TABLE
OF CONTENTS
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The Turkish Japan
Kobe, Japan
By Michelle Cox
My friends and I walked into a
Turkish hookah bar in an alley-way off the streets of Kobe. It was on the second floor of a really narrow
building, the bar about the size of one of our ship's cabins. We
all sat down on the bar stools and ordered a hookah. It
wasn’t long after that three Japanese men with the look of
professional
businessmen and one woman walked in. At
first they looked confused. There were Americans at
their usual
hangout and they began to turn around and walk out. But the bar
owner
convinced them
to come in. There was no interaction
between my group and theirs and we all minded our own business until
the older
business man noticed my tattoo on my back peeking from the bottom of my
shirt. He came over and lifted my shirt to
see what
it was, which startled me. 
This was a
conversation opener, even though there was a large language
barrier. They
spoke very, very little English and we speak no Japanese.
The
older man and the other men proceeded to talk about us all. One
guy actually
went up
to one of my friends and rubbed her stomach and then grabbed her
breast,
telling
her she looks like she is pregnant and that is why she has a large
chest. My friend got really offended and
rubbed his
stomach back, saying he is no prize himself. The
men obviously didn’t understand that they were being
offensive, possibly because they were drunk. After
the three
men conversed for a few minutes we asked the bar owner to translate to
us and
he said they were calling us “beefy” Americans. We
all became really disappointed at our unusual encounter and tried to
ignore the men
while we finished our drinks to leave. Ironically
enough, we learned that they all work in a butcher shop
together; hence the
beefy comment.
Finally, the one woman
accompanying the men walked over to us and struggled with her English
to tell
us we are all very beautiful, as if to apologize for her co-workers’
behavior. As we were getting ready to
leave, I walked over to the woman to introduce
myself holding out my
hand to
shake her hand. I had forgotten that
Japanese do not believe in shaking hands and as I pulled away in my
attempt not
to insult the woman, she grabbed my hand, kissed it, and then bowed to
me. I felt this was a very kind and
sincere
gesture meant to make me feel better.
All in
all, this encounter was a very strange and angering experience, because
my friends and I are all
very
aware we are much larger framed than Japanese women.
However, it was a learning experience and it
was worth it to me because I walked away feeling as though I had some
sort of
connection or understanding in that one moment I shared with the young
woman, despite our difficulty of communicating through language. It was
almost as if she was
trying to
show her admiration for us American women. It
made me think of Mikiko Ashikari’s article “Urban Middle
Class
Japanese Women and Their White Faces,” in
which she explains how Japanese women have
always looked at
fashion magazines and tried to mimic Western styles and make-up
techniques
to look
like American actresses. I will
never forget that night in Kobe.
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