To look good is to feel good, seems to be the slogan of choice at the university where I work in Japan. Today marked the Opening Ceremony for this years’ incoming freshman, and the event was nothing short an outrageous display of posturing. Being an employee of the university I am expected to partake in the rather maudlin welcoming of the year’s new students and their parents, and altogether it was a fruitful learning experience.
My job today was to escort parents to their seats while they watched the president and other high-up representatives give speeches of academic encouragement to the young trembling neophytes. Of course, the parents were forced to sit in a different auditorium and watch their offspring on a giant screen, but I can imagine that electronic gamma rays of pride and nurture hovered from one hall to the next, hence the trembling.
Watching all the young newbies looking so nervous and insecure, wearing suits and skirts that their parents forced them to buy in preparation for this day, lead me to reflect on my own Opening Ceremony at my university nearly 8 years ago...or at least what I remember of it. The details are hazy at best, but I'm fairly certain that beer and the men's soccer team were involved and I'm also fairly confident I introduced myself to all members of my dormitory in a drunken stupor later that evening. But, what I am absolutely positive about was the thin stripe of hair left on my scalp post head-shaving that the aforementioned (and rather ritualistic) men’s soccer team insisted was the hip new style for that years’incoming class of freshman. Although, for the record, the other freshman on the soccer team and I soon discovered that Mohawks allegedly skipped that year at my school.
As embarrassing as it was to go through my first day of university classes looking like a member of "The Clash," these Japanese students, however, got it much much worse—they had to slug through a day of Japan’s Swamp O’ Posture. The Swamp O’ Posture, although murky and situational, is basically a slew of words and image-up techniques that conspire to misdirect an event or expression’s actual meaning in favor of decorating it with blatant and ceremonial formality. Fortunately, I was able to contribute to this bog of farce through my escort job, where I very intentionally, formally, and professionally told people where to park their rumps. I fear I was less enthusiastic than my other team-mates (yes, I actually was put in a team of five for this job), as my co-workers were constantly walking up and down the aisles, stacking and unstacking things, arranging, then re-arranging, and finally
supra-arranging anything they could get their hands on. I chose to remain by the door to smile and congratulate the parents on their son or daughter’s entry into the university, though I wonder if the tense looks on their faces were put there by the realization that a fleet of tuition bills would soon be gracing their mailboxes for the next four years. This heavy thinking must have tired them out for I can confidently resport that at least 75% of the parents used the ceremony as a nice chance for a little mid-morning snooze.
If anything, though, the event was a chance to put my limited knowledge of formal Japanese to work. There is actually a name for such language—it’s called
keigo—though it’s usually too mind-crunching for me to use on a regular basis. I typically start out using it when talking to a superior, then inevitably slide into casual-lingo when it becomes too cumbersome (which I've noticed is at about the 30 second mark).
An example of
keigo and its uses: in English, to say “Please have a seat near the front of the auditorium,” is by no means rude, and it may even be a bit on the polite side as it is less-course than “Sit down in front,” which still conveys the intended meaning . In Japanese, however, if I used
keigo to express this request (and I did), it might roughly be translated (and it was) like this:
“Dear, sir/madam: we believe it would be to the behooval of all parties involved if we were to receive your kind consideration in the selection of a seat— of your choice, of course—near the front of the amphitheater in which we now, and will for approximately the following one and one-half hours, reside.”
Needless to say, a morning spent saying this to an influx of parents tired me out pretty quick, and I soon digressed to: “Anywhere is great!” Most folks streaming in tended to regard me—the only foreigner in the auditorium—with a deliberate ignorance. Some of them even gave me the “Ultra-Violet Ray Double Take.” I am quite familiar with general head-jerking, as unintentionally attracting attention because of my fish-out-of-water-ness has become somewhat of a forte, if not a job description. The Ultra-Violet Ray Double Take goes like this:
1.) They casually look at me and glance away, as they would with anyone.
2.) Then, after they realize that not only am I a foreigner, but a foreigner who is university staff
and wearing a suit, they double-take right back at me in a sort of
what the? jerking motion.
3.) Lastly, noticing that we are making eye-contact, they quickly avert their eyes to the ground, feigning that the interaction never even took place. I think it’s because I exude radioactive waves or something, because what they seem to fear most at this point is offering any kind of facial movement that would lead to the meeting of our eyes again.
Thus, with their heads down, they walk past me in such a way that suggests they are aware of my presence, but are afraid that any further expression of acknowledgement would, perhaps, provoke me or cause me to fire off more radioactive lightning bolts.
Or maybe they are just shy. Or forgot their sunglasses.
At any rate, I enjoy poking light fun at the whole attention-to-appearance obsession in Japan, and am aware that America, in its own way, has the same preoccupation. Everyone does to some degree, I think. But, it was to my ultimate delight that while the ceremony was coming to a close, my university’s hip-hop dance club held an informal congregation outside of the auditorium whose inhabitants were the very people for whom my university’s high-uppers had laid out the red carpet. Evidently, the large windows in front of the theatre provide the hip-hoppers with what function as giant-mirrors, thereby allowing them to visually evaluate their grinds. Imagine, if you will, the expression on the parents’faces as they exited the building to find 30 or so G-funky university students clad in sideways baseball caps and sagging camouflage pants bobbing to beats and sliding their heads back and forth on top of their collar-bones on the VERY day dedicated to their sons and daughters formal commencement onto higher education.
To be honest, though, I had a difficult time deciding which was more amusing: the parents’ conservative, what-is-happening-to-our-country looks of disapproval, OR the dance clubs’ God-we-look-so-fucking-cool expressions of satisfaction at the reflection of their bodies slithering, bouncing, and gyrating dopely in the windows.
I’d even go as far as to call the whole scene ironic...that is to say, if such a thing as irony existed in Japan.
