of her inevitablefate. The procedure described was a traditional Japanese form of voodoo called
nenokoku mairi
, practised at night, in secret, on the grounds of a shrine. Meta had read a reference to it a few months before in an article in the
Tokyo Journal
.
The students in the class were obviously familiar with the practice, too, for they were in stitches from beginning to end of the speech. Or was it the young woman’s changed demeanour they found comical? Meta knew that the closest she’d ever get to the meaning of any gesture on the part of Japanese people was a guess. Though she laughed through the speech along with the students, there was something vaguely disconcerting about it. The procedure described was something all the students knew how to do, how to put a death hex on someone. After that class had left her room, the memory of her own laughter began to make her feel queasy.
Meta had learned a way of coping with the kind of cultural alienation she was feeling at the moment. The best thing to do in this case was to share the voodoo story with a fellow foreigner and chuckle and shake your head at how nothing made sense away from home. But Meta did not dare make any remarks about Japan in her office that could even remotely be construed as negative. The man at the desk next to hers was practically psychotic with hatred for Japan and the Japanese. Greg Ulesso was an East-European Londoner, the son of Estonian parents who had emigrated to Britain. He’d come to Tokyo via Burma, where he’d taught English at Burmese National University for a small salary and a huge allowance of unearned respect. In Tokyo, he must have known he was facing a huge salary and no respect. Still, when he balanced Tokyo with Burma, he found Tokyo wanting. When Meta had first met Ulesso, he spent most of his time comparingTokyo unfavourably to Burma. “These surly fucking Japanese gobshites! You walk down the street in Burma and everyone has a smile for you.”
Meta felt more sorrow than anger for Greg; she knew he was deeply unhappy and that he had probably had as many bad things to say about Burma when he lived there. But she cursed her bad luck at having been assigned a desk right beside his. Every other teacher on staff could leave, turn their back, or slink away when he entered the room.
So Meta stayed quiet and, instead, she started a letter to Ziv back in Canada. She wrote him instinctively at times like this, times of alienation and despair. She rarely sent him one of the letters she wrote. They were usually attempts at explaining the inexplicable, and he was the only person she felt would understand. Even when she did send a letter, he did not always reply. She kept the partially completed attempts in a plastic case file in a desk drawer in her bedroom. Together, the notes she made this way composed a half-formed journal of her experiences in Japan. Still, all the entries began as letters to Ziv. She was incapable of starting them any other way.
Dear Ziv
, she began.
Today in class we had speeches
. She stared at the sentence for several minutes. Without crossing this out, she started again.
How to Curse Someone with Straw Doll
, she wrote.
First
, … Her thoughts were still too jumbled and unformed. The task of describing what she’d just been through seemed enormous. She turned the sheet she’d been writing on face down and placed it in the top drawer of her desk, then silently began making notes for Monday’s lessons. At three thirty, the earliest she was allowed to leave the office, she hurried out the door to the bus stop.
She’d spent the weekend trying to avoid the feeling of detachment and succeeded only, she now realized, in making herself feel even more detached. She’d drifted alone on foot through the Shinjuku district, stopping in coffee shops, drinking coffee by herself. She’d spent more than five hours on Saturday on the English-language floor of Kinokuniya Books. At the end of that day, her eyes
nenokoku mairi
, practised at night, in secret, on the grounds of a shrine. Meta had read a reference to it a few months before in an article in the
Tokyo Journal
.
The students in the class were obviously familiar with the practice, too, for they were in stitches from beginning to end of the speech. Or was it the young woman’s changed demeanour they found comical? Meta knew that the closest she’d ever get to the meaning of any gesture on the part of Japanese people was a guess. Though she laughed through the speech along with the students, there was something vaguely disconcerting about it. The procedure described was something all the students knew how to do, how to put a death hex on someone. After that class had left her room, the memory of her own laughter began to make her feel queasy.
Meta had learned a way of coping with the kind of cultural alienation she was feeling at the moment. The best thing to do in this case was to share the voodoo story with a fellow foreigner and chuckle and shake your head at how nothing made sense away from home. But Meta did not dare make any remarks about Japan in her office that could even remotely be construed as negative. The man at the desk next to hers was practically psychotic with hatred for Japan and the Japanese. Greg Ulesso was an East-European Londoner, the son of Estonian parents who had emigrated to Britain. He’d come to Tokyo via Burma, where he’d taught English at Burmese National University for a small salary and a huge allowance of unearned respect. In Tokyo, he must have known he was facing a huge salary and no respect. Still, when he balanced Tokyo with Burma, he found Tokyo wanting. When Meta had first met Ulesso, he spent most of his time comparingTokyo unfavourably to Burma. “These surly fucking Japanese gobshites! You walk down the street in Burma and everyone has a smile for you.”
Meta felt more sorrow than anger for Greg; she knew he was deeply unhappy and that he had probably had as many bad things to say about Burma when he lived there. But she cursed her bad luck at having been assigned a desk right beside his. Every other teacher on staff could leave, turn their back, or slink away when he entered the room.
So Meta stayed quiet and, instead, she started a letter to Ziv back in Canada. She wrote him instinctively at times like this, times of alienation and despair. She rarely sent him one of the letters she wrote. They were usually attempts at explaining the inexplicable, and he was the only person she felt would understand. Even when she did send a letter, he did not always reply. She kept the partially completed attempts in a plastic case file in a desk drawer in her bedroom. Together, the notes she made this way composed a half-formed journal of her experiences in Japan. Still, all the entries began as letters to Ziv. She was incapable of starting them any other way.
Dear Ziv
, she began.
Today in class we had speeches
. She stared at the sentence for several minutes. Without crossing this out, she started again.
How to Curse Someone with Straw Doll
, she wrote.
First
, … Her thoughts were still too jumbled and unformed. The task of describing what she’d just been through seemed enormous. She turned the sheet she’d been writing on face down and placed it in the top drawer of her desk, then silently began making notes for Monday’s lessons. At three thirty, the earliest she was allowed to leave the office, she hurried out the door to the bus stop.
She’d spent the weekend trying to avoid the feeling of detachment and succeeded only, she now realized, in making herself feel even more detached. She’d drifted alone on foot through the Shinjuku district, stopping in coffee shops, drinking coffee by herself. She’d spent more than five hours on Saturday on the English-language floor of Kinokuniya Books. At the end of that day, her eyes
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