Deciding What Matters

Making It Home

My recent decision to move my family back to Japanhas been met with tons of positive support and good wishes. For this, my wife and I are extremely grateful. The decision at the time was not an easy one.

There have also been those who, albeit with the best of intentions, have questioned the wisdom of our return, particularly with three young children. I don’t resent the questions; I’m not offended by the concerns, necessarily based on information that is debatable. We don’t know ourselves just what the present situation is, what needs to be done or what the future holds. No one does. Even the so-called experts disagree.

We saw in Fukushima the radiation meters – microsieverts per hour, displayed digitally on machines posted in parks, on school grounds and throughout the center of town. We read updates in the newspaper, day after day. We stared at the spectrum of opinion offered up in cyberspace, mostly from people thousands of miles removed from the reality those they are supposedly educating are living with every day.

Amid all this, we saw the people of Fukushima going about the business of living.

This is, simply, what my wife and I have decided to do.

For the first time in our married life (not counting our 6-month European dream in 2007) we have decided, with no external demands, where to be. For her job as a teacher with the Fukushima Board of Education, through the uncertainty following the quake, for an opportunity that didn’t quite play out as we’d hoped, we’ve always deferred to circumstance in the esoteric yet very real matter of choosing who or what would steer our ship as we sailed an ocean with countless ports we might like to see.

We got knocked around a bit.

Now there is no one on deck but us.

It would be wrong to claim nothing influenced our decision to move here. But the determinants, the deciding factors, came from within. First and foremost, we wanted our kids to spend a few formative years in Japan. The practical path from a financial point of view would have been to go back to Fukushima where, after seven years of continuous maternity leave, my wife could go right back to work. We both have friends who never left town, certain (perhaps with a dash of hope mixed in) that there was never any measurable threat to their families’ well-being. According to some sources they are correct. Still, in our hearts my wife and I didn’t feel moving back to Fukushima Citywas the right decision for us.

So we find ourselves among the mountains of Nagano Prefecture– in the ‘belly button of Japan’ as some like to say. I lived here in Matsumoto once before, during a three-month teaching assignment with my first Japanese employer. I always told myself I wanted to return.

With a little bit of digging we found a house, on the eastern fringes of town, among picture-perfect rice fields, welcoming neighbors and the gently permeating aroma of the surrounding vineyards. I catch up with old friends, still around from eleven years ago, and see in them a sign that this is indeed a good place. My wife has made many new friends already. Some have themselves come from Fukushima.

I think of all the things I’d like to accomplish in the four years we plan to live here. Some are grounded in practical reality; others are entirely self-indulgent. Between these two extremes await the children we are here for, and the things that would mean most to them.

Within the constraints of time must we make our decisions.

In these times, ours is exactly what they will be.

 

Car Shopping in Japan

Treat Bags, Toys & Free Beer

My wife and I walked through the sliding glass storefront doors, our kids not trailing us so much as swarming around us like a nebulous cloud of sweet-smelling humanity. The people working looked up, all of them at once, and greeted us with a rousing chorus of ‘Irrasshaimase~!’ A young girl with a pony tail as crisp as her white blouse and black skirt ensemble walked over, bent slightly at the waist in that subtle and ubiquitous display of deference, and offered us a string of niceties like flower petals laid out at our feet.

Japanese hospitality never gets old.

Her beaming smile was genuine and steady and, outside of Japan, a rare attribute for 8 bucks an hour. She continued her bowing, bobbing show of polished civility as she led us to our table. Not waiting for us to be seated, she produced out of nowhere a pristine faux-leather-bound menu and proceeded to ask us what we would like to drink.

My boys shouted in tandem – ‘Melon soda!’ – and headed for the foam-padded play area in the corner. Their little sister followed, focused only on the red slide. My wife asked our waitress something about tea. I stood next to her, looking around at the other people sitting and drinking at their tables, and wondered what the hell was going on.

I’d never been to a car dealership in Japan. I now go to them every weekend.

My wife had a friend who worked at this wonderfully endearing Honda showroom. They had, we were told, several used minivans among the new cars that made up the vast majority of their inventory. And we needed the space of a minivan rather than the sensible practicality of a regular car thanks to that third child over there, that twenty-two pound crawling, screaming, drink-spilling machine tumbling backwards down the red slide over in the corner.

Our waitress served us our drinks, placed three little bags of candy next to my kids’ glasses, then smiled some more as she commented on how cute our screaming twenty-two pounder was. Remaining bent over, she backed away from our table as if we were royalty, leaving us to enjoy in peace what would be the perfect amount of time before my wife’s friend appeared out of nowhere and greeted us with a smile and a comment about how cute our screaming twenty-two pounder was.

We were summarily told that they only had two used vehicles on the entire lot. This would have elicited a few sarcastic words out of my mouth except (a) they were so polite about it, (b) they’d just given me free coffee, and (c) Japanese people do not get the concept of sarcasm.

The two sort-of (for Japan) largish almost-mini-SUV-type cars they had were both perfect microcosms of man-made Japan: clean, orderly and entirely too small. One had a DVD player. The other came with a set of snow tires. Neither had room in the back for a bicycle.

My wife suggested buying one of them because her friend had shown them to us. I had other ideas and went back inside for a refill on the coffee.

On our way out of the showroom the entire staff sent us off with a rousing chorus - ‘Arigatou gozaimashita~!’ - while our permanently-smiling waitress handed my kids fireworks. For our parting gifts my wife and I got pocket-sized packets of tissues.

 

...And so we search on...

Down the street we visited a Toyotadealership; the same scenario played out except there were no refills on the coffee and the play area was noticeably and quite thoughtlessly small. My boys didn’t care; they are happy to fight over stuff no matter what size. My girl climbed up and tumbled off a rubber rocking horse.

They had two used vans that seemed much more suited to our needs. ‘Can we see them?’ I asked in abrupt, coffee-stained Japanese. I like to jump into the conversation when the questions are easy and the answers are predictable.

‘No, I am sorry,’ the man said.

No?

No, we couldn’t, as they were both presently on a Toyota lot in Koriyama, an hour south.

My kids got more fireworks on our way out. My wife and I each got a fan.

At our third place, a Daihatsu dealership, we never even made it inside. My wife very nicely accosted the salesman hurriedly crossing the lot as if he had something to do and was trying to avoid contact with us, because he would then be obligated to offer us as much of the rest of his day as we wanted – and would have to smile and be polite through it all. My wife, although she is Japanese, does not think of these things and tends to accost people.

Daihatsuland had a few used cars that were too small and one van that, surprisingly, was much too big. Before letting us go, perhaps relieved that we were not going to be taking up the rest of his day, our salesman ran inside and came back out with a proper-sized box of tissues for us. My older son is mature enough not to say things like ‘Don’t we get fireworks?’ My younger son is not. My little girl reached for my shorts, missed and fell down.

That evening my wife, either suddeny prone to giving up or simply bent on being nice, suggested again we get one of her Honda friend’s vehicles. I said we should go to the Nissan dealership the next day. I was not about to spend the next four years cramming our growing kids into a back seat the size of a carton of Cup Ramen.

Our guy Takagi-san at the Nissan lot, after letting us finish our drinks, showed us several used vans. He also managed to ignore the one van that was perfect for us; perfect within Japanese parameters at least.

 

Eventually he stopped talking to my wife about those other vans and came over to me.

Back inside I slouched in my chair and sipped more free joe while my wife tossed all kinds of questions at Takagi-san. When she was done I told him that the rotors and the muffler were rusty and the tires looked a bit worn. While he was outside checking everything out I snagged another coffee. Then I finished off my kids’ lemon sodas and dug into their candy bags while they continued knocking each other around the wide, cushiony play area that not even my daughter could get hurt in - which meant she was compelled to climb up on the foam wall border and fall over onto the linoleum floor.

 

Well I know what I want...

Despite the egregious lack of a DVD player I was giddy about buying this van. Because Takagi-san and his bowing, smiling, flower petal polite co-workers were running a campaign wherein every new vehicle purchase came with a very special gift.

‘Come this way,’ he said (handing us three crisp, unblemished Nissan umbrellas as it has started to rain) and led us over to a side office the size and shape of a trailer home. There he showed us a table with three gifts to choose from, a thank you for choosing Nissan, rusty rotors and all.

"Honey, you drive."

I already knew what they had on offer. I knew exactly what I was taking home.

‘I’ll take the case of beer,’ I said.

‘Good choice,’ said Takagi-san, handing me my prize.

The Japanese have no sense of irony.

Our new van has so far performed admirably, taking the five of us and all our stuff up over the mountains of Fukushima, down the Sea of Japan coast and over the mountains of Naganoto our new home here in Matsumoto, where they don’t know me and I am able to make the rounds at the car dealerships all up and down Route 19.

Until around October when I’ll have to start motorcycle shopping.