Kia ora koutou. Tim Bunting the Kiwi Yamabushi here bringing you concepts, life advice, and hiking guides from the Japanese mountains.
Somehow
Somehow, it doesn’t phase the Japanese. Somehow, through some divine intervention, the Japanese act as if it’s nothing.
It’s not nothing.
It’s very much something.
It’s a uniquely Japanese superpower. It’s ability unlike anything seen anywhere else in anyone else.
This video highlights it with excruciating detail (cheers RetireJapan for the heads up). My favourite author on all things Japan, Alex Kerr, even wrote an entire book on it.
In Japanese.
And they still didn’t get the message.
It’s something those of us who have lived here long-term have become accustomed to. Or at least, we pretend we have.
If you’ve become accustomed to it, you can safely say you have officially become Japanese. As a thirteen-years-a-gaijin I give you permission.
Good on you.
Instinctively bowing on the phone. Instinctively bowing while driving a car. Instinctively bowing while on the phone while driving a car (don’t do that). Knowing the difference between a Buddhist temple and a Shinto shrine, knowing which one needs the claps, and which one a bow suffices. Mastering Japanese, including knowing the difference between ン and ソ, knowing all the readings for 日 in this sentence: 今日は日曜日で、明日は祝日 (hint: they’re all different), or the holy grail, knowing when to use は, and when to use が.
