Homecoming
Thursday, July 1
All day, I think about a thing that Koun wrote in one of his letters, puzzling over it, because it makes sense and also because I don’t completely understand it: In every moment, he writes, I keep coming back to a sense of wonder about how closely linked this formal practice is to a sense of place.
This singular thought inspires me to linger in each of my frequently inhabited spaces, noticing how the placement and functionality of objects and architecture determine the flow of movement, like boulders jutting from a river. In the bedroom, the fragile tatami encouraging a light and shoeless step as I dress for the day. In my office, the wall of windows and vast view of green and blue pulling my gaze, and then my body, up again and again, away from work at my desk. In a classroom, the inexplicably permanent wood lectern around which I am constantly maneuvering in order to deliver my lessons.
And in entering or exiting all of these spaces, a heavy sliding door requiring one to pause. open. enter. turn. pause. close. turn.
Friday, July 2
I have a visitor to my office during an afternoon break—Kiyoe (aka the Totoro character “Nekobus”—affectionately called this by her classmates due to her overly broad grin and perfect row of shiny white teeth). She recently returned from her year-long homestay with the College of Saint Mary in the States. Something in her manner is different and recognizable all at once. “I didn’t understand what you said about eye contact and smiles,” she tells me, “until I went to the U.S. Now I understand completely. Everybody smiles and looks you in the eyes—even strangers.”
I relate to her my story of being stalked through the side streets of Kumamoto. I was headed home on the tram and I happened to be sitting across from a man about my age. When I looked in his direction, our eyes briefly locked. “I just smiled once before turning away—that’s what we’re likely to do in America. Maybe especially in small-town America.” But when I got off the tram, he followed me everywhere I went. I couldn’t shake him, and I certainly didn’t want to lead him to my home. At one point I started yelling at him in English to go away. After a little while, he did. Later, a somewhat older man did the same thing, him going on and on about my breasts looking like some kind of fruit. By that time, I knew exactly what to do. When I started walking toward the nearest police box, he veered off.
“After that, I got better about not making prolonged eye contact and smiling so much at people here. But I still do it sometimes. It’s a habit, you know.” I tell her, “You be careful—even more boys will be following you around now.” I imagine all the CSM girls locking eyes and flashing brilliant smiles at unsuspecting boys—dangerous, or a dangerous skill.
What I don’t tell her is that I once walked down Shimotori Arcade during the crowded daylight hours, casually looking into the eyes of those who passed by to see what would happen. Everyone looked away quickly on that day—except the old women. Obaachan (old lady) power. They stared me into the ground and I always looked away first. Why does this remind me of Sensei?
Sunday, July 4
We’re in the dojo—Tsuda-san, Mimaki-san, and I—and all of us are sweating rivulets, though we’ve barely begun to stretch. “Motivation goes down in heat,” says Tsuda-san. “Let’s do our best!” Our practice quickly evolves into a fever dream of pushing our bodies through thick air while Tsuda-san barks orders at us. There is something said about breathing—apparently I’m not doing it right—and then, I think, a long riff on my inability to move in anything but a straight line when I attack and receive punches and kicks. All of the advice sounds somewhat like the buzzing of an insect in the ear when one just wants, desperately, to lie down and sleep it all away. By the end of practice, I’m pretty sure I’m missing time.
Though the shower afterward is delicious, it is only a brief reprieve. Clean clothes on, and already damp through to the skin. This season of mushiatsui may most literally mean “hot and humid,” but a better translation would be “a hell realm; a constant state of discomfort.”
Monday, July 5
It’s the last week of school before the mid-year summer break, and I’m playing Pictionary with my students for fun—though it’s an abbreviated and improvised version in which I filter out English words that are likely beyond their understanding. This game often fascinates me because fluent native speakers of English such as myself are rarely assets on an all-Japanese team. The girls create sketches that I would not necessarily associate with the given word—but the images work well enough for their Japanese teammates.
Today, the one additional quirk is that the good-natured and sweetly naive Risa keeps shouting “Over easy!” as the possible answer or perhaps as words of encouragement to her teammates. (I guess it is a phrase recalled from one of her other English classes; I’m not at all convinced that she has any idea what it means.)
One of the girls draws a card, hands it to me, and I point to a word that looks doable: “pie.”
She immediately draws a circle, which surprises me. I would have sketched a slice on a plate.
“Circle!” shouts another student.
I begin to offer advice: “Maybe you should give more detail, or draw another . . .”
“Pie!” shout three team members simultaneously.
Meanwhile, Risa peeks at one of the spent cards on the table. “Ano, Sensei—what is . . . ‘stupid’?”
“Baka,” I explain. Her eyes grow wide and confused, and her neighbor starts to laugh. “Sensei, she thinks you called her ‘baka’—hahahahaha!”
“Oh, no no no—that’s not what I meant. ‘Stupid’ is ‘baka.’” Risa remains a deer in the headlights. I’m getting nowhere on this one.
“Ah, Sensei, Japanese okay?” I nod and they huddle around Risa, explaining and laughing, and I think how much the five of them are often like borderless slices of pie in a dish, and how this image, when set against my single slice on a lonely plate, is also a rather useful representation of Eastern versus Western cultural habits.
Tuesday, July 6
This afternoon I stand beneath the ginkgo trees on campus, waiting to meet up with Akihara-sensei. He has volunteered for the task of delivering me to a couple of local high schools, where I’m to give sample lessons as a kind of advertisement, and he will present about our university programs.
My partner last year, a shodo professor from the Art department, had seemed both terrified and resentful of my presence as we drove around together. Hopefully, Akihara-sensei, a teacher from the Japanese department whom I have not yet met, will be less so. He promptly pulls up in his immaculate white sedan and steps out of the car to greet me—a true gentleman. He has, I note, a kind face and a shock of neatly combed white hair. “Furanzu-sensei, it is nice to meet you,” he says. “I heard you are a big fan of pottery. I want to show you a very famous shop today.” This is indeed encouraging!
On the way to our first school, we turn down a side street and pull over next to what looks to be a quaint showroom attached to a large old house. As we enter, my first thought is that the matte wood-lined walls are the perfect backdrop to the rough folk pottery inside. And then it hits me: I am not standing among the usual bowls and cups and vases. Instead there are thousands of statues of various sizes—mostly fertility monkeys with huge, erect phalluses protruding, as well as a few sets of the slightly less pornographic (but still perky) “three wise monkeys” covering eyes, ears, and mouth. An old woman follows us as we move from display to display, commenting on the efficacy of her talismans. My escort chuckles but doesn’t say much—maybe he’s waiting for something. As we turn to leave, a huge penis/monkey statue (more penis than monkey, that is) provides the opportunity for comment. “You know what this is?” he says, slapping a hand on the top, as if on a buddy’s shoulder.
“Hai—yoku wakarimasu.” (Yes, I know very well.)—probably a truly hilarious response. Both he and the old woman laugh wickedly.
After I teach my sample classes at the schools, we drive toward home and Akihara-sensei begins to tell me all about what’s wrong with youth and education today in Japan—but the rhetoric flies by too fast for me to follow. He sighs, “I wish you could understand me better—I really want to tell you all this stuff. I want to know your opinion as a foreigner. . . . By the way, do you like onsen? Do you use shampoo? Conditioner?” These seem very personal and unusual questions, but then he adds, “Is it okay if we’re a little late getting back? Maybe thirty minutes at the onsen? It is a very good one.”
I’m thinking now that he might play another sexual joke of some sort on me and deliver us to one of those rare Kyushu onsen that allow both men and women to bathe together. “You must remember to go outside—try the outside baths because they are the best.” Right—a clue. Perhaps the outside baths are shared, then?
We arrive at the onsen, and I stare desperately at all the signage as we enter, trying to locate some scrap of information. But, as always, there is so much that I cannot understand. Akihara-sensei procures towels and tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner at the front desk. He offers the lot to me in a neat pile, and so I tentatively enter the “Women’s” area. It is early, and I am the only patron this afternoon. I quickly undress, shower, and enter a bath, which is indeed wonderfully soothing. As far as I can tell, behind the steamed windows there is nobody in the outside bath—and though I’m worried that a man will show up out there, I think I had better give it a try in case Akihara-sensei asks me some specific question about it afterward. With the too-tiny bathing towel clutched to my front (which shameful bit is most important to cover?), I step outside and nearly tumble into a gorgeous little bath nook surrounded by natural rocks and foliage. I enter the water, but I can’t relax. My eyes remain fixed on the unmarked door opposite the one from which I just entered, semi-expecting a naked man to come strolling through at any minute. Having dutifully experienced the outside bath, I exit quickly and return to the “safe” zone.
Just before we leave the onsen, Akihara-sensei asks me to pose for a photograph in front of the building. “Very nice,” he says. “I hope you could enjoy Japanese culture today.”
“It was . . . a very interesting experience,” I assure him.
I am duly delivered to my townhouse, and I immediately change clothes and rush off to pottery with my bag of too-wet recycled clay. I am late, but also just in time to produce one big watery, wavy bowl. Wiping my hands, I notice that the onsen-saturated skin of my fingertips is still deeply wrinkled. “Too much water in the clay again,” chides Sensei.
“Or maybe too much water in my skin?” I offer, showing her my fingertips.
She nods, and instead of insisting that I toss my work in the recycle bucket as usual, she helps me cut the bowl off the hump and sets it gently down on the board to dry.
“Oh—it’s pretty,” says Yoko-san, leaning back from her spinning wheel, “like lotus petals opening.”
In my mailbox at work, there is a clean white envelope in which Akihara-sensei has tucked some pictures of our journey together—me standing in front of the high school where I delivered the sample English lesson, squinting into the sun; me standing in front of the pornographic pottery hut; and me in front of the onsen sign with disheveled, damp hair and a relieved smile—as well as three stunning photos of white cranes lifting off from a lake’s surface.
At the end of the work day, I walk down the stairs and along the hall to the English Speaking Society lounge for a chat with my students. “Ojamashimasu,” I announce as I enter, noting the vibration and weight of the sliding door as it moves with my touch. Inside, several ESS members are sitting on zabuton, huddled around bento at a low table, and intently discussing the contents of the little lunch boxes.
“What is this—mama bento?” I ask, knowing that many of them still receive elaborately packed meals from their mothers each morning.
“No, Sanae brought it from the store for us—we couldn’t eat our lunch today because we had to take a test. Try?” Yukari reaches for the jar of spare restaurant chopsticks and pulls out one set from a popular sushi chain, and I accept her offer, settling in next to her on one of the cushions.
“Oh! Do you know? Can you read this?” Sanae points to the kana text on the chopsticks wrapper.
“Ah . . . ‘ichi-go ichi-e.’ What does it mean?”
“Hiroe-sensei taught us. ‘Each meeting is unique and never to be repeated.’ It is very famous words in Japan. It comes from sado—tea ceremony. That is very special times and place.”
Naoko giggles and says, “Or very special times like here, now, in ESS room!”
Just then, the door slides open. It is Hiroe-sensei. “What’s going on? You are talking about me?”
The girls laugh and make space for him at the table. Having lived a number of years in England to work on his Ph.D., Akira Hiroe is one of the few teachers who always has an easy, almost Western-friendly relationship with the students.
“They were explaining this Japanese phrase.” I hold up the chopsticks wrapper as he settles in next to me. “It’s ‘seize the day’ in English, right?”
“Maybe. But . . . it is a little sadder in Japanese. There is a kind of melancholy or a nostalgia. In this, we understand impermanence.”
“So, ‘this moment too will pass.’”
“Yes.”
Friday, July 9
Today is the last day of classes before the summer break. Everyone on campus seems distracted and happy—chatting excitedly with each other. In composition class, my students tell me about their plans: part-time jobs, trips with friends, visits with family. When I say I have decided to go to Alaska, they ask if they can come too: “Ii na! Will there be snow? Can you see aurora?” Always the same questions, the same fascinations. It is strange to see my home through their eyes—an exotic, magical place. To me, it is mundane reality. A mottled and too-ordinary bruise on the psyche.
Later as I am locking up my office to leave for the day, a group of my students pass by in the hallway. “Tracy-sensei, tonight, TV, 6 p.m. It is Shokei promotion. Please watch us!”
Indeed the Shokei girls are on the television tonight, though I can’t quite see them through the poor reception of that one elusive channel, only hearing something about “Enjoy English!” and “Do our best!”. . . In a way, it is perfect though. I think this is how we always see each other—through a heavy static fuzz that will never clear for more than a second or two.
Saturday, July 10
For the first time in a long time I talk with Koun’s parents—they’ve decided to have Viv go ahead with the permanent catheter surgery they’ve apparently been discussing as an option for some months. “We know there’s no turning back once we do this, so we’ve held off for a while. But it’s time. Hopefully it will make it easier to get around.” Dick’s voice sounds resolved and tired at the same time. I feel for them. And I feel guilty, too. From here in Japan, it’s impossible to offer much more than a distant phone call. I know Koun will be worried when I pass along this information. At least it will be in person, as I have permission to visit Shogoji again tomorrow.
Sunday, July 11
The last time I drove out to the monastery in the mountains of Kikuchi, the rice fields were filled with fresh water reflecting sky; now they resemble a lush spread of emerald carpet. As I drive, the van clings to the thin strip of gravel and weeds that is the “road,” and I dodge several mushroom farmers carrying pails and bamboo poles.
When I arrive, Koun asks Jisen-san if I can assist in the dimly lit kitchen where he is serving as tenzo (head cook). She grants permission for this slight impropriety, so I spend the first half of the day working with my husband, cutting vegetables, washing dishes, and preparing the noon meal over portable gas stoves: a simple vegetarian fare of wakame-and-cucumber salad with red pepper bits for color; miso soup with cabbage; carrots and potatoes in a thick, sugared soy sauce; brown rice; and, of course, the necessary pickled daikon to clean the bowls afterward. There is also a special treat today: a small canned fruit-and-nata-de-coco salad with slices of ripe mikan on top. All of the recipes have been written out by hand on slips of stained and tattered paper.
Though Koun and I can’t relax and just talk (we are, as always, surrounded by thin walls and keen ears), I find that I truly enjoy sharing space with him in this new way. We work quickly and efficiently, with minimal speaking—Koun pointing to the tools he needs or succinctly explaining a heating technique or the proper way to cut food so that it can be easily held with chopsticks. He tells me that we’ve got to be swift and accurate with the recipes, getting it all out on time and arranged just so. “The food matters so much,” he says. “It’s one of few great comforts in the day.”
As per Jisen-san’s instructions, we heat the ceramic dishes with boiling water before placing the hot food on them. “It’s really too bad we didn’t add a little bit of onion and garlic,” I lament.
“Onions and garlic are strictly forbidden—‘incites the passions.’” I smile at an image of him sweeping away all of the little dishes of fruit salad, a struggle with the ties of our samu-e. Impure thoughts from the very mention of onion and garlic. Koun grins at me broadly—he must be thinking the same thing—and hands me a lacquerware tray of food to deliver to the informal serving hall.
During the free period that follows lunch, Koun and the monks are busy with various duties. I ascend the stone staircase with the aim of making a rice-paper rubbing of the Buddha’s feet that are carved into a boulder at the entrance to the main grounds, but it won’t take—the surface is too rough and uneven. Nature and art conspiring against a frame, I think. It’s a shame, as this was to be my special gift for Koun’s older brother, Bryan. I know that he especially would find something poignant in this small memento from his brother’s current daily life.
As I’m putting the paper and charcoal back in the car, Koun finds me and we walk the trail that loops above the complex. “It’s okay—as long as we don’t wander too far off,” he assures me.
“And we will be watched?”
“Someone is always watching.”
As we walk, we talk about his mother’s upcoming surgery, about that edge of worry in his father’s voice.
“They must really be hurting. I know they’ve been trying to avoid that step for a while now. Once it’s done, you can’t go back. Still, if it means more mobility for Mom—that’s great.”
When we return to the parking area, it is time for me to leave but I’ve left an interior car light on and the engine won’t start. We jump it using the Shogoji car, and I’m grateful for the excuse to stay just a little longer.
The phone rings early this morning—Koun’s voice so casual and familiar, as if he were standing next to me in the kitchen. “I just spoke with Jisen-san—she told me to remind you that you can call if there is a problem with my mom’s surgery. Just leave a message.”
“Got it.”
“Oh, and . . . I thought I should tell you that I had an odd chat with a visitor the other day. She knows one of the women who visited the Monday zazenkai at Tatsuda Center. Supposedly, it’s known far and wide as ‘the zazenkai that does not serve tea.’ She seemed very annoyed about it.”
“What? You’ve got to be kidding!”
“Yes, she was going on and on about how ‘zazenkai is not zazenkai without tea’—I believe she said ‘zazenkai without tea is pointless.’ She was as direct as I’ve ever seen a Japanese person be. It was really weird.”
“Okay—but, do I own the zazenkai? Who’s responsible for providing tea? And how does said tea get prepared while we are all sitting? Is zazenkai zazenkai without sitting?”
“I really don’t know.”
At pottery in the evening, Sensei passes out a selection of her beautiful handmade cups to each of us. The tea is lightly astringent and shimmery grass-green. I have never been to pottery class without this ritual happening first. The tea, the pleasantries, and then it’s down to business. Is pottery not pottery without tea? What else am I missing every day and in every way here?
Friday, July 16
It’s been two days now since Viv’s surgery, and there is still no answer when I call, so I talk to Bryan again. “I think something’s definitely up,” he says. I call Shogoji and leave a message for Koun. A short while later he calls my cell: “I couldn’t get hold of my parents so I left a message. Jisen-san said you can come visit this Sunday—I think she must feel sorry for me.”
A lot of helplessness and worry today mixed with something like a residual angst. I take the bus into town for my Japanese lesson as usual, hopping off at my stop in front of the towering downtown department stores, but instead of heading directly to the YMCA, I turn and walk in the opposite direction, toward my home of some years ago. When I arrive thirty or so minutes later to that old Suizenji neighborhood, it takes me a few more minutes to orient myself away from the main thoroughfare toward the little four-story building tucked against the claustrophobic crush of taller, newer constructions and the dilapidated holdouts of past eras. When I find it, that place where I used to live, there is a surge of emotion. I stand beneath this dirty wedge-shaped building, looking up at the new inhabitant’s brightly colored futon stretched out across the balcony railing. There are moments—like this—when it strikes me how odd it is that I am still in Japan, a place to which I gave little, if any, thought in all the years prior to my arrival.
As my gaze falls away from that third-story apartment, something catches my eye. Beneath the building, taking up half of what would be the first floor, is a small open parking lot for bicycles, two-wheeled vehicles, and various building maintenance items. There also, tucked into the shadows, is a modest wood-and-metal computer desk—constructed so that the user can type while sitting in seiza. It is my desk, the very same one I abandoned out of desperation because it would not fit into the car on the day I moved in with Koun in Aso, in the months before our wedding. This relic was my first piece of real furniture in Japan. The desk at which I began to put words to the experience of being out of context. The writing—I threw it all away, into the electronic ether, or into the garbage, on the day I left. But the desk, it seems, has been waiting here for me for over five years. I walk under the awning, run my hand over the dusty piece of furniture before becoming aware that probably everyone in the neighborhood knows that an unauthorized foreigner is standing beneath a building that is not (no longer) her home.
And so I move on, following the slender line of water that flows past my old building along a concrete streambed and beneath the tiny urban bridges before opening out into the river that feeds Lake Ezu. As I enter the trail into the park surrounding the lake, I see that in the widening river next to me colorful koi swim lazily, sunlight catching along the gold and white of their scales. I know if I trail my hand along the water’s surface, the fish will nip at my fingertips. On several occasions while out on my daily walks, I found all manner of fascinating and idyllic scenes here: an old man playing shinobue, the mournful tune of the flute carrying all the way across the lake to my ears; fat, drowsy cats leashed to the open doorways of dilapidated houses; men fishing with long bamboo poles; brilliant white blooms of lotus flowers; children with their trousers rolled up to the knees, catching frogs in a creek. And at the furthest point of my daily walk—if I was lucky—a view of Kumamoto Zoo’s Indian elephant standing forlornly in his pen.
Yes, I walked here a lot. Sometimes I wept here, too, as I grappled with the strangeness of a new and immediate country juxtaposed against the memories of a distant home.
But mostly, I spent long hours staring into water reflecting sky, a stone slowly turning over and over in the hand as I turned all those old stories over and over in my mind, trying to understand and let go.
Sunday, July 18
Koun and I stand in the dirt-and-gravel parking lot of Shogoji, trying to get phone reception beneath the fickle clouds. Finally, the call connects, and I’m standing close enough to Koun that I can hear his dad answer on the other end. “The doctors don’t know what’s going on—she’s been talking to her twin sister as if she were still alive. She’s saying ‘help me’ over and over. It’s just terrible. I don’t know how much more I can take.” His voice sounds gravelly, raw.
“Dad, you need to tell me if I need to go home. Call Tracy. She can call the monastery. I’ll just do what I have to do. But you have to tell me if it’s time.”
After he hangs up, the phone rings again immediately, and I move away to kick at stones while Koun listens and responds again and again in the affirmative in Japanese. “What now?” I ask, as he tucks the phone into his sleeve.
“That was Ganzoji. The head of the temple board has just passed away. The wake is this evening. They’re coming here to pick me up now, to take me to Aso.”
“I could take you.”
“No—it’s bad form. They’re already on their way. And they’ll need to explain the situation to Jisen-san. It should be okay for you to follow along, though, if you’re up for it.”
A couple hours later, we arrive at the house in Aso. Koun and his teacher are led to one room to dress while I am waved toward another room full of mourners in black suits, kneeling on tatami.
The priest’s wife pats me on the arm, and I hesitate. “Are you sure it’s okay?” I whisper.
“Of course. You are from Ganzoji.”
I nod and enter the tatami room, choosing a spot near the back. Incense burner, candles, and flowers have been carefully placed on a low table in front of the body, which lies in an open casket beneath an opaque white lace cloth. Black-suited people continue to file in and, at some point, the priest’s wife decides that I’m sitting in the wrong spot, so she waves me to the other side of the tatami. “Family side,” she whispers. Koun and the priest enter, and the wife of the deceased begins to sing—an anguished, wailing refrain. Afterward, the priest offers a short eulogy that is difficult for me to follow in his countryside accent, but for this one unmistakable, heart-rending statement: “We were the same age—we were growing old together. He helped me to be a better man all the time.”
As he begins to cycle through the Heart Sutra, Koun serves as doan, hitting the bells and wooden fish block on cue, his voice layered in with the priest’s. One after the other, mourners step forward to offer incense and to bow. Makizushi and green tea are passed around, the guests nodding as they accept the trays. There is also the stillness of the deceased, the stillness of his wife as she sits in seiza.
The wake is still in progress when I excuse myself, and Koun walks me to my car. “It’s the first time I’ve seen the priest really choked up at one of these things,” he says.
“It was a hard day, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, and the funeral will be harder. But maybe I’ll have a chance to check in with my folks on a decent phone connection before going back to Shogoji.”
The priest’s wife strides toward us to collect Koun, nodding at him that it is time, and he clutches my hand for a moment before turning to leave.
Monday, July 19
Koun calls in the afternoon, and it is frustration tinged with a wrenching feeling: “Jisen-san let me use the phone to check in with my folks. But, you know, the connection here is so bad. Dad says my mom’s lost most of her motor skills since that surgery. She still can’t feed herself. I didn’t realize—[click-click].”
And when he calls back: “Sorry, oh, this connection. Anyway, this is the hell she’s been imagining herself in her whole life. A lifetime of worry leading to the exact thing she’s worried about. Now it’s here—right now. Trapped in her own body. It’s just—[click-click].”
And again: “This is so irritating. Well, I just don’t know what to do. Mom doesn’t want a rumination on the nature of life. What [click-click].”
And again: “Oh, T, someone’s hitting the bell. I should say good-bye before it cuts [click-click].”
~
It’s just Stephen and me again at zazenkai this evening. It is quiet but for the usual passage of trains and the cough of the night watchman, who seems to have developed a summer cold. This is becoming normal, this falling away of attendees. I wonder how long our group will continue, especially given my upcoming absence. (And then, of course, there is the matter of the tea for the visiting Japanese. I have yet to address this issue.)
On the drive back, Stephen assures me that the waning zazen group is not a failure. “It’s just how it is—people get busy with things that feel more important.”
“Yes well, I guess it doesn’t help that I’m just sitting with this general guilty feeling lately. I feel that I’m letting Koun down, and at the same time I’m worried about his mom, about being so far away. I’m terrified that she’s going to die, honestly. I feel that I should be doing something for her.”
“What can you do? I lost my sister some years ago. I was here at the time, but I went back for the funeral.”
“That must have been hard for you, being so far away.”
He shrugs. “Yes and no. Everybody dies. That’s just reality.”
Tuesday, July 20
In pottery class—our last before the summer holiday—Yoko-san announces, “I got the tickets!”
“What tickets?”
“To Alaska! I will bring my granddaughter, Satsuki-chan!”
Oh—right. “Yoko-san, my mom’s condo is very small. . . .”
“Don’t worry! It’s package. We have a hotel in Anchorage.”
Yoko-san has an amazing ability to delight and annoy and make one feel guilty all at the same time. Mostly, in this moment, I feel annoyed. Meanwhile, the cups I’m trimming simply won’t hold their form—the edges fray up and smudge where I carve. Sensei points out that I’m not using the correct finger, the middle one, or enough chikara (power) when pressing at the center of the pot. The muscles in my hands tense up and lock while I try to maintain this posture, and when I pause to massage the pain away, I note that the pottery ladies seem to be now discussing fortunetelling while peering into one another’s palms—much too complex a topic for me to engage with. Starting my wheel up again, I concentrate on the pressure of my fingers against the pot.
“Te o kudasai!” (Give me your hand!), says Sensei.
“Hai, ganbarimasu” (Yes, I’m working at it), I say automatically.
“Iie, te o kudasai.” (No, give me your hand.) I look up, see that she’s holding out her hand expectantly. I stop the wheel and hold out my right hand. She squints at the lines in my clay-wet palm for a long moment before sucking air between her teeth and cocking her head.
“Is it okay?” I ask.
“Hmm. I don’t know. It’s difficult. Hmmm.”
This cryptic pronouncement about my fate, and then she is back into fast banter with the ladies. I am about to push on about the meaning of the lines, but already they’re on a different topic so I go back to my work. I wonder what is missing from the geography of my skin, what secrets are revealed. Surely it is imprinted here somewhere in the clay turning beneath my fingers, in all of my failed creations.
As I drive home, I note that my mood is decidedly dark. A line from one of Koun’s letters comes to me: Today it’s sunny; I feel good. Yesterday was rainy; I felt bad. Following the same schedule every day makes these kinds of variables really obvious.
Saturday, July 24
Bryan calls in the morning from Helena. “I got in yesterday. Mom’s basically doing okay now, but still there’s a dramatic difference. Hard stuff. You’ll see when you get here.”
Today is Shokei’s Open Campus Day—Jennifer and I have been slated to team-teach a sample class. We are doing our best to be as super genki (happy/healthy/energetic) as possible, though my heart is not in it at first. But once we get going, I’m back in the flow. After we introduce a short film about how to greet an American host family, we practice introductions, shaking hands and giving hugs. The girls in their high school uniforms giggle and scream playfully through the whole thing. Will I see their sweet, open faces in my classes next year?
“How’s your mother-in-law doing?” Jennifer asks after the last student has left.
“Not so great—we’re all really worried.”
“Yet you smiled all day. What we do is amazing, isn’t it? We’re always putting on this other persona.”
It’s my wedding anniversary, and it seems particularly melancholic that I will spend the day—two days, actually, thanks to the curvature of the Earth—in transit to the U.S., rushing away from the love of my life.
Satomi, driving her mother’s car nervously but with great care, delivers me to the highway bus stop for the airport early in the morning. She hugs me and then continues to wave as I slip beyond the gate, my rolling suitcase in tow. This farewell is her gift to me, and I am grateful to not be driven by an impersonal taxi at this hour.
Once on the bus, I phase in and out of consciousness, the announcement waking me just as we pull into the international airport in Fukuoka. I shuffle from check-in to terminal to airplane, arrive in Taipei at a reasonable morning hour, and then spend the following five hours wandering the seemingly endless, (mostly) empty personality-free terminal wings, trying to get my exercise before the much longer flight ahead to Seattle, where I will stay for a few days before moving on to Montana and then Alaska.
At one point, I find myself in an especially shabby dead-end corridor. Hung along the length of the hallway is a surprise of art: ten ink paintings, many ox-themed. As I am looking at the images, wondering at their beauty and simplicity, an older Taiwanese man approaches me (we’ve passed each other a few times now, walking laps in these sparse hallways). He says in English, “Do you know about these?”
“I know I read about them some time ago, but I don’t remember the meanings well.”
“The horned cow is your mind,” he says, tapping his head. “You have to tame. That is all you need to know.” Looking again at the paintings, I see that they reveal in stages the process of finding the ox, bringing it to submission, and then, perhaps, moving on to some kind of final transcendence.
I arrive in Seattle at nearly the exact date and time as when I left Fukuoka. As I exit customs, Bryan and his girlfriend, Kathy, greet me. Though they have been dating nearly two years, seeing them together shocks me. Their relationship blossomed entirely outside of my spatial proximity—it has been a romance for me viewed through spoken word, not image (as if the mind needed the image as proof of reality). So I accidentally see him—the brother-in-law whom I love as my older brother—still as a kind of permanent bachelor, while also recognizing him as he is now.
As we wait for my bags to appear on the conveyor, Bryan presents me with an earth-colored ceramic pitcher he picked up with Kathy while on vacation in Mexico. “Happy Anniversary,” he says. “We thought you would appreciate this.”
“It’s perfect,” I say, and it is, the weight of it in my hands.
Wednesday, July 28
Bryan has already left for his job at Microsoft by the time I wake this morning. So I dress and head out for a walk around Green Lake in a jet-lag daze, dressed like a middle-aged Japanese woman, with my skin dutifully covered with hat, long-sleeved blouse, and pants. I long for a parasol, but know that’s a little too much. Most people look pale, under-dressed, thick, tall. In Japan I always feel ten pounds overweight and rather average in height, but here I feel tiny and delicate. As I walk, I catch snippets of conversation in English that I assume are about TV shows that I have never heard of, and acronyms for business and new technologies that I don’t know about. There is one familiar face: the old man with his sandwich board advertising Spanish lessons walks past, speaking to a young man who nods, listens intently, and then responds slowly. That gentle volley of language. A comfortable feeling comes over me. Their speech is pleasant background music, whereas the English makes me tune in and feel exhausted, as if I’m being constantly addressed.
I ride the bus out to the mall with the intention of buying several things on my list, but when I actually get there, I have to leave after twenty minutes. Everything is big, abundant, overwhelming. And the advertising is definitely talking to me, but it’s just too much desire. So I get back on the bus and stop at a high-end grocery store near Bryan’s house to pick up a few essentials—tofu, rice, fruit. When I check out, I present my rarely used debit card to the cashier.
“Slide it in the machine,” she drawls lazily.
“What? Sorry, I don’t use a card very often.” In Japan, it’s cash only.
“You know, the MACHINE.” She points to a gadget on the counter that I have never seen before in my life.
“Okay, what do I do?”
The woman behind me in line, nearly naked in her sexy yoga gear, mutters “What the fuck?!,” rolls her eyes, and storms away (to another line—and then on to Nirvana—I presume). Namaste to you, too, I think.
I return to Bryan’s home and sleep, sleep, sleep.
Thursday, July 29
Today I wake late again and don’t leave the house for the better part of the afternoon. Instead, I sit in the small enclosed backyard and read with the smell of roses and sun-heated wood and the sound of distant traffic around me. A fat fluffy gray cat wanders in, climbing a neighbor’s tree and leaping from a branch over the fence to get here. She sniffs my ankle and then curls up in a ball next to me. There must be something to how I attract cats, my greatest allergenic nemeses, in whatever country I happen to be.
In the evening, I go contra dancing with one of my dear friends, the soulful Brinda, who has worn the same velvet-short haircut since she shaved it all off in 2002 after her divorce (inspiring me, a few months after, to cut off my own long locks for the first time ever). She has a new beau in her repertoire, an undeniably sexy, bald, and not terribly kind ex-marine in a “utili-kilt,” a manly new Seattle fashion trend, apparently.
“You have lead feet,” he tells me as I am passed to him during the dancing. “Slide!”
“Are you kidding? I’m wearing hiking sandals—they don’t slide!”
“You could if you were graceful.”
And then, gratefully, I’m passed to another man with sad eyes and another who introduces himself far too formally and another who acts like an old lover, the way he tenderly grips me—until I’ve met all of the men and a few of the women at the dance. When, finally, it is time for a break, we take plastic cups of cold water and step outside to cool air. A man about fifteen years my senior sits down next to me on the curb, asks me where I’m from. While we talk, a woman his age looks over at us with pain in her eyes. I excuse myself when I see that look, taking a slow lap around the outside of the building. I get the feeling that many of these men and women are carrying out unspoken and spoken romantic mini-dramas. Reading between the lines is devastatingly easy, and it’s all too intimate.
Afterward, Brinda drives while Bill sits in the seat beside her. They talk animatedly while I lean back, exhausted, ready to be nestled in bed. I sit up when we are nearly to Bryan’s, making my best effort to participate—after all, Brinda really likes this guy. They’re basically talking about the battle of the sexes now, about men and women and annoying lovers past.
“You’re lucky—you’ve got a great one now,” I offer, when Bill laments yet another horrible relationship.
“What?” There is a hint of irritation in his voice.
I lean forward, speak louder, “You’re lucky—” Brinda catches my eye in the rearview mirror, says “no” with her eyes. “Oh nothing, I’m just so tired.” I slump back into my seat. Nobody speaks for the rest of the trip.
“How was the dancing?” asks Bryan after Brinda drops me back at his place.
“I don’t know. Fun and athletic, but weirdly emotionally draining. I have this feeling that it’s really a place for those who desperately need to be touched. Oh and—I don’t think I understand what ‘dating’ means.”
Friday, July 30
Brinda and I sit in the steam room of a neighborhood gym, rubbing handfuls of sea salt across our bodies, flaking away the old skin to reveal the new. “I’m sorry about that thing with Bill in the car yesterday,” says Brinda. “He’s got boundaries. He says I bring out the worst in him.”
“‘The worst in him’—what does that mean?”
“I don’t know. He’s a complicated guy.”
You deserve better, I think. And then, We’re all complicated. But I don’t trust my ability to evaluate anything right now, so I say nothing.
“You know, in relationships there are cycles. In my marriage, we went around and around. And then we got to the bottom of a cycle and just didn’t come back up.”
“I’ve never experienced that. I had a bad marriage before, and now I have a good one.”
“You will experience it someday. Maybe.”
“How are things, now that you are separated from your husband?”
“When we were first together, he painted. He was very artistic. And then he stopped. Now that we’re apart, he is painting again. We are both happier now. So much happier.”
After the steam, I sit in Brinda’s apartment drinking tea while she moves around the kitchen, gathering dried herbs for me into brown paper bags. “This will nourish your lungs,” she says, “and this one’s for your heart.” Brinda, the wise woman/Microsoft professional/mother of three who knows the intricacies of healing plants, who walks the earth barefoot on every solstice—I’m always touched by her inclination to nurture. Having finished gathering a pile of remedies for me (some of which may or may not get me stopped in the airport), she sits down with a deck of cards in her hands. “Okay, are you ready for a tarot reading?”
Cards are placed. Complex symbols are interpreted. The herbal teas flow freely. I have no idea what any of it really means. Yet another foreign language.
I sigh, rub my forehead. “So, I’m on the verge of a breakthrough?”
“Something like that.”
~
In the evening, I trust the old bus route to take me to the karate dojo where Koun and I train with our Seattle sensei, Steve, whenever we’re in town. I am duly delivered to a recognizable neighborhood. In the studio, I find myself among a few familiar, but mostly new, faces. After a warm-up bout of randori sparring, Steve points out the obvious, “You haven’t been training enough, have you?”
“Jet lag,” I reply, but we both know he’s right.
Saturday, July 31
Bryan, Kathy, and I hike a mountain trail some hours from the city. Clear skies, warm sun, and just enough breeze to keep the bugs off as we wend our way up and around and through the ever-evolving terrain. At last, we traverse the final ridge and emerge at the peak. All that effort and then there is nothing to do but take in the sun and breeze and the brilliant blueness of sky and distant lake.
“It’s like standing on top of the world,” says Kathy, and it is, the illusion of it. Why is it, I wonder, that a certain landscape inspires us? Why one and not the other? Or why one in a certain way, and another in a different way entirely? I realize that I associate broad, natural vistas with the U.S. and cultivated close-ups with Japan, but that may not be an entirely fair assessment of the aesthetics of two complex nations—the cultures may in fact be in direct opposition to this view. What I do know is that the landscapes of both countries move me, and whenever I pay attention, the familiar becomes foreign; the foreign becomes familiar.
As Bryan and Kathy explore the mountaintop from every angle, I settle onto a broad, flat rock, pick up a stick, and etch and re-etch a phrase into soft dirt that the wind or a hiker’s boot will sweep away by the end of the day:
ichi-go
ichi-e
ichi-go
ichi-e
When it is nearly time to descend the mountain, I think I must look as pensive as I feel, and Bryan asks, “Is it weird to be back in the U.S.?”
“Yes, maybe. It always feels so unreal at first, this re-entry period. I’m an outsider in the place that I know to be my home. Of course, the feeling will pass soon enough. It always does eventually.”
“Do you feel this way in Japan, whenever you return?”
“Yes, but—it’s different. I expect it to be weird.”
“And the first time you arrived there?”
“I knew immediately that it would change me.”
How could I ever forget my first day in Japan after an ill-advised forty-eight-hour journey via a bargain airplane ticket, purchased for the selling price of my car, the only thing of value I owned? I stepped off the plane wearing a simple blue dress, wrinkled from travel and humidity. There were buttons along the front of the dress—this detail strangely clear. Feeling tired, drugged almost, and the surroundings assaulting the senses in such a way that I felt I had arrived in the idea of a country. I slept most of the way in Garrett’s car as he drove us to that old house in Takamori, me waking at brief intervals to a cacophony of complicated architecture and signage in an unknown language, to massive gray apartment buildings that seemed to echo each other, to a rise of mountains and greenery, to a village of rice paddies and ornate tile roofs, and finally to that old house nestled against a bamboo forest. And then, standing in the bedroom for the first time, noticing the squares repeating again and again and again throughout the angles of the interior—the large silk-edged squares of the tatami flooring, the dark wood slats crisscrossing the white putty walls, the smaller squares of paper shoji, the ceiling patterned, too, in square wood tiles. An angled mandala, this recursive architecture. There was just the roundness of the buttons coming undone beneath Garrett’s fingers, and of his head beneath my hands.