Won't Miss #413 - cutting/adding sounds

Sometimes I have to really reach for a picture, especially when I'm talking about sounds. So, we have this extremely tenuous connection here. 

One correction I've made to students' English about a million times by now is the addition of an "a" at the end of the word "salad". This is because Japanese, with a few exceptions, operates with consonant vowel pairs (e.g., ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, but not

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Will Miss #412 - gobo

Delicious Dominica soup curry with many well-prepared vegetables including a tasty bit of burdock. 

"Gobo" means "burdock" in Japanese. Before coming here, burdock was something that I had to pick off my clothes after a childhood romp through the field behind my rural home. It was certainly not something that was included in a delicious salad that could be purchased in nearly every deli and

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Won't Miss #412 - Tokyo fur wearers

My students, who think America does not have four distinct seasons and each area experiences a very limited range of weather, often can't conceive of the idea that I've lived in a place with an actual winter "like Japan". Never mind that Tokyo does not get very cold and sees about one, possibly two days of light snow per year, if that. I grew up in an area along the same latitude as Hokkaido

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Will Miss #411 - anthropomorphizing dolls

A doll thrown into the pile of items to be burned at a shrine during New Year's holidays. 

When we're children, we often anthropomorphize our dolls and toys. The entire concept of Toy Story is based on the idea that we all once felt our toys were real and capable of feeling. That being said, as a culture, and particularly as adults, we don't view dolls as anything other than memories of

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Won't Miss #411 - "Tarzan" speak

Some English teachers operate under the dubious philosophy that if they speak English poorly, their students with comprehension problems will have an easier time understanding. Sitting next to one of these teachers provides one with a steady stream of dropped articles ("a", "the", "an"), plurals that lost their s's, and adjectives subbing for adverbs. An example would be something like, "boy

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Will Miss #410 - bad dancing

One of my students loves Michael Jackson. Well, there's a very good chance that more than one of them loves him as he has been super popular in Japan since his death. At any rate, there was a tribute performance to him that included performers of various nationalities including, of course, Japanese. She praised the Koreans and the Americans, but said little about her countrymen. I asked her

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Won't #410 - disbelief of American poverty

One of my students recently told me that she went to an Italian restaurant which was offering venison as a special dish. She asked me if I'd ever tried deer meat, and I told her that, because I grew up very poor, I indeed had eaten venison because sometimes my family had no money for food and my father would have to kill deer, rabbits, and, even squirrels, so we'd have food to eat. This

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Will Miss #409 -orderliness

I have spent a long time pondering what it is that essentially makes American culture different from Japanese culture. While I do not flatter myself sufficiently to believe I have anything resembling a full understanding, I think that one essential aspect of Japanese culture is that there is a very high valuation of order. This is why there are so many rules and relatively rigid thinking.

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Won't Miss #409 - (illogical) rigidity

I know that all cultures have "rules", but Japan has more than I grew up with and they apply to the smallest things. For instance, you can't serve certain dishes with certain foods. It's not that they don't taste good together, but it is simply "not done". This is particularly so among the older set, but I've had younger people complain about things like women putting on make-up on trains.

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Shameless (Non-Self) Promotion

Most people are familiar with the Rashomon effect either by that particular term or as the old statement about there being three sides to every story, yours, mine, and the truth. In Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon movie, he attempted to illustrate this concept in his own inimitable way. Personally, I think some "truths" are too big to be known or understood by any one person and that such truths are

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Will Miss #408 - oshibori

"Oshibori" are wet towels, sometimes hot, sometimes not, and sometimes real cloth and sometimes a paper towel, that you are given at the beginning of a meal in restaurants in Japan. They are given to allow you to approach your food with clean hands. One of my students once mentioned their absence in restaurants in the U.S. and said she didn't know what people did to make sure they had clean

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Won't Miss #408 - fear of America

I've said before and I'm sure I'll say it again and again; context is everything. I've been in Japan a long time and haven't been home for 20 years. As a result of this, I've started to absorb a lot of the negative, skewed and distorted perspectives about life in America that the Japanese have. They talk incessantly about guns, violence, crime, and safety as if you risk getting mugged on every

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Will Miss #407 - sea mail and small packet

A box sent to us from a friend which had to be sent by airmail parcel post which cost a whopping $69. The value of the contents was likely lower than the cost of the shipping. I imagine our fate once we leave Japan will be to be relegated to such exorbitant fees or to not send anything to friends abroad.


Because my husband and I got together as penpals, and he spent a year alone in Japan

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Won't Miss #407 - bicycle/bike confusion

Neighborhood kitty doesn't care what word I use. It just wants a place to sleep.

Sometimes the simplest conversations get tangled in a web of confusion and the use of the word "bike" in Japan always seems to spin this web. When I'm speaking in English with a Japanese person and ask, "have you ever had your bike stolen," and the answer will be, "I don't have a bike." That same person may have

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Will Miss #406 - missionary results

As someone who grew up in a small town with small minds and a white bread Christian mentality, I'm very familiar with the negative aspects of Christianity. It's also easy to point an accusing finger at a lot of societal turmoil, war and suffering and hang the blame on Christian fundamentalism. However, not all Christians are militant and many do a lot of good in the world. Back home, this

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Won't Miss #406 - proselytizers outside of shrines

I've said before that the Japanese aren't particularly religious, though they do go through the motions (visiting shrines and temples, praying, etc.) a lot for a non-religious people, and they aren't uptight about religion and tend to ignore proselytizers. During New Year's holidays, Christians stand in front of the entrance of Meiji shrine, the most popular shrine for hatsumode (first

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Will Miss #405 - playing Auld Lang Syne for shop closing

A crowded department store during New Year's sales. I'd love to see this bunch cleared out with a song.


When shops are about to close back home, announcements are often made which are the polite equivalent of "we're closing soon so finish what you're doing and get out." In Japan, they handle it in a gentler way. When the time for the shop to close is coming up, they start playing Auld Lang

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Won't Miss #405 - skin care advice (that is ignored)

Nine times out of ten, when a Japanese woman says she has bought "cosmetics", she has picked up a plethora of skin care products (not make-up). In fact, most women under 50 have a "skin care regime" that they go through which costs them a pretty penny. Because my skin is clear and pale, I'm often asked what I do to maintain it. The answer is, "nothing." I buy soap which is 3 bars for 98 yen ($

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Will Miss #404 - the blue forest

Worldwide, there are a lot of incredible places with illumination. Sometimes they are ostentatious and ridiculous and sometimes beautiful. I'm not a huge fan of the gigantic over-the-top displays and am more of a fan of places which manage to generate a mood. For me, the most magical display in Tokyo is the Blue Forest in front of the Caretta building in Shiodome. During the day, it's a

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Won't Miss #404 - the superiority thing

The flip-side to the lingering inferiority complex that the Japanese people have about their position relative to Western cultures and China is the superiority complex about Asia. There is an interesting contradiction displayed in regards to China in particular. The Japanese frequently criticize all things Chinese from the lack of order as demonstrated by not lining up to the rudeness to the

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Will Miss #403 - the slo-mo hang-up

Politeness in Japan can sometimes be carried to ridiculous levels, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the slow motion hang up of phones. In my former office, when a salesman called a client, he put the receiver back in the cradle as if he were settling a sleeping baby into its bed and trying not to make the least little move that would jar it awake. I asked why salesmen took about 5

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Won't Miss #403 - the inferiority thing

Japan has the third largest economy in the world with the 10th largest population. Tokyo leads the world's major cities in patent applications. The country is known for its superior technology. Their cars dominate the automobile market. Japan is a very small country with almost no natural resources. The fact that their food, pop culture, and products are known and desired and that they are an

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Will Miss #402 -the AFLAC duck, Japan-style

Not one, not two, but 3 variants on the duck, and they're all decked out for Halloween!

In the U.S., the AFLAC duck mascot is shown as a real duck. This makes sense since insurance is serious business, well, except for the part where ducks aren't exactly representative of maturity and responsibility. In Japan, the duck gets the same makeover as everything else. It is "cutified" and most of

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