K: So lately I’ve been thinking about raising kids in Japan.
C: We already raised one.
K: (laughs) Yes, so the first time, because we had planned to come to Japan when he was 8, and I came over and I was studying Japanese and I was going to study Japanese and then be fluent in Japanese and you were going to come over after you graduated from Berkeley.
C: Right.
K: But then I got sick, which is a topic for a different episode. And so it took us about three years from then to get back, and so we came over when he was 12, and he had graduated high school at 12. So he wasn’t actually in any formal education at that time.
C: That’s right. And soon after, we put him back in formal education.
K: Yeah, he went to college online and graduated college from university when he was 16.
C: Yes.
K: So for me, the biggest challenge for raising him in Japan was the fact that he wasn’t bilingual and how to get him socialized and a peer group and learn Japanese…
C: Yeah, that was a trick.
K: And also because, since he had already graduated high school, we couldn’t just send him to an international school, which there are quite a, quite a few international schools in Nagoya.
C: But the thing about them is that none of them are actually accredited by the Japanese government.
K: Correct.
C: They have accreditations other places, you know, they through the US, one of the regionals or through the, you know, International organizations, the IBO or whatever. But in Japan they have the same status as driving school.
K: Yeah.
C: So there’s been some discussion lately. In the news about whether sending your kids one of these schools, they’re actually in violation of truancy laws.
K: Yeah, and a lot of Japanese universities won’t accept diplomas from them.
C: Right
K: Won’t count them as high school graduates. And so we can kind of get around that with testing into college and all of that.
C: Yeah.
K: So for us, him already being a high school graduate, which we were really happy about because we didn’t want to put him into Japanese high school because he didn’t speak Japanese, and we didn’t want to put him in an international high school because we didn’t feel there was a big enough benefit for the price tag…
C: Right.
K: And so having him already graduate was really nice, because in our home state of California, you’re able to take a test and graduate high school.
C: Yeah. It’s a little bit more complicated than that. You have to be at least a tenth grader to take that test. But if you’re homeschooled, which you have to file a declaration form to do, then you get to decide what grade the kid is in.
K: Yeah.
C: So we just, when he was 11 we said yeah, he’s a 10th grader.
K: Well, we also homeschool him and he did have all of that because he went….
C: Oh, yeah.
K: He had to do school. So don’t say that we just like decided he was a 10th grader.
C: No. No, we looked at what he would need to know for the test. So, he did well on the test, he passed it easily.
K: Yes. But he also had all of the math, language, writing, and reading skills of a 10th grader
C: Correct
K: when he went in. And when he entered college, he had all of, at 12, he had all of the math, reading skills that he needed to take all college level classes. He didn’t take any remedial classes.
C: No, he didn’t and in fact, he would get frustrated sometimes. He’d be like, okay, so I’m in my… I think it was like history class, philosophy or something, and this person just totally plagiarized. You can tell it’s just from Wikipedia. What do I do about that? Who do I tell on them to?
K: Yes, he was very much the plagiarism… he did not like plagiarism at all.
C: Because he’d say I worked really hard writing my discussion posts and other people are just plagiarizing. That’s just not fair.
K: Yeah. He really wanted it to be fair. He had an extreme sense of social justice and wanting things to be balanced and fair when he was 12 and 13 years old. Now, he’s really a lot more laid back. It’s like, I don’t care what other people are doing, but back then he cared quite a bit quite a bit.
C: But I think because he just really disliked it. Not just people cheating, he disliked like school, too.
K: Yes, he did.
C: He was like, I went through your test. I did your test to graduate from high school. Why should I have to do more school?
K: Well, because with a bachelor’s degree you can… and this is a benefit of being from a country that’s recognized as an English-speaking country… but as soon as you have a bachelor’s degree, you can get a visa to teach English anywhere in Asia.
C: Yes.
K: and South America and many places in Europe.
C: Well, and the other thing is that the way that you can graduate from high school early in California is not universally recognized. So, it’s California law that it’s equivalent to a high school diploma…
K: But it was recognized… it would have been recognized in Japan, but then he wouldn’t have the 10 years of education that Japan likes.
C: Right
C: And so that’s where it kind of gets funky for Japan is that a high school diploma or 10 years of education.
C: Right.
K: And he didn’t have ten years at that point. So having the, him earning his bachelor’s he would be able to at 16 sponsor his own visa if he got a job, which we did not have him do.
C: No, he would have had to wait till 18 just because of their rules on age. But
K: so would he have to wait till 20?
C: No, for some reason 18. So, 20 is the age of legal adulthood in Japan. But if you… if it’s immigration-related, then it’s 18. So it’s a weird kind of schism there.
K: Yeah.
C: But I mean, I grew up in Alaska where the legal age of majority is 18 but you couldn’t smoke until you’re 19, couldn’t drink until you’re 21, but you could join the military at 16. So it’s… you know, different legal ages for different things.
K: So something I found… the three things that I found most challenging about raising a child in Japan, for me. One was socialization. The other was language acquisition, second language acquisition. And the third was shifting timelines and expectations. So I want to start with shifting timelines and expectations because that’s kind of the most relevant for right now, what we just recently did, so if we had stayed in the United States, I had always planned to enroll him in driver’s ed, teach him how to drive myself for the gap between driver’s ed and teaching how to drive, and driver’s ed would be offered through whatever high school he went to, and then I would give him my car.
C: Right.
K: So it was all relatively inexpensive, I would buy myself a new car… just really straightforward… knew how to do everything. It all made sense. This would happen when he was 16, and I felt really good about that plan. It’s very close to my own story because at 16, I learned how to drive and I got my car and all of that. So, I got my driver’s license on my 16th birthday, and I really wanted to have that same experience for him, but there’s no… it doesn’t culturally translate, and because Japan drives on the left-hand side of the road, I do not feel qualified to teach him to drive. And, I let my Ameri… my California driver’s license expire before getting my international driver’s license. So now I do not have a driver’s license in Japan because I believe, for me personally and this is my personal belief, which has changed… I felt five years ago that you shouldn’t drive unless you’re fluent in the language of the country you’re driving in, because when you get in accidents with other drivers, you need to be able to exchange information, you need to be able to talk with them. And when the police come, you need to be able to advocate and convince them that it wasn’t your fault.
C: So, if you’re listening hoping to move to Japan and get a driver’s license, Google how to do it. Don’t take our advice. But basically you have to get an international driver’s license before you come and then you have to convert it within one year to a Japanese…
K: Unless you’re from Maryland. So this is something true. I did look it up. I don’t I don’t know if it’ll still be true whenever they come but look it up. (
C: But the transcript is going to say skeptical look (skeptical look)
K: So Japan views every state license in the United States differently.
C: Well they all have different requirements.
K: Yeah. So if you get a Maryland license, you can transfer that directly to a Japanese license. You don’t have to do international.
C: Interesting. Because the international driver’s license is just an application form. So I’ve never quite understood why it’s given any weight, but you know, whatever.
K: And so for me if… I also feel it… because I when I ride in cars, I still flinch even after being here for over 10 years. I still flinch on right-hand and left-hand turns. It still feels wrong to me, pulling out of my instincts and my muscle memory is very much to driving on the right-hand side of the road.
C: You know, I’m always headed for the driver’s side whenever I ride with somebody because I’m like headed in my mind for the passenger side. And then I see the steering while and I’m like, like right, yep, nope, gotta sit on the other side.
K: Yes. So for me, I’m better at now knowing how to get in on the passenger side. And that’s because our son has a car and he’s always driving me around places. Like I ride in cars a lot more frequently than I did in the past. Whoo, so I’m having a hot flash if you hear me fanning, I apologize, but whoo doggy. This menopause is like… menopause is real… (laughs)
C: It is.
K: The hot flashes are real man. They’re whoo, they’re something else, something else.
C: Nany years later.
K: Yes, because I did have the, what’s it called, surgical
C: surgical menopause
K: surgical menopause. I had a hysterectomy which makes me suspicious like, you know, I’ve always wondered like what exactly did they take out? What exactly did they leave in? But that’s a completely different episode. Back to raising a child and shifting timelines. So, for me everything shifted. Like prom. So, for me prom would be like a serious girlfriend and prom happens your junior year of high school. So that’s age 16. You get your serious girlfriend, you get a car, you probably become sexually active… not promoting that, not saying 16 is the age that you should, just saying that car culture in the United States… a lot of teenagers have sex in cars. And so if you give your teenager a car, I feel like… I don’t know for me emotionally you need to be prepared for the fact that they might be having sex.
C: Yeah, if you don’t like that give them a convertible.
K: No, even with a convertible you can still do it. You can still do it if you’re limber and nimble and all of that because they…
C: Give them a motorcycle. Because that’s what teenagers need.
K:So I’m not saying that I was wanting our son to have sex at 16. I’m glad he didn’t he didn’t have sex at 16. I think in large part because he didn’t have a car.
C: Probably. Yeah.
K: What do you think about that?
C: He didn’t have a car. He didn’t have his own place. He wasn’t old enough to rent a hotel room.
K: Yeah,
C: so like, he had no way to kind of get away with it. And Japanese apartments are small enough that we would have noticed somebody else coming in.
K: Yeah, and there was no way to like climb up a trellis or anything because we live on one of the top floors of our building. So yeah. So what do you feel about the shift? Because I feel like us living in Japan, and this was one of the things that appealed to me for living in Japan. I felt like he would kiss later, have sex later, get a car later. I feel like everything just happened later in life.
C: Well, and that’s one of the things we were looking at when we moved is the climate in the US school systems. I mean, he went to a good school, but there was still violence in schools. And when we looked at Japan, it wasn’t like Japan was better, you know the time…
K: But for the drugs, Japan was a lot better because even the private school that he was at there was an Adderall issue. Yeah people abusing Adderall. And in the public school system, we lived in a really nice neighborhood, really great public school, but there was still… we couldn’t find a school that didn’t have a drug problem at the time that we were looking and thinking about him going to high school.
C: Well, and I know that when I went to high school back like in the late 80s early 90s, the high school I went to took like all the kids from the military base plus kids who lived in town, and had like problems with marijuana. And then the other high school took all the rich kids and had problems with cocaine. So like, whichever high school you went to, there was drugs readily available.
K: So I went to like three or four high schools and every single high school that I went to massive massive drugs. Interestingly enough though, the one high school that I went to that was like straight-up ghetto, just like hood to me, the only thing that you could get on campus there was marijuana, and the most ritzy high school I went to, you could get everything. You could get acid, mushrooms, like a whole cornucopia of illegal drugs.
C: So, I went to Lathrop High School which used to be called Fairbanks Main High School. And so I think that had a population of students that was relatively representative of the general US population. It was like, I think like between 15 and 20% of kids were Black, like 10 and 20% were Asian and it was like probably half the kids were white, and it was just marijuana. That was it. But the other high school was like 97% white and 3% Asian. There were like two Black kids at that high school, and they had like serious problems with cocaine and with prescription drug abuse.
K: And so the high school that I went to that was predominantly African-American, it was just weed. There wasn’t like anything harder. It was just, not on campus, not available on campus. Now I ventured off campus and got you know harder stuff, ‘cause I did a lot of drugs in my youth. Don’t do drugs. Stay in school.
C: It is interesting. So I know this is a digression but we’d be off brand if we didn’t have one. The high school that I went to, they would write about it in the newspaper, and I wrote to the editor, a letter to the editor of the newspaper at the time because I was… there was one day that they had an issue. On one page it said “Lathrop students flock to nearby mall and loot as shoplifters” or something like that. It was all about how terrible it was to be near our high school because we would just like mob the mall and there were so many of us they couldn’t stop us from shoplifting. And then in the column over from that was like “West Valley Junior High School Champions”, and it was consistently like that. Like there’d be “Lathrop is just awful. The kids are awful. They’re all thieves and vandals” and “West Valley, oh, we love our rich kids.”
K: Okay that kind of discrimination and propaganda. Yes. Yeah, that’s too bad.
C: But the information that we got before we came here about Japanese high schools. And one of the reasons that we push to get Rasta graduated from high school was like, you know,
K: they were setting
C: setting kids on fire, that was
K: bullying
C: bully was a big one but setting kids on fire was the one I remember.
K: Because they have this sempai/kouhai system where you have like upper classmen and lower classmen and the lower classmen have to do whatever the upper classmen say. And the year that we moved here, that was the year that three different kids in three different neighborhoods were set on fire by older… like legit, set on fire. So it also happens in California. There was that same year, there was a story about a kid who, a young man who wore a skirt to school and got set on fire for that. So that is just alarming. You hear that in high school people are setting people on fire. I was like, whoa, wait a minute, pump the brakes.
C: Don’t set anybody on fire, ever, but if you’re going to set fires wait till you’re in university.
K: (laughs) Don’t set fires! So, for school I was really worried about bullying and then because of the homogeneity in Japan… it’s predominantly Japanese, and so there aren’t a lot of foreigners and there aren’t a lot of points of contact for Blackness specifically.
C: Right.
K: And there is a problem in Japan with blackface and cultural appropriation and appropriating the most negative stereotypes. Like, there is a Japanese group that calls themselves “The niggaz” and they dress, interestingly enough, they appropriate Chicano fashion. So they Just like cholos and cholas, but they call themselves “The Niggaz” and they rap. So that’s… a problem. And then every New Year’s Eve there’s an issue with somebody appearing on TV in blackface. So I don’t think that Japan understands. There’s also like in Nagoya, there’s like low rider clubs, where they celebrate low riders and they dress like cholos and cholas, and they like have religious artifacts and things for religions that they don’t believe in, for customs that they don’t understand. And so the Japanese really kind of view other cultures as costumes, and don’t really dive… this isn’t everybody, but there is an issue with this in Japan, where it’s just a costume.
C: Definitely. You know, I wonder if part of it is that… I think something like 30% of the Japanese export economy is cultural stuff.
K: Yeah.
C: So, I mean cars is a big one, but after that like anime and movies and stuff makes Japan massive amounts of money to export it. So,
K: yes
C: Like Japanese people, generally, don’t seem to have an issue with cultural appropriation. Like, if other people want to appropriate Japanese culture they’re like “yes, we’re selling it please buy.”
K: Yeah, and they actually want it. So like yes, cool. Come over. Dress up like a samurai, cool Wear a shirt with kanji you don’t know how to read. Get kanji tattoos that you don’t know how to read. And it doesn’t seem to make Japanese nationals angry. There’s some Japanese nationals that it makes angry, but generally speaking it’s not as sensitive topic as it is in the United States.
C: And you know, I wouldn’t feel upset if like somebody outside the US were like wearing a t-shirt with a hamburger on it. Like yeah, I’m American. I’ve got a hamburger.
K: So for me, I have a problem with any variation of the n-word being used. I just feel like, that’s not your word. You don’t get to use that word. So please don’t use that word. And I feel like any images… any slave imagery, I have a problem with. I don’t have a problem with like makeup and hairstyles. I know for some people it is very upsetting if people who are not who don’t have African ancestry wear dreadlocks. That doesn’t bother me as much, corn rows doesn’t bother me as much. I do… it does bother me when there’s blackphishing, where they’re trying to pass as black or they know that they’re being perceived as black and they don’t correct people and say “Yo, you know, this isn’t… like this is what my culture is, although I think black is beautiful, this isn’t my ancestry” and just differentiating. And that’s only because there’s a limited amount of opportunities for African Americans and for people with African ancestry, and I want those limited opportunities to go to those people.
C: I think it goes deeper than that, too, because I know I come from a writing side of it. And I know that, you know, whenever somebody writes a book about the Black experience that, short-sightedly, kind of takes up space for other books about the Black experience. And what I’ve seen happen, is that somebody, who’s usually white, will write a book about what it’s like to be Black, and then when somebody who’s actually Black comes and writes a book about it, they get told “no, that’s not what it’s like. It’s like this other book,” and I see that more on a personal level with disability stuff.
K: But you wrote a book where the main character is a Black female in a wheelchair.
C: Absolutely
K: And you draw your understanding of what that means from my experience.
C: I do so, when I say about the black experience
K: …for the black portion of it, just to be clear. I’m not in a wheelchair. We have other sources for that. You personally knew a young lady who was in a wheelchair and you based a lot on her experience. And we also have a lot of connections to…
C: Well, and I have writing groups. So, I had several people who are wheelchair users read it. I did some paid sensitivity reads. But when I was writing that, I wasn’t… I wasn’t saying to myself “I’m writing the Black experience.” I was writing a book with a black character and made the gazes very clear. So, I think a lot about gaze, and I think the same thing happens with the Japanese culture where they’re like looking at as “no, this is, this is me,” rather than “this is my perception of that culture.”
K: Yeah, but this is like a complete digression. We need to get back to raising a kid. Okay raising a young..
C: yeah, he will never grow up if we don’t get back to it.
K: So, he has an afro, which I think is beautiful and raising him in Japan versus raising him in the United States as an afro-wearer, as someone who celebrates their natural hair… I didn’t find any issues between… any differences between what I would have done in the United States versus what I would have done in Japan with the exception of in Japan I have to cut his hair.
C: Yeah.
K: There’s no one in Nagoya, and we recently… he went to a barber (laughs) who like, not a single part of his hair was the same length. There were so many dips and curls and some parts of it were so short that we just had to camouflage that until it grows out and we can even out the length.
C: Yeah, so
K: It’s still being repaired from that.
C: So Rasta is completely bilingual, so he has some
K: and bicultural
C: and bicultural, so he asked on Facebook, you know, does anybody know a Black barber? Somebody who can cut black hair? This guy says “Oh, yeah. I’m totally totally familiar with it, and he went, and I think what the guy was totally familiar with was cutting permed hair and just kind of assumed.
K: I know you keep saying that but I’m telling you no, this guy does not know how to cut curly hair at all.
C: Okay
K: At all. I know you think that perms create uniform lengths in the curls and it does not. If you stretch out curly hair when you’re cutting it, you’re going to not have… because each curl has different elasticity even when permed.
C: okay
K: even when permed
C: I’ve never had a perm just yeah, you know,
K: Your hair is straight as a bone. Except for your beard hair. I think your beard hair, to me though is kind of more frizzy than curly.
C: It is not frizzy. It is crinkly.
K: I know you think crinky, but I think frizzy, frizzy and brittle.
C: It is not brittle.
K: Your beard hair is dry as a bone and can the mic pick you pick up you stroking your beard hair?
C: No, it can’t I’ve checked multiple times.
K: Okay, because you’re just going to town today.
C: Absolutely.
K: (laughs) You’re just like my precious, my pretty…
C: No, it’s whenever I stroke it, I become slightly more wise.
K: (continues laughing) Oh, geez. So Rasta’s timelines are different.
C: Yeah.
K: I feel that he grew up much slower in Japan because he didn’t… he didn’t have as many social points of contact, and so we were really able to craft and shape who his peers were.
C: Yeah. I think that’s a big thing.
K: And for the most part from 12 to I want to say geez Louise, till about 17 or 18.
C: Yeah.
K: His peers were either college students who were playing Go
C: right
K: Or people in their 60s who were playing Go.
C: Yeah
K: Because that was his almost his only source of socialization was the board game Go. It’s the one with the… it’s a logic game with white and black stones that you play on a kind of board.
C: Well, he did soccer, too.
K: Yeah, but he didn’t do soccer for very long.
C: No, I think we… that was like 9 months maybe.
K: And then when he does soccer it was mostly Brazilians who spoke Portuguese.
C: Right
K: So they spoke Portuguese and Japanese.
C: Yeah, and his Japanese was not that good at that time. So it was limited communication.
K: Yeah, so we didn’t get him involved in any serious soccer teams because he wasn’t really athletically skilled.
C: No.
K: That wasn’t his talent.
C: Most of the sports happens through the schools.
K: Yeah
C: Through the club system in schools, so if you don’t go to a school that can be really tough to be involved in things here in Japan as a young person.
K: So then when he was about 18/19, he got into salsa dancing.
C: Yep
K: And then started socializing with different people and dance clubs and the salsa community. And also we talked about it on our making friends thing, but like the Nagoya Adventure Club and different Facebook groups and meetup groups. And so his socialization felt really easy and his development felt really easy because he moved out on his own at 20. He didn’t get a car until he was 25.
C: And I think it was easier. I think part of the reason is that… is Japanese bars. So, in the US if you want to learn that you’d probably go to a bar and you’d probably have to be 21 to enter.
K: Yeah.
C: But in Japan, there’s no age limit on entering a bar because of like a centuries-old law that basically it’s not legal to serve only alcohol. So every bar is actually a restaurant.
K: Yeah
C: Where all ages are welcome. So with… if I go to a bar it’s not unusual to see kids there. They’re not drinking, but they’re their you know, eating food with their parents while their parents drink, or not, but
K: O they’re on their own. Because we do see out on dates and such.
C: Yeah. See, I think it did… it did alter his timeline, as far as raising him. And I think that some of the parts were easier. So, before we moved, we had to drive him to any activities or have one of his friends’ parents pick him up.
K: Yeah
C: Unless they were really close by. I think he had a couple of friends he could ride his bicycle to the… to their house, but that was like, very limited number of people.
K: Yeah
C: But being here in Japan, you know, as long as he knew the subway and train route, he could go pretty much anywhere.
K: Yeah, and so he was able… he had a lot of, a lot of autonomy. I think he had more autonomy at a younger age.
C: Yeah
K: Because at around 13 he was just riding the subway all over wherever he wanted to go. He would just tell us where he wanted to go and leave, whereas in the United States at 13 because of where we lived, we would have to drive him. Yes. And so he would have autonomy at the destination but maybe not autonomy getting to and from.
C: Right
K: And because we were in Japan and we live so close to public transportation, there were many days that he would go hang out at the ki-in or the igo-bu… the Go Club… on Nagoya campus, Nagoya University campus, or hang out at the Go parlor. There was his favorite local partner here in Nagoya.
C: yeah, there’s several but he had one favorite. He was a member so he got discounted entry and all of that. So yeah.
K: Yeah, and then when he started going out to clubs, I think he had a lot more leeway at 16 and 17 because he could stay out until the last train and then
C: Which is at about midnight
K: Yeah because the last train’s at midnight. And so I’m not sure that midnight would have been his curfew in the United States. I don’t know if I would have felt comfortable with him driving around at midnight.
C: Yeah, I don’t remember the California laws on that. Because I know California has laws about how late teenagers can be driving and whether they can have passengers and all kinds of things.
K: And so then around 18/19 he… we just sort of “just text us and let us know if you’re catching the last train or not.” And so sometimes he would come in six o’clock the next day when the train started again. And I know now that he lives on his own, sometimes people just walk home after the last train
C: Right
K: stops, because he has friends that live in and around his neighborhood that he sometimes goes out with. But since he’s got his car he doesn’t tend to do that anymore.
C: Yeah, because there’s a lot of 24-hour entertainment in Japan.
K: Yeah.
C: But it’s not always entertaining to do that for six hours. So, most karaoke places are open 24 hours. There’s, you know,
K: Several 24-hour restaurants.
C: Internet cafes that are open 24 hours and things but it’s, you know, not necessarily fun to go to karaoke for five hours. Unless you’re with somebody you’re really having a good time with.
K: Yeah. And something I really like that makes it easier to be happy about him owning a car is he’s not really a drinker.
C: Yeah,
K: So, he has gotten drunk. And the first time he got drunk was at home with me because I wanted him to… we didn’t get hammered together, but I wanted him to see what a small amount of alcohol it takes to not fully be yourself.
C: Yeah, it was like, okay drink this. Okay, now how you feeling? Okay, that’s called buzz. You’re feeling buzzed. Okay, drink this. Okay, now you’re tipsy.
K: So we did three drinks. We did vodka orange juice with a half shot of vodka. And then we did a mudslide, which is a ton of alcohol. It’s vodka, Kahlua and milk, Bailey’s and cream, and milk. And the reason I wanted him to do those two mixed drink specifically is because the mudslide just tastes delicious. You don’t taste any of the alcohol. It’s sweet and creamy and good and when you’re first drinking it, you don’t feel buzzed.
C: Yeah. Now that’s your personal opinion. I think it’s vile, but I dislike the taste of coffee.
K: Yeah, so it’s not because of the alcohol you don’t like… the don’t like the two coffee liqueurs that are included. And then after he drank that he was like, “oh, I’m feeling good now”. It’s like okay, now get up and move around. Let it circulate. He’s like, okay, I’m buzzed. I’m like, yeah two mix drinks will most often get… he’s very small in frame and doesn’t drink often so he will most likely get a buzz. I said “now let’s put a shot of vodka on top of that so you can be drunk”.
C: Yeah.
K: and he was able to see, okay if I drink one drink, go dance, and then drink a second drink 30 minutes later, I’m going to be… stay even all night. If I’m drinking drinks back to back, I’m going to get drunker than I mean to. And there has been times that he’s gotten… there’s been two occasions that he’s gotten so drunk that he had the spins. But he wasn’t driving either of those times. He intended to go out and have a good time and see what it felt like to get hammered just to experiment, and he didn’t like the aftermath of it.
C: Yeah, so he’s never been a fan of the “nomihoudai”. Which, nomihoudai is the “all you can drink”. Which is you a set price and for two hours they’ll bring you as much booze as you can stomach. It’s usually watered down, but you can still get really, really drunk on it, and it’s a thing here in Japan. So
K: Yeah, so I wasn’t worried about drug use so much in Japan because drugs are really hard to come by in Japan and there are such strict drug laws that even if you are under the influence, it is still considered… the word just ran out of my head… possession. So having it in your system is possession in Japan. And I … we always told him, you know, if you’re with someone who’s doing drugs or your around drugs, know that if you get secondhand smoke from marijuana and then you get arrested they will do a blood test on you and that blood test will show that you had marijuana in your system and then you will get possession and you may be deported. But you’re definitely
C: Your Japanese friend is going to get a slap on the wrist. You are going to have major major consequences.
K: Yes, and so for him if we know of an expat that smokes, we tell them hey they’re a smoker, make sure that they’re not smoking around you. Because I’m not judging. They can choose to take that risk. I’m not taking that risk.
C: And when I was at Nagoya University apparently mushrooms were popular. I saw several signs in buildings that would say do not go into the woods looking for mushrooms. If you eat mushrooms, you might hallucinate, but you will die.
K: Yes, there’s a lot of poison mushrooms.
C: And if you’re a foreigner, we will deport you so yeah, most of the mushrooms where poisonous. They had I think five or six deaths from people thinking they were getting hallucinogenic mushrooms getting poisonous mushrooms instead. So yeah, I mean there are drugs in Japan but it’s a lot less and it’s a lot less obvious.
K: Yeah. And so with the drinking I was just really, really happy that he’s not heavy drinker because he has porphyria. He inherited hereditary coproporphyria from me and he also inherited lupus from me and both of those cause inflammation and irritation. And so if he drinks, he’s going to have issues with his pancreas, issues with his liver. So I’m really… he can metabolize it okay, but afterwards it just really leaves him feeling sick. So I’m super super happy that he’s not a heavy drinker. He’s just all around a really responsible dude.
C: Yeah. Now if you’re listening and you like to drink and you don’t have a drinking problem, you know, good on you, but you know for… I know for all three of us, it’s physically bad it rate… it lowers my threshold for seizures, and for you and Rasta it causes problems with porphyria and lupus.
K: Yeah, and my pancreas can’t take it. I was a hard drinker for years and years and years and
C: Before your diagnoses
K: Yeah before my… but even if I had diagnoses, let’s be real. Before I had Rasta and the first… so even the first, I want to say like the first five years of Rasta’s life there would be like, I dropped him off with a caregiver for the weekend and I would go party. Not every weekend, but I still enjoyed the drink.
C: I know that… that when you were doing sex work, you would drink a lot, too.
K: Yeah sex work, I did drink a lot and do a lot of drugs. It wasn’t because I was doing sex work. It was because the environment I was in had a lot of alcohol. And so when I was a stripper in the bar, I made money off of getting people drunk. So, you know people don’t like to drink alone, and if you have a high tolerance for alcohol, you make more money than the girls that don’t drink.
C: Yeah, talking with you I learned all about dancer drinks and all kinds of things because I had never been to a strip club.
K: Yeah, and I told you, “yeah, no I’m ordering diet today” and you were like “what’s diet?” It’s watered down alcohol so that I’m not drinking as much and like the more savvy people would be like “give me her drink” to see if I was drinking diet drinks or if I was drinking fully loaded, and then there was a whole list of
C: I don’t know if they call that savvy but… (K laughs)
K: the more experienced?
C: I would say predatory, but you know.
K: Okay, so yeah, but there’s No Sex in the Champagne Room.
C: No
K: There’s No Sex in the Champagne Room, for reals. So anyways, that’s like a huge digression. So I don’t even know if we talked about raising a kid in Japan.
C: Yeah, we did. We put him in college because we didn’t want him put him in high school, because we didn’t want him some on fire.
K: Yeah, lots of foreign people go to Japanese high school and are completely fine.
C: Yeah.
K: Don’t get picked on don’t get bullied and have a lovely experience.
C: He had a lot of autonomy and he didn’t get given your car.
K: Which is was hard for me.
C: Those are the three things if you want to raise a kid in Japan. Don’t give them Kisstopher’s car. Give them some autonomy.
K: Well and so for language, I think I do want to touch on how he learned Japanese because that is something people ask me a great deal is “How did his Japanese get to be so good?” For… he went to a Jap… a family Japanese class at Nagoya University for two years.
C: Right, while I was there both Kisstopher and Rasta were able to attend a family Japanese class.
K: Yes, and that was once a week. And then he went to the Go clubs and played Go with only people who could speak Japanese, so he would practice his Japanese speaking there. Then, he went from there to the YWCA in Nagoya. Their, I think he went to the 5-day week program first.
C: Yeah, he did
K: And he did the five-day week program for about six months.
C: Yeah. So the YWCA is the Young Women’s Christian Association. It’s like the YMCA but for women, but for some reason they’re a language school here. They do other stuff but primarily a language school and they teach both Japanese and English.
K: Yeah. I think they have some other private lessons for different languages.
C: Yeah, I think so, but their main programs are teaching Japanese to non-japanese people and teaching English to Japanese people.
K: And then after doing about six months of that, I think he went to the two days a week for about six months. So he did like probably like a year at the YWCA?
C: I think he did two years overall.
K: Okay, so we had different… he was doing different plans at different frequency
C: and he met different people who had invited him out to events. And usually they were older people.
K: Yeah, and then joining the salsa community, he spoke to a lot of people but his Japanese really took off when he started dating.
C: Yeah.
K: And that really solidified, I think moreso his reading because he wasn’t studying Kanji. Now he does LINE on Kanji.
C: You know for reading he has always been motivated by what does it get me? So he learned to read English because Pokemon came out.
K: Yep. And if he wanted to play Pokemon… I wouldn’t read him anything that it said.
C: It was Pokémon and it was Tomba on the PlayStation.
K: Yeah, and we would not read what it said to him. And he’s… he’s so stubborn man, when he was… because Pokemon came out when he was five, and he’s like, “I’m gonna play it anyways”, and I’m like “go ahead, I’m not reading this”. And it was through frustration not being able to do what he wanted. And it wasn’t until I started playing Pokemon and he was seeing all the stuff I could do that he couldn’t do, because he thought that he was maxing out the game with his little bit of knowledge being stuck in the first town. Not knowing how to do anything and I didn’t even realize there were other town.
C: That they were telling him “go to the next town over”. Ahh, I’m skipping the boring part.
K: Yeah because he would just walk in and out of all the rooms and so he ended up getting a random starter Pokemon just by fluke. And “oh, I’m in a battle. Okay. I’m just going to push buttons”. So when he saw everything I could do, then it was like, okay, if you’re serious about learning to read, then let’s read this.
C: And I will say that my own Japanese reading improved greatly when I started playing Japanese video games.
K: and my Japanese reading is still busted. I can read bills.
C: Because you don’t play Japanese video games.
K: Yeah, but I can read bills. I can read about 75% of our bills, there’s like 25% that I can’t read
C: the ones that don’t come regularly.
K: Yeah that are a little bit of a struggle for me. So yeah, that’s why he was motivated because then he was doing… then LINE came out, and he was receiving a lot of text messages in Japanese, and so now his Japanese reading is quite good. So how to get bilingual and biliterate
C: is get involved in something social. I know a lot of people who’ve learned Japanese through watching home dramas.
K: Yeah
C: so they always sound right dramatic when they speak. (K laughs) Aand then there’s the guys who learn Japanese from their girlfriends.
K: Yeah, and they sound effeminate
C: they found effeminate when they speak
K: because Japanese does have a masculine expression and feminine expression.
C: There’s people who learn at University, so I sound very uptight when I speak. Yeah, so
K: and my Japanese is “level busted”. So I sound very halting and hesitant when I speak. There are a few phrases that roll off the tongue for me. Because… because he will come to my office and it’s like “chotto matte kudasai”.
C: Which is “please wait”.
K: Yeah, so that just rolls off… and then saying, you know, “this is a business. I don’t live here. I’m with clients now, please do not come back. I am always busy. No, I do not want whatever you’re offering.” So yeah the stuff that you say often.
C: I don’t want any residual income.
K: That’s not who comes to our door. Jehovah Witnesses come.
C: Yeah, Jehovah Witnesses come.
K: Yeah and sometimes door-to-door salesmen come. Yeah, every once in a while. Yeah, because my building is not… it doesn’t have a security entrance. You can just walk up to the individual, you know.
C: I accidentally let in a door-to-door salesman once and he was trying to sell us filters for our stove. He was like, “but don’t you love your wife? Don’t you want it to be easy for her clean it?” and I say, “first of all yes, I do love my wife. Second of all, I’m the one who cleans that, so goodbye for you”.
K: Yeah. So, for me, I feel like raising a kid in Japan to be bilingual and biliterate just takes effort and intention.
C: Yeah, I think so.
K: And I think everyone should find their own way.
C: I think it would have been very similar to raising him in some place like New York City where there’s ways to get around on your own.
K: I don’t think so because in New York City, I doubt that you’re seeing five year olds riding the subway by themselves.
C: Okay. Yes, maybe not in New York City, but maybe one of the European cities with good transportation
K: And low crime.
C: And low crime, yeah.
K: Where it’s safe for kids. So I’m really happy of our choice to move him when he was 12. I really love the fact that he can culture switch. And I really love the fact that at 25 he’s completely biliterate, completely bilingual, and completely bicultural because that means that he’ll be able to… I’m always thinking about my grandbabies… he’ll be able to celebrate both parts of my grandbabies the Japanese part
C: Your future grandbabies.
K: Yeah, my future grandbabies. He doesn’t have any kids yet. So that he’ll be able to celebrate their Japanese and American heritage and their African-American heritage. All that they bring to the table, because I think in a lot of international couples that we see, the foreign partner doesn’t celebrate Japanese holidays, doesn’t celebrate Japanese traditions, and I think they’re kind of missing a really great opportunity of embracing and celebrating all that their child is.
C: Yeah. So that’s us.
K: Yeah, that’s us for today. Thanks for listening. Hope you tune in again next week.
C: Bye bye.
K: Bye.