Japanese are not Germans after all

“Japan, land of samurais, Mt Fuji, geishas, sumo and sake. Am I missing any cliché Japanese thing here? Oh yeah, Jesus Christ! SUSHI! Right, land of sushi too. Well land of sushi, without the “too” cause it makes it sound weird, kinda like jujitsu, and… oh crap that too. Why do they have to be so well known and yet still manage to be so exotic. Stupid Japanese, well incredibly great Japanese, people that have permeated every inch of world culture, while adopting shinkansen speed modernity without betraying their colorful uniqueness. Ugg… sometimes I overdose on travel guides and their exoticist generalizing ways, my apologies.” Me – who else?

To me the Japanese have always seemed a little bit German. I know, I know, it sounds ridiculous, but think about it, come on, comply with me. They are extremely organized, efficient and orderly, everything is on time and accurately working. They are very serious people too, who also happen to harvest an incredible internationally known affection for beer. See how I’m not completely delusional? Doesn’t it all sound suspiciously German to you, if not German, at least, I don’t know: Germanish? So yeah they are not tall, white and blond, with women whose plentiful bosoms scream of meaty wurst. On the contrary they are short, oriental (which by some reason excludes them out of White Kingdom) and traditionally, black haired. Their women, with their tiny bones structures definitely speak more of itsy bitsy bites of low caloric foods like fish, than greasy sausages.
Still, with regards to people we (we the international community, we the tourists, etcetera, etcetera) have always associated both countries’ populations with two powerful and sometimes tenebrous words: purity and homogeneity; two words not really foreign to Japanese and Germans. Bingo, you got it, don’t you? purity, German, NAZI!!! Easy cake. If you can’t figure out that sequence I don’t know where you’ve been the last couple of years; Africa probably, or in Machu Pichu feeding llamas. But back to purity, the German association was easy, yet the Japanese are not so far away in terms of associating population and purity. It is well known that they have an incredibly homogeneous population (99% ethnic Japanese if you need the facts) and that’s the way they like it, thank-you-very-much. The less Koreans and Chinese coming to stay the better, and if invasion is possible: “weepee yey yey!” Which bring us to the sad stories of World War Two and failed aspirations of constructing continental empires: “Asia for the Asians”, but not really, just the Japanese; and “Europe of the pretty people”, but not really just no non-Arians aloud no matter what. Cute. Not.
However, this passed bunches of years ago, not even MTV had been born, so I don’t know why I bother with it. Both nations have been “rehabilitated” and suffered more than enough, some would say as direct consequence of their actions, needless to speak of atomic bombs or walls, right? Thus both nations have surpassed their militaristic tendencies and the subsequent catastrophes, to become highly popular well regarded nations, with successful economies and a decent amount of political power, even if still treated as possibly unpredictable adolescent states. In conclusion we’ve got in common: personality, population ideals, imperialistic tendencies and well known postwar catastrophes. Check, check, check… and check! Huh, don’t I feel satisfied.
I’m sure now you get the Japanese-German equation and you can’t help but marvel and gawk at my amazing brilliantness, but hey, don’t feel sad if you had never though of this before, I wasn’t born enlightened with this knowledge. Actually, if I really ought to be honest I wasn’t even slightly aware of it until I knew for sure that I was going to Japan, which more or less coincided with the 2006 Soccer World Cup in Berlin. That’s where my reveries of countries started being simultaneous, I wanted so bad to be in Berlin, to see those games live; and at the same time I couldn’t help thinking of what Japan would be like, being the first country in Asia I would ever visit. I guess that at some point along the way the reveries got all mixed together and I started putting Germans in kimonos and Japanese in blond braids.
Still, however wacky, inaccurate and subjective these cross cultural mutations and subsequent pseudo analysis may be, it did give me a basis from where to understand Japan. It was there to guide me, for example, in focusing more on learning the language than memorizing the maps, ‘cause again, they are very organized so they probably would have maps and signs everywhere. Maps that I knew I couldn’t dream to understand without some basic idea of Japanese.
So I made sure I had my “ohio gozaimas, ‘fill in blank’ doko deska?” memorized and I headed to Sannomiya Station in downtown Kobe. The trip from the port terminal where my current home took some deserved beauty rest was relatively uneventful; some Japanese people silently waiting for their stations and a bunch of SAS students being way louder than everybody. My German picture felt reassured. Yes they are orderly and very much for following rules and codes with an efficiency and respect unexpected of USA culture much less Latin. Yet they seemed particularly use to tourists’ informality; the kimono and wooden sandal wearing man beside me was looking as he had already resigned to foreign incompetence in the cultural playground.
Sannomiya station, like most big stations, was crowded, vibrant and full of hallways and stairs, forming a perverse 3-D version of Chutes and Ladders for those initiated in its labyrinth ways. But in no way could I dare call it chaotic, there were maps everywhere, along with color coded signs politely translating to English some of its information. It didn’t take a lot of time to find that banner saying Osaka, Nara and (yes!) Kyoto. Up the stairs I went and the famous bullet trains, also known as Shinkansen, in Japanese, or shynkaynseen by Jill (my travel buddy), solemnly appeared in front of us. They came and went with a precision that kind of scared me. If a train was schedule for 13:41, at 13:39 it arrived and you could bet your life that at 13:41 it would leave. I knew they were Germanish, but not that German. I stood transfixed by this parade of punctuality, impossible in Porto Rico’s unwritten one hour late policy, until finally Jill woke me up with an arigaytow that thanked the policemen who so nicely indicated the train we should take.
Up the Hikari train we go and into our comfortable blue seats with expressionless yellow mustard lines. At 13:55 sharp the train departs and the voice of a Japanese lady sounds through the train’s radio politely saying information which to my non-japanese understanding ears sounds something like yadayadayada Kyoto, arigato-gozaimas, which is the polite way of saying thank you and one of the few world I know. But no worries, the color coded maps and diagrams were there fulfilling the effectiveness expected of them and I knew we were on the right train. First stop: yadayadayada Kobe station, arigato gozaimas; second stop: yadayadayada Nara, arigato gozaimas; third stop: yadayadayada yadayada yada yadayadayada Nihon-ni-shima, yadayada (this sounds weird) yadayada yadayada (what’s happening?) yadayada, arigato gozaimas. I look at Jill in search of an explanation that I know she doesn’t have. That was an unusually long announcement and we have been on this station for about two minutes already, a total waste of time considering it is a very small station and nobody is coming in. But nobody is moving, everybody stays on their sits looking bored or sleeping, never talking, which stops me from manifesting my anxiousness to Jill.
Whatever, I think, in Rome do like the Romans and in Japan like the Japanese, so I just try to look nonchalant and bored, trusting of the effectiveness of Japan Railway’s system. Yet ten minutes and one more announcement pass and people start looking a little bit less pacified, cautiously moving from one side to the other in their sits and shyly looking around, the Japanese way of restlessness I suppose. I look around me, but there’s no color coded map than can help me now. Some people get off the train, however most stay, though breaking the silent bow by consulting with whoever is near.
This change of behavior gives me the courage to scoop around for some friendly young face who may know some English with which to compliment my less-than-elemental Japanese in order to explain what’s happening. However, Jill beats me by finding and striking conversation with an American lady. Her fussy long brown hair and casual clingy clothes speak of long gone wild hippy days, and even though she doesn’t speak Japanese the mere fact of having a communication link with one more being is slightly comforting. While we are talking about what could have possibly happen to break the efficiency pattern in such a drastic way a young business man approaches us and explains that there was a car crash in one of the tracks and that’s why the train can’t go on. Thus we just have to wait for the area to be cleared and everything will go back to normal. Well, even in the best of systems some failures are bound to happen, but since we are talking about the preservation of order and traditional patterns, there are always systematic alternatives to solve the already exceptional insurgences of chaos. Wrong. We waited ten more minutes, already accounting to an incredibly inconceivable delay of 20 minutes and nothing. Five more minutes, one more announcement and people start getting out. I started following them since I thought that surely in the impossibility of clearing the tracks (that ought to be one big nasty crash) they had provided an alternate train to do the route. But people are heading in all kind of different directions and I, with Jill on my side, just stand there in the middle of the station looking totally lost, how very touristy of us. That’s when Jill gets the genius idea of stop following cliché presumptions and decides to just ask around and figure out what to do next. Luckily we spot the same English speaking Japanese business man, who briefly lets us know that we have to figure out how to get out of that little town by ourselves since the train, (can you believe this?), is just not working. We’ll probably have to get a local train, he says. Oh my, local train, make every single stop along the way. Yes, I know the little towns that we would have missed in the shinkansen now will be at our reach with the slow moving progress of our alternative transportation and that may be cute, an alternate way to discover the non iconic Japan, but oh, how so not German of them.