Sunday was my father’s meinichi, the anniversary of the day he died nine years ago (although Japanese are always puzzled that we use a happy-sounding word like “anniversary” to describe this). Peter Rowland Payne was an engineer who created many things in his 70 years on Earth, including high-speed boats and hydrofoils, early crash-test dummies, VTOL aircraft, and not least of all, me! (Thanks, Dad.) Although Japan blends many different religious traditions as they see fit, drawing on Shinto for baby naming ceremonies and prayers for happiness on New Year’s Day, and Christian themes for that special “white wedding,” at the end of the day it’s a very Buddhist country. Japanese Buddhism, at least the Nichiren sect that my wife and mother belong to, tends to be focused on one’s ancestors, your mother and father and those who came before them, and there are many ceremonies or daily customs that let the dead know they’ve not been forgotten, from burning a stick of incense at the Buddhist altar in the morning to visiting the family grave on a person’s meinichi. Here’s to my Dad, much loved and not forgotten!
I bought my son one of those spiffy new iMacs that can run Mac OS X and also function as a full PC for Windows-only applications and games. (Aside, if you’re a Star Wars fan and haven’t played Battlefront I and II, you don’t know what you’re missing). While taking our weekend dip in the local onsen bath my son and I were talking about how a bilingual individual’s personality can change depending on which language he’s using — my own Japanese-speaking “self” is quite different from my American side, even capable of inadvertently bowing to the other party while speaking on the phone. My 11-year-old son agreed. “When I speak English, I’m one way,” he observed, “but when I switch to Japanese, everything changes inside.” It was, he concluded, a lot like his iMac booting from Mac to Windows. Intrigued, I had to ask him which language was Mac and which was Windows, and he answered that the Japanese side of his brain was like Windows because there are more rules, virus software you have to run and so on, but the English side is like the Mac because it’s more “free.” Interesting.
I wonder about my daughter sometimes, though. If my son has a dual-booting OS with Japanese and English sides, my daughter seems to be American all the way. The Japanese Ministry of Education is trying to be more effective at teaching Japanese kids English, so now all Elementary School kids get a few hours a week with a native speaker AET. Despite having 40 of her non-bilingual class- mates surrounding her, my daughter has no problem with conversing naturally with this teacher, a very un-Japanese attitude to have. One important mechanism in society here is enryo (EN-ryoh), which means to avoid doing things that will inconvenience others, and deferring to those who are older than you. But my daughter regularly does the impossible, turning kids who are older than her (and thus, her senpai) into friends, treating them as if they were the same age and thus eliminating the barrier between them. This is a rarity in Japan, a country where you use (slightly) more polite language when talking to someone who is your senior. She makes friends with kids she doesn’t know, too, and when she was smaller and took baths with us in the men’s onsen, my son and I would watch and see how long it would take her to organize the other kids in the bath and start playing games together. While there are occasional issues of “TPO” (a convenient Japanese word which means “time, place, occasion”), my wife and I totally support my daughter’s desire to be an American girl in Japan.
Remember that J-List is loaded to the gills with great 2007 calendars printed for the domestic market, but available to you through us. The calendars feature large, poster-sized pages with gorgeous glossy printing, and they’re a great way to bring a bit of Japan into your year. We’ve posted new stock of some of our most popular calendars, including Yuko Ogura, Bleach, Naruto, Evangelion, Rozen Maiden and this year’s smash hit, Domo-kun! Why not browse our calendar selection now and find some great items for you or those on your gift-giving list this year?
