You Remind Me...

For no particular reason, I started thinking a few days ago about how people's perceptions of us often vastly deviate from reality. I remembered a conversation I had with a girlfriend a few months ago. She had been talking about a time her computer had crashed or something like that, to which I had responded in my most condescending why-do-you-not-know-this voice by going off on a number of troubleshooting techniques. My friend then expressed her shock and what she thought to be my adeptness at understanding computers. "Wow. I had no idea you knew so much about computers," and in the very second after she made that utterance, I had two thoughts.

Thought 1: Is this going to be one of these Well, MY uterus precludes me from having any knowledge of machines moments? (Sadly, too many women I know are guilty of harboring this sentiment.)

Thought 2: This surprises you about me? Who are you? What body-snatching alien civilisation are you from and what have you done with my friend?

Rewind to last June. I'm at work, when I hear the mother of one of my students say to the school manager in Japanese that I look like a model. The manager does the obligatory translation of said comment more for show than for my benefit. I do the obligatory shy laugh, also for show. The parent leaves and then the manager tells me that, yes, I do look like someone who belongs on TV, doing English language programmes for children.

Thought 1: No, woman. I do not look like a model. Go and see an eye doctor.

Thought 2: Yes, English language programmes for kids. That's exactly what I need to do with myself. Put on a weird furry costume and get in front of a camera and act silly, for example:

Often (more often since moving to Japan), I find that I usually fall into one neat category in the lives of people around me. I'm either the Party Friend or the Shopping Friend or the Token Gaijin Friend or, more specifically, the Token Black Gaijin Friend as opposed to just being a friend (common letters, no prefixes). This is not to say that is an experience unique to living as an ex-pat in Japan, but since coming to a place so far away from home in distance and culture, a situation in which making meaningful connections is vastly more difficult, the experience of being categorised in this fashion is a bit more pronounced.

Obviously, we make judgements based on what we see. Unless you're visually challenged, sight is the first way you experience new things so, yes, it stands to reason that we react to people based on the way they look. However, sometimes, the assumptions, categorisations and comparisons get ridiculous. More times than I care to try and count, I've been told that I look like Rihanna and/or Janet Jackson.

Okay, this is me:

Here's Janet Jackson:

And here's Rihanna:

Exactly. Absolutely no resemblance and yet, not only do I resemble these two, but because of said resemblance, I'm expected to be able to sing (which I can't, at least, not well). I asked a few folks about their personal experiences and here's a bit of the discussion that ensued:

Colin: I have been told repeatedly that I look like Quentin Tarantino, and it pisses me off. I hate anyone that says that to me forever.

I dare one of you to point out the resemblance here:

Michaela: I have been told I look like almost anybody. People walk up to me all the time and say, don't I know you? Men and women, so it's not a pick up line. I feel I must have a common face or common energy. When I was about 20 lbs lighter I was compared to Jada Pinkett, but I was 20 lbs. lighter.

L'Oreal: I've been told: Whoopi Goldberg -- mainly Celie and Erika Alexander -- Pam from Living Single.

Helen: Someone almost always tells me I look like a cousin, bff, a girl from school, a brother's ex, etc. of theirs. it makes me wonder...perhaps we do have twins in other parts of the world.

Caroline: Like a lot of jobs in Japan, you have to submit a photo of yourself on your resume. So when my old school received the picture and my data before I arrived, I was told (long after) that my head teacher (who is now a good friend of mine) thought because I was overweight and had a Polish last name that she thought I would be lazy and sloppy...

I suppose that's more a stereotype based on my general physique rather than my face in particular, but, as you can imagine, it saddened me a great deal that people would make that assumption about it, as, I think most people would say, it isn't true...

But anyway, everyone fights against some stereotype, so I suppose I shouldn't be any different...

Marcus: My list: ( in no particular order )

1) Brian McKnight

2) Remy Boyanski

3) The 7up Guy

4) Djmon Honsou

1) This surprised me because I look nothing like Brian McKnight, but a Canadian guy I met swore I resembled him.

2) Remy Boyanski is an M1 fighter who my friend who fights (he's training for UFC) told me I looked like. I guess there's a vague resemblance.

3) I definitely resemble this guy, and I have no qualms about people saying it to me. This happened a lot if I went out on Halloween with no costume. People would be like "Dude! It's the seven up guy!"

4) This happened when I was watching the Colbert report in New York. A stand up comedian warms up the crowd and zeroed in on me. I don't look like Honsou at all, but he was saying I look like an actor. But he started out by asking me if I was an actor (that happens with reasonable frequency) so I didn't feel out of sorts.

Wendi: This is not at all insightful but funny: three or four years ago I walked into a class at [work] on a help shift and these college girls shrieked with glee and "kawaii!"s all over and then told me, "You look like...do you know Dakota Fanning?!" Blue eyes, fair skin, but seriously there's like a 20-year age gap there.

And when I tell some Japanese people I'm American, they respond with, "Wow, you're not even that fat!" I love the "that." Thanks, jerks.

Caroline, I'd be totally pissed if someone made that confession to me. I hope she thinks twice before she makes a snap judgment like that again.

Caroline: Wendi: Not pissed, actually, kind of dismayed...

I don't know if I'm alone in having this perception, but as you get to know people and they becoming friends, as they begin to trust and confide in you about things, it sometimes comes out that they actually do hold stereotypes or other biases/prejudices not against you in particular, but of your "group." It's strange and ironic, I think... For one, why are these people your friends if they hold these notions, and two, how could they continue to keep their obviously inaccurate perceptions? Do we become exceptions to the rule? How does that make sense? We represent a stereotype to people, and at the same time, through the growth of friendship, we break it. And yet the stereotype continues to exist, being directed at other people...

My friend that I mentioned before said that she regretted ever thinking that, and I think that she meant it--she realized that she couldn't make a judgement on an entire "type" of people (fat Polish people) based on her experience with one (one of my predecessors at the school I was working at). So I think she did learn from her err in judgement...but, sadly, I don't think everyone does.

Michaela: Caroline you mention a valid point, you are the exception to the rule. Unfortunately, that's how people see it. "They may say, well, she's (in my case) black, but she's not like the black people on Ricki Lake. So she's different. But the rest of black people are like the ones on Ricki Lake." Each person has to end up proving herself against a stereotype. I don't get to skip the proving stage just because someone debunked a stereotype. Just think if you HAD been lazy and didn't want to do anything, she would have believed her prior judgment. So let's say you are a stellar employee (which you are), but the next one isn't. Then guess what, that stereotype pops right back up and we go back to the beginning. Sad, but true.

Maybe Helen's right and we do have twins in other parts of the world. I just wish the celebrity comparisons didn't come with the expectation that I'll spontaneously break out into song and dance.

The Company We Keep

A thought ran through my mind a few months after coming here and someone vocalised said thought to me just the other day. The thought was this:

When you live abroad, many of the friendships you form are relationships of convenience.

Which is something I understand - this idea that relationships that may appear to be meaningful on the surface only exist to serve the immediate needs of one or both of the parties involved. I grew up in a family wherein many of the women engaged in long-term, emotionally destructive and physically abusive relationships just because they needed to experience and do several things like (just off the top of my head) living in a home with what they considered necessary material amenities or raising children in a nuclear family.

Now, take that need to cling to people for arbitrary reasons multiply that by the complexities that come with living in a foreign country with completely different social mores than you're accustomed to. Multiply that by the factor of living in a country wherein the official language is not your own and you have a hotbed of fleeting acquaintances with people coming and going in and out of the country or in and out of your immediate circle. I guess you could attribute that phenomenon to the fact that we tend to act differently while living abroad in an attempt to make our ex-pat lives more justifiable. If I were going to live exactly that way I normally do, then why not just stay in my own country where I'd have the comfort of being around people I have much more in common with? For example, where I wasn't before, I have become more open to the possibility of sustaining contact with strangers I meet in nightclubs and bars and while I've met some interesting people in this way, I'm still a little cynical about the depth of any ensuing relationships formed by way of such meetings.

The thing, I've come to realise is simply this: being sort of an introvert, I've always been cautious about getting close to people. This is still the case now, to an extent, but less so because I guess the fear of being all alone here pushed me to cast a wider net, sometimes resulting in the occasional scroll through my phone book wondering, "Huh?" or "Why did I ever exchange numbers with...?" or (even sadder) "Oh, right. She/He's not in Japan anymore."

That said, I must hastily add that not all of my friendships here have been so ephemeral and I still enjoy meeting new and interesting people regularly. I've just noticed that several of the (what I thought were) meaningful friendships I've formed here have startlingly shorter lifespans than what I'm used to and I find that fact a bit unsettling. That's one of the things I'm still getting used to here, having been here for over two years and all and I know I'm not alone in that respect. I asked a some friends to weight in on the topic and here's what some of them had to say:

Caroline :

I think my situation was a lot different than most people coming to Japan. I worked for a company that staffs university English programs, so, though I only worked with a couple of foreigners, 22 foreign teachers lived in the same apartment complex. It was quite a similar atmosphere to a college dormitory, except we were the teachers. So it was easy in that scenario to meet people and make some relationships--some of which I still have, though most of the people I worked with at that time moved to other countries. That was a 3 month contract, and, thereafter, I moved into [a hostel] for 2 months, where I met [several folks I'm currently friends with] a year after I had moved to Japan.

The truth is, I have maintained no friendships (with the exception of my Japanese returnee head teacher) from the year and a half I worked at [an English conversation school]. I do, however, keep in touch and often go out with my students from that school. Now that I've been here for 3 years, I can say that I have made no new friends at all (if you exclude my boyfriend) that don't have something to do with my current group of friends.

Colin:

My feeling is that living overseas is a pretty unnatural situation that creates friendships that would not otherwise exist. Often that’s a good thing, and often it’s not. You end up talking to a much higher percentage of the people that speak your language, especially if you come here with no ability in the language of your new country, as I did. A lot of these are people who would not attract a second glance from you if you were home. Again, this is both good and bad. You have the luxury of being instantly judgmental when your options for friendships are limitless, and in a way that acts as sort of an inverse limitation, at least for me. But overseas, you tend to give people a longer interview process.

On the bad side, you may end up bound up with people that you soon wish you weren't. You may form relationships with people before learning that in truth, they’re dicks, or insane in some way. This is disappointing. Even more disappointing though, is that probably 90% of friendships that you form while overseas have a shelf life of about 1-2 years. Just when you start to rely on a friendship and get used to that person being around, they're gone. I now ask people how long they're going to be around soon after meeting them, and if their answer is shorter than my cell phone contract, adios potential muchacho.

I can say that I’m lucky enough to be good friends with a few Japanese people, people who call me and want to hang out with me sometimes. They’re sort of a mix of the three types of Japanese friends you can have: the ones that you already had when you came, the ones that you meet at random while you’re here, and people you meet at work/ former students. That’s no mean feat I’m told and it makes it a lot easier to live here. If you stick with the foreigner crowd, you’re going to get fed up and bail before long.

Yasmeen :

I must say that it seemed a lot easier to form friendships while abroad just because of the commonality of language. Whenever I saw a foreigner it was easier to just break into conversation about where they were from, what they were doing in Japan, how long they had been there or were planning to stay, etc, whereas in your home country, there's no real blanket excuse to step up to a random person and start yakking.

Also, because of the odd nature of being abroad and needing to feel a bond or closeness with someone reminding you in the least of your humble beginnings, I feel like I may have gotten attached and felt more of a bond a lot more quickly. There we all were, sharing a unique experience that not everyone can relate to, so when you reconnect with friends that have been through it with you, you just feel all the more close.

All in all, I feel like the friendships I had- even if they were just for a "season" are pretty unforgettable, therefore making them extra special in my friendship book.

That last bit from Yasmeen is enough to abate my cynicism somewhat. Lasting friendships or not, though, living abroad is a really good people-watching exercise:

While jogging, Colin snapped this shot of a guy who unicycles while juggling and wearing a cowboy hat.