Japan Part One (Ichi): Overwhelming gratitude... It's a lot harder than it looks

Japan is cool. I heart Japan, seriously. I implore you to visit this country and not come home with warm fuzzies and amazement at their country and culture. First, everyone is unbelievably polite. It's the Japanese way, as my cousin's husband said, to think of others first and yourself last. That's not new to some people, but to experience that in action every day is quite amazing. I have so many observations and interesting stories from our short trip to Japan, I've decided to break them up into parts.

One thing I was not prepared for on this visit was the level of gratitude and honor each member of my family felt and expressed to us for making the trip out to see them. Each and every one of them was so grateful and so happy and so overcome with emotion, it was completely overwhelming.

For example, M, my mother and I went to visit my great aunt in her care facility about 2 hours outside downtown Tokyo (Tokyo is huge, so everywhere we went there was pretty much still considered Tokyo, but it can take a long time to get to your destination with all the train transfers). When we arrived at the train station, my great uncle picked us up and the first thing he did was pull out a 27-year old picture of me at my uncle Hiro's wedding that he keeps in his wallet. That wasn't the last time I saw them, but it was the last picture he had of me with his wife, my great aunt. But still, I haven't seen him in at least 17 years and he still keeps a picture of me in his wallet. (It should be noted that my brother and I are 2 of the 3 grandchildren in the entire family. ENTIRE family, including all of my grandmother's siblings). He said (in Japanese) that he was so impressed that we came to visit him on this short trip, they were so grateful. To express his gratitude my great uncle and aunt gave M a *very* expensive watch (http://www.seikowatches.com/asia/press/news_gs2005.asp
--keep in mind, M has never met any of these Japanese relatives) and gave me an equally expensive piece of jewelry. I felt terrible because Japanese tradition is to bring people you are visiting a gift, not the other way around. But we simply did not have time to get something before this visit. But of course, we graciously accepted their gifts in awe.

Later, we went into my aunt's room at the care facility. She was so overcome with gratitude that she had to turn away to cry. It was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time. She could NOT believe that we had travelled all that way to see her, and it was pretty evident that it would be the last time we will see her. She was so excited to meet my husband (who, in Japan, is practically at rock-star status). We communicated our well wishes for her health in the minimal Japanese we learned on the way over, and she was thrilled.

After the visit, we were supposed to have dinner with my great uncle in his hometown at some very fancy restaurant. We brought a change of clothes for the occasion. But at the last minute, he had to conduct some business downtown, so he drove us downtown to the Ginza area, put us in a beautiful Chinese restaurant, ordered us an unbelievable meal, complete with 2 bottles of French wine and a traditional Chinese liquor with dessert, paid the bill and went to his meeting. He later joined us for the Chinese liquor and dessert. Okay, he just bought us crazy expensive gifts and now he's taking us to a thousand dollar meal? I mean, soup was 4200 Yen (approx $42 bucks). OMG. This is just too much. But the thing is, in Japan, you gotta roll with it. So we ate and ate and ate, for fear of being rude for not trying everything. We rolled ourselves out of dinner, bade him farewell with multiple thank yous, and walked around in Ginza (famous part of Tokyo) to help digest.


A few days later, we went to visit my aunt at the hospital. She's very sick, and it was again clear that this would be our last visit with her. She too was completely overcome with emotion. She literally choked up and cried, bringing us all to tears too. I hadn't seen her in about 17 or so years, so seeing her in this condition was very difficult. But, in keeping with Japanese ways, she also gave us an all-too-generous gift of cash.

Can you see how this week went? I felt so mixed up by the whole thing. I mean, it's not that difficult for us to fly out to Japan, and given that we had a free place to stay in Tokyo the whole time (along with my great uncle's offer to put us up in some fancy-pants hotel next time we come back to Tokyo because he thinks my Grandma's house is too small to accomodate us), we could certainly make the trip more often. I felt bad that we hadn't done so earlier. I felt bad that we didn't bring gifts with us (although I did write my aunt a card). I also felt amazed at their expressions of love and affection. It may be true that Japanese (and Asians in general) aren't too good at expressing love with words and physical actions, but these grandiose gestures make it pretty darn clear how they feel. And that was a big lesson learned for me. My mother has never been able to tell me how she felt about me, but she has done things that I know are hard for her, and now in retrospect (damn 20-20 hindsight) I have gratitude for that.

Next time on "Lucky_girl's odyssey to Japan:" CRAZY JAPANESE FASHION and funny idiosyncracies unique to Japan (singing toilets anyone?). Stay tuned Wintermute.

*okay, I know I saw a typo in here earlier... somewhere there is a word with two "m's".... so forgive me. i am too hungry to hunt it down right now*