During a rain delay at a baseball game in the Tokyo area, I chatted with a professional scout from an MLB club. I don’t recall how the conversation got to the price of living in California and its implications for my generation, but it did and he brought about an interesting characteristic of Japanese people that I had known implicitly until he put it into words.
“They do all of the little things you need to do,” he said. No, he wasn’t talking about having the three-hitter bunt with one out. Rather, it was a remark about what they do in everyday life.
They take trains. They ride bicycles into their 90s. They hang their laundry. They walk from Point A to Points B, C, and beyond. They live in their parents’ houses with their own families to take care of the one parent left behind.
I look around Japan and feel like it’s the 1970s. Our Greatest Generation grew up during the Depression, made sacrifices and won the second World War, and worked to transform the United States into the greatest superpower the world has ever known.
Japan’s Greatest Generation, economically speaking, accomplished this in the 1980s, going from “Made in Japan” crapola to selling more efficient cars and buying up the seven wonders of the world and some golf courses.
Subsequent American generations have enjoyed the wealth and prosperity for sixty years; people in Japan my age look to their parents’ generation the way that I do to my grandparents’. They haven’t enjoyed the lavish lifestyle as long collectively and seem to understand the long climb up better than my American peers and I do.
And so, in some ways they are where I think we were 30-35 years ago. I don’t know for sure because I wasn’t there, but if “I Love the 70s” is at all accurate, I think I have a good picture of what it was like.
Rampant consumerism is just as much a problem here as it is in the States, but it takes a slightly different shape. Here, it’s name brand junk and plastic packaging, and in the U.S. it’s gasoline and living above one’s means.
I think the scout’s comment was geared toward Japan’s apparent solutions to Americans’ current housing and energy problems, though in fact the way that Japanese handle housing and energy has been the way it is for a long time.
Japanese people seem to believe that life is necessarily hard and that there’s nothing much you can do about it. Traveling is going to take a long time and cost a lot of money. Housing is going to be ridiculously expensive and cramped. Getting into the best schools and getting the best jobs will require heinous amounts of study and testing.
Yet they live their lives in ways that allow them to get through it. They do those little things that the scout talked about. They organize drinking parties to help them connect and complain about inconveniences, but wake up the following day ready to combat them with a stiff upper lip.
They watch celebrities make the game show circuit, winning prizes and money Lord knows they don’t need. There is no hope of a regular Joe or Taro getting there, which is what makes game shows so fun for us.
Japanese fans watch baseball players receive huge bouquets of flowers and giant checks (on top of their high salaries) for such mundane events as 1,000 games played or being voted the Best Dad in the Central League.
They sigh and wish that life could be that way, but they are firmly rooted in the reality that it is not. Then they smile and continue to air dry their clothes, make lunch for the octogenarians in the house, or arrive at the meeting 46 minutes early because the next train gets them there 1 minute late. True story.
In short, they are much better at bending over and taking it up the tailpipe than we are, collectively and generally speaking. Of course they know about drying machines and old folks’ homes and believe that public transportation in the countryside is awfully inconvenient, but that’s just the way life is.
When I left the States, the housing bust was in full bloom and the gas crisis was just around the corner. Sometimes I feel like I’m hiding out here in Kochi, with no car, no mortgage, and no debt. If I return, I feel like I’ll be able to put myself in a good position to live within my means and be more tolerant of the inconveniences of that lifestyle thanks to my experiences in Japan and the underlying acceptance that life is tough that I feel from Japanese people.
Unfortunately, it looks like friends and family can’t do much about situations that they’re in. Gas wasn’t four bucks a gallon when they chose to live 15 miles from work. Or when they chose to work 15 miles from home.
I hope the situation improves, but I also hope that people in my generation are able to give up things they don’t need (or avoid having them in the first place) and accept a less convenient lifestyle for better long-term happiness and success. I’m very fortunate to enjoy a great lifestyle for less right now.