Both Toilets and Kitchens Are My Classrooms

By Zhu Xun

After cleaning toilets for three months in Tokyo,I made moves to land a new job as a dishwasher at a restaurant.

I swept all the bathrooms from the eighteenth story all the way down to the first floor and collected my wage to end my last shift. Unexpectedly, I felt a little bit of attachment to the place as I was bidding farewell to all the clean toilets in the building.This was a second classroom for me, where women and men,coming in and out, including foremen in uniform and elderly Japanese ladies, offered me so many life lessons during our brief interactions. Various life scenarios were being acted out in this private place, with some smiling in the mirror and some crying behind locked doors. Once,I even ran into a couple who were making out in there. Walking out of the toilets, I was not afraid of anything because nothing could be scary for a person who just walked out of rock bottom.

The new place I worked for was a small Asian restaurant in Shibuya-ku, Tokyo. The boss had a smart way of doing business,and the food was delicious and inexpensive. Naturally, it was quite a welcoming place. The menu included several Chinesestyle dishes. Maybe some of the regular diners at the restaurant were somewhat connected to China, so the boss hired me to wash the dishes in his restaurant.Normally, the busiest time for the restaurant was around 6 pm,when the place was crowded with customers.

Washing dishes is a tough job especially when you cannot wear gloves while doing it, as dishes will become slippery. Soaked in dish-washing liquid, my hands turned rough and cracked in less than a month. Nonetheless, I still preferred to work at a restaurant,as it provided more opportunities to interact with people. As long as they were Japanese, I targeted them to practice my oral Japanese. This small restaurant was crowded every night. Besides me, an international student, a couple of Japanese students also worked here—they came to work earlier than me and were quite nice to me. I am a smiling woman with big eyes and thick eyebrows,so they gave me a nickname on my first day at work, “Look, Axun is so much like a Barbie Doll.”

Being spoiled was a long-lost thing to me. Thus, a tiny gesture of kindness could warm my heart. For example, a boy named Hashimoto would help me wash dishes when I was too busy, and he got scolded by the manager for this； once I broke four plates,our chef stepped forward to take the responsibility for me, and the manager moved on without fining me a penny. While cleaning toilets made me tough, working in the kitchen has taught me a feeling of gratitude.

Too much dishwashing work eventually resulted in certain psychological problems for me,however. I saw, in my dream,piles of plates stacking up on me, just like Madame White Snake imprisoned at the bottom of Leifeng Pagoda. However, as soon as I got into the restaurant,I was carried away by the aroma of dish-washing liquid, and then I reassured myself that, “Dishwashing is a promising job.Working hard, you just suffer for ten years； however, without hard work, suffering will follow your entire life. Since I have done so much dishwashing in my life, I will not need to wash dishes for the rest of my life, so I am only going to marry someone who does not ask me to do such a thing ever.”

Seeing my fingers get all swollen, the manager finally agreed, “Axun, you now can serve dishes in the counter room.”

Our chef, all smiles, gave me a thumbs-up, and offered me a carrot as a reward. I burst into a hearty laugh, for we all knew that serving dishes indicated a pay raise.

Language is a tool for making a living and it is money itself.As words turn into paychecks,the motivation for learning a language is irresistible. My speaking and listening skills were improving rapidly every day, just like the spring drizzles in March,moistening the world in a silent way. One day, I was taken aback by the fact that I could follow what people were talking about around me.

After serving dishes, I withdrew to the corner of the room. Even though there were not many diners today, I was pretty busy.I kept a note hiding in my clenched hand, on which were 70 new vocabulary words that were required by the Japanese language school I belonged to.Unrolling it sneakily to have a quick look, and then rolling it up hastily, I tried to memorize them silently in my heart, behaving like a student who was cheating on a test.

“Excuse me,” some customers tried to strike up a conversation,on and off.

At the beginning, I pretended I didn't understand, and it worked out pretty well. “She is a foreigner,” most diners would laugh this off. If they didn't give up easily, I would never get mad,but rather talk back in long strings of words in English with a smile.I used to work as an interpreter for some foreigners in my senior high school, so my English is good enough to enable me to call names. One thing you need to be particularly aware of is that you have to fight with a smile, which can be quite satisfying.

Japanese generally adore English. They will certainly feel ashamed when they cannot understand it, and they don't want others to know the fact. “Ok, then another bottle of wine,” his tone softened.

I kept smiling and handed him the bottle with both hands. I have learned professional respect here. In my work, since he was the guest, I should provide highquality service to him, and save face for him, especially in front of others.

If any customer spit all over the fioor, the manager would ask me to clean it up at once. At first, I took it as a sign of discrimination against Chinese, and would get extremely upset. Gradually, I came to realize that, in Japan, it is a request or a tradition placed on females that women should take coffee to men, talk obediently,and listen to complaints from others. If you follow the rule,you are showing good manners；if not, you are in need of good manners. Wherever you are,it is natural for newcomers to do the dirtiest and most tiring work. Later, new staff joined the restaurant team, and then the task found a successor. (FromAxun,Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House. Translation:Zhang Xueqin)