On my fifth teaching trip to Japan, I have the privilege of teaching in Osaka, not only Tokyo.  In the 20-year history of my sponsoring company, VOICE, I am only the third American teacher to do so. For a week, I'll be accompanied by an expert interpreter, "Jessica," and will combine weekend workshops with personal sessions on weekdays.  This trip is an honor, and I'm brimming with anticipation to visit my second major Japanese city.

To celebrate, I finally start studying Japanese.  Everything about this language seems really strange.  Vowels run rampant, mixed with crunchy little syllables that I find awfully difficult to tell apart from each other.  Rules of grammar don't only turn sentences inside out but sprinkle in fascinating little particles of meaning, like wa, ka, and ga.  To switch between English and Japanese requires more than turning your brain into a pretzel.  After twisting the dough, you must rub all the salt off the surface and then reassemble it again, one fleck at a time, just so.

Vocabulary is hard, and one word in my textbook seems slightly ominous.  Did you know?  The term for "business trip" sounds an awful lot like "shoot you."

HOTEL THE LUTHERAN

Yes, that is the name, in English, of the place I will stay for a week.  Jessica's room is two doors over.

This is not Garrison Keillor's kind of Lutheran.  There will be no ludefisk in the hotel restaurant or mysterious guests who turn out to be Norwegian bachelor farmers.  Instead, there will be very correct young businessmen in perfect black suits and equally tense businesswomen in black dresses.  There will be a buffet breakfast with salmon, rice, miso soup, raw eggs; also croissants, sausages, eggs, broccoli, and three choices of coffee from a machine: Cappucino, Coffee, and American (weak).

Located a few blocks from Osaka castle, Hotel the Lutheran is beautifully decorated, with sleek modern furniture, elegantly textured wallpaper, multi-layered curtains.  My room also features what, to me, is a most baffling smell.  Air freshener is piped in constantly.  To a Japanese sensibility, this has got to be way more welcome than some crude fragrance like America's Glade Air Freshener or Pine Sol.

But how does it play to this American nose?  Imagine a room fragrance that is one part salty, one part sour, one part spicy, with deeper undertones of musk.  To me, it's a highly nuanced version of living inside someone's armpit.  Eight days into my stay, I still can't get used to it.

Otherwise, mine is a lovely room, generously appointed with windows that provide a view of office buildings and distant mountains.  A four-lane highway winds into the distance, lined by lush trees that, in November, have only just begun to turn red and gold.

My first morning, I see men practicing on a nearby rooftop.  What are they practicing?  I can't tell.  Twenty men, in tuxedos, are clearly intent on something.  Is it a parade?  Are they singers?  Moving in formation, they line up, change their moves.  Sound could give me a clue, but I can't figure out how to open the windows.

Whatever this practice is, the guys do it for an hour, then disappear, never to be seen again.  By me, at least.

A New Kind of Homesick

Hotel living can sometimes be too luxurious.  My bed is comfortable.  There's a fine computer.  My only vexation, in such a calmly elegant room, is the toilet.

Japan's complex culture combines ancient tradition with the most modern thinking imaginable.  The toilets are such a perfect example that, undoubtedly, entire Ph.D. dissertations have been devoted to the subject.  Japanese toilets range from a hole in the ground, where you squat, to high-tech contraptions with push buttons that can squirt you in various places, warm the seat and Heaven knows what else… Heaven or those literate Japanese people who can read what is printed on the toilet's various buttons.

On previous trips, I have played with these buttons, giggling uproariously.  It has been like an amusement park for your butt.

But here in Osaka, I develop a serious problem with my toilet.  Soon as you sit on it, a loud waterfall-like gush emanates from the plumbing.  The incessant flow doesn't stop until you stand up again.  Maybe this is a male engineer's idea of a pleasant treat?

No matter how many times this waterfall happens, I can't get used to it.  Staying alone in a foreign country can be lonely enough.  Sadly, I discover that I don't only miss hearing people speak my language.  I miss the sound of my own pee.

But this should be my biggest problem, right?

Alas, there's also a bit of a problem with my interpreter Jessica.  On a previous trip, we worked together.  Chemistry between us wasn't good, so I asked VOICE management never to make me work with her again.  Mostly, this request was honored.  For my three other weeks on this trip, I was teamed with several different interpreters, each one delightful to work with as well as linguistically talented.

But none of them was available to travel this far for so long.  Jessica is.  She wants the work.  I need an interpreter and she is a very good one.  Therefore, she is to be my constant companion, translating during every workshop and sessions.  Jessica will also be my lifeline to literacy, conversation and general coping in this very foreign city.  Uh-oh.

On the train ride, we soon lapse into a rather uncomfortable silence.  After an hour, she takes a break and evidently finds a way to have a good stiff drink.  Eight days of enforced companionship can be very long.  In our various ways, we prepare ourselves.

Ever hear the story of bad Japanese marriages, where the husband walks fifty paces ahead of the wife?  That's Jessica and me, walking around in Osaka.  Only Jessica doesn't just walk.  She's mutters incantations.  She also makes Reiki-style symbols with her hands.  Undoubtedly this is a kind of protection against taking on my vibrations.

Strange or not, estranged or not, we do manage to function okay.  During workshop and sessions, we act like total professionals.  Soon as there's break time, however, Jessica runs from the room like a bat out of hell. 

Entertainment

Sometimes I take myself sightseeing, during off hours.  Usually, however, I use my computer, read, or watch TV.  Television would be my favorite diversion, if only I could find a show in English.

This always happens to me in Japan.  I develop powerful cravings to hear people speak a language I understand.  Preferably I will also see these people move, emote like actors, or else wear the fascinating auras of the non-actors in documentaries or interviews.

For my lodging in Tokyo, VOICE has provided cable TV, so I can satisfy this craving with a few English-language channels.  Osaka guests at Hotel the Lutheran don't have this luxury, however.  Personally, I think the management is missing a fine conversion opportunity, because I would watch Broadcasting Channel the Lutheran for hours at a time, if only it were in English.  Bring on Leviticus. I'll watch, I'll watch.

Second best choice is to watch The Home Shopping Channel.  You'll be excited to know, as I was, that the Japanese version, Channel 1 on my TV set, is currently celebrating its 11^th anniversary.  All eight days of my stay, this celebration is in progress, as I can tell from signs that occasionally appear on the screen.  Perhaps this 11^th anniversary will last all year, a salesperson's version of a professor's sabbatical.

I don't care.  I don't care what the people are selling.  I only care that these are pleasant people, always happy, often apparently ecstatic, with a plot that I can always follow.  Never is there a bomb or a shooting or some hysterical soap opera star.  Always there is beauty: A blouse, a ring, an important chemical discovery such as Pure Wrinkle Moisture beauty cream.

For my entire time in Osaka, Jessica and I have only one conversation that I would describe as truly friendly.  It happens when we discuss The Home Shopping Channel.  She likes it, too.  We marvel at the talented salespeople, with their incessant enthusiasms and perfect hands.

"They say the same sales pitch over and over, varying it in a thousand ways," Jessica marvels.  "They hypnotize you."

In America, I've noticed this on my rare viewings of the show.  But I can tell you this for a fact: Resisting hypnosis is way more fun when you don't understand a word being said.

Carrots Made Fascinating

On my last night in Osaka, I celebrate by drinking lots of hot chocolate and watching The Shopping Channel.  Something very exciting is on.  A chef!  He's really a chef, with an apron and the air of truly being a professional chef.  He is selling knives, which he demonstrates in a thousand ways.

I'm glad, partly, because I have come to find the beauty products somewhat alarming.  Days after the show about Pure Wrinkle Moisture cream, a nearly identical show has featured a product called "Wrinkle Plus One." This product line also has something called "Charisma."  I don't want to be tempted to buy a jar of Charisma.  What would happen if I put on too much?  Cutting vegetables--that seems much safer.

"Knife Man," the chef, is demonstrating his products with "Honey," a cute, 20-something woman who seems truly astounded by all his wares.  These knives, they are sharp!  They cut things.  I wonder if, perhaps, Honey has never seen a knife before.

At one point, Knife Man teaches Honey how to balance the knife on one finger, touching her fingertip to a sweet spot where the handle connects to the blade.  For several thrilling minutes, both of them show they can balance this way.  It's a bit like a circus act in miniature.

Honey is thrilled to learn how to balance her knife.  She is even more delighted to learn how to cut things.  Knife Man creates a sandwich just for her to use to practice cutting.  Ten pieces of white bread are stacked up, with fillings in between, all the layers held together with thin wooden skewers.  And what a sandwich this is.  Cucumber! Tomato! Meats! And the knife cuts them all. Knife Man isn't doing it, either.  No, it's Honey.

Isn't it touching?  This simple woman, a mere TV star and super sales person, is not a professional chef.  Yet here she is, cutting just like a pro.  Apparently Honey has never dreamed that some day she might have such an opportunity, cutting a giant-sized club sandwich.

I wonder just how sheltered Honey's life is, when not appearing on The Home Shopping Channel.

For me, the climax of the half hour happens when Knife Man cuts a fat carrot into paper-thin slices.  Honey learns how to cut carrots, too.  Oh, it is so touching.

Honey treasures this moment.  She holds one perfect carrot round up to the light, stroking it with her finger, caressing this rare moment of beauty made possible by a super-duper knife.  Finally she takes a tiny bite of this carrot, savoring it.  You can see she is (barely) restraining herself from going into a full orgasm.

Perfect cutting makes even a simple carrot into a food of delight.  And Knife Man keeps cutting more veggies and salmon, always paper thin slices, always perfect.  He talks while he cuts and you can feel how he loves this chance to be on television and sell his knives.

Camera close-ups linger over the nearly impossibly perfect thin slices.  I am doing my own close-ups, of Knife Man's aura, and how it thrills his soul, being here, doing this work.

Then my eyes notice his hands.  On his hands, there are many small cuts.  There are scars.  He is, after all, a real chef.  This part of chef-dom is hardly going to be advertised on The Home Shopping Channel or anywhere else.  But I'm watching now, utterly fascinated.

Perfect slices.  A good product, a knife.  Years of skill in those capable hands.  His aura full of joy.  And the cuts that nobody is supposed to notice.

In my own trip to Osaka, I have had my small cuts, too.  The loneliness, sometimes, the chemistry with my interpreter that I could not overcome, living with that strange smell and being forcibly removed from a bathroom sound I will never take for granted again.  Small cuts--how human that is.  But, like Knife Man, who stops to count those small accidents?

What matters most is making those sweet, perfect slices, doing the work that you love.

In case you missed them, here are recent highlights from my blog, Deeper Perception Made Practical. 

Inferiority Complex

Your Healing Book

Mystery Money

Quiz of the Month:  "Are you Spacey or Grounded?"