Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
Above is the annual sports festival at a local junior high school here in Sasayama. These much-anticipated events take place at every school in the country around the middle of September — even pre-school and kindergarten!
To say they’re popular is an understatement. They are as much part of the fabric of social life here as eating rice and fish.
The events at a Japanese sports festival include some “normal” sports contests, e.g. relay races, tug-of-war, team rope jumping. But they as well have quite an assortment of unique, and I have to say, quite amusing activities I wouldn’t expect to show up in the Olympics anytime soon. There’s the hacky sack basket toss, the three-legged kick-the-ball then shoot-a-hoop match, a relay race carrying a tennis ball on a tennis racket while running at full-speed around the circumference of the field.
Sports festivals are not restricted to just students. Villages compete against one another, meaning full-grown adults also participate in the action. I can’t say the village I live in does very well in these competitions. We may have the most geriatric team in all of Japan. But we have a great time, which is mainly what these all-ages competitive events are all about.
Here’s a mercifully short video of my legendary performance at a recent community sports festival. If it’s not entirely obvious, my challenge — for which I trained with the best coaches east of Nagasaki — was to inflate a balloon, pop it by sitting on it, then scramble back to the starting line, tagging my next teammate in line, who we hoped would repeat my gold medal-level performance, and lock in first place for this epic showdown.
What can I say? It seems no matter what the season is, there’s always something going on here, and whatever it is is typically is built around some excuse for people to get together, have a good time, and simply enjoy the company of those living in the community.
The sub-title of my newest book begins “Anecdotes on the People and Culture of Contemporary Japan …”
Here are a few anecdotes which will give you phenomenal insights into the remarkably high ethical standards and general character of the Japanese people.
• • •
A friend of mine, originally from New Zealand but who lives in Japan, left her latest model Macbook Pro in a train station ladies room. For two hours! She had left it on the counter while she washed her hands and forgetfully walked out without it. By the way, this was one of the busiest hubs in Japan, the Umeda JR Station in Osaka. That restroom has hundreds of people going through it every hour. She got quite a ways along on her trip back here to Sasayama, remembered, jumped off, and immediately got on a train back to Osaka. She found her laptop right where she left it. Yes … two hours later!
• • •
Every year in October, we have here in Sasayama the Festival of the Portable Shrines. It’s one of my favorites!
A gentleman arrived here from Kobe, which is about an hour away. He came to purchase black beans, an item my home town is famous for, but when the moment came to pay, he discovered his wallet was missing.
There are no pickpockets around here, so obviously he had dropped his wallet somewhere in town.
He went to the nearest Koban. There are several here in Sasayama, as there are all over Japan. A Koban is a mini-police station. In Japan, it’s considered an integral part of a functioning community. The Koban is to make sure there are friendly cops in the neighborhood to address problems which come up in the local area, situations just like this.
The policeman on duty took a report, then got on the phone. He called all the other Kobans in the immediate area, anywhere close to where the gentleman had parked his car, before walking into the main part of town for the festivities.
He passed along the man’s name and a description of the wallet. Now get this …
While the officer was on the phone with another Koban, someone walked in with the wallet and handed it to the policeman on duty there.
The gentleman from Kobe then walked the short distance to the other Koban, and retrieved his wallet. The contents — credit cards, ID, cash — were intact. Not a single item had been taken.
• • •
One Sunday many months ago, we went to, Rurikei, our favorite local onsen. This is one of the great joys of living here in Japan and we try to go often (see next section).
Anyway, I left my hair brush in the mens locker room. This was not a family heirloom. This was an 89 cent piece of plastic, dirty and full of my hair from use over many months. The only thing it had going for it was that it was a pleasant shade of lavender.
Five weeks later, we returned to the hot springs. On some impulse — my synapses tend to fire randomly at times — I asked at the counter if they had a purple hair brush in their lost-and-found box. Stupid me. I was thinking they had a cardboard box behind the desk. The clerk asked when I thought I had lost it. That was easy. Maybe four or five weeks ago? He stepped into the facility’s main office, consulted with someone, then returned with my 89-cent hair brush, safely contained in a sealed plastic bag with a label. On the label was the date I left it in the locker room.
• • •
Masumi reminded me of this story, one I had forgotten. One day we went to Japan Post to mail a package to the U.S. — I think it was one of my novels, sent off for a review. Shortly after we returned, the phone rang. It was the clerk who had waited on me at the post office. She first apologized. She had made a mistake and overcharged me. She was so sorry this happened! It was an honest mistake and would be happy to refund the money. How much was it? 10 yen. Unbelievable! Do you know how much 10 yen is at current exchange rates? 9.44 cents!
What did I do? I did what any red-blooded American would do in the face of such incompetence! I went to the post office with my AR-15 and shot the place up. I didn’t kill anyone, though obviously I could hardly be blamed if I had. But when I got done, the place looked like one of the Twin Towers on September 12!
Okay. Obviously, I made that up. The truth was, I was speechless. 10 yen? After I stopped laughing — pleasant, joyful laughing — I had Masumi tell the clerk all was forgiven and she could keep the 10 yen. I think you can probably buy a lollipop somewhere for 10 yen.
• • •
I could go on and on. For example, in the news several months ago, there was the story of a person who had found a satchel on a park bench with over 5 million yen (that’s $50,000 cash) and no identification of any kind in or on the bag. It was promptly turned into the police.
I’m not going to moralize. Draw your own conclusions.
But by seeing such extreme honesty here, I see what has happened to my own country. I’m not pointing fingers. I see it in my own thinking. It’s been quite an adjustment for me. After all, I grew up in a tug-of-war between what I was taught at home, school and church, and real world a prioris: ‘Finders keepers losers weepers.’ ‘It’s every man for himself.’ ‘If I don’t take it someone else will.’
As a kid, often it wasn’t a question of right or wrong, but a question of whether we’d get caught.
I will say that dishonesty, regardless of how minor or seemingly insignificant, is a slippery slope. The Japanese have chosen to avoid taking even the first step.
I openly admit, it’s resulted in a huge paradigm shift for me. It’s required an enormous adjustment. But an extremely rewarding one. Just imagine … being able to trust other people. What a concept!
Understand: This extreme level of honesty and respect for the property of others I’m describing here is not an anomaly. It’s the norm. And it’s nothing new.
My American friend, Scott Burley, recently emailed me about his brief but rewarding experiences visiting Japan. He included this story:
My girlfriend who I met sophomore year … went on a student exchange program to Tokyo for her junior year and went to school over there. She was 1/2 Japanese and 1/2 Czech and her parents were both Japanese — her mother must have married a Czech before her step father. So around Christmas I flew to Tokyo when she had Christmas break and we spent three weeks traveling by train … my girlfriend left her purse at a bus stop. I went back to look for it and it was gone. After we got back to Tokyo, one day her purse arrived in the mail. Only in Japan!
That was back in 1973. Some things don’t change here.
