Five thousand, four hundred,
And eighty-one miles from
Everything I know.

Part I: My Father’s Japan in Post-Revolutionary Cuba
              I had expected a city wrapped in a coastal breeze, dotted with elegant cranes, paper lanterns, and weeping cherry blossom trees; it was some half-conjured, half-snatched romantic scene fluttering in my mind’s eye like a piece of silk cloth.  It had grown from my father in Cuba.  Since I was young enough to fashion memories, my father was obsessed with Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune.  He used to walk to El Teatro Payret and slip into the cool air of the theater.  It was his great escape from the brooding heat and humidity of the island that clings to soaked skin almost leech-like; there, he would sink into the red velvet seats, ears cocked to the RCA sound system, goggling at the three-projector panoramic image that flickered on screen.  It was as good as it gets, and he would simper at the USA-esqueness of it all.  That of course was before I was born, that was pre-revolutionary Cuba.  My Cuba was different; it was a wasteland of neglected cinemas and markets, where there was an equal shortage of films and food. 
But my father was the consummate storyteller; looking back, stretching memory thin, I remember him wielding a slender stick of sugar cane over his head, his makeshift katana, while I imagined something like a long machete - it was the only warrior blade I knew.  My father brought the world of the samurai to life, nuanced the acts of violence and bloodletting with their unfaltering, unspoken code of honor.  My father's Japan was both sinewy and beautiful, and so it was from his recreations of the elite warrior culture that I weaved my first visions of Japan.  It was years later, in Miami, that I would compliment the visions I carried with Hokusai's "Great Wave of Kanagawa," the Japanese gardens at Morikami, the pictures of wooden statues of Buddhist images and kabuki performers donning their elaborate kimonos and masks, and the fictional memoirs of geishas.  And, it was only recently, while living and teaching in Kumamoto that I began to sort fact from myth, even though at times, the lines become irrevocably blurred.

Part II: The Language of Silence and the Sweet Little Dot
              When I arrived, the silences startled me.  Japan is a culture of silence; it persists in the elevators, buses, trains, and even in the classrooms.  Here silence is a language.  For outsiders, it simply means an uncomfortable open space found between sounds, but in Japan, it has an element of order, respect, sincerity, seriousness, and spirituality.  Public spaces may be disturbed by the occasional cawing of crows, but for the most part, moving through them is like walking through rock gardens.  This is a far cry from the cacophony of honking horns, roaring engines, and booming car stereos of Miami, which as is true of most things in America often came superfied, that is to say: supersized, superboosted, and supercharged.  If American culture seeks to call attention to itself; if we can agree that its behavioral norms and structures blurt out: "I'm here, take notice of me," that it seeks recognition, or rather that it demands it, then Japanese culture is its opposing cousin.  And perhaps nowhere is this difference more palpable than in the classroom.
I was an advanced placement English Language and Literature teacher in the US for over ten years.  My students would pride themselves on asking the “right” questions; they approached learning with a tenacious curiosity bordering on aggressiveness.  In Japan, my new students have no such questions, and there is only the shrillness of my voice running down rigid rows, and sometimes the unplaceable muddled nervous laughter.  It takes me a long time to learn to anticipate these silences and wait for them like you do with waves; interpreting them however is another matter all together. 
One day, while rummaging through the English cabinet, I came across an oral communication textbook with a lesson titled: “Asking Questions.”  The dialogue went something like this:

X sensei:            “I don’t like these Americans.”
X sensei’s wife:   “Why? What happened?”
X sensei:              “They ask far too many questions.”
X sensei’s wife:   “I don’t see the problem with asking questions. Why does that bother you?”
X sensei:              “Well, it’s embarrassing when I don’t know all the answers.”

The exercise continued to pivot X-sensei’s Japanese mindset with the more Western-awareness of the wife.  It discussed the rudeness of questioning, of placing someone in a position where they feel inadequate, incompetent, lacking.  The highlighted-boxed English phrase for new learning was: “I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”  I think back to my own teaching and how many times I had to strum together a similar apology.  I do not know how accurate this explanation is; what I do know, however, is that my students would not dare to ask questions if they felt it was disrespectful or intrusive. 
I also know, or rather have come to learn, that while educational comparisons are rampant subjects in the media, internet blogs, and even in university entrance exams, it is unfair to compare these educational systems.  Each educational system is a product of their cultural values, each system manages to focus, hone, sustain, and transmit its distinct worldview.  The fact is that we see things differently.  For the Westerner, things exist by themselves; the self is an entity detached from others and context.  For the Japanese, things are inter-related and interdependent, and the self has a contextual and relational existence.  Even our works of art expose this disparity.  American paintings draw close objects larger than objects in the distance.  They stabilize the viewer, and portraits exclude or darken the backgrounds, and there is a depth between the figure in the foreground and the field or landscape at the subject’s back.  Japanese paintings favor a bird’s eye view, there is a flattening of the context – almost scroll-like, and in portraits the figure rests amidst the backdrop, where the face-to-frame ratio is well-balanced.  And then of course, we have the issue of language…  
I was born in a land of small personal pronouns, where “yo” is only capitalized at the beginning of sentences.  America has a culture of capitalized I’s and while some historians claim that the “I” reared its dotless head as a matter of typography, or stress, or for simplicity’s sake, I cannot help but marvel at the metaphorical implications.  What do I say to my new students when they humbly dare to ask why we capitalize the “I” in English?  Perhaps I will mention that Western society is rooted in Individualism and that we cherish our unique Identity.  However, I do not think that they will fully understand, any more than we can hope to comprehend the implications of a culture of yoroshiku’s.  Language reflects culture, and while Japanese is punctuated with expressions of inter-reliance, English would rather rely on me, myself, and I.  And so I rhetorically wonder, just how much could a culture be changed by a sweet little dot?

Part III: Thankless
              Sumimasen, wakarimasen.  I want to tell the lady at the Ramen shop down the street that she is an angel.  I want to know how she translated her entire menu into English for us, but I do not own those words and the few phrases I have learned to piece together fall from my tongue like boulders.  The menu rests balanced between the soy sauce and the bottle with the overly complex kanji in the corner where we tend to sit.  She smiles… another offering.
Sumimasen, wakarimasen.  At the bakery, an older woman watches as we break our cakes into small bite-sized squares.  She sips her drink and shifts her eyes.  What does she notice?  Seconds later, she moves towards our table and motions at the coffee machine by the counter.  She begins to study our faces, but it seems that she cannot find what she is looking for, so she turns to pick up two plastic cups and fills them with coffee.  She places these by our hands and shuffles back to the counter; this time she returns with two packs of cream.  She gestures her goodbye, a gentle bow of her head, and she is gone.  We mutter the formal thank you we have come to master in Japanese, but it is too late, she has caught us off guard and most of our words crack on the door behind her.
Sumimasen, wakarimasen.  Soon you begin to grow accustomed to such random acts of kindness: like the neighbor who brings us plates of freshly sliced peaches, or the children who lead us to the station on their bikes because we have lost our way, or the woman who offers us little handmade tokens of cloth-wrapped oyster shells for our bags, or the store clerks who hand us oranges while we ogle their wares, or the Japanese teacher who wants to drive us to the second-hand shop for affordable kimonos, or the man on the train who gives up his seat, tells us he likes Mel Gibson, and then invites us to dinner.
These are the most overwhelming moments of Japanese culture, not even seeing the robed monks drifting below curved-copper-tiled eaves, or the great gilded Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines with their main halls flanked with scowling faced guardian gods and intricately carved pagodas, can come close to this.  Your heart flip-flops and leaps, and around you everything feels like water, tastes like honey, and sounds like jazz…  I dream of taking all of this with me, of stuffing these moments into suitcases and setting them loose in Miami.  But these are just dreams, and truth-be-told, I know that back home such kindness cannot survive…  Japan is a culture of kindness with a long tradition of guest and host, but in the West, the word is “tourist” and not “guest”.

Part IV: The Garbage Ritual
              The crows convene at the side of roads on the edges of loose stones and peck at the blue nets draped over neatly lined, carefully classified clear plastic bags of garbage.  Garbage is important here in a way it has never been in America.  At City Hall, they photocopy my passport to process my resident card, and the only thing they hand me is a city map and a trash calendar.  So, there you have it… 
You stare at this foreign calendar, where red letters announcing holidays have been replaced by little red flames and blue bottles, and begin to mark the passage of time through trash.  Tuesdays are special on my block -- the red flame day; it means “burnables”; it means that I can finally dispose of the banana peels and onion skins and the brewed finely ground coffee remains from the packets of La Llave that my mother sends from the States.
Japan takes its waste disposal very seriously.  The streets are uncommonly clean.  The vending machines that round each corner are accompanied by recycling bins.  For the most part, America likes its waste out of mind.  Buried in large mounds at the city’s edge between toll booth and toll booth, we think about it in flashes as we zip by along the highway.  In Japan you become an expert on waste; there are explicit rules and regulations, and it is always in mind.  At the supermarket I try not to purchase anything in metal cans or plastic bottles, because it means two more piles to sort at home, two more collection days to observe.
In Japan, the trash and cleaning rituals mean community, equality, and a shared sense of responsibility.  At school, even my principal, sleeves rolled, tugs at the weeds.  You can learn a lot about a people from the way they handle their trash.  I learn that the Japanese promote a group identity, that fulfillment is found in group interactions, that personal obligation stems from your role in and contributions to the group, that empathy and self-control are highly valued and vital to a functional group, and that cooperation is fundamental to survival.  In America, schools come fully equipped with a custodial staff; you make a mess and someone else gets paid to tidy up; this is an acceptable fact.  We learn this lesson at an early age, and we learn it well.  We develop a riff between ourselves and others; we lose sight of our empathy.  We like to believe we are special.  Indeed, we have developed an entire system of language for our unique perspective; we crave special treatment, special care, special attention.  In the popular American mind, individualism is the very essence of Americanism.  And I have to admit that while there is a refreshing energy in a system that frees us from the heavy weight of communal guilt, regrettably there is a fine line between carefreeness and carelessness, between a strong sense of self and selfishness.  In Japan, these differences become palpably antagonistic.  Sometimes you begin to lose parts of yourself; sometimes you are grateful for the loss.

Part V: Lessons in Tea
              Japan has a bowing culture, a culture of respect.  Even without curving their backs, they bow… it is in their hands, and eyes.  All of Japan is composed of it.  Respect greets you on the street corners when it hands you advertising pamphlets and wrapped napkins, and at the supermarket when it returns your change; it follows you into the local restaurants and on the buses and trains.  And during the tea ceremony, when you are pressed on the tatami mat, chest to knees, forehead lowered to the back of your hands that stretch to form a “V,” your entire body settles into the soothing pull of tea, and you begin to learn the Japanese meaning of respect.
Across from you, in an alcove, yellow wax plum flowers dangle from a suspended bamboo vase and a calligraphy scroll announces the theme.  There is a mellow aroma of unfinished wood and everything seems to pulsate to the soft sweeps of kimono-draped hands.  Hers is champagne hued with gold maple leaves and floral fans of green and burnished red with a dip dyed edging, the other is a deep powder blue with wide brushstrokes of white ink resembling wind or waves.  They are both masters in the art of gliding.  They move with a smooth precision of steps and angles, folding and tucking their long sleeves, a delicately balanced musical slur.  And so, you begin to learn the Japanese meaning of harmony.
              The thick powdered tea rests in a small lacquer tea-caddy.  I sit on the tatami with my legs neatly folded under me and a dish of sweets in front of my knees watching and waiting as the hot water is ladled from the stoneware jar into the tea bowl.  The sound of the water is as soothing as the flow of her hands during this delicate cleansing ritual.  She exudes care and concentration.  It is in the way she rinses the small bamboo whisk and empties and wipes the bowl, in the way she rests the scooper on the pinched pot, in the way she eases two servings of green powder into the porcelain bowl, in the way she churns the mixture into a green froth, her wrist forming the shape of an “M”.  This too is Japan.  Outside the tea room, it is in the way the store clerks wrap even your smallest trinkets, in the way the officers direct traffic, in the way everyone sweeps the sidewalks daily and scrubs at the dirt clogged cracks.  And so you begin to learn the Japanese meaning of simplicity.
              I eat the sweets before the tea bowl is rotated in quarter turns and presented to me.  The strawberry mush sticks to the roof of my mouth and the sweetness lingers long after my first gulp of thick tea.  The bowl has a milky glaze and a brushstroke mountain landscape -- I imagine Mount Fuji.  When I have finished I think she asks me how I feel.
“Special,” I say, “I feel special.”
“Like bitter,” she calls back, the inner tips of her eyebrows bent upward.
              “Oh, yes, better,” I correct her, “much better.”
              And we both smile.  It is only after I leave that I realize that she was asking about the tea and not me, and for that interlude, I wish nothing more that to be able to melt into a small dotted i.

Part VI: Unpacking a Culture
              It’s the blooming season and the plum trees are flowering white and red, and the air is a plum-wind fragrance.  I keep vigil over these five-petalled scatterings of joy, these harbingers of change bursting with promise.  Soon the cherry blossoms will begin spreading and weeping.  Brimming with fragile pink petals, we will plop down beneath their boughs.  Sloshed amidst the pink foliage, we will sink into sake and song.  And the whole of Japan will be showers of drifting petals; and I will remember my father’s stories in Cuba.
In my view, what the Japanese culture offers is transformation.  Your perspective shifts and your observation of the world slows down; things come into focus more clearly, more closely.  It is like awakening another sense, and even your language is amended: words like identity, collaboration, trash, and tea take on radically new connotations.
One way or another, Japan changes you, not at the jaw line or along the forehead or at the edges of the lips, but inside there is a gentle clinging curling itself around the blood.  In a couple of years, I will return home to an empty house slammed into loose earth, and I will have to make room for the new size and shape of my life.  I will unpack my bags and begin to sift through the new things I carry.  At first, I will remember the Japanese culture with exacting detail, and then the memories will lose their hold and shape themselves into familiar stories, but what will always remain tugging at the heartstrings are these immutable three little words: domo arigatou gozaimasu…