Turning Japanese
“I think this would be just the thing for the
children,” said Daddy, looking in the back page of the Buxton Advertiser, one
day. “Japanese tuition…”
The children groaned. We thought we were learning
enough subjects. Guitar, German, Palaeography, Latin, Maths, French, and long
spelling lessons. We didn’t know anything about Japan; we had never heard of
the place.
We met the Japanese tutor in church by chance. He was
playing his guitar during a break in the family service. After the sermon we all
got together at the back of the church and played the blues. His name was David
Vick, and he was a cheerful, outgoing, enthusiastic person, who had been living
in Japan for 15 years and had a Japanese wife and 2 children.
Of course we agreed to go for Japanese lessons then.
David, Mitsue, Michael and Sean lived in Fairfield Hill in Buxton above the
railway arches, and we started going every week for a lesson on a Monday night.
It was great fun. David showed us lots of books and videos about Japan, Mitsue
cooked us Japanese food, and we talked to the children and made paper aeroplanes
during our lessons.
The Japanese really took a hold of us, especially me
and Metia, who studied it so hard that we were soon good enough to go in for an
exam held by the Japan Foundation in London, level 4 of the Japanese Language
Proficiency test.
We went down on the train. It was a very serious thing
for us, taking a language exam. Metia and I had done several grades on the
Guitar in Stoke on Trent, with the Trinity College of Music, but this was a new
experience. The exams were held on the University of London campus, at SOAS, the
Society for Oriental and Asian Studies. I later came here to do a BA in
Japanese.
We were given a multiple choice answer sheet, to be
read by an optical mark reader. The exams lasted a good couple of hours, and
there was a listening element too, which was really hard.
Anyway, we both later learned that we had passed with
flying colors. I had got over 80% pass rate, and to my incredulity, I was called
by the Japan Foundation the following summer and told that I had been selected
as an Outstanding Foreign Student of the Japanese Language, and was to visit
Japan on an all expenses paid study tour in September.
Daddy said, “It’s got to be a hoax!” But it
wasn’t. I was only just seventeen at the time, and the idea of traveling all
those thousands of miles away from the Strines was really exciting. I had to go
to the doctor’s and have some weird inoculations for all kinds of tropical
diseases such as typhoid.
And I had to have lots of new clothes bought. I
remember going to Dorothy Perkins in Buxton with my mother. We got some really
nice denim trousers with brown leather on the edges, and some long-sleeved
t-shirts. I had never been so smart!
Well, the great day came, and I was taken to
Manchester Airport in the car. Everyone came to see me off. Mummy and Daddy
cried a bit, and so did I, when I went through the gates to get onto my shuttle
to London. I had only flown once, and I hated it.
What really bugs me about flying is the immense height
of the aeroplane from the terra firma, coupled with the fact that if it were to
get into difficulties, there would be no way that I could save myself. I really
think people should be equipped with parachutes. Then they’d have some sort of
a chance!
I was soon in London and checking in onto a huge
British Airways jumbo jet which would take me all the way to Japan. I sat next
to a Japanese girl, and we soon struck up a conversation. I was beginning to
enjoy myself.
The plane touched down in Tokyo Narita Airport some 11
hours later, which is not a bad time, I believe. I had long since ceased to
enjoy the journey though, and was suffering from shock and jet lag. I just got
out of the airport and fell asleep on my stack of cases, missing the bus to the
Japan Centre in Urawa.
Fortunately a Japanese family came to the rescue, put
me on the right bus, and I eventually reached my destination. My first
impressions of Japan were rain and doughnut shaped car brake lights in queues in
front of the bus. It was just at the end of the tsuyu, their rainy
season.
I spent two glorious weeks at the Japan Centre in
Urawa. There were seminars and classes, lots of Japanese speaking people from
all over the world, good food, and wonderful excursions to all the different
corners of the country by bus. I made a lot of friends, got argued about by a
whole bunch of guys (another novelty for me), and had a great time just
exploring Tokyo by train and bike. My friends often came along and looked after
me to a certain extent, as I was the youngest of the group of 65 students.
Once a Chinese guy took me into Shinjuku, Tokyo’s
gambling scene. It was a run-down area, with people sitting in shanty houses and
cardboard shelters, drinking beer. We went into a pachinko parlor, full of
Japanese in cowboy hats sitting at rows on rows of one armed bandits and pinball
wizards. The rattling of silver balls filled the air. We won some money, but the
woman behind the kiosk refused to give us anything. Eventually at my complaints
she produced a bottle of shampoo!
The bus tours were good fun too. We traveled in two
coaches, and the students used to throw sweets from one through the open windows
of the other as we cruised down the motorway. Once we went to Kyoto and Nara,
home of Japan’s best temples, by bullet train. The Japanese on the train
looked shocked to see so many foreigners taking up a whole coach, so I made a
big red notice saying “Gaijin, Abunai!” ("Danger,
Foreigners!”) and stuck it on the door at the end of the carriage. We rolled
about laughing to see the faces of the people walking through as they read it;
such serious people…
I got lots of Japanese practice, as there were no
other English people in the group. I made friends with an Irish girl, Julie
Hudson, and with some Koreans, all of whom spoke fluent Japanese, so I got a lot
of Japanese conversation without missing English too badly.
We visited the shrines and temples of Nara and Kyoto,
the orange torii at Miyajima, Hokkaido, the burnt remains of buildings in
Hiroshima and a terrible war museum, which I wouldn’t look at, with remains of
victims of the nuclear bomb preserved in jars. We saw an automobile factory, and
went to the Kabuki theatre for nine hours. I crept out and went back to the
Centre after three hours of this though. My Japanese wasn’t refined enough to
get the gist of the play! And as I had a camera bought for me by my parents, I
captured many of the sights of Japan on film.
After another two weeks spent in Osaka with my second
Japanese tutor, a friend of David Vick, who had gone back to live in Tokunoshima,
one of the southernmost islands of Japan, I returned home to England. I cried as
the plane left Narita Airport for London. I could see Mount Fuji rising above
the distant clouds, and I felt that it was going to be a very long time before I
would ever see this magical place again. I was right.
At London there was a big fuss, because they
discovered me to be in possession of a Japanese katana (a very small one though)
which I had ‘smuggled’ all the way over in my hand luggage. I was surprised.
Surely someone had noticed me cutting an apple with it on the plane?
“Don’t you realize you could have hijacked the
plane with this!” stormed an official. I never saw my knife again. My family
were all waiting at Manchester Airport, and I felt a sudden rush of joy as I saw
them behind the barriers. I ran with my case and hugged my parents hard. It was
good to be home.
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