Dare wa Oni? Showa Day Celebration!

Today was a national holiday in Japan called Showa Day (Showa no hi).  It is a celebration of former Emperor Showa’s birthday, and all the ryuugakusei (foreign students) at my university didn’t have any classes.  The regular Japanese students did have classes, but I received a text from my home visit sister to meet her after her morning class for a Showa BBQ with her mother’s family.

After spending the morning attempting to figure out internship stuff for the summer (a pile of stress in itself when you are juggling time differences and business schedules), I met Ai at the station gate in Kyobashi.  By this point Ai and I have an interesting way of communication.  I typically stumble through my sentences—half in Japanese and half English–and Ai will feed me Japanese words and reassurance.  Ai speaks to me in English–plugging in Japanese and Osaka-ben (Osaka Japanese dialect) occasionally–and I adjust her English pronunciation and grammar when necessary.

We took the JR-Osaka Loop Line to Tsuruhashi, then switched to the Kintetsu Line to Nara.  It’s a long ride down to Nara, and we didn’t get off the train until the very last stop.  She asked me questions about WWII–which turned into an interesting conversation.  She is taking an economics class and they are currently on economics in 1940–and while it is centered on economics in Japan, there are obviously a lot of outside influences.  Ai told me that in school they read Anne Frank’s Diary, and she seemed to know the basics of WWII and what occurred, but we spent a long time discussing the reasons the war happened.  When it comes down to it–WWII had a lot of its roots in Germany’s poor economy…which is an interesting thought.

Once in Nara, Ai’s aunt, five cousins, and a young friend of their family, picked us up from the station.  Japanese cars are wondrous things.  Every single one of them have a GPS navigation system installed in the dashboard–usually with an antenna so that it also picks up television stations as well as radio.  When you put the car into reverse it also shows a video feed of the back of your car–so you can see exactly what you are doing as you park.  We watched Spongebob Squarepants in Japanese (and the voices are strangely identical…minus the whole language thing).

We arrived at Ai’s grandpa’s house where they were already ready for the BBQ to start.  The house itself was a fairly traditional Japanese house (unlike Ai’s house–which is mostly modern with a few Japanese features).   There were wooden and paper sliding doors and tatami mats, as well as a shrine where her grandpa kept a photo of his late-wife.  Outside in the front-yard, a small piece of land about 12 feet in width and 30 feet in length, they set up what looked like a makeshift BBQ grill.  It was a medium sized metal box with vents and a grill plate on top, which they filled with cinders and lit.  Ojiisan (grandpa) was in charge of the food and as plates and plates full of meat and vegetables came out from the house, he used tongs and long chopsticks to grill them.

The amount of food competed with my own family’s parties.  They grilled beef, pork, squid, chicken, sausage, corn, potato, sweet potato, cabbage, and rice.  From the grill we picked food off with our chopsticks and dipped it into our bowls before eating.  They had sweet and spicy sauces to choose from–personally, I went with the sweet stuff.  It was all so very delicious!

While we ate the children ran around, collecting bugs and playing in an empty field nearby.  Ai’s three aunts, two uncles, grandpa and myself had broken conversation–again, half in English, half in Japanese.  Most of her family does not speak any English, but with the few things they do know and Ai as a translator we were able to communicate fairly well.  I was told recently that the key to comprehending a spoken foreign language is to find at least two nouns and one verb in a sentence.  From there you can usually figure out a general meaning…now if only my vocabulary were bigger.  Still, I was pretty happy when I could follow the conversation fully, and while my Japanese usually comes out hesitant and slow, it was really fun.

At one point we were discussing the different types of sounds animals make.  I think it was because they were grilling chicken and they made a chicken sound–“ kokekokko.”  They wanted to know if it was the same in America.  When I told them in America we say, “cock-a-doodle-doo” it elicited a long laugh and about five minutes of trying to teach them to make the “dle” sound.  As a side note, in Japan dogs go, “wan! wan!“, cats go, “nyaa! nyaa!“, and the mouse goes, “chuu! chuu!” Just goes to show even animals speak a difference language here. =P

After we finished BBQ deliciousness Ai and I joined the children in the field.  While the younger girls were weaving flowers together I showed everyone how to whistle using a blade of grass between my thumbs (something my grandma showed me when I was little).  I was then crowned with the girl’s ring of flowers.  While I could not always understand what they were saying to me, they were all so very cute!  They are all younger than ten years old–all boys except for two.  The youngest is Hyo-kun–who is about 1 1/2 years old and adorable.

We were called back inside for green tea and cake.  They got out the good tea used for tea ceremonies and we all got to try whisking the powdered green tea in our cups–which turns it frothy.  The family bought pre-wrapped cakes to go alongside the tea, each one delicately decorated and delicious.  Mine was chocolate with raspberry filling.  After we ate I tried my hand at communication with the adults again.

I find that I am asked about my age and the age of my family members a lot.  I was even asked to guess the age of everyone in the room, which I always find awkward.  They tell you to be honest and you’ve got it ingrained in your head that if you somehow guess older than they really are–you’ll be incredibly rude.  Every guess I gave was a good 10 years younger than their actual ages…maybe I’m just bad at guessing? 😉

In any case, age seems to be important here.  Everyone wants to know how old my parents are, and also my two younger brothers.  That they are younger than me is also stressed, as there is no actual word for “brother.”  You have to settle for “younger brother — otouto” or “older brother — oniisan.”  Age is just another way of establishing hierarchy within their relationships.  Japan is all about knowing who is higher up on the chain, and in a lot of cases that seems to be determined by age–even by a single year.  At school freshmen speak to seniors with respect, using a form of Japanese that is honorific and humble–something called keigo.

Ai and I joined the cousins for a game of tag after our conversation.  They don’t call it tag, but something along the lines of “oni.” An oni is a devil or monster of sorts, and so instead of being called “it,” you are called “oni.”  When we weren’t sure who was the “oni” we would call out, “dare wa oni?” –who is oni? It was a blast!

This past week in class we have been learning to speak in casual Japanese, so I also got the chance to use a lot of it with the kids.  Ai also taught me that in Osaka-ben, instead of saying, “nani shiteru no?” to casually ask, “what you are doing,” you can say, “nani shiten?”  Of course, we’ve been warned not to use Osaka-ben, because it seems extremely strange for a foreigner to use it.  Usually it elicits laughter from Japanese people.  It’s basically like we’re trying to speak like someone from the Kansai region…and…we’re clearly a little too white for that.  Regardless, I think it’s really fun to learn.  It also helps when I am trying to understand Japanese conversation.

When the sun went down we all packed back into the cars and headed to an udon restaurant for dinner.  Ai’s aunt and uncle then took Ai and me back to the train station and we headed home.  PHEW! What a fun, packed day.  To top it all off, I received an email from my advisor back home about my internship paperwork and the deadline has been moved to next week.  ^_^ It doesn’t get much better than that.