Happy Anniversary!
ー周年[いっしゅうねん]おめでとう(isshunen omedetou）
As of today, July 30th, exactly one year ago, I flew into Kikuyo, Kumamoto from Tokyo and began my new life in Japan. I am remembering my wonder of a world full of fish and strange vegetables. A world where people with beautiful black hair live in paper boxes, contemplate nature and love cartoons. A yin-yang world of zen mysteries and contradiction, an ancient world of stoic warriors and a nascent world of technological exploits, living harmoniously together. Everything I dreamed was true and yet not; vastly different yet strangely similar.
I am recalling all the things that shocked me, and wondering if I would have been discouraged to know the amount of knowledge I would be forced to attain। Was there a time when I couldn’t read? Some of my misunderstandings came back to me when my brother Jake came to Japan for two weeks. I got on the bus, grabbed a ticket and in passing told him to grab a ticket too. He didn’t hear me, and was trying to pay a machine that gives out tickets. How could he not know that here in Japan, we pay after we leave the bus according to our ticket number? How else would we properly pay for the amount of time spent on the bus? Is that not common sense?
Being treated so well here, despite my social handicaps, makes me wonder about our collective treatment of immigrants in America. From what I know and have personally experienced, I have come to the conclusion that we have much to live up to in the Japanese treatment of foreigners.I have a tremendous amount of respect for immigrants in America, and immigrants anywhere for that matter. Many things that we take for granted (food, culture, protocol, societal norms, etc) aren’t what they seem and aren’t necessarily the best way of doing things. Something that I will take back with me is the knowledge that I don’t know what I don’t know, lest I think I am smarter or better than anyone else because they have an accent, can’t read, or have different ideas. When I meet an immigrant in the future, I will greet them as equals and wonder what cup of knowledge they brought with them, and how I can drink some of it.
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance. – Confucius
