Summer Break 2013

Hey Nick,

Short post today. I’ve been tossing some ideas around for a while but none of them seem to stick to the walls. So I made an arbitrary deadline to post something by the end of Labor Day (even though it’s getting hard to remember, exactly, which day is Labor Day). But the blog’s been a little too quiet of late. I promise a more robust article on something (*anything) soon.

Perhaps one of the only difficulties about visiting home on vacation is that you know that there is going to be a short list of five or six questions that everyone is going to ask.

“How is Japan?” “When are you moving back to America?” “Have you married anyone?”

I don’t think it’s malicious or lazy, but because these questions do seem predicated solely upon the assumptions of social normalcy, they are tiring in their presumptive inevitability, like with clearing customs, it’s a probationary check-in on my progress as a ‘normal,’ contributing member of society. Sometimes, it would seem more efficient to print up an FAQ for distribution upon arrival: “Japan is great, but hot. My contract ends in July of next year and I have no firm plans yet, though I am looking. And no, I am enjoying my free time and copious amounts of bachelor ca$he.”

I guess that it’s the same regardless of which life stage you are in. The same kinds of questions are passed around like greeting cards to recent grads, to single people past their thirties, married peoples without children, and on and on and on.

Fact is, most people are genuinely interested in hearing how things are going, and if we haven’t been in constant contact, these micro-inquisitions are probably the most accessible, expeditious ways to jump right in.

And to eschew such conversation is the same to eschew all such small talk and ignore the fact that a large amount of information is still communicated through such seemingly meaningless exchange of white noise.

Over the weekend we had the opportunity to drive up to Nipomo for a family gathering. It was a pretty big event so we managed to pack the grandparents in with the luggage and make the short three-and-a-half hour drive up the coast for a weekend away.

While we were there, we met the grandmother of my brother’s fiancée, a Japanese woman of comparable age to my grandfather, who is also Japanese American. After the introductions were made, the two of them were left together to chat.

Their conversation faltered, so my grandpa started in to his version of small-talk: “What camp were you stationed at,” he asked.

Both being Japanese American and alive during World War II, this remains a touchstone for them 70 years later. It’s not the first time that I’ve overheard him begin a conversation with this and though he, personally, has always been reticent to talk to us about his experience at the internment camps, I’ve always been curious as to what sorts of identifiers he feels he learns from asking people where they were stationed.

I suppose the same sorts of things could be said about any or all small talk—the weather, work plans, internment: we’re all just plying for conversational ins and looking for pathways of permission from points of common contact.