Konnichiwa

As the daughter of a journalist, I am convinced that a major component of the skill of traveling well is the ability to talk to people - something that does not come easily to us introverts. (Indeed, this is something I've written about before, in the context of our trip to Morocco and traveling by myself in Utrecht.) After our two weeks in Japan, I decided that such interactions are only partly dependent on serendipity - there is a science to this, too. 

The samurai district of Kanazawa: talking about a closed society...

In a country like Japan, reputedly a closed society hard for casual visitors to crack, having actual conversations with the Japanese requires some forethought. Here are four places to start:

1. Friends - and friends of friends.  This may be an inauspicious beginning because right now you are thinking, "Well, duh."  We all know seeing a new place through the eyes of a friendly local is the best of all possible worlds, but most of us do not have such a far-flung network of friends. 

Or don't we? Until this trip, I had under-appreciated the potentiality of friends-of-friends, old acquaintances, friends-of-acquaintances, and even more tenuous combinations. Contemplate this: if a friend told you his business colleague was traveling half way around the world and was going to be staying down the street from you, wouldn't you give serious thought to meeting that business colleague for lunch, or at least a coffee? 

Exploring Tokyo with Jeff's business school friends

Thus, even though we were already planning a day with Jeff's classmates who live in Tokyo, I followed up on another classmate's suggestion to get in touch with a friend of a mutual friend (if that makes sense), who was able to meet us for a drink early in our trip. We learned so much from that one conversation, I cannot imagine the rest of our trip without the context that this new friend helped to provide.

In the future, I will allow myself full license to bore everyone I know with news of my upcoming travel on the chance that someone will know someone (who knows someone) who might be willing to hang out with me, or at least throw a couple personal recommendations my way.

The Tokugawa-era government house in Takayama

2. Organized interactions. Japan is replete with organized opportunities to meet English-speaking Japanese, if you know where to look. "Goodwill guides" volunteer to show tourists around famous sites: a young woman, for example, provided us with a personalized tour of the Tokugawa-era government house in Takayama. Granted, we only got a few non-historical questions worked in amongst all the facts and factoids, but in other cities (like Nara and Kanazawa), Goodwill guides will spend half a day with you and join you for lunch.

There are also home visit programs - meaning you actually get to visit with a family in their home, a rare occurrence in Japan - but the visits must typically be arranged in person at the local tourist office. This in turn requires staying put for more than a couple of days, a feat we did not ourselves accomplish during our whirlwind tour. I had also hoped to take advantage of the almost-free cultural classes taught by volunteers at Kanazawa's Ishikawa International Lounge.  

I should include in this category as well more commercial experiences, like our  cooking class and tea ceremony (the logistical details of which are included at the end of my long temple post). These were investments in building our cultural awareness of Japan - and, as it turned out, our only opportunity to visit a family's home.

Pursuing this track requires a bit of advanced planning, for which I recommend  Frommer's Japan. But given the wide range of opportunities, the advanced planning is very likely to pay off.

3. Innkeepers. Besides being cheaper, staying at small, traditional inns and guesthouses increased our chances of meeting people - both other travelers and those running the businesses. This tactic really paid off in Kyoto when we stayed at IchiEnSou, an upscale hostel right in the middle of Gion.

Yes, we are too old for hostels - a fact Jeff made sure to remind me of repeatedly during our four-night stay in a mixed dormitory. But IchiEnSou is fairly unique among hostels, a thoughtfully designed and managed guesthouse that is a work of love for the proprietor, Yashi-san.

The hole in the wall

It helped that Yashi is roughly our age (early to mid-30s) and that he started his business because he wanted to meet people traveling through Japan. Hanging out at the guesthouse, I peppered him with all sorts of impertinent questions - about his business, his family, his aspirations. That evening, Yashi took us and several Korean drama students out to a favorite "bar," literally a hole in the wall in the middle of an alley. This is not a misuse of the word "literally" - we had to climb through a hole in a wall to enter a tiny space where a dozen people could squeeze around two tables. Despite significant language barriers, Jeff quizzed the Korean students on Korean gangster films; we befriended three men in town for a wedding who had slid in next to us.

The next night, Yashi and I stepped across the street from the guesthouse to Bistro Grilot, a restaurant recently opened by another mid-30s entrepreneur. The "restaurant" sat just 6 along a counter; the chef-owner prepped ingredients and sauteed, grilled, and plated them directly in front of me. Yashi and I fell into a long conversation: his worst guest stories, his plans for the future, how we met our spouses. The chef joined in when we started talking politics and business, topics like how the Japanese feel about Korea and China, what it takes to start a business like the bistro or a guesthouse, and the famed Japanese work ethic.

I am very grateful to Yashi, who felt like a friend after just a couple of days. The takeaway here is that people who start businesses built around tourists - particularly innkeepers - are likely to have (1) conversational English and (2) an interest in meeting people. Some serendipity is helpful here, but so is a little bit of initiative and a lot of sincere interest in other people's lives.

4. Conversion: turning random encounters into meaningful ones. We were surprised traveling through Japan how often random people would strike up mini-conversations with us, a tendency I chalked up to limited opportunities to practice English as well as genuine hospitality for foreigners. My theory is, once in a while, you can convert such brief encounters into slightly more meaningful conversations.

Meeting teenagers in a cookie class

I only managed to do this once, at a shop in Takayama near closing time, when the owner was so enthused to have an American in his store, he whipped out his old electronic translator to help him carry on a conversation. He and his wife were the ones who recommended Kinoene to us, but he also told me about his trip to California long ago (back when electronic translators were the height of modern technology) and how he had found the U.S.; he even brought up Pearl Harbor at one point, but then thought the better of it (nuances and electronic translators don't really mix).

I was really satisfied by this conversation, I think because of the shopkeeper's sincere enthusiasm to talk to me. Though such "conversion" is a more difficult sort of connection to achieve, there are a couple lessons to be drawn from this one encounter: (1) seize the opportunity when someone strikes up a conversation - you never know where it will lead, and (2) let your enthusiasm show - it is probably just as infectious as that of my Takayama shopkeeper.