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.

Video Killed The Radio Star

"I grew up in White People Land..."

That was a statement made by my boyfriend a few nights ago when we were talking about music videos. We were in the middle of a two or three-hour exchange of music videos we loved as adolescents and that was his response to my showing him Nas' "Hate Me Now" video and asking: "You've never seen this?"

One might be inclined to say that the obvious thing here is the race thing. However, the longer we swapped videos was the more it became evident that, yes, it's the race thing but it's also a whole host of other things including the difference in taste thing and also the six-year age difference thing.

While he was watching heavy metal videos like this on TV...:

...I was just discovering MTV and VH1 thanks to my parents' new satellite dish and on the verge of starting an unhealthy obsession with Michael Jackson.

As much as we would like to discard popular media as incidental, the media we consume tell a story (albeit not the whole story) about us and the way we experience the world. My boyfriend is obviously a real child of the '80s and you know this when you first start talking about movies with him. Understanding the period in which he first became an active consumer makes it easier to understand him, his politics and the way he sees the world outside of America.

My mother grew up listening to music via radio and the loudspeakers of various sound systems in Jamaica. There weren't any showy, egocentric (as she often puts it) music videos. Of course, she spends much of her time bewildered by the musical tastes of my generation.

I now understand my mother's bewilderment when I hear/watch stuff like this on TV:

The hilarious thing is that, as annoying as I find Japanese pop, there are women here my mother's age who list J-pop as their favourite genre of music.

While I was thinking about the topic, I asked some friends what their favourite music videos were. Here are the responses I got:

From Erin (Canada)

From Garreth (Jamaica)

From Channon (U.S.A.)

From Davis (U.S.A.)

From L'Oreal (U.S.A.)

From Nivi (Kenya)

And from me...?

Earlier on in this post I may have given a hint. Here's one of my all-time favourites:

What's yours?

Odds and Eggs

One thing I've been wondering since moving to Japan: Why is it that my refrigerator's egg holder has room for fourteen eggs when cartons of eggs hold up to ten?

Silly question, I know. I just thought I'd ask.

I haven't updated this blog in a while, so here's a hodgepodge of updates:

1. I went to China early last month. It was a great trip. Lots of great, inexpensive food was consumed and many great, interesting sights were seen. Of course, I went to the Great Wall:

And Tiananmen Square:

And many other places. What still left an impression on me though, was the fact that Chinese people would stop and take pictures of me. Really, I'd be standing at an intersection waiting to cross the street and some strange person would just come up, point a camera in my face, click and walk away. This happened several times every day we were there. My boyfriend thought it was funny. I found the whole experience weird and disconcerting. Annoying too. Why can't I just enjoy my vacation like a normal person instead of making some one's Beijing photo album more interesting by being the odd foreigner? That's one thing about living in Asia that I'm really getting sick of: being the odd foreigner.

2. I went to the One Love Festival in Tokyo a few weeks ago and was once again amazed by the number of Jamaicans living here. Each time I go to the festival though, I ponder the role of our embassy in Tokyo. The one and only time I ever went there, I have to admit, I felt so disappointed. The only (Japanese) staff member at the desk was bewildered at the fact that I was interested in knowing where the embassy is, or where I can find Jamaican-owned/related businesses in Japan.

I didn't come here as a JET or through any ALT programme that was recruiting in Jamaica. I came here working for a company that was recruiting in the U.S., and that company had a dearth of Caribbean nationals working for them in the Tokyo area. Needless to say, despite having met many interesting people from all around the world, and having formed many interesting and meaningful friendships, during my first year here I still felt very much alone. I guess I just wish that our embassy would look like it functioned as more than a branch of the Jamaica Tourist Board.

Anyway, the festival was fun. I met some great people, ate some good food (yes, I'm always eating these days) and jammed to some good music.

3. I haven't been writing as much as I'd like. I've seen so much horrible poetry being posted everywhere on the Internet from Blogger to Facebook and as horrified as I am by the terrible writing, I begrudge these writers their courage. I also see the mountain of praise that terrible writing attracts sometimes and I am scared to death that things I've written and received tons of accolades for in the past were actually glorious crap.

In order to remedy all of that, I decided to help a friend start a writing circle. We'll see how that goes. If there are any writers in the Tokyo area reading this, drop me a line if you're interested in joining.

Okay, back to listening to this week's This American Life.

A tale of the phallus in two cities

The other day, while I was talking to my mother over the phone, she told me about a radio talk show host's discussion about the statues at Emancipation Park. Again.

Ever since the statues were unveiled, the [then PNP] government and the National Housing Trust (the group responsible for the project) have been the subject of some vicious criticism. One website even called the statues "pornographic". And why?

Personally, I think it's just because of the penis.

I don't think I'm reaching with that statement. Before I left Jamaica in August 2002, all anybody talked about was how big the penis is - how grotesque this naked male form is (especially next door to the posh Liguanea Club and across the street from the Hilton Kingston, the Jamaica Pegasus and the Courtleigh Hotel). Never mind the naked female form facing it, the penis is what we should all be concerned about for the sake of our children or some such nonsense.

I had long gotten over the nonsensical discussion about Emancipation Park, but when my mother reminded me about it, she did so after commenting on a phallic experience I recently had here in Japan. She marvelled at how Japanese people were not culturally bogged down by archaic, imperialist-imposed morals when it came to the human form. 

Anyway, a few weeks ago, I went to the Kanamara Matsuri, held at a shrine dedicated to a steel penis.

Yes, a steel penis. 

Actually, this steel penis:

So, the story about this steel penis goes like this (basically):

A young woman had a demon inhabiting her vagina. Each time she got married, however, the demon would bite off the penis of the groom. One day, a priest built a steel penis which tricked the demon into biting it, thereby breaking off its teeth.

I found this festival hilarious/amusing/shocking/interesting. I cannot really comment on it further than saying how refreshing it was to be in a place where people didn't have these stringent (and hypocritical) hang-ups when it comes to the human form. What I will do for the remainder of this post, though, is let the pictures speak for themselves (with a few captions).

The usual Japanese festival fare: stalls selling various food items including, but not limited to, yakitori, yakisoba and crepes (and, of course, beer).

One of the mikoshi featuring a black penis.

Another mikoshi featuring a pink penis.

Penis candy for sale at the festival.

Carvings made out of daikon (Japanese radish).

What else can I say? It was an interesting day. Also, if I may add, Jamaican people need to chill regarding the statues at Emancipation Park. Seriously.

P.S. - By the way, for all the readers out there, check out Sacred Games by Vikram Chandra when you have the chance.

To the next person who mentions Cool Runnings to me

Yes, I am Jamaican.

Yes, I have seen Cool Runnings.

No, I don't like it. In fact, there are few crappy movies that I so fervently despise for their ties to my national identity. Shottas and Rude Boys are close to the top of that list, but I won't get into a discussion about those two films (if you can even call them that) right now. One of the reasons (I suppose the main reason) I hate Cool Runnings so much is not so much the fact that it, like some other popular Hollywood movies, succeeded once again in portraying people from the Caribbean as buffoons. That, I've come to expect from Hollywood films - this idea that we island people only hang out and live "right by di beach, bwoy!"(Half Baked), smoke weed and don't do much else. Cool Runnings has managed to slightly separate itself from the rest by taking a few more ambitious buffoons and placing them in a groundbreaking moment in sporting history.  Inspiring story of these four  with nothing serious going on in their lives, blah blah blah, when in fact, three of the members of the real bobsled team were in the military. The fourth member was a railway engineer.

But, that stuff, the idiotic portrayal of our people as laid-back (read as lazy), not taking life too seriously and not really knowledgeable about the outside world, that's not what really gets to me about this movie. What really annoys me is how ubiquitous it is outside of Jamaica as a frame of reference when talking about Jamaica. I can't count the number of times I've had this conversation since moving to Japan:

Person X (usually a new student): What's your name?

Me: I'm Biankah. And you?

X: My name is ____. Nice to meet you.

Me: Nice to meet you too. Are you from Tokyo/Saitama?

X: Yes/No, etc. Where are you from?

Me: Jamaica.

X: [Did you say] America?

Me: No, no. Jamaica.

X: Where is Jamaica? Africa?

Me: No. It's pretty close to Florida, actually. (I then pull out a world map or atlas.)

X: Ah! Jamaica! I watched the movie Cool Runnings. Do you know [it]?

Me: (wearily) Yes, I've seen it. 

X: I thought it was very interesting.

Me: Really? (I then force a smile, groan inaudibly and mentally put a loaded pistol to my head.)

That's what happens six out of ten times. Since the Beijing Olympics, (thank god), people more often bring up our track and field team in conversation upon hearing where I'm from.  Sadly though, there are still more people who refer to that damned movie, and who honestly believe that it presents a realistic portrayal of life in Jamaica. It makes me sick.

So, to anyone out there who might read this before meeting me in person:

Enough.

Stop.

I hate the movie and I don't want to talk about it again.

On Sleep

Shortly after I started teaching English in Japan (maybe a few months in or so), I conducted an informal poll among a few of my friends. Here's what I asked them:

What's the most popular pastime among your students?

The answer that came back from almost everyone was this:

Sleeping.
I was dumbfounded. I was, for as long as I could remember, of the belief that weekends and days off were for pursuing some hobby/interest or the other. People actively did something in their free time, not sleep, I thought. At that point in time, "My hobby is sleeping," was the saddest thing I had ever heard.

Of course, at that point in time, it was still the honeymoon phase of my life here. I had just started living what I considered to be my real adult life (college doesn't count). I had an okay, not too demanding job, a nice apartment and a social life that brought me the very well deserved envy of many of my friends  back home (and some of my friends here too, for that matter).

Then Nova went bankrupt.

That's right. The sort of okay, not too demanding job I had when I first came here was working as a Nova instructor. Sitting in a booth teaching forty-minute lessons was not too physically taxing. Plus, I only had three children's classes per week, so I always had the energy to go out after work and the night before a workday with plenty of energy to spare for my lessons that did not require much preparation. 

But October 26, 2008 came. I was asked by one of my then co-workers what time I was supposed to start working that day. When I replied saying that it was my day off, the relieved response was, "Great. Good thing you weren't up and heading to work since all the schools are closed indefinitely." She had learned this when she got to work and saw the shutters on our school's door closed with a note in Japanese taped to it.

Time to look for another job, and another job I did find about a month later. Now, my days are filled with screaming  kids in the early afternoons and sleepy, demotivated junior high and high school students at night. I started this job working longer hours and commuting farther than before (and for less money).  As if that weren't tiring enough, as of this week my hours are even longer with the extension of the junior high and high school classes.  On Wednesday, I commuted for one hour to work, taught six classes over the course of eight hours and twenty minutes with only half an hour to prepare, commuted for an hour and a half to my train station and finally got to my apartment at about 11:20p.m. That's just a taste of what my work week is like.

Now I understand what it means to look forward to sleeping on the weekends. As I write this post, I'm thinking about how much I'm going to sleep tomorrow, on my day off. I'm imagining the feel of my futon...wait...that's not accurate because nowadays I keep entering a near-comatose state when I sleep. Sometimes I'm in such a deep sleep that not even the sound of my boyfriend's alarm clock, the most obnoxious alarm clock in Tokyo, can wake me up.

Right now, I'm looking forward to not hearing four and five-year-olds screaming, to not looking on in envy while exhausted high school students fall asleep in class and to not feigning interest in gardening for the millionth time. Tomorrow, I will sleep. I will actively enjoy my slumber. And it will be divine.