Big in Japan
How I grew to become a giant (and the challenges of being tall)
Being tall in Japan
When I was in junior high school I attended a basketball camp where I got the autograph of the Center for a local NBA team. Without any doubt, James Donaldson is the tallest human I have ever met.
Although I have since grown to become 188 centimeters, which many would consider to be tall, I will always know that my height is simply a little above average. Even in high school I knew that my height would barely qualify me to play as the shortest member of the basketball team. I didn’t see the point of throwing my time and energy into basketball and I joined the grand intellectual pursuit of learning how to win arguments in the debate club.
Becoming Gulliver
I had visited Japan once prior to marrying my Japanese wife. It was a very hectic trip in a chilly December starting in the world’s largest city and ending in a tiny mountain village covered in two meters of snow. My memories are filled with cold rooms, frightening amounts of snow, meeting her parents, strange foods, unusual customs, and a lot of bowing. Being tall was the least of the issues that were on my mind.
Years later, returning to Japan in order to teach English brought me into a different realization of my physical identity. I was now spending a much more sustained period of time navigating homes, schools, cars, bicycles, and trains. And, it quickly became apparent that my height could get me killed.
Doorframes in most of the schools where I taught came in two different sizes. Some doors were 200 cm in height while others were 180 cm. That extra 8–9 cm on my head presented a real problem for a person who had never had to pay attention to such things. And, there was no forgetting it as I strolled through the elementary schools with a trailing cry of ‘takai!’ (tall) as I sauntered through the crowds of Lilliputians. Alternatively, they may have intended to mean that I was ‘expensive’?
Not to be outdone by the numerous short doorframes in my work environments, we managed to move and live in four different homes or apartments during those four years. So, just when I grew accustomed to surviving in one residence, we would move and I would have to restart my muscle memory of where I needed to duck.
Getting onto, or off of, trains provided lots of opportunities for ducking (or bowing). On the upside, even in the most crowded of train cars or stations, I always had an unobstructed view of the exits and all of the advertisements that run along the luggage racks at the ceiling of the train cars. If there was a new restaurant in town, I was the first to know. And, after many minutes of standing and staring on the always silent railcars, I could likely remember the map of how to find it.
On most days my existence as a tall person in Japan is an unnoticed detail of my life. It is not something I give any thought to. Yet, recently attending my children’s Sports Day at their Elementary School was a crisp reminder. I am not simply the brown-haired fair-skinned English speaker, I am also the neighbourhood “giant”.
