The Melting World

Yesterday evening my family and I drove out, creeping our way instinctively through a blizzard, to the neighboring village of Higashikawa. We had been invited by a local NPO worker who said the townspeople wanted to speak with foreigners for advice about setting up a concierge system for incoming foriegn tourists who wished to hike Asahidake of the Daisetsu mountains.

Yet, not surprisingly (after ten years in this country I should have known better), after we arrived we were spaced out evenly (a man from Korea was also present), so we were about three to four Japanese people per adult foreigner.

I was asked how long I had been in Japan, in Asahikawa, what I did for a living, how old my son was, why he had a Japanese name, what my husband did, where I learned to speak Japanese, and whether I cooked Japanese food or not, etc.

In other words, the event turned into a “talk with the foreigner” event and in an hour and a half no one asked me any questions about what would be helpful for foreign tourists who wished to visit the National Park (and later my husband confirmed that no such questions were asked of him either).

Only Kazu, the organizer for the event, made one comment, in Japanese, somewhat related to the unmentioned concierge planning. He said that when foreign tourists came to the mountain in tour groups all went smoothly because the Japanese agent handled everything and made sure the visitors followed the rules. But when people from foreign countries visited independently problems occurred. He said that they couldn’t read the rules since they were written in Japanese, and thus, they broke many rules. I wanted to state the obvious, that the rules should be posted in other languages, but I held my tongue.

When we begged leave, my husband had a puzzled look on his face and I was reminded of why I normally declined such formal social invitations.

The only person who seemed to have a blast was our son, who had the rare chance to eat three taboo chocolate chip cookies, and he celebrated the windfall by circling the sedated adults who sat around the table as if he were an insane hornet.

On the way home, driving slowly on invisible roads covered with snow and with visiblilty limited to ten yards, I went to the verge of apologizing for dragging my husband and son out of our warm house, into a snowstorm, for light conversation with total strangers. Instead, I said that we could chalk it up as a cultural learning experience.

My husband said, “And we met some nice people.” “People we will probably never see again,” I added. And so, we chuckled about the evening, thinking that maybe they had met with us to warn us indirectly to follow the rules if we ever stepped foot on the mountain. Very happy to be heading toward home, I silently wondered if our hosts had felt the scheduled meeting a success?