Say my name, say my name

I just got home from work and am now cooking dinner for 1 in my 2 bedroom apartment. I stopped by this little grocery store for the first time on my bike ride home to pick up some eggs and then bacon (at least I think that’s what I bought). I can hear the sizzling now mixing with my ever present chorus of semi-truck tires and rumbling concrete.

I had my second private Japanese lesson last night. It’s going really well and I’m really excited because I finally feel like I’m getting started. I’ve gotten somewhat comfortable with my life here, that is to say I’m settled in, and I’m ready to move past the surviving stage and into a thriving one. However, I still find pulling and perplexing aspects on an almost daily basis.

Last night my tutor, Watanabe-san, was asking me my family member’s names. When I tried telling her Marie’s name, I put it in katakana and said “Ma Ri” with the emphasis on the second syllable. Watanabe-san asked me, “Is it Mary?” (She can speak English fluently). I said no, it’s Marie. “Oh, so Ma Ri,” she repeated, but with the emphasis on the first syllable. I said, no, that it was actually Ma Ri. But Watanabe-san corrected me again and then went on to explain that in katakana, foreign words always receive the higher emphasis on the third to last syllable, and since Marie only has two syllables, the emphasis is on the second to the last syllable. I was quite put off by this, like the wind being taken out of my sails. I had already been putting up with people calling me “Ru—Sa—“ for the past 4 months, and now here was a name that could actually be somewhat accurately pronounced using Japanese phonetics, yet that wasn’t the way it was going to be.

When Watanabe-san was giving me a ride back to the station I started thinking about names again. I suddenly realized that I now knew what it feels like for people coming to America – people with Chinese names and Arabic names and Thai names in a place where no one can pronounce them. I was thinking this out loud to Watanabe-san, and I almost started crying. I said that it was difficult to have to say my own name incorrectly to people in order for them to understand me.

Thinking back on it now, I remember wondering to Sarah, my fellow ALT at my high school, if I would miss hearing people say my name. There’s just so much identity wrapped up in it- and maybe especially for me since I’ve never been called anything else my entire life.

I was looking at an American friend living in Japan’s photo album the other day and saw a picture of her singing in a row of Japanese ladies; her natural bleach blond hair stark against the row of black. One of her Asian friends back in the states had made a comment poking fun at “all the Asians and [her]!” and then wrote, “Now you know how this girl feels every day.”

I am a minority here: in this city, in this prefecture and in this country; A minority in looks, in language and in culture. This is neither a positive nor a negative value placed on this statement, it just simply is so far. I really haven’t had a long enough period of time to flesh it all out.