Tokyo Love and Japan (part 2)

Continuing my excitement for my upcoming novel, Tokyo Love. Being published by Crimson Romance this July.

More fun stories from my adventures in Japan!

This one also takes place during my first trip to Japan and was actually one of the first things I did after stopping off in Tokyo.

My sister is a part of many traditional music groups in Japan. One of them is gagaku, traditional Japanese court music. My sister plays the shō, which I have seen described as a mouth organ and has a very particular sound that is a bit unforgettable. Seriously, youtube some gagaku or shō, you won't regret it.

Anyway, the shō section of her gagaku group decided to have a mountainous retreat together to practice and have fun. Since I was staying with her at the time, I was invited as a guest. The only other guest happened to be a young daughter of another shō player.

This girl was very friendly and polite and knew very little English. I, of course, knew even less Japanese. But for an entire afternoon, while my sister and the other shō players rehearsed, we only had each other to entertain.

For anyone who has tried to spend an afternoon with someone they cannot fundamentally communicate with, a very strange thing happens; you learn to understand each other. It is hard for me to describe how it happened. But after some faulty starts, we mutually decided to simply stop trying to speak the other's language and just talk. I'd blather on in English about how nice and cool the weather was on the mountain and she'd respond in Japanese.

We went for a walk, found some trails, took some pictures. At some point, I got pretty thirsty, so I said I wanted to get a drink. She understood me enough that we went and found a small store and she picked out a juice for me (and helped me pay for it. Children are too nice). As we were heading back to the ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) we came across a rather pretty lizard hanging out on the side of the path. I took a picture and told her that lizards could lose their tails and just grow another one back (see? pretty inane dialogue on my part) she responded and we went back to our rooms.

In the rooms, we watched some Japanese TV and she got out some paper and scissors she had brought. Then, right before my eyes, she cut out a paper lizard, then snipped off the tail and threw it in the air. I have no idea if she understood what I said earlier, or if she simply knew the same inane facts that I did.

On the TV, an actress came on to some talk show. She pointed to the woman and called her hafu, which means that the woman was only half-Japanese. It was the beginning of my understanding of the monoculture that is Japan.

It is a strange thing to say, but there are a lot of Japanese people in Japan. Coming from America, where any city street could have ten different nationalities, seeing someone that is different from myself isn't a big deal. But in Japan being only half-Japanese is an oddity.

I don't know if that girl thought I would appreciate seeing someone on the TV that might have seemed just as foreign as myself. Or if she was simply making small talk.