Getting Personal -- Breaking The Ice: Japan Will Meet You Half Way

Against a background of temples, markets and natural beauties, the Pacific Rim's rich human panorama unfolds in an overwhelming variety of languages and customs that can intimidate a Western traveler. Yet for someone who wants intimate contact with Asian cultures - a visitor seeking not just the sights but insights - personal encounters are possible through both organized exchanges and less formal contacts. Most important, a traveler must be open to experiencing the ways other people live.

TOKYO - After weeks of riding on subways and trains jammed with businessmen in gray suits and white shirts, the sight was a bit unusual - four women in red hiking boots and white sun hats with chin straps.

But this was not a commuter train; it was bound for Nikko, a quiet mountain town where hiking trails lead to peaceful shrines, cool lakes and hidden waterfalls.

Settling into my window seat alone, I watched as the women across the aisle dug into canvas day packs and produced a picnic breakfast: rice balls wrapped in seaweed, and canteens of green tea. Unlacing their boots, they propped their feet up on the seats and popped open cans of beer, laughing and talking between mouthfuls of sushi.

I had heard much about how quiet and reserved Japanese women are - and how that can change when they are out together, away from husbands and family.

I wanted to know more about who these women were and where they were going, and normally I would have asked. But once again I was the only non-Asian face in the crowd, surrounded by signs I could not read and overhearing lively conversation I could not understand. And I'm shy

when it comes to striking up a conversation with strangers.

``Do you mind if I sit here?'' asked a Japanese man as he slumped down in the seat across from me. Startled at his perfect English, I smiled, and we soon made room for two more women hikers.

Unpacking their lunches, they offered us some hard, brown candy. Recalling the Japanese word for green tea, I quickly identified the taste as ``ocha.'' Everyone laughed. The ice was broken.

For the next hour, with the help of our English-speaking seat mate, we chatted about husbands, family and hobbies.

``Where is your husband?'' asked Keiko, dressed for her hike in pink pants, red knee socks and a red checkered shirt. She talked of her two teen-age boys and her love for tennis, painting and piano. She unwrapped a foil packet of homemade pickles for us all to share, and explained that she has been learning English by listening to the radio.

During the three and a half weeks I spent traveling in Japan, first with my husband, Tom, then alone, I found meeting Japanese people was often as easy as sitting down alone in a train seat. Or strolling through a park crowded with schoolchildren anxious to practice their English. Or venturing into a public bathhouse where the women showed me how to wash before getting into a large blue-tiled soaking tub.

On a day-long bus tour of Isuzu Motors, Tom met a young Canadian

traveling around the world. The man was disappointed in Japan. He didn't know the language, was unfamiliar with the customs and spent most of his evenings in his hotel room. He didn't know how to eat with chopsticks and left his soup sitting because there was no spoon.

I was sad when I heard the story. Because not only is Japan as affordable as France, England or New York City, its people and culture are accessible for those willing to do a little planning and make a mental promise to try anything Japanese.

For us, this meant forsaking Western-style hotels with beds and private baths for friendly minshuku, the Japanese version of a bed and breakfast, where we slept on futons and had afternoon tea each day around a low table in our tatami-mat rooms.

Instead of bacon and eggs for breakfast, we drank miso soup and ate seaweed, white rice and fermented soy-bean paste cooked on a maple leaf in a clay pot.

Before we left Seattle, we worked with an international visitors group to arrange for a weekend in the home of a Japanese family in Kamakura, an ancient fishing village about two hours by train south of Tokyo.

On our own, we tried off-beat entertainment such as an afternoon in a Japanese maze, a wooden obstacle course of rope swings, slides, tunnels and bridges.

We have pictures and memories of excited schoolgirls giving us the two-fingered peace sign of the '60s after stopping us on the street to practice their English.

One afternoon as we were shopping in Tokyo, a trio of 18-year-olds from the Japan College of Foreign Languages in Tokyo approached us, reading carefully worded English phrases from their study guides. ``What is your job?'' one asked. When I answered that I was a journalist, she giggled as if surprised that we actually understood what she said. We chatted some more, then said goodbye. A few seconds later they came back to practice some more.

Another evening, instead of collapsing in our room after a day of sightseeing in Kyoto, we went to the neighborhood public bath near our inn. We were nervous, since we were sure to be the only Americans.

Parting the red-and-black curtains that separated the bathhouse from the sidewalk outside, we checked our shoes inside small wooden lockers, put on plastic slippers and were steered by an attendant toward separate areas for men and women.

The dressing room on the women's side resembled a '50s-style beauty parlor, with plastic chairs in front of long mirrors, a glass case stocked with soaps and shampoos and another filled with ice-cream treats.

I folded my clothes in a wicker basket and entered the large, blue-tiled bath room. Several women sat on stools, vigorously lathering themselves and scrubbing each other's backs.

Although they spoke no English, we communicated through smiles and gestures. An elderly bather, her gray hair piled atop her head, motioned for me to bathe at one of the waist-high shower heads on the wall before entering one of the soaking tubs - one each of hot and cold water, and two small ones with green and brown water.

The water was too hot for me to stay in very long; within a half-hour I was back in the dressing room searching for my yukata, a cotton bath robe supplied to guests by Japanese inns. Rather than bother with putting clothes back on, many people bring along a robe to wear home. Tying my sash and tucking my clothes under my arms, I went out (self-consciously) into the street to walk the half-block back to my hotel. I suddenly felt very Japanese.

The men's side of the bath left my husband with a different impression. He felt out of place because he was the only man without a tattoo covering his upper and lower torso. The men were not particularly friendly, and Tom felt they didn't like his being there. He was told later that these kinds of tattoos are often worn by Japanese gangsters.

Conversation supplied the entertainment another evening when we traveled an hour by subway and train in rush hour to sample a ``conversation lounge,'' where the Japanese go to practice their English and English speakers go to meet the Japanese.

Leaving the train station in Eifukucho, a Tokyo suburb, we knew we had entered a part of the city tourists rarely see. The streets were crowded with weary businessmen on their way home from work to their ``2-DK'' (company-issued, kitchen/dining room) apartments. A few detour each Wednesday for an evening at Cat's Coffee Shop, headquarters of a conversation club sponsored by ALC Press, a Japanese publisher of English study guides.

Sitting around small tables, we and five others - Ran, a graphic designer; Taki, an executive at Nissan Motors; Noriaki, a chemical engineer; Yoshinori, a salesman for Rockwell International in Japan, and Toshi, a medical student - spent two hours talking about everything from the tattoos to the latest American movies.

Ran, who plans to quit her graphic-design job when she marries, was interested in our impression of the movie ``Working Girl.'' She asked me if I knew about American ``career women,'' defined by her as a woman who keeps working after marriage.

I told her as tactfully as possible that I was one. Her reserved and polite response was that it was not a lifestyle that she would like. Although Ran likes her job, she views it as temporary, as do many young and educated Japanese women in professional jobs. Her ultimate goal is to find a husband to take care of her.

Asked what they thought of Japanese Emperor Akihito's plans to apologize to Korean President Roh Tae-Woo for Japan's harsh rule of Korea as a colony for 35 years, they all had strong opinions. They asked us for the English word to describe the kind of conversation we were having. We labeled it ``controversial.'' They repeated it several times.

``This subject I would never talk about in Japanese,'' Yoshinori laughed.

We found that the Japanese sometimes feel more free to speak their minds when thoughts can be expressed in the English language - which can be more direct and to the point than Japanese.

Perhaps it's why so many Japanese are so anxious to practice English.

But meeting the Japanese in a conversation lounge or on the street is one thing; meeting them in their home is another. It's a rare opportunity, I was told; Japanese homes are so small that families rarely have guests.

For Yutaka Usui, a manager for a vegetable-oil company in Yokohama; his wife, Tami, a pharmacist; and their daughters Misumi, 22, and Masumi, 21, our weekend home-stay, arranged several months in advance of our trip, was a chance to break the rules.

They not only took us into their home for the weekend, they threw a rare and impromptu family-style dinner party so we could meet their friends.

The Usuis have a comfortable three-bedroom home in Kamakura, a historic town about two hours from Tokyo. Like many modern Japanese, they have furnished it with Western-style couches, chairs and beds, but they do without household items we consider basics - a clothes dryer and dishwasher - not because they can't afford them, but because there is no room.

Tami and the other women taught me how to prepare sukiyaki. As we stood over the sink slicing raw bamboo root and cutting lotus flower designs in the caps of giant mushrooms, we talked half in English and half in Japanese.

Soon the table was laden with dishes and we gathered around for pictures, as if it was Thanksgiving and this was a family reunion. Sipping Budweiser beer and French Chablis, we passed around side dishes of tofu, pumpkin, bright pink fish cakes and pickles.

Like many modern Japanese families, the Usuis have gradually embraced aspects of Western-style life and values while preserving their Japanese traditions.

Yutaka Usui, 53, who travels by train an hour each way to his job at Nisshin Oil Mills Ltd., has no trouble remembering how to play the shamisen, a three-stringed traditional instrument similar to a banjo, but he's more likely to pick up his Spanish guitar and play a Western classical piece.

Tami Usui, an energetic woman who owns and runs three small pharmacies, rarely wears a kimono except for a wedding or funeral.

But when I flipped through a family photo album and found a picture of one of their friends in full kimono dress, Tami and her daughters were anxious for me to try one on. Soon we were up upstairs in the Usuis' bedroom, where Tamichose a cream-colored kimono that her mother had made.

As she wrapped the obi, or sash, tight around me, I felt short of breath. Since the Usuis' daughters travel to the train station each day on motor scooters, I could appreciate why they are not particularly saddened about not having kimonos of their own.

When a Japanese girl turns 20, it's traditional for her parents to present her with her first kimono. But Misumi and Masumi Usui will probably end up wearing one of their mother's.

When they turned 20, their parents took the money and presented them with a choice: a kimono or a trip to the United States. They took the trip.