F.O.B.

   I’ve been reading old letters and journals from my early days in Japan hoping to find some gems worth buffing up and posting but so far no luck. I was awfully whiny two decades ago. But then, I had plenty to whinge about: that dreadful boss, “Bakayama”, the miserable state of my lovelife, student-loan induced austerity, and so on.

   The only really good thing about my first year in Japan was the friendship that developed between “Blad”, “Hoka”, and me. Never having been in the military myself I can’t be too sure, but I think what we had was as close as civilians can come to being comrade-in-arms. I might not have taken a bullet for them, but I would have quickly told off that idiot of a boss of ours if he ever treated the others unfairly.

   That’s another thing I noticed about myself. I had quite the temper. I’m happy to say that like a good wine I’ve mellowed with age.

   Anyways, there’s one funny story from those days that is worth mentioning.

   The more interesting episodes of that first year usually involve Blad. He was the first in a long slew of people I would come to know over the years who had a Masters Degree in TESL/TEFL and yet couldn’t master a foreign language if their lives depended upon it.

   And, in a sense it did: twenty years ago in Japan, it was hard to find people who could speak English, especially in that working class town we were living in, Kitakyûshû. You had to speak Japanese to get by.

   The root of Blad’s struggle with the Japanese language was the fact that he was tone-deaf. The guy could not have carried a tune even if he’d had a bucket. Seriously.

   The Japanese can be very polite and will encourage even the poorest of singers to finish their karaoke song, but with Blad they couldn’t help but throw their hands up. “Pulease, Bladorey,” they would beg as he sang Killing Me Softly. “You are killing us!”

   Thanks his imperfect pitch, Blad could never quite get his tongue around Japanese words. I can clearly remember how the word for “toilet”, o-tearai, used to give him a lot of grief.

   “Why don’t you just say, ‘toiretto’ or ‘benjo’?” I suggested.

   “No!”

   He could be stubborn, too.

   Some of the best times Blad and I had together were the evenings after work. Since we lived next door to each other, we would often get together, share a bottle of beer and talk about the things that had gobsmacked us during the day.

   “You know all those little mom-and-pop shops are up the hill?” he said one night.

   “I do.”

   “Well, I found what looked like a little garden shop/florist and there was a woman out watering the plants, so I picked up one of the pots and asked, ‘Kore-wa ikura desuka?’”

   We had recently learned how to say, “How much is this?” in Japanese.

   “The woman babbled something to me that I couldn’t understand, so I went to another plant, picked it up and asked, ‘Kore-wa ikura deskua?’ She said something to me again, but as I was picking up a third plant, she turned and ran into the shop. I could hear her shouting something to someone inside.”

   “And?”

   “And a few seconds later a man came out—I think it was her husband—and he gestured wildly at the plants and shouted, ‘No!’ He turned to some flowers, shouted ‘No!’ again. Then he turned to me and shouted, ‘No! No! NO! This . . . is . . . our . . . HOME!’”

   I laughed so hard that I started crying. When I finally regained my composure, I asked what Blad did next.

   “I put the plant down and continued on down the road.”

Shita Amé

   The other night my wife used a word I hadn't heard before: shita amé (下雨). I tried looking it up but couldn't find it in any of my dictionaries. I did, however, learn that the two characters in reverse order (雨下) was pronounced uka and meant "rain" or "raining". I'd guessed that much: there had been a downpour outside at the time.

   Now, I'd never heard uka before, either, but, taking a second look at 下雨 (shita amé) with fresh eyes I remembered that it was the same as the Chinese word for "raining", namely xià yǔ.

   It's been years since I last studied Mandarin. Nevertheless, the word was still tucked away in that cluttered pantry in my head, waiting for me to take it out and dust it off. Almost makes me want to study the language again. Almost.

   So, shita amé meant "rain". Or so I thought. When I asked my wife about it a few days later, she gave a quizzical look and said she had no idea what I was talking about.

   "Maybe you misheard."

   "I did not mishear," I insisted. "You said, shita amé."

   After a moment's thought, she had a sudden inspiration: "Ashita amé!"

   "Ugh!"

   I had indeed misheard, or more precisely had not heard the first syllable "a" of her sentence. She hadn't said, shita amé, but rather ashita amé. She was telling me it was going to rain tomorrow. 

   Anyways, now that the rainy season is just around the corner I am reminded of a passage from my second novel A Woman's Nails:

Listen:

   In Japanese, Jimé jimé is that unpleasant, sticky feeling during the rainy season when humidity's got its clammy hands all over you; mushi mushi when it damn near smothers you.

   To the Japanese ear, potan is the sound of a drop of water plopping into, say, a bucket; pota pota, the tune a leaky faucet sings; and jah jah, water gushing out of a pipe.

   The Japanese will hear potsu potsu as raindrops start falling upon dry ground; shito shito, when it drizzles; and zah zah when it pours.

   Strong winds howl with a byoo byoo making the windows of your apartment rattle, gata gata. And, thunder, when woken by the pika pika of lightning, will grumble loudly with a goro goro.

   While nuru nuru describes the slimy feel every surface has when it’s been balmy for days on end, beta beta is how your sweaty skin feels on uncomfortably jimé jimé days.

   You're dripping with sweat if you're dara dara; drenched to the skin if you're bisho bisho.

   And, while niwaka amé, you may recall, means a sudden shower, a doshaburi is a downpour; and oh-amé, a torrential rain. Konuka amé means a light mist; and kiri samé, a drizzle.

   Confused already? This is not even a potan in the baketsu. There are 1190 rain related words and phrases in the Japanese language.

   One more! Though Yûdachi, which literally means evening stand, refers to a late afternoon summer shower, you shouldn't assume that asadachi, or morning stand, means an early morning shower. Far from it, an asadachi, my friend, is sure as shootin’ the Morning Woodie.

Excerpt from A Woman's Nails. To read more here.

 © Aonghas Crowe, 2010. All rights reserved. No unauthorized duplication of any kind.

注意：この作品はフィクションです。登場人物、団体等、実在のモノとは一切関係ありません。

All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

A Woman's Nails is now available at Amazon.