In the previous post I mentioned how tough Chalean Extreme is on the back. It seems that every exercise involves bending over! Yesterday was no exception, and when I finish a set and my back aches, I often wonder if I'll be paying for it the next day. I feel okay today, but I have had a stiff neck since Thursday. I'll see how I go next week. If I get another crick or hurt my back in any way, I'll think I'll stop doing it.
I'm at a loss for anything to write about. Sports season over, Aussies lost the Ashes, Swans not in the finals, Golf season finished on a sour note. My work is dead boring.
I go to the pool with Will every day I am off. I bought him an inflatable tube thing, and he loves it. Yesterday I was having an ice-cream with Will at a small portable shop run by a nice old lady outside the pool. It was just us, the lady, and a guy I'd pegged as a nutter when I saw him sitting down on the locker room floor putting his shoes and socks on. Listening to him talking to the lady took me back to when I'd been here a year and a bit and I was hanging out at a mate's house who had been here a lot longer. An old couple were arguing in their garden outside. "What are they saying?" I asked my mate, and he interpreted the conversation for me.
"What did you bring me this for? I don't need it."
"You need it to trim the plants."
"I'm not going to trim the plants."
"You have to trim the plants."
"You trim the plants, I couldn't be bothered."
"What do you mean? That's what gardening is. Trimming stuff. What the hell are you doing then?"
And so on. I thought it was so cool to be able to understand what people were saying. It's funny how when we hear people talking in another language and we don't understand what they are saying we assume they are talking about really important stuff. Have you seen that bit in Anger Management (I think, some Adam Sandler movie anyway) when you see two Arab looking guys sitting next to each other on a plane arguing? You think they might be arguing about which one is going to stab the flight attendant and which one is going to rush the cockpit, but when the subtitles come up we find out they're arguing about a scene in The Simpsons.
Well my Japanese is now at a level where I can understand mostly about what people are saying in everyday conversations about everyday things. The nutter was talking to the lady about how test scores are way down from what they used to be when he graduated, kids these days are lazy, etc, straight out of one of the silly current affairs shows they have here, and the old lady's like yea, yea, yea. He is a nutter - there are loads of them here, and the funny thing is he only looked about my age. A bit young to be whining about kids. Then when he gets up to throw his empty can in the bin, she says "Thank you very much!" really loudly, which kind of meant "Go away now!". He leaves, muttering to himself, and then two old ladies, friends of the old lady who runs the shop I assume, come for a visit. How are you? they ask the old lady. She says she's tired from working, which they all say. But she says lately she's drinking some kind of drink, I'm not sure, probably some Chinese tea/extract thing that is popular with old people, and she has been feeling much better. They ask her the brand, and she tells them and one of the friends says Oh don't drink that brand, it's a waste of money. But if I drink it thinking it's good for me, then it is good for me, says the shop lady. You should drink this, says the friend, and brings out a brochure for some other drink. Bah! says the shop lady, everybody has their recommendations. Then they bought some ice-cream (here, Willy asked the lady who bought them, in Japanese, Are you really buying two ice-creams? He couldn't believe it. She laughed and explained that one was for her friend). They sat and chatted about these extract drinks, and then the shop lady said I'm sorry, but if I don't close up soon... and we all made our way to the car park.
So I can understand what they say, but I can't understand the tone, and I can't understand the context. At one stage the shop lady said to the other ladies "Shinpai shiteitadaitte arigatougozaimasu" which is basically "Thank you for your concern" which is pretty polite, isn't it. Are they really friends? I could kind of get that the shop lady was humouring the nutter and wanted him to go away, but what about these ladies? Were they trying to sell her something? I have no idea. If they were speaking English I would have been able to tell their relationship pretty quickly. So even though I understand, I don't understand.
It's really hard here to work out what's going on in a Japanese conversation. One thing is that they usually leave out the subject. So "I went shopping" is just "Went shopping." So a lot of the time I don't have a clue who or what they are talking about. Japanese people have the same problem too, but of course not as often. This creates the converse problem of a foreigner learning Japanese who can't leave the subject out, and ends up sounding like "As for me, I went shopping, and I, in particular, bought a hat" instead of "Went shopping, bought a hat." The second one is the level of politeness. You talk to a person you don't know different to people that you know. Same in English, but it's the hardest thing to do in Japanese, especially when you are expected to do it, like when talking to your boss or business associate. There's a whole heap of special terms and verbs that are required. Foreigners can usually get away with it, unless their Japanese is so good that the Japanese person (rightly) thinks they should know better, but Japanese people new to a company will have to take lessons in learning to talk to their boss and guests from other companies. Learning all of these verbs and expressions and doing it correctly under pressure is really tough, and they probably get peeved when a foreigner is allowed to talk to a higher-up in a way that would get them into trouble. And then, to add insult to injury, the boss might actually enjoy the "natural-ness" of the foreigner, which might in turn lead to special treatment or drinks or a round of golf or something. And on top of that, the foreigner probably leaves at 5:00 every day while the Japanese slave away until 9 or 10 every night. Hah hah, fuck em. So yea, a long way to go, but sometimes I enjoy just being able to listen and to understand everyday conversations. People around the world studying Japanese pay a lot of money for the opportunity to hear two Japanese people talking like they would naturally. It's like living amongst the Rinos in a Kenyan national park as the safari buses drive past in the distance. Not really.
So what have I learnt working here? I might have learnt some stuff, but I still find it hard to apply what I have learnt. I don't say "That's not my job" anymore. If the boss asked me to clean the toilet, I would do it. We have to move desks when we move offices. I hate it when people say That's not my job now. But that's easy. What else. I keep my mouth shut in meetings. Or try to. The Japanese say "The mouth is the root of all trouble." Saying nothing is usually the best option here. What else. I have fallen ass-backwards into too many good situations to think that I am owed anything or that I deserve anything. I think living here has made me realise this. Is it a good thing? Has to be, doesn't it? I am a very ordinary man, completely replaceable, and I have so little professional ambition or initiative that I often feel like a fraud. So when Chalean tells me that I deserve this or that, or when I think that just because I did a day's work that I deserve an uninterrupted hour in front of the TV or a pack of chips, I check myself. I don't deserve shit. If I got what I deserved, I would be in terrible trouble, and so would my kids.
The boys, Joey Joe Joe and Silly Willy
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