Body In Japan But Mind Elsewhere

choi

Damian Flanagan, You're Living in Japan — So Now for Something Completely Different. Japan Times, Nov 19, 2017.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/com ... ompletely-different
("I have also observed a considerable number of people use their experience of life in Japan as a conduit to a third culture or set of cultures. * * * In my experience, the “substitute” language chosen is nearly always Spanish")

My comment:
(a) "it is a wonder the Cervantes Institute is not paying royalties to the Japanese government"

Instituto Cervantes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instituto_Cervantes

My guess is it is similar to Goethe Institute of Germany, and Confucius Institute of China.
(b) "Yet after 15 years in Japan, he spoke hardly any Japanese, and one time when I happened to mention the 16th-century unifier of Japan, TOYOTOMI Hideyoshi [豊臣 秀吉 (1537 – 1598; "is regarded as Japan's second 'great unifier' ": en.wikipedia.org)— one of the most famous figures in Japanese history — I was astonished to discover he had never heard of him."

He is not deemed george Washington of Japan. He almost unified Japan. Two years after his death, in 1600, TOKUGAWA Ieyasu 徳川 家康 defeated Toyotomi's son and successor, ending Sengoku period 戦国時代.
(c) "I was recently amused — though not surprised — to discover that the British Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell has her own appreciation society in Japan."

Elizabeth Gaskell
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Gaskell
(1810 – 1865)
(d) "the samurai ethic of regarding pursuits done merely for the sake of money as demeaning and unworthy. Applying oneself to a 'way' [道, as in 武士道] (a belief system or interest), done for its own sake, and cultivated with the highest standards of care and excellence, is a profoundly Japanese style of viewing the world."

(e) "The list of distinguished authors who have 'found themselves' in Japan, from the English novelist Angela Carter to the American writer Jay McInerney, is relatively well known. The Irish author Lafcadio Hearn expressed it best in his essay 'My First Day in the Orient [in the book Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)],' in which after absorbing the bewildering stimuli of sights and sounds around him, he climbed 100 steps and discovered at the heart of a temple a mirror with which to view his own face."
(i) Angela Carter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Carter
(1940 – 1992; known professionally as Angela Carter; born Angela Olive Stalker

Quote: "She married twice, first in 1960 to Paul Carter, divorcing in 1972. In 1969, she used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982) that she 'learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised.' She wrote about her experiences there in articles for New Society and a collection of short stories, Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), and evidence of her experiences in Japan can also be seen in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972). She then explored the United States, Asia and Europe, helped by her fluency in French and German. She spent much of the late 1970s and 1980s as a writer in residence at universities, including the University of Sheffield, Brown University, the University of Adelaide, and the University of East Anglia. In 1977, Carter married Mark Pearce [so her official name aftewards was/is Angela Olive Carter-Pearce]
(ii) Jay McInerney
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_McInerney
(1955- )

The entire Wiki page does not mation Japan once.
(iii) Lafcadio Hearn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafcadio_Hearn
(1850 – 1904; known also by the Japanese name KOIZUMI Yakumo 小泉 八雲

section 1.1 Early Life, section 1.1.2 Catholic education, abandonment: "At age 16 [1865: ja.wikipedia.org], while at Ushaw, Hearn injured his left eye in a schoolyard mishap. The eye became infected and, despite consultations with specialists in Dublin and London, and a year spent out of school convalescing, went blind. Hearn also suffered from severe myopia, so his injury left him permanently with poor vision, requiring him to carry a magnifying glass for close work and a pocket telescope to see anything beyond a short distance (Hearn avoided eyeglasses, believing they would gradually weaken his vision further). The iris [of left eye] was permanently discolored, and left Hearn self-conscious about his appearance for the rest of his life, causing him to cover his left eye while conversing and always posing for the camera in profile so that the left eye was not visible.

section 1.5 Later life in Japan:
* "gained a teaching position during the summer of 1890 at the Shimane Prefectural Common Middle School and Normal School in Matsue 松江[市]"
ja.wikipedia.org: "島根県尋常中学校（現・島根県立松江北高等学校）と島根県尋常師範学校（現・島根大学）の英語教師"
* married Koizumi Setsu 小泉セツ
* photo caption: "Kazuo [小泉一雄（長男)], Hearn's son, aged about seventeen"
* "During late 1891, Hearn obtained another teaching position in Kumamoto, Kyūshū, at the Fifth Higher Middle School"
ja.wikipedia.org: ""熊本市の第五高等学校（熊本大学の前身校)"
* ju-jutsu 柔術 (= 柔道)

(f) It is just like me: Months after coming to US, I wanted to learn Japanese though my graduate study did not require credits of a foreign language. An American undergraduate living in the same dormitry (which was co-ed) discouraged me: "American are narrow-minded: if you can not speak English well, they think you are stupid." So I deferred it until the fourth/last year after arriving in that university. I got my PhD in biology in four years.