The Story Continues - Traditional Book Binding

So, picking up where the last story left off, about the home-ec teacher and her son, today I was working away on my kanji studies when the pair walks up again. This time, in Japanese, they ask if I would like to work with her son in the creation of a "book". Having nothing more exciting to do, I happily joined them up in one of the classrooms. What we were creating was a real hardcover book from scratch. It was myself, the home-ec teacher, her son, and the school nurse.

Building these books included a number of steps. We cut a ream of paper to size, then punched pin holes through it and wove fine thread through the holes as binding. We then took construction paper and mounted it onto the front and back, then sealed the binding with special paper and adhesive.

Next, to work on the exterior, we took thick fiberboard and cut it slightly larger than the book interior: two exterior slices and a spine piece. We then took colored cloth and used spray adhesive to adhere it to Japanese paper. We used an iron to evaporate the adhesive through the cloth, making it stiff and perfectly flat. From there, we put a textured paper along the exterior spine, and proceeded to adhere the interior book to the exterior hardcover. We even put those little cloth ribbons that appear along the spine of a professionally bound book (check one and you'll probably see what I'm talking about). They ended up turning out really good. Mine looks a little messy cause I put a little too much adhesive on my exterior cloth binding, so it has a dark spot, but other than that, it's pretty cool.

It took the whole day, and was a lot of fun. We also went out to lunch at a great soba shop. The whole day was Japanese too! I learned to do the book binding using Japanese and gestures. I even taught a few English words to them. When I get internet, I'll post a pic of the book, along with all the other pictures I've been saving up to post on here.

Two Small Stories

In the last couple days, two small encounters took place.

1) The home-ec teacher, a very nice woman, brought her 10 y/o son into work the other day. She brings him over to me and proceeds to rock/paper/scissors with him for who has to talk to me first. He lost, and had to introduce himself to me in English. So cute! I complimented him on a job well done and returned my own introduction. Then his mom took a golden moment to make her son sweat and told him to wait there and talk to me while she hurried off to do something. So, I let him sweat a little longer til he exhausted his English ability, and then broke out into my Japanese. I LOVE talking to kids! I can so totally understand everything they say!!! Not to mention they probably have a lot more in common with me, what with the types of music I listen to and shows on tv I watch, compared to some of the older teachers.

As soon as he realized I could speak Japanese, he majorly relaxed, and we were able to chat for a while about pop culture, sports, etc. A great exchange in general. His mom is delightfully cruel for making him panic like that, but I think it was good for him to get some real-world use out of what he's learning in school.

2) The next story starts with me walking down my mountain toward the station.
From my initial perspective: I see a young (upper high school or younger college age) guy walking up the hill, and I've never seen him before. We have these big area maps posted at various intersections throughout my town, and he walks up to one and starts looking at it with a look of great seriousness. I subconsciously notice him, but I'm really not paying him much heed. Just as I pass by, he quickly whips around and says "Hello?!" in what sounds very much like a question. Stunned like I'd just been by a truck hearing someone use English, not to mention with the lightning-fast approach, I stutter for a second and say hi, then reflexively ask, "do you need some help? are you lost?" because of the look on his face, his quizzical greeting, that he'd been looking at the map, and that I'd never seen him before. Judging from the panic in his eyes at my reply, I quickly realize that his "hello" was quite possibly his own English words, and he was really just trying to be friendly. I quickly follow up with a more amicable hello and slight bow, which eases his face and he quickly turns around to bolt. Suddenly he turns and yells perhaps his only other English phrase, "See you!" I smile and and return his farewell.

Now, here's what really happened, with 20/20 hindsight: He sees me coming down the street, Mr. very-obviously-foreigner. He wants to be friendly, but he's nervous and doesn't know how to make an approach. So, he stalls by turning to the map while he gathers up his courage and sorts out his words. He waits like that til I'm close enough, then turns, thinking he's just made the perfect greeting. Minus the poor approach and interrogative intonation, he was indeed a perfect success. I'm very happy he took the time to initiate even such a simple engagement, and I wish I'd been more on-the-ball so as not to freak him out with my English inquiry.

I'm fascinated by the little things, the insignificant engagements we have with our surrounding society on a daily basis. I probably don't go far enough out of my way to make similar engagements to those around me, and I probably should. 頑張りましょう！

Blue means go???

I'm waiting at an intersection in Tokyo a couple years ago, speaking with a friend. She looks up, and says "Oh, it's blue, let's go!" referring to the pedestrian traffic light. "Don't you mean green?" I say as we hurry to cross the street, double checking to confirm that I haven't missed a major difference in Japanese traffic signals. The light is in fact the exact same shade of green I'd expect from back home in the U.S. "No, no, street lights are blue; red, yellow, blue." From this exchange, I wondered, do Japanese people have some unique sensory perception where in specific contexts only, they perceive the world in a different color than everyone else?

Well, the reality is, in the Japanese language, traffic lights are 赤 (red), 黄 (yellow), 青 (blue) while their actual physical colors remain rather consistent with international standards (in English: red, yellow, and green). This especially came as a surprise to me because I knew that there existed a word for green in Japanese, 緑 (green).

As it turns out, there are a number of languages around the world that do not distinguish between green and blue. To speakers of these languages, you would use the same word to describe the color of a leaf and the color of the sky, or else you would qualify it as "leaf blue/green" or "sky blue/green". Linguists use the attractive word "grue" to describe this unspecified blue/green color designation.

For Japan, this very phenomenon was the case, only having the word 青 (read "ao") which today is used effectively as blue. Prior to World War II, this word was used to describe everything we would regard in the realm of blue and green, and it was not until the occupation following the war that linguistic distinguishment between green and blue arose. It is from this era that the word 緑 (read "midori") arose as more than just a shade of "ao" and instead came to distinguish green colors as different from blue ones....for the most part.

There remain a few culturally lasting exceptions where the traditional term "ao" is still used to describe what would technically/perceptually fall under the category of green. These exceptions include traffic signals, grass, leaves, as well as a few others. So, when a Japanese person says that a traffic light is "red, yellow, and blue", they are literally translating a culturally lingering linguistic vestige, not indicating a unique sensory perception.

For more information regarding linguistic distinctions of color, as well as descriptions of various languages that have their own versions of "grue", click here.