Hearth & Home, Japanese-style

On a recent Sunday afternoon, I had a storybook JET experience: I visited a Japanese family’s home and spent quality down-time with them. JET is, after all, an acronym for ‘Japan Exchange and Teaching Programme’… but until now, I had felt more like I was doing much more of the latter than the former. The K family is a family of four- N-san (the mother), K-chan (9 years old), M-chan (11 years old) and the father…um, Mr.K. N-san is intensely interested in English, and she wants her kids, who learn some English at elementary school, to get to know foreign people on a real level. Until July, I worked with another ALT who was friends with this family. When she left, she introduced me to them, in the interest of continuing the foreigner-K family bonding tradition…

N called me during the week to invite me to their house on the weekend. I’m ashamed to say that at first, I had a somewhat negative attitude towards the visit. As enjoyable as it seems, talking to, playing with, and generally ‘hanging’ with Japanese people sounded suspiciously like work to me. After a year of teaching teenagers English, and occasionally visiting elementary and junior high schools, not to mention helping out at summer workshops and attending work ‘parties’, I have to say that for me, a bit of the shine has disappeared from the international exchange experience. I still mostly enjoy it, but the idea of cutting a Sunday with my friends short to do be a ‘zoo exhibit’ for a few hours didn’t exactly inspire me. Demonstrating our highly-developed sense of self-awareness, my friends and I have started calling ourselves “jaded second-years”- that is, ALTs who have been in Japan for over a year and are starting to voice our complaints about living here.

I spite of myself, I ended up having a great time. First, N drove to my house and picked me up. The girls rang my doorbell and were obviously excited at the prospect of having me as their guest. I was pretty curious about what the afternoon would entail, given that all N had said was that she would like to have me come over to her house. But I needn’t have worried – doing normal ‘Sunday at home with the family’ stuff was relaxing and fun. So what did we do? Well, number one was cooking. And therefore, eating. N and the kids – and me, throwing my clumsy gaijin hands into the mix – prepared scones (raisin, and bean-filled), kakigori (shaved ice with coloured syrup), and curry rice (Japanese curry, that is). I was particularly impressed by the kids, who were actually a lot of help to their mum – kind of like the mythical country kids we hear about from days gone by, who chopped firewood, milked the cows, gathered the eggs, and hiked 10 miles in the snow to collect the mail. Only in this case, they biked to the supermarket, bought ingredients for dinner, chopped potatoes, kneaded dough, and shaved ice. I suspect this is actually the norm in Japan… Western kids come across as extremely Bart Simpson-like, in contrast. Funny, that.

The second highlight of the day was playing with their Wii. For older readers and technophobes, this is a video game console, as close to virtual reality as the average Joe can get. In a nutshell, “a distinguishing feature is its wireless controller, which can be used as a handheld pointing device and detect movement in three dimensions.” (Thank you, Wikipedia.) The girls created a ジェシカ (Jessica) character, which involved choosing various facial features to create a cartoon that looked like me. I was a little worried that I would end up looking like the stereotypical gaijin character that features so prominently in the collective Japanese psyche (big nose, round eyes, pink skin, usually fat). But fortunately my character ended up resembling me pretty closely- as much as a pixilated cartoon portrait can, anyway.

The final icing on the cake was a mini piano concert. My ALT friend had warned me about the K family’s tendency to break into von Trapp-esque performances now and then. I was looking forward to the chance to be reunited with a piano once again- it had been over a year since I was in the same room as one. Sure enough, just before dinner, K-chan started playing from her piano books. She was pretty good, which doesn’t surprise me. A lot of Japanese kids learn the piano, and with the inordinate amount of time they spent practicing, they always end up seeming like child prodigies, even if their playing style lacks emotion. (I can comment on this because I’ve had the ‘luck’ to walk into, or past, several piano recitals in the past year, in random public places. They’re a common occurance in Japan.) Anyway, when the kids and N heard that I had learned piano for 10 years, they insisted I perform for them. So I tried to play the two songs I can always rely on my fingers to automatically remember. But it seems that after a year sans piano, I’ve forgotten parts of them! So I just played and replayed the bits I could remember.

After a dinner of curry, N insisted on sending me home with more curry for tomorrow’s lunch, freshly baked scones, and a business shirt that was too big for her… but which of course fit the bigger gaijin- me. She even drove me home, and the kids walked me to my door. It was all so sweet, and I felt guilty not being able to properly reciprocate. But I plan to buy them some wonderful omiyage this weekend, since I’m supposed to be seeing them again next week.