What is normal, anyway?

Just like us?

I wrote most of that first post a week ago and then just sat on it. But having posted it, I feel motivated to (finally) keep going. I seem to have a lot of (what I think are) my best ideas when I’m trying to fall asleep, and so it was last night.

I was idly thinking about how and why there is something in American culture that is so different from that of the countries most similar to the US – Canada, Australia and New Zealand. I considered how much effort I’ve made to learn and understand Japanese culture and society (a lot) and compared it with how much effort I’ve made to learn and understand US culture and society (…). Yeah, not much.

I think it’s relatively easy to learn some intercultural awareness about those who look and/or act quite differently from us. At the very least, it’s easy to notice that there is a difference, a gap that maybe we should think about. Of course, whether we actually develop any sensitivity about it is another matter. But we do know that the people in/from non-English-speaking countries where they speak a different language (and countries where the majority has traditionally not been white looked like us) do things differently.

(I made the changes in the paragraph above because I realized I was showing my instinctive tendency to think about things from a white, western point of view. These matters apply to everyone in the world. For example, the expectations Japanese tend to have of westerners of Japanese descent and of other East Asians tend to be very different from their expectations of white or black people. I'd like to hear about South Asians' experiences in Japan, too.)

But when it comes to countries that are similar, we don’t notice as much. We assume that because they are like us in so many ways, there must be no difference. This is especially true of the US in relation to Canada. American movies conquered the entertainment world a long time ago, but movies are still somewhat of a “special event”. Even before cable, Canadians who live within broadcasting range of US TV stations (that is to say, most Canadians) have been growing up watching American TV in their own homes for decades. And it wasn’t just network shows - when I was a kid in southern Ontario, we watched Buffalo’s Rocketship 7 every morning before school and Commander Tom in the afternoon. There was such familiarity, and the shows catered to the market on both sides of the border. The logo of PBS station WNED is half stars-&-stripes, half maple leaf and says “Buffalo / Toronto”. Their slogan is “Serving Western New York and Southern Ontario”. Apparently, more than half of their pledge money comes from the Canadian side of the border.

So you can see how we think of the US as “just like us”, or no more different than neighbours down the street or cousins in another city.

For the most part, that’s true. But aren’t there some things those neighbours or cousins do that make you go “huh? We don’t do it like that at my house.” When these differences jump out at us, we wonder why those people can’t just be more like us. We are so alike already - how hard would it be for them to change?

Very hard, I suspect. Because after all, as I said, their history is different.

(Which I keep planning to write more about, but I get distracted by all the background. I will get to it!)

A new start

Recently I returned to live in Canada from Japan, planning to write about intercultural issues. Tokyo had been my home for 14 years. Japan was where I began to seriously think about, study and discuss intercultural matters, and the angle I was used to was, quite naturally, Japan and “the West”. (In this context “the West” implies “the U.S. and other English-speaking countries”.) So I figured that that would be my focus, or at least my way in to understanding the intercultural questions that arise in my mind.

However, I am easily distracted and interested in (far too) many things, which is why it has been so hard even to just sit down and write this blog. And living here in the Niagara area in 2013, with all the ongoing commemoration of the War of 1812 surrounding me – especially around Canada Day and Independence Day last week – I find my mind wandering in the direction of Canada and the U.S. instead.

Actually, that line of thought has been floating around for a while, but it’s only recently that I’ve started to get some clear thoughts about how two such similar countries can be so different.

A couple of weeks ago, I popped across the border to attend the high school graduation of a family member. I’ve attended many graduation ceremonies at Japanese junior high schools and was surprised by the many similarities in the order and contents of the program. But two things stood out.

One was the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance. To tell the truth, that has always freaked me out somewhat. It reminds me of nothing so much as a ritual prayer at a church. I have often thought that, even for those Americans who aren’t religious, being American is a kind of religion. (Or a cult. But then, religion in general tends to look somewhat cultish to me.) And this is their prayer. To question it would almost be blasphemy.

The other thing was the principal’s speech. Most of it was the usual stuff, praising them for being such great kids, expectations for their contributions to the world, and so on. But when he talked about the graduates’ immediate plans, the options he cited were college, the military or work. The military. I could not imagine hearing mentioned that at a Canadian or Japanese graduation ceremony, except perhaps during wartime. (So, there’s a question that just came to my mind – do Americans consider themselves to be living in wartime?) Why, I thought (not for the first time), is the U.S. so hung up on its military and on glory and honour? (Or honor, since they’re American.)

Then last weekend I found myself watching the CBC’s very entertaining (if very simplified) show about the War of 1812 on TV. (It was originally broadcast last year.) It made Canadian history much more interesting than what was presented during my school days. Back then I was convinced that every country but Canada had interesting history. I even studied “Ancient (read: Greek and Roman) History”. And American history, but was disappointed that in the course of a year, we didn’t get anywhere close to WWII.

When I travelled around Australia and New Zealand, I wanted to learn about the history of their European settlers and that of the people who were there before them. And when I started to settle myself in Japan, I wanted to know about Japanese history too, so I’ve read many books about that - starting with Edwin O. Reischauer's excellent Japan: The Story of a Nation. I've been reading a book called Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French, by Jean-Benoit Nadeau and Julie Barlow, that helps me to understand why the French are so…French. Knowing the history of a culture is really important in understanding the values that are important to that culture. Values are deeply embedded in our psyches, so deeply that we think they’re universal – until we encounter someone from another culture who does something that at the very least makes us go hmmm, and at worst makes us want to attack.

History helps us to understand how a culture formed its values.  We need more understanding, and that’s what I want to write about in this blog.

To post or not to post

I love to write.

I have so much to say and I want to get it out there (here) so my brain can take a rest from thinking. But I want it to be perfect. I want to choose just the right words and sentence structures. I'm hesitant to post something that I might change my mind about later if someone makes a good point with a different angle. I want to be fair. Of course, I don't want to be attacked. (I think it's unpleasant and unnecessary, and I'm going to write a post about why I think so soon. It will probably be called The Anger Demon.) I want to be clear and unassailable.

However...

When I start writing about an issue, I often find myself going in circles. I am blessed or cursed with the ability to see both or all sides of an issue. Even if I disagree with you fundamentally, if you explain your position I can usually still understand why you hold a particular opinion. I can - or will try to - see how you reached that place.

Does this make me wishy-washy?

People who like things black-and-white would probably say yes. But for me, that kind of contrast is only for clothes. I can't help seeing the grey areas, the other side of the coin, the black and the white and the rainbow shades in-between.

Yes, I do realize that there is a direct contradiction between that and wanting to be "clear and unassailable". I wonder, what's the point of posting anything if I'm not clear about my thoughts? I start writing and either end up where I began or somewhere different that I'm not sure I like the look of. Or just somewhere completely inconclusive, neither here nor there. I crave resolution and yet I can't get there. There is always another point to consider.

I get to the end and think, well, that didn't really lead anywhere or add anything to the discussion after all. It may be well-written but so what? What's the point of posting it?

While mulling over this impasse, I realized that:

• sometimes there are no easy answers;
• it's not natural for me to pretend that there are;
• I'm often suspicious of people who seem too sure of their position;

and

• it doesn't matter if I don't reach a conclusion.

(That gets rid of almost all my excuses for procrastination. Oh, damn!)

So, all I can do is share my experiences, my thoughts and my opinions, such as they are. Like the entry I posted last week - reading it over (narcissistically), I wondered how much sense it really made. My thought processes can be a kind of model, showing how I work my way to a conclusion. If I sound flaky or indecisive, so be it.

And if you want to disagree - with this or anything else I write - do it nicely.

One year later: A response to Anna Kunnecke

Earthquakes are unmooring, by their very nature. As human beings, we usually live on the ground, no matter how high we build. I actually was on the ground - on the first floor at work, and then out in the parking lot, watching a car rock back and forth, listening to the rattle of the corrugated metal roof above the bicycles, hanging on to a coworker’s arm for dear life.

We talk of "solid ground" but when the earth moves like that, our instincts tell us that there is no safe place, despite the absence of collapsing buildings around us. But in the end, all we lost at my home (materially) was some dishes.

I don't have children and am not planning to have any. I don't blame any parent for leaving. I don't blame anyone for leaving. I just don't understand why people feel they have to justify their decisions in opposition to someone else's. I mean that for "flyjin", hardcore volunteers, and the rest of us.

This is my home, my community, and I can't just walk away in a crisis. Like a traffic accident in which a family member or close friend is critically injured - I would want to stay at or near the hospital until I knew for sure whether my loved one was going to make it or not. That was the kind of emotion I based my decision on.

So yes, leaving in a hurry felt wrong for me, but I didn't want to judge anyone else - especially those with kids - for making a different choice. I was more bothered by the (unhelpful) freaking out in the Western media and the unnatural calm in the Japanese media, than the actual choices made by those getting freaked out by the freaking out.

Actually, that's not completely true. I did get irritated with people who freaked out and tried to get others to join them. Yet I couldn't join in on the condemnation of them, either. Whichever side we were on, we felt that there was safety in numbers and we wanted as many people as possible to justify that our choice was the right one by agreeing with it. OK, I guess I do “understand why people feel they have to justify their decisions in opposition to someone else's”...

Anyway, even more than "stand strong with Japan", my attitude was, "I can't leave now. I need to get through this first stage and see where things are going next". I knew that didn’t mean I wouldn't leave someday. I just needed to know, I needed to be there through that period of uncertainty, to make sure that my community would be OK. From the things I was seeing in the Western media, reports from a distance were often unreliable and even sensationalistic. It coloured my perception of other events that had recently been in the news at that time, to read things that seemed to contractict my own experience so dramatically.

Anyway, if it was really bad, I would leave.

It was both better and worse, I think. Worse was finding out about the lies we were told and the incompetence or selfish short-sightedness that left Fukushima Daiichi so vulnerable. But overall, in Tokyo we have, as Anna wrote, a "new normal”. That was the expression I used, too, last spring when I started this blog. Many things have changed, but it’s human nature to want to get back to some kind of normality.

Now I can see the lay of the land better. This time last year, I couldn't see anything in front of me. I wanted to see what was in front of me when the black cloud dissipated a little, see what was gone and what remained. To decide about the future with a clear head

Japan is going to be a very different place - and it has already changed a lot in the 13 years I've been here - but it will still be. I have some concerns, but that’s for another post.

Reality sinking in

Exhausted from stress, I had no trouble sleeping, but we had to get up fairly early because we had an appointment at a clinic in Harajuku for a whooping cough booster shot. (We both got sick in 2010, and my partner had it the year before too.) We confirmed that the clinic was operating, but they were starting an hour later. We caught the Seibu-Shinjuku line and were going to transfer to the Yamanote line, which was only running on the inner (counter-clockwise) loop, at Takadanobaba. But as we and many others headed for the stairs there, the station staff announced that the Yamanote line was "operating but not coming yet". Everyone turned around and got back on the train to Seibu-Shinjuku station.

Outside the north exit the Korean shops were open, selling groceries or pictures of Korean celebrities. We walked over to Meiji-dori, looking for a taxi. The streets were quiet – few people or cars. Could this be Tokyo on a sunny Saturday morning? There were few taxis and most of them were occupied, but we did eventually find one available and were on time for our appointment. While we waited to see the doctor, there was another aftershock – we were on the 4th floor. I jumped, but my partner and the receptionist both reassured me that it was OK.

After our appointment we need breakfast, so we went to a café across the street for brunch. There were a few more tremors while we were in there, and I was still nervous to go to the toilet, but…shoganai. (Shoganai is Japanese for "C'est la vie".) When we got back up to Harajuku station, the trains were still only running one way. I didn't want to go around backwards for 27 stations, nor did I want to get into the subway, so we took a taxi back to Seibu-Shinjuku station and caught the train home. The supermarket at Iogi station was open and I needed some new slippers, as some of the broken dishes had fallen onto my old ones. Browsing among the cheap footwear and other clothes felt unreal. "Normal" activities always feel unreal in these situations.

That afternoon was when we started to become aware of the worrying news about Fukushima Daichi power plant. I dug out my camping flashlight and my hiking headlamp. My partner went out a couple of times, to buy snacks, and then again to buy kombu and wakame after a friend sent a chain email (with actual useful information) about eating them to protect against radioactive iodine. Otherwise we stayed home. On Sunday we didn't go out until late afternoon. We wore masks and hats, because we'd been watching too much CNN and because at that point, the information we were getting was just too vague to know what was safe.

At the nearby electronics store, we realized that we were much too late to buy D-cell batteries for the big flashlight, but we got a few more snacks, cup soups, masks etc in the housewares section of the electronics store. Then we went to the fishing shop and T found a headlamp! (It can shine red or white light, and the angle can be adjusted. He's very happy with this new toy, and I think he was a bit disappointed that our neighborhood didn't get blacked out after all.) We also went to a big drugstore, which had the lights off around the edges.

It was a strange feeling, shops with their lights lowered, certain shelves (batteries and toilet paper – why toilet paper?) emptied of all stock, few cars on the roads. The unusual hush of Sasame-dori. The vague feeling of urgency in the air. The gas station near our apartment was out of gas (except diesel) but the car wash was operating.

Messages poured in from friends around the world via email and FB. I chatted with my mother and my sister on Skype. Realizing that the foreign news media (especially CNN) have a vested interest in sensationalizing things that don't need it, I tried to get and share good information from different media – the BBC, NHK World, Japanese TV news, and then various websites and blogs shared by friends. Some people were freaking out on FB, practically screaming their panic in capital-letter status updates. On the other hand, others started new FB groups to share information.

Among friends and family in Japan there was much checking in, too. My partner was relieved to hear from a friend who had moved to Sendai. His hometown, Hakodate, was slightly flooded by the tsunami, but the area where his mother lives is quite far from there and on higher ground. His brother in Sapporo barely felt a thing. Someone started a FB group for the sole purpose of "liking" it to show that you were OK, and inviting friends to "like" it to confirm their own safety.

A friend in Christchurch has popped up on FB chat a few times and we have been sharing our feelings. Her situation is different from mine – she was on vacation when the earthquake struck, and the worst damage is much closer to home so she has been volunteering at a food distribution centre. But she has lost her job the Rugby World Cup games were moved away from Christchurch. She is seriously thinking about leaving town for good, and in fact has gotten out for a break, ahead of a panicky prediction that there will be another big quake soon.

(to be continued...)

Getting home

I sent an email to my partner's "stupid" (non-smart) phone's email address, hoping it would reach him where a text to his number wouldn't. He sent a brief reply to say that he got it, so I knew he was OK and was probably conserving his battery. (Once again I appreciated the way Japan's mobile phone system has evolved differently from other countries' – we've never been able to text between phone numbers belonging to different companies. Instead, our phones have their own email addresses that can receive emails from both users of other companies as well as computers.) I figured he was walking home. I checked Google Maps to confirm that this would take about 3 hours. I didn't hear from him again until he sent another brief message telling me he had made it home.

Another coworker was online at home nearby. He sent a Facebook message inviting us to stay at his place, and arrived at around 9pm to pick us up. While we were in the car, my partner called me on Skype. He confirmed that he had indeed walked home (with a lot of other people), and told me that some dishes had fallen out of the china cabinet and smashed on the floor.

Our friend and his wife prepared futons and heaters in their spare rooms. I was a bit nervous about staying in a room alone, but reassured myself that their house was very new and hadn't fallen down. (Indeed, no buildings had fallen down around us.) Upstairs, their very new baby was sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the way the country he'll grow up in had just changed dramatically. We had watched some of the news on our iPhones – NHK World, BBC, etc. – but the scale became clearer on the big flat-screen TV. The way the tsunami oozed across the screen, pulling almost everything along in its wake, really brought home the scale of the destruction. Cars, trucks, boats, and houses – some of them on fire – were easy to recognize. The tsunami had gathered them whole and carried them along.

My partner called on Skype again and told me that the Seibu-Shinjuku line was running. So our hosts drove my colleague and I to the station and we got on a train together. It waited in the station until it was quite full, then stopped at every station. There was one long stop due to aftershocks – as well as a passing express train. It was almost 1am when I got home. Despite knowing it would be a shaky night, I was so glad to be home and even happier to see my partner.

(to be continued...)

Catching my breath

We stayed outside for a long time, afraid to go back inside and trying to make contact with loved ones. The mobile phone network was overloaded, so I couldn't reach my partner on his "stupid phone". However, 3G and internet connections were working and many of us have smart phones. We quickly gathered information about what had happened through a variety of iPhone apps, and began using Skype to call people. Our supervisor couldn't reach his wife, so one AET let him use it to call his wife at home.

It was the middle of the night in Canada and I didn't want to wake my mother with this news. But I needed to make contact with someone, so I skyped my sister in India. She immediately started to tell me that her computer's camera wasn't working for some unknown reason, but I interrupted her complaint to tell her I was on the phone, not the computer, and that there had just been a huge earthquake. I didn't care about video chatting at that moment, I just wanted to tell her what was going on. She promised to call my mother in a few hours and tell her the news before she had a chance to be shocked by seeing it on the TV.

While we were talking, the first aftershock hit and she heard me freaking out as we went through an only-slightly toned down version of what we'd already experienced. I figured she didn't need to listen to that, so we ended the call.

When that was over, utility workers arrived to check the electric cables on the houses across the street. Getting cold now, we nervously started to go back into the building. I was between the two sets of sliding glass doors when I heard them rattling from another aftershock. We turned around and went back outside. The tin roof of the bike parking area was rattling up and down.

Eventually the ground really did stay still, for long enough that we could calm down. It was getting much too cold to remain outside. Inside the AETs' Room, a couple of desk drawers had slid open but otherwise everything looked as oddly normal as the outside.

I was afraid to go to the toilet for a long time. What if another earthquake hit while I was in there?

We talked, we laughed nervously, we started to unwind a little. We started to catch our breath. Some went home by bike or car to check on loved ones and the condition of their homes.

I realized that I was feeling dizzy, and that this feeling got worse when I went into a small space, such as a toilet. It was like the feeling after getting off a ship, feeling as if the earth is moving beneath your feet even though it's perfectly stable. Of course, in my case it was the earth itself that had shown its instability.

Still unable to reach my partner by mobile, I called his company's number from an office phone. His boss's wife answered. She didn't seem particularly upset – she just told me that he was downstairs and said she'd give him the message to call me at the center. But by 5pm, I hadn't heard from him. I called his company again. This time the boss's wife informed me that he'd been unable to reach me (by now landlines were getting overloaded too) and had gone home. She also said she didn't know how he was going to get there.

Besides me, there was one other coworker who lives in Tokyo, and we were both wondering how we'd get home, especially after we'd confirmed that trains weren't running. A couple of others stayed with us, hanging out at a nearby Tengu izakaya, where the manager agreed to let us plug our phones in to recharge. One friend walked up nine floors to his apartment nearby (I refused to go up that high in case of more shaking) and brought back some extension cords. The guys drank a lot of beer, but I could only handle lemonade. They ordered some snacks, but I could only eat a few fries, one gyoza, a few edamame. We checked the news and communicated with the world through Facebook, email and Skype.

(to be continued...)

Into the unknown

I started to write this on Thursday, March 17th. I could not see that far in front of me the Friday before. I could hardly see in front of me even two weeks later.

On the morning of Friday, March 11th, I was chatting on Facebook with a Kiwi friend who lives in Christchurch, New Zealand. She was trying to put her life together after the February 22nd earthquake, and she wanted to get away from the aftershocks that were still stressing her out. I remember saying something like "I'd invite you for a visit but we get them here too". I remember thinking that I was tempting fate with that remark.

In my job, we AETs have weekly meetings on Friday afternoons. That afternoon, people were starting to drift into the Education Center as usual. A few of us were chatting in our meeting room when we felt an earthquake.

Usually earthquakes only last a few seconds, so we assumed the shaking would soon be over. We expected it to fade away, but it didn't. Instead it became stronger and stronger. The guys just stood there wondering whether to be practical or macho, but looking vaguely stunned. I was thinking that maybe I should get on the floor under my desk. Finally there was an unspoken consensus - we headed for the door. The Japanese staff and teachers were all in the lobby already, heading outside and encouraging us to do the same. We all stood in the parking lot as the normally-solid ground made like it was the ocean under our feet, with no sign of stopping. A parked car rocked back and forth a few meters away.

It was not only the strongest but also the longest earthquake I (or any of us) have ever experienced. Instead of a few seconds, it lasted about five minutes. I grabbed hold of one of my coworkers - as if any human being could do something to control the situation. The shaking weakened and finally stopped completely. The car became still. The physical world started to calm down, but my knees were weak and my heart was pounding.

Amazingly, everything around us looked perfectly normal. That didn't feel right. Things were anything but normal. What a nerve the buildings around us had, to stand there looking like nothing had happened.

We stood there in stunned relief as clouds came in and the temperature began to drop. I tried to catch my breath, to stay on my feet, to keep from falling apart into panic.

(to be continued...)