An American Tradition Worth Sharing

Many meaningful traditions and customs exist in Japan; I've gained a new appreciation for the role that ritual and tradition can play in a society in learning about some of those aspects of Japanese culture. America has its own traditions, of course, and we recently discovered one that I think is worth sharing with our friends here in Japan: the whole-restaurant-looking-at-you-while-waiters-sing-happy-birthday-to you tradition. We took our good friend Hitomi to an El Torito restaurant that exists in a nearby town (if you're from California, yes, it's the same restaurant) to celebrate her birthday. What she did know is that we were treating her to Mexican food for her birthday. What she didn't know was that blaring "happy birthday" music would fill the restaurant, she'd be forced to wear a sombrero and have Japanese waiters and waitresses yell "HAPPY BIRTHDAY!" while popping party poppers, thereby drawing the attention of the entire restaurant to our table. It was a truly unforgetable moment, and all Hitomi could say, after taking off the sombrero and wiping away the tears (of joy? surprise?) from her eyes was "we don't usually do this in Japan!"
Now, I know we aren't the first people to have requested the special birthday surprise from the El Torito in Tsukuba. But we must have made an impression on the staff, because we went back to El Torito two days later, when we were in town for our friend Minako's violin recital. Travis A., a fellow AET, was with us, and he was craving some all-too-rare Mexican food. Mark, Travis and I walked in the restaurant and the tortilla making girl recognized Mark, smiled and waved. When we sat down, our waitress from our previous visit came over to our table, flashed us a big smile, and asked if we'd brought any birthday friends this time. The answer, unfortunately, was no. But I think we've found a new tradition to share with our Japanese friends while we're here, so the staff of El Torito may be seeing a lot more of us in the coming months.

The WHAT Room?

Well, after years of hearing funny cross-cultural-mix-up stories from my parents and their fellow missionaries, I finally have one of my own. It's not nearly as funny as my dad's "it's early" story from Brazil (if you know my dad and haven't heard that story, ask him about it), but this one is my very own, and I'm kind of proud of that. Last week, some very important guests were coming to visit our school. Students, teachers and administrators were cleaning furiously and madly making green tea, along with the many other preparations required when receiving visitors who will be judging your school based on the ten seconds they spend in each classroom.
I was in the teachers' room, and my kyoto sensei (vice-principal) came in and asked me to go to the kagi shitsu. At least that's what I thought he said. "Kagi" in Japanese is key, and I thought "that's strange, we don't really have a key ROOM, per se. But we do have a big wooden key BOARD--that must be what he means." So I walked across the teachers' room and stood right in front of the key board, dutifully awaiting further instructions. My kyoto sensei looked at me, tilted his head to one side, and basically communicated to me, non-verbally, that I was an idiot. He pointed in the direction of the neighboring room and said "the kaigi shitsu"? Oh yes, "kaigi," only one vowel away from from "kagi" means meeting. The meeting room. We definitely DO have one of those, and that does make a lot more sense. I smiled sheepishly and hurried to the meeting room, where I tried to make up for my embarassing moment by sweeping the floor with an extra measure of gusto. And now I, and hopefully you, will always remember the difference between those two similar, but very different, words.

Abunai, yo!

During our time here, Mark and I have noticed that many people have a preoccupation with avoiding danger. Before summer vacation began, my teachers and I went on an after-school walk in the neighborhood surrounding our school, searching for "dangerous places" (this was the extent of the explanation given to me, I'm sure a much more comprehensive one exists...but you get the short version a lot when you've only been learning Japanese for a few months). Lots of things are regarded as "abunai" (dangerous); in fact, when adults are telling kids to stop doing something or watch out for something, sometimes they will just yell "abunai!" However, we've also noticed that the Japanese idea of what constitutes danger doesn't necessarily line up with the American one. This came to our attention during a school field trip. Mark and I both got to attend a Seiji Ozawa concert in Mito with our fifth graders. There were more kids than seats on the bus to the concert, so lots of the students stood in the aisle, city-bus style. A few of them held on for dear life when we turned sharp corners, but many of them viewed this situation as a chance to practice gymanstics techniques or show off their pull up skills. The whole time, as I sat in my (safe) seat, I thought "what if we were in a wreck?!? Don't the teachers know how DANGEROUS this is? This would never fly in America!" As soon as I got home, I asked Mark "on the bus, did your kids..."; before I could finish my sentence, Mark knew what I was asking about. His school's bus situation had been the same, and he'd had the same reaction.
This got us talking about what is deemed dangerous in Japan versus what is deemed the same in the States. Here's what we've observed in our short time here (by the way, I don't mean this in an ethnocentric vein. One perspective makes more sense to me, based on my cultural background, but I realize that Japanese people are probably totally puzzled by American ideas of what constitutes danger. I'm more interested in what these assumptions say about our cultural values). Okay, here's the list:
What's dangerous in Japan:
* Going to the beach after "Ocean Season" is over--even though it's a holiday weekend, the water is the same as it was all summer, and the weather is hot and gorgeous.
* Driving after drinking one drop of alcohol--Japan has a zero tolerance policy. People seem to abide by it, probably keeping the late-night taxi industry in business.
*Any kind of information, such as addresses or phone numbers, being made available (teachers have to be REALLY careful with student info).
More interestingly, what's NOT considered dangerous:
*Flippy bars, complete with running-start ramps, on the kindergarten playground.
*A front-seat passenger holding a baby in his or her lap--no seat belt.
*Letting elementary kids have their own box cutters in their desks.
*High schoolers checking e-mail on their cell phones while riding their bikes to school next to heavy traffic.
*Kids passing out from heat in school assemblies or during sports festival practice.
*Driving way over the speed limit around a (truly) abunai curve near our house. We've witnessed one accident there, and I'm surprised we haven't seen more.

I'm still thinking through what all this means, and we're still collecting observations for our list. If you've visited Japan or lived here and would like to share a tidbit, please do!