April 20, 2008

Tokyo (JAPAN)

My First Run-Out with the 東工大 Soccer Team

For the past three weeks I have been training with the Tokyo Tech soccer team, which in many ways is the biggest step I have taken toward becoming a part of the Japanese community - as opposed to being someone who is simply residing in Tokyo, taking in the sights, and learning about the culture. Our team trains three hours a day, six days a week, rain or shine, and all training is done in Japanese. Thus, since returning from my recent journey my life has revolved around studying the Japanese language, training for soccer, and my coursework.

Needless to say, I love soccer, and fortunately I could not have asked for better teammates. Perhaps as time goes on I will have an opportunity to write about some of their stories.

As the headline suggests, today was our first practice game against the Tokyo University for Foreign Languages in 飛田給(Tobitakyu). It was difficult finding my way to the station as I had to transfer at Shinjuku Station, which is the busiest metro station in the world, and then I had to find one of the "commuter trains" heading toward Tobitakyu. This may sound easy, but in fact there are four varieties of train that go through Tobitakyu Station (Local, Rapid, Semi-Express, and Express), and only one of those actually stops there. While Moscow may boast the world's largest train network, I am fairly certain Tokyo takes the cake (by a country mile) in terms of complexity and efficiency of operation.

I was met at the station by four teammates (the rest of the team was arriving at another station), and we made the 20 minute walk to the fields together. En route, we passed the massive AJINOMOTO stadium for Tokyo FC, a J-League soccer team in Japan. Surely a player of my caliber deserves to be playing there, but alas my time has not yet come.

While waiting for kick-off, I took the opportunity to chat with some players from the opposing team to find out what languages they are studying, and heard everything from Russian to Spanish to Chinese. Obviously, in the game Japanese was the language of choice, although there is a surprisingly high amount of English slang mixed in. Below are several of the more useful phrases, along with their translations...

"Nice Kee!" - Short for "Nice Keeper!"

"Nice Shoo!" - Short for "Nice Shot!"

"Thankyouthankyouthankyou" - Repeated use of "Thank you" every time someone does something well. (I have no idea why the Japanese equivalent, "ARIGATO", is not used, and neither does anyone else.)

Since this was a run-out designed to give all the players a chance to play, we ended up playing two matches. The first match, and the one in which I played, was a 0-0 draw, and the second match was a 2-0 loss. However, by far the most interesting moment of the day came about one hour after the second match as players finished their warm-down and were beginning to leave...

I was juggling a soccer ball with a couple of friends, laughing about this and that, when we heard yelling from a nearby pavilion. Looking over, I saw two of my teammates in a fist-fight, and before I knew it I was racing over, hurdling benches and chairs to stop the fight. I saw a couple of strong blows landed to the face before I finally put a Full-Nelson on one of the players. I dragged him away while other teammates grabbed the other guy, and while the two were separated and cooling off I wondered what in the hell just happened.

Bear with me, but a little background information is needed to really appreciate the rest of this story...

1) It has been a long-running joke among my foreign friends and I that it is impossible to provoke a fight in Tokyo (short of doing something drastic). For example, if I pushed somebody to the floor on a train, they would simply struggle to their feet, and walk to a different part of the train, with the other passengers likely following suit. Similarly, if I knocked someone's to-go coffee out of their hands and onto their business attire, they might give me a nasty look, but would hurry off to buy a new outfit so as not to be late to work. I could go on and on with different situations, but the point remains: the Japanese are unparalleled in their ability to avoid open conflict.

2) Another long-running joke relates to the Japanese habit of apologizing for being tired when leaving work (irrespective of how long they might have been working), saying something that translates roughly as, "I am Mr. Tired (so I am going home)." If someone does not say this when leaving work for the day, it is a massive faux pas that does not have an adequate analogy in the Western world. Put simply, everybody (myself included), says this every time they leave practice, work, or other similar environments.

3) Seniority is paramount in Japan. Everyone has heard the stories about how a Japanese job is the safest in the world because as time goes by you will slowly climb the ladder, but for the ambitious it is miserable because seniority is more important than talent. Well, this carries over to all aspects of life because the Japanese are arguably the most polite/respectful people on the planet, and one always pays deference to elders ("SENPAI"). This deference affects which words are used when speaking, how low one bows, and (ultimately) who is right in arguments.

Apparently, the fight among my teammates started because one of the younger players, who did not have a particularly good game today, was leaving without saying "OTSUKARE SAMA DESHITA" ("I am Mr. Tired"), and a senior player scolded him for this. Obviously, one thing led to another, and WHAM something snapped inside them. Both players are normally as placid as ice, so seeing this kind of thing was a real eye-opener for me. Even now, writing this, I know it doesn't seem that out of the ordinary - American athletes get into fights all the time - but what makes the Japan case so interesting is the way in which people can go from being so composed to so fanatical in a heartbeat.

The idea I took away from all this was that everyone, even Japanese, have their limits for what they can tolerate. The rules imposed upon  which Japanese society is built are so complete and structured that people never have a chance to vent over grievances, even in the smallest ways, so it is just a matter of time before the next SNAP.