Getting Naked with the Father In Law
“I try to run my house like military system.”My future father-in-law, Takeshi Sakamoto, a retired Infantry General, looked me square in the eye. He was referring to the command he just issued to his family. In two gruff, Japanese syllables, he ordered them to leave my apartment and prepare for my wedding ceremony. I was marrying his daughter. I barely knew the man. I deepened my voice and stood up straight.
“Does it work?”
He paused, “No. Ha Ha Ha.”
His bellowing laugh was infectious, and soon we were both grinning. I’d passed my first test.
The ceremony at city hall, and the parties that followed went by in a euphoric blur. I was now a member of the Sakamoto clan. That, however, was on my home turf. The real challenge lay ahead. Noriko and I were going to Japan for two weeks to meet the rest of the family.
I’ve traveled before, many times. My previous travel was about giving the world another opportunity to impress me. Me, the adventurer, me the philanderer, and me the vagabond. My travel, and my life for that matter, could be summed up in three short words: Me, Me, and Me. This trip was different. I was going to all the way to Japan to meet my wife’s family. It was about her, and it was about them. It was about making a good impression, being a good sport and being a devoted husband — three things I’d never really planned on doing when I grew up, and from the beginning I knew I was out of my depth.
On the flight over, I reviewed the Japanese words I’d learned in the year I had to prepare: a few parts of the male and female anatomy and a couple of things to eat. I looked at my wife sleeping beside me and then I focused on the in-flight film, For the Love of the Game. This isn’t a movie review, so I won’t go into how much I hated that film. I will say that it was the first time a movie on a plane actually made the flight seem longer. At 14 hours in the air, that’s quite a feat.
We landed at Narita International Airport, near Tokyo, and waited for Noriko’s mother, Kyoko, to pick us up. As we waited, I gazed at two young travelers with bulging backpacks, dirty boots and an air of practiced indifference. I longed for my past days of travel. One of the travelers spoke, “It’s so great to be out of the rat-race. Travel is so spiritual, you know.” His companion nodded, “The bars in Tokyo remind me of Athens.” I remembered why I quit the road and got a nine-to-five.
Noriko’s mother appeared in front of me. I stood and bowed to my new mother-in-law. The bowing thing has always seemed weird to me. I tried to shake hands and hug, but that clearly didn’t go over too well. The formality was too much. I tried to be the gregarious American and help everyone lighten up. As I had before, I fell into the cliché of the obnoxious American. The Japanese are OK with handshakes, but hugging, no way. They cringe. Public displays of affection, I have learned, are so far beyond the pale of acceptable behavior that the Japanese had to invent a word out of English just to describe it. It’s called skinship, and it’s a big no-no. They’re not uptight, they’re different. Public skinship is about as acceptable in Japan as eating fermented soybeans (natto) for breakfast in Michigan.
Noriko, her mother and I rode through Tokyo and out to the suburbs. As we walked from train to train, I couldn’t help but notice how clean everything was. Public bathrooms that smelled fresh in every station, floors free of litter, and even the bums wore suits. New suits, not like the second-hand Salvation Army clothes our homeless wear. Of course, the Japanese are a bit behind when it comes to American-style capitalism, so it may be awhile until their downtrodden are as trodden down as ours are.
The cleanliness was amazing. That and the quiet. The subways came and went with barely a whisper. The apocalyptic squeal and clatter that the New York subway is known for seemed almost exaggerated in my mind. Surely, New York isn’t that large and dirty. It was only until I read an article in The New York Times that I understood why the streets of the Big Apple are covered in trash and feces. Apparently, the Japanese are suffering from a compromised immune system because their cities are too clean. They are losing all their natural resistance to infections.
You’ve got to hand it to Giuliani, always thinking ahead. Here I thought New York smelled like Calcutta because we had a problem. Oh no, we’re just getting an edge over the Japanese. Why, by the time the bubonic plague breaks out in midtown, we’ll be conquering the world again. Our robust immune systems will lead us onward and upward. Only the English will bar our way from complete victory.
My reverie about the cleanliness of Tokyo was finally broken when we arrived at the folks’ apartment. It was nice, and beside the language, I was surprised not at how different things seemed from New York, but how similar they were. Japan was different, but it was just enough like America to keep me off balance.
For our first dinner in Japan, we went to Red Lobster. I had fried clams, which I ate with chopsticks and a glass of Calpis Water. Calpis Water, I might add, is the best soft drink in the world. (Full disclosure: Calpis Inc. paid for the cost of the entire trip — just kidding.) It is some kind of water and dried-milk combination that is actually pretty tasty. The music at the restaurant was some early ’80s New Wave that brought back some memories. I hadn’t eaten in a Red Lobster since the early ’80s, when they never would have played New Wave. It was all as I remembered it back in Kalamazoo, Michigan. All except the chopsticks.
Our next stop was a quick flight to Kyushu, in the south of Japan, where Noriko’s parents were from. We visited family that I couldn’t speak to and ate delicious Chinese food. I wrote a quick speech, and Noriko translated it into Japanese for me. I trembled as I stumbled over the words before dinner, and everyone was very polite. Noriko translated a few words from the family, and we dug into the meal. For the rest of the night, it was a family reunion that I couldn’t understand. My job was to sit with an expression of interest, while my new family members enjoyed seeing each other for the first time in years. If I looked bored, everyone made attempts to entertain me, so it quickly became clear that I had to appear to be engaged and amused while I sat in complete ignorance of what was going on for hours at a stretch.
We made it, and we bowed after dinner; I was getting better at that part. The next day, we traveled to the cemetery to see where Noriko’s grandparents were buried. Incense was lit, and each family member bowed, then knelt by the grave, clapped their hands and prayed to the ancestors. After everyone but Noriko and I had prayed at the grave, everyone looked at me. With extreme embarrassment, I self-consciously tried the clapping and bowing and knelt in front of the gravestone and did my best to pray.
My eyes became warm. I pinched my lips together, and my throat started to choke. Before me was the weathered grave of people I had never known. People without whom my marriage could not have taken place. Here I was halfway around the world with the family of the woman I love more than anything, and there was so much I didn’t know. I choked back sobs. Visions of me bursting into tears in front of the family that I could barely speak to mortified me. Somehow, I kept it together. I opened my eyes, and someone snapped a picture.
Natural hot springs, also known as Onsen, are a big deal in Japan. Hakone, a town known for its hot springs and also the place my wife was born, was our last stop. We stayed in an amazing hotel that I don’t think foreigners usually get a chance to see. It was old-school. We had to take off our shoes and change into Yukata, which are robes, sort of like informal kimonos.
After we changed into our Yukatas, we ambled down to the hot springs, which were on the grounds of the hotel. Just before we got outside, we split off; the women went one way, and the men went the other. Foolishly, I had presumed that my wife and I would get our own hot spring and the rest of her family another. Oops. All I knew about the hot springs was that you sit in them naked. Now, I am not a prude, but getting naked with my father-in-law, a retired Infantry General, was an intimidating thought. I wondered what was going through his mind.
As we stood in the freezing air, we slowly undressed by the side of the hot spring. It seemed to be a race; only the goal was to be the last one to be naked. He had a distinct advantage of having more layers. I slowly unwrapped the Yukata, and then, before removing my underwear, I carefully folded the Yukata and placed it with the greatest care on a wooden shelf. It was the first, and probably last time I’ve ever folded any clothing that I just took off. My efforts were worthless; he still had two layers of cotton underwear to go.
I gave up and whipped off my underwear. I shivered and waited to see what came next. My father-in-law finally got naked. He grabbed a bamboo bowl from a stack of them and squatted by the hot spring. Trying to act casual, I strolled over to the water and tried to squat in that Japanese way that looks comfortable but is impossible. With knees popping, I balanced precariously on the edge and managed to splash some water on myself. Together, we eased into the hot water. As we sat side by side in the chest-deep hot water, I finally exhaled the breath I had been holding for the past two weeks.
In the distance, a gentle range of mountains turned golden in the sunset. Steam swirled past our faces and into the night air. The stars were just coming out. In his broken English, my father-in-law told me that in two straight days, he had climbed the mountains all around us when he was an Army Ranger Instructor. I inhaled.
I gamely recounted the few pushups I had done while in the Army National Guard, and he smiled. We laughed about smuggling food on training missions and working on little sleep. We were both relieved that we could get along. I thought about Noriko, and how glad I was to be part of her family at last. The trip to the Onsen lasted a couple of days, and then we were off to Tokyo and our flight back to New York. Noriko’s parents dropped us off at the train station. We all bowed. I shook Noriko’s father’s hand, and he spoke.
“Important visit, accomplished.” Yes, indeed, General.
Noriko and I waved her parents goodbye, and then my wife and I were alone together for the first time in weeks. I leaned over and gave her a kiss. Noriko quickly pushed me away. I looked around and found that we were the focus of the evilest of evil eyes from a platoon of suit-wearing businessmen. I’d never been scared by a businessman before, but then, I’d never tried skinship on the Hibya line before, either.
