Of short tempers, vacuums & landlords

It`s summer! I`m sweating like a legion of bastards! The cockroaches are multitudinous and colossal! We`re getting eaten alive by mosquitoes!

When taking a break from the Japanese study that my holiday daily permits me, I inevitably find some excuse to wander down the local shopping street, ostensibly for little domestic things, in reality, to bask in the glorious air-conditioning. On friday, I had a valid reason, namely the pursuit of that most elusive of creatures, the correct hoover-bag.

Even in English I don`t like to ask for things in shops; doubly so in Japanese, as I still haven`t developed the habit of checking my dictionary for the right word. This oversight frequently leaves me stuck & eventually having to perform a little mime, complete with sound effects to a politely amused assistant.

Three such captive audiences later, and it seemed to transpire that I had to buy a new hoover, as the right bag had apparently been discontinued. As I walked home, my brain was exploding with the absurdity of it all - the typically Japanese desire for new products lest the old ones come to life.

As one particular rant stampedes through my skull, so it kicks open the sluice gates that hold back a rabble of volcanic diatribes. On bad days, the cultural and linguistic isolation of being an ethnic minority makes you question the sanity (and if you`re really angry, the morality) of your host country.

In more lucid moments, I realise that this frustration can be overcome by studying the language voraciously, which, hangovers permitting, I`ve been doing. Peculiarities of accent however can lead to misunderstanding, something I`ve experienced the other side of when dealing with foreign students in the Library. Sometimes, when hearing your own language spoken to you by someone from another country, a mysterious fog descends, filtering out recognisable sounds and creating a near shapeless mass of weird noises. This is a double edged sword, requiring clear speaking & intense listening from each party, which isn`t always possible. My own shortcomings in this field have tested the patience of many a foreign student wanting to get a point across, and so here the roles are reversed - when somebody can`t understand my Japanese, I become frustrated, as someone else I was talking to not an hour ago had no problem whatsoever.

With these mini-tempests boiling away inside, it`s easy to forget the other side of human beings. Stomping home from a communicative conundrum, I often run into the benevolent Tsuchiya san, our landlord, next-door neighbour, a spectacularly well preserved sixty-eight, these days mucking about in the garden a great deal, with an endearing straw hat (one of which I am now the proud owner).

More often than not, he wants to give us food. Our fridge frequently creaks under the weight of his generosity. Recently, I think he`s clocked my new found zeal for Japanese, as the past few times he`s called me up to his flat, I`ve been given kanji lessons (the record time a staggering three hours). We sit on his porch, perched on a single geta each, him demonstrating the correct stroke order for sundry kanji (the difference it makes is staggering), or how to look the things up in a dictionary, myself listening to the best of my ability, as it`s all in Japanese. It`s not unheard of for us to share watermelons or corn on the cob, both in season now.

Tsuchiya sans` family has lived in this part of Kawasaki since the Edo period; a good three hundred years. The collection of buildings wherein we live carries his name, and was, I suspect, at some point part of a larger Tsuchiya estate. I`m the first foreigner he`s met. He couldn`t speak English before then. It seems that the prescence of Hayley & myself has inspired him to study. He uttered his first English word ("trash") just over a year ago when explaining the rubbish collection procedure to me.

On bad days, I`ve come to expect dismissal, ignorance, coldness and racism from many elderly Japanese. It`s refreshing that my cynical prejudices are consistently swept aside by none other than my landlord.

...and it seems that the only thing that`s changed about hoover-bags is the serial numbers. Halleluia.