Denim on Love: Love in translation

"You'd married the wrong girlfriend," is what I would exclaim to my husband sometimes.

Usually, it comes out as a joke but as the years go by, I realize how I still feel like a hot goreng pisang on a cold combini bento (prepacked lunch box from a convenience store). You see, although most of my teenage years were spent fantasizing about the world of J-pop with five girlfriends, I was the least clued in on the real culture that J-pop breeds on.

Bento shelves at a combini

To me, Japan was simply a lot of fun, fizz and neon lights in a foreign language that left blanks for my imagination to fill in. An alien planet where I could escape whenever I felt alone or misunderstood. A place to bury those growing pains. And, as with all things that time changes, my infatuation gradually faded to a distant admiration when I started at university. The once hormonally-driven feelings toward everything that popped out from the Land of the Rising Sun dissipated and in its place, I began to enjoy the rich and vibrant offerings of local hostel life complete with its midnight suppers of kopi-pengs (iced coffees). After that, I was thrown into the Anglo-culture of my ad agency and that led me further away from my teenage roots.

Meanwhile, three of those five J-pop crazy girlfriends remained loyal and became so deeply fascinated by the Japanese culture they'd actually taken courses in Japanese, lived in Japan on long cultural exchange programmes and picked up fluent Japanese. They are, in many ways, more Japanese than I am. And yet, they are the ones in Singapore whilst I am here in Tokyo.

I remember the first time I’d shared with my girlfriends about my Japanese then-boyfriend. It was met with gleeful excitement followed by, “Does he know other cute Japanese guys?” But the main concern amongst them was, “Can he speak English?” The Japanese are not known for their fluency in English and their form of broken English known as Japlish or Engrish (according to a popular website), has been the source of various amusing quotes. My most unforgettable and personal experience so far has to be from my previous workplace in Tokyo when the Japanese advertising creative team had a campaign that promised to ‘reflesh’ women with a new body shower product.

An example of a typical and fun Japanese phrase where they write like how they speak

As for the question about my husband’s English fluency, I am lucky in that so far, there hasn’t been any trouble on the communication front. Only when he uses dirty slangs he’s picked up from six years living in the New York borough of Queens. And his success is attributed to how he is someone who really tries to assimilate and immerse himself wholly to any new environment. He could even teach some really nasty Hokkien (Chinese dialect) within a year of living in Singapore.

However, my private joke with my husband is not really an exaggeration. He'd missed the odds. Sometimes, when I flirt with thoughts of fleeing this place, I start to feel a little guilty. Who else would give my other girlfriends an excuse to visit Tokyo once a year if I leave? Who else would incite loud stomach rumblings if not for my Facebook photos of glorious cuts of Yakiniku (Japanese BBQ of marbled beef)? Who else would tell people when the sales here start? Or scoff at the pseudo latest trends that magazines back home tout as Japanese? (Okay, maybe they are Japanese but they were from the last season. Or perhaps, just not from Tokyo?) I know people who would kill to take my place in the land of kawaii (cute) and kakkoi (cool).

Salivating yet?

But in dark times, those rhetorical questions appear frivolous. To live each day in a land where it conflicts with the Singaporean in me is a challenge and when it all adds up, I explode into my loud rants inside my closet-sized home they call mansions and entertain thoughts of digging a subway line all the way down to the equator.

"Why can't they simply give me the barbeque sauce?" a pregnant me wailed at Ma-Ku-Do-Na-Ru-Do (MacD) as I held onto my pack of fries that was getting soggy. (In Japan, unless you buy the McNuggets, they refuse to give you any of its sauces, even if you'd purchased the largest bag of food enough to feed four people. No amount of begging would faze their robotic auto-replies.)

"Why can't they simply change my drink?" a more pregnant me lamented as the waiter refused to allow me to have something else apart from the caffeinated drinks of the set menu. Isn't it easier to pour juice than to brew a cup of coffee?

"Why can't they have more escalators?" a going-to-pop-next-week me wept as I labored up the stairs out of the Shibuya subway. "How do the old people tahan this?" I wondered aloud and the next moment, I see a white-haired hunched-back old lady totter up twice as fast as me like a frisky hamster. (Tahan is Singaporean slang for “put up with.”)

Getting through this crowd is an emotional experience itself

I know that these all sound like petty complaints but the root of it is how Japan and I are just simply on two different ends of a personality scale. A psychology major friend explained to me that each country has her own personality profile and it is my lack of insight to not have figured out earlier that Japan is an introverted culture as opposed to my extroverted one. It is a stickler for abiding by process versus my flexible can-do attitude. And just these two conflicts alone make the chasm wide enough that after five years, I still haven't built a bridge to the other side.

So, how did I get here? Oh yes, the husband. A Japanese one to boot. Many plates of sushi ago, back when I was still easily satiated by the premium Singapore sushi restaurant, Sushi Tei, I met my husband. Then, after a short holiday with him in Tokyo, I boldly thought I could live here, explore my horizons and rejoiced at the opportunity to be IN JAPAN! That was me naively tapping back into my teenage state of mind. Bad idea. Wrong girlfriend.

This mistaken identity just kept snowballing down the rocky path into a really large onigiri (rice ball) filled with longings for sambal, durian and prawn mee. That is a combination that would burn any stomach and in my case, with a relationship in the mix, a tricky one to cure.

To his credit, my husband has been a real trouper despite all my dramatic protests against his home country. He seldom takes the side of the Japanese whenever I launch into my tirades. (He shrugs and agrees sympathetically.) He never expects me to learn the refined manners of a Japanese woman. (Till now, I still go out with minimal or no make-up. Horrors!) Never asks me to cook a Japanese meal. (Do you know the Japanese believe in consuming 30 or more different foods per day? Think of the number of side dishes I would have to prepare! I'm sorry but I'm usually a one-dish-meal kinda girl.)

Kaiseki spread: a Japanese full course meal

But best of all, he always sincerely offers to drop everything and move back to Singapore anytime.

So while I still believe I was the wrong girlfriend, for a guy like this, and with a lot more awareness, I’m going to keep trying to be the right wife.

(Some pictures taken from the Internet)