By Hank F. Miller Jr.
Whenever the work and weariness of life fills my house with gloom, the sure way to drive away the clouds and ring in the laughter is this:
All I need do is to speak politely to my wife. In Japanese, I mean. For the same reason, she finds having her husband address her in formal speech hilarious. If, for example, I ask her if she knows where I left my wallet, odds are she will ignore me. But if I use the word zonjiri for \”know\” and add the polite prefix of go, resulting in gozonjimasu ka, she will pound the tatami in convulsions.
I especially enjoy joking and bringing harmony into our lives, there is never a dull moment around the Miller household.
Neither way do I learn about my wallet.
The immediate point, however, is that Japanese couples are not supposed to speak to each other in such a formal manner, but we\’re not a Japanese couple. Not unless, that is, they actually intend to make each other split.
The bigger point is that I don\’t get the joke. To me, one of the finer mysteries of life in Japan is the proper use of polite speech, teneigo or-worse-its more horrific cousin, keigo. Let\’s make this simple and wrap these two together in a single package-the word keigo.
Of course, Japanese will tell you keigo is a mystery to them as well. Especially younger Japanese, who-learning to ride a bike-have to scrape their knees a few times before they can pedal away on just the right verb choices. As for me, my knees are so badly scarred, I am afraid to get anywhere near the keigo bicycle.
If you acquire your language skills in a classroom with a patient instructor for about two years-or one that was not so tolerant but carried a whip-you might have a handle on polite speech.
As for my Japanese I learned it here and there due to the necessity of having to speak to survive and get along with my colleagues. Since I was the only English speaking foreigner here and in charge of the project. I was posted here by the French off shore oil Construction Company that I was employed by.
I was posted at Nippon Steel\’s fabrication yard located at Wakamatsu, City near where I live now. I had to survive to be able to communicate my daily orders from our engineering department main office in Singapore.
\”The rules here are simple,\” says my wife Keiko, who is an English teacher at one of the local high schools.
She says \”you only use \’o\’ or\’go\’before nouns, unless you use them before verbs.
Anyway with me learning Japanese from my wife, though she is extremely patient in every form perhaps she needs a whip.
Living and working in a foreign country sometimes isn\’t easy as one may think it is.
There is the language, the culture and the food, thus one gets tired of using sign language to make known just what one wants.
Not to mention being able to travel around freely to do what one want to do. Not all the Japanese speak English. One really need to have a sense of humor at times to be able to get along, it can be very frustrating to say the least.
But at this time in my life I can look back on life here and reflect on all the good and bad as well as the memorable times, such as all the achievements as well as the accomplishments, my family have achieved together.
Warm Regards from Kitakyushu City, Japan,
Enjoy the nice fall weather.
Hank & Keiko Miller & Family
Note: Hank was born and raised in Gloucester City, NJ after he was discharged from the service he settle in Japan.
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