Trauma (Japanese expats)

I was an exchange student in Florida at the time and went for dinner at an Outback Steakhouse.  When I went to the bathroom, though, I couldn’t tell the difference between the men’s and women’s bathrooms, so I chose what I thought was the right bathroom, went in and fortunately didn’t see anyone else.  However, as I was sitting in the stall, I noticed men’s legs going by and I heard men’s voices.  I was petrified and didn’t know what to do, so I just sat there frozen for about ten minutes.  Finally, I burst through my stall door and just hurried out of the bathroom very embarrassed.
-Anonymous

About eight years ago, I was walking on Madison and 52nd St. on a Sunday afternoon and some kind of animal fell down from the sky, seemingly from the middle of nowhere, and almost hit me.  I heard the sounds of the dead animal on the ground, and it looked like a white rat, but of course there is no white rat, so maybe it was just a rat or mouse or white rabbit or some other kind of animal.  I saw some blood and body fluid on the ground which made me feel really sick and scared, so I did not really look closely and left.  There was no one walking around me, so I am not sure if anyone saw this.  However, I was walking around the business district, so there is no way someone dropped the animal from the building… Plus, it was Sunday… And I noticed that there was some blood and body fluid on my pants that I was wearing, so it really shows me how close I was to getting hit by this animal!  Ever since then, I am so scared to walk in the Madison and 52nd St. area and always looking up to make sure that nothing is falling from the sky.
-Anonymous

Seventy-two hours after my company transferred me from Tokyo to New York, I found myself abandoned in New Jersey, in an office full of strangers, and no idea of how to return to New York.  My supervisor had taken me to the New Jersey office. We were planning to return together so I paid scant attention to buses, directions, turns, etc., just trailing along after my my supervisor without even purchasing a return ticket.  After we arrived at the New Jersey office, however, my supervisor experienced a dramatic change of mood and abruptly declared that she was returning to New York, and then did so by herself.

Later, as the time came for me to leave the office, no one in the office seemed willing or able to offer any help I asked repeatedly in the office for directions for returning to the city.  No one seemed to know or be willing to help.  Eventually, I gave up and went outside — it was pouring rain, of course — and I resorted to asking strangers for directions to the bus to New York.  After a long walk, I found my way to a bus stop, but not before my shoes were ruined and my feet were literally bleeding.  Of course, I was not sure which bus went to Port Authority.

A bus eventually stopped. The driver, a large and impatient woman, seemed to ignore my question about where the bus went.  Eventually, I just got on.  At least it was out of the rain.  There were only three other passengers on the bus.  The George Washington Bridge was a giant traffic jam, and the driver began to violently curse and swear at the traffic in general and the surrounding vehicles in particular.  I was terrified. Japanese bus drivers would never react that way.  Was this rude, angry woman crazy?

Eventually, I made it back to Port Authority.  Still not home though.  I needed to take the subway back to my office.  Three days into my tenure in New York, the subways were a mystery.  I wandered into a McDonald’s and asked people for directions but no one seemed willing to help.  Eventually, I gave up and wandered back outside, found a subway map and worked out the trains myself.

I still had not learned my lesson about asking strangers for help, though.  I got on a subway.  When I asked a fellow passenger what station I should exit at, he asked where I wanted to go.  “Grand Central,” I replied.  “Oh, get off here.”  We both scrambled out the open door, and then he quickly disappeared up the stairs.  Locating another map, I learned that this was not the right station at all.  I settled in to wait for the next train.

Eventually, I managed to get back to a familiar station near my office.  Exhausted, I clutched the handrail as I rode the escalator up.  At the top, I discovered my hand was covered in black dust.   Life in America might just prove too much, I thought as I stood there still wet, with ruined shoes, bloody feet and blackened hands, reflecting on the consistently unhelpful people I had encountered all day.  Even today, after seven years in New York, I can barely stand to be in the vicinity of the Port Authority.
-Mari

Immigration in this country bites, as everyone knows.  Being a foreigner, I have to go by the book. I don’t take any chances when it comes to immigration law, since I am such a chicken.  As you may know, when you are about to graduate from university, your visa needs to be switched from student status to a temporary working permit.  During this time, you can’t leave the U.S. until the new visa arrives.  It was 1999, a week before Thanksgiving, when I sent my application to the INS, and called my mother.  I told her that I couldn’t leave the country for a while, and she said everyone was fine, and nothing to worry about.  A day after Thanksgiving, still munching on leftover turkey, I got a call.  It was my brother.  He never calls me.  He said “Don’t be surprised.”  I was like, “What do you mean?” and he kept saying not to be surprised.  I was almost getting excited, thinking, is he getting married?  Did someone win the lottery?!  Then he quietly said “Your father passed away.”  I didn’t believe him, and I kept asking what the real surprise was.  Finally my mom came to the phone, and told me it was true.  Disbelief.  Of course I told mother that I couldn’t go home a week earlier, so I was like, “WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO?”, sobbing.  She said not to worry about it since there was not much anyone could do at that moment.  Even if I tried, by the time I got back home, it would have been after the funeral was over.  It was the most traumatic moment of my life, yet, such a hard-core realization moment.  I was just studying abroad, 10,000 miles away from home, but never thought about this type of serious thing happening to anyone at home.  It made me rethink the whole reason of me being in America, the land of opportunity.  I thought about going back to Japan, but I remembered how my father was the most supportive when I said I wanted to go study abroad, so I stayed.  When I went home in March of 2000, it was so odd.  The only thing visible was his picture and a butsudan.  Since my father had been in and out of the hospital, I felt like he was still in the hospital.  It’s been seven years since, but I sometimes still have to tell myself “My father is dead.”
-Anonymous

When I first arrived in the U.S. in 1991, I got in to JFK Airport with my two friends, all of us female.  As we started to figure out transportation from the airport, a man just took our suitcases and started putting them in his car.  It turned out he had a big stretch limousine.  I was getting a bad vibe, but we asked him “How much?” and he said $35.  So we got in, and he took us to our hotel in Manhattan.   When we got out, he started saying it was $35 “per person.”  But I didn’t know what “PAH–pasun” meant.  So I kept saying I didn’t understand and he kept saying “PAH-pasun.”  Finally I figured it out and we gave him $35 per person.  Then he complained we have to give him a tip, and I was so scared I gave him $20.  Afterwards I told my friend who lives in New York.  She was so mad and said I shouldn’t have paid the driver that much.
-Hiromi

A few years ago when I was living in Southern California, my friends and I rented a car to drive from Oxnard, where I was living at the time, to Santa Barbara.  I was still new to living in the U.S., and while I experienced many culture shocks while getting used to my new life here, I was still confident of my driving abilities.

We got on the 101 and my two friends took an afternoon nap as we began the hour-plus journey.  I was comfortable behind the wheel — maybe too comfortable.  After some time, I noticed another car that appeared to be coming straight at us!  This was strange, and I thought maybe the driver was lost or something.  Staying in place, I continued to drive even though the car was still speeding towards me!

The car moved closer and closer, and we were doing at least 50 MPH.  I thought about what was going on when the other driver suddenly blared its horn, waking my friend who was sitting next to me.  In a flash, she saw what was happening and screamed at the top of her lungs, grabbing the wheel and turning it hard.  We just missed the the other driver, who sped away without even slowing down.  It wasn’t until I looked at the road again that I realized what happened — I somehow drifted all the way to the left side of the road!  And here I thought that I had finally gotten used to driving on the right!  Fortunately, nobody was hurt and we safely arrived at our destination.  This story might seem more accidental than traumatic, but the sad thing is that during the rest of my time in California, the same thing happened two more times — with the same friend in the passenger seat!  Now I stick to riding the subway, but I still enjoy driving in America!
-Aya Shimizu

f you have ever ridden a subway in Tokyo during rush hour, you know about the subway employees responsible for pushing people into the trains.  I was born and raised in Tokyo, so, I have successfully learned how to get myself into the train and to get comfortable most of the time without getting into a fight in Tokyo.   However, on the first day to work in NY, I did what I used do to in Tokyo.  Haha…   A big and tall woman pushed me out of the train with her hips saying “What the hell you think you are doing.  No more space for you!”  When I arrived in NY four years ago, the complexity of the MTA subway map did not intimidate me — until I started riding the subway myself!   For my first job interview in NY, I had to call the interviewers twice to let them know that I was coming late since the train was delayed, since I could not hear or understand the announcement telling that the train was going express, etc.  On my third call to them, I apologied for the inconvenice, explaining that I did not think I would be able to get to their office in the near future, and thanked them for contacting me for the interview.  I was not cyring.  But, when they told me that they went through the same expreience and said, “We will be here and wait for you,” I started cying.  As you know, this would not have happened in Japan, but only in NY.
-Emiko

The first year I came to the U.S. I was in a dormitory room with some friends watching TV.  I wanted to switch channels, so I said to everybody, “Where is limo-con?”  Everybody was like “???”  I realized I pronounced it wrong, so I said it again, “Where is rimo-con?”  Everybody was still like, “???”  I thought my “r” pronunciation was pretty bad, so I said, “RRRRimo-con?”  After a while, somebody said “You mean remote control?”   I was sooooo embarrassed!  But we call it “limo-con” in Japan!
-Noriko