Go home Mr. Tie, you're drunk.

Sometimes you've got to party till the wheels fall off. Other times, moderation may be best. Especially when you are here as a student and have put it all on the line to make it here and to this point. But when in Tokyo you should do as the Tokyoites do, right? At least as far as euphemisms go. However if you value your liver, stomach, intestines and sleep try not to do as the sarariimen do.

     In my advanced lifetime, I have had various times where my need and endeavors to celebrate to Keith Richards leveled proportions have outdone my ability to do so and function usefully the next day. Heck, in my heyday I could outdrink circles around most of my peers and still be up for anything the next day. "Go big or go home" would have easily been my motto. However those days have come and gone as I've gotten older and hopefully more mature/responsible. Here in Tokyo though, more than any group of young 20-somethings from my school in party mode, the sarariiman go hardest of all. Their motto may be "turn down for what"!

     Here in Tokyo, more than any other place I've traveled (including Tijuana) I've seen more things culturally ingrained geared toward drinking throughout the regular work week. Every night beginning after about 7pm, the ambient scent of my train lines change from varied degrees and varieties of body odor to the scent of alcohol as sarariiman cram the trains and head home after nomikai (drinking party) with their co-workers. However here being that drinking with bosses and coworkers is more of an institutionalized practice there is less negative stigma, sideways glances, and surliness regarding drinkers. Rather a stronger sense of camaraderie and respect-of-sorts exists. 

     More times than I can recall I have noticed neckties left along walkways and in trains and wondered what the story is behind them. Also, I noticed that at train station newsstands and conbini they sell plain, nondescript packaged neckties and oxford shirts. No doubt for people who have lost theirs or those who missed the last trains and have to go directly from party-mode into business warrior mode. For me seeing the abandoned ties on the street was intriguing at first. Now however they just blend into the background, as much a part of Tokyo as vending machines.

"Good fences make good neighbors"... or so they say.

There is a saying back in the U.S. which goes, "good fences make good neighbors"... which you really come to appreciate once you are living here in Tokyo. In a tiny cramped place, infested with millions of people, and very little if any personal space, the residents of Tokyo have developed ways of assuring that they don't impede on other people's coveted-yet-few private spaces. It has taken a considerable passage of time but it has become a way of life so ingrained that it comes as second nature, innate, intrinsic. This is not always the case for every resident of Tokyo however.
     As a result of my travels in this beautiful country thus far, I've noticed there seems to be a much more concentrated amount of foreigners living in Metropolitan areas like Tokyo and Osaka. With them come a whole host of their own intrinsic behaviors, ideologies, and mores from their respective home countries/cultures. This can be good for adding a richness of variety about the world usually. However, it can be one helluva difficult (read: out right meiwaku - problematically troublesome) experience in the cramped confines of personal spaces in the shoe-box sized living spaces of Tokyo. Enter in the rental living sharehouse situations for foreigners.
     Trying to find reasonably priced living space to rent in Tokyo as foreigner that aren't too ghettofabulous or slummy can be akin to finding a unicorn. Companies like the one I rented from for a year take advantage of the great need in the market. For the sake of somewhat anonymity, lets call the company I rented from "Ume House". 
     Ume House has very strict rules for living in their properties so as to try to maximize harmony among people living in their run-down, mostly dilapidated buildings. At least 5 times on their rental contract they have you sign and mark with initials, before handing over your keys, is their very strict policy about not smoking inside the buildings. As a non-smoker I appreciate the rule and was only mildly irritated the gazillionth time they mentioned it to me because it inferred they would be very diligent with this for their smoking renters obviously. Cool! Or so I thought.

     Fast forward a few weeks after moving into my shared room when my new roommate from China moved in. (I should preface this story with the fact that I knew my smarmy room was a share room but chose it not only on its economic factor but also because it was only classified as a shared room based on the shared entrance which was on my side of the room. It was conveniently separated by a sliding glass door and curtain between both living areas which assured some modicum of privacy for both inhabitants.) The far part of the glass door which was on my side of the door track was always closed as it served as a sort of wall. The part on her side she could close after arriving home and thus allow her the privacy of having her own room. Which for the record she only closed one time while we were living there.

     One day after arriving home on the last train following a very long day at school as I walked into the front door, square in the genkan, I was greeted with the smell of cigarette smoke. The further I walked into the house and its common areas the stronger the smell got. When I opened the room to my bedroom I encountered the highest concentration of smoke smell. Smoke can trigger my migraines so I opened my window to the outside and went to bed. The next day a few of my flatmates asked me if I smelled the smoke last night, quite angry about it. I concurred and told them I thought it was my roommate. I didn't make a big deal about it, figuring maybe she had also had a long day the day before and thinking it was a fluke. A few days later while I was sitting at my comp and working on a 10 page paper due the next day she came home, went into her room, did not close the dividing door (as usual) and began to smoke. I was floored!! Oh no she did not! 
     
     Trying not to be "THAT American" and knowing I have a bit of a short-fuse at times when people are being inconsiderate/rude/careless I though better of confronting her on it. Rather I took the wa, peaceful, yet passive-aggressive high road and opened the door between our bedroom and the rest of the house. Certainly one of them would smell it, come to inquire about it, then I could point them to her direction. I also texted my neighbor and told her about it hoping she would come say something about it. No luck. All of my clothes, towels, and linens smelled of smoke and being a non-smoker I was quite angry. I had to wash all my things to remove the smell. a few more times I came home late and the room smelled. Finally I'd had enough. Out of respect for others including my roommate (who clearly had not thought of ours) I didn't confront her. Knowing I may end up jailed or kicked out of the country if my temper got the best of me I opted for another passive-aggressive means and wrote a letter to the management company questioning them about their no-smoking policy in light of my roommate's several smoking in a shared room violations. I thought this method was a more "Japanese" way of handling things. I believed it would be more diplomatic and peaceful to let them handle it.

     What the company did was very un-Japanese in my opinion so again I was floored. They sent me a letter saying they would call and write to her to ask her to stop smoking. They said if she had been smoking she would be kicked out. I didn't want all that but I did want the smoking to stop. Well, when my roommate got home she came to the kitchen where I was eating dinner with my flatmate and told me Ume House had told her that I wrote a letter to them complaining about her smoking and that she needed to apologize so she was. I was embarrassed, caught off guard, and trying hard to ebb my anger at the company throwing me under the bus like that. I muttered something like "its ok, no worries" and returned to eating my meal. 

     Here I was in Tokyo when something so un-Japanese happened. I wonder if my roommate had been Japanese if something like that would have happened. The smoking or the confrontation. I doubt it, but I still wonder. None the less, it all could have been avoided if she had taken the time to consider someone other than herself. Maybe it is my bad for not considering her desire to smoke... but it was in our shared room and the rules of the place were clear on that measure. If only she had closed the dang door in-between us on her side. Maybe it's my fault for not closing it but had I done so, I feared it would have seemed rude and I'm trying to be less rude-American. Here I have come with my own upbringing, ideologies, customs and mores to Japan where I have tried to adapt but clearly not all those here are doing the same.

DISCLAIMER: This blog is a class project for my Visual Anthropology -of Modern Japan-  class; as such it is for educational purposes only. All photos (or videos) posted here are taken by the blog author unless otherwise noted. If any problem with the posting of a particular photo (video) is brought to my attention, I will earnestly review the problem and review the photo if necessary

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

What remains...

A couple pieces of dishes. So what? Sure, some of them are pretty, maybe even decorated beautifully and intricately. What's the big deal? Hmm. . . I wonder why they're here?

Those were some of the thoughts I had when I first happened upon this collection of fragments. However every second I stood there staring at them, the more exponentially my interest in them grew. Also, the more the answers to those questions came from a place of knowing, of relating, of camaraderie. Knowing where I was and the events of my own personal life that led shortly up to that point make, or rather I believe make, this photo even more beautiful and substantial. (And, not just because I was the photographer.)

The day I took this picture was June 20, 2012. A sunny although unusually cool summer day in Tohoku Region of Eastern Japan following a Typhoon. So the vast areas of land, foundations of former homes, piles of rubble stories high, and nearly everything was saturated with standing water. On this day it was easier for me to imagine what it must have been like in the days immediately following the horrible tsunami that had ravaged the land a little over a year prior. The group I was travelling with from the Terasaki Foundation out of UCLA were mostly second, third and fourth generation Japanese-Americans. As such, for them this was a chance to connect with their homeland: to learn, to meet, to offer help. On this day a camera crew filming a documentary was following us around recording our reactions. Well not so much mine, being straight gaijin (aka: outsider and not Japanese), but the other kids. I didn't mind this though as it allowed me to experience my emotions and process what I was seeing in privacy and un-canned.

While walking around the area I came upon this collection of ceramic/porcelain fragments and something about it stood out to me. I had to take a picture of it. It was something small and really unremarkable given the other things in the area, but it completely captured my attention -- and continued to do so for probably 10 minutes.

So lets look again at my first picture. What do you see? What do you notice? What do you think? . . .  I thought several things: all of those shards look pretty in their own individual way. It didn't appear that any of them matched. On some of them were placed small pebbles. Some may have been from platters, dishes, vases or pots although there is also an intact, glass drinking container. These particular items were not scattered there by the wind or rain or that horrible tsunami a year before; these were placed there on purpose, by humans, in a sort of simple but beautiful and peaceful arrangement.

Here is another view, a different angle of what I originally saw.

Notice the repeating horizontal cement bars similar to the one the pieces were resting on. These are boundary demarcaters separating either rooms in a former home or possibly even home from home before March 11, 2011.  It should be said that these pictures I've shown are actually out of sequence. The first photo on this blog was taken after this one, after I had dwelt on it for some time. After I had made an addition of my own on it after standing and looking at it for some time.

Look back at photo 1. It differs from photo 2. See the piece of green (my favorite color) decorated ceramic off to the left hand side, trying not to impose on the others but standing as a marker that someone was there, that someone saw the others, that someone found it beautiful, that someone believed she understood the meaning and wanted to pay her respects and share her sympathy. . . ? That was mine. That is how I felt.

Imagine standing in the rubble, ashes and remains of what used to be your home before a tragedy, possibly the greatest in your life, took everything away from you: items, photos, and most sadly people. Standing amid immeasurable items that barely survived the disaster, that were unusable and only slightly unrecognizable in their current state, imagine having to sort out "garbage" from salvageable items of things that had emotional value greater than any treasure trove of jewels, gold and finery. Decide what now had actual wealth and usability amid items who also had been broken and damaged in the disaster, guilt on top of the other emotions in a full boil under your surface, tasked with cleaning the remains up to standards of sorting refuse, and once sorted what you would do with them. It's hard to imagine, tough to imagine, maybe even tough to relate to. That's exactly what my family and I had to do following March 8, 2010 when my grandparents' house caught on fire destroying our family home and killing my grandmother in the process.

My tragedy was just a drop in the bucket compared to what the people in the town had gone through. I lost only one home, one family member, one family's lifetime of memories. Times that by tens of thousands and that's what the community had suffered. However mine was as emotionally murdering, heart fracturing and devastating to me. Yet these people had a large collective burden to the umpteenth power greater than just mine and still managed to rise again as a community. They found the strength to pick up the pieces and go on; the fortitude and perseverance to charge at life as it had been prior, unhindered. . . well maybe just a little. 

I was there only a year after the tragedy yet so much had been sorted through and cleaned up. Of course it was done so in uniquely Japanese fashion: burnables separated from recyclables separated from non-burnable (which in this case included automobiles by the thousands), to help begin the process. However the gathering of fragments I happened upon were placed in arrangement and not thrown out. Why? I could only use my own emotional experience to come up with an answer that after much thought didn't turn out to be 'uniquely Japanese' but perchance more of a universal reaction and understanding that victims of this sort of tragedy possess. They were placed there to serve as memorial possibly, too destroyed to keep but too precious to throw away, done so out of respect for the people who lost everything, to signify that their emotional value had been recognized, done from empathy.

One question I was unable to answer but still would like to know was who left each fragment behind? Were they family members, neighbors, or strangers like myself? I wonder if these fragments of life are still there serving as sentry or if they have been cast out.