The Flowers of Keiwha
Page 24
better or worse even though he was a year older.
That week began. TUSK was a little shy, not approaching as many people as he would have liked; but he was present at the lunch for both Wednesday and Thursday (first for Alpha’s promise, then for general social reasons regarding Farhome). On Tuesday, for campus orientation, he hung out with the Japanese crowd; they divided themselves into groups of two to five, although three very cute girls apparently found each other to form a very small cute girls clique; and other 8’s and 9’s were scattered thereabout. Despite Japanese behavior to form groups, only three of the girls formed some group at the orientation; the group included ICEPRINCESS, but TUSK kept his eye exactly on the center of things (which perhaps was too, in the end, strategic).
So this, then, would be the theme of things. TUSK would for 2.5 weeks (program is shorter this year), always position himself as close to center or off-center as possible; he learned mad Japanese, mad Korean, he saw as much as physically possible but the really exciting drama of last year would not occur. Everything would just be more subdued. Yet here was also potential for things, for it allowed insight into what was going on. 3-cute girls clique bump into appreciative university boy photographers and allow their pictures to be taken; students generally hang out with their classmates at first and then explore; little peas in a pod do spend some of their time looking around and more generally pay attention to themselves. Then the slow drifting away of the crowd.
There is that problem, of course, in social observation or sociology even itself of merely pointing out the obvious. The “well, when two elites meet, oftentimes they recognize each other’s eliteness, but they don’t necessarily become friends.” True for USA, true for Japan. BARBIEDOLL and ICEPRINCESS out of the group of eleven or so fairly easily establish that they are the high-quality girls in the class, but despite their unique skill-set or university affiliations (BARBIEDOLL is studying at Keio), the two don’t become very close friends. Rather, they split up the atmosphere of the place; insofar as TUSK is there also; and then there is the “center” so to speak of the 2/1 class itself, which asserts itself in different ways first through Alpha, then to Farhome, then maybe even briefly to AJ-4 and even BARBIEDOLL, but then back to Farhome again, where it all ends up. Fortunately there is a Japanese-speaker there who is remaining completely silent about his ability; readership can now participate in a spy-exercise of sorts, listening in on the secret conversations of giggling Japanese schoolgirls who believe they are in the room with a monolingual English speaker.
"Think you might date him?”
"Nahh, I already have a boyfriend.”
"He looks young for 30.”
"Not my type…”
This was 2/1 as it played out; monocultural; monolingual, within a programme that was itself bereft of Americans, Germans, Danes. [The crisis had caught up with Fulbright.] South American Koreans apparently were present; an older British was there; but the sadly subdued tone of this section has to do with the completely inability to get a three-way culture free-for-all going. So goodbye Fasching! Goodbye Carnival! We are in the zone of the wabi-sabi, the utsukushii, the pretend-non-Japanese speaker. It was fun. The question was whether true chaos could be caused.
Tuesday: “You know, these cultures are kind of hard to understand. You could use somebody who really has the insight.” “Thanks, I think I understand these cultures quite well.” K-teacher: “Everybody get up now;” masculine-looking US-girl got up; wandered somewhere strange.
"Oh you’re British.” “You must be Korean.” “Thanks.”
"Watch out for this treat. It’s greasy.” “Abura.”
Tuesday TUSK found a good Japanese coat; he was already experiencing hypo-mania; he would need four hours of sleep all programme long. Wednesday in the morning he ate a sticky bagel and answered Alpha in written down messages. University affiliations came out. BARBIEDOLL was wearing a strange middle-aged woman different floral print and an odd medallion. ICEPRINCESS said, “embarrassing,” when TUSK looked at her at lunch that day. Thursday GOAT first lost face, coming into class fifteen minutes before it was going to end. There was something going on with a Korean boy, somebody at a coffeeshop, but everybody just thought it attention-seeking. The fat girls would just be the fat girls; although certainly there was differentiation between them; Farhome, who eventually become the sort of social centre, was first gently teased by TUSK and then became ‘kohai’ to BARBIEDOLL. Brillopad started low and just went lower. It was all of nothing, and nothing of another, and here the social observer, the obsessive and dreamer, would go on to note with all of his brain buzzing, the minutiae of such conversations as ‘what did you have for breakfast this morning.’ The sole significant classroom discussion to erupt was a plan to go out—as girls—to the sauna. TUSK was an add-on!
Since Rezeption team is of course not interested in bagels, donuts, coffee and other such topics (and even Tuesday lunch, Wednesday lunch; Friday class trip to Lotte world) generated the tiniest of incidents (ICEPRINCESS shakes her head at TUSK but is it deliberate, subconscious, or misinterpretation twice-fold?), actually text must resort not so much to absolute reporter-ship as psychological diving. For there is keen material here; it’s just a matter of presentation and understanding.
Let us say that "what this was about" was conventionality. Like a whole other lot of language programs, there was a flurry for everyone to get to know each other at the beginning, and then a definite lag for Week 4. TUSK, who managed for 72 hours to hide his knowledge of Japanese, heard little surprising. But he noticed, in his silence, that Alpha wrote her nametag with straight brush-like strokes; it marked a conservative writing teacher. Farhome went the other extreme, using bubble-letters and her language as well was different. Most of the girls had distinct dialects; one could tell Fukoka from Nagoya from Osaka. But Farhome had an aggressive, 'gyaru' tone; it seemed almost non-Japanese. Called on to demonstrate his Japanese, TUSK first pointed this out; the girls were amused; they were completely unaware of how they did or did not come off to the foreigner's eyes.
Alpha and Rockstar are both immediately friendly to TUSK; ICEPRINCESS is the other extreme. Here in the breakdown of trilingualism, TUSK accidentally smiles confusingly to AJ-4, whose immediate response, a hand up in the air, is indicative of certain traditional Japanese attitudes. This reaction, once elicited, is then consciously repeated by AJ-4 as an explanation of her internal psychology. The girls generally avoid AJ-4; at once point it seemed Brillopad would be formally in her orbit, but that did not happen. TUSK has introduced himself with a Zainichi name; he then resented whoever adopted it too easily.
There was that weird vibe of Tuesday's lunch and Wednesday's lunch, with code-switching resulting in ICEPRINCESS rapidly blinking (but she had this habit, it would turn out, regardless); there was the fact of GOAT wearing the same stylized blue-doll coat day after day. The differences, even to the degree of calling GOAT 'working-class,' would be evident only to the Japan observer; to the outsider, they all seemed the same. Yet if Farhome refused to kiss her elongated bear soft pencil case proferred by TUSK, yet her accent would be insulted by the sparely-formed teachers of 2/1, who for the first time in this programme are understand to be manipulating the process as well. Their introduction of TUSK accelerates information flow; their commentary about him sets the pace. Yet tension and characterization go both way; as Week 4 will expose, certain dormant sentiments are recognized for exactly what they are.
"Girls only," said BARBIEDOLL.
"No worries," said TUSK.
"Okay, finished, thanks!"
"Cheers."
They ate at a rolls-place Tuesday, at which point Rockstar and ICEPRINCESS, already closer, briefly consider going to Wii with TUSK. Wednesday brings an underground place; Thursday morning reveals Alpha smells of kim-chee. (BARBIEDOLL discreetly sniffs herself.) Then on Friday everybody goes to LotteWorld.
It is everything and nothing at once. To put it all in perspective can be done by saying absolutely nothing
at all.
"And my boyfriend..."
"So do you love him?" (=ai, not koi or daisuki)
"Of course!"
Brillopad wears high-heels, almost keels over several times. TUSK puts out a gentlemanly hand.
"Well okay, who is up for dinner?"
"Me! Me! Me!"
Here BARBIEDOLL talks of One Piece. It's ironically hip.
Having covered much of the events of this year's crowd, it is now appropos to dive into personality analysis, which begins at Rockstar's east of Tokyo country roots and goes to TUSK's rapidfire commentary about Keio's clear cool-ness advantage over the stiff Todaists finally to end up somewhere along Ritsuko-2's wearing of a cartoon-scribbled sweatshirt. BARBIEDOLL is the knife-edge of this program, of course; she is presented here in U.S.-centric terms because otherwise she would be lost to view. To the naive or first-time viewer, she is just another one of those silly 'dyed-hair types;' who would have thought that she was the final person to finish the entrance exam, that she could just sit--sit and study--for as long as her brain commanded her to, that she went to the elite Peers' school before going to Keio, that she was also a literaturist?!
Imagine, if you will, a blonde-haired American girl from a top Virginia