Hannah Lukow (Gunma)
In just a few weeks from the time I’m writing this, my family will leave their home in upstate New York, drive to JFK Airport in New York City, sit in a flying metal tube for twelve hours, and somehow end up in Tokyo, Japan. I have lived in Japan since June 2018, but this will be my family’s first time in Japan. Of course, I am thrilled to have them here, especially because it’s been nearly a year since I last went home to the States. But another, smaller part of me feels preemptively embarrassed. There’s something nauseating about watching foreign tourists in Japan freely do things I have disciplined myself not to do: having loud conversations on the train, assuming that everyone speaks enough English to understand your fast-paced regional accent, or unabashedly jaywalking. A few months ago, Netflix released the latest iteration of the hit American TV show Queer Eye: “Queer Eye Japan.” For those unfamiliar with the show, a team of four gay men and one non-binary person travel around to give their subjects “more than a makeover” via a trademark blend of consumerism and self-help logic. This time, we follow the Fab
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Five around Tokyo as they make over four Japanese subjects. Of course, the Fab Five is accompanied by gorgeous (and to my knowledge, disappointingly straight) model Kiku Mizuhara, who is tasked with explaining Japanese customs to the team. Five minutes into the first episode, I had to look away. They’re hugging the subjects! Karamo is driving the scooter on the wrong side of the road! Did you hear the way Bobby said arigatou? And they’re just so loud. Of course, any sense of superiority I might have over the Fab Five or other foreign tourists is surely an illusion designed to protect my own sense of belonging. It’s uncomfortable to watch foreign tourists make “mistakes” in Japan because it’s like looking into a mirror, forcing you to relive that vulnerable time when you were new here and had no clue what was going on. Luckily for most of us, we now have a bit more of a clue about what’s going on, and we’re eager to share the details of our lives with the people we love back home. Sometimes, though, it seems like there’s just too much to explain—to
