Yan, the man...on a bullet train with no plan...

[parasitegirl]

 Brain drain and two hours to go. It’s as good a time as ever to write about Yan-san.

 

In the second year of Japanese class, by the time the class had decreased by at least 60%, we met Yan-san. Yan-san and friends were a video series we endured every new lesson to test our listening comprehension. We were given fill-in-the blank scripts and watched it in class together. Then we would have to check out 10th generation audio-tapes from the language lab to catch what we had missed. I was lucky, I had the first season of Yan-san’s adventure on tape at my own place for reasons I shall not explain.

Yan-san was not Japanese, he was a rotund man of undetermined ethnicity, perhaps Chinese by way of Singapore, attired in unflattering early 80’s clothing. The clothing wasn’t his fault; it was the era he was filmed in. Nor was the soundtrack his fault. The soundtrack featured a cheesy sythn line that, by the end of a semester, we could, and would, hum along with.
 
The first semester of Yan-san and friends was pretty upbeat and, in retrospect, dubious in accuracy. Yan moved to Japan, friends picked him up at the airport, he moved into a nice little house with a yard (do you hear me, a YARD! I go for seasons at a time without seeing a YARD!) His friends were groovy, his job was solid, when he forgot his bag on a train it was easily retrieved at the train lost and found, he had time from his salary man life to travel to Nikko (and was not attacked by monkeys) and every one seemed to love him.
 
It is the sort of lifestyle that second year first semester Japanese students still believe exists and can be theirs.
 
The second semester was a dark one. Our class had shrunk more. My clove habit was at an all time nervous high. Yan-san got pretty fucking depressing…in retrospect, realistically so.) Yan’s job required a transfer of sorts. Say bye-bye to the lawn with the brook and a kitten. He now had a tiny, concrete, one room apartment furnished mainly with piles of things.
 
The apartment didn’t have a lawn; it just had more concrete outside. Concrete and a chubby land lady who always seemed to be wearing her apron and butting into everyone’s business. Yan also had a mysterious, but rude, young man as a neighbor. It looked to our pampered Wisconsin asses like the most depressing apartment in all of Japan. My first apartment in Japan was larger in the interior, but the exterior was dead on. I knew other people from my class who were living in Japan at the time, but they were in host families living large…one visited me and verified that I was living like my man, Yan.
 
At Yan’s new workplace he often found himself pining over a woman he’d know during happier, first season, days. When this woman announced her impending marriage Yan soon found himself at a tiny street-corner Ramen stand, getting plastered, and lashing out at every one. “It is because I’m a foreigner?!?!?” “”Is it?” “It’s because I’m not Japanese, isn’t it!!!!” until his sake supply was cut off and he was forced, lurching, back to his dark, sad, apartment. We laughed nervously.
 
Next episode started with a ringing phone…a phone untouched by Yan who was now so depressed that he couldn’t even leave his futon. Co-workers were worried. Hell, we were worried. His neighbor stopped by to make some hot dinner to try to coax Yan back into the land of the living, but that was a stop-gap measure. Even the landlady’s children bum-rushing his apartment on New Years to show off the New Year’s cash they’d scored didn’t make him truly happy.
 
The last time we saw Yan he’d caught a bullet train up to the farthest ice covered edge Hokkaido (the big cold island up top) during the winter. A kindly elderly couple had fed Yan on the train and learned that he was so disoriented that he didn’t know where he was going and what he would do once he was there. They arranged a room at a small bed and breakfast. In the end the cold seemed to awaken him again. Not as jubilant as he once was, but accepting of his place, his low-low-place, in Japan.
 
We thought it was silly. We thought “How the fuck could someone just randomly decided to take a bullet train to an unknown destination? “ “What the hell happened to Yan?” And, in general, we asked “What the fuck?”
 
I’m in good spirits right now, but I’m saying that there have been times in my last three years where I could easily see myself, under funded and without a final destination, just getting on a train to go…somewhere else. Although randomly booking a flight to an East Asian country is more my style. I thinksometimes we feel for the Yan and sometimes we feel the Yan in us.

Comments

[leilia.livejournal.com]

In a very strange way, I think I have heard of your Yan-san. He changed his name to Rao and is currently living in the book "American Fuji" by Sara Becker.

I think that under his new, assumed name he is living it up. Although, he still forgets his bag on the train from time to time. Next week, he is planning to go skiing and will hopefully have a lovely time.

Seriously though, your description of his adventures and mishaps mirror what one Visiting English professor asks another about in a bar. Very weird.

[kimuchi.livejournal.com]

Oh god, Yan-san. I hated that show with a passion. The speech was slow and stilted (well, duh) and the situations ridiculous. It reminded me of the equivalent videos for learning English I was forced to watch in Japan ("Are you hungry now? FIX yourself a sandwich!"). I managed to supress the vast majority of the experience.

For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the Yan-san tapes were actually made in the very early 90s. I believe this because some of the pay phones were of a type that weren't introduced yet when I lived there the first time but had appeared upon my 2nd stay. So the wardrobe master/mistress on that production really has no excuse for dressing the poor man that badly. "Sannen tate koi" on the other hand...that thing had to be 10 years old already by the time I saw it (but at least the people spoke more naturally).