by Stephen Benfey,
May 2022

Down the hill from where she lived and up a side street was a little shop that Ann had grown to love. The woman there spared Ann the “Help! It’s a gaijin!” act. Nor did she mouth misremembered middle-school English while deaf to Ann’s Japanese. No, Tanaka-san was helpful and caring, if not always understanding.

On this particular rainy Wednesday morning in Kyoto’s northwestern corner of Takagamine, Tanaka-san was drawing a blank.

Ann couldn’t imagine why. Like, what’s not to understand about “butter?” It’s a loan-word—English with a Japanese accent, no?

Ann had tried baata, baataa, bata, baattaa, and even battoru.

At wit’s end, Ann said, “Anou, pan ni nuru mono desu. ‘Batta’ desu.” Uh, it’s what you spread on bread. A “grasshopper.”

The woman’s face lit up. “Ah! ‘Bataa’ dosu na? Shou shou omachi okureyasu.” Oh, “butter,” right? Just a moment, please.

Ann pursed her lips in consternation. Isn’t that what I just said?

She thanked the proprietor and headed home. How long, oh Lord, would it take?

Conversing with people in Kyoto was complicated by Kyoto-ben, the local dialect. Her college courses taught hyojungo, Standard Japanese. Standard for TV and exams, but not necessarily family and friends—unless you hailed from Tokyo or Hokkaido. Can’t blame the teachers. Would a Japanese university teach Bronx English?

Not counting cases like today’s butter slip-up, Ann’s standard Japanese worked just fine. It was the respondent’s Kyoto-ben that threw her. Kyoto-ben was more than an accent. It had a different vocabulary and conjugations. Where you’d say “kawanai” in standard Japanese to indicate you weren’t buying something, here people would say “kawahen.”

Months after arriving in Kyoto, Ann was still baffled by the words, “sakai ni.” She heard it everywhere, but couldn’t find it in any dictionary. Another mystery: where had the basic Japanese phrase “da kara” gone?

Eureka! In Kyoto you used “sakai ni” instead of “da kara” to mean “because” or “therefore.”

Ann was also confounded by the ubiquitous “ooki ni.” Satori: it was how you said “doumo arigatou”—“thank you” in Kyoto.

As her self-consciousness faded, a funny thing happened—people stopped looking at her. Not that being stared at was a constant. Near Kyoto’s landmarks—Gion, Nijo Castle, Kinkaku-ji, Ryoan-ji, and the rest—foreigners outnumbered pigeons. But take a few steps down a narrow side street and—bam!—you were the lone gunslinger walking into a saloon. The place goes silent. Even the dog raises its head to size up the stranger.

Ann knew an exchange student working on his doctorate at Kyoto University. His surname was Ono, coincident with a common Japanese family name. People would cross the street to avoid him at night. They feared he was a bakemono, a fox spirit, a ghost or a god—his skin was blue-black .

At times, Ann “passed,” like, she imagined, a light-skinned person-of-color might in North America. But this only happened, she had to admit, with people who had forgotten their eyeglasses or who were desperate.

There was the elderly lady who asked if the next bus went to Arashiyama. The taxi driver who pulled up beside her near Ginkaku-ji. He needed to get to Nijo Castle but his GPS wasn’t working.

Mulling over the cabbie’s odd choice of informants, she concluded that asking a Japanese person would have been deathly embarrassing. He’d be laughed at. That, or the guy wanted to see her face.

She had learned to enter shops casually, expressionless, not looking at the proprietor until they had responded to a simple question or comment. Preferably a non-judgmental one such as nakanaka, my, my; or he–, registering pleasant surprise.

She also asked questions in the negative so people could respond in the positive if the answer was no. Strategies and tactics were there for the using.

Her friend Diana said if they’re going to look at you, give them something to look at. Diana’s multicolor, variform ensembles awed, frightened, or delighted,
depending on the viewer’s personality. A living, walking Rorshach test, she was.

Then there was the Japanese gardener she met at a bar, who spoke an unusually direct version of Kyoto-ben whether he was vacationing in Rome, working in Hong Kong, or visiting Tokyo. Salt of the earth, he made people comfortable by his very being— no agenda, no self-image issues, no trepidation. He flew below their radar. Before their conscious minds had registered “strange male, speaking unknown tongue,” their hearts and guts had been drawn to him like warm spring rain to a thirsty earth.

He got what he wanted, usually more.

On days dreary with rain, feeling depressed and unloved, Ann told herself she was murahachibu, an outcast, expelled from the village as punishment for, whatever. It was the rainy season—uki—the fifth season of the year, an honor denied by a near universal insistence that Japan was unique in having four seasons. In the face of this unanimity, it would be cruel to suggest that the Bakufu should have informed Vivaldi of this fact before he composed Le quattro stagioni.

One such day she decided to splurge and wash her clothes at the nearby laundromat. On a weekday morning there’d be no waiting for washing machines or dryers.

The tiny washer outside her tiny apartment was near useless this time of year. Her clothes might mildew before they dried. Even on rainless days it was that humid. A dryer was a nonstarter. It would trip the circuit breaker.

She put her dirty clothes in the big machine. She put in the laundry soap and the coins and pressed start. She told herself she would study kanji while she waited.
A shaft of light entered the room. She saw a patch of blue pushing through the clouds. Ann stepped outside into the sunlight.

In the distance she saw a man and a small boy. Suddenly, the boy, who looked to be five or six, sprinted in Ann’s direction, leaving his father behind.

She stepped aside to let him pass, but the boy stopped right in front of her. He tilted his head back, directly under Ann’s face so they were eye-to-eye. The boy stood there, half her height, his face blank, yet alert as a pet cat scrutinizing its human.

Ann broke the silence. “Nan desu ka?” she said. What is it?

The boy’s eyes widened and his mouth formed an “O.” He swiveled back toward his father, still a good way off, and at the top of his lungs yelled, “gaijin ja nakatta!” It wasn’t a foreigner!


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Stephen Benfey’s homepage with examples of his short stories can be found here. For his short story on gardening and rocks, see here. For a New Year story, click here. For his piece on foxes, see here.