Worry, Worry Everywhere

What a world we live in. The solid ground of several generations now shakes with uncertainty. What lays behind the door to tomorrow? Gosh. It's unnerving.

Need a break? Below is a humor bit I wrote about my worrywart lifestyle way back in

2004. Skilled in the worry arts then, I am a master of those arts today.

Some notes on the content:

SARS, bird flu and Mad Cow Diseases were all in the headlines that year. Bird flu, meanwhile has returned, like a revived fashion. Could bell-bottoms be next?

Japanese Prime Ministers are often ambushed by news reporters as they walk to and from various meetings. Such scenes play on the Japanese news almost daily. Junichiro Koizumi, perhaps the spryest Prime Minister of my time, could outstep any newsman alive.

I think you’ll get the rest.

Let the worry times roll!

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Worry, Worry, Everywhere

Jun 19, 2004

"If there's one thing I've learned from life in Japan," I tell my wife over a pot of black coffee, "it's how to worry."

She frames me with narrow eyes.

"Oh, right. You needed to learn to worry the way fish need to learn to swim.

You were born worrying. You can't blame that on Japan."

Who's worried?

And just like that, we are off... in another his/her battle over our mixed cultures -- one that I soon worry I will lose.

"I mean," my wife continues, "you are more than just a typical Type A stressed-out personality. You are a Type A Double XL. You wring your hands about everything under the sun and -- considering your fear of rogue asteroids -- things beyond the sun as well. With you, panic does not appear in sporadic attacks, it comes in week long parades."

"Ha!" I counter. "Panic? Stress? Hyper-anxiety? Why, I can handle those things as well as any man alive!"

And then I spill coffee down my shirt.

She rolls her eyes as I wipe myself with a napkin which -- unfortunately -- has already been smeared with jam. Still, I launch my defense.

"To start, I am not now, nor have I ever been, afraid of asteroids. Why should I be? A killer earthquake is bound to get us first. Either that or SARS. Or the bird flu. Or Mad Cow Disease. Of course, once the economy melts, any such calamity might be merciful."

"Asteroids, hemorrhoids, whatever -- you're a minstrel of never-ending doom."

I shift on my seat -- uncomfortably -- and say it didn't used to be that way, that Japan is to worrywarts what helium is to balloons.

"Listen," I tell her, "and you can almost hear it. Tick-tick-tick-tick. This entire nation runs at the demand of a clock: 'Gotta catch my train, gotta catch my bus, gonna be late for work, gonna be late for my meeting, gonna be late for tomorrow.' Ever watch Prime Minister Koizumi walk? Well, it's not a walk; it's a sprint. That's Japan."

She taps her nails on the table. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

"And it's not just the wristwatch worship. People bow to the calendar as well. 'The test must be passed! The job must be found! Now is the time. Now, now, NOW!' "

"You'd better go wash that stain," she says. "You'd better hurry."

"We're always racing the clock. But what if I'm proud to be a slob? What if I just wanna lean back and smell the coffee?"

"What if people think you're an idiot?"

What if people think I'm an idiot?

"Which brings me to my second point. If the time pinch doesn't jack your anxieties, then the probing eyes of the masses will. In Japan, those critiquing eyes are everywhere -- from colleagues to neighbors to the crowd on the street. Each group places you inside parameters that no normal person can fill but absolutely anyone can judge. You have your up relationships, your down relationships and then your lateral relationships, each as tremulous as tofu on a spoon. With all of these linked together by the minefield of polite Japanese speech.

"And in that minefield, you're a steamroller."

"Right!" I slap the table for emphasis and flip my spoon across the room.

"More than that, as a foreign resident I exist inside a petri dish. Everyone studies me while I mangle the lingo and lifestyle. If, for example, my waitress hesitates, I can't help but wonder, 'Gosh . . . did I glitch on "ippai" and "oppai" AGAIN! And instead of a drink, ask for her breast?' Talk about stress."

"She would surely understand."

"Understand what? That I'm a pervert?"

"That you need a drink. A stiff one."

"But I don't need to pay for it. Japan's cost of living feeds my insecurities while it starves my wallet. I'm forever light on cash. But I am full of anxiety."

"You're full of something."

"Japan feasts on fretfulness. The media continually pumps out stories of fear. Falling stocks. Rising unemployment. Crime, delinquency, aging, crummy test scores, bad harvests. Marauding crows. Bears prowling down from the mountains for food."

"Bears? Like the one behind you now?"

I grip the table -- and sneer and say, "Oh and like I'm gonna fall for that." Then spin around and check.

"See. You have nothing to worry about. Japan and the Japanese are no less nervously inclined than people any place else. You just have to relax. Besides, what comes, comes. Haven't you ever heard that tomorrow will take care of itself? It's better to focus on today."

"Yeah, because tomorrow we'll probably all get cell phone poisoning and drop dead. Or lose our minds and become Yankee fans. Or Japanese science will discover a direct link between cancer and all forms of food -- except 'raw squid.' "

"Yet for the moment aren't you well off? Despite that smear on your shirt? It seems to me the only real thing you have to worry about it that you worry too much. And all that will gain you is gray hair and ulcers."

"It's not just me," I repeat again as I pour myself another cup and splash coffee on my tie. "It's Japan. This place is to apprehension what the Sahara Desert is to sand."

"Well," she says. "if that's how you feel, perhaps we should consider moving elsewhere."

"Nah," I tell her, as I grind my tie with the same napkin. "We don't dare do that."

"And why not?"

"Because it might make me worry."

© Thomas Noah Wood