Kowai ne

This means frightening or fierce. But today, I learned that this can refer to a grave situation.

After the 10.50am break, our sensei asked: “Where is Ebuzeru?” He is a small, smelly Turkish guy who annoys everyone with his incessant, inane questions but he’s generally harmless. I was friendly with him until he began to sit next to me in class everyday and followed me after class to the station. He asked me a million times if I was married and commented that Singapore is a beautiful place with beautiful people. I tired of answering his intrusive and strange questions but dismissed it as coming from a weird little person (the other Turks in the school do not behave like him. In fact, they also avoid him). When ignoring him didn’t work, I simply told him, “Tomatte kudasai.” (Please stop [talking to me]) Harsh? Well, he was driving me insane.

He yaks non-stop and would not shut up even when the teacher goes, “Shizuka ni!” (Please keep quiet) All the girls in the class, including me, avoid him as much as possible. He also has a creepy way of staring at your face even when you are not talking to him. He has a habit of speaking to you just 5 cm away from your ear. The Koreans were really freaked out by him and giggle to themselves whenever the teacher said: “Ebuzeru kesseki?” (to be absent) because it means “son of a bitch” in Korean.

A writer of Islamic books, he boasted that he met famous personalities everyday when he was back in Ankara. He had a habit of constantly heckling you if you were his neighbour — he’d peer over your shoulder to see what you’re writing; he would tell you your Japanese was wrong when in fact it was right; he would snort with laughter over nothing.
Since half the class didn’t want to sit next to him, he tagged along with the guys who often looked upon him with bemusement.

Anyway, Isato, an Algerian guy, was also missing. The teacher cracked a joke that Isato and Ebuzeru must be together. There’s an on-going joke that Ebuzeru is gay and that he wants to marry Nihato (the bad ass hottie), a fellow Turk, because he used to stick with him 24/7, even after class. Niihato got tired of him and ignored him. When he couldn’t stand his irritating banter, he would tell Ebuzeru to shut up gruffly. Ebuzeru then hung out with Chris, the American guy. When Chris got annoyed, Ebuzeru started talking a lot more to YK, the Australian, and sometimes Isato.

The sensei teased Ebuzeru for being left behind by Isato and that Isato didn’t love him anymore. Isato stewed away in his seat and at the next break, he burst out with: “I didn’t come to Japan to fight. Nobody calls me gay! Who started this stupid joke?” Kowai, ne!

And so, he told the teacher he would not continue class today as he was upset. In a way, I kind of understood but I also don’t…Perhaps, in the Middle East, such things are not meant to be joked about.

On a previous occasion, YK made a joke about Isato’s wife. We were told to describe the pictures given to us. YK had one with an old lady smoking a cigarette and he teased Isato: “Hey, that looks like your wife!” Isato menacingly replied: “Don’t talk about my family in this way. If you insult my family, you insult my honour.” Toteimo kowai…

Our sensei made a second announcement that Isato was going to hire a private tutor and won’t be joining us for the next level. I think he was considering this move for a while already as I know he was anxious to accelerate his Japanese language skills so he could attend a computer course only taught in Japanese. But this made his departure even more dramatic.

Everyone was shocked. We quickly assured our sensei that everyone was in on the joke when she blamed herself for starting it. The lesson resumed on a slightly somber note.

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Thinking about this over lunch at Masala Hut in Harajuku by myself today, I relished being alone. I haven’t had this feeling for a long time. For the past six months, I have been trying hard to forge a social circle for myself. But I need a break from all that.

Cultural differences are a difficult minefield to navigate. Sometimes, I don’t know if it’s really a cultural divide or just off-putting behaviour. In my encounters with many people these past months, I’ve made boo-boos and have had my fair share of being offended. Let me illustrate a couple of examples on my mind now.

Last term, I was hanging out with this Canadian guy, Kim. He revealed that he checked into a mental hospital a year before coming to Tokyo. I listened but I didn’t know what to say except nod and “that must’ve have been tough for you”. He was defensive that some people freaked out when they knew about this but I assured him I wasn’t.

But he avoided me after that dinner. I figured I should just leave him alone — perhaps he felt over-exposed. But when I chatted to our other classmates, he would insist on cutting the other person off and talk about whatever was on his mind. Then I would think, oh he is okay with me now. But the same thing would happen: I take part in the conversation when he and a few others are chatting, but he ignores me and switches to speaking in French (there were several French speakers in our class). When I keep away from him, he’d start badgering me for attention.

I decided to avoid him completely when the term was over. To me, it wasn’t a big loss. He was a bit strange as he always wanted to chat about his hip hop class in Vancouver (he was a grade school teacher) and asked me to pay for his drink or ice-cream because he could only afford to shell out 600 yen for a meal. We would be at the cashier and he would literally suddenly ask me to pay for the ice-cream. There was no prior warning but what could I do at the cashier? So I paid lah. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for treating my friends but I would rather do it out of my own accord. He also expected me to copy notes (by hand) for him when he wasn’t around because he would do that when I was absent. I am really not used to this type of behaviour. I told him he didn’t have to do that for me. There was this warped sense of personal space that was going on over here.

As you can see, I’m on a roll with this rant.

During this term, I got on quite well with YK, a Chinese-Australian. He mostly grew up in Malaysia and Singapore but migrated to Melbourne in his teens. He seemed friendly and I welcomed talking to someone in English. Everyone else, besides Chris, spoke a different language.

Then…..I tired of him, too. He was constantly whining about something. We often headed out to lunch after class, but after one particular ferocious whine fest, I couldn’t bear the thought of hanging out with him. I would rather have lunch alone for the rest of my life.

What was he complaining about? His job, not having a degree, not having many friends here, being disillusioned about Japan even though he was an all out Japanophile, being ill-treated at work, being annoyed with his flat mates…He didn’t like the sensei because she paid more attention to the Caucasian boys in the class. Man, I can tell you it’s so not true. He tries to get her attention by monopolizing her with his own questions or cracks stupid jokes. In response, she just laughs or palms his questions off by asking him to see her during the break. He was peeved by that and told me in a huffy voice: “I can’t stand her! And her handwriting looks like shit!” I kid you not. I am appalled by how huge his blind spot is.

Sometimes I think women are difficult and bitchy, but some men are worse. Maybe it’s not even a gender issue… some people are just annoying. Or do I have a low tolerance for people different from me?

What gets my goat about him too is that he insists on speaking to me in an exaggerated Singlish acc
ent. He thinks it’s extremely funny but after a while I found it kind of condescending. How would he like it if I kept saying: “G’day, mayte!” or “It’s a foine day, hey?” to him? He likes to joke that I don’t have any work to do and so have plenty of time to party and watch DVDs. I usually just make tittering murmurs and move straight onto the next topic.

Very often, besides whining, he goes off on his own diatribes. Once, I was telling him about my friend, Viv, who teaches conversation English and is earning a decent amount of moolah from that. He became incensed when he heard she was not qualified to teach: “If you call yourself a teacher, you better be able to explain everything to your student. If you can’t, you shouldn’t be teaching at all. You’ll be corrupting their English. There are all these people who dare to call themselves English teachers when they are in fact unfit to teach.” On teaching methods: “The student must have a textbook, even for conversational English.” And lastly, on who can teach: “Only native speakers will know what’s right.”

He asked me several times if I lived alone, but each time I would inform him I lived with my boyfriend. The latest one had him criticizing me for coming to Japan for the kangaroo.

“Why doesn’t your boyfriend come out with you?” I just said: “He travels a lot so I’m on my own most of the time. We had a few conflicts when I first arrived in Japan because I expected to see him more after our long distance relationship.” He was like: “Did you come to Japan just to be with him?” I said: “Well, of course but it was to also experience living abroad.” Man, it set him off on this tangent on the kinds of relationship mistakes people make when they don’t do what they want, but follow what their boyfriend/girlfriend wants. He shook his head and went on and on about how important it is to be an individual.

In Singlish, my response would be: “Sibei sian.” (to feel extremely bored and disinterested). In this context, I would add a touch of revulsion to such narrow-mindedness.

Man, that was a great rant. I was keeping all this inside but the daily irritation reached its peak this week. YK asked me out to lunch everyday but I dodged it every time. I just couldn’t bear to sit through a whole hour listening to him go on and on and on. Ah, he also lectured me on ignoring Ebuzeru. That I was being mean and by not speaking to him, I was making the problem worse, ie. Ebuzeru would continue his heckling to get attention. Whatever.

It’s times like these I miss my girlfriends. I wish I could call them right now so we can have a good chat over dinner at our favourite haunts. They really made my life sparkle when I was in Singapore with them.

So tonight I will be alone. I am tired of talking to other people.

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