What you put on the Internet really does stay on the Internet. Case in point: some articles I wrote seven years ago are still propping up the advertising links on a (now either defunct or totally fake) Japanese culture website. Thanks to the power of Google/hoongle search, these links appear on page one of a search for “Jodi Neufeld.” Nice to know that they live on, even after the site itself has spiraled into AdSense purgatory.

Here is the first article, which you can find in its original form here (although I don’t recommend it). You can look forward to reading the second article in a future post. Try to contain your excitement!

An encounter with Japanese businessmen – Lesson one in Japanese business practices

By Jodi Neufeld (c. Spring 2001)

“On Friday, thirty-six businessmen from Tokyo are coming to visit the university.  We need three tour guides to show them around before their conference.  Oh, by the way, they don’t speak any English.  Volunteers?”

It was sometime in the autumn of my sophomore year that I decided I was going to take the plunge and sign on for the university’s study abroad program in Kyoto, Japan.  I’d studied Japanese since my first semester at Colgate, and I found the Japanese language and culture more and more fascinating the further I progressed.  Progression…well, at least I hoped I was progressing.

Often the intricate kanjiand intuitive grammar structures still threw me for a loop.  But at this point in my college career I had it fairly set in my mind that Japanese would be one of my concentrations, and as my sensei (teacher) stared pointedly at me after asking for “volunteers,” I knew it was my obligation as a concentrator to raise my hand.

Cocky that I understood concepts like salaryman and keigo (a formal form of Japanese spoken in business situation or other formal occasions like weddings) I picked through my pocket dictionary the night before the tour for some key words and prepared to meet the gentlemen from Tokyo Electric Company, the largest supplier of electricity in Japan.

The next morning dawned like many at Colgate: dreary and wet.  Upstate New York is famous for its breathtaking fall foliage, not so famous for the gray, drizzly brand of weather which finds us when those leaves hit the ground.

As I put on my nicest business suit (having resolved the pants/skirt debate the night before with a coin-toss) I went over the stock phrases I’d drilled into my head: Watasi wa, Jodi Neufeld de gozaimasu.  Hajimemasite. (Hello, my name is Jodi Neufeld.  Pleased to meet you.) Sumimasen ga, watasi no nihongo ga heta desu kara, yorosiku onegai-itasimasu. (I’m sorry, but my Japanese is very bad, please excuse me.)  Somehow I had convinced myself that these two phrases, combined with a well-executed bow, would simply blow my guests away and set the tone for a marvelous little dialogue.

Two facts I managed to forget: first of all, I am not fluent in Japanese, and second, reading about Tokyo businessmen is a completely insufficient manner of preparation for actually meeting them.

The encounter begins

Things started off well, though.  I arrived early to the meeting place, where our guests had just finished breakfast.  A quick look around revealed jet-lagged faces and little in the way of smiles, but I had expected that and bowed politely and smiled to everyone who looked my way.  “Ohayo-gozaimasu!” I greeted them as cheerfully as any professional greeter in a Japanese department store.  I was quite pleased with myself for my politeness.

Next it was time to begin the tour.  We split up into three groups, each guide leading some twelve men, all of them wearing identical black suits, black ties, and deep scowls.  Still I was not deterred; I performed my well-rehearsed introduction and received an encouraging “Yosh!” as we headed out.  So far so good, I thought.

As the tour guide with the least proficiency in Japanese, I had been given the only translator traveling with the group to help me if I got stuck.  Thank goodness he was there, because the minute I started talking about the first building on our route, a large problem became evident to me: my lack of vocabulary.  Good grades on grammar quizzes really don’t help when you’re trying to describe the history and use of the administration building in Japanese.  The translator (I’ll call him Mr. Yamada) quickly became my crutch, relating my words (and hopefully not my embarrassment) to the group.  I berated myself silently as we moved along.  When I’d apologized for my bad Japanese, they had probably assumed it was a gesture of politeness.  Now we were all discovering just how lacking my Japanese was.

But I put this issue behind me as we walked (now it was starting to drizzle; one of the younger men held an umbrella over the translator’s head).  A year and a half of Japanese yields fluency to very few gaijin, and I was certainly not one of them.  More concerning to me as we walked along was the uniform mass of deadpan faces.  I knew these men were jet-lagged, just as I knew they were not likely to display their interest openly even if they had it.  But these guys looked bored.  I dug deep into my knowledge of the campus’ history and tried to tell them stories that would interest them.  They perked up a bit when I talked about the dormitory built by Colgate’s first students, who dragged the stones from a nearby quarry and completed the building as a physical education requirement.  They also seemed very interested when I explained that there were some one hundred trees from different parts of the world planted on the campus, but when I was unable to identify their scientific names as we walked by a few of them, they seemed to sink back into disinterest.

I didn’t know enough facts.  They wanted facts.  How many acres is the campus?  How far to New York City?  How much rain is there each year in this area?  How many volumes in the library?  I just didn’t know, and to my aggravation it was these things that most interested them.  Grasping at straws, I brought them to the Japan Center to observe a first-year lecture in Japanese language.  They stayed for five minutes and then filed out of the room without comment, leaving behind a very nervous bunch of freshmen.  Later, the Japanese intern who was also sitting in the room told me in outrage that the businessmen had actually made fun of the students in that classroom, remarking that they spoke poorly and could not manage the simplest phrase.

Our tour concluded (no small relief to me at this point) back at the administration building, where we had our picture taken and said our good-byes.  Mr. Yamada handed me a small gift.  “Thank you for that interesting and informative tour,” he said to me.

What went wrong?

Japanese politeness at its best.  I couldn’t believe that they found the tour anything but dull and inadequate.  The final blow to my confidence came next, when he handed me his business card.  It pronounced him the president of a translating company, somewhere I might be looking for a job in a few years.  I prayed that he wouldn’t recall my poor performance on the tour if I ever contacted him for an interview.  And of course I had come unprepared for the exchange of business cards—I had none of my own to give him in return.

Silently pronouncing myself a total failure, I thanked the group and retreated to my Japanese classroom, where my class was in progress.  When my sensei asked me how it went, I just shook my head and gave him an accusatory stare.  I felt he’d stuck me in a situation where I couldn’t possibly have felt successful.  He chuckled, giving me one of his “Buddhasmiles” as we the students in his in-group call them, and went back to the grammar lesson.

As he lectured I thought about the tour.  I had been prepared for everything that had happened—the facial expressions, my linguistic inadequacies, even the interest in factual information—so why did I feel so unsatisfied and disappointed?  The experience was a wake-up call.  Grammar lessons were not enough.  Reading books on culture was not enough.

Culture shock can occur even on our own turf, and that’s what happened to me that rainy day with the salarymen.  Even when we’re prepared for culture shock, it’s still just that—a shock.  I’m glad I had this experience before going to Japan, and advice I give myself now stems from a Japanese proverb that says “If you fall down seven times, stand up eight times.”  Perseverance is highly valued in Japanese society, and if my vocabulary and my pronunciation are still lacking when I set foot in Kyoto next fall, then certainly everyone will be very impressed with my refusal to let that stand in my way.  I am going to Japan, and whether I encounter salarymen, Zen monks, politicians, or soba shop owners, I will face them all with one word in mind: ganbaru.

En Route

Our trip to Rome began at 4:30 in the morning. These early morning flights let us enjoy a whole lot more sightseeing, but it’s hard to appreciate that when you get up in the middle of the night.

We hopped the airbus to El Prat and soon were Vueeeeeeling to Rome. The flight attendants spoke Catalan! Encomana en català indeed.

After sleeping through most of the two-hour flight, we arrive in Roma! We took the local railway to Termini Station, just a short walk from our hotel. On the way to the hotel, we noticed that the subway kiosks were selling boots and Prada bags. (I guess you have to have something in which to carry your newspaper?)

Our hotel was in a fantastic location in the center of the city. Since it was still very early, we left our backpacks and set out with map in hand. The kind receptionist had circled all the main sites on our map, with our hotel in the center of them all. Talk about convenient!

Vatican City: Meh

We decided to hit the Vatican first, mostly to get it out of the way. Good idea, since it was the most disappointing part of the whole trip. Okay, the piazza is impressive, but the museum? Big time waster. Two hours herding past miles of Catholic art to finally push our way into the Sistine Chapel (the only thing we were really interested in seeing). Once inside the chapel we couldn’t even appreciate it, as there is no talking allowed. Everyone is pushing and shoving, and the guards yell at you if you take a picture – even without the flash! Plus, after all the trudging around we were too exhausted to fully admire this masterpiece. For 14 € a head, I say save your money. You can examine the Sistine Chapel at your leisure on the good ol’ internet without anyone yelling at you.

(Sacred?) Cash Cow

Something even our two guidebooks didn’t warn us was that Roman museums and historic sites only accept cash. You cannot pay the (outrageous) entrance fees with a credit card. If you’re going to Rome, please remember to stop at the ATM on your way! Also feel free to map onto this anecdote whichever sinister back story pleases you the most. (So far we like money laundering or mafia “protection” fees.)

We wanted a snack, so we found a café near the museum (classic tourist mistake!). Twenty euros later, we had consumed a disappointing, doughey pizza and  two coffees. Lame! I should also mention that it was frigidly cold for most of the weekend. What’s that nonsense? First BCN, now Rome. The “Mediterranean” weather is overrated! (Just kidding, please come visit, I miss you!)

Holy Crap the Colosseum is Awesome

The marathon on Sunday was going to make visiting this landmark tricky, so we wanted to do it today. Also, well it’s the coolest part of Rome! After a confusing few minutes of disorganized group assignment (plus we had to scrounge for enough cash for the entrance fee), we joined a tour and learned about gladiators, lions, and mob mentality. Politics as usual, I’d say. I can think of a few bankers we could feed to the beasts…

It was just very, very cool to visit a place that has captured the imagination for 2,000 years. Although not much remains of the structure except its skeleton, it is still one of the most impressive things I have ever seen. You might wish that the government would restore it, but any attempt to do so would probably turn it into a charicature of itself.

After a quick bite at a street vendor cart, we wandered around the Palatine and the Forum. It’s just incredible to stand among all these historical ruins. I was really, really impressed. Don’t know what else to say.

At dinner time (post nap) we got lured by a wiley old man to try his local trattoria. The food was good (pasta and saltimboca for me, ossobucco for Òscar, followed by tiramisu) but the prices were a bit high. Plus, two American twenty-somethings were acting out their own sad version of “Sex and the City” at the table behind us, which put a damper on the ambience. Since two out of every three people in Rome on any given day are tourists, I guess the ambience was probably more realistic than what we had envisioned anyway. Tired but happy, we had an early night so we could rest up for our second day of sightseeing.

Stay tuned for Rome Day II: Gimeno Death March, Then Pizza!

Here are some rarely seen photos of my first trips to Barcelona.

1999 (senior year of high school)

Some things to notice:

• It is no longer possible to be alone in a picture of the dragon statue at Parc Güell.
• I used to drink Pepsi?! That’s just wrong.
• I loved that army jacket. It had a fantastic liner and I was always warm in winter.

2002 (junior year of college)

Did you notice?

• Still not too many tourists.
• I was favoring this long black pea coat (which I wore until it was threadbare)
• My hair was wicked long!
• Extra credit if you knew I still have these grey slacks, and that they still fit!

For comparison I fearlessly offer these more recent images.

January 2008

January 2009

This is January, people! What are you all doing in Barcelona? Don’t you know it’s not tourist season yet? Now I will have to find somewhere else for my annual navel-gazing, existential self-portrait project. At one point it got really out of hand. Look how this local man jumped right into the photo!

January 2009 (with sketchy local)