“Good morning!”
Try as I might I’ve yet to beat her to the good morning greeting draw. She always beats me to it and it’s always with a big smile on her face. I’ve seen her riding her bike to work when gunning it to make the green light to turn south on Road 136. I’m going way to fast to see her face but always try to look out of curiosity. I want to know if she’s smiling then too.
Then I'll see her at the big company where we both work. I don’t do the same kind of work as she does. I'm guessing she’s an engineer. I’m a language trainer. We’re both foreigners in Japan. That’s something we have in common. I come from an English speaking country and she from a non-English speaking one. I’ve heard her speak Japanese; she’s far more proficient in the native tongue of this land than I am. Her English proficiency is excellent too, or so I believe based on the few words we’ve exchanged. Thus she’s in no need of my language trainer services whatsoever. Many of her coworkers are however, so every morning I go to that company where she’s now working and sometimes we cross paths.
I’ve been going there for years now. She showed up a few months ago. I’ve seen her peers come and go over the years--people from India, Malaysia, Germany or other lands. I always say hello when I see a new face. Doing as much has led to meeting some nice people from elsewhere on this spinning ball of mud we all call home. I’ve yet to say hello to one quite like her though. There’s something a bit different about her. Her positive energy is downright contagious. It’s almost as if she glows. A mere catching that “good morning” call along with a glimpse of the big smile while passing in the aisle between the rows of desks sprawled out on the vast third floor always makes me want to smile too. I’ve been half asleep or daydreaming only to pass her and hear that cheery “Good Morning!” and Blamo! I’m smiling and before I know it my own cheery “Good morning!” has crossed my teeth and shot out in her direction.
We've only spoken for more than a minute on a couple of occasions. One was when she was with the group of people waiting to use the room that I just finished teaching in. I spoke with her some that time while erasing the whiteboard and gathering my things. The other time was when there was a mix up in room assignments. I was supposed to teach class in the room that she was working in. She was the only one in there when I arrived only to find it filled with computers and all kinds of electrical equipment and circuit boards. I joked about it looking like the Matrix. Her already smiling face broke into a laugh, which made her seem to glow all the more.
She's tiny. Her teeth are kind of crooked. Her skin is a bit blemished from what I’d guess was a bad case of teenage acne. On that latter occasion we met we spoke long enough for me to learn that she’s here from Malaysia and her I from the States. That’s about the most personal information we’ve ever really exchanged. I don’t even know her name, nor she mine. The only other thing I know about her is her religion.
She's Muslim.
She didn't tell me as much. That's my educated guess. She's from Malaysia, which is a sixty some odd percent predominately Muslim country, and she wears a hijab (called a tudung in Malaysia, or so Wikipedia tells me), which is the head scarf worn by Muslim women. I've seen other foreign women wearing them now and then when out and about in this little corner of Nippon.
I don't know if she's wondered about my religious affiliation or lack thereof, but since she knows I'm American I try, as I've made it a habit to do since living in a foreign land, to be a good diplomat for my country. I've had more than a few Japanese tell me that I'm the only American they've gotten to know personally. I take great responsibility in playing that role. Be it with my neighbors, students of all ages, other drivers on the road or people I ride the train with or other foreigners I exchange morning greetings with, I want to show them the "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses" strong and accepting, helpful and giving face of America. And so I try to be it. It's not always easy. Like when some dickhead acts like they don't see me and pulls out in front of me when I'm running late. If riding shotgun they'd see, or hear rather, the "You F'n dick!" face of America from me. But for the most part they see the friendly one. Like down at the town gym. That's another place where I try to be aware of my American diplomat hat and wear it wisely. There, like most places, it's mostly Japanese who I interact with, but oftentimes I meet and have gotten to know folks from quite a few other countries there too. I've gotten to know some well enough to refer to them as "My friend down at the gym" when telling my wife about them.
Guys like big Muhammad and little Muhammad for example. My gosh those two would get me to laughing so hard I’d like to pee myself! That’s how they introduced themselves the day we met. One was muscles on top of muscles a good 6’ tall and the other’n about my height (short) and skinny as a rail. We smiled and said “konnichi wa” (hello) till I realized they spoke some English and so we got to talking Engli-nese and would talk more and more when we’d see each other at the gym. They were Iranians. Still are I'm guessing. They're Muslims too. Save for that we had some things in common--Japanese wives and kids--things we missed about our respective homes--things we loved about Japan. I haven’t seen them down there in well over a year or more. I guess they’ve long since moved to another city or left Japan. I miss talking with those guys. If someone were to ask I’d say “Oh big Muhammad and little Muhammad, they’re my friends!” I think they might say the same if asked about that American guy Casey down at the gym. "Oh he's a nice man" I hope they'd say. Or maybe even like many a Japanese have told me: "A great American".
Since living in Japan, married to a Japanese, father to three biracial kids, etc., I've become interested enough to learn about past views of Americans by Japanese and vice versa. I've read up on the propaganda spread about each by both countries during WWII. I've read extensively of the descrimination against Asians in America long before the war--racist resistance to the "Yellow Peril" and laws such as the Immigration Act of 1924 and the Chinese Exclusion Act (which also banned or restricted Japanese immigrants to USA). Anti Miscegenation laws made marriages between "White" Americans like me and "Yellow" Japanese like my wife illegal. Then of course during the war there was Executive Order 9066--the Internment of Japanese Americans.
As an American I'm more interested in knowing my own country's history. Japan carried out atrocities against US POW's and had equally vile propaganda that painted the worst possible picture of your average American.
Alas the war is over now. We're friends now. Some of us are even husbands and wives and hopefully even becoming husbands and husbands or wives and wives now. Progress!
But the ugly lies, the racism, the ignorance, the misdirected anger, it hasn't all gone away. It's just changed faces. For many Americans what was the "Yellow Peril" then has become the "Muslim Peril" now.
I started thinking this some years back. It was shortly after the last good American President (the last real American President) first came into office. I refer of course to President Obama. Many of our nation's so-called conservatives lost their freak'n minds. The same who now believe Trump is a Christian were dead certain Obama was Muslim. They never so much as met a Muslim but they didn't need to. They knew all they needed to know about every person in nearly a quarter of the world's population--nearly 2 billion people--they knew them all inside and out based on what they heard from Fox and Friends or other right wing propaganda or fwd fwd fwd Muslim bashing emails.
The hate took many forms, the lies were countless. One of them, the same one often rewritten or revised, kept landing in my inbox again and again and again for years. It was sent by, I'm assuming, well intentioned, yet brainwashed people I know or once knew back in home sweet USA home. The ignorance and bitterness was damn near palpable. The same yet sometimes slightly reworded email was about Islam in Japan. I kindly debunked the first few and grew more and more disturbed and blunt in debunking it as the months and years passed till I got to insisting they stop sending me email fwds altogether. It mattered little if at all that I thoroughly disproved it. Sadly, I imagine if you ask the people who sent one of the fwd Islam in Japan emails to me today, they're still believing it true. No doubt they've long forgotten the information I gave them. That info didn't fit their preconceived, well entrenched ignorance and hate so it fell by the wayside.
I've heard that memory is a liberal superpower. Gmail search feature helps with this power at times. I still have the emails.
Screenshot Exhibit A:
That one was direct, to the point, and somewhere between 99.9% to 100% unadulterated bullshit.
As the years passed the same lies started taking different forms. Like this one it starts out as a high praise for Japan kind of email (I had to mush the screenshots together on this'n since it was one narrow column)
The red asterisk there is mine. Click to enlarge you can see the first points are all about how great Japan is (with some misleading or BS worked in there as well) then after a few of those they get right into the Muslim bashing BS
and it goes on from there...
I can never help but ask myself, if they're all really so bad then why the need to make up so many lies?
So it's Muslims here but it could be any group lying about any other group. My point here is people are by and large good. Another point is get off your ass and meet someone, sit down and talk with them or hell at least cross paths with them and say "good morning" before bashing everyone of that person's religion or sexual preference or ethnicity or the like.
My point is propaganda, blind hate and ignorance sucks donkey balls!
It never fails that I end up thinking about these emails when I meet a friendly Muslim here. Someone like the smiling girl for example. I wish the people who sent me these could sit and chat with her for a minute or two, or go spend an hour at the gym with big Muhammad and little Muhammad. That is my hope for anyone spreading any kind of lies and hatred. Meet, sit down and talk to, a person in the group that you're ignorantly bashing. Doing that first should be mandatory before sending out an email fwd or posting some BS meme on social media about the entire class of people.
I can only hope for others, but for myself I can be an example--I can try to be the change that I wish to see in the world, to paraphrase what Gandhi said.
And so if or when I cross paths with smiling girl again I'm going to try to be quicker on the draw with a smile and cheery "good morning!".
Why not?
It beats spreading hate and lies. That much I know for sure.
It leaves me feeling a helluva lot better inside too.
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