I have managed to learn sufficient Japanese to get by in daily life without undue difficulty. By listening to the soundscape around me I have acquired a somewhat random collection of terms and phrases. For example, there are several ways to ask for a bill/check in a restaurant. My standard phrase to ask for the bill in a restaurant was for a long time “okanjō onegaishimasu.” But I hear my son John who speaks Japanese well ask for the “okaiki.” And Ryōka, John’s partner, taught me to ask for the “denpyo kudasai.”
In a society in which politeness and deference are important, it is not surprising that there are many ways to say thank you. The basic starter is “arigato.” Politer is ”arigato gozaimasu.” And then there is “arigato gozaimashita [the past tense of gozaimasu].” If you want to lay it on a bit thicker, you can precede all these phrases with “domo” (“domo arigato gozaimasu” and so on). Another means of expressing thanks is “okagesama” (thanks to you or by your grace). I may well discover more variants of gratitude yet
The most fiendish challenge for a non-Japanese speaker is numbers, for there are multiple numbering systems depending on the kind of object you are counting. When I travelled on business, the most useful system was the one I had been told was for ordering food and drinks in a restaurant or café. For a long time “hitotsu, futatsu” (one, two) sufficed, while “mittsu” (three) occasionally was required. Since our numbers increased to seven this year, I resolved to learn one to ten, and to learn another common numbering system which begins with “ichi, ni san” (one, two three).
However, in the heat of the moment the appropriate word does not always come to mind. I also notice that those I speak to did not correspond with the same word. For example, on our arrival at Haneda airport, I proudly ordered two Limousine Bus tickets to Ikebukuro (“Ikebukuro made ni onegaishimasu”), but the lady who sold me the tickets responded with “nimae”. John explained that this is the correct form for a flat object such as a ticket or a sheet of paper.
When we decided to order lunch from the Yakitori King (a grilled chicken takeaway) the number only sprang to mind after I had resorted to holding up the correct number of fingers. I made up for this by reciting one to ten using the “hitotsu” system, which drew a round of applause from the kind people behind the counter. However, when I told John the story, he told me that I had used the wrong numbers anyway because, although kebabs are food, they are long objects.
I have had one moment of triumph in a bakery which sells a delicious rye bread, called 61 for some reason. To construct 61, one starts with six (“roku”) followed by “juu” (ten) and then “ichi” (one).
Our son Chris, who has just experienced Japan for the first time, and who speaks excellent Mexican Spanish, commented that the Japanese seem never to stop speaking. He was referring to the waves of verbiage that greet a customer in a shop, café or restaurant. It all begins with “irasshaimase” (welcome), in a chorus as staff echo the first call. Then there are the repeated offers of thanks for placing your order, completing and enjoying your purchase: the various riffs on “arigato” repeated several times, along with other phrases that I do not understand.
For a Spanish speaker, some aspects of Japan’s complicated language are gratifyingly simple. Verbs have only one form for each tense, and there are no pronouns. So while students of Spanish have to learn six forms of verbs for every tense, plus a large number of irregular verbs, students of Japanese need only learn that “desu” means to be/is, “wakarimasu” means to understand, and so on. For speakers of Spanish the stress placed on a particular syllable carries meaning: “hable” (stress on the first syllable) means speak up, while “hablé” means I spoke. In Japanese the importance of stress is replaced by the vital role of the short and long vowel. For example “obasan” (short a in the second syllable) means aunt while “obãsan” (long a) is grandmother.
Japanese has many homophones, words pronounced identically or similarly, perhaps with slight differences of tone, but written with different characters. A restaurant owner taught me that “kaki” means oyster, while “kaki” means persimmon when the finally syllable is pronounced with a slightly rising tone. Other meanings of the same syllables include (according to Google): fence or hedge, summer, inflammation, fire hazard or open flame.
An inescapable part of the soundscape of moving around Toyko are the announcements (generally in female voices) and jingles (known as melodies) that one hears constantly in train stations. As we enter our local station on the escalator, an announcement in Japanese only in a high-pitched female voice plays constantly. I have as yet succeeded in deciphering only the first phrase: “o nori kudasai” (please ride …). If one concentrates, it is possible to decipher the most frequent announcements after numerous hearings. For example, on the Yamanote line, when a train approaches the next station, the announcement is (I think) “o-deguchi wa hidarigawa/migigawa desu” (the exit door is on the left/right). This announcement reminded me of a former Macmillan colleague in Tokyo, Mr. Deguchi. The imminent arrival of a train is heralded by an announcement beginning with ”mamonaku” (imminently, shortly).
On the platform, the imminent closure of the doors is signalled by a Japanese only announcement “dōr ga shimarimasu” (the doors are closing) accompanied by a melody. There are thought to be hundreds of melodies heard every day by millions of people on their daily journeys. Some musicians derive part of their income from composing melodies. For example, Mukaiya Minoru, a jazz keyboardist, has composed some 200 melodies that are played in more than 110 subway stations.
Melodies are chosen for a variety of reasons. At Kawasaki station, travellers can hear a 10 second departure melody from Sakamoto Kyū’s 1961 hit song Sukiyaki. The melody was adopted as a result of insistent lobbying by the Kawasaki chamber of commerce and other local organizations.
Apparently, Japan’s first railway between Shinbashi in Tokyo and Yokohama announced train departures with a drum and a bell. In 1951 Bungotaketa Station in Ōita Prefecture chose “Kōjō no tsuki” (The Moon over the Ruined Castle), composed in 1901 by Rentarō Taki (1879-1903). The song refers to a local castle. A proud resident bought a recording (vinyl in those days) and played the song over a megaphone when trains departed. Eventually, the record deteriorated, and by 1963 some 80 records had announced train departures. The recording has now been replaced by a recording of a local girls’ choir performing the song. However, the mass introduction of melodies seems to have come about during the “bubble economy of the 1980s. In 1989, the bell sounds at Shinjuku and Shibuya stations on Japan Railways’ Yamanote line in Tokyo were replaced by melodies. My son David tells me that one station introduced a melody from a song performed by one of Japan’s “idol” groups, but fans holding their phones to the speakers to record the melody caused such a nuisance that it had to be withdrawn.
Melodies also have an accessibility function. Various bird songs are played to inform the blind and partially sighted that they are approaching escalators and lifts. Apparently, they are also played to reduce tension for all travellers. Based on my observations of commuters rushing by, I am sceptical.
Our son John had told us that melodies are apparently randomly played across entire city areas. We heard such a melody during an evening walk home from Ekoda to Higashi Nagasaki. The time was approaching 6pm, so perhaps the music announced impending nightfall to the population at large.
It is, of course, perfectly possible for a non-Japanese speaker to cope with the basics of a visit to Japan without paying any attention to the melodies, announcements and daily interactions in restaurants, cafés and so on. Certainly, the great majority of Japanese passengers in Tokyo seem to be so absorbed in their mobile phones on the platform and the train that they surely pay little or no attention the melodies and announcements. But the sounds and language of life in Japan are an integral part of life and culture.
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| Haning the laundry Japanese style. |
Weather forecasts drew our attention. Japanese TV forecasters all use the same pointer to direct attention to the weather maps – a stick with a white ball on the end, A minor detail of Japanese weather forecasts tells one about a small detail of domestic life. Forecasts include a Laundry Index because most Japanese homes (perhaps for lack of space or possibly to conserve energy) lack a dryer for laundry (although they may have a dishwasher). Almost all Japanese homes have a small balcony, but this is not for sitting to enjoy a pleasant evening; rather, it is the location for the metal laundry bar and an array of equipment for hanging washing. When the Laundry Index is favourable, our neighbours’ balconies are filled with drying laundry.
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| Racks for hanging multiple items. |
These kinds of things give the daily life of a country its textures. They merit the attention of a traveller as much as the temples, shrines, gardens and other distinctive aspects of Japanese life.
At the urging of my family, I have installed on my mobile phone a programme called Google Lens so that we can “read” Japanese menus and other indecipherable text in Japanese characters. This has certainly been useful, but it has a number of limitations when it reads Japanese. If the text is in true Japanese order (vertical columns of text read from top to bottom), the English is presented vertically on its side and is extremely tiring or impossible to read. Panels of text in museums are read with difficulty because the screen cannot take in and display translations of a complete line of text. Again, reading becomes very hard. When the programme reads menus, it is not always clear which line of Japanese a line of English translates. Perhaps this accounts for the unexpected appearance of a plate of octopus sashimi in one restaurant, for example.
Occasionally, the programme reads the text phonetically, producing amusing results. One regularly finds in café menus “cafe ole,” although if cream is added it reads correctly as “cream cafe au lait.” And for some reason, the readings are not always stable; the programme seems to change its reading of characters unpredictably. For example, we visited a local museum devoted to an artist who had live in our neighbourhood. His biography in the leaflet we received with our tickets told us, according to Google Lens, that Kumagai Morikazu was “attached to dog killing,” but then the programme changed its mind and informed us that he opposed cruelty to animals, and particularly liked cats.
When we visit a historic building or museum, a helpful member of staff or volunteer sometimes uses a mobile phone to translate into English what our guide is telling us in Japanese. Some of these programmes speak in irritatingly “helpful” voices, asking after each utterance “Is there more you’d like to know?” or “Am I boring you?” While we learn things we would not otherwise have known, the guide clearly finds the process hard work. We respond with profuse thanks and bowing.
And I must not forget to mention the elderly gentleman who serves the food in a nearby noodle restaurant. We occasionally encounter him making a home delivery on his bike, holding the handle bars with his right hand, and balancing on his left a tray with a bowl of noodles, soup and pickles. As he weaves his way through the narrow streets of Higashi Nagasaki, he somehow maintains perfect balance.
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