➜ Vanishing Voices

➜ we gave colors names, and it messed with our brains

➜ Knock for Knock

1. Americans are way too sensitive

Sometimes I wonder if political correctness is in your constitution. I found out very quickly in my first visit that I had to bite my tongue pretty much all the time, and (more annoyingly) that nobody was ever straight with me.

It seems that speaking your mind to individuals is a major taboo. You can’t tell a friend straight when he has fucked up, nobody will ever tell you that you look fat (oversensitivity with not telling obese people to get their act together is a major contributor in my opinion to why there are so many of them in the states), and there’s way too much euphemism to avoid the hard truth.

To a certain extent, I can understand it – America generally does a great job of preventing people from singling out ethnic groups and toning down hate speech. But it waters it down far too much at the individual level.

A lot of Americans I met feel very lonely, and I feel this is a major reason. You may never find a boy/girlfriend if someone doesn’t tell you the hard facts of what makes you so damn annoying… so that you can change it! Being insulting for the sake of it is needless aggression. But constructive criticism is what friends are for.

The one time in my entire last three months that someone was straight with me was when my friend Karol Gajda gave me some tips to improve my presentation in future after I gave a TEDx talk, while everyone else was doing nothing but massaging my ego. It was really useful advice but it caught me off guard because I was used to months of…

2. Everything is “awesome”!

I really really hate the word awesome. I detest it. It used to mean “that which inspires awe”, but in the states it means nothing! It doesn’t even mean good - it’s just a word – a filler, like “um” or “y’know”.

This is the stereotypical American cheesy word, and I heard it until my ears started to bleed.

And when you ask someone “How are you?” the answer will inevitably be “great!” even if they are far from it.

When you start using excessive positivity it waters down the meaning, and those words become neutral. Then what do you do when you need to express true positivity? Of course, when someone says they are “OK, I guess” then you know things are pear shaped! I don’t think “bad” is in America’s vocabulary.

But nothing beats America’s over-positivity more than this:

3. Smiles mean NOTHING

When I meet Americans abroad, one of their biggest complaints are along the lines of “nobody smiles on Prague’s trams!” “That waitress was so rude to me! She didn’t even smile!”

Goddamnit America – I have the opposite complaint for you. You guys smile way too much. It’s fucking annoying! How can you tell when someone means it? And why the hell would a stranger doing a crossword puzzle on public transport want to look giddy?

When people smile in Europe it means something. For example, because Germans don’t go around looking like an American toothpaste commercial when I was with them and they smiled, it lit up the room – you know it’s genuine and you can’t help but smile back, because you are genuinely happy. You’ve shared a joke, or a funny story or you are in love etc.

But all the time? When you smile all the time in public it means nothing. Apparently a smile releases endorphins, but if your face is stuck that way I’m sure your dreams of a natural high will fade soon. I’d rather focus on trying to make my life better and have reasons to smile than lie to myself and the world.

Despite how surely I sound in this post, because complaining is the theme of the article, the fact that I vent when I mean it, means that when you see me happy you know I’m truly happy. And that is indeed a lot of the time But not all of it!

4. Tipping

While it’s a perk for most of you, for me it was terribly annoying to be in restaurants and having a waitress interrupt me every 3 minutes asking me if everything is OK. I’d have to feign a smile and thumbs up to make her go away since my mouth was always full. I really don’t see the point – if you’ve given me the wrong order or if I suddenly realise I’m dying from an allergic reaction to your food, you’ll know it long before those 3 minutes are up.

Eating out is always an annoying experience because of this. In the rest of the world we call the server over when we need something. If this was genuine interest, or if the person was trying to be friendly that would be cool, but that’s not what it’s about. In fact, it’s all down to “subtle” reminders that this person wants you to tip them.

This drove me crazy – I really think tipping as a means of waitresses and others earning the vast majority of their living is ridiculous. If I have to pay, say 15% anyway, then include it in the bill! It’s not a bloody tip if it’s mandatory!!!

Once again, one huge complaint I hear in other countries is how rude waitresses are, and Americans claim it’s because they aren’t tipped. Instead of getting tipped they earn a wage like everyone else, and do their job and if they do it bad enough they’ll get fired. But apparently not pestering you every minute and not smiling like you are in a Ms. World competition means you are “rude”.

I think the basic concept of tipping is nice – if someone does a top-notch job, sure, throw them an extra few cents or a dollar – but I just see it as a complex system of tax evasion for both restaurants and workers in the states. Some people ludicrously suggest that it makes it cheaper that the restaurant doesn’t have to charge more, but you’re paying the difference anyway. What it does contribute to is clear though:

5. False prices on everything

Tipping is just the peak of the iceberg.

It’s all one big marketing scam to make people feel like they are paying less. The price you see on a menu isnothing compared to what you’ll actually pay. Apart from tipping, you have to of course pay taxes.

Now taxes are things that you simply have to pay on items you purchase – it’s how governments work all around the world. So why hide it from us? It boggles my mind that places refuse to include the tax in prices. The price they state is pretty much useless. It’s just saying “this is how much we get from what you pay, but you’ll actually pay more”.

I don’t give a flying toss how much YOU get, I want to know how much I have to pay! How much money… do you want me… to hand to you? Do I really have to spell this out?

The most laughable of all of these is the “dollar store”. We have this thing in Ireland called the €2 shop. You can walk in with a single €2 coin and walk out with something. If you have a single dollar, you will be turned away from a “dollar” store though. It’s a dollar… that they earn not that you pay. Do you follow? The only thing that matters is the business’s perspective.

Airlines are the worst of all though. While in Europe some airlines are pretty bad with added fees, at least you’ll see them when it’s time to pay. The crazy thing for me flying in the states (since I have check-in luggage) was that I would pay… and then I’d pay again later.

It’s nothing but a large scale marketing scam. Make the price seem cheaper, which is lying to people. One great way to get people in more debt is to make them feel like they are spending less, but add the rest when it comes time to hand over the cash. This is one big part of….

6. Cheesy in-your-face marketing

I feel like scraping out my eyes with toothpicks when I’m forced to endure advertising in America. Make it stop.

Most Americans aren’t even aware of it – it’s on all the time so much that it becomes nothing more than background noise. And this means that advertisers have to be even louder to get through to people. It’s a vicious circle that drives any non-American not used to it bonkers.

BUT WAIT THERE’S MORE!

I decided to watch an episode of House one evening on TV. Up until then I had only really seen American shows online with advertising removed or back in Europe with European advertising inserted.

Holy shit.

Every few minutes you get torn out of the show and bombarded with irrelevant spam, and “awesome” images of people who practically experience orgasms as soon as they buy product X, that is (of course) on special offer just right now. And if it’s anything medical you get a super fast voice spur every kind of medical complaint you can imagine that his product will create as a side-effect. But at least the cheesy model is still happy, so it’s probably not so important.

Some of my American blogger friends apply this to the online world and cover their site with flashing or aggressive banners, and a writing style that is psychologically very effective to make a sale, but damn is it annoying. One online pet-peeve of mine is email pop-up sign-up forms, which you can justify with marketing stats, as long as you ignore how much you piss off people you don’t “convert”. I’d recommend you install Randy‘s Stoppity plugin for Firefox or Chrome to turn those off.

And here’s the thing: Americans are marketing geniuses. This can never be disputed. Every time I went to buy just a carton of milk, something about the supermarket that’s different to what I’m used to gravitated me towards some expensive garbage I didn’t need and I almost bought it, or did buy it, feeling very stupid as I walked out.

If you are in Las Vegas you’ll see how skilled they are at this manipulation by how they design the casinos. No windows, no clocks, impossible to find exits, no way to get where you want to go without walking through slot machines, the slot machines themselves have lots of shiny lights and bouncy music to entice you. You feel like you are being hypnotised. They know exactly what they are doing and have the billions of dollars to prove it.

But it’s still manipulation, and to those of us not used to the loudness it’s plain cheesy. Every corner of America is plastered with some kind of advertising or sponsorship, and I feel so at peace now that I’ve left. No more random phonecalls on any landline (including hotels I was paying for) with a recorded voice to try to pitch me something and no more spam promotional brochures taking over my physical mailbox.

7. Wasteful consumerism

Some of the consumerism is difficult to avoid when you are flooded with advertising, but some of it really is entirely the person’s own fault for being so wasteful.

The best example I can think of by far is Apple fanboyism. So many Americans waste so much cash to have the latest iteration of Apple’s iPhone, iPad, or Macbook. When you buy one that’s fine – I personally don’t like Apple products (I find the operating system too restrictive), but there are many good arguments for why it could be better. I also like to have a good smartphone and laptop for example, and I’m as much a consumer as you if you happen to have an Apple equivalent.

The problem is when you replace your iPhone 4 with an iPhone 4S, and do it along with an army of millions of other sheep for no good reason. It’s pointless and wasteful consumerism at its best.

I actually took advantage of this when I was in Austin this year. I waited until the day the iPad 2 was announced and as I predicted there were 20 new ads per minute on Craigslist in that city alone from desperate fanboys trying to sell their iPad 1. Since my laptop is so big (I consider it a portable desktop), it was worth my while to invest in a tablet and I convinced one idiot to sell me his with a bluetooth keyboard case for $250. (I’ve written a few blog posts on it in cafés so it was worth my investment) He was so desperate to have the latest version that was ever so slightly thinner and faster, and with a camera that makes you look like an idiot when you point your iPad at something, but otherwise basically exactly the same.

Personally I only replace my smartphone when I break the other one from travel stress or dropping it in an ocean etc. I’m also a consumer though, and will occasionally buy stuff that I don’t need, but replacing something I have for something marginally better for a large price is something I can never understand.

What makes it worse is that these people sometimes claim to not have much money and Apple products are added to their “necessities” list. The gobshite I bought my iPad from sighed when I told him what I do, and he said that he wished he had the money to travel. I wish he had the common sense to realise that if he stopped wasting his money he’d have plenty left over.

8. Idiotic American stereotypes of other countries

Many of us have seen videos online of Americans arsing up basic questions of international geography. I went out of my way to avoid people that stupid – my beef is with the supposedly educated ones.

Luckily, Americans you meet abroad tend to be much cleverer, but meeting those who haven’t travelled made my head hurt with the amount of facepalms I’d have to do.

Now, I know there are 300 million of you, but I have had this exact same conversation on both the east and west coast, and in the mid-west and south:

“Hi, I’m Benny”

“Awesome! I’m X. Where are you from?”

“Ireland”

“Wow! You guys certainly know how to drink!”

“Actually, I don’t drink”

“Oh, you’re not really Irish then, are you!”

Again, and again and again… and again. The same idiotic script – I knew it was coming every time. They demanded to see my passport, said that I’m the only Irish guy they’ve ever met who doesn’t drink (and very stupidly then admitted that I was the ONLY Irish guy they ever met!!) or had visited Ireland and spent all their time in Temple Bar (not even leaving Dublin), confirming that all Irish people are drunkards.

This is just one of the many idiotic things they would say, which of course annoyed me the most.

A few others I’ve gotten include:

• How was the boat ride over here? [Surprised that we have airports in Ireland - I must have arrived in rags in New York harbour of course]
• Too many people insisting that Ireland was part of the UK. They actually argued it with me!!
• Did I have to check my car for IRA bombs when I was growing up? (there were so many things wrong with this)
• Surprised that I knew more about technology than they did. Aren’t we all potato farmers in Ireland?

Whenever someone said anything about Ireland I’d always try to change the subject immediately or they’d quickly find out how blunt I can be.

9. Heritage

Every American you meet is not actually American. They are a fourth Polish, 3/17 Italian, ten other random countries, and then of course half Irish. Since Ireland is more homogenous, it’s hard for me to appreciate this, so honestly I don’t really care if your great grandfather’s dog walker’s best friend’s roommate was Irish. I really don’t.

The amount of “Oh my gaaawwwd, me too!!” retorts I heard when I said I was Irish is quite silly. I use country adjectives more restrictively than Americans do, so this was quite the pet peeve of mine. I finally learned that “I’m from Ireland” means what I wanted to say to them better than “I’m Irish” does.

I don’t want to say I don’t respect people’s rich heritage (a nice mixture makes a country more interesting; the melting pot of cultures and skin colours is one reason why Brazil is my favourite country for example), but when people start talking about it as if it were genetics and their Italian part makes them more passionate and their Irish part makes them good drinkers I really do have to roll my eyes.

10. ID checks & stupid drinking laws

Seriously, I promise I’m not 12. Please let me into the nightclub!

I’ve even seen 60 year olds get IDed. Nowhere else in the world do they ID me now that I’m clearly in my late 20s. A few times I haven’t had my passport (the most important document I own that I really don’t want to get beer spilled over) in my jeans pocket and have simply been refused entry.

I find it incredible that drinking age is 21, but you give 16 year olds licenses to drive cars and you can buy a rifle at age 18. And you can’t walk around outside with an open drink in most states (but apparently putting it in a brown bag while you drink it makes it OK). I don’t even drink, and I find these laws nonsensical.

11. Religious Americans

Look – I grew up in a religious town in Ireland, went to an all boys Catholic school, and some of my friends in Europe are religious. Even if I’m not religious myself, it’s up to everyone to decide what they believe in. I find religious people in Europe to be NORMAL – it’s a spiritual thing, or something they tend to keep to themselves, and are very modern people with a great balance of religion and modernism.

But I can’t stand certain Christian affiliations of religious Americans. It’s Jesus this and Jesus that all the bloody time. You really can’t have a normal conversation with them. It’s in your face religion, and they replace hard science with scripture in the classroom. They really need to tone it down.

12. Corporations win all the time, not small businesses

While there are many arguments against everything working towards there simply being a bunch of large corporations competing with one another, my biggest problem is in terms of availability.

When you get your food from Walmart or Wholefoods, and nowhere else, these places grow and will be separated by a reasonable driving distance for greatest scope. But between them? It’s a wasteland.

I was in downtown Chicago one day and wanted to simply get a bite to eat, but after walking around for an hour the only affordable option I could find was Dunkin Donuts. There are plenty of excellent cheap places to eat in Chicago, but you need to drive to them, or be in a specific part of the city with lots of restaurants. There’s too much competition between the big guys for a large number of little guys to sprinkle themselves conveniently throughout cities.

If you plonk me in any major city in Europe, I’ll find food in minutes. If you do the same in America, and don’t give me a cell phone or a car, I could starve to death.

And this is a major contributor to what I feel is one of the biggest problems in America:

13. A country designed for cars, not humans

One of my biggest issues in the states has been how terrible a place it is for pedestrians. It’s the worst place in the entire world to live in if you don’t own a car.

On previous trips to the states I’ve had it rough – relying on sub-par public transport (which is at least workable in certain major cities, but almost never first world standard in my opinion), or relying on a friend the entire time. You can’t do anything without a car in most cases. With rare exceptions (like San Francisco), all shops, affordable restaurants, supermarkets, electronics etc. are miles away. You rarely have corner shops (and if you do they are way more expensive than supermarkets).

I find it laughable that Austin is rated as among the most “walkable” cities in the states. Living just outside the centre, but within walking distance, meant that I had a stretch of my path with no pavement, and a little further out I had to walk on grass to get to a bus stop.

What struck me as the most eerie thing of all is that I felt very much alone when walking in any American city. In many cases I’d be the only pedestrian in the entire block, even if it was in the middle of the week downtown! The country is really designed to get in your car, drive to your destination and get out there. No walk-abouts.

Going for a walk to find food serendipitously (as I would in any European city) was a terrible idea every time without checking Yelp.com in advance.

For this last trip, I did actually rent a car for most of my stay (I didn’t even have a driving license before this trip, which most Americans find hard to grasp), and everything was so much more convenient, but I really did feel like I was only ever using my feet to work the gas pedal, and I will not miss it at all.

14. Always in a hurry

So many things in America are rushed far too much my liking. Fast food is something we have all around the world now (thanks America…) but even in a posh sit-down restaurant your food will usually come out in less than five minutes after ordering! There are also obsessions with get-rich-quick and lose-fat-quick schemes, pills that solve all your problems after a single swallow, people cutting to the chase in casual conversations far too quickly (after the customary empty “How are you? Great!”)

People don’t seem to have the patience to invest time to slowly improve things, unless it involves some kind of monetary investment.

Americans are also very punctual, because of course time is money. So many of them could do with stopping to smell the roses, and arriving late because they took their time.

Despite all the false positivity, I find Americans to be generally the most stressed out and unhappiest people on the planet. Despite all the resources, and all the money they have, they are sadder than people I know who can barely make ends meet in other countries, but still know how to live in the moment.

This rush to the finish line, to have your book published, or to have a million dollars in your bank account or to get that promotion, and to have that consume your life is something I find really sad.

15. Obsession with money

I met far too many people who were more interested in their bank balance than their quality of life. People richer than I can possibly imagine, who are depressed. More money seems to be the only way they understand of solving problems. They don’t travel because they think they need tens of thousands of dollars, and they don’t enjoy their day because they may miss out on a business opportunity.

16. Unhealthy portions

Apart from people not being frank with those who are overweight, the biggest problem is that portions in restaurants are grossly overgenerous. Any time I ordered even a small portion I’d be totally full. Small means something completely different to me than it does to Americans. If you sit down in most places and orderanything but an appetiser or a salad, you will eat more than you should.

I was brought up being reminded of starving children in Africa, so I feel guilty if I don’t clear my plate. This has been disastrous over the last few months and I’ve put on weight because of it! I should have asked for a “doggy bag” nearly all the time.

I’ve learned to stop ordering a soda entirely, because when places give you free refills, I feel like I shoulddrink more… it’s free after all! Ugh.

17. Thinking America is the best

Finally, one thing I find annoying is the warped view of America’s situation in the world.

Americans ask me all the time if I’m scared to be travelling in South America. I found it way scarier to walk around certain parts of downtown San Francisco or Chicago at night than I did even in downtown Recife (apparently one of the most dangerous cities in South America) – because at least there are people there. And I find it pretty scary to be in a country where pretty much anyone can legally buy a revolver.

I also keep hearing about America being the land of the free – it certainly was… 200 years ago. Most of western Europe is as free or more free, with opportunities for people at all levels. America is indeed a better place with a higher standard of living than most of the world, but free speech and tolerance for all is the norm in the western world as a rule, not just in America.

There is no best country. But those who go on about how America is number one, tend to be those who have never travelled or lightly travelled.

Interview with Nanzan University’s Prof. James Heisig

Interview by David White
June 16, 2009

What brought you to Japan?

Well, the short answer is that I was invited to help begin the Nanzan Institute for Religion and Culture by the then-president of the University. I had never met him; I was living in Nicaragua at the time on a small island.

The president of Nanzan had the idea of doing something new on the campus. As a Catholic priest, he thought he would do something connected to religion. He wanted to create a place that would encourage dialogue between various religions. His idea was to start an institute where religions could find a common language.

The university initially dismissed his idea for starting an institute for religion and culture; they didn’t have a department in religious studies or post-graduate programs in religion. But he was determined to build it, and so he sent his vice-president to look for possible candidates to come to the institute. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I was one of the people chosen to come to Japan, and they sent me an air ticket.

So in 1977 I was invited to come to Japan to help begin the institute. The president said to me, “I realize you’ve never lived more than 3 years in any one place, but you’ll have to come to Japan for at least 5 years, as Japanese is a difficult language and requires more time.”

So when I arrived in Japan in September 1978, I first came to Nagoya and met the head of the new institute; he asked me to “take a good look around, meet everybody,” and then he said to me, “I don’t want your shadow to darken this place again until you can read, write, and lecture in Japanese; your only responsibility now is to learn the language.”

I found out that I had been enrolled in a language school in Kamakura . I said, “But I thought I was supposed to learn the language, not go to school!” He replied, “We’ve put you in one of the best schools in Japan, it’s in Kamakura, they’ve written textbooks…” And I said, “I don’t want to go to school; I haven’t learnt any living languages in school.” But he said, “You’re going.”

So I went to Kamakura, and the head of the school was a man from the Basque area of Spain, where I had once lived. We had a talk about the language, and he agreed it would be best if I studied on my own.

The school had a 2-volume textbook. I read through every chapter; I didn’t do any drills, didn’t memorize anything; I just wanted to see the structure of the language. I just wanted to understand how the language worked. Reading through it all took me about a month. During that month, everyone told me I was crazy – “you have to come to class, start learning kanji, start learning to read – what are thinking? Japanese is not like other languages.”

The teachers said the same thing to me as well, as we (teachers and students) all had lunch together every day in the school. The grammar seemed quite simple compared to other languages. Everyone talked about the Chinese characters and about how tough it is to learn them; we were expected to concentrate more on the reading than the writing. So I asked if the Japanese themselves could write the characters, and of course I was told that everyone could, they learn them in school from a young age. So I couldn’t understand how it could be so difficult to memorize these characters. I was told that I could probably learn a few hundred or so, but no more than that.

I went to the library and found everything I could on Chinese characters. The first fifty or so pages of books on kanji were usually well-thumbed, and then after that they were untouched as the books were just lists of characters.

So I decided to start learning them as everyone said how tough it was to remember the characters.

I also noticed that the characters had been reformed a number of times in history; and they had been reformed using rational principles, and everyone had been telling me that they were irrational. I also learned that the characters were basically made up of 220-odd pieces. I thought if all the characters are made up of these pieces, what would happen if I took two or three pieces and went through the whole list of the required characters (1875 at the time) and gave each piece a meaning? There were about 4 or 5 pictographs that had survived the changes made through history—”sun,” “eye,” “moon,” “field,” and “mouth.” Everyone learns those in the first 30 minutes or so, and just using these pieces it was possible to make about 20 characters or so.

The question was the meaning. I gave each of the pieces and each of the characters individual meanings in English, and when the meaning was abstract, I tried to associate them with some concrete image. And then I started playing with stories and imagination: I would dream up scenarios to remember the characters.

The teachers had told me that the Koreans and the Chinese have a much easier time of learning the language because they already know how to write Chinese characters in their own language, but their own languages aren’t much help in learning how to pronounce them. I thought this was interesting as these are two different tasks that require the use of two different sides of the brain – learning to write, which is visual and artistic – and learning to pronounce, which is just kind of brute memory. So why couldn’t I be like the Koreans or Chinese, and remember the characters using English meanings?

So I thought I should do the most rational thing – the writing – first. I tried to find a meaning for characters by looking in dictionaries, and some of these created a clear image for me. I would move pieces here and there; then I found out that certain characters could form other characters, so I learnt those. I worked about 10 hours a day on this for 30 days, making my way through them (1875 of them); I hardly reviewed them, but I knew that I remembered them all. I never went to any classes; the teachers were getting annoyed as they had heard that I was studying the characters on my own, and this was just not the done thing.

Anyway, when I said that I was doing this, other language students at the school asked for my notes. So I wrote the characters on index cards with my little stories and passed them around to students. In the meantime, the word got out to teachers that I was passing these index cards around. The teachers asked to see me in the lunch break one day. Only one spoke good English. She said to me,

“I’ve heard that you’ve learnt some Chinese characters.”

“No, no, I’ve learnt to write all the required characters.”

“So you can write all of them?”

“Yes, I can”

They put me in front of a blackboard with some chalk and said, “Write the character for inu.”

And I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t know what inu means.”

“So you’ve been here for 2 months and you don’t know the word for ‘dog’?”

I said “Sorry, but I didn’t get to vocabulary yet. I learnt the characters through English words. So give me an English word.”

So she explained to the other teachers who were there, and somebody threw out “cow.” So I wrote the character for cow. And the same for “cat.” And they all started talking amongst themselves in Japanese. And I said, “What’s wrong? Is the character wrong?” And they replied, “No, it’s correct, but you’re not supposed to know it because it’s not on the official list.” I explained that there were a lot of them that weren’t on the list but they were easy to learn, so I just added them anyway.

So they started testing me; they might ask me to write the word “sad,” and I would write the character that I had given the meaning “sorrowful” to, as there are many overlaps in the characters. Following that, they asked me to come back after classes had finished that evening.

So I went back at 5:30, and all the teachers were sitting there. The one lady who spoke English said, “We’ve discussed your case very carefully, and there’s about seventy years of combined teaching experience in this room, and it’s the opinion of everyone in here that you are doing yourself a big disservice by studying this way and you should come to class.”

And I asked why it would be a disservice to learn the characters. And they said, “It’s short-term memory. You have a photographic memory, and you’ll discourage the other students who don’t have one.”

And of course I disagreed with them. But I said that I wouldn’t bother the other students. I went to see the head of the school and offered to leave as I didn’t want to cause any problems, and the head of the school asked me to stay a few more weeks but to keep a low profile.

So I stayed until just before Christmas. But a few days after the teachers had spoken to me, I had a call from the president of Nanzan University, asking me to go back to Nagoya quickly. So I went back to Nagoya, and to the president’s office.

He said, “Look, we went to great trouble to bring you to Japan . We expect you to be a diligent student of the language. This is not a game. This is a very serious business, it is a difficult language. I hear you refuse to go to class, study on your own and make this outrageous claim that you can write the characters. I’ve been here for sixteen years, I cannot write them, I’ve never met a foreigner anywhere that writes all the characters that the Japanese know, and yet you said you did it within a month.”

And I said, “Well, sorry, but yes, I did learn them.”

So the president brought a few Japanese teachers and a blackboard into his office. I was tested once again, and I wrote everything that they asked me to. The president dismissed everyone from the room, sat me down, and said “How did you do that!?”

So I tried to explain it all to him, and he accepted what I told him and that I was serious about staying in the country and studying the language. He said, “I want you to write this up in a book. Now.”

So I organized my notes within a few days and he pressured me to write a book from my notes. I went back to Kamakura and laid out the individual index cards on paper, and that took an entire month. I left the book as it was, without my name on it because I was embarrassed about the stories. I gave it to the president of Nanzan University, and he took it to the printing office and they printed 600 copies.

One of the secretaries at the institute asked me how I was going to learn to speak the language, and I said that I would play with children as the adults were too polite to correct my mistakes. So the secretary suggested that I stay with her sister’s family in Nagano. The two young children in the family I stayed with became my teachers and that’s where I learnt to speak Japanese.

The book was published, and I took a copy of the book to a foreign publishing house (Tuttle) in Japan and asked to see the president, a very nice lady called Iwamoto Keiko, who had lived in the USA and spoke English. She asked me to write her name in Chinese characters, so she gave me her name with the English meanings and I wrote the characters. One of the characters was the character for “happy”; I wrote 5 different characters, the first four were incorrect, and I got it right the fifth time. But she said that all the characters were all correct in the sense that they all had a related meaning (“happiness”). So she asked me how I did this, and I said, “Well, that’s what the book is about.” She asked, “How many did you print?” and I replied “Six hundred.” The book sold out in 6 weeks. She called me a few months later and asked if she could publish a proper version. But I had little time and let the book sit until 1981. This time I went to another company and I printed 500 copies with an ugly gray cover! I said to the publisher to only pay me for the books that sell. Two months later they called and said that the books had sold out, so we reprinted the book. I went through 15 or 20 printings with the initial book. So then I wrote volume two, then volume three, working with the same people for many years. The book was never advertised and it has basically just sold itself. Eventually the University of Hawaii Press agreed to take the whole series over.

The wonderful thing is that I have had letters from all over the world from language students and teachers who have used the book, and I continue to receive emails from people about the books. I usually answer the questions by saying that I’m not a professional linguist and cannot really answer certain questions: I just know that I wrote this book, and if you use it in the order in which it was written, it works. Some people expect magic, or expect that it can be used to cram for an exam, and it doesn’t work like that. The book is only meant to do one thing – if you want to learn to write the characters in a short space of time, begin from page one, don’t interrupt yourself, and you’ll do it. I’ve never seen anyone who has made it to the end and failed.

These books are a hobby for me and of course are not my main field, and in fact the people in my field (philosophy and religion) don’t always know I’m the same person who wrote the kanji and kana books.

I was once waiting in Kansai airport and there was a guy sitting next to me reading Remembering the Kanji. I asked him, “Is that book any good?” and he replied “Yeah, it’s like my bible, I take it everywhere.” So I said to him, “I hear the author’s a real whacko,” and he said “What do you mean?” and I replied, “Well, I hear he’s just nuts, he’s really strange.” And he said, “Well, I wouldn’t know that from this book,” and I replied, “Well, you better be careful what you read!” and he said, “Well, there are a few strange examples in the book. So this guy is really crazy?” And I said, “Yeah, absolutely. He’s been crazy all his life.” Later, he asked me to watch his bags while he went to the bathroom, and so I took his book and signed it when he was in the bathroom.

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