Someone once said ‘Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.’ I guess that encapsulates my own experiences which include growing up in Malaysia, living, studying, conducting research & working in places as far-flung as New Zealand, Canada, Barbados, the U.S. & Singapore. In each case, I had clear plans but things changed as familial, financial & even geo-political concerns & pressures interposed at key moments to divert me away from my original path. Being married to a Japanese national, Yuri, has, unsurprisingly, driven & shaped many of our more recent decisions, including making the choice to live here in Japan to enable us to remain close to Yuri’s parents.
I’m often told, reasonably enough, that having a Japanese spouse necessarily means that I must be fluent in ‘ Nihongo’ but my particular example should disabuse most people of this popular misconception. My competence (or incompetence!) in the language is very much a work in progress. I seem to have passively picked up a good many phrases & words but my wife isn’t too thrilled with some of the idiomatic Japanese I use, particularly since I often get confused, not always with innocuous consequences, as evidenced by the following anecdote.
When I began in BSI, we moved to Hikarigaoka, which allowed me to use a bicycle to get to & from work. One night this past January, suffering from the flu, I called a taxi to get home after work. The driver mistakenly believed he could drive up towards the West Gate to leave RIKEN campus. I wanted to say “Don’t”, in Japanese, but unfortunately, I’d somehow confused “Dameh dah” with “Dama reh” & used the latter, which prompted a “ Sumi-masen?” from the suddenly addled driver. I decided to repeat, more forcefully, the “ Dama reh”, throwing in “There’s no road there!” by way of explanation. The atmosphere in the cab chilled palpably & when we eventually reached my home, I caught a glimpse of the driver’s sullen demeanour but, at the time, I was too sick to really care. I was mortified, however, several days later, when I learned the enormity of my horrendous faux pas.
Recently, we moved to the Hashimoto area, closer to Yuri’s parents, which means I now have to slog thru 4 hours of commuting each day, a truly enervating experience, occasionally enlivened by brushes with hyper-aggressive ‘ Oba-chans’ (one sure way to get your adrenaline pumping!) and other prickly predicaments.
Several months ago, I was in a particularly crowded train, which became absolutely sardined when a legion of rather grumpy commuters jumped aboard in Meidaimae. As we left the station, a young woman to my right abruptly turned her head to glare at me in a withering manner that clearly spelt trouble. I don’t know how but some kind of survival instinct kicked in really fast because I quickly deciphered her angry expression, and immediately moved my eyes up towards my hands which were firmly rooted to the ceiling of the train (Long arms come in handy sometimes). Upon seeing this, her face contorted into a look of bewilderment and she turned down to the area near her derriere. There, almost hidden from view amidst a thicket of bags, arms & shoulders, was a tiny little old woman, barely 1.3m tall. Importantly, she had both her hands on the seat of the younger lady’s jeans, as if she was holding on for dear life, which, actually, considering her size and the rocking train, she was! With her remarkably expressive face now conveying an unreadable countenance, the young lady turned back to me but, deciding not to push my luck, I averted my eyes back up to my hands, on the ceiling, in a transparent bid to emphasize my innocence, leaving her to deal with her pressing problem. I shudder to think what would have happened if I’d had to talk my way out of that situation ? I somehow doubt that a screwup on the order of “ Dama reh/ Dameh dah” would’ve been tolerated quietly!
Body language can be a beautiful thing but I guess I’ll just have to work harder at the ‘ Nihongo’ too.
The ‘Nihongo-challenged’ Baljinder Singh with his wife Yuri
