TRAINS, TEMPLES, AND HORDES—GOZAIMASU! (continued)

Bruce David Wilner
July 2001

Tue 22 May     Back to top

We woke up at 3:00AM after a fitful sleep, but at least I managed to squeeze in a six-hour uninterrupted block, along with a decent dream. "Lucky us" is my first thought—there have been no earthquakes since we’ve visited. Come to think of it, as many times as I’ve been in California, there have never been any earthquakes during my visits. Maybe I’m a good-luck talisman, or maybe such catastrophes just aren’t that frequent, but I haven’t even felt a tremor, and I had understood that these are quite common—indeed, everyday—occurrences in the Japanese archipelago.

We chitchat upon waking, since it’s too early even to hunt for breakfast. (Though Tokyo had enough early-bird breakfast establishments in the business district, the same is evidently not true of this part of Kyoto.) Cheryl notes that, though signs here are geared toward aiding English-speaking visitors, foreigners who come to the U.S. are essentially screwed. (We will witness this firsthand when we get back to JFK and find all-English signage and guards barking English instructions at bewildered Japanese visitors.) Of course, Japan has its share of linguistic ethnocentrism: in convenience and fast-food stores, they keep talking at us in Japanese—seemingly out of harmless, ingrained politeness—though they know we don’t understand a word. My, the Japanese are such creatures of habit! Cheryl then notes that Kyoto reminds her of Niagara Falls. The analogy is quite piquant: a lovely place, noted for beautiful scenery (whether natural or artificial), becomes popularized and sells out to the tourist trade, bringing crowds, noise, and trash and leaving only yesteryear’s memories.

I can’t believe we go home tomorrow, and I praise God for helping us this far—with Cheryl’s diligent planning, a fair dose of luck, my middling (albeit enthusiastic) grasp of kanji, dynamic gesturing, and the kindness of strangers, we have done very well. I can only focus on the fact that my own bed lies waiting for me, forty hours away. What a machayeh it will be (pardon my use of an arguably esoteric Yiddish term) to crawl into our own king-size bed with its thirteen-inch-thick mattress and butter-soft pillows! We are now counting what remains of our Japanese money; it isn’t much, but it should be enough to go on. Since I’m a spendthrift, Cheryl only gives me the equivalent of $20, keeping more than $100 for herself. Credit cards won’t help, I think to myself—then I realize that, even though this is supposedly a cash-only society, the Japanese must use credit cards at some time, inasmuch as a Persian rug at Isetan was priced at ¥1,580,000 and the largest bill in circulation is only ¥10,000.

Since it’s now 5:00AM, we flip through various TV channels, including the CNN Headline News in English and the BBC news. Once again, there are nature shows set to music on several channels. Still another channel shows the same scenes we caught yesterday morning of a stretch of riverside freeway passing by the Stock Exchange in downtown Osaka, with moderate traffic whizzing past in the pitch blackness. The scenery looks rainy, and it appears that it will rain all day today (our last touring day) and tomorrow (the day we fly home). The weather report (“weather” is rendered as “sky breath") displays Celsius temperature ranges superimposed on the cutest block graphic of the four major Japanese islands. I’m worried about the rain ruining my nice yellow suede Birkenstock clogs (I guess I’ve been lucky that such sunny-weather shoes haven’t been ruined yet), so I figure I’ll pick up some rubber flip-flops if I can find a pair of sufficient quality to support a full day’s walking tour. (I would have brought a pair from home, but there just wasn’t room in the suitcase, since I had to bring all sorts of crap that I never once used—or even looked at, for that matter.) Now, rubber can be sweaty, but that doesn’t matter in the rain—plus, the flip-squeak-flop-squack noise of wet rubber flip-flops will distract and piss off the other tourists, which should prove as entertaining in Japan as it does in a museum or public library at home.

We head down to the station to hunt for something to eat. We pass the usual array of vending machines and marvel again at the variety that they offer: fruit and vegetable combinations; peculiar teas; various brands of coffee (Wonda, Suntory Boss, Georgia); spring water and vitamin-fortified mineral water preparations; even the distasteful sounding Calpis and Pocari Sweat beverages—which sell like hotcakes despite their names. The humidity of Kyoto makes these beverages a vital and welcome commodity. I should point out that I never once patronized a beer vending machine, though both Asahi and Kirin provided them. We find a kiosk open at the station and load up on goods. The girl must have fucked up, as I’m at a loss to otherwise explain how we could possibly have obtained two plates of hot (microwaved) chicken yakitori, a shrimp and noodles dish, a large bottle of water, and an umbrella (only available in white) for the rock-bottom sum of ¥887 ($7.¹⁰).

Heading back to the hotel before our full-day tour with nighttime extension, we push the button that says, "Push button to cross street," but, just like the similarly labeled buttons at home, it does nothing. We see the most peculiar rock video on TV at 7:00AM, in which a Japanese girl with a long blond wig, being photographed by an immaculately suited black man, is holding a nine-banded armadillo under her arm as she belts out the tune. The hallway muzak is now a lame rendition of "Angel of the Morning." Returning to the lobby for our morning pickup, we see numerous older women in kimonos: evidently, weddings are held frequently at this hotel even though the place is clearly geared toward tourists. We chuckle when we find that the Odysseys Unlimited tours ($4250 per person excluding air fare) share the same pickup points, buses, and destinations as the Japan Tourist Bureau tours that we copped for $1750 per person (including air fare).

Here we go. Our guide, Toshi, will accompany us to one temple and two palaces, though after lunch we will visit three temples and no palaces. (Navigation among these sites is easy, since Kyoto is a planned city whose streets follow a grid pattern—unlike the willy-nilly conglomeration that was Tokyo.) Toshi starts off her dialogue with a historical error, boldly declaring that Kyoto was the world’s longest-serving seat of government (it served as capital of Japan from 794 to 1868). Rome comes to my mind as a contender. Now, per my calculations, Kyoto (formerly Heian-Kyo, or “peace tranquility capital" ) was the Japanese capital for 1074 years, but Rome was capital of its empire for 1229 years (from 753 BC to AD 476). I broadcast these dates—in addition to my frequent one-liners—making certain that everyone in the bus can hear me and be impressed by the handsome, wisecracking polymath with the puppy dog eyes, the soupçon of gray hair, and the loud black-and-gold leopard T-shirt. Presently, our Myojyo ("bright star" ) bus pulls up in front of Nijo Castle.

We must place our shoes in the rack (and our umbrellas in the basket) before entering the facility because, once again, only socks or skin may touch the floor.

Diversion on Japanese language: Nijo Castle is a “national treasure" and is so marked. In other contexts, "national" is rendered as "nation stand," such as in "nation stand public park" . There are also what are known as "quasi-national" parks, and these are somewhat differently labeled, "nation firm public park" . The group entrance to the castle—for some reason—is labeled "group body entrance" . Next linguistic diversion or previous

Nijo Castle is beautifully decorated. The rooms are carpeted with tatami mats, though there is no furniture, since the emperor disliked used furniture and threw it all away when he took ownership of the castle in the 1800s. The Buddhist ceiling themes seem discordant. All of the walls were richly painted by masters of the Kano family and are breathtakingly beautiful. The themes include birds (crane, peacock, and eagle), trees (pine, cherry, and peony), and mammals (leopard and tiger). The leopard and tiger are anatomically imprecise, as they were painted from skins—not from the living animals—because, according to Toshi, “those animals do not live anywhere near Japan.” I inform her that Siberian tigers are found in North Korea and Manchuria (and later find—when checking my Macdonald’s Encyclopedia of Mammals [New York: Facts on File, 1984]—that leopards range there as well), but she doubts my testimony. Shit, when I was six years old, I could take you around the Bronx Zoo and point out the aoudad and the gharial and the binturong, so don’t tell me where fucking Siberian tigers don’t live!

Some rooms have dioramas featuring fully costumed, life-size mannequins to show what life in the castle was like. An intricate system of rank was in place at that time, so the emperor’s messenger sits on a portion of the floor that is raised several inches above the shogun’s deck, whereas the shogun sits above his subordinate daimyo, and so on. The dummies show that the daimyo wore long trousers—longer than their legs, in fact—so that they could only shuffle along and thereby presented less of an assassination risk to the shogun (who could clap his hands at any time to summon the samurai who hid behind a door only meters from the shogun’s back). This reminds one of the scene from the Shogun TV miniseries of Anjin’s first audience with Tokugawa. When we see a diorama depicting the shogun’s umpteen wives and courtesans, I remark to a Japanese couple behind me, irome! ("erotic!"—literally, "color eye!" ), which draws a hearty laugh.

Walking outside the castle, we study the mechanism that underlies the "nightingale floors." Each walkway is balanced on the points of a number of iron nails that bend slightly when their loading varies. (The creaking and squeaking serves to warn the paranoid occupants of ninja sneaking in for a nighttime attack—though it also woke the whole place if someone had to sneak out for a drink of water or something less savory.) A rock garden out back looks peaceful to me, but the guide declares that it is considered martial by virtue of the vertical stones peppering the pond, which supposedly summon the image of soldiers ready to attack.

(It’s an interesting kind of "imagery" when you must be taught what image "comes to mind." I prefer the kind of imagery that—well, that just comes to mind.) We are ready to attack the bus after standing out in the rain, which has increased to a steady, miserable downpour. En route to our next location, we hear the same three or four facts that we have heard from every guide: Tokyo used to be called Edo; Tokyo means “eastern capital”; Kyoto means “capital city”; Emperor Meiji (Meiji was his reign name, his personal name having been Mutsuhito) dissolved the shogunate in 1868; etc. People seem astonished that I either knew these the first time or remembered them subsequent times. Americans are so damned ignorant: I really wish that they had bothered to read, say, a five-page encyclopedia article on Japan before schlepping 8000 miles to visit the blessed place! Such ignorance—plus the morbid obesity of some of them (you can spot a high-school-educated Midwesterner from a mile off)—makes it clear why educated foreigners stereotype Americans so unflatteringly.

We arrive at the Golden Pavilion. I’ve seen pictures before, and I have a poster on my living room wall that my parents gave me. The Golden Pavilion is spectacular, even in the spring rain (this photo doesn't begin to do justice to it), and I can only imagine how it must look on a sunny day in late autumn, arrayed in a fantasia of varicolored maples.

How unfortunate it is that it is also a fraud (the original pagoda burned down and was rebuilt in 1955, and a fresh coating of gold leaf was applied in 1988). The pagoda features three levels: an imperial-style ground floor, a shogun-style second floor, and a Buddhist-style top floor. Now for the de rigueur architectural sidebar: imperial style stresses simplicity, since the emperor need not be ostentatious; shogun style is more extravagant, striving to demonstrate power and authority; and Buddhist style is ornate, with intricate filigree on columns and around windows. The whole is anticlimactically topped with a "phoenix" that looks like a chicken to me. Just outside the pagoda grounds, we are again set upon by a flock of middle-school girls. They give us small origami as gifts and are thrilled when I present my business card to them, referring to it by its proper Japanese name, meishi. We again take the obligatory group photo with everyone holding up his fingers in the hip-to-be-square "Peace, brother!" configuration.

Our last stop before lunch is the Imperial Palace (different from its namesake in Tokyo). One must make an appointment to come here, and if one arrives late, entrance will be denied. I didn’t care much for the place, since we were endlessly lining up in the rain in groups of four while being warned that we would be arrested if we strayed from the group. Line up over here, get drenched; line up over there, get drenched; etc. (Some of us try to form a solid protective cover from our umbrellas, like an ancient Roman testudo, but the others are slow on the uptake and fail to cooperate constructively.) The buildings are of the favored material, Japanese cypress, and many surfaces are painted orange, which is a joyful color in Japanese culture.(Though Japanese culture derives in almost every respect from Chinese culture, red is the most joyful color in China. I’m awfully glad that the Japanese went out on a limb this time—though, admittedly, we did note plenty of red in Japanese festive contexts.) The mundane gardens here are considered tranquil inasmuch as they lack the vertical stones of Nijo that, as Toshi told us, are suggestive of soldiers.

This has been a tiring morning, and the weather has made it all the more unpleasant. Back on the bus, we learn some more about the emperor and his symbols. The emperor inherits three symbolic treasures: a mirror (symbol of the sun goddess, Amaterasu); a sword; and a jade something-or-other. The mon, or heraldic charge, of the imperial family is a 16-petaled chrysanthemum. Commoners are only permitted to display a 17-petaled (and thus imperfect) chrysanthemum; this was confirmed when I glimpsed the front cover of a Japanese passport, which has a 17-petaled, gold-colored chrysanthemum under the word "JAPAN" on a red background. (No, I couldn’t count to 17 that quickly, but I could see that the top of the mon was the center of a petal whereas the bottom of the mon was between petals, indicating an odd number of petals.) I almost flip out when we finally arrive at the Kyoto Handicraft Center for lunch, since I’m absolutely starving. I dismount the bus and, realizing that I’ve left my umbrella, head back toward it. Just then, the tour guide comes running up to me with my umbrella. (This is actually the second time in Japan that I’ve lost an umbrella and that it graciously grew legs and returned itself to papa.) The Center offered a very generous lunch of dubious quality: meatballs, chicken, salmon, egg drop soup with mushrooms, lichi nuts, and at least six more items that I’ve omitted. My, the last time I ate a lichi nut was at a Chinese restaurant in a very bad section of downtown Detroit in 1975. About the size of a large walnut, the lichi has a crispy, dark brown skin that is easily peeled off to reveal the grayish-white fruit. Its taste lies halfway between a plum and a pearl onion. Lunch also includes some truly odd selections, including fried onions on a stick and a bean paste abomination labeled "Very Delicious Chinese Cake." The salt and pepper shakers on the table are reversed (many holes for pepper, one hole for salt). Oh, well, at least they tried.

There are seven levels of art studios in this building. Everybody speaks English fluently, and major credit cards are accepted. It’s clear what’s going on here: bring us your busloads of rich American tourists, and we will provide a generous, mediocre-quality luncheon in the hopes that they will buy some handicrafts. We did actually find some lovely handicrafts to buy. At one store, we bought a beautiful set of lacquered coasters decorated in a black and gold bamboo motif, although we decided to forgo their samurai sword reproductions and their dolls, which are very overpriced by comparison to the prices at Mitsukoshi on the Ginza. We strike gold at the Uchida ("inside field" ) Art Company, where skilled craftsmen are patiently carving wooden blocks in order to make high-precision reproductions of classic Japanese woodblock prints, or ukiyo-e. The artworks are printed on handmade Japanese paper, or washi. Everyone is familiar with Hokusai’s Under the Wave off Kanagawa, which is part of his famous series, Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji. (Even in The Wave, you find Mount Fuji in the distance if you hunt for it.) We bought some Hokusai, some of Hiroshige’s Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road, and some well-known Utamaro works depicting Japanese ladies in traditional court attire. It was interesting that the larger hand-carved reproductions on authentic handmade Japanese paper cost $70 apiece here, whereas plain paper reproductions of lesser quality cost about $140 apiece at the gift shop in the basement of the Tokyo National Museum. (I guess the difference comes from the fortune in tolls that the truck driver must pay to transport the prints from Kyoto to Tokyo.) Our several purchases amounted to roughly $220, and the boss packed them with great care and pride for the long trip home. The boss (just like the lady at the lacquer ware shop) also stamped this ticket that we had been given. Before we leave the facility, we present our ticket, which qualifies us for a spin on the “lottery” machine. I spin until a white ball pops out and am informed that I won “fifth prize”—a choice of either this tacky piece of crap or that goofy paper trifle. I choose the latter and figure that I’ll throw it in the trash as soon as nobody’s looking. However, trash cans are extremely hard to find in this country, leading one to wonder how it can possibly be so clean. (I think the shortage of trash cans is the government’s way of gently persuading you not to eat while walking, since you’ll have no place to put your trash and will therefore have to tote your empty box of tonkatsu with you for the rest of the day.)

The afternoon guides are waiting for us in the lobby of the craft center. We choose Saito-san, whose first name I forgot, because her English seems better than the others’. I don’t care for her much, since she is rather officious: this can be seen even in her excuse for a "flag"—a pink pompon mounted on the end of a stainless steel pointer—which stands in stark contrast to the other guides’ more upbeat flags (e.g., Donald Duck). We are going to schlep to three more shrines, and I’ve had it. We arrive at the Heian shrine—largely painted in "joyful" orange—and I decide to sit on the steps and wait, since I’m cloyed with shrines and don’t have enough money to get back to the hotel to rest up for our scheduled evening extension of our entertainment marathon. The shrine would turn out to have a lovely garden, and a nice lady snapped several on-site photos of Cheryl, whose rotten husband stayed on the steps, resting his feet and brain.

Diversion on Japanese language: Heian means "peace tranquility," with the kanji for "tranquil" literally showing "woman under roof." I’m not sure by what logic they arrived at this representation. Women figure more logically in other kanji: "plurality of women" and "multitude of women" represent "quarrel" and "adultery" , respectively, while my "sister-in-law" is faithfully rendered "barbarian woman" and a "scheme" or "plan" is represented by "woman in tree under roof" (you can just see the woman hiding in the timbers hatching some iniquitous plot), "scheme" followed by "within" yielding "information" . (Maps of tourist sites are marked either with the characters "scheme-within picture" [which would appear to mean "diagram" rather than "map"] or with the more classical term for "map," "earth picture" .) My favorite woman-related kanji (from my admitted chauvinist's perspective) are "marriage" —which is formed from "woman" and "(male) prisoner" —and "wife"—which most appropriately combines "woman" with the activities for which she is ideally suited, "broom" and "market" . Next linguistic diversion or previous

People-watching is fun. While I’m sitting on the steps, a young Shinto priest walks back and forth from gift shop to gift shop, looking very chaste in his white robe, white tabi foot mittens, and white setta. Another tour guide happens past, leading a tour group in French, and it strikes me as funny to hear a Japanese person speak French, though I’m not sure why. A pair of teenage girls dressed like harlots are leaning on a counter to scrawl prayers on their ema before posting them on the rack. Meanwhile, the young boy who is in their charge is running riot, trying to break the handles off the doors of the shrine with his umbrella; stabbing his umbrella into the notice boards; and trying to knock other supplicants’ ema off the rack. (I didn’t expect to see such shitty—and unchecked—behavior in Japan.) Then, a teenage guy happens past with his girl friend. They are so tightly coupled at the arms and shoulders that they can barely walk without breaking their necks. The young do have some fashion sense, it turns out: the girl is wearing Birkenstock Gizeh thong sandals crafted in snow-white leather with brass hardware, which are avant garde even at home.

Cheryl collects me before the next leg of our trip. I had a nice little quiet period. Driving to our next station, I notice that there are many Circle K convenience stores (there were none in Tokyo), immortalized in Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure as a good place to ask passersby when the Mongols ruled China. We arrive at a Buddhist shrine, Sanjusangendo (“Hall of Thirty-Three Intervals" ), named after the spaces between columns through which one views the 1001 hand-carved Buddhist deities, each of which sports a distinctive face (or so we’re told).

Diversion on Japanese language: The character for "interval" is used to express not only physical spaces or interstices, but also periods of operation of businesses. To express "hours of operation," we write "gate open interval" , which looks repetitive inasmuch as all three characters are based on the "gate" radical. To my surprise, I find that the word for "image" (seen on signs that label images of Buddhist deities) is "man elephant" . I also saw "elephant" on one of my convenience store receipts, in which context, I’m told, it means "liquid," as in "cash tendered." It’s easier to learn the co-significs: I master "emperor" ("white king", the king of utmost purity), "pure" ("water blue" ; pardon my poetic license, by which purity is associated now with white, now with blue), and—seen at the fish market in Tokyo—“whale” ("capital fish" , considerations of zoological precision aside).

Note that, even where I believe I've found co-significs, it could just be happenstance that the element accompanying the radical contributed the right sound. In the preceding example, can I be certain whether the characters "capital fish" intend the poetic, co-signific interpretation—"the life form that is capital among the fish"—or the pedestrian, phonetic interpretation—"the word pertaining to fish that sounds like the Chinese word for capital"? Even the experts aren't always sure which is the case, so the guiding principle is that, if thinking about a character as a co-signific helps you remember how to draw it, then it's a harmless mnemonic device unless you're a historical grammarian of Sino-Japanese. Next linguistic diversion or previous

We play the shoe game here as well. In order to avoid confusion (though it’s unlikely that my bright yellow suede clogs in a large Caucasian size will get mixed up with anyone else’s), I place a quarter on the exposed heel of one shoe. (I will return later to find the quarter intact.) We learn about an archery contest that took place annually on the verandah of the temple and about a kid who fired something like 13,000 arrows in a 24-hour period, the majority of which succeeded in hitting the target hundreds of meters away.

Our last stop of the afternoon is Kiyomizu-dera ("Pure Water Temple" ). The bus parks in a busy lot, and we must haul up a steep shopping street—lined with savvy merchants who yell "Discount!" at the top of their lungs—to get to a huge set of steps that lead up to the temple.

This must be the mountainside temple that I descried in the distance through the window while we were eating lunch at the crafts building.

Tell me the truth, now: Aren't these endless photographs of temples getting boring? Is this why I paid thousands of dollars to tour Japan? No! It's for the culture and the lifestyle. These shrines are about as relevant to the daily life of most Japanese as the Colonial Williamsburg restoration is to that of the average Californian.

A mendicant on the street refuses to allow me to take his photograph (though I later caught one surreptitiously)—unlike the "mendicant" at Nara, who wasted no time posing for a shot. Waiting patiently for Cheryl to complete the tour, I observe throngs of students (including a group of girls with matching yellow umbrellas) enjoying their green tea and sweet potato ice cream. Hooking up with my wife after she tours the temple and heading back (downhill, fortunately) to the bus, I see a tengu at a shop down the street. Now, I had thought that Tengu was just a brand of beef jerky found in the minibar in our hotel in Tokyo, but this shop sells a large wooden mask that looks just like the character on the beef jerky pack—a dark red, evil-looking face with a tremendously long nose. (Research reveals that Tengu are tall, thin demons that wear geta, whip up tornadoes with their magic fans, and provoke war and civil unrest to keep humanity in perpetual chaos.) I ask the lady and receive confirmation ("Tengu?" "Tengu!"). Whatever: I didn’t buy it. The store also sells used American license plates, some of them quite old, others with 1999 registration renewal stickers. I fish through them for a Maryland plate and show it to the proprietress, loudly declaring, "My home," in English, but I don’t think she understands.

On the bus, waiting for the last stragglers to return, the guide warms up to me when we discover that we both speak Spanish. We chat in Spanish about many things, including her daughter, who is now finishing her degree at Williams College in Massachusetts. (Even the Japanese—world-renowned for the "excellence" of their educational system—send students to the United States.) Switching gears from Spanish, I ask the guide how one renders foreign syllables in Japanese writing that the katakana seem unable to support (for example, che). Her answer is that one combines a katakana for the consonant (cha) with a minuscule katakana for the lone vowel (e). (Normally, a syllable ending in –u would be chosen to prefix the minuscule, but there is no chu sound in the katakana—only tsu—so this case is exceptional.) So, we see that the interpretation of a text depends upon the sizes of the characters as well as upon their shapes. Now, how do they make that work with a word processor, which (in English) allows one to freely intermix characters of arbitrary size for visual emphasis? It throws a monkey wrench into the works, that’s for sure!

We finally arrive at our hotel right around 5:45AM, just in time to rest up for a few minutes, brush our teeth, and wash our faces before heading out on the evening extension, which will include a tea ceremony, a vegetarian dinner at a ryokan, and a traditional Japanese arts show in Gion. There is no bus this time: our guide, Tamami, jams us into a taxi that makes two stops (once to synchronize with another taxi, once to pick up another couple). Miles and Delia are a pleasant, educated, chatty British couple who once lived in Cyprus and now live in Hong Kong. Miles is a pilot, and I find "Miles the pilot" humorous in the same way as "I. Yankem, Dentist," "Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, Accountants," and "Hotel Costa Plente" (thank you, Three Stooges).

Our first stop is Yoshiima, a more or less authentic ryokan in the famous Gion section. The building is narrow and long—the Japanese term this style an "eel’s bed"—because houses were formerly taxed based upon the width of their frontage, just like in Amsterdam. Entering the ryokan, we must remove our shoes, and, once again, nobody even notices how careful I am to position my shoes toes outward, as a gentleman should. The eleven of us are split into two groups before dinner, due to the shortage of space: one group will tour the facility first, then enjoy a tea ceremony (that’s our group), while the other will do tea first, tour later.

The ryokan was lovely, with traditional, tiny rooms carpeted with tatami mats. A glass showcase abutting a Buddhist altar (butsudan) in one of the rooms housed the most exquisite dolls modeling samurai warriors in full battle regalia:

We are told to wait for the soft gong sound that will announce that the tea ceremony, or chanoyu, will begin. We pass through an atrium—donning slippers, stepping across slippery rocks, and holding reed baskets over our heads to avoid getting wet (since it’s raining outside)—and arrive at the traditional entrance to the tearoom, which is not the apparent door, but a small square opening at floor level, about two feet on each side. (I guess obese visitors may use the door to avoid embarrassing situations à la President Taft in the White House bathtub.)

We must crawl into the tearoom on our hands and knees in a carefully prescribed manner. The purpose of the opening, we are told, is to equalize the classes by (among other things) preventing the samurai from entering unless he first removes his sword and helmet. (The samurai was the highest class, followed by farmers, artisans, and merchants—merchants last because they were not perceived to contribute substantively to society.)

The tearoom includes an alcove decorated by a classic scroll painted only in black and white (suiboku-ga) and a pointedly non-fragrant flower. We sit on the floor (kneeling, in actuality, for this picture):

The dinner was all vegetarian, in keeping with Buddhist practice. It included a fried wheat kernel foodstuff (fu), vegetable tempura, miso soup (the finest I have ever tasted), and some unrecognizable native plants. We learned about a card game called hyakunin isshu—similar to Concentration® or Husker Du®—where each poem-bearing card corresponds to a card that relates only the final couplet of the poem. As the leader reads a couplet, if you can recite the whole poem, you get to pick up both cards. Talk about irony: I sit next to a young nisei gentleman who used to live in Lefrak City in Queens—right across the street from the cooperative where I lived for thirteen years in the 1970s and 1980s! I have so much fun talking to Reed (who spent several years of his childhood in Japan and now resides in Atlanta with his wife) that I basically ignore the tour guide as she leads us out of the ryokan into a brief walking tour of the vicinity. We see verandahs overlooking a canal and a shrine to the fox deity, Inari. Interestingly, although the guidebooks said that I would "often" see Tanuki, the badger deity, outside drinking establishments, I never once saw him. (Perhaps he's in hiding because he's upset about being incorrectly taxonomized: subsequent research revealed that he is not a badger, but a "raccoon dog," Nyctereutes procyonoides.) The only thing that attracts my interest more than my lively chat with Reed is a restaurant that sports a curbside display of live turtles for sale for ¥12,000 apiece. Watching their long, serpentine necks writhe, I gather that they are a male aphrodisiac.

We have now arrived at Gion Corner for the "traditional" culture show. I had thought that Gion Corner was a section of the city; in fact, it’s the name of a theater. The place is so phony—including a taped English soundtrack that narrates the show that sounds absolutely ancient—that even the name is foreign (Gion Kona, spelled out in katakana, as are all lowly foreign words). Our suspicions are confirmed when we note that the large curtain over the stage plugs Gekkeikan and Takashimaya products in English. The phoniness does not discourage a group of uniformed middle-school students from attending, however.

Diversion on Japanese language: Our English-language program is marked with two kanji that say "brave language" , viz.,"language of the brave country" (pronounced e-go). The Japanese mechanism for naming countries and languages is similar to the Chinese: a Japanese word is chosen that sounds like the first syllable of the country’s name and that has a pleasant connotation, and the word "country" or "language" is appended as appropriate. Next linguistic diversion or previous

It’s nice to have Reed sitting near us, since he provides additional commentary that is quite enriching. One concludes that what we’re watching—just like its soundtrack—has been repeated day in and day out, year in and year out, since they first discovered that tourists would pay for an "authentic" Japanese dance and puppet show extravaganza. We learn that the tea ceremony is unchanged since the 1500s and that the 13-stringed koto is an extremely difficult instrument to play. (The plectrums with which the ladies pluck the strings do not exactly look ancient.) Halfway through the composition, the performers are joined by what looks like a maiko, who performs a slight dance. We desperately needed the taped narration, as the show was so tightly orchestrated that a fresh act was starting up while the previous one was still going full force. In all, we see the tea ceremony, koto players, a putative maiko dancer, ikebana (flower arrangement), kyogen (a comedy skit), gagaku (medieval court music with dance), and bunraku (puppet show) in less than one hour—a veritable three-ring circus. The wife’s camera died during the show (just like mine did somewhere during the Himeji castle tour), so now she believes that it’s these shitty $100 cameras—not the operators—that are to blame.

In ikebana, we learn, one must plan three chief points of the arrangement. However, I was hard-pressed to discern a triangle, and it is clear that, in any collection of N objects (flowers, leaves, thorns, rhinoceroses, etc.), there are quite a number of triangles—indeed, there are ( N³ – 3N² + 2N ) / 6 triangles, to be precise. The kyogen comic play was reasonably funny even though we didn’t understand word one of the dialogue: a daimyo (wearing the long trousers that prevent him from assassinating the shogun) tricks his servants into tying one another up so they won’t drink his sake while he’s out of the estate for an affair, but they get into the booze anyway because their fingers are free and they have enough fractional brains to work synergistically. The gagaku segment featured flute, drums, and a dancer wearing a tengu mask; the music was absolutely torturously dreadful.

The final bunraku segment related some story about a girl who climbs the city wall and rings the bell to communicate something or other to her boyfriend. It was fascinating to watch a team of three puppeteers, clad from head to foot in shiny black but obviously in plain view, work in unison to manipulate a single oversized puppet nearly four feet tall. Among all forms of theater arts that I have seen, this performance was truly unique, the four characters plus haunting musical accompaniment making for a spellbinding composition.

That’s all, folks. On the way back, we noticed another newfangled Japanese gadget gracing the taxi: a tiny TV mounted in the dashboard. We got back to the hotel just in time to see tattooed kids doing skateboard tricks (albeit not very skillfully, with frequent, apparently painful, touchdowns on their asses) outside the station. Ladies and gentlemen passing by are obviously frustrated and embarrassed by this display, but they try hard not to let the foreigners perceive it. We bought a few cold drinks, headed back across the street to our hotel, and fell asleep quickly. This is the latest bedtime (10:00PM or so) that we’ve managed since we arrived in Japan.

Diversion on Japanese names: We have seen over and over again that the Japanese name people and things using very simple concepts from nature that—to them, at least—sound beautiful. Nishida ("west field") and Yamamoto ("mountain root") seem nearly as common as Smith and Jones. A close parallel is found in Jewish surnames, which almost always come from nature (Blumenthal = "flower valley," Rosenfeld = "rose field," Steinberg = "rock mountain") if they don’t come from the Yiddish name of the European capital (Berliner, Moskowitz, Warshawsky, Wilner [Vilnius]) where your immigrant ancestor was born. If we tried to take the names of Japanese cities—as dorky as they are—and apply a bit of creativity to map them into something resembling familiar U.S. place names, we come up with:

Osaka (literally, big city) = Megapolis

Kyoto (literally, capital city) = Capitola

Tokyo (literally, east capital) = East Capitola

Hiroshima (literally, wide island) = Isla Gorda

Himeji (literally, princess path) = Queensway

 

Wed 23 May     Back to top

We’re going home today. We woke up reasonably refreshed at 4:30AM. I dreamed, among other things, that somebody reviewed my Japan trip journal (in which I recorded the basis of this Web site), calling it brilliant, free-ranging verse. I hope you feel the same, though I’m sure you think it’s just some guy’s hack job relating his workaday escapades in stultifying detail.

A kids’ show airing at 4:30AM shows a woman and a puppet singing very simple verses, many containing repeating syllables, while hiragana transcriptions of the verses appear on the screen. Surely they don’t expect the kids to be up at this hour watching an educational program—or do they? Switching channels, even while dreaming of America, we are immediately reminded that Americans are less honest than some people, notably the Japanese: we see Senator Joe Lieberman on CNN saying something like, "Yes, cell phones do cause changes to your brain tissue, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing." I’ll tell you what, Senator: you care for your brain tissue your way, I’ll care for my brain tissue my way.

Arriving at the train station before the shinkansen tracks are open, we see the clerk in the booth wiping down the counter with a cloth—again, evidence that every Japanese regards his job with the utmost gravity and respect. Once we are allowed into the train, we grab a quick breakfast at the platform kiosk—in this case, strips of smoked mackerel atop rice (for me) and shrimp tempura atop rice (for Cheryl)—each packed, of course, in a darling little wooden box with a tiny bottle of soy sauce, a small packet of pickled ginger, and wooden chopsticks.

I’ve droned on enough about the shinkansen, so I won’t belabor the point. I do notice that most of the people on the train have just a small briefcase, probably enough for a day trip to the capital, but we have a huge mass of luggage—having swelled considerably from its original volume thanks to all the gifts we bought—and seats in the rear of the car just in front of the preferred luggage area. Although the train is nearly empty when it leaves Kyoto, it fills up at Nagoya (the only stop before Tokyo station). One gentleman in the front row is running Microsoft Excel in Japanese, which strikes me as funny even though it obviously shouldn’t. Many men are wearing the black suits that one never sees in the U.S., and one young salaryman across the aisle from us—who appears to be in his early twenties—is chowing down on a Western-style sandwich, the first I’ve seen on an actual submarine roll rather than on surgically trimmed white bread.

We arrive at Tokyo station right on time (of course) and must transfer to the Narita express, affectionately known as the N’EX. A wheel just broke off our second bag; perhaps the wife will now learn that, when you pay twice as much, you get four times as much. The broken wheel scraping along the floor is driving me batshit. Of course, the Japanese never notice: they’re too lost in their private virtual Xanadus. On the platform waiting for the N’EX, some old guy fishes through the recycle bins to reclaim a free newspaper, and he succeeds. I sit there scratching the mosquito bites on my arms. I only got two mosquito bites during the last week, but one of them is blowing up like a balloon and I have no Benadryl. I’m still sneezing my head off—as I have been for days—no doubt the result of the alien plants that infest the landscape.

I decide to investigate the water fountain that is located smack in the middle of the platform. The fountain does not have a spring-loaded valve like an American fountain, but, instead, two screw valves that are tightly secured. The upper one is loosened by turning it counterclockwise (as expected), causing it to shoot water straight upward so that you can conveniently flood your nostrils and drown (not as expected); the lower one operates in the same manner, but shoots downward into a basin, allowing you enough room to stick a bottle or pail underneath. Several Japanese businessmen heading to the airport individually pose for a photo with my wife. This strikes me as odd until I realize that they merely want to capture the experience of having seen a stunningly beautiful Caucasian woman during their travels in Japan—which, for all its people, is a very lonely place.

Diversion on Japanese language: This one takes the cake. I recognize the kanji for "newspaper" on a recycle bin, and the magazine slot is next to it. The elements of the kanji for "magazine" literally mean "nine tree chicken words scholar heart" . Previous linguistic diversion

I peek into the "green car," the first-class one, on a passing train, and I find that—although it has two-and-two seating instead of the two-and-three found in coach—it is double-decker (one steps down or up from platform level to find a seat) whereas coach is only single-level. I guess the Japanese are trying to squeeze as many yen as possible out of their "first class" service.

Finally, the N’EX arrives. It seems to be two minutes early: something is wrong. It also flies straight past our location, so we all run for the train, whereupon a uniformed attendant promptly kicks us off and tells us to take the next one. (Of course, I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but his grimaces and gestures were sufficiently discouraging, and everyone else abandoned ship, so I can take a hint.) It would appear that this N’EX train has been split into two pieces—a front half and a rear half—and each one stops at precisely the designated portion of the platform.

The N’EX train is quite comfortable and is full of foreigners. There are generous areas for large suitcases within easy reach. The train has a map on either end that lights up with LEDs as you make progress to show you how close you are to Narita, which is at least forty miles outside town. I gawk at the scenery—even though I’m quite tired of scenery viewed from within moving trains—and see 25-story manshon; the first free-standing gas station I’ve seen in Tokyo; and the Beatles painted in psychedelic colors on the side of a private house, executed in such a manner as to be specifically noticeable from the N’EX train.

We arrive at Narita airport. A Muslim clad from head to foot in traditional white garb—looking for all the world like a Taliban extremist—gives his Japanese host a hugging and kissing farewell. This so warms my heart that I spontaneously crack the widest smile, to which the Muslim responds in kind. The unity of mankind is captured in our eyes: friendship transcends language, culture, and prejudice. We head upstairs to the sizable shopping area to eat. I am at a loss to explain why the character for “north" marking the north escalator looks different from the standard character for "north" . We are so tired of Japanese food that we dream of sinking our teeth into delicious—McDonald’s. The McDonald’s upstairs offers such oddball fare as Teriyaki McBurger and bacon-potato pie. Also, the staff gives you a number, which you carry to your table, and they subsequently serve you at the table. Near McDonald’s in the shopping arcade, a duty-free jewelry shop ("avoid tax treasure stone sell shop" ) is trying to unload a tacky $400 Rolex knockoff, replete with three-pointed crown logo, called a "Marshal." (I should note that the most popular wristwatch I saw during our travels in Japan was—guess what—Seiko.) After dining and exchanging money at one of the numerous money exchanges (much more grandiose than the ones at Kennedy or Dulles—and always open), clearing customs and immigration is a snap. It is as easy to get out of Japan as it was to get in. What an efficient, friendly, cheerful, grateful-for-your-tourist-dollars people.

On the plane, the majority of the Japanese read comics (I’m not sure if they’re manga), which makes me wonder about either their literacy or the profundity of the comic as a Japanese literary form. Other Japanese play the most unusual video games on palm-sized Compaq platforms that I’ve never seen before. Their menus don’t match ours—the seafood teriyaki entrée appears on their carte as "sea fresh bowl" , while garden salad is spelled out gaden saraju in katakana. (A Chinese friend of mine would later tell me that the Japanese shamelessly appropriate anything and everything if it helps them achieve their purpose—but it’s hard to believe that they can’t express the concept of salad with native Japanese words, viz., "vegetable assorted dinner precede cold" or some such.) I’m noticing such things because, naturally, I’m bored shitless by the plane ride. I’m also not sure why the long haul eastbound takes thirteen hours—exactly as long as the long westbound haul—since, when I travel to California, it takes only 4:15 eastbound as compared to 5:45 westbound. Going to Japan, we took the great circle route over Canada, Alaska, and Vladivostok; going home, we appear to be following what looks like a straight line on the Mercator projection, supposedly to catch optimum tailwinds. I had the stewardess phone the captain at one point to ask where we were, and the answer was south of Kodiak Island. Then I asked if he saw any bears, and I got no answer from the four-striped iceberg. Typical airline captain, a dyed-in-the-wool asshole—just because he wears a silly hat, and presses buttons in the manner in which he has been taught, and earns half my income, he thinks his shit doesn’t stink.

We arrive at JFK right on schedule. We clear customs, noticing that they are much more interested in our possible contact with agricultural establishments (foot-and-mouth disease!) than anything else and that only one sniffer beagle—without his stylish blaze-orange vest—is on duty. After collecting our 55-pound duffel, we must hotfoot it to the AA terminal, a nontrivial bus ride away. Even though the plane got in at 3:20PM, Cheryl has planned our connecting flight to BWI for 8:45PM, figuring that clearing customs can take a while and that, if seats are available on earlier flights, we can grab them, whereas missing a flight and hoping for a later make-up flight is not an enviable position in which to find oneself. Two punks—who sport crew cuts and walk like they’ve either got brooms stuck up their rectums or were born without Achilles tendons—try to cut the line, and I put them in their place.

While sitting in the newly built commuter terminal area, we talk to an American couple who had visited France but were ripped off in a small town of everything but their passports. I would have bought their seats on an earlier flight from them (supposedly illegal—but slip behind a pillar and exchange a few Franklins, and shit happens), but Cheryl decides that they deserve the seats more than I do after their ordeal. She is, of course, right.

It’s a zoo at the AA commuter terminal, with late flights, cancellations, fog, and every schmuck and his brother trying to get to Boston or Cleveland or Raleigh or Buffalo. I could bitch and moan, but you’ve all been there before, and we got home only ninety minutes late, so I’ll spare you the gory details, which really aren’t all that gory. Hopping on the bathroom scale after getting home, we realize that the food must have been healthful even though the portions were small—despite all the schlepping and sleeplessness, I have lost two pounds and my wife has lost seven.

Closing Thoughts    Back to top

This was our second marathon tour of a very foreign land (our honeymoon to Israel in 1999 was the first). We could readily perceive that we were visiting Japan at a transition point where it is wrestling with the sharp contraction of its record-setting economy and the imminent demise of many of its most treasured cultural traditions. Nearly everyone we spoke to yearned in one way or another for the "good old days." This isn’t the same old yearning that the old always offer at the expense of the young—this is very real: Japan only emerged from its self-imposed isolationism after Mutsuhito took the throne in 1868, so it has charted a meteoric path to success and back. "It is only with the heart," wrote Saint-Exupéry, "that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye." I have no idea what the hell that means or how it’s applicable to this paragraph, but it sounds terrific.

Aside from its crowding, Japan is a very livable place—more developed, with a greater variety of goods and services, cleaner, and safer than just about anywhere. If I couldn’t live in the United States, perhaps I’d choose Japan. I didn’t see extensive decay and neglect like I see at home, though the decay and neglect were both there, just outside official view. Of course, neither did I see the overwhelming natural beauty that I had seen in all of the books. Maybe it, too, is there, waiting for the discerning eye to ferret it out from between the power lines, but where the people actually live and work, beauty is a hard thing to come by, even if it is characteristically treasured. The Japanese seem to lampoon themselves in this regard: so many posters depicted the Japanese cherry trees in full bloom—as if this were the everyday state of affairs—though my wife and I know from observing Washington’s Japanese trees for the past fifteen years that they bloom for all of a week in early April (late March if the winter was mild).

The Japanese walk a very difficult, very lonely road. There is no peace, no privacy to be had. As crowded as I find America becoming, I will never again consider it anything but a scarcely developed wilderness, since I don’t have to drive very far at all to find thousands of acres’ worth of virgin forest. As techno-sardines, the Japanese live masterfully orchestrated lives. They could probably live out all their days in the same five square blocks: as soon as they die, having overdosed on mediocre-quality sushi procured from the convenience mart around the corner, they will be interred in that tiny cemetery right next door to their 20-story condominium tower, only blocks from the clatter and din of the shinkansen. Amid this painstakingly organized demi-chaos, they have subjugated the will of the individual to the will of the collective, though in brutally efficient and organized fashion—like so many Borg. The individualism of the young and the tolerance of the older are both remarkable in the light of this overpowering socialist modus vivendi.

Whereas we had gone to Israel in 1999 to find our roots, we went to Japan in 2001 to conduct an anthropological study—to try to learn how people so different from us, so handicapped by language and manners, could come knocking on the world leader’s door only fifty years after having been all but destroyed. I won’t drone on and on after having woven such a detailed écriture vérité. The anecdotes have been presented, the truth bared; accept it or reject it as you see fit.

Suggested Reading    Back to top

In addition to the references that I've cited so far, the following were valuable for providing both general and detailed background information about enthralling Japan and its people and culture. They were already on my bookshelves, gathering dust.

Bowring, R., and Kornicki, P., eds., Cambridge Encyclopedia of Modern Japan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

George, D. W., and Carlson, A. G., eds., Japan: True Stories of Life on the Road. San Francisco: Traveler's Tales, 1999.

Pictorial Encyclopedia of Modern Japan. Tokyo: Gakken, 1986.

Thiro, R., ed., Eyewitness Travel Guides: Japan. London: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.

Underwood, E., The Life of a Geisha. New York: Smithmark, 1999.

My wife also bought a number of travel guides, over which she pored late into the night for the better part of two months:

Gostelow, M., Citypack Tokyo. New York: Fodor's, 1999.

Rowthorn, C., et al., Japan. Melbourne: Lonely Planet Publications, 2000.

Umeda, A., Kyoto-Osaka: A Bilingual Atlas. New York: Kodansha, 1993.

——, Tokyo Metropolitan Area Road and Rail Atlas. New York: Kodansha, 1992.

Several months later, I bought this sumptuous, twin-volume, $250 opus, for which you may want to wait until after you return from Japan, but which is unmatched for scope and quality of coverage and incorporates the most breathtaking full-color spreads:

Campbell, A., and Noble, D. S., eds., Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. New York: Kodansha, 1993.

which I followed a year after with another $75 beauty:

Baird, M., Symbols of Japan: Thematic Motifs in Art and Design. New York: Rizzoli, 2001.

Finally, you can gather wonderful ideas about what to do with the expensive knickknacks that you bring home from Japan—and painlessly learn the Japanese names of dozens of household articles—by browsing:

Rao, P. L., and Mahoney, J., Japanese Accents in Western Interiors. Toyko: Shufunotomo/Japan Publications, 1997.

Flight Schedule    Back to top