Close My Eyes and Count to Ten
Juliet deButts (Columbia Grammar and Preparatory School)
The first time I ever heard the word “Japan,” I was six. I was in first grade, and along with the
planetary system and basic grammar, we were being taught to count in foreign languages.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

I didn’t think much more about Japan—about the country, about the language. I knew there was
Japanese food, I knew there was a Japan, but I was nonchalant about the entire business. My mother did tell
me stories about it, but she told me stories about other places too—about Thailand, and Hawaii, and
London and Paris—so I never attached particular importance to the stories of the Japanese doctors that
came to study with my grandfather and who wouldn’t let anyone else pay for dinner, of their daughters who
visited but spoke very little English and were married in my grandmother’s wedding dress, of an aunt who
worked as a Japanese aerobics teacher for an entire summer without learning to say more than “inhale,
exhale,” and how to count to ten.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

As I grew older, my limited store of knowledge expanded to children’s books set in Tokigawa-era
Japan, to “kimono” and “katana,” “karate” and “karaoke,” and the fact that I loved Japanese food.

In seventh grade I walked into my first Japanese class, interested but nervous. It was the first day of
school, a new classroom, a new building, a new teacher and a new language, but the first thing we learned
was to count to ten—and I recognized the numbers.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

I was fascinated by the way the characters curved and fell apart and came together again, by hiragana
and katakana and kanji and calligraphy. I devoured words that I’d never heard before, held them up and
weighed them by the scale of words I already knew. I rarely found them wanting—all the words and
patterns I learned, simple and basic, somehow matched the numbers I’d been carrying around in my head
for years: the smooth sounds and the slanted black lines in my notes and my textbook.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

Japanese was fascinating and endlessly new—I was enthralled by every tidbit I learned. Manga,
anime, chopsticks, radicals, Chinese influences, rice farming, mountains, hot-springs, snow monkeys,
octopus muffins, obon festivals: I couldn’t get enough of it. So I stuck with Japanese, even after the sounds
stopped making quite so much sense, even after I needed to study harder and longer. Though the words I
learned and the characters I drew (over and over and over again on tracing paper, desperate to get them just
right) and the sounds I shaped with a reluctant tongue grew more and more complicated, farther and farther
away from the simple basics that had enchanted me as a child, I kept going, and I could hear an echo of
counting to ten.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

It seemed that the more Japanese I learned, the less I knew. There are female samurai, of a kind—the
ama, who dive for pearls in icy waters, and follow a different code of honor from the men who lived and
died by the sword—and there’s a shortage of men to work modern Japanese farms, and the newest
publishing sensation in Japan is the cell-phone novel. Everything I learned only reinforced my earlier
impressions of a country and a culture that had grace bred into its very bones; a place that effortlessly and
elegantly mingled the old and the new, the traditional and the innovative. It was a country of
contradictions—in everything from its geography to its history to its politics. The more I learned, the less I
knew; the less I knew, the more I wanted to discover.

I watched Miyazaki movies, and loved them—always in Japanese, with English subtitles, because the
dubbed versions didn’t sound right—and I struggled through a few manga in Japanese before surrendering
and reading them in English. I still study, I still listen and read and ask innumerable questions, and I still
count, when I'm bored or tired or angry, and the numbers are still as soothing as they ever have been, and
they are still, for me, the essence of Japan.

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

26



Respect for the Pigeons
Jessica Joseph (Bronx High School of Science)
My next door neighbor was afraid for the pigeons. He had heard the stories we exchanged and the
plans we made as my friends and I lazed around on my porch on a dull summer day. Someone had
mentioned the luck of a pigeon feather, someone else had complained about the birds themselves, and I had
brought both thoughts together in an idea that promised to be fun; ambushing the birds on my roof for a
few laughs and luck.

Mr. Ikeda had been close by, listening to our sleepy voices and hazy musings. He was always outside
with his faithful straw broom, keeping his slice of cement spotless. My younger brother and I secretly
mocked him. A modest Asian man thinking that he would be able to keep his area free from the debris that
plagued the rest of the Bronx was laughable. He however, did not find it as absurd and was perpetually
shuffling around with his broom.

On that muggy day he overheard our plan. I remember Mr. Ikeda walking the few feet over to my
house, politely pardoning himself as he navigated the mesh of teenage limbs to get to the front door. He
rang the doorbell and left the broom outside when my father invited him in. I was puzzled, thinking that he
had never spoken to us before, so what would make him do so now?
A few minutes later, my father told my friends to go back home and ordered me to come in. In the
living room was Mr. Ikeda, sipping tea. My father began to explain that Mr. Ikeda was concerned. It
seemed that the neighborhood kids were bent on terrorizing the pigeons. Mr. Ikeda was afraid for them,
worried that we would hurt them if we went to their territory on the roof. I explained that he was
overreacting. After all, they were only pigeons, and we only wanted their feathers. As long as we didn’t hurt
them, what was the problem?
Mr. Ikeda shook his head and explained that we should respect the birds, their feathers, and everything
around us. He explained his belief that we do not own the world around us, that we are not above it in any
way, that we do not control it whatsoever. We are merely a part of it. We are participants and observers but
never, ever owners of nature. He believed in the Golden Rule of treating others as we wish to be treated. He
applied it not only to the people around him, but also to the things he interacted with. I can distinctly hear
him telling me that “everything has a soul.” Mr. Ikeda saw my raising my eyebrows and repeated himself.

“Everything has a soul, even this pot of sugar.” He was motioning to the sugar on the table. My father
nodded and said that he would keep me from harming the pigeons, and then gently let Mr. Ikeda out of our
house. I sat still on my couch, thinking about the idea that everything has a soul.

Mr. Ikeda left and my dad went back to his laptop. I went to the kitchen to make myself some tea,
keeping this idea in my mind all the while. I pretended that everything I touched, from the teacup to the
teabag, to the sugar and the milk, had a soul. I was slow in my preparations, taking time and care with
every step of the simple recipe.

My tea was ready and I began to drink it slowly. Something about this cup of tea was different,
something about it was better. The change was dim and elusive, but it was there. In my hands I held
physical proof of the benefits of reverence.

The concept of respect that saturates Japanese culture was delivered to me through Mr. Ikeda. With his
concern for birds and meticulous care for his property, he exemplified the respect that our world needs to
survive. This extensive application of the Golden Rule by the Japanese inspires me to be a better person.

Beginning with that cup of tea, I started to have greater respect for the things and people around me. I
began to communicate Mr. Ikeda’s beliefs through my daily actions. Though small, my actions with the
inanimate souls around me may affect the actions of the human souls around me, as Mr. Ikeda affected me.

27