December 2005 Newsletter

Learning to Bow and Recycle

Tom Zeiler

Within twelve hours of arriving in Tokyo, Japan, I got my first taste of a different culture. It was typical of the experiences that lie at the soul of the Fulbright program.

Up early our first morning, I looked out the window of our second-story apartment to see a garbage truck approaching. We had accumulated some cans, bottles, and magazines during the trip over, and so, doing the sensible thing, I put them in a bag and simply dropped it from the window on a waiting pile of trash in the street below. OK, so I’m a heathen (and the Fulbright staff rightly admonished me), but the learning curve shot up when the sacred rite of Tokyo garbage recycling soon became apparent. A few days later, when I walked out the trash, some neighbors joined me at the curb for instruction on the intricacies of recycling. Combustibles are not to be mixed with noncombustibles; big plastic bottles are put in separate bins from small ones; and never combine cans with glass bottles. Never, ever throw a bag from a window.

Whenever I took out the trash over the next year, two or three women from the block would miraculously appear to assist me; if I were a stranger before, now I was an infamous, though redeemable, interloper on harmony and correct process, which the Japanese hold so dear. This was my first lesson in Fulbright-style “mutual understanding,” and my education never ceased.

The lesson my family and I will remember best is that perspective is important. First off, we learned more about the United States and ourselves, gaining a view of America that comes from living abroad. Sure, we missed the Red Sox triumph (though luckily I was able to watch it in the offices of Major League Baseball Japan), and we seemed remote from the presidential election, but it was stimulating to place events at home within an Asian context.

Second, the more we grasped at customs and behavior, the more questions we had about Japan. Yet everyone was so accommodating to us, even the watchdog recyclers, that groping toward discovery was enlightening in itself. Above all, we seized the chance to make the most of a very different culture. My wife, for example, took Japanese language lessons, calligraphy, flower arrangement, and pottery, while also working out under the gaze of Arnold at a Gold’s Gym. I dabbled in longbow archery, although I realized my personality lacks the appropriate Zen qualities. Still, it was just pure fun to do these things, and they enabled us to meet new people outside and inside of the workplace.

Fulbright fellowships come in varying forms, depending on what is offered in the country of choice. Japan offers half-year or full-year (eleven months) teaching-only grants (for those of us who have no language skills and/or knowledge of the country), research support (you must be able to conduct your work in Japanese, which can be facilitated by partnering with a native academic), or a combination of the two.

As a lecturer, I split my four-course-per-semester load (a graduate seminar, an undergraduate seminar, and two lecture courses) between two universities, teaching ninety-minute classes in each course once a week. I had the freedom to teach whatever subject I wished, although the challenge of teaching in English to students who listened politely but clearly did not understand much of what I said necessitated strategizing about lectures. My students were generally more competent at reading than understanding the spoken word, and certainly speaking was their weak point. This has to do with their English training as well as their customary deferential behavior in class. The language barrier required adaptation on my part. I had students write down answers to questions so they could read them in class, and I taught them how to conduct a debate but allowed it to take place in both English and Japanese phases.

Still, I think undergraduates are undergraduates wherever they are in the world. These students might have slept a bit more in class (apparently, Tokyo residents get fewer hours of sleep at night than anyone else on earth), but they greeted me charmingly in unison when I entered the room and expressed a sense of wonderment when my wife and I invited a group of fifty from both universities to our apartment for a party. They had never visited a professor’s house, and they were thrilled by such relaxed American attitudes. It was great for us, too, for they adopted our children, and each one brought food or drinks, even after I told them not to bring a thing. Yet on the whole, the Japanese students were very much like American students. They smiled and chattered before class, loved to socialize with professors and each other at drinking parties, tried every trick (all disappointingly familiar to me) to avoid working or taking exams, and dressed in styles that made me kick myself for throwing away my bell-bottom jeans years ago. Many of the guys wore ski caps, which has always struck me as odd. But I’m getting older.

Being in Japan during the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War II, as controversy about Japan’s role in the conflict erupted in Asia, provided us with excellent classroom opportunities to discuss history’s relevance. I learned the depth of Japanese pacifism when we discussed the atomic bombings, and I discovered the extent of the appreciation the Japanese have for American policies after World War II and their widespread disgust with American policies today. Thus, as in any good teaching experience, we all learned, students and professor.

Beyond teaching, the Fulbright program provides a world of opportunities. Paying for a year in Tokyo was an initial worry, but the program gave us a healthy housing allowance, a stipend that more than accounted for the prohibitive costs of the city, full school tuition for both children, and an extra family allowance. Conference travel and teaching support money were available, if needed. We thus lived very comfortably and were able to travel extensively. We visited much of Japan by taking two ski trips, traveling to an island three hours south of Tokyo, and spending numerous weekends away with new friends (both Japanese and foreign) and even some University of Colorado alumni. We also went to Guam, and from Guam I took off with three planeloads of veterans and their families to spend a day on Iwo Jima (a moving experience that commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of that horrendous battle). We also spent two weeks over Christmas in Vietnam and two more in April in China.

In addition, because I teach a course on American history and baseball, and because the Japanese are baseball-crazy, the public affairs section of the American Embassy in Japan sent me to the five consulates around the country to speak on U.S. — Japanese relations and Seattle Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki. That experience introduced me to a variety of people — journalists, fans, sports executives, and television reporters — I would not have otherwise encountered on campus. There were educational advantages, too. Because I had contacts with the embassy and with Major League Baseball’s Japan office, I hosted former Mets manager Bobby Valentine, now captain of a Japanese team, in one of my classes . As one of America’s major celebrities in Japan, he created quite a stir.

But what about family life? Specifically, how did the kids manage with all these new experiences? Just fine. Our children, a boy of eleven and a girl age seven, made friends with many Japanese and other students at their English-speaking international school, learned Japanese, and certainly discovered the meaning of living in a huge metropolis as they suffered through a one-hour commute, each way, on two trains and a bus. They did this alone, for Tokyo is very safe, although their two grandmothers are still scolding me for maltreatment of their grandchildren. Their daily trip included a train change in Shinjuku station, reportedly the busiest station in the world, with three million people going through it every day. Only once did they get separated. They remembered the emergency plan, however: get off at the next stop and wait until your sibling arrives on the following train. My seven year old daughter jumped on a train one morning and the doors closed before her brother could enter. She got off, crying, in Ikebukuro, a station with a scant two million daily visitors, and nobody came up to help ( unfortunately, many Japanese whose English is poor are afraid to make a situation worse by intervening, even when they see a child in distress), but her big brother rescued her a few minutes later when his train arrived. I have yet to tell their grandmothers about this event out of a fear of being banished from the family. Still, the kids were no worry, and even essential at times, for like dogs in a park, they attracted attention from the kid-crazy, cute-obsessed Japanese,and prompted conversation.

A willingness to adjust is the key to a wonderful time overseas. We knew as little about Argentina, our first Fulbright experience, as we did about Japan, but it did not matter. The Fulbright program is perfect for the blissfully ignorant! In Japan we soon became expert at enjoying an onsen ( hot springs), bowing and saying “excuse me” in almost every sentence, and making our way around the most efficient urban transportation system in the world. We had wonderful food (including great Italian and French food and some things that are better left to fraternity houses, such as cod sperm sac), spent a lot of money, saw amazing things, and participated in community events. For instance, I was recruited one day to carry an extremely heavy portable shrine, called a mikoshi, into our local Shinto temple; because I was taller than everyone else I had to carry most of the weight. The best thing was that there was always somebody around to help us adjust and learn.

Fulbrights are for scholars and students of all post-secondary school ages. For information on getting started on the application process, check out the Fulbright website at http://exchanges.state.gov/education/fulbright/commiss.htm. And remember to separate those newspaper inserts from the main sections when you take out the trash.