Brits win the tooth race (of 6 countries, except for Sweden)

Writing in "Communication Breakbown" about my embarrassing dentist experience in Japan got me a-thinking about teeth in Japan, as you do, so I thought I'd write a couple of my funny observations here...not that Japanese teeth are different to British teeth, but, you know, Japanese people and their teething escapades.

One thing I would say about when I went to the dentist in Japan is that I walked in, showed my little health insurance card (faded so much it was essentially just a piece of card) and I was immediately taken in for a check up...no forms (well a tiny form with my name and stuff, but let's just say I found it easier to fill out the form in the JAPANESE dentist in JAPANESE than I did to fill out the re-registry one in my ENGLISH dentist in ENGLISH.) No waiting...certainly not true of British dentists where you often enter in broad daylight, just before lunch, and, in spite having an appointment that you were on time for, emerge from the light-deprived sterility to find that 6 hours have passed, it's dinnertime yet you can't eat, drink or speak. It was all relatviely fuss free for a hypochondriac country prone to fuss dealing with a foreigner. The biggest fuss was when I put my slippers on the dentist chair carpet (see Communication Breakbown).

Of course, I couldn't understand the dentistry terms in Japanese, but the lady had a book with English translations, as if she had been expecting a foreigner to waltz into her surgery, in the middle of a rice filed in Ita-where (drenched and bewildered as it was typhoon season and typhoon+bicycle is not a happy combo). She pointed wildly at her book which had many medical terms that I didn't understand in English anyway. One thing she did do was cover my mouth with purple dye, then ask me to brush my teeth. Then we looked in my mouth with the mirror thing and saw the bits that still had purple dye as they were the places I didn't brush. I thought that this was SUCH a clever idea and went on ranting and raving about how it had changed my life and how amazing and forward thinking everything in hypermodern Japan was, until finally telling a British friend of mine who said that she had had it done at school in the UK 20 years ago and couldn't believe I hadn't. May have taught quite a few teachers and children a slight mistruth about the UK there...naughty ALT, doing more harm than good.

Whilst in a primary school once in Japan, I went along to the assembly which was all about how to clean your teeth. It had all the bog-standard things you'd expect from such an assembly in the UK too...information about how often to clean your toothbrush, a power point presentation, 6 kids with the flag of a country each hung around their necks who ran around the hall a few times in a fake race to demonstrate which country's children had the least fillings and a prize giving at the end where every child with no fillings was made to stand up, recieve applause and then was rewarded with a piece of tinsel to drape around themselves. All the usual.

In this assembly, Japan came last of the 6 presumably random countries, with the most fillings. I think the UK came second after Mr. perfect Sweden, beating the USA. I've heard that Americans think the Brits have really bad teeth...well the flag-necklace-running-race in Ita-where PROVES otherwise. Actually, I've found this incredible confusing graph from Gapminder online, which, if I'm interpreting it correctly which I'm fairly sure I am not, also places the UK as having better teeth than Japan and the US, so HAHA!. Link to graph.

Actually, a few American friends seemed fairly shocked that I'd gone to the dentist in Japan, as they'd heard horror stories. Their horror stories were that you get SILVER FILLINGS instead of the perfect little white ones. I opened my mouth each time, including to relative stranger, because I was that offended, to show my two silver British fillings...not just Japan there. Maybe that's why Americans think we have bad teeth...because we are loud and proud with our fillings instead of being shallow and coy about them.

Another part of the assembly featured empty bottles of softdrink with sugarcubes inside them to demonstrate how much sugar there was in each bottle. That was a really great visual and I can honestly say that I drink a lot less Coca Cola since seeing it. There were 15 cubes I think in one 500ml bottle!! Pocari Sweat, my fave J-drink was much better with something like 8 (still disgusting though, not stopped me going to the Japan Centre in Picadilly and buying a couple of bottles since being back in London though!) These bottles are STILL on display in the school TROPHY CABINET (or they were in July, assembly was last year) and the assembly won some sort of prize and was in the local paper. I didnt' see any assembly judgers present, but I feel very priveleged to have experienced a prize-winner.

I did notice that very few children had braces in Japan. Quite how Japanese children have more fillings though, I am not sure. Firstly I thought, it's their awful sugary school lunch, but, then I thought, I used to drink Coca Cola for lunch every day after the age of 11 I reckon, which is not possible for kids in Japan - they only get milk until the age of 15. There were also vending machines at my secondary school with chocolate and crisps...not so in Japan, where, surprisingly seeing as you often feel that vending machines outnumber PEOPLE 2:1 in Japan, schools are a no-vend area. Also, all the teachers and students brush their teeth after lunch in Japan, which we don't do in England (they used to do it in my office in Paris when I worked there though, so it's not only Japan). My only conclusion on the reason why Japanese children have a lot of fillings is their good old trait for hypochondria and fuss which means they put them in just to be on the safe side, even if there is no cavity to be seen. Problem solved!

Communication Breakbown

Something to amuse you as you hear how fully incompetent I am at communicating in my own country. I am bowing right, left and centre, then being embarrased that I've just bowed so bowing more in apology/embarrassment, my head nodding up and down like one of those annoying dogs that sit on the car dashboard...it's starting to look like I'm half way between having a seizure and starting a break dance or something as my bows get continuouly deeper and force my nose closer to the floor...I might learn break dancing so that I can just start styling it out into that - I think that would look more natural!

I have just come back from Vienna on holiday (I used to live in Vienna, it's amazing) - I went and asked a lady in the airport which U-Bahn line my desti-station (I've just made that word - why don't we have that word?) was on, in German - it was no problem when I prepared myself slightly, she answered, but I, unfortunately hadn't prepared myself to respond, and even the simplest "Danke" seemed to escape me, and I opted for athe next best thing: a big bow and an "arigatou gozaimasu" in the middle of Schwechat airport in Vienna...how was I supposed to explain that? "Oh sorry, that was Japanese, I'm not Japanese though, obviously, but I used to live in Japan, but you can hear I'm also not Austrian, I'm British, but I'm here on holiday and I can speak German because I used to live here and studied it at uni"...then how would she respond having just felt that she'd watched an episode of "This Is Your Life with sushi-less" and we'd both missed our trains. So, instead, I sort of yelped and leapt back at the same time and ran to the ticket machine, leaving a very confused Austrian in my still semi-bowing shadow...NOT GOOD.

I've become so used to getting it wrong and embarrassing myself, my new tactic is to just say nothing in reply to people, which is incredibly rude, but at least it saves me looking like I'm one of those chronically shy people that is on their first day out of the house in two years. It's so weird, because I seem almost fine when I'm with my mates, but the second I'm amongst actual general public, who have no idea that I've just been living in Japan for two years, I start getting everything wrong and looking like a crazy person!! Typical! One thing that I haven't got out of the habit of, even with my friends, is gesturing everything...this is not from my experience of talking in Japanese in Japan, but of speaking English to a bunch of kids who understood very little of what I said, meaning that I got into the habit (which I apparently can't shake) of gesturing everything possible, which means doing a little pencil gesture when I say "write", making a little book with my hands when I say "book" or "read" and pointing at people when I say "you". This means that I am treating my fully native English speaking 2o-something friends, as if they are 5-year-old Japanese children with no grasp of the English language. One such gesture is that every time I say "me" or "I", I point at myself....unfortunately in Japan you point at your nose not your chest when you say "watashi" (true story), so I keep pointing at my nose at the dinner table...beautiful. I'm also counting with my fingers in the Japanese way, which is getting a bit ridiculous now and getting many strange stares. You should be able to see them below: this is how a Japanese person gestures when you counting, and this is now how I now gesture when I count...to people who don't need a gesture as they fully understand the words 1-10 of course. My worst gesture faux-pas so far was yesterday, when I shook my finger (wagged it, you know, like a patronising head teacher) at the girl in the chippy (fish and chip shop) when she asked me if I wanted salt and vinegar on my chips. She looked horrified, which I can understand - it was very sort of..."no little girl, of COURSE I don't want salt and vinegar." Must think harder next time...that or tie my hands behind my back when outside of the house.

Of course, I wish I could say that my problems here in the UK stem from the fact that I am an example of perfection in my communication style in Japan...not so. I recall not long from the end of my stay in Japan that in ONE DAY I managed to not contradict a man when he said his granddaughter was a bit slow, and instead agree, fall asleep in the waiting room at the dentist's, wear my special dentist surgery's slipper onto the MINISCULE piece of carpet situtated at the bit where you put your feet when you sit on the leany-backy-dentisty chair, put there surely only to catch out the gaijin, over-confident in outdoor shoe-indoor shoe-slipper-toilet slipper-bare foot CHAOS that is Japan's complicated shoe system...why that TINY piece of carpet just there that you had to be bare foot on...WHY?? And also I was in the school's announcement system room and managed to play some music on the loud broadcast outside the school when I thought it was only playing in the little room I was in...bit of the Norwegian Eurovision entry for the kids outside on the PE field. That was all in one day too!

So, what I am telling you is that I left Europe 2 years ago a fully competent member of British society and, I think, Austrian society, to being some kind of half-way-house, not fully competent anywhere and not to be trusted alone in public at any time...I might get myself a sign to go round my neck saying "WARNING: just been living in a strange country, high risk of social awkwardness and head nodding," or maybe I'll just give in and buy myself a Dunce's hat...embrace my new-found incompetence!

First Reverse Culture Shock....PUBLIC TRANSPORT

I am going to do my absolute best to not make all of my reverse culture shock negative things about how rubbish London is compared to the heavenly land of milk of honey (or sushi and udon) aka Japan, but one thing that is TRULY frustrating is the public transport in London, especially when you have just come from a country where they manage to make trains run on time and put out an apology (you can hear the bows in their voices) if it is even one minute late. No such luck in London town...I wonder if maybe they make an announcement when the trains arrive on time (Ryan Air styleeee), but I wouldn't know because I've never experienced a South Eastern train run on time. South Eastern are the overground service that go to Greater South East London and is the company I have to use, along with the rest of the damned. Today I was sitting on the 15.02 from Charing Cross, it was 15.04, still in Charing Cross. The little electric sign (no announcement) updated itself and said "expected at 15.05," which I was slightly sceptical of, more so as it hit 15.06 and I was still sitting there. It then updated itself to 15.09, eventually leaving at 15.11. As it left they have the cheek to announce "The train departing from platform 3 is the 15.02 to Dartford." No sorry, no explanation...not even a bloody acknowledgement, they just said it casually as if it was still 15.02...we do have watches you know!! Is there not some EU regulation against calling trains leaving at 15.11 15.02 trains? I bet Brussels's trains run on time. Lucky that I didn't have an important meeting or hospital appointment, but was in fact just going home to wallow in my current unemploydom. In Japan, you can use the fantastically amazing Hyperdia website and actually plan your schedule and life around the train times it gives...using the TFL (Transport for London) website is totally useless...I wonder why they put times on it to be honest! How can a train even be 9 minutes delayed when it's still at it's first station? My local train map in Japan (above) may have been bloody confusing, but it never failed me once!

Anyway, enough whinge, more of what my loyal readers prefer...self-depreciating stupid stories of stupid stupid things I do. We have the Oyster Card in London for paying train fares in advance, because the world is your Oyster (albeit it 9 minutes later that you were wanting it to be). I have no excuse for this as we had Oyster cards long before I left and they also have Passmo in Japan, but I just keep getting it wroooooong and feeling like a big tourist and wanting to cry, as I get it wrong, I bow at the man for being stupid and get more embarrassed and then want to cry some more - vicious circle line. Nearly had a full-blown row with the Waterloo East man the other day for treating me as if I had an IQ of about 25 just because I didn't know the ins and outs of the Oyster system...I was only asking where I need to check out!! I was already checked in!! I'm the good guy, I wanted to pay!! I say I nearly had a row...5 minutes later I was fuming and would have had a row with him, but my stupid indirect Japanesified self basically bowed and almost cried again. More bowing stories to follow believe me, I'm thrusting my head in people's genitals by accident right left and centre and it is SO mortifyingly embarrassing.

Reverse Culture Shock, Transport Chapter : Japan 1, UK 0