Anger Management

Day 31 Thursday 9th September 2010

Will work for beer

Last night while eating dinner I made the mistake of mentioning that we had replaced the mesh in the insect screens on our house in Kyoto. Shizuka’s mother’s eyes lit up on hearing this. She told me that all the screens on this place are full of holes and that nobody has thus far volunteered to fix them. The deafening clang of that hint being dropped was too much to ignore. After all, you can’t really drink their beer and eat their food without being somewhat obligated. So we volunteered. All the tools that you need were found and a roll of mesh appeared. Shizukas father disappeared off to the home centre to get the rubber strip that fits in the groove along the edges of the screen. In all there are 9 screens and they are all suffering from severe lack of maintenance syndrome. I extract Makoto from her bed (it’s kind of like pulling teeth out) and push her outside to help with cleaning the screens. Toshiaki comes back with the rubber. I pull out the old rubber and I can see straight away that it’s a different size from what he’s bought. I tell him that he’s bought the wrong size. He looks at it then mumbles something I can’t understand. Shizuka starts laughing quietly. “What’s the joke”? I ask her. “He’s angry” she replies. I look over at him but he is as calm as ever. “How can you tell?” I ask. “Because he said – I’m angry.”  Wow. This guy is one of the most serene people I have ever met. Nothing ever seems to bother him. If he hadn’t said that he was angry nobody would have known. Evidently his anger quickly passed as he was back to normal within seconds.

  

It’s often said that the Japanese are inscrutable. When I first came here 18 years ago I was inclined to believe it. It’s the kind of generalization that I’m comfortable with. I remember sitting in the office of my export agent. He was on the other side of the desk intently studying a piece of paper on which I had written prices I wanted to pay for a bunch of cars. As he read my offers he was totally expressionless. Until then I had been used to negotiations with Westerners. At this point in the process expressions like “you’re dreaming!” or “you’re out to lunch on that one!” would normally be heard. Instead he remained poker faced. “Typical inscrutable Asian” I thought to myself. It was only years later when I had finally gained some insight into their mind set, that I realised that they are not actually inscrutable. They just react in ways that are different from and which are unexpected by Westerners. Now, when faced with a similar situation, I know that his blank expression is him calculating how to refuse my offer without causing offence or loss of face for either party. The lack of expression is not him trying to hide something. It’s a sign of his uncertainty. With a bit of study you can mostly predict what they will do and say next. Their social programming about maintaining harmony and their wish to avoid confrontation make them quite predictable. Occasionally I have been surprised by an unexpected reaction such as the “I’m angry now” comment by Shizukas father today, but 9 times out of 10 I have been right.

Ice Cabbage

After we had finished the screens we went into town for Shaved Ice. This is called kakigori and it’s a must have when in Japan during summer. They start with a block of ice which is put into the shaving machine. The ice that comes out the bottom is light and fluffy, almost like candy floss.  You can choose what you want to put on top of it. I had cream and strawberry. It looked like real ice cream. Makoto had green tea flavour which made it look like a bowl with a  shredded cabbage sitting in it. Her parents were very happy with the screens but then Shizuka made the mistake of mentioning that we have a waterblaster…….