September 29, 2002:
This is from last weekend, I should note. I’ve been slow about writing it!
I woke up at around 8:30 and was promptly handed a towel and a new toothbrush should I have happened to not bring my own along. I was also informed that I could use Fumi’s “whitening cream” in the bathroom. My skin is generally so pale I hesitated to do anything to whiten it further but I’m always up for discovering the exotic beauty secrets of the Orient. It didn’t make me paler, thankfully, but was a very nice sort of moisturizer.
Breakfast was another meal that much surpassed any breakfast I’ve eaten at JCMU–heck, it just about surpassed any breakfast I’ve ever made for myself in my life. There was an assortment of little rolls, an egg served with some of the salad from yesterday, more fruit, little pieces of cheese and corn soup. At the very end she served us all ice cream. Surprised, I asked if ice cream was a breakfast food in Japan and was told no, it’s a dessert food here too, but today is a special ocassion! At this point I was feeling a little too special, a feeling that was going to reoccur about every fifteen minutes the whole day through.
The first museum we went to was called the Sagawa Art Museum. Apparently it’s part of the private collection of someone or another related to the Sagawa Express Company which, I think, does things like package shipping and translation and other communication-related activities, but don’t quote me on that. The building is very beautifully designed and looks rather like it’s floating on top of the water, and it features the works of two artists, the painter Ikuo Hirayama and the sculptor Churyo Sato. Ikuo Hirayama traveled the Silk Road, drawing the buildings and scenes he saw along the way on traditional Japanese paper using Japanese paints, and the effect is otherworldy and delicate, completely non-traditional subjects covered in a traditional manner. The building, at this point, struck me as being much less crowded than an American museum, and the Miho Museum later had the same sort of effect, where the building is part of the art experience, not something to be covered over lightly. Churyo Sato mostly did very sweet sculptures of women and children, and a lot of his sketches of his subjects and of natural details were on display as well. There was also a sculpture of an owl that he had done on display, which led to an odd cross-cultural moment: As Brian and my friends will know, because they tease me about this often, I say the word “owl” more like the name “al.” I don’t know whether this is just a weird thing or a manner of speaking I picked up in the South, but it differs greatly from the way they say it, which is “ahwal” with the W very definitely pronunced. So Fumi asked me how to say the word for “owl” in English and I replied “al” and quickly corrected it to “ahwal,” then explained that “al” was how I learned it in the South and “ahwal” was how it was supposed to be said. She understood, because here in Japan there are also accents that carry the full force of a Southern accent in America. For example, if I was to ask Bryce, who is sitting here next to me at the computers, for an example of Kansai-ben, the primary accent in this area, he would reply with a few choice vulgar samples, but there are acceptable ones; there are different ways of saying “Thank you,” for example, and “I don’t understand.” At the museum store, I picked up a bunch of postcards and a little trinket that the Kados bought for me, and looked at the museum literature, which contained a rule that I liked very much: “Prohibition in the building of any act disturbing appreciation of other visitors.” We hopped back into the car and headed to the next destination: Ishiyama-dera.
Now, one of the books that brought me here to Japan is the _Tale of Genji_, which is one of the oldest novels in the world, written by a lady called Murasaki Shikibu back in the Heian era (around 800-1100 AD), the Golden Age of Japan. It’s very, very long and fussy, and it circles around the near-perfect son of the Emperor and his adventures, most of which involve beautiful women. I’ve studied it extensively, and I love it. It’s one of the things that made me want to learn Japanese, as a matter of fact. Not because I really had a whole lot of interest in reading it in Japanese, though I’d like to now, but because I saw an untranslated, handwritten page from the first chapter. It looked for all the world like a page of scribbles, and it hid this amazing old story. I’ve never forgotten that. It’s rather a hard book to explain to people, because really Genji does nothing but impress people and seduce women, but it’s like a window into a period of time that was unlike any other time in history, at least for a selected group of aristocrats. Most people will think of samurai and tea ceremonies when they think of Japan, but this era predates all that and gets into a whole different set of traditions: exquisite forms of dress, poetry as communication, delicacy and artistry raised to a way of living. It’s really something to study, and make no mistake, Genji is what you study. Of course, we don’t know a whole lot about Murasaki Shikibu–that isn’t even her real name, because in that era it wasn’t polite to record a lady’s name–and it’s probable she wrote Genji in more than one location over a period of time. However, legend holds that she wrote most of Genji at this temple, Ishiyama-dera, in one particular room no less. During dinner last night, I had told Fumi and Moto that I was very interested in Japanese literature, especially the Tale of Genji, so they decided to take me here.
I’m not very familiar with Japanese religion, not familiar enough with it to talk knowledgably about it in any case, so this temple made a very marked departure from the only other Buddhist temple I’ve visited so far. Being that it was the home of the lady who wrote the most famous work of literature in all Japan, it’s become a tourist attraction, and it was pretty large to start with, so there was a lot to look at. The name means “stone mountain temple,” more or less, and it’s set by a mountain, with the main shrine at the base and more little interesting places as you go up the mountain. Fumi and I lit candles and set them in a rack with other candles, then quickly prayed at the main shrine. I would have liked to gawk a bit, but there were too many people around to stand in one place for too long. Just outside the shrine is a room that is THE room, the room where Murasaki Shikibu supposedly wrote Genji. You can’t go into it, of course, but it’s open and you can see into it. A mannequin dressed as a Heian lady was set inside, kneeling by a little desk with a scroll of paper on it. That was it–this was where it all started, back a thousand years ago, or at least about as close as anyone can get a thousand years later. I was overwhelmed, but not so overwhelmed that I couldn’t pose by the mannequin for a picture.
Up some stairs and down the road a ways was a little building where you could perform a tea ceremony, so Fumi and Moto and I all did so, and I inwardly thanked JCMU for setting up the tea ceremony learning experience a day earlier as I ate my sweet–another morsel of mochi filled with bean paste–and drank my tea properly. Once again I was overwhelmed as I realized that not only was I visiting the temple where Murasaki Shikibu wrote the _Tale of Genji_, but I was doing a real tea ceremony, in Japan, with a Japanese host family, at the temple where Murasaki Shikibu wrote the _Tale of Genji_ one thousand years ago. I felt like such a fangirl! Further up the mountain was a museum, fairly new as far as I could tell, where pictures, scrolls and screens all decorated with scenes from Genji were on display. Another couple of fangirl moments came and went, and I rejoined my host family, completely blissful.
It was around noon now, so we headed off to have lunch. We ended up at this odd complex where you could apparently stay in a hotel, get married and eat very well in several different restaurants all in the same period of time, all in the utmost elegance and beauty. I had dressed very well yesterday, but that day I was only dressed nicely, and I wished for a skirt as we passed through the halls. As we were waiting for an elevator Fumi brushed my hair out of my face, and I wondered exactly how many years it’s been since I let my own mom do that in a public place! We arrived at a little traditional Japanese restaurant, where everything was served in courses by a young lady wearing a pretty green kimono, and I struggled both with the chopsticks (I’m decent with them, but you try eating the inside of an eggplant half with them!) and the knowledge that this dinner probably cost more than I’ve spent on meals since I came to JCMU. It was incredibly delicious, though. The first course consisted of an odd bit of food that Fumi told me was similar to tofu but not quite the same. It seemed like how tofu skin would taste, if tofu had skin, and you mixed a bit of ginger in the dipping sauce and dipped a bit of your tofu skin in it. There was also a cold salad with vegetables I wasn’t familiar with. Between that course and the next one Fumi showed me how to pick up chopsticks gracefully. The chopsticks should be set to whatever hand you are, that is if you’re right handed the holding ends should be on your right side. Pick them up with your dominant hand from the top using your thumb and first two fingers, bring your other hand underneath them and hold them from the bottom on the eating end, and bring your dominant hand underneath, setting the chopsticks gracefully in your hand. We had, thankfully, also learned this at the temple yesterday, so I was able to do it reasonably well. Next came a dish of eggplant, and I’m usually not an eggplant fan, but this was really good eggplant, made even more tantalizing by how difficult it was to get in your mouth. To eat it properly, you scooped out the insides with the chopsticks. Then once the insides were scooped out, you cut a section of skin with the chopsticks, rolled it up with the chopsticks, and transported it to your mouth with the chopsticks. All this is easier said than done, and I’m afraid I looked quite clumsy. After this came a few perfectly fried pieces of tempura, which is, thank goodness, not hard to eat. Next came a course consisting of noodles and a little side dish of starchy things. I liked the potatoes and the pumpkin, which was carved into a lovely little leaf shape, but the noodles… I wasn’t sure if they were noodles carefully designed to look and taste like real seaweed, or little strips of seaweed passing for noodles, and either way I just couldn’t get them down, new-found affection for seaweed notwithstanding. Fumi told me she didn’t like them, which made me feel better about leaving them in the bowl. Finally came a course with perfectly cooked white rice and miso soup, as well as little pickled daikon and cucumbers on the side. It was all delicious and perfect, and probably extremely expensive. Around the beginning of the meal I started wondering if there was any way I could ever repay Fumi and Moto, and around the end of it I realized that there really wasn’t.
After lunch, we went deep into Shiga Prefecture, winding up on a road that Moto said was called “Snake Road,” which was an extremely descriptive name. More than once I wondered how we successfully passed some car or another, and I was grateful for the mirrors placed at turns that let you see oncoming cars. I thought of the anime Initial D, about people who race cars through mountain roads, and wondered if this particular area was ever featured as one of the racetracks. The area was wild and beautiful, going through a huge forest, eventually leading us to the Miho Museum.
This museum was designed by I.M. Pei, who some of you will know because he designed the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and some of you will know because he designed the glass pyramid outside of the Louvre. The literature notes that he wanted coming to the museum to be an experience in and of itself, like you’re passing from the mundane outside world into something more magical and rarefied, and that the museum should itself be a work of art. So you buy a ticket and then take a little buggy through a tunnel, over a bridge, and into the middle of a pristine forest that happens to be punctuated by an exquisite building. The contents of the museum were from the collection of Mrs. Mihoko Koyama, and there were many beautiful examples of Asian art and items, especially Japanese things such as bowls and wall hangings, as well as items from Greece and Rome. It seemed to me to be a sort of old-fashioned museum, focusing on the past despite its modern sort of construction, every item just as lovely and classical as it could possibly be. I tried to remember all the Japanese adjectives I knew, but I just ended up saying “sugoi” (very cool) and “kirei” to everything. “Kirei,” by the way, means “pretty” or “neat,” and I’ve developed a phobia about it because it is close to the word “kirai” which means “dislike.” Say “kirei desu” (kee-ray-ee des) and you are saying “it’s pretty,” but say “kirai desu” (kee-rah-ee des) and you’re saying “I don’t like it.” So I took every opportunity of saying “kirei desu” out loud, to make sure I didn’t keep confusing it with “kirai desu”!
At the museum cafeteria we had a delicious sort of lemonade made with a fruit that was unfamiliar with me, something like a sweet lime. I love sweet fruit drinks to the point that Brian will tease me and call me a hummingbird, so I know what I’m talking about when I saw this was just about the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. We talked, as well as we could, about religion in America and Japan. I told them that in America a lot of politicans sort of affect or flaunt religious feeling, and if, for example, President Bush was to say he had no religion there would be a big fuss made about it. They didn’t know if Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister of Japan, was religious or not.
Next stop was Shigaraki. By this point we were way out in the middle of nowhere, and in the middle of this particular nowhere was a large set of shops, all selling ceramic things. Now, here you could buy very nice little plates and cups and whatnot, but that wasn’t the real attraction of all these stores. No, they were all selling little tanuki statues. Now, I’ve gone on at length about how beautiful this snippet of Japan is or how tasteful that one is, and may have possibly left the impression that it is all tea ceremonies and and walks along the edge of Lake Biwa. This makes the tanuki statues all the more surprising, because they are easily the tackiest things I’ve ever seen in my life, in Japan or in America, and, having lived and visited all over the place, I have seen a great deal of tackiness in my short time. Tanuki are real creatures, something like our raccoons but not the same, but the folk-tale ceramic representations of tanuki are only found outside of stores, as they are believed to bring good luck to the owners. They look like big furry lumps with little stubby ears, large, rather stupidly crossed eyes, a big goofy grin and bigger cheeks. They’re always wearing a large straw hat tied beneath their chin, they’re always fat, and they’re usually carrying something, darned if I know what it is. And–I hesitate to mention this, considering all my grandparents and my future in-laws are reading this journal–they are always portrayed with enormous testicles which, according to folklore, have magical powers. I wasn’t at all tempted to buy one, I’m afraid, but Moto got a lot of pictures of me in the midst of all those tanuki.
At this point, it was about five or six and we were all exhausted, so it was, naturally, time to meet the typhoons. Now, I neglected to write about the pictures on the first day, but on the first day I was here I saw a lot of beautiful pictures from the weddings of the two daughters, pictures of the daughters in kimono, pictures of the newborn grandchild and finally, pictures of the most adorable young boys dressed in blue traditional outfits. They looked so solemn and charming, but Fumi told me that when they visit, it’s like a typhoon is coming through, and the rest of the visit, when the grandsons were doing something particularly destructive, she would smile at me and say “Typhoon…” We picked up the older daughter, Kaori, and the two grandsons, Masanori and Takenori (Ma-kun and Take-chan), at the bus station and transported them back home.
At first they hid from me. Fumi translated it as “hazukashii” (embarassment) at meeting a stranger, especially one who knew English, which they were learning in school. But they were, true to the epithet Fumi gave them, very high-spirited and before long they were gleefully trashing the living room. Imagine this: a very nice leather couch with two little sections to make it into a sort of rounded L shape, covered with little fuzzy cushions and delicate pillows, and within five minutes the sections were separated, the cushions strewn on the floor and a fort made out of the pillows. All weekend I had worried about messing things up, and I felt a little better at seeing this wanton destruction. Take-chan had a little catapillar in a plastic box, and they showed that off to me while we compared English and Japanese words for various bugs–stag beetles, dragonflies, butterflies. A deck of cards came out and Moto, Kaori, the grandsons and I played some very simple card games for a bit. After that, we played a game that I’ve actually seen before, 100 Poems for 100 Poets, but we played a rather abbreviated version of it. I think in the real game you have to match the poem to the writer, but in this game we tried to collect as many cards as we could. You drew a card from the top of one of five piles, and all discarded cards went in the middle of those piles. If you got a “prince,” or a regular guy card, you kept it, if you got a “monk,” a balding guy, you put all your cards in the middle of the pile, and if you got a “princess,” a court lady, you took all of the cards from the middle of the pile. Winner ends up with the most cards, of course. This was fun, because everyone would get so excited about drawing a “hime-sama!” (princess) and get so upset with those poor monks. I worked on reading the poems and the names of the various poets, and was glad to recognize a few of my favorites–Murasaki Shikibu, Sei Shonagon, Izumi Shikibu. After the novelty of this game wore off, Ma-kun and Take-chan ran around getting a little more destructive (they found that, if you threw a rubber ball at a spinning umbrella, hilarity ensues) so, trying to make myself useful, I asked them to teach me a Japanese game. This brought out another little set of cards, where you tried to match up a set of pictures, and after that was finished it was dinner time.
Having become very nearly a child myself, I enjoyed watching real Japanese children at work eating dinner. What does their mom scold them for? (Nearly everything, it turns out, but it never seemed to have any real effect.) What do they do when they drop something with their chopsticks? (Unfazed, they get on the floor, pick it up with their hands, and pop it right in their mouths. I decided not to emulate their example.) How do they eat things? (Quickly.) For dinner, we had the most yummy stew sort of deal. Everything comes to the table in a big pot, and you get a little broth, a few noodles, and then you use your chopsticks to pick whatever goodies you want out of the pot–a little mochi, some mushrooms, some vegetables, some more mochi. It was apparently a favorite with the grandsons, and of course it was delicious. For dessert, Kaori had brought dango, more sweet mochi filled with bean paste.
After dinner, Kaori and I talked for a bit, as well as we could. She was 30, but she looked very young, and she worked designing lingerie and enjoyed the musical Cats. The grandsons were continuing their destruction, and I realized something. Anyone who saw these kids would call them very thoroughly spoiled rotten, in the nicest possible way. It was clear they were used to getting whatever they wanted from their grandparents and their mom and dad and they weren’t really big on feeling thankful, but that it was due to them. They were there, and they were lovable, and that was all anybody needed from them. Now, since the previous day I, too, had been spoiled rotten, and by the end of our trip I had come to the conclusion that the only way I could possibly pay back Moto and Fumi was with the gift of my first-born child. But watching Ma-kun and Take-chan, I realized that people in our positions–the positions of children and guest, respectively, though with me the line blurs–aren’t necessarily expected to ever be able to pay back someone. There’s simply no way we could make up for the good treatment we receive, and this creates the biggest sort of obligation for us. Everybody has this obligation–it’s just how the system works. Ma-kun and Take-chan will forever owe their parents and grandparents for the constant spoiling and care, and I’ll be sending letters and Christmas gifts to Moto and Fumi for a good long time. I can’t quite explain it, but I felt better knowing that this was how things stood. Needless to say, there are a few books I’m going to be reading a little more closely once I get back home, seeing if I can explain this feeling a little better.
After this came that glorious bath, and since I was exhausted I excused myself right after the bath and went straight to bed. The night before, I had written a little summary of what I had done on a spare piece of paper, but this time I was too tired to do even that! Luckily, I had picked up various pamphlets from every place we visited, so I could remember all of our trip.
Liana | one comment
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