A Gaijin's Guide to Japan: An alternative look at Japanese life, history and culture. Ben Stevens

from Tokyo’s Narita airport to their hotel, or perhaps to the domestic airport Haneda for a connecting flight, can’t help but be struck by the thousands of futon that have been placed out to air on the balconies of Tokyo’s countless apartment blocks—assuming, of course, that it is a fine day.

      Many ‘beds’ in Japan are made up of a futon covered by a sheet that is put out in the evening. Otherwise futon are kept in a cupboard known as oshiire, which serves to free up space in what are often slightly cramped living conditions.

      You’ll encounter futon rather than beds if you stay at a ryokan—a traditional Japanese inn—as opposed to a hotel.

       G

      GAIJIN

      Shortened form of the word gaikokujin, which means ‘outside country person’. A person born outside Japan will still be considered by most Japanese to be gaijin even after they have lived in the country for most of their lives, thus coming to understand the language and culture perfectly. Put it this way: you can have a seventy-year-old professor of ancient Japanese (or something of the sort), born in Oxford, England, but living in Japan since the start of the 1950s. He has a Japanese wife, and they have two grown-up children. The professor is, of course, completely fluent in Japanese; his wife jokes that he speaks it better than she.

      When he dies the professor will have a Buddhist funeral, and his ashes will be interred in the family haka. He doesn’t expect ever to go back to England again—it’s a long flight, and anyway his family, friends, work and life in general are all in Japan.

      Then one day—now in the autumn of his successful life, and while walking serenely to the university where he continues to lecture on a part-time basis—two schoolboys giggle and shout ‘Herro!’ and ‘Zis iz a pen!’ at him.

      So go to Japan for anything longer than a holiday, and you will soon a) be driven mad, b) give up and go home, or c) resign yourself to the fact that you will be considered as an ‘outside country person’ for the remainder of your stay.

      GAMBATTE

      Beneath the polite, patient and often slightly reserved exterior of the ‘typical’ Japanese person there lurks a beast. This beast is at all times ready and alert for a challenge, although any outward indication will rarely be given.

      This beast is the reason why Japanese students can get by on four hours’ sleep when studying for exams and why the typical Japanese sarariman thinks nothing of staying at the office till ten o’clock at night, only to then apologise for his rudeness should he leave before his colleagues.

      This beast can trace its roots right back to the dawn of the samurai, and their code of bushidŦ . It has at its heart the samurai ‘do or die’ philosophy: to commit to something—anything—wholly, and to succeed in this field or else to die in the attempt.

      All of the above and much, much more—entire books have been written about the ‘do or die’ factor—is contained within one single word: Gambatte.

      ‘Gambatte,’ says the midwife to the mother about to give birth.

      ‘Gambatte,’ says the mother to the child as it takes its first faltering steps.

      ‘Gambatte,’ says the father to the teenager, as he studies beyond the point of exhaustion for the all-important university entrance examinations.

      ‘Gambatte,’ says the employer to the young man, now working for a firm that must pull out all the stops—and work all the hours—in order to secure an important contract.

      And so it goes on, through generations, until the word is effectively etched on the heart of every newborn Japanese child before he or she even utters their first cry.

      ‘Gambatte’: ‘do your best!’—and, by implication, never, ever give up, no matter how seemingly insurmountable the odds. Because to give up was a source of great shame to the samurai, and if you’ve read this far, you’ll know how they dealt with that…

      GAME SHOWS, JAPANESE

      Japanese game shows—of the physical rather than the mental variety—commonly involve four things: water (usually freezing), a number of contestants wearing silly costumes (who will invariably enter said water at some point), an audience of limited mental capability (who will act as though someone getting wet is the funniest thing they’ve ever seen) and a presenter (often male) who requires medication to control what is obviously a serious hyperactivity disorder.

      It is interesting to note that Japanese game shows are never watched by small children, who find them tiresome in the extreme.