Under the Osakan Sun

by Hamish Beaton

  ‘What’s your real name?’ yelled a small girl.

  ‘Your beard fell off! You’re not Santa!’ shouted a boy.

  Everyone laughed, even me.

  The school term finally came to an end on December 21, and I packed my bags for a winter vacation in Tokyo. I had arranged to spend Christmas with the Hanaki family and New Year’s Eve with the Tanaka family. I had met both these families through exchange programmes during my university days, and they had invited me to spend the festive season with them. The Hanakis had also inivited Natalie and Ben, two of my friends from New Zealand.

  Despite the occasional Christmas-themed neon display in the Tokyo city centre and colossal sales in major department stores, I was not expecting any traditional celebrations. Accordingly, I decided to treat myself to a Christmas feast the evening before I departed. Two New Zealand-made meat pies had been frozen and stealthily transported to me by a visiting family member, and I had stored them in my freezer for such an occasion. I splashed out and bought a creamy chocolate cake at Daiei, a can of Coca-Cola from the school vending machine and a bag of popcorn, and rented the last remaining copy of Gladiator from the local video store.

  I ate my hearty Christmas repast wearing a Santa hat, and took a photo of myself to commemorate my first Christmas in Japan. No amount of sushi and okonomiayaki could match the nostalgia of a good old New Zealand steak pie. I ate slowly, relishing every mouthful. The can of Coke complemented the pies wonderfully, with the gooey blob from Daiei making a slightly peculiar end to an otherwise scrumptious Christmas feast.

  I then settled in for my movie, stuffed myself full of sickly caramel popcorn, wrapped my small selection of gifts for my Tokyo families, and lovingly decorated my small wooden Christmas tree.

  Christmas Day at the Hanakis was untraditional to say the least. Mr Hanaki and his son-in-law left for work shortly after dawn. I sprang out of bed at a healthier hour and greeted Mrs Hanaki in the kitchen with a cheerful ‘Merry Christmas!’ Looking baffled, she shooed me out of the kitchen and sat me down at the dining-room table, where Natalie, Ben and I ate breakfast of fried rice and pickled plums.

  Next, we spent a merry morning at Mrs Hanaki’s pottery class creating chopstick holders, turtles, cats’ heads, and in my case a scale model of my left hand. Later, we wandered around the nearby village of Kamakura, seeking out a Christmassy lunch. The best we could manage was greasy cheeseburgers at a Burger King near the train station.

  The following day, I took a train north to spend New Year with the Tanaka family in Kawasaki. My time here began with an almost disastrous faux pas. Before leaving for Tokyo I had been insanely busy, with many people to visit and farewell and numerous Christmas cards and presents to buy. Despite my well-laid plans, I had been horrified to discover on the day of my departure that I had forgotten to buy anything for the Tanakas. With only minutes to spare before my train left Tondabayashi, I had raced around in a blind panic, searching my apartment for a possible gift.

  I had suddenly spotted a box of rice crackers and assorted snack food that my principal, Mr Kazama, had given me for Christmas. I am not a fan of salty Japanese rice crackers, but I knew Mr Tanaka was. I quickly decided that he would enjoy the box of crackers a lot more than I ever would. I daintily removed the decorative sticker emblazoned with ‘Merry Christmas, Mr Hamish’ from the front of the unopened, gift-wrapped box and raced out the door.

  By the time I arrived at the Tanaka household several days later, I had completely forgotten about the crisis, and had even managed to convince myself that I had purchased the box of crackers. The Tanakas welcomed me into their home and we sat down for dinner. Our meal of soup and noodles was quickly followed by a presentation of gifts. Mr Tanaka had bought me a computer printer, and Mrs Tanaka a lurid orange and red striped woollen sweater.

  I shyly produced my second-hand box of crackers. Mr Tanaka thanked me profusely. He tore the wrapping and opened the box. My heart sank. Inside, a slim white envelope sat unopened. The school principal’s tidy handwriting clearly indicated that the envelope and accompanying box of crackers had been destined for ‘Mr Hamish’.

  I gulped. Mr Tanaka seemed confused. He reached forward and opened the envelope. ‘Dear Mr Hamish,’ he read aloud, ‘I hope you have a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Take care in Tokyo. Best wishes, Ryouichi Kazama.’

  I blushed. My mind raced. ‘Aha,’ I proclaimed, suddenly sensing a way out of my predicament. ‘These crackers are from me. However, I did not know what a good brand of crackers was. I told Mr Kazama that you all like rice crackers very much, and asked him to help me choose a good selection. So we went shopping together, and he chose these crackers for you. He must have accidentally put that letter inside the box by mistake.’

  I held my breath. I prayed that Mr Tanaka would not ask how the envelope had managed to get into the box before the box was gift-wrapped.

  He sat perfectly still for a moment, carefully considering my story. ‘Hmm,’ he mused, rubbing his chin, ‘Mr Kazama is a good man. I must thank him.’ And with that, he rose and left the table. An hour later, while the rest of the family and I were watching television, he returned and presented me with a slim envelope.‘I have written a letter to Mr Kazama,’ he announced. ‘Please thank him for the rice crackers.’

  I am ashamed to admit that Mr Tanaka’s letter did not quite make it to its intended recipient.

  As New Year approached I received emails from friends in New Zealand talking of happy days at the beach, great camping trips and sun-drenched cricket matches. Meanwhile, snow was covering the Tanaka home and it was too freezing to go outside.

  While the Christmas period had been a riot of shopping, New Year would be the complete opposite. In Japan, most shops shut from January 1 to January 4, with families staying home by the heater and venturing out only to pay homage at a local shrine or temple. The days leading up to New Year are, therefore, spent preparing for this hermit-like existence. Four days of meals need to be prepared before midnight on December 31, and the entire household needs to be immaculately clean to welcome in the new year. We hunkered down and polished the Tanaka’s family shrine, as well as their collection of silver cutlery and rice bowls, and helped Mrs Tanaka make copious batches of rice balls and slice vegetables for the New Year stew.

  New Year’s Eve finally rolled around, the family assembled in the living room and the television set was switched on. A team of male celebrities was trying to beat a team of female celebrities in a singing competition. Poppy teen idols were singing soppy songs about asking someone on a date and being happy, and elderly celebrities were crooning folk songs about the countryside. Although almost everyone seemed to be out of tune, plastic smiles and obsequious praise abounded.

  While I struggled to stay awake, the Tanaka family talked excitedly about which celebrities had undergone plastic surgery and who was dating whom. After six hours the competition finally ended, there was a cheesy countdown to midnight, and the family bowed and clapped. I heartily joined in, thrilled the evening was at an end.

  Mr Tanaka leapt to his feet and put on his coat. ‘Right!’ he announced. ‘It’s time to go.’ Mrs Tanaka informed me that we were going to a shrine. Trussed up in my thick red puffer jacket, I followed the Tanakas down an icy road to the local temple, where a giant bronze bell was chiming one hundred and eight times to cleanse visitors of sin.

  The reverent queue stretched 200 metres down the road. As we shuffled forward, Mr Tanaka explained that people came to the temple to pray for good luck and protection for the coming year. Japanese people were not particularly religious, but this was a national tradition.

  After an hour we reached the temple steps. I was given an incense stick to burn and bowed my head in prayer. ‘Dear Lord,’ I began, ‘please do not let me spend another Christmas and New Year in Japan. Don’t get me wrong, everyone’s been super-friendly, but I want to play cricket, have a barbecue at the beach and lie in the sun. Fried rice, pickled plums and Burger King are no
t my idea of Christmas fare, and I may well lose my sanity if I have to sit through another celebrity singing competition.’

  8

  Season of change

  The bitter winter eventually ended and spring arrived. The large cherry blossom tree at the entrance to Kanan Junior High School burst into flower, coating the locker bay and sports ground with a frosting of pink.

  Lunch breaks became riotous affairs as five hundred students emerged from winter hibernation, eager to make up for lost games of tag and soccer. The school pool was cleaned and the students began arriving at class with damp hair and red eyes after their daily swimming practice.

  The young minnows were also in the mood. I arrived at my Friday morning lesson to discover that Jun, prancing about like a new born lamb, had managed to lock himself in the classroom. Mrs Hotta banged on the frosted-glass window and yelled, but Jun was unable to unlock the door. Other teachers were called to see if the door could be dismantled by unscrewing the hinges. More banging and yelling at Jun ensued; he became visibly alarmed and distressed.

  At last, Mr Ii, a maths teacher, instructed Jun to turn the door knob counter-clockwise instead of clockwise, and the door opened. Three teachers burst into the room, seized a startled Jun Fujita and rushed him to the staffroom, where Mrs Hotta set about giving him a telling-off for being naughty and disobedient.

  This staffroom visit would not be his last. The following week I was eating my lunch when the door opened, and Jun was marched in by Mr Omura and led to Mrs Hotta’s desk. Mrs Hotta followed, looking slightly alarmed. Jun seemed bewildered. His mouth hung open, and he looked at his shoes and shifted his weight nervously.

  I sensed something was amiss, and listened in for any potential gossip or scandal. Mrs Hotta seemed unsure where to begin. Mr Omura looked on uncertainly, and put his hand on Jun’s shoulder.

  ‘What on earth were you thinking?’ Mrs Hotta asked.

  Jun continued to look at his feet. His cheeks were flushed and he wrung his hands. At last he looked up. His brow was locked in a frown and his eyes seemed moist. He opened his mouth and in his slow, husky drawl began to tell his story.

  Seven weeks earlier he had developed a crush on a female student. Alas, this was not just any female student but Asuka Kitamura, the prettiest girl in school. Much like me, Jun was afflicted with the soul-destroying compulsion of falling for girls well outside his league and with whom he had little chance of romance. The weeks had gone by with Jun admiring Asuka from a distance and secretly daydreaming about her.

  ‘I think she’s very pretty,’ Jun said. He blushed and looked at his feet again, ‘so I wanted to make her a present.’

  A week earlier the young minnows had gone to visit the local kindergarten. Part of the visit had involved making greeting cards for the kindergarten students. Jun, Hiro and Yurika had spent hours colouring in, and sticking pieces of crêpe paper on to pieces of cardboard. The end result had been a mess of glue, tattered crêpe paper, scruffy felt-pen doodles and indecipherable pictures. However, this had not mattered at all to the three-year-old recipients and the visit had been a great success.

  This artistic breakthrough had inspired Jun to express his feelings to Asuka via a homemade greeting card. He had acquired leftover scraps of pink crêpe paper and drawn Asuka the prettiest, least scribbly bunch of flowers his love-struck hands could muster. He had then smuggled his creation into his home room, and waited for an opportune moment to present it to the unwitting Asuka.

  This moment had arisen at lunch break, when Jun had shyly given the card to Asuka and then fled to the safety of the young minnows’ room.

  To her credit, Asuka had not laughed at Jun, or embarrassed him in front of the other students. She had quickly gone to find her homeroom teacher. She explained that she had never spoken with Jun, and didn’t know why he’d made her a card. She did not share Jun’s feelings, but certainly did not want to hurt him.

  Mrs Hotta relayed all this to Jun, and I quietly shared his feeling of shame and unhappiness as the bottom dropped out of his stomach, and the small glimmer of hope was snuffed out. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. Mr Omura patted Jun on the back and Mrs Hotta smiled.

  Asuka’s homeroom teacher had now entered the classroom, and she stood smiling awkwardly at Jun.

  ‘Is Nobu still angry with me?’ Jun looked up, a worried look on his face. Mr Omura’s smile instantly vanished. ‘Nobu won’t bother you again.’

  Keisuke Nobunaga was Asuka’s boyfriend. He was the coolest boy in school, and rode a motor bike on the weekends. This gave him a Fonzie-style rebel-without-a-cause reputation, and the girls loved him. I shared their admiration. Nobu’s clownish pranks made my classes more entertaining. He always had a joke to tell when we met in the hallways, and kept me up to date with who the prettiest girls on TV were.

  Unfortunately, though, Nobu had not reacted well to Jun’s affection for his girlfriend. Despite Asuka’s best efforts, word of the home-made greeting card had quickly reached Nobu’s ears. He had stormed off to the young minnows’ room and yelled something threatening at Jun through the frosted window.

  Jun and Hiro had cleverly locked the door, and remained fortified behind some desks. Nobu’s threats had, therefore, fallen on deaf ears, and he had been quickly apprehended by the school counsellor, Mr Kobayashi, and taken away for a ‘conversation’.

  Jun was still blushing, but a smile had returned to his face. He leant forward to whisper in Mrs Hotta’s ear – and, as always, I was able to hear him from across the room. ‘I think she’s pretty.’ His red complexion turned a shade of puce, and he clapped his hand across his mouth.

  Mrs Hotta and Mr Omura looked startled. ‘Jun!’ they exclaimed at once. ‘You mustn’t do this again.’ Jun looked up innocently. ‘Of course not. No, I won’t do it again.’

  As he plodded slowly out of the staffroom, he glanced in my direction. He blushed again and smiled. For some bizarre reason, Jun Fujita seemed happy.

  During his remaining fortnight at Kanan Junior High School, Jun never repeated his amorous advances towards Asuka. Asuka was polite to Jun, and would always greet him in the hallways. Jun apologised to Nobu, and in turn Nobu took Jun under his wing and started playing table tennis with him during break times. Jun did not seem upset that his feelings were unrequited, and I never heard the issue mentioned again.

  The Japanese school year ends at the end of March, and Jun and his third-grade classmates were set to graduate on March 13. I had known these students for only eight months, but I had grown close to many of them and was not looking forward to their leaving.

  Sadly, my final class with Jun and Fumio was cancelled because of exams. I had not foreseen this, and had hoped to have a send-off party in the form of a ‘super game day’, on which we would play all the favourite board games one last time, and the boys would make a last attempt at pinning the tail on the donkey. Instead, the last remaining day on which Jun would be my student would be the day he graduated.

  Japanese school graduations are sombre, formal affairs. The passage from one academic institution to another is deemed to be a highly significant stage of life – so much so that even kindergartens and primary schools hold graduation ceremonies. The students attend with their uniforms cleaned, shoes polished, and hair cut especially for the occasion. Male teachers and proud fathers dust off their best suits, or even tuxedos, while mothers and female teachers wear formal kimonos and intricate hairdos.

  The Kanan Junior High School ceremony, at which 150 fifteen-year-olds would graduate, would be attended by the mayor, the town elders and government officials. The mayor would, as usual, wear a three-piece suit and white satin gloves.

  The second-grade students had spent the week decorating the school gymnasium, the venue for the occasion, with black and white ribbons and large bouquets of flowers, and plastering coloured cellophane on to the windows to create the impression of cathedral stained glass. The gym floor had been painstakingly measured and mapped so that all the bench
es were the exact distance apart and at the same angle to the stage. Mr Kobayashi had spent the week instructing students on how to line up, sit down, bow and stand on command.

  Apart from the strictness and pomp of the ceremony, the most striking feature was the intense and morbid mood. Whereas Western graduation ceremonies focus on the students’ accomplishments and bright hopes for the future, Japanese ceremonies dwell on the past, and serve to remind students that they are about to step outside their comfort zones and potentially lose all their friends.

  The ceremony started with the typical Japanese formalities. The national anthem was played over the loudspeakers and everyone stood to attention. The school hymn was sung with gusto, and then everyone sat down at the exact same microsecond. The principal welcomed the mayor. The mayor welcomed the parents, and gave a speech about the students having done well, but now being on the scary unpredictable path called life. He then thanked the principal for having had the opportunity to speak, and the principal thanked the parents for feeding and clothing the students for so many years.

  Growing restless, I looked at my programme. Alas, the next hour and a half promised to be even more tedious, with endless certificate presentations. This would be very drawn-out. The third-grade dean would present the principal with a scroll, which contained the class roll for the entire third grade. The principal would carefully unfurl the scroll and read out each name. Upon hearing his or her name, the respective student would stand swiftly to attention, yell ‘Hai!’ in a loud voice, and walk up on to the stage to receive their certificate. Once the student had returned to his or her seat, the next name would be called, until all 150 students had received their certificates and the audience had lapsed into a coma.