Size Matters

Size matters. Nothing brought that statement to life better for me than the moment I was staring at a Japanese man’s rear end, crammed on the escalator moving up out of the subway.
As a woman who’d grown up in America convinced I was a malnourished midget at my (once believed) diminutive 5’2, 115 lbs, I couldn’t help but notice the immediate difference between my size and most of the people walking in the street. There was no significant difference, other than the fact that I was definitely on the beefier end of the female sizing chart. Add the men, too. Size 26 belts must be flying off the shelves at the Japanese equivalent of the Men’s Warehouse because that’s all I seem to see, subway escalators not excluded.
For the first time in my life, I have the opposite problem from what I experience in the US—finding clothes is still a challenge, not because the XS is too big, but because the M is too small.
“Sumimasen,” I’d asked the shopping clerk at my last (and final, I swear) trip to a Japanese designer boutique store. “Size large?”
The clerk, who couldn’t be more than five feet tall and 90 pounds, furrowed her brow.
“Grande! Big? Super size?” I painted an imaginary larger shirt around the shirt I had brought into the dressing room.
The clerk’s expression didn’t change. With a clipped British accent she said, “No bigger size than medium.” She grabbed the rotten shirt and spun her heels.
I immediately went to the lingerie shop next door and bought a C cup bra, which had no business being more than an American size B. Maybe a size A. Might as well use the system to my mental health’s benefit.
The size issue doesn’t stop with clothes. As I began to unpack our boxes that arrived in our new Japanese apartment, it became clear our American sensibilities and new Japanese framework were about to collide.
I held up one of the sole items I adore from Mike’s bachelorhood—his Big Lots bowls. They’re ceramic works of art: swirly blue, red, yellow and brown. I can fill them with my morning granola and yogurt and eat to my heart’s content without refilling. Entire cans of soup happily rest in them and not a drop will spill over the side. And don’t even get me started on big helpings of brownie ice cream sundaes! Those 99 cent wonders are made of some crazy bone china and won’t chip, unlike all my silly plates.
I pulled them out of the box one by one and opened up the dishwasher to give them a good wash before I filled them with my favorite foods.
I positioned the first one, my favorite blue bowl, in the lower rack. It ate up the entire right side. I looked at the second one and wondered how I’d get it into the remaining space. Now granted, I never excelled at spatial dynamics, but a PhD wouldn’t be able to figure out how to get more than three Big Lots bowls into this itty bitty excuse for a dishwasher.
I positioned the three bowls and pulled out the top rack for my mugs. My love for the Big Lots bowls come second only to my giant mugs from around the world. I like the enormous gluttony of giant mugs, so heavy that you almost have to lift it with both hands. I love a giant mug of coffee in the morning and a giant mug of chamomile at night. It’s my thing.
But it’s apparently an American thing, for not a single mug fit in the top rack. Japanese teacups, water glasses, and beer mugs (except for at one luscious brewery we found) are all incredibly small, more like shot glasses than the actual 6 to 8 eight ounce glasses you’re supposed to drink a day. I bought a mug from the sumo match I went to and even at that venue, with a picture of the champion sumo wrestler emblazoned on it, the mug couldn’t be bigger than three ounces.
I slammed the dishwasher shut and rolled up my sleeves to start hand washing our too-damn-big American dishes. I shouldn’t be surprised our American dishes didn’t fit. Two pairs of Mike’s pants and the washing machine is full. We’re just too big for the place.
“I miss Costco,” I told the sink full of plates and mugs. I drifted off to that happy place in my mind, meandering through a parking lot full of gas guzzling SUVs and minivans and fighting for not just super-sized carts, but those flatbed carts. Flash your white, blue and red Costco membership card, and you’re drifting through aisles and aisles of gigantic goods. 9 pounds of imported Havarti cheese for $69.99! 72 rolls of Charmin toilet paper for $11.99! 128 ounces of Tide detergent for $12.99! Six bottles of Tapatio hot sauce for $9.99! And don’t forget the double sized bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips, enough to bake six dozen cookies! But there’d be no room here in my Tokyo kitchen; my four cupboards already full after unpacking only one of my seven kitchen boxes.
I moaned about Costco and American gluttony to Junko.
“There is Costco, but very far away. Maybe not so big stuff,” said Junko. I simply could not imagine it. I bitterly called her a liar.
“Are you homesick?” Junko asked. “Is natural, don’t you think?”
“No, I’m not homesick. I just miss having a lot of crap available to me,” I said, realizing how silly I sounded. Too late to self-edit, I thought.
“That is VERY American,” Junko exclaimed, pointing her finger in the air.
“It sounds horrible, but it’s true. I’d love to have just five minutes in Costco. Like I’m a contestant in ‘Supermarket Sweep.’”
“Game show on shopping?” Junko asked, as if I’d lost my mind.
“Like you’re one to talk,” I fired back, pointing at the Japanese game show on Junko’s TV where contestants were pushing eggs along the floor with their noses. “Supermarket Sweep is pure genius. It was this game show where you had a certain amount of time to buy all the crap you could. The team with the highest grocery bill at the end won, or something like that.”
“Sounds terrible,” said Junko, going back to her computer screen. “We have to go catch taxi or we’re late.” Junko and I were going to an event thrown by the North Koreans living in Japan network. Given the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula, this was a group we needed to know.
We entered the ballroom of the event to grandiose music and two giant pictures of Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung, the current and former dictators of North Korea.
“Birthday song,” said Junko. We were at a party held in celebration of Kim Jong Il’s birthday. And in honor of the DPRK leader’s birthday, six gigantic tables full of food awaited. Not just small little sushi plates or mini bento boxes, but extravagant plates of cheese, giant chicken, and big racks of lamb. It was as if I’d been transported to France or Italy, and exactly what I would have expected Kim Jong Il might actually order up in North Korea, despite his starving masses outside his doors.
“I have never seen so much food in Japan before,” I whispered to Junko.
“Eee. It’s lot, huh?”
We weaved our way through the crowd to meet the president of the organization and the media liaison.
“Meet, onegaishimas,” said the organization’s media man, extending his arm to the man next to him.
“Kochira wa Kim-san desu,” he said, and the small man stepped closer to Junko and I. And older fellow, he couldn’t be more than five feet tall, maybe.
“Ahn young hashamika,” the man said, bowing politely. Crap, I thought, trying to switch off the Japanese in my head and getting my rusty Korean engine started.
“Ahn young hashamika,” I said back, relieved the right language came out.
“You speak Korean!” Junko said.
“Chotto,” I said to her in Japanese. I didn’t want to mislead her and let her think I could actually converse intelligently in the language of the old country.
Weaving between English, Japanese, Korean and a couple of phrases in French, the older gentleman and I pieced together a hodgepodge of conversation. The man was a professor at Tokyo University and had grown up in Japan, ethnically Korean, with a family that traced its roots to North Korea. When the war raged on the Korean peninsula, the refugees fled to Japan. Those who had wealth survived and blended in. Those without and held the unpopular political view and with the North suffered discrimination for decades.
I’d never had a conversation with someone who identified with North Korea, a people my parents had warned me could suck all the freedom and intelligence out of my skull and replace it with evil and injustice, just by mere proximity to them. A polite man, he struck me as an academic and a gentle soul. What was remarkable about this man was that he was so unremarkable, packaged in a (what I decided after bending my neck down to listen to him) 4’9 frame.
“Interesting party,” I told Junko on our way out, “Tokyo is really so full of interesting people.”
“But no Roscoe in downtown,” she kidded.
“Costco. Respect the name,” I said.
No Costco, she was right. And anyone who says size DOES matter is probably saying such from their three car garaged suburban house, sipping a 2 liter coke chilled in a sub-zero XL fridge. But other things can make up for lack of size. On occasion.