Tokyo Notes and Anecdotes

After living and working in England, Iran and India, Bruce McCormack returned to Canada and settled in Montreal, where he got a Master's Degree in Applied Linguistics from Concordia University. In 1987, he headed off to Japan, just in time to catch the last years of the Japanese 'bubble economy.' He worked at a Japanese company and seven universities during his decade in Tokyo. He also did a lot of thinking and writing about The Land of Wa (meaning 'Harmony'); hence the thickness of this book. He loves to travel and has visited close to 30 countries. He currently lives in Victoria, B.C., on Canada's West Coast, where he writes, teaches, hikes, and sings in the Gettin' Higher Choir. As far as he can tell, laughter and singing are the best cross-cultural bridges we have for bringing people together across borders.

Preface

Japan is a remarkable country, and it's been very good to me. But blasting around like an overheated molecule in the pressure cooker of the Tokyo subway system does not come naturally to a Canadian used to blue sky and wide open spaces. Eventually, I began to feel like I was evolving into some kind of mutated hybrid rat/robot, rehearsing for the next sequel to The Fly.

I wrote Tokyo Notes & Anecdotes: Natsukashii because living in Japan changed me dramatically, and I needed to continually process what I was going through. I also realized that I wanted to share my often wonderful, sometimes zany and occasionally bizarre experiences, as well as the many changes in my feelings about Japan. But it's not just a book of my own impressions. It also includes those of many friends and colleagues I met and worked with during a decade in Tokyo.

On my trips back to Canada and the U.S., I always found that everyone - friends, acquaintances, barbers and bank tellers - was intensely curious about life in the Land of the Rising Sun. Most people on the West Coast knew someone who was working in Japan - a cousin, a neighbor's daughter, a friend of a friend - or they'd hosted a Japanese homestay student. They often hadn't read any of the excellent academic books now available on Japan's society and economy. Though they were very interested in all of that, the question they almost always asked was simply, "What's it like living there?"

This book is a long answer to their question. It's a chronicle of my journey - amusing incidents, everyday routines, reactions to inexplicable happenings, and wonderful encounters. It's also the story of my volatile evolution from infatuation through waves of culture shock, and on to a sense of acceptance and appreciation of a country and people I've grown very fond of.

Wonderful books have been written about life in rural areas of this great country by people who might as well have been on a different planet from me, so different are the stories we have to tell. In actual fact, many Japanese would probably say that Tokyo is not the Real Japan. That being the case, perhaps this is a book about the Unreal Japan - especially the one inhabited by a "gaijin" (foreigner) like myself. But I wasn't alone in this unreal place called Tokyo; thousands of others shared it with me, and our experiences were certainly real to us.

I trust these stories will give the reader a very real sense of what it's like to wander the subway labyrinths of this enormous techno-megacity and endure its horrendously cramped trains. I hope it will shed a bit more light on what it's like to live and work as a "gaijin" in this complex society, one in which you will always be an outsider, however long you stay. I trust it will convey some vivid impressions of Tokyo life, of what it's like to ride on its urban and social roller coaster, to come home utterly exasperated one night, and totally delighted the next.

I also hope it makes a contribution towards showing a Japan with a human face, a face that can be very hard for outsiders to see. T