Kyoto Miscellany (2)

Sound trucks: One of the (remarkably few) totally annoying things about living in Japan is some of the noise—not the generic traffic noise of a city or the conversation of folks in the street, which is quite normal for urbanites. In fact, Kyoto city streets are very quiet, except for the occasional badly muffled motorcycle, because hardly anyone ever honks a horn or even rings a bicycle bell. I am referring to the intentional noise made by sound trucks. We have a few small business trucks that come through the ‘hood regularly, and one of them, the cardboard-box guy in his old pick-up, incongruously but loudly plays a tinkly synthesizer version of “The Last Rose of Summer,” over and over and over, with a high-pitched female voice announcing his presence and his mission, over and over and over, early in the morning. In contrast, the vendor of roasted sweet potatoes, who comes around mid-evening, actually enunciates his own “Yaki-imo! Yaki-imo!” call, which is kind of comforting until the 50th or 60th repetition. Much worse, the political parties equip little mini-vans (REALLY little, about the size of a well-fed St. Bernard) with extra batteries and huge sound systems and send them through the narrow residential streets, blaring out their agit-prop at high volume—nothing quite so persuasive as a poorly-modulated recorded voice, at 8:30 a.m., yelling, “I’m Hiroshi Sato, candidate for this district from the Japan Communist Party, and I’m here to tell you….!!!”
The most menacing version comes not from the left but from the far right wing of Japanese politics, where fascism, religious (Emperor-worship) fanaticism, big business, and the yakuza underworld meet. We’ve only seen one of their sound trucks, but it was a full-scale, Greyhound-sized bus, painted black, with pro-Emperor long-live-Great-Japan slogans plastered all over it, rolling toward some political rally with retro-1930s ultranationalist speechification splashing out of its giant speakers. Wow. When these guys locate an enemy, they can use these monsters to devastating effect. In one case I know from the late 1980s, they targeted a city mayor who had made some comments about the Emperor’s responsibility for the war—they surrounded his house and his office with sound trucks, and went at him 24/7, at full blast. It would have gone on forever, I suppose, but finally one of the right-wingers took mercy on their poor victim and shot him. He survived, barely, but only because the perps decided it would have been cruel to the other patients to surround the hospital with sound trucks.

Hot springs: One of the most wonderful things about living in Japan derives from the islands’ continuing geo-history—these are still volcanic islands, so it’s mighty hot underground, and where water comes to the surface, it can be very hot water, filled with minerals leached (or borrowed or boiled) from the earth. This happens everywhere, so it’s hard to escape from soaking one’s body in naturally hot water, cooled to a tolerable 103-105 degrees. Bummer, huh? The spas (called onsen in Japanese) range from local working folks’ after-hours wash-and-soaks to high-end resorts with beautifully appointed guest houses and fabulous meals laid on. They all follow pretty much the same rules—they provide the baths, usually large enough to accommodate a bunch of folks and always (since the arrival of the 19th c. missionaries) segregated by sex. Near the big tubs (whether indoors or outdoors, and many places have both) the customer finds hand-held showers, sinks, mirrors, and (usually) soap and shampoo and other cleansers. So you get naked (put your stuff in a locker and put the key around your wrist), except for a small towel (held decorously in front of you), find yourself a shower-spot, and sit on a small stool in front of your mirror. There you perform your ablutions—wash, shampoo, condition, shave, whatever pleases you—and rinse very well. THEN you get into the tub and soak to your heart’s content. The small towel, which is what you’ve used as a washcloth and then rinsed and wrung out, either goes to the side of the tub or, if you’re male, it can be folded up and put on top of your head. At ordinary places, you soak a while, then get out and dry yourself with the same small towel (which is, of course, already wet), go back out to your locker, dress and go home. At fancier places, there might be a steam room or a sauna or a warmed resting bench, after which you can get back in for another soak, and you can keep a large towel in your locker if you don’t get dry enough with your washcloth. Some towns exist around these hot springs, and I’ve never been anywhere in Japan that doesn’t have them. Here in Kyoto there are a few in town, but we take our little train to the northern end of the line, out in the hills, where Kurama onsen lies among the tall pines, advertising that bathing in their mineral water heals what ails you, especially rheumatism, asthma, and muscular disorders. They have indoor baths, but we go to the outdoor ones, regardless of the weather, and have a good long soak whenever we like. Including the train ticket, it comes to around $15 a person for as much mineral hot springs as we can stand—after all, it doesn’t cost them anything to heat the water. THAT, as Martha would say, is a very good thing.

English in Japan: Especially since the USA occupied Japan after WWII, English has been an important part of Japanese. A century ago, when words like demokurashii (democracy) and saikoanarisusu (psychoanalysis) had a vogue among the intellectual elite, everyday vocabulary still came pretty much from the Japanese and Chinese words inherited from the past. Except for European foods like pan (“bread,” from Spanish or Portuguese) and kastera (“sponge cake,” again from Spanish or Portuguese), which had joined the lexicon way back. Unlike written Chinese, Japanese includes a phonetic writing system, so transliteration of useful foreign words makes a certain amount of sense. But nowadays, English words can be found everywhere, sometimes written in the Latin alphabet, sometimes in the katakana phonetic system (a special one for spelling out foreign words). A few years ago, Coca-Cola’s slogan for the Japan market was, “I feel Coke,” in English, plastered on every soft-drink machine in the country. Particular English words have special resonance with Japanese marketing folks—“happy,” “choice,” and “style” appear frequently—but even when a perfectly good Japanese word exists for something, very often the English word shows up instead. We’re snacking not on kawakashita budo (dried grapes) but on reizun (raisins); our friends drive around not in uchi no kuruma (our automobile) but in maikaa (my car). This could hardly be considered weird by an American, surrounded with pizza, sushi, hamburgers, and ketchup (all non-English words, after all, for non-local foods). A linguist friend who lives here thinks that it’s not only the utility of English words that attracts people—foreign words are just cooler than domestic words, and every Japanese student must take at least a few years of English, making ours the foreign language of choice. (There are exceptions, of course—“part-time work” is German arubaito, and one of our department stores is French biburei, or Vivre.) But the pleasure and flashiness of English makes good Japanese tori (chicken) turn into chikin, orthodox kekkonshiki (marriage ritual) into ueddingu, and a celebratory matsuri (festival) into a fueaa (fair). Our local greasy spoon might be a shokudo (dining hall) or a shokujisho (a place to eat), but nope, it’s a guriru (grill) or a resutoran. The quality of English in Japan has increased noticeably—the old jokes about “Japlish” don’t apply much any more—but I still feel a bit odd when I ask for an ichinichi joshaken (one-day pass) at the subway station, and the attendant replies, “Wan dei passu.” Or when I order our drinks at the counter, and the barrista shouts, “Burendo kohii, tsuu.” That is, blend coffee, two. Doesn’t Japanese have a good word for two, for goodness’ sake???