Dressed to Kill

Bordeaux in southwestern France is home to a small but elegant bridal salon called Mary Mariées, a shop that despite research, yields little information for those of us ill-equipped to read French. The most I could squeeze from a ‘translate this page’ website snippet is that the store’s customers are brides-to-be. Ms Mariées features wedding gowns by designers well-known for bridal fashion, but apparently, carries nothing at all for men, leaving the groom to find his own simpler attire. But then, it is surely the bride who is most excited by shopping for a wedding dress and choosing the bridesmaid ensemble.

I can only imagine that a Japanese tourist wandering around Bordeaux one summer day happened upon the Mariées Salon and was intoxicated by the notion of transplanting the idea to Japan and offering wedding fashions and ball gowns to ladies for whom marriage and fancy dress is an unfulfilled dream. Nothing odd about a plan to open a rental clothing shop, but as it happens, the business expanded in another direction. Within months word got out and the store was inundated with requests from men dreaming of a secret debut. And thus was a new market discovered, one for men—men with a secret desire to wear beautiful drag.

For a low price under $600, Mary Mariee (no connection to the French salon) in central Japan offers men the chance to dress up and be photographed in a ball gown. The price package includes a haircut, shampoo and close shave before moving on to make-up and hair, or wig selection. After a choice of favorite gowns and a two-hour session for hair and make-up, the "man" moves to a studio where a professional photographer does an extensive shoot showing off the "new woman" in a panoply of gowns. Princess for a day. 

Among the many dresses offered to women customers are racks of 100 gowns exclusively for men. Choices include a selection of sumptuous white wedding dresses, as well as traditional kimonos with a seamstress on hand to alter clothing for a male figure. The store manager explained, “Enquiries from men were so overwhelming we concluded that men too yearn for that princess feeling.” Naturally, the store’s services are offered without any judgment of men who choose to wear a dress and heels on occasion. The manager added, “We provide the opportunity for people to enjoy showing their real selves, whether they are men or women.” In line with that philosophy, Mary Mariee has extended its services to cover fashion shoots for women who dream of being dressed and photographed in men’s clothing.

Should the reader with delicate sensitivities be shocked and open-mouthed at this phenomenon, rest assured that it is unlikely to turn heads among average modern Japanese people, who probably buy lettuce from a vending machine, pay to have "cute" crooked caps put on their teeth, frequent coffee shops where waitresses wear the costumes of animation characters, and where the Takarazuka all-female theatre troupe is wildly popular and where strawberry and whipped cream sandwiches for lunch are ordinary fare.

Lettuce from vending machines in combination with the Mary Mariee fancy dress salon puts me in mind of New York drag entertainer, Hedda Lettuce, but who’s to know if the salon has any wigs and dresses in verdant green, trademark of the queen of green.

An Extraordinary Life

DONALD RICHIE

APRIL 17, 1924 — FEBRUARY 19, 2013 

‘Winter 1947… Tokyo lies deep under a bank of clouds which move slowly out to sea as the sun climbs higher. Between the moving clouds are sections of the city: the raw gray of whole burned blocks with the yellow of new cut wood and the shining tile of recent roofs, the reds and browns of sections unburned, the dusty green of barely damaged parks, and the shallow blue of ornamental lakes. In the middle is the palace, moated and rectangular, gray outlined with green, the city stretching to the horizons all around it.

The smoke of early household hearths, of newly renovated factories, of the waiting, charcoal burning taxis, rises and with it the freshness of late winter, the bitter yellow smoke of burning cedar shavings, the smell of breakfast: barley, sweet potato, roasted chestnuts. In the houses the bedding is folded into closets and tatami mats are swept.

18 April 2004… I wander into the future—Roppongi Hills, an enormous complex of high-rise buildings, including a mighty tower near where I used to live. This is the new Japan—gargantuan, expensive, and wasteful. There are, to be sure, concessions to tradition (trad but mod) in the transplantations of zelkova and gingko trees, all of them expensively mature, and in such touches of the Japanesque as a pocket garden here and a teahouse there. But Keyakizaka Street is lined with Louis Vuitton, Hermès, Gucci, Bulgari, and other high-priced merchants. These are matched by the kind of restaurants now called cutting-edge, which are far too expensive to eat in. People who work in the tower complain that they have to leave the Hills and walk far away to find a place to have an affordable lunch.’                                  — Donald Richie, The Japan Journals 1947-2004

During almost thirty years in Japan one of the greatest influences on my understanding of the country and its people came from another American who devoted more than a half-century to living in and writing about the country. Beginning on January 1, 1947 and continuing over the next sixty-six years, Donald Ritchie’s voice and eye penetrated every aspect of the Japanese experience. From the homeless and destitute to the honored and privileged elite, Mr Ritchie’s observations and insights penetrated everything from art to film and literature, on down to back alley porno shops and ten dollar prostitutes. As much as conversation with the celebrated Kurosawa Akira and Mishima Yukio, he was just as happy to sit on a park bench and talk with someone living in a cardboard box who never rose above the drudgery of manual labor.   

Donald Richie was born in Lima, Ohio in 1924. After graduating from high school he traveled to New Orleans where he was working at the time of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. He was spared the Army by entering an officer training program with the US Maritime Service where he served as an ensign-purser and medical officer during the war years. In 1946 he found work with the US Civil Service and on January 1, 1947 arrived in Japan. For the twenty-two year-old neophyte it was love at first sight.

Except for the years spent at Columbia University from 1949-53, and another four years in New York as Curator of Film at the New York Museum of Modern Art from 1969 to 1972, Richie spent the remainder of his life in Japan. His writing on Japan includes books, articles and stories too numerous to count. There would be little exaggeration in calling Mr Richie Japan’s single greatest cultural bridge to the west.

In his 1971 landmark book, The Inland Sea, the writer observes early in his travels…

‘A journey is always something of a flight. You go to reach, but you also go to escape. I am going to see the islands and all that they seem to promise, but, at the same time, I am going to escape the mainland and all that I already know it contains. I find less fault with Japan than with the century that is destroying this country along with all the others. Now, to escape is no sentimental gesture, it is survival.’

Standouts among the more than forty books by Donald Richie

Three Donald Richie Books

Jumping the Reverend’s Bones

After long years of living in a land far away, my anticipated return to America two years ago was troubled by fear of cultural adjustments I knew were waiting on the horizon. I worried that America would turn out to be a society nearly foreign to my sensitivities. The fears all came to life once my feet were back on native soil. For months I thought the plane had set me down in the wrong place, dropped me in a land completely out of sync with what I remembered. Stranger in a strange land, a fish out of water, a square peg in a round hole, a hopeless misfit.

No surprise that time has softened the hard edges, and while occasional aspects of life here continue to baffle me, I’ve discovered my place and no longer thrash about out of water, ill-fitted to those around me. 

Had the great good fortune last week to stumble upon a book that left me dazzled by its story of a middle-aged man suddenly uprooted from everything he knows and thrust suddenly into what seems to him at first a Martian landscape full of odd creatures. The book is Buddhaland Brooklyn by Richard C. Morais, published last month by Scribner.

Seido Oda is a thirty-nine year-old Buddhist priest who has lived and worked most of his life in a remote mountain temple in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. Entering the temple as an acolyte at the age of eleven, he has known no other life, apart from a brief flirtation with the outside world during his time at college in Tokyo. Even within the temple precincts Seido manages to live in a world all his own, a world of books, painting and poetry, insulated within the idyllic setting of his leafy private quarters. There are events in the priest’s early life that have shaped his ways and made him something of a thorn in the side of his superiors, and it is this prickly concern that prompts the Head Priest to send this cloistered soul to Brooklyn, New York with the task of overseeing the building and foundation of a Buddhist temple there.

Met, hugged and welcomed at JFK by what Reverend Oda imagines is a ‘militant American lesbian’ he finds himself bundled into a car and lurching onto the highway…‘She drove like she had just robbed a bank.’ Meeting an important member of the American Buddhist community a day later he is confronted with a startling sight. ‘The woman’s hair, and even the tinge of her skin, resembled the color of overripe oranges. She was short and plump, with numerous gold rings snaking around her fingers. She wore a tent-shaped dress of black and gold material that was light and diaphanous, so the overall impression I had was of someone wearing an expensive shower curtain…Mrs Symes insisted I call her Harriet.’ But Harriet is just the beginning. The baffled priest soon meets another of the American believers, one who has been guiding the weekly study group using The Reader’s Digest Encyclopedia of Religion and Buddhism for Dummies.

The culture-lagged priest is further beleaguered by a female member who lusts after him, another who keeps a picture of Jesus on her Buddhist altar and one other devout believer who spends much of his time in a mental home. But amidst these oddities of life and work in Brooklyn, Reverend Oda begins to catch glimpses of something that is more human than anything he has known before, realizing as well that he is beginning to learn more about his own faith, opening doors and windows into long shuttered corners of his heart.

One reviewer of Buddhaland Brooklyn complained that Morais occasional goes overboard with purple prose, one particular criticism this reader is far from understanding. For a moment I thought I might have misunderstood the term (overly elaborate; ornate), but a moment later decided the critic had simply applied an erroneous label to what most others would call exquisite prose. The novel is full of poetry, art, a few basics of Buddhism and never faltering in its accuracy. Too often a writer chooses as his setting an unfamiliar place, an exotic culture and then proceeds to describe it all based upon poor research, ending with characters speaking odd phrases in settings imbued with the resonance of postcard photography. In this sense, Morais has provided an exemplary model of accuracy.

Buddhaland Brooklyn is indisputably a feel-good fairy tale skillfully leavened with color, personality and laughter, but one including as well a wee dose of sad endings. Definitely a contender on my 2012 list of favorite books. First discovered in the library, after the first fifty pages I stopped reading long enough to order my own copy of the book, along with the writer’s earlier book, The Hundred-Foot Journey.

Community Spirit

Following Tuesday’s review of The Last Samurai I had second thoughts about a portion of that post. I began to wonder if some of my comments about younger generation Japanese might have been untimely in light of Friday’s earthquake, its terrible aftermath and the reaction of the Japanese people to the horror, the fear and the loss. In thinking about the Tom Cruise movie and the themes its story turns on, it was a natural step that I view at least one of those themes against the differences apparent in historical versus contemporary social conditions. In that light I suggested that many of the younger Japanese today lead selfish lives uncaring of others outside their immediate circle. Yes, that is perhaps oftentimes the case, but in the same breath I look at photos and video of the Japanese people struggling through the devastation that has become their world. What do so many of those images of the people show?

They show a people badly beaten but resilient, patient, humble and mindful of helping others. They reveal people with everything taken away, lost, and uncertain but still with what you can only call quiet courage. Who of us here in the US has looked at these images without at some point remembering similar devastation in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Did the people of New Orleans face their hardship in ways that we can favorably compare to Sendai and Tokyo? For the most part I think not. I lived for many years among Japanese people and to my understanding one thing is certain—In times like these the rarest sight is selfish or unlawful behavior. The thought of stealing food or water, of taking from others or doing anything that obstructs is unimaginable for the average Japanese.

Consider one man’s experience… ‘Spurred on by my wife, I run to a convenience store nearby and find nearly empty rows of shelves and just ten bottles of water left. I am amazed that the owner is still selling the bottles at the regular price—$1 each—because I know I would pay twice as much. I briefly think about grabbing all 10 bottles, but decide to buy just five, because I know others will need them…I grew up in this country, but I am still amazed at the people’s patience and civility. But I also know how they can remain so civil. They trust that food will come somehow. They trust the government and know their share will come. They have faith.’

Gregory Pflugfelder, Director of the Donald Keene Center of Japanese Culture at Columbia University happened to be in Tokyo on the day of the earthquake. In a piece for CNN he wrote: ‘The layer of human turmoil—looting and scuffles for food or services—that often comes in the wake of disaster seems noticeably absent in Japan. “Looting simply does not take place in Japan. I’m not even sure if there’s a word for it that is as clear in its implications as when we hear ‘looting.’ Japanese have “a sense of being first and foremost responsible to the community.”

There are times when we all should wish for similar community spirit.

Discovering a Way of Life

Perhaps because Japan is so much in the news these days, or maybe because I have a Japanese visitor, last night I pulled out a movie we had both seen previously, both liked very much and wanted to watch again. The movie is The Last Samurai made in 2003 and starring Tom Cruise. As is usual with the movies of superstar Cruise, this one too got lots of publicity. It was nominated for and won a dozen or more awards and a look at box office reports on IMBd indicate that it must have made money after recouping its 140 million price tag. It was extremely popular in Japan, where I first saw it. There is a great deal of good work in The Last Samurai, and though I did not read any of the reviews that followed its opening, my opinion of the movie is high.

For the most part, aspects of the Japanese story and its production are well done and give a good sense of the authentic. Certainly things were dirtier and not always so ‘pretty’ in nineteenth century Japan, but when has Hollywood with a hundred and forty million to spend ever made anything visually unappealing? More to the point, the story is not bad at all despite a few holes, and the producers did well with the language and especially Tom Cruise’s use of Japanese. But for me it is the values that make up the story I found so appealing. Apart from it’s purpose of entertaining, of being a movie that offers grand escape with handsome actors and beautiful exotic Japanese beauties, apart from all the drifting cherry blossoms and mist shrouded mountains, there is a solid story at the movie’s heart.

The time is 1876. Captain Nathan Algren (Cruise) of the US Army is haunted by nightmares of massacring Indian women and children under orders from General Custer and another of his superior officers. No longer an officer in the field, Algren has become a drunk willing to do almost any kind of work to buy the next bottle of whiskey. He reluctantly accepts an offer to train new conscripts to Japan’s Imperial Army and prepare them for battle against a rebelling samurai (Ken Watanabe). Things don’t happen as expected, and in a strange and alien country Algren discovers the balm to soothe his nightmares and soften the self disgust over past actions. Forced into battle before his raw troops are prepared, the Imperial forces are badly defeated by Katsumoto, the rebelling samurai leader. Algren is captured by Katsumoto and taken to live in the enemy’s mountain village. Here he discovers a way of life that he had never imagined and over the course of months with his Japanese captors Algren finds an ethic and a man he is willing to give his life for.

When Japan entered what they call the Meiji Period of their history (1868-1912) leaders of that time were eager to push Japan into the modern world and to import ideas as well as goods from western countries. The Last Samurai is a very exciting story about the new ideas of Meiji pushing against the older ideas and values of Japan. At the heart of the story is the concept of bushido. Dictionaries as well as many Japanese will tell you that bushido means “the way of the warrior,” but what does that say to the modern westerner? What exactly is this “way” of the warrior? In it shortest definition it means that people who live by the code of bushido believe that a simple unadorned life of honor is best. The old texts teach that fear of death does not deter one from the pathway of loyalty and unselfish honor. Defeat without death in battle, or daily life without honor are both shameful.

The question comes to mind, does this time honored bushido still exist in Japanese society of the twenty-first century? Can we see the same qualities of honor, unselfishness and simplicity in the daily life of Japanese today? Unfortunately there is another word sometimes heard in connection with the younger generation of Japan. The word is “me-ism,” meaning living and doing only for ‘me’ with little or no consideration of others. It is a self-centered way of living and thinking seen in many societies today. Modern problems in Japanese society include a lack of interest in moral values. The old bushido values we see in The Last Samurai taught children to use manners always, to always think of other community members. Many might say that those older qualities are hard to find in societies everywhere now, that the same ‘living for myself’ idea knows few borders.

The Last Samurai was directed by Edward Zwick, has a lush score by Hans Zimmer, beautiful costumes, dazzling battle scenes and wonderful performances by Ken Watanabe, Hiroyuki Sanada, the gorgeous Koyuki, and yes, Tom Cruise.

The last words of Captain Algren in the movie are spoken to the Meiji Emperor. Asking about his teacher and lifelong retainer Katsumoto, the young Emperor says, “Tell me how he died.” Algren replies, “I will tell you how he lived.” A beautiful answer that sums it all up.

All Shook Up

Seeing the headlines on Friday morning, making my way in a dazed state through the CNN reports and filmed disaster of a devastating earthquake in Japan, concern for friends and all affected people was an immediate concern. Pictures and reports were horrible, but the worst of those were from northeastern Japan, a good distance from Tokyo. The city looked badly rattled but without the catastrophic collapse and inundation of Sendai 300 miles north and near the quake’s epicenter. Continuing to read the incoming reports it was hard to stop the thought of what if…? One year ago today I was preparing to leave Japan. With departure imminent, the house was more than usual in a muddle of sifting, sorting and unsecured piles of everything from furniture to knickknackery. What if an earthquake of 8.9 magnitude had hit Japan at 2:46 p.m. on March 11, 2010—what would I have seen?

With classes still in session ongoing tremors trigger an alarm recognizable by all as a signal to evacuate the buildings and move away to a pre-determined distance and location. Because of the severity and continuance of the tremors—only 5.0 in Tokyo, three hours south of the epicenter—students and staff are instructed to return home either by bicycle or on foot without returning to the school buildings. All trains have been automatically stopped so those without bicycles—about fifty percent—have no choice but to walk home, be it near or far. Most students have cell phones but service is down and they are like everyone else, unable to contact family and friends for the present. For me the walk home is eighty minutes, much of it through areas free of traffic and buildings. Everywhere people are out on streets and sidewalks, even strangers are talking, commiserating, offering help or whatever is needed. It is a time when all come together without the smallest thought of discrimination or reserve.

In Kugayama, approaching my apartment building I find five or six of the residents out front and I stop to talk with them, to ask for news or about conditions inside the building. Much of the dramatic description and rolling eyes I put off as exaggeration and head up the stairs to my third floor apartment. The greatest worry is an eighteen gallon aquarium, the horrible thought of it knocked down and smashed with a flood of water and tropical fish. Opening the door and looking in is an anxious moment, but the indoor scene shows less collapse than expected. The fish are fine, but there in the middle of the kitchen floor lay the shards of several irreplaceable old Japanese dishes and bowls. The top of the paulownia chest of drawers is a jumble of collapsed figures and trifles, two CD cases have tipped over spilling their cargo into a hash of plastic and glossy covers. A mirror has fallen to leave shards of bad luck on the living room carpet and a reading lamp leans awkwardly over a reading chair, saved from a crash by the cushioned arm. I take a few deep breaths, relieved that it’s not as bad as my imagination had painted. But I have no electricity and no water, no telephone and no Internet. For the time being talk with neighbors will have to serve to keep me posted on conditions in a shaken but intact city. Easily the worst earthquake in my experience but in Tokyo at least we’ve been spared.

News reports have mentioned more than once that Friday’s earthquake in Japan was the worst in a hundred years. Some truth to that but many are forgetting that at noon on September 1, 1923 the Tokyo area was rocked by a cataclysmic earthquake that killed over 100,000 people in the city alone, with 570,000 homes destroyed and 1.9 million left homeless. The Great Kantô Earthquake of 1923 hit with a force of 7.9 but conditions made it a disaster of biblical proportions. At that time all homes as well as many of the city’s buildings were constructed of wood, an extremely fragile structural base. The quake hit at an hour when many were preparing lunch over open fires. The spread of fire was an immediate threat and to add a big measure of ill fortune, a typhoon was blowing from the north fanning the flames into a firestorm which trapped many in melting tarmac, burning them where they stood. 38,000 died in a huge clothing depot when the fire induced something called a fire tornado. But in looking back at that disaster we can see that preventive measures were nonexistent, buildings and planning much different from the architecture and infrastructure of Tokyo in March of 2011.

Modern Tokyo is a city designed with earthquakes uppermost in the mind of civic engineers and architects. An earthquake with the power of Friday’s temblor is certainly not anything that Tokyo or any other large city can ignore, but the chances of loss in both life and property on the scale of 1923 are unlikely today. While it may be true that twenty-four hours after an 8.9 earthquake 300 miles distant, four million homes in Tokyo remain without power and while trains sit unmoving and people are still finding their way home, there is great relief in the small number of human casualties today in Japan’s capital.

Journals

Last night I finished a book by a writer who could be called, or classified ‘foreigner in Japan.’ The book was Tokyo Central and the writer Edward Seidensticker. It is a memoir in great part, of the years spent in Tokyo and is a good book for one interested in such experiences. What I found surprising was that in the book’s entirety, not once did Mr Seidensticker write of his longtime friend and fellow expatriate, Donald Ritchie, with whom he shared experiences over many years of living near each other in Tokyo’s downtown Bunkyo-ku. To this day Donald Richie continues to live in Tokyo, there since 1947, and in the same apartment for over fifty years. The interesting thing about Richie is that while his friend and fellow American translated an impressive list of Japanese novels and stories, Richie, though certainly fluent in the spoken language, still now does not read or write Japanese. But do not misunderstand; his knowledge and understanding of the country is exemplified by the more than forty books he has written about Japan.

Probably because of the conspicuous absence of Richie’s name in the just read Seidensticker book, I pulled off the shelves one of my favorites of the Richie oeuvre, The Japan Journals: 1947-2004. In many ways Richie’s telling of his experience in Tokyo is much more colorful and human. There is too often the impression with Seidensticker that he is overly careful in concealing that he may once or twice have gotten down and dirty. As far as memoir goes, there’s little earthiness to his well written paean of days and nights in Tokyo. Richie gives us the grime on the bar counter, the prostitute’s sad tale, all rich in the multifaceted textures of life in the world’s largest and at times oddest city.

One of my favorite passages from the Richie journals is from late summer 1947, from his earliest days in Tokyo and long before his settled longterm residency:

‘Wandering in the city after work, smelling camellia hair oil, dusty long unaired kimono, the passing night soil wagon with its patient ox, listening to the incomprehensible murmur of conversation around me, looking into eyes suddenly averted, I try to make sense of what I see.

In a way it already makes sense—Tokyo in ruins still reveals something known from Chicago, New York and during the war, Naples, Marseilles: the look of a big city just anywhere. In another way, however, I begin to apprehend alternatives to things as I already know them…

Another country, I am discovering, is another self. I am regarded as different, and so I become different—two people at once. I am a native of Ohio who really knew only the streets of little Lima, and I am also a foreigner who is coming to know the streets of Tokyo, largest city in the world. Consequently I can compare them, and since comparison is creation, I am able to learn about both.’

For those interested in a more diverse example of Donald Richie’s writing, it is hard to go wrong with the delightful 2001 book, The Donald Richie Reader.

Rabbits on My Mind

An old journal reminds me that January 1 of the past year was a morning of cold but fine weather in Tokyo. One year later a similar description could be applied to Florida, maybe a little warmer but another dazzling New Year’s Day.

To all those who have been faithful readers and friends—including those sometime readers as well, I thank you for the support and wish you a year’s allotment of contentment and realized dreams.

Here are two new year cards, past and present wishing all a Happy New Year. The card at the top is 2011, the year of the rabbit. Just below HAPPY NEW YEAR at the top of the card are qualities associated in myth and symbolism with rabbits.

The card at the bottom is another rabbit, this one from some years back, and includes a short poem. The three lines in the center are from top to bottom, right to left:

Fuyu zare ya

usagi no wataru

yamakage ni

The English is something like: In winter’s chill, the rabbit hops across a mountain cove

Studying Japanese calligraphy, scratching down inadequate haiku poems and sitting with an old grandmother who struggled with her student’s attempts at ink painting. Such were the days in 1987.

The Cat’s Meow

A common sight in Japan is the coffee shop. Unlike the shared and almost predictable commonality of coffee shops in many American cities, those in Japan come in a funhouse of types and themes. If you’re looking for a simple cup of coffee the choices are myriad and if you’re in a Starbucks mood walk twenty yards and look around—you’ll probably see two of them. Want to be waited on by a young girl in a French maid’s costume? Easy to find. How about boys in French maid’s costumes pouring tea and coffee? Yep, that too. Coffee shops in Tokyo come in all guises.

One increasingly popular type of coffee shop is the cat café. There are anywhere from fifty to sixty coffee shops in Tokyo catering to cat lovers, cozy shops where you can sip your coffee with a cat on your lap. The Calico Café in Shinjuku has about twenty cats in a wide variety of breeds.

What kind of customer goes to these cafés? First thought is probably of odd old ladies who live alone and moderate lonely afternoons petting and nuzzling cats. But in fact, the cat cafés attract all kinds of people. You’ll find singles, couples in their 20s and 30s, and lots of people who simply like cats and for one reason or another can’t keep one at home.

In most of the cat cafés, walking in, finding a table and ordering a cup of coffee is not the way it’s done. Rates vary, but the average is $9.00 or $10.00 for an hour of cat company, with coffee extra. There are also rules and picking up just any nearby cat may not be the thing. At the Calico Cat Café there are six rules: (1) Customers must wear a ‘cat-access’ pass around their neck. (2) Cats wearing a scarf are too young to be handled or picked up. (3) Customers must not force themselves on any cat that resists. (4) Napping cats must not be disturbed. (5) No catnip or cat treats allowed, and (6) children under eleven are not allowed in the café.

I probably know at least ten Japanese people who would consider relaxing in a comfy chair, sipping a cup of cappuccino, flipping through a comic book while scratching the ears of a purring cat the ultimate in relaxation. On the other hand, I probably know a good many who view the whole thing as just a little screwy. Think I might be more comfortable if there were just one cat instead of several, and him or her dozing on the sill of a sun-splashed window across the room.

Note on the bottom photo: A cat I used to have, a red point Siamese dozing on the veranda. Her name was Husselbud.

Vending Machines Japanese Style

Most visitors to Japan are not long out of Narita Airport before discovering that among other eye-popping sights greatly visible armies of vending machines stand in squad-like clusters on every other corner. Plain and simple, the Japanese adore vending machines. No question that companies like Georgia (Coca Cola), Kirin and Glico have over the years created a market that is hugely served by a near epidemic of vending machines from one end of Japan to the other, across cities and countryside. When the 100 yen coin was first put into circulation in 1967, vending machine sales skyrocketed overnight. They have been a part of daily Japanese life for so long that it wouldn’t surprise me to hear of Japanese visitors to the US suffering withdrawal symptoms. It may not be an exaggeration to say that many Japanese children learn how to operate a vending machine before learning to tie their shoelaces.

Back when I was still new to Japan, maybe a week or two after my arrival, my first time of using one of several vending machines near where I lived turned out to be a memorable experience. When I dropped a 100 yen coin in the slot, the machine—half the size of a Buick—lit up like a pinball machine and belted out, “WELCOME AND THANK YOU FOR CHOOSING DAIDO!” The enormous thing practically shimmied and I had to walk around to the back to see if a woman was hiding there with a megaphone. There was also in my old neighborhood one vending machine that sold nothing but comic books.

Ice cream, cold drinks, beer, cigarettes and other staples are only the tip of the iceberg in the land that gave us karaoke. Machine contents are often decided in relation to location. Near schools there are more juice, tea and milk products; in front of liquor stores you’ll find machines with alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and soft drinks. Wander into Kabukicho, a Tokyo center of nightlife and you are more likely to find machines selling items of a more adult nature, such as neatly packaged worn, but unwashed panties. Over the years there I saw a range of goods including eggs, oranges, fried food, live lobsters, pornography, sexual lubricants and pot plants.

Whatever they are selling, vending machines in the big cities of Japan are state of the art hi-tech behemoths. For example, to prevent minors from buying cigarettes and alcohol, many machines are now engineered to read ‘proof of age’ cards before dispensing the product. Cell phones can be charged with ‘money’ to allow use with vending machines by swiping the phone across a sensor. An article from CNN today reports installation in some cities of solar powered vending machines operable 24 hours a day.

And the new item for sale in these machines now? Would you believe lettuce?

Last, and by no means least, there were 5.6 million vending machines in Japan in 2008, or one machine for every twenty-three people. You never have to walk far to buy a Coke, a beer, a pair of boxer shorts, or a pair of…

Starbucks Days

During these Baton Rouge days over the past two weeks Starbucks has been an almost regular stop on my travels around town and country. Not really a signal that the ubiquitous green, black and white logo is a special sort of magnet pulling me daily toward its caffeinated charms, but more a mark of dependance on the available WI-FI Internet connection. In spite of living most of the time surrounded by and embracing the tools and objects of time past, the vintage fountain pens, old spoons and dishes, the preference for books instead of Kindle or iPad, in spite of these and other ‘old-timey’ interests, I have to admit my addiction to being wired up for a little time each day. To get that online fix during these days of vacation at 1051, the nearby Starbucks has provided a solution to connection problems in the house.

Figured if I was going to write something about sitting around Starbucks I could at least find an interesting factoid or two about the company. It was founded in 1971 by three fellows in Seattle, an English teacher, a history teacher and a writer. No one involved is named Starbuck, and the name comes from a character in Moby Dick. The first mate on Captain Ahab’s ship, the Pequod is named Starbuck. The number could be a few more or less, but you will find Starbucks in about fifty-five countries worldwide. The first branch outside North America opened in Tokyo in 1996. By the end of March 2010 there were 877 stores in Japan. If you're planning a trip to Tokyo, guaranteed you will find the Starbucks urge easily satisfied. In more than one part of the city there are even Starbucks on opposite corners of an intersection. One of the best, at least in warmer months, is the larger of three stores in western Tokyo’s Kichijôji area, the one located at the back of Tokyu Department Store with it’s wide and spacious deck opposite The Gap. Comfortable spot to pass an hour or two on a spring afternoon. The photo here was taken at night and doesn’t really do justice to the terrace atmosphere. The Japanese are no different from many in other countries who frequent Starbucks, and hang out there with their laptops and schoolbooks, or a group of friends. They love their coffee just as we do, and I would bet that business is booming there.

These past days have given me a chance to 'eavesdrop’ on conversations and attitudes in a not-very-Cajun Starbucks located at the Towne Centre mall in the Goodwood area of Baton Rouge. It’s an upscale kind of place, and the people flowing in and out are well-dressed and well-spoken. One man I’ve noticed on several occasions always has a thick book from the more difficult shelves; yesterday was The Decameron by Boccaccio. Three girls from LSU like to study here, but you have wonder how much of that gets done between the cell phone texting and the peals of laughter. Business meetings are happening at every other table, and Bluetooth phone calls from every direction make you wonder if you’ve stumbled into a rest stop for schizophrenics. Is it just me or is it hard to get used to people sitting in a chair talking and gesturing to an invisible presence? A note about the Starbucks employees here and elsewhere—No question there are exceptions, but my experiences have always been good whether in Louisiana, Florida or Japan, the service friendly and efficient. Just don’t ask me about the low fat pumpkin brulee holiday frappaccino. I’m a straight coffee kind of guy.

Can’t Shake it Loose

Despite great strides made over the past six months toward acclimating to a different, and in part less familiar culture, there are things I miss almost daily about Tokyo, my city of twenty-eight years. A look at the calendar tells me that 184 days have passed since arriving in this little Florida town on the beach. Half a year, quite a lump of days, but even still, few days pass when I don’t say to myself, ‘Wish I could run out to Tower and pick up a Monkey Majik CD.’ Or maybe, ‘Sure would like to have some ebi tendon at Futaba.’ ‘Maybe I’ll go to Maruzen tomorrow and check out the new Sailor ink.’

I wrote to a friend in Tokyo yesterday asking if she would mind sending something I badly need and can’t find here. Leaving Tokyo in late April, I packed six of the notebooks long used for both journal and first drafts of writing projects. Guess it’s because of more free time here, but now all but the last pages of the last Life Noble Note notebook are filled.

Been unable to find in my area here, a café or coffee shop where I can pass an hour or so doing a John Lennon—watching the wheels go round, scribbling in my journal and occasionally blotting errant drops of iced coffee from the pages. I miss the sunbright third floor of Doutor Café in Kugayama…miss that late afternoon coffee hour.

Think too about the numbers of young Japanese boys and girls I so often passed among, those of the green hair and pierced lips, the boys in skirts, the girls in hot pink hightop Keds. The hooked-up youth nose down in cell phones, plugged into iPods, draped in chains and dragging bushel-sized tote bags. The college kids on trains locked into comic books, wearing boots big and heavy enough to cross the Amazon jungle. I miss them all.

Shimizu-san was for years my regular supermarket checkout cashier at Peacock near the Kugayama apartment. She sent a New Year’s card each January first, and never a Valentine’s Day passed that she didn’t give me a box of chocolates. Now I think of her as I stroll the aisles of my beachtown Publix, remembering a faithful friend and wondering about the cost of soy milk at Peacock these days.

I had my hair cut last Friday, and not a bad job either, but it will take a lot to erase from my wants a few more haircuts from Hikaru at Minato 3710. Hardly a time that I look at my hair in the mirror and don’t miss the skill and caring service given by my Japanese barber. I wonder often enough what color Hikaru’s hair is this month. He pretty much switched colors once a month, from black to yellow, and then to orange and maybe the next month the ever popular favorite tea-brown chapatsu.

These Florida days continue to be crowded with thoughts of the daily, weekly sights and sounds that soothed and jangled my long passage through Tokyo and the whole Japan experience.