The first thing I really missed about home was daylight savings time. The approach of the solstice brought about days so short and frigid that light itself couldn't be bothered to stay up much past 5:00 p.m. And when the sun was out it looked and felt so frail. I know daylight savings time should have no such affect, yet I swear it did.
My lack of a business appropriate overcoat made my December commutes a miserable, shivering trek from school to station to station to home. (It wasn't until January, when my evaluations had been finished, that I stopped caring and wore my puffy, hooded jacket with striped, elastic bands around the waist and wrists to work). Some nights I bought a convenience store beer to drink on the ride home, but the chilled cans pained my hands so much I'd no choice but to gulp it down before I even reached the station.
When I complained about the weather to coworkers, in the typical manner that begins most workplace conversations, I was laughed at or condescendingly given sympathy as "a poor, spoiled little Californian". The Canadian teachers made themselves quite well known to me that winter.
Osaka compensated for the loss of daylight with opulent displays of Christmas lighting. Across the city Christmas lights were strung across cedars and sakura, ume and maple. Japan's private railway behemoths competed for most elegant display in their respective terminals. A golden chandelier loomed over the Hankyu Umeda Grand central corridor, its delicate glass tendrils stretching nearly the length of a football field. The windows of the Hankyu department store depicted a fantastically fictitious scene of a Christmas in New York. Here the Big Apple was filled with figurines of bipedal dogs and their human companions, compelled by the Christmas spirit to cast off their roles as master and pet and join in the festivities as equals, skating side by side in the foreground of 30 Rock and walking the red carpet at Radio City Music Hall. Over this bizarre scene of seasonal Americana hung a rippled banner which inexplicably displayed the French Christmas greeting "Joyeux Noel".
The soundtrack to accompany this visual wonderland was singularly the song "Last Christmas" by Wham. That saccharine melody played in the train stations, it played in restaurants, in stores and schools and lobbys, and from neighbors' windows. Other old classics were played, of course, like "Jingle Bells" and "We Wish you a Merry Christmas", but wherever one heard a Christmas playlist it seemed that "Last Christmas" was never more than a few tracks from playing. Every time one song ended it was only a coin toss to see if "Last Christmas" was next. I spent half a lesson teaching the lyrics to one of my adult students. With every new line I taught her she insisted on once again singing the song from the start up to that point, until at last we finished and sang the whole thing together.
As our Christmas calendar filled out Sarah and I found we still had no plans for Christmas dinner. I decided to pester my students for info on where a traditional Western Christmas dinner could be found. One student, Tatsuya, was surprised I hadn't made a reservation for KFC yet. Of course not, I told him, and asked him why, was he going to eat KFC for Christmas? He said he wasn't either, but that he'd always believed the KFC Christmas dinner was a great American tradition.
The opposite turns out to be true. The Japanese have started a tradition of eating KFC on Christmas night, perhaps because of the myth that this is how Christmas in America is done. If this sounds like an undignified way to spend the holiday keep in mind that Christmas is a relatively minor holiday in Japan. It's more of a couple's holiday where sweets are exchanged and boyfriends take girlfriends on romantic dates; though, one may argue then, that KFC is just as questionable in this version of Christmas.
The most important holiday for the Japanese is New Year's Day. I pressed Tatsuya to tell me about his fondest New Year's Day memories as a boy growing up in the rural outskirts of Kobe, hoping to get a taste of holiday traditions more authentic than deep-fried chicken and coleslaw.
"When I was in my childhood my father and me would leave the farm. We would walk into the nature. Then we cut down bamboo with saw."
"Sounds like cutting down a Christmas tree. Do you put presents under it?"
"No no no, usually we put outside. We also we must get pine and stick for it."
"What do you do with all that bamboo and wood?"
"We put them together to make, hmmm I don't know what you call it in English..."
"I don't think we call it anything at all. Maybe like a wreath, but probably not, though."
It turns out Tatsuya was describing a kadomatsu. He explained the painstaking symbolism involved in the arrangement. Each bamboo is cut at a different height, representing heaven, humanity, and earth and the sprigs of pine must be placed just so, as to properly evoke a prosperous blessing for the new year. Silly perhaps, but Tatsuya, who achieved a university professor position while still in his thirties, seemed to be doing pretty prosperously. I made a mental note for next Christmas to hang my ornaments as propitiously as I know how.
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| Kadomatsu |
* * *
Before classes ended for the year, one of my schools was planning a ritzy Christmas party. Talk of the party was that it was to be replete with restaurant catering and bar with all-you-can-eat-and-drink. There were rumors that our regional manager "Baron" was going to show up. We were also instructed to bring gifts for a Secret Santa exchange and for a charity auction. I bought a bottle of American beer for each at an international store.
The afternoon before the party I was preparing for one of my kids classes when our newest staff member slinked up next to me. I didn't know his real name, but to the English speakers he went by "Wally".
"Ah good afternoon", mumbled Wally. The greeting was odd as we'd been talking in the other room only twenty minutes ago - he'd been coloring in a poster and I'd been reminding him that his job was to help me prepare materials for my class. Everything about this was typical of Wally.
"Good to see you again, did you come to help me find my flash cards?"
He nodded with a big smile; despite his awkwardness and ineffective job performance he was a friendly and well-meaning young man. But his English was shockingly insufficient for workplace communication and I realized he didn't know what I was saying.
"What did you buy for the party tonight?"
"I can't tell you that! That's why we call it Secret Santa, Wally."
"Haha yes, Secret Santa. I know." He said "I know" in a way that led me to believe he'd heard the words "secret" and "Santa" before, but had no idea what they meant as a phrase.
"Do you know brand 'Ed Hardy'? So cool." he continued.
What I knew of Ed Hardy was that it was an American clothing brand recognizable by its gaudy tattoo-style prints worn by roid rats on their weekend forays into night clubs and pool halls. But knowing that Wally was pursuing DJing on the side I sensed which way the wind was blowing and simply said, "yes, I know of it."
"I am bringing Ed Hardy hats for the party tonight. Two!"
"Ah don't tell me Wally!" I joked, "but tell me what the wrapping paper is gonna look like."
"Yes..." Wally nodded and smiled, "they are my hats."
"What do you mean 'they're your hats'?"
"They are my hats. They are very cool in club, but I don't want them now."
Though I assume he'd never used an auction to sell his used clothes before, it somehow still seemed to be textbook Wally.
Between work and the party I decided to go home and change to casual. On the way I got a text from my friend Tommy, an Englishman and fellow teacher. The text read that Tommy and his girlfriend, Sasha, were dressing up as Santa and Mrs. Claus; they suggested that Sarah and I do the same. I checked the costume section at Don Quixote and found all sorts of sexy Santa and elf costumes for a sultry Mrs. Claus, but nothing in which a grown man could stuff his stocking.
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| There was also the demonic reindeer option |
The party atmosphere was hampered by a self-imposed cultural segregation. The Japanese staff mostly mingled with each other, while Sarah and I made small talk with some Western teachers. Tommy and Sasha, in splendid Santa attire, were too busy MCing the party to talk much. Most of my interactions with Tommy were him proclaiming: "fetch Santa another glass of holiday cheer my good lad!", slapping his belly in his best jolly, old St. Nick.
I was happy to be a good elf and bring Santa his beers as it kept me from prolonged small talk and gave me a good reason to always be at the bar refilling my own mug. Pretty soon I was ferrying drinks for Sasha, too, who actually did want some holiday cheer. Unfortunately, but not unsurprisingly, our Japanese caterers had no eggnog for Sasha. I worked with our bartender to improvise a concoction of Kahlua and Malibu rum. There were no complaints from Mrs. Claus.
After having a few "eggnogs" of my own I made a point of bumping into our regional manager. For a while Baron had worked directly at my school, overseeing us while our normal school director was on maternity leave. In that interim we had grown fond of each other. Together we'd shared laughs at Wally's follies, like the time he asked me if I knew a girl he'd met once who was white with the surname Smith. I'd even brushed off Baron's repeated jokes about me going to Okinawa to ogle girls in their bikinis. I reminded myself that sexual harassment is still an emerging concept in Japan. But for every inappropriate joke he made he smiled twice as often and paid as many compliments. He earnestly pursued our thoughts and feelings regarding our job satisfaction and met them with an open ear. And, as he often reminded me, Sarah was his six year old daughter's favorite teacher.
I warned Baron about Wally's hand-me-down hats, but our conversation was cut short by the start of the Secret Santa gift exchange.
Tommy and Sasha stood in front of a banquet table covered with the gifts of over fifty employees. Everyone had a number, which dictated when their turn was. Usually in Secret Santa someone can choose to either open a gift or steal someone else's gift. No one seemed to have heard of this rule, (though most people had never heard of Secret Santa at all), so the MCs decided you could open a gift and then decide whether to keep it or whether to forcibly exchange it with someone possessing a gift you coveted more. Nor were they aware of the usual limits on how many times a gift can be stolen, for example that after, say, three thefts the gift becomes locked to the final thief.
It became readily apparent that the gifts had not come close to jeopardizing the 500 yen limit: chocolate bars, stationary, tea, a skateboard fitted for a toddler, a plastic back scratcher, and so on. A 5$ Starbucks gift certificate quickly became the "must have" gift of the season and because of the lax rules it was pilfered well over a dozen times, finally making its way into Sarah's hands. The very next turn it was taken from her and replaced with a packet of instant ramen.
When it was my turn to choose a gift from the banquet table I dawdled around the banquet table, running my fingers over presents and eyeing them point blank. In truth, I was bit a envious of the spotlight Tommy had been given as MC Santa all night.
"Hurry up now, young man," Tommy boomed, clutching his belt. I could see that his face had come to match the red from his suit due to all the beer I'd been delivering.
"I just want to make sure I don't get a gift that I love. I would 'hat' to get something I don't like, Santa". My pun, the victim of an open bar, was somehow still understood by Tommy, who'd heard the same boastful memo from Wally that I had.
"Nobody wants a gay present like that!" declared Santa.
I looked up to see people's reactions, maybe they hadn't heard. I tried to shush Tommy, but as I put my finger to my mouth he continued.
"And pick something already cause nobody, especially not Santa, likes a gay boy .... HO HO HO!" He turned and winked at me, quite audibly saying "I'm just kidding, they can't hear me. Besides they don't know what I'm saying".
I hurried to open my gift, some cocoa powder, and returned to my seat, no longer desiring to share a stage with mean, drunken Santa. But maybe Tommy was right, because the next thing I knew people were hooting and hollering over the Starbucks gift card again and never was another word spoken about Santa's slurs.
Over the next hour the gifts on the banquet table diminished, yet there was no sign of the Ed Hardy hats. Then there was only one gift left. It was in a plastic convenience store bag that at least Wally had taken the time to tie closed with a bow-like not. Wally stepped forward, coincidentally, he also held the last number.
He held up the plastic bag to the entire room "This, my gift". But inside, instead of two Ed Hardy hats, was a packet of curry powder flavoring. "Thai style," he sheepishly disclosed. There were a few muffled groans and laughs.
"But I don't want. I want Starbucks!"
The incongruity theory of humor states that we laugh when the outcome of a something is inconsistent with our expectation. Like a knock-knock joke in which the punchline is often a familiar phrase constructed in a novel manner from out-of-context words. Or a comedian who gets laughs by unapologetically crossing a sacred line. Well, Wally challenged that very conception of humor, causing an eruption of laughter by doing precisely the type of nonsense everyone expected of him.
"But what of the Ed Hardy hats?" I wanted to know.
"Ahhh." Wally nodded. And in a transition MC Santa himself would be jealous of Wally declared, "I'm saving those for the auction".
Most of the charity auction gifts were only marginally better and I'm sad to say not a lot of money went to the cold and hungry kids of Osaka that winter. Sarah tried to start bidding wars by calling out a higher prices immediately over the prior bid. Just like on TV. A few times this sparked interest. Mostly we just ended up with crap we didn't need. ("It's for a good cause", Sarah reminded me later as we lugged a third of the total auction gifts home.)
When at last Wally's two previously owned and worn Ed Hardy hats hit the auction block there was, understandably, little interest. Baron shook his head and Santa choked on his own laughter trying to flavorfully advertise the hats. Mrs. Claus had to help him until he could regain his composure.
The bidding started low. The number was too mundane to even remember. Maybe less than ten yen.
Sarah put the price up to 50 yen.
It was silent for a while and Wally tried to appeal to the audience by adding "They are very nice hat. Ed Hardy!" He failed to mention he'd worn them before.
I'd taken such interest in the destiny of these hats I decided to counter my own girlfriend's bid.
"I'll take them for 100 yen!" I announced.
And then it was silent again. "Going once ... going twice.." - a number of things ran through my mind: first, I really didn't want the hats because I'd just throw them away, second, Wally looked so deflated as he stood at the forefront of the room holding his sad little hats, and third, what about the charity and peace and good will towards men and so on?
"...But Baron will take them for 500 yen!" I countered my own offer.
He was over by the shrimp table talking to some associates. He glanced over as if he'd heard his name, but nothing else.
"500 yen for each hat," I clarified to Santa, "He wants both".
Santa nodded, "going once, going twice,"
"What?" He raised his hands, to halt Santa, "No I do not want-"
"going three times and SOLD!"
Baron was a good sport, and if he'd thought about resisting, the laughter and slaps on the back from his coworkers and friends won him over. He punched my arm lightly on his way to the front of the room to receive his gifts. Wally laughed as he helped Baron try on the hat. I guess we'd all forgotten to tell Baron the hats had been used.
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