Our Year in Tokyo
Tokyo is where I read "The Pillow Book", "The Tale of Genji" (the Shining Prince of ancient Japanese legend written in the 10th century), and "The Dream of the Red Chamber", an early Chinese novel, and where I felt the alluring mystique of the east enfold me in its gentle clasp. Camellias bloom in fall, azaleas in spring, and ornamental kale is planted alongside winter sidewalks. Jungle crows cawed atop the water tower and their black weight as they hopped on the metal rooftop of our house sheltered in its compound sounded like a grown man up on the roof. Feral cats slink along alleyways, and their kittens slip into gutter gratings before you can even begin to think of catching them. They feed on the refuse left weekly in a communal-gathering spot for garbage collection..
Initially, we lived at The Pegasus Apartments close to Aoyama dori. At night we joined throngs of pedestrians on tranquil autumn evenings. Bicycles, motorbikes, motorcycles are entrusted unlocked, to parking areas. We would occasionally ride our own bicycles on the wide boulevards along with so many others. In the streets, ancient bonsai sit on sidewalks adjacent cramped homes where there is no place for them. Their owners know their treasures are safe on public display. No one in Tokyo would ever dream of disturbing anything belonging to someone else. Similarly, beautifully decorated large pots sit out beside homes, and golden carp, befitting the size of the pot, swim lazily around and around their confines. At night the many 'downtown' areas scintillate in neon blaze. Strolling broad boulevards we pass impressive hotels, the Imperial palaces and upscale shops. Deeper into the city, constricted streets force vehicles to proceed with caution. Most residents live in crammed concrete apartment blocks. Futons hang out the windows of each tiny apartment contained within soaring buildings day creating an appearance of doilly-festooned facades. Firefighters garbed in white moon-man uniforms hand-pull wheeled gear into these unnamed, numbered streets. At intersections stand cobans, box-like structures manned by police, area maps on the walls. If in doubt, enquire. The police make it their business to know of everyone in their precincts; they conduct introductory enquiries at your door if you've just moved into a neighbourhood. Not in a threatening manner; polite and thorough in their questioning. Then they depart, never to be seen again. Oddly this leaves you secure in the knowledge that they are there to serve you and all the other residents nearby.
Traffic is heavy but accidents few, car horns rarely used. The Japanese harbour a mild horror of drawing attention to oneself. To speak loudly in public, to sound one's horn simply is not acceptable. When drivers stop for red lights, they shut the ignition, a holdover of the last war, when energy conservation was of utmost importance. . Most cars are a variant of cream or white. Black cars are driven by the Yakuza. Japanese taxi drivers are uniformed in cap and white gloves, wielding feather dusters to flick dirt from their vehicles. Should a few centimeters of snow fall in winter panic ensues, chains are fitted to tires, then removed shortly afterward, as the newfallen snow quickly melts in the generally benign winter atmosphere..
Buildings under construction or renovation are completely enclosed in scaffolding; engulfed in huge white tarps. Construction workers wear white coveralls, soft helmets and white felt boots resembling camels’ feet. Roadwork takes place at night, the restored surface opened to morning traffic. There is thus, no interruption of the ebb and flow of regular traffic throughout the day; other than for the fact that with upwards of fourteen million people within the city during the working week, it is inevitable that a huge number of vehicles will be upon the streets at any given time. So traffic, although it flows, does so slowly, and since the Japanese are not particularly good drivers, this is just as well, keeping traffic accidents to a minimum. Polite, restrained and reserved generally within society, many Japanese drivers become transformed behind the wheel of a car, and practise a sly and stealthy one-upsmanship of speedily overtaking and illegally passing at any opportunity on crowded roads.
Tokyoites are, however, polite and reserved otherwise how could such a huge population living in such a tiny geographic area conceivably get on in the amicable fashion that they do? The standard response, answering the telephone is "mushi-mushi?" No one can explain what it means. There is a collective quiet in the city, despite its size and habitation. The exception to the general hush is a melodic chime heard throughout the city at five o’clock. This is my signal to walk to a little corner store for the Maiinichi shinbun, a daily English/Japanese newspaper. There are street vendors hawking roasted yams. Impulsively, Japanese engage westerners in public discourse, happily grasping the opportunity to practice English.
Tokyo summers are unrelentingly hot and humid. Leaving air conditioned interiors, one recoils upon reaching the street as though slapped with a scalding, wet towel. Every block or so throughout the city large automatic dispensers vend hot tea, coffee or cold sport drinks. Tokyo is located in an earthquake-prone zone. And we experienced many shudders of the earth during our stay in that city. Most of them when we were indoors, but several when we were out of doors. It isn't a thrilling experience; the movement of the earth, and therefore everything that surrounds you seems to go on forever. Until it finally stops and you can safely exhale. In the front clothes cupboard of our house there was an earthquake backpack with necessities which we would grab in the event of a needed evacuation should an earthquake erupt of massive proportions. How would we know? I often thought, since we would most often sit there, sucking back our expectant breath, until the shuddering passed.
Daily food shopping prevails. One visits the fruit- and vegetable-monger, the rice shop, teashop, fishmonger, florist, hardware merchant. Shop fronts open to the street, are shuttered at night. Since leaving Japan I’ve never tasted fruit so sweet, vegetables or fish as fresh. The bustling, expansive markets near Ueno Park offer food and clothing in bazaar-like abundance. Our favourite week-end jaunt for shopping was Ueno, and there we would walk among the multitudes, marvel at the spectacle of food, particularly seafood, set out on banks of open stalls. Before we got our car, we would haul shopping bagsful of fresh produce back with us to the Pegasus Apartments. Fact is, the mass transit system in Tokyo is unparalleled for efficiency. My husband had no trouble figuring out the subway system, but when I wasn't with him I trusted myself only to the buses, or shank's mare. I did one hell of a lot of walking, terrifically far distances, and loved every step of the way, for I'd never be certain what I'd come across; each turn was an adventure. Speaking of turning. I figured out that if I always turned right, for example, then on the return trip turned left consistently I would invariably find myself back where I had begun. I didn't get lost too often, but when I did, I would use my very rudimentary Japanese to ask directions. Anyone I thus approached for directions would kind of panic, not recognize my attempts at language, but finally it would sink it and the person to whom I spoke would guide me gently on my way. Once, a young woman insisted on walking with me the entire way back to where I had started, obviously feeling a tremendous responsibility for this poor lost westerner.
Tokyo boasts singular districts of shops devoted to cookware, footwear, meats, fish, books, electronics, and motorcycles. Tokyo’s neighbourhoods resemble an assemblage of multitudinous villages. There are kissaten (coffeehouses) and soba (noodle soup) cafes; temples and shrines, parks and botanical gardens with ponds full of giant gold, silver, and orange carp. There was one of these temple/shrine/botanical gardens close to where we lived, and occasionally we would enter the gardens, walk among the artfully placed ornamental shrubs and trees, peer into the large pond with its huge gold, silver, orange carp, and admire the display of venerable bonsai set out on shelves in the garden. This place in particular was a favoured site for weddings and it was easy to understand why that would be.
In Yokohama we visited a doll museum. Close by we entered an antique shop and there I bought my very own Gosho Ningyo, a fat-faced, ornately dressed doll astride a hobbyhorse. Bordering the Pacific Ocean, Kamakura is a city of temples, one devoted to the Great Daibutsu, a towering bronze Buddha. Another temple is dedicated to a Buddha accredited as the protector of lost babies. Tiny replications of Jesu are placed around the temple grounds, many of them dressed in scanty little fabric garments. People leave babies’ playthings and clothing sitting before many of these little buddha-replications in poignant remembrance of babies lost in infancy, even fetuses lost in miscarriages.
We joined an international travel group; mostly Japanese, some foreigners (Germans, Australians, Brits) and traveled week-ends by bus to tea plantations, traditional Ryokan (inns) and once to Hamamatsu, where the kite festival takes place, rural communities vying against one another, manipulating giant kites, lines arrayed with knives. The winners, whose kite survives airborne, exult in their martial skills. With that same group we traveled the coast to Okuyama, staying overnight at a Zen Buddhist temple nestled in the hills and forests outside the village. There, bathers scrub themselves seated on little stools before entering the steaming communal bath. One sheds slippers for wooden clogs to enter the communal bathroom, balancing over floor-level toilets. Both the baths and the bathrooms are separated for the genders. We slept on futons in a tiny tatami-matted room and rose at five to participate in the morning service. I thought my legs would never recover from assuming the Lotus position. In the sprawling Temple buildings, one adjoining another, I discovered echoes of Umberto Ecco’s Name of the Rose. Following breakfast of miso soup, rice, raw egg and chai, we wandered the Temple grounds and heard, from an embankment towering above us a divine chorus of men’s devotional voices. As we followed a narrow dirt road down toward the village two tonsured monks in flowing robes passed in a Mercedes Benz, nodding at us as they sped on. These were two of the same monks who had offered special prayers for loved ones for a modest fee the evening before, at the temple.
We joined Friends of the Earth and took a series of subway trains, buses and railway trains, passing outlying communities, finally reaching trailheads where our group of twelve would ascend mountains to explore landscapes infinitely dissimilar to any we’d trekked before. We climbed mountain trails from the trailheads just outside small villages which seemed lost in time. During our hikes we came across giant trees said to be a thousand years old, near the top of one mountain. At another, we came across a temple near a summit, and beside the temple two huge sandals hung, in memory of a Buddhist monk who had trekked across Japan, and in whose memory thousands of Japanese take upon themselves similar yearly treks, from temple to dedicated temple. We hiked through bamboo forests, the odd green trunks thick with age, and stone lanterns standing under the trees along the trails, gave the entire scene a truly otherwordly atmosphere. During one hike we took part in a tea ceremony, a grave and beautiful affair.
To again stroll Omotesando on a Sunday, or Shibuya, or Giain Higashi dori; to promenade along the Ginza, or through Ueno Park under cherry blossoms; to see the Temple of the 47 Ronin where the earth shuddered underfoot, or the Asakusa Kanon Temple by the Sumeida River where the Floating World of the Geisha once flourished, is to dream.
posted by Pieface @ Monday, October 17, 2005
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