving through the local mountain range in the office car, and the following weekend we made a day-long trip to Kyoto with George to look at more temples. Another staff member arranged for me to visit a local monastery and meet some Buddhist monks.
Mrs Isoi, my English-speaking assistant, picked up on my curiosity about the rocket-shaped Tondabayashi Tower, and decided a special trip there would help me understand its background. It turned out that the tower had been built by the Perfect Liberty cult, a bizarre religious group from Brazil that had mysteriously sprung up in Osaka in the 1940s. For some reason, the cult had gained a large following, and one of its acolytes had had the idea of building a gigantic monument to pay homage to the cult’s motto, ‘Life is art’. The massive fibreglass construction was visible from everywhere in Tondabayashi and the surrounding countryside.
Mrs Isoi had never visited the tower before, and as we entered the visitors’ elevator she seemed nervous. ‘I am a little afraid of the cult,’ she whispered. ‘They are very strange.’
The cult was certainly going to great efforts to keep to itself. The visitors’ e
levator was separate from the members’ elevator, and stopped only at a special observation deck. Access to the rest of the tower was prohibited, and further information was limited to a pamphlet at the entrance. Surprisingly, it was available in English.
I was bemused to discover that the tower was supposed to represent the passage of life. The five slim struts at the bottom slowly merged into three fat struts, which then melded into a bulbous hub in the centre. From here the structure continued upwards into its melted candle form. This design, the pamphlet explained, resembled the maturity of mankind. We were all born as individuals (skinny white struts), but were brought together by society until we became one united entity (fat and bulbous). This did nothing to dispell the impression that the tower looked like a toy rocket ship that had been put in a microwave by accident.
The visitors’ observation deck was also an aesthetic disaster. Because of the tower’s ridiculous shape and firmly sealed windows, it was obviously impossible to clean its exterior and small glass peepholes. I peered through the grubby apertures but could see nothing of the city below.
And so my summer holidays at the Board of Education soon lapsed into a lazy and happy period of sightseeing and time-wasting. Shortly after four o’clock every day I would stop work and catch the bus home, stopping in at Daiei to buy bread and something for dinner. Mrs Isoi had bought me a Japanese recipe book and I was making good use of it.
During my first shopping expeditions, I was surprised to find that many of the items I had expected to be expensive were, in fact, reasonably priced. Chicken was cheap, as were vegetables. Rice, on the other hand, was very expensive, and seemed to be sold only in packs that catered for families of twenty.
After shopping, I would trudge home in the afternoon heat. As I passed the gaggle of elderly neighbours who seemed to spend their afternoons gossiping on the street outside Mrs Okuda’s apartment, they would wave back, pointing and remarking on the amount of groceries I was carrying.
It was my grocery bags that eventually enabled me to get to know Mrs Okuda. A sprightly woman of over seventy, Mrs Okuda lived with her mother and father in a large, 400-year-old house on the other side of the road. She spent her days caring for her wheelchair-bound mother and tending the family’s vegetable garden. Her mother would sit quietly on the back step while her daughter watered their large tomato plants and weeded their latest zucchini crop.
Mrs Okuda had initially regarded me with suspicion, and scurried away whenever I walked past. As the weeks went by, however, she and her circle of lady gardeners became intrigued with the contents of my shopping bags. I would stop and chat about the weather, and explain how much hotter Japan was than New Zealand. The women would nod in agreement, all the while nosily eying my latest purchases.
As my dietary routines and limited cooking skills slowly became apparent, they were able to predict and comment on changes in my shopping list.
‘Oooh, that’s a new flavour of juice. Didn’t you like that other flavour?’ remarked the woman with the amusing glasses.
‘He likes apple juice,’ Mrs Okuda would answer on my behalf.
‘I saw him buy bread the other day,’ the skinny woman remarked.
‘Yes, he likes bread.’
‘Do you live by yourself?’ Mrs Okuda’s mother piped up from her wheel chair, peering earnestly at me. ‘Do you live by yourself?’ she repeated.
‘Yes.’ Everyone nodded in agreement.
‘Do you cook by yourself?’
‘Yes.’ Everyone nodded again.
Mrs Okuda’s mother asked the same questions every day, and her delighted response was always the same..
‘That’s great. That’s great. Oh my, a young man who can cook for himself. That’s great. Do you clean for yourself?’
The younger women would answer on my behalf, and the nodding and head-bobbing would continue.
These grocery-bag conversations often lasted for up to quarter of an hour, and would eventually come to an end with Mrs Okuda rushing off to her kitchen and returning with fresh vegetables. She would apologise profusely for their quality, promising that next year would be a better season and she would be able to offer me better specimens. On the days when she couldn’t find anything in her garden, she would give me a carton of my favourite apple juice or something else she believed I needed.
Overwhelmed by this generosity, I took to bringing Mrs Okuda and her mother cakes and savouries from the supermarket.
I was beginning to think that everyone in Japan was incredibly kind and generous. My landlady, Mrs Fujita, was no exception. The Fujita family lived downstairs, on the second floor. Mr Fujita was a chiropractor and operated a clinic on the ground floor, opposite Mrs Okuda’s vegetable garden.
Mr and Mrs Fujita had two small daughters, Fumiko (Fu-Chan) and Mikako (Mi-Chan). The girls spent their days playing in front of the apartment block, squirting each other with Mrs Okuda’s garden hose and speeding around on their tricycles. Never shy, they always ran to welcome me home. Fu-Chan celebrated her fifth birthday shortly after I arrived in Japan, and I gave her some New Zealand stickers and kiwifruit chocolates. These were shared with her sister, and I soon became a favourite member of the apartment block. The girls drew scribbly pictures of me with bright yellow hair and neon-green shirts and I was invited to join games of jump-rope and spinning top.
I had obviously not paid close enough attention to Mr Tokunaga when he explained how to use my washing machine, as on my first attempt I flooded the apartment. Fortunately, the water had not made it to the precious tatami mats, but the hallway and kitchen floors were completely submerged. I danced around in a panic, terrified the water would seep through the floor and drench the apartment below. What could I use to soak up the spillage? I possessed only a thin bath towel and a tea towel, and using the pink futon and flowery blanket did not seem advisable.
I raced off to find Mrs Fujita, who instantly sped to my rescue, and using her family’s entire bath-towel collection we had the mess cleaned up in minutes. Instead of scolding me, Mrs Fujita apologised for not having explained the washing machine’s strange drainage function, and despatched Fu-Chan to get me a bunch of grapes.
My close shave with the overflowing washing machine had high-lighted two areas of concern. First, I had only one towel and very little linen. Secondly, I had no furniture. All my belongings were sitting around in piles in the living room. I sat on two wooden chairs that I had inherited from Mr Tokunaga and ate my dinner on a cardboard box. I watched TV on the floor, surrounded by stacks of books and CDs.
It was time to go shopping again. My dwindling supply of yen led me to Daiei, where prices were cheap – except for bed sheets: a replacement for my pink futon would have to wait until pay-day. In the meantime, blue pillowcases were purchased to help me feel more masculine.
A blue sofa soon followed. It was a soft, spongy contraption that sat close to the ground and seated one and a half people. A matching blue glass coffee table added a summery feel, and soon afterwards I purchased a couple of bookcases.
The pièce de résistance, though, involved a trip further afield. I was growing tired of Japanese television and was desperate to hear some English music. My CD collection, which I had taken great pains to bring to Japan with me, was gathering dust. I counted my yen and made the daring decision to buy a stereo.
Mr Tokunaga applauded my decision the minute he overheard me talking about it. He was, it turned out, a frequent shopper in Osaka’s electronics district and a self-proclaimed expert haggler. We took an afternoon off work and drove north in the office car. Mr Tokunaga dithered through city traffic and found a park close to the main street.
The Nipponbashi strip of electronics stores was a riot of flashing neon. Multi-storey places with names such as Yodobashi Camera and Bic Camera displayed huge banners and blasted jangly tunes on to the street. Each stocked an overwhelming range of cameras, television sets, DVD players, computers, laptops and stereo equipment. For several hours Mr Tokunaga and I wa
ndered from shop to shop. I had never seen such flashy gadgets. There were petite pink and white stereos, large silver stereos, bright green boom-boxes, red cassette players and orange portable CD players. Sliding panels swivelled noiselessly at the touch of a button, revealing panoramas of buttons and knobs. On blinking display screens, dancing cartoon characters helped the listener choose the volume level.
I was captivated by a medium-sized system. Large blue speakers were set into a sleek silver body. CDs were inserted vertically, locked in place by a magnetic disc. Half the front panel of the system would then slide up, enabling the CD to be played. It looked and acted like a robot. I was determined to purchase it.
Mr Tokunaga nodded in approval. ‘Yes, yes, good model, good price. But I think you need to get a reduction. I know how to haggle for a reduction. Let me do the talking.’
With that, he strode up to a salesman and began to complain that the stereo was overpriced. I should be given a ten percent discount. The salesman politely assured him the stereo had already been reduced and was at the lowest possible price.
Mr Tokunaga shook his head and coughed. ‘No, no!’ he stated loudly. ‘We have just seen this stereo for ten percent less down the road, and hoped you would do us a deal.’
The salesman’s manager overheard this remark and joined the debate. ‘Sir, please accept our humble apologies. My clerk here did not realise our competitor’s price. We will match it immediately. Please, you are most welcome to a ten percent discount, and would you like some minidiscs thrown in for free?’
Mr Tokunaga’s smile of triumph lasted only a split second before being replaced by a look of serious contemplation. ‘Hmmm, that sounds acceptable. I don’t know though. I do need some new batteries.’
The store manager nodded and clicked his fingers. The salesman, now bowing and blushing with shame, rushed away to arrange the sale and find AA batteries and a pack of minidiscs.
Under the Osakan Sun Page 3