I was a Foreign Houseguest:Japan Chapter
Preface
I have not written a travel story like this and don’t know how wide the appeal will be. It has a different element of adventure than my other travel stories. And it may be more historical and tied to time and place than other stories. And as such, I expect it is less repeatable for travellers now. I would imagine such an adventure would require a trip, by oneself, to an out of the way place, certainly off a normal tourist route, as this was, when I did it.
I had other similar experiences, but they were all part of the same 1970–71 trip.
My trip starts here.
In 1970, when I left on what proved to be an 8-month around-the-world-trip, I was by myself. Two sources I consulted, one a professor, another a friend, both advised travelling alone. I was briefly tempted to invite a companion, but did not. Possible incompatibility with a travel companion was cited by those advising to go alone.
Two key experiences of travel are exhilaration and stress. We can share exhilaration with many, stress with fewer.
When I embarked on this trip I was young, 24, with sufficient physical presence to discourage most bent on mugging. My Indian studies professor said I was almost certain to be robbed. He further warned me to be careful about getting involved with women in countries visited. You may realize that you were set up when somebody comes busting in the door to rob you, he elaborated. Well we can imagine his experience. Despite considerable precaution, it seems I wasn’t completely immune, but that for a later story.
An advantage of travelling alone that came home to me were invitations into people’s homes. These can be rich experiences. During one stretch of nearly 50 days I did not have to pay for accommodation, since I was invited into homes and then passed on to friends in communities down the road. In the six-month portion, of the trip from Japan to India I was a guest about 60 nights and even in Europe four or five.
Since that trip, I have gone on a dozen or more two to four-week trips, several with my son, two with my daughter and others with a friend. I have had one invite and I was by myself in Kenya. With this other friend I knew we were compatible in lodging (a $5 hotel if available), mode of travel and distance to cycle each day. These issues can be key stressors.
A companion on a cycling trip seems more crucial because one has bikes and belongings that occasionally need to be guarded by one person, while the other is elsewhere involved. A second person can be of help on the road with mishaps. However, I have met some who cycle alone and I have done one solo cycling trip myself.
I think my first Asia experience was enhanced by more advice from, professor-of-the-robbery-while-making-time-with-a-woman. Instead of a backpack, he suggested a large canvas duffle bag, conventional grooming (haircut, no beard) and permanent press clothes.
At that time, a lot of “hippies” were on the move, unkempt, carrying rucksacks and expressing a kind of rebellion. Personally I liked and respected this. But my goal was to look ‘acceptable’ by the standards of the people of the countries I was visiting.
Another tip from the professor that proved useful was to spend some time at universities and introduce myself as a student. I was no longer an in-class student, but a travelling student of Asian studies, my most recent university major.
My first stop on leaving Canada at the end of September 1970 was Tokyo, Japan. And to toughen me up right out of the gate, along with expected culture shock, the airline sent my luggage on to Hong Kong.
So I had money, passport and little else for three days before the airline got my luggage back. And there was no deliver to hotel offer. I was required to come to the airport every day and ask. The English-Japanese language barrier for this helped me adjust to a travel challenge.
Instead of embarking on the standard pilgrimage to the famed historical sites south of Tokyo, I headed to Hokkaido, the northern most of the four main islands, for a reason I can’t recall.
A couple of days in the capital, Sapporo, I then, for some forgotten reason, headed northeast on the train to Asahikawa. There I decided to check out the university. While in the stands watching a tennis class, I was approached by a tall man who proved to be the instructor.
Following some conversation, he, Genkichi Immamura, invited me to his house. He was a widower with two teenage sons.
I mentioned he was tall. I estimated about 6'1”, five or six inches taller than average. And this disparity showed up in his house where he moved around with a constant slight stoop to get under the doorways.
As I embark on this story about being a regular foreign guest, I will outline some of the reasons this happened.
Japan, like most Asian countries has an homogenous population, and visible minorities in the form of western travellers were quite rare. In those days, foreigners were more noticed than they would be now and especially outside of the main centres.
There is a curiosity about visible minorities often accompanied by a desire to practice their school-learned English. And this is what led to many home invites in several countries.
As well as seeing the house, how they lived and some idea of values, one only had to be prepared to be a good guest.
Along with the house, I often got experiences or tours, I wouldn’t have thought of. The Immamura family took me to a large public bath. The highlight was a large hot shallow swimming pool that one enters after thoroughly washing. The men and women sides are divided by a wall high enough to obstruct the casual view of most.
Now the two teenage boys, like their father were quite tall. And they were kibitzing around..jumping and such. With a kind of metaphorical international nudge and wink to me they would jump up and get a quick glance over the wall. They invited me to avail myself of the opportunity. I don’t recall the father discouraging this play. But as a foreigner, on his best behaviour, in a strange country, I thought it best to resist this participation.
There was no spare bedroom in this house. So I would sleep in the owner’s room. There was one bed. So one of us would sleep peacefully on the floor while the other, guilt ridden, would get hardly any sleep in the bed.
So I, 20 years younger, had to sleep in the bed with the host on the floor with a bedroll. This was not a comfortable tatami mat situation.
Unbeknownst to me, plans for my further hosting were being made. I was going to Abashiri, a fishing town on the north coast of Hokkaido Island.
Before leaving Genkichi gave me ‘a gift for my father’. It was a Japanese doll, a delicate thing you wished you didn’t have to take care of at the beginning of a long trip. Anyway the doll was of an Ainu, the original indigenous inhabitants of Japan, and possibly the same ethnicity as those who came to North America 15,000 years ago. In the politically incorrect of the times they were referred to as “Japanese Indians”. What few there still were, mostly lived in Hokkaido. I actually did convey the doll to my father largely intact.
Anyway back to the story. This was Japan boonies. It had all been arranged I was going to be met at the train station by Mr. Hiroshi Terada. The station attendant would have summoned him. I was to be put up for a couple more nights.
Mr. Terada was a veterinarian by training and the manager of Japan’s largest mink farm. He housed me in my own little cabin and with his friends treated to a multi course Japanese supper, actually successive days. Each course was primed with more hot sake.
Now floor dwelling doesn’t suit me since I can’t sit comfortably cross legged. Mr. Terada detecting my squirming and discomfort, at the end of the meal he did something I imagine would not be acceptable in polite Japanese company. He leaned over and sprawled on his side on floor at the end of the meal and continued the socializing from that lying position. As such he was inviting me to get more comfortable.
The next day, along with his friend, Egi, he took me sightseeing around this small community. The following day he and Egi (also a mink farm veterinary) drove me three hours to meet my next arranged host, Dr. Suzuki and family…..wife and two teenage daughters, Yuria and Rori. That is when I learned that “ko” at the end of most women’s names referred to “woman” and was not actually part of their name.
They took me the rest of the way to their city, Kushiro on the south coast of Hokkaido. I was feted with western cuisine at the Imperial Hotel, the most luxurious establishment the city had to offer.
The next day the daughters took me again to the same hotel for Japanese cuisine.
A friend of the family, an ornithologist asked if I could speak to his class in another town and that would require leaving early the next day.
I agreed without properly considering that Yuria, the 17-year-old and elder daughter, had asked me four times about going to her school. I had become a ‘show and tell’ attraction. However, her father in Japanese, told her that the other commitment was more important and there wasn’t enough time for both.
And now Yuria was insisting that I not go to her school in deference to her father’s desires, even though I persisted that I could do both. Although yielding, she seemed nearly in tears.
The next day, when I was to leave with the ornithologist, I got a private word with him and explained the dilemma. He took me to the high school for an hour.
The high school mathematics class had about 40 students (only five girls), and all would be university bound. The main tenor of the conversing practice was “do you have a girlfriend” and “do you like Japanese girls”.
After that I went with the ornithologist for the several-hour drive to his community, Bibai, near Sapporo. He worked in an agricultural college of 200 students, including one female, where I again talked to students through three question and answer ‘lectures’. Apparently I was the first “foreign” guest the school had had. I was put up in the school’s guesthouse. Essentially I had gone around the island and been hosted all the way.
The next day I was driven to Sapporo by the dean and his son where I had a standing home invitation offered before my sojourn around the island.
Now I will go back a week or a little more, to the beginning of this ‘invitation interlude’. I had been told repeatedly how shy Japanese, especially young women, were. And there was a ready phrase, that I had learned describing this, ‘sujibon agassi’ roughly meaning shy young woman.
Despite this reputation I was astonished how many young women, usually students, overcame this inhibition in order to try ‘their’ English.
The first and most memorable one here was an office ‘girl’. And ‘girl’ may be the correct word. When she became a ‘woman’ she would no longer be allowed to work and would be at home doing wifely duties.
Anyway she waylaid me in the street to practice English, but couldn’t stay long because she was on a work errand and had to get back. But she got me to promise to wait until her work was over and she deposited me in the Hokkaido Prefectural government building. It was late afternoon.
But I was vulnerable and another girl descended to practice English. Soon the original returned with three friends in tow. And the practice continued for about three hours before the participants started leaving.
The first one to “capture me” and the last to leave, Tashiko Yagihashi, gave me the address and directions to her workplace in both English and Japanese in the event I had any “free time”.
That led to my first home invite. This not to stay the night but to see another style of living. It came from Tashiko. I suspected, but didn’t actually know how rare that was. A young unmarried woman inviting a young man to her room was exceedingly rare and flirted with serious taboos. There were two factors that allowed her to skirt these. One was that I was a foreigner and the second, and most important, she brought a chaperone from her office.
Her tatami room (four or five tatamis in size about 9ft. by 9ft.) was big enough for one with their belongings. In her case, the big elements were her Japanese harp about two thirds the width of the room and her TV. She also had a sink and a one burner hot plate, a dresser and a book shelf.
She bought the TV solely for the purpose of watching a one-hour English conversation program at 6 am. She augmented this with three nights at school weekly, consuming one sixth of her monthly salary. She was so involved in study that she would postpone marriage for four years. Getting married meant she would have to stay home and quit learning.
The next day I had “free time” and went to her office and met her boss and teacher of English at the Hokkaido Fisheries Co-operative.
He was the most fluent speaker of English I had encountered and was a wonderful source to answer my questions.
Now back after a week or so of being hosted around the island of Hokkaido, I dropped into the fisheries co-operative.
I spent the last evening in Sapporo at the home of Naoyoki Tao and his young family.
Then I went south to see the noted historical sites of Japan. No more invitations came my way in the remaining three weeks in Japan.
It would be nice to brag that this story comes from memory. The outline does, but is augmented by a detailed journal account.
