The Eye of the Camera

We all have memories of special places. For one it’s a particular spot in the old hometown, and for another it may be the jungles of Borneo or a high school trip to New York. The recollections of places we’ve spent a part of our lives, be it long or short, are not mere static images frozen in the imagination but something often enriched by the passage of years. This happens especially when memories of a place are pleasant and characterized by a happy time of life. Over time the memories become romanticized and take on an aura of specialness that becomes almost holy. At least that’s always how it’s been with me.

Businessmen stop for a bowl of noodles on the way home.

Anyone who has spent some time flipping through the pages of Scriblets will know that once upon a time I lived in the faraway land of Japan. Seeing as how I spent more than a year and a day there, my memories of it are about as tactile as thought can be. But a funny thing happened. It wasn’t long before those aspects of life in Japan that had once bothered me—the packed trains, the crowds and constant dodging of oncoming bicycles, the bureaucracy—all these gradually turned sweet in memory and now I’m thinking, “God, how I miss the loud and constant chatter of five housewives over coffee!” All of it has been embellished and set fondly and romantically aglow by the yearning for a place in memory.

Early morning bicycle

The photographs of Masashi Wakui bring to life the city in my mind. Though they catalog actual places, Wakui’s photographs give Tokyo a surreal, cinematic quality. Photographed at night, mostly among the backstreets and alleyways of Shibuya and Shinjuku, in their neon richness the photos are almost kaleidoscopic in their portrayal of the city. Wakui’s photographs have been called, “big-budget anime come to life.” It is the result of processing his photographs to give them the tinged look of oversaturated colors seen in Japanese anime—it is what some have begun calling the Masashi Wakui Look. Unlike other cities, light illuminates Tokyo at night to give it a dreamlike dystopian atmosphere and it is through this nocturnal city that Wakui’s camera eye wanders.

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Despite the many, many visitors to his Flicker and Tumblr pages and the popularity of his work, information about the photographer is hard to find. He is a self-taught photographer who wanders the streets at night with high-performance compact cameras (Sony RX100 and Ricoh GR) in search of nighttime cityscapes. Perhaps it’s that he prefers to let his cameras do the talking and so remains in the background. Certainly a humble touch that his Tumblr account includes the brief phrase, 本当に馬鹿でした。(“It’s just foolishness really.”) In fact, Wakui’s photographs are anything but and are marveled over by more than a few amateurs and professionals. You can find his work at http://masa-photo.tumblr.com and https://www.flickr.com/photos/megane_wakui/

Have a look. It’s a safe bet to say you will be fascinated by this man’s view of Tokyo.

Alleyway Bar

Shibuya Crossing, one of the most heavily trafficked crossings in the world

Rainy night in the neon jungle

The romance of dimly lit narrow streets colored by neon, streetlights and shadow.

Early morning under the wires

Soul Joint

Stuck on a Bench

Tokyo is a vast city incorporating an ever-changing mix of districts and neighborhoods, places differing in style and color and constantly offering up small architectural gems that chart the city’s growth. One of Tokyo’s most handsomely refurbished areas is the commercial district of Marunouchi, located in Chiyoda Ward between Tokyo Station and the Imperial Palace. The name translates as “inside the circle” and comes from its location within the outer moat of the palace. Marunouchi is a major center of Japan’s financial industry with three of the country’s largest banks headquartered there. In recent years the area has become a magnet to tourists because of its tree lined streets and imposing architecture, as well as its world class shopping. You will find museums, department stores, multi-floored bookstores, historical buildings, elegant boutiques, theatres and of course the incomparable Tokyo Station.

To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the opening of the Marunouchi Shopping center, in cooperation with Chiyoda Ward, the Marunouchi Executive Committee presented a street side exhibition of Bench Art for five weeks in September and October of this year. The exhibition was of twenty sculptures either seated on or standing near specially made benches. The figures included famous characters, personalities, athletic heroes and historical figures and also names connected to the area of Marunouchi.

Looking at the sculptures (statues) the first thought is that none of them are very well executed in terms of modeling or delicacy. Some might even suspect that the artist didn’t understand his medium. Still it’s important to realize that because of its scope the project could never be envisioned as a collection of fine art. The artists are unnamed and it would surprise no one to learn that none are well-known names. But the concept is both valid and interesting.

Four of the sculptures (and I imagine the benches as well) are being auctioned for charity with the starting bid of $500.00. The four selected for auctioning are: Albert Einstein, Tatsuno Kingo, Tokugawa Ieyasu and Saigo Takamori. The last two are not included in the photos below.

Not sure why the sculptor chose to accent his portrait of Albert Einstein with the famous tongue-out pose, but it comes across as odd in this case. My guess is the idea was to make identification more immediate, since most are familiar with the 1951 Albert Sasse birthday photo of the famous physicist.

Not well-known outside of Japan, Tatsuno Kingo was an architect who made major contributions to the area during the Meiji period. He is remembered for his 1914 design of Tokyo Station. He also set up the Japanese architecture course at Kôbu University, which later became the Tokyo University Engineering Department, laying the foundations of modern Japanese architecture.

The Masked Rider is a Japanese superhero with the abilities of a grasshopper. The character first appeared in a manga-based television series, where the hero, an ordinary man is transformed on his high performance bike to battle various monsters. The role was first played by Hiroshi Fujioka.

Icon of silent film, Englishman Charles Chaplin was not only an actor, but director, writer, composer and producer of films.

Ryoma Sakamoto was a loyalist involved in the plot to overthrow Japan’s ruling Tokugawa Shogunate in the years between 1853 and 1867. He played a pivotal role in bringing about the 1867 Meiji Restoration.

Ryo Ishikawa, a professional golfer who became youngest money-title winner and the youngest overall winner on the Japan’s professional tour. His shy smile and good looks have attracted legions of fans.

Japanese professional baseball player Hideki “Godzilla” Matsui who in 2009 led the New York Yankees to a World Series win, receiving the series MVP award.

Shun Oguri is a Tokyo-born actor and director well-known for his numerous film and television appearances. He made his directorial debut as the youngest director in Japan with the film Surely Someday in which he also appeared.

Lost Along the Way

Once more thoughts today have drifted east, curling backward through maze-like tracks of memory to faces and experiences of almost thirty years ago. No idea what it is that brings Junichi Mori to mind, but suddenly there he is, tall, gawky and ink-stained, writing in elegant swirls of jet black sumi-ink the old proverb or tidbit of poetry that was our assignment.

Soon after arriving in Tokyo all those years ago, I began looking around for someone to teach me Japanese brushwriting, shodô—in English, ‘the way of the brush.’ It was one of the first enchantments in my fascination with Japan and once settled there the hope was to jump right under the wing of a teacher. The practice of writing with brush and ink has always been taught in Japanese schools and teachers are about as rare as acorns under an oak tree, with every neighborhood boasting one, two, sometimes three teachers. I found Mrs Motohashi down at the end of my street, showed up at her door one day and sputtered out in broken bits of Japanese my desire to learn brushwriting. She told me to come back on Saturday morning at 10:00.

And there I was, sitting painfully on my heels, back straight before a low table laid out with felt pad, white rice paper, paperweight, a well of ink and a fat horsehair brush. To my left sat a college boy, and I noticed right off that he had the hands of a pianist, well-shaped and strong, not too big. It would have been obvious to anyone that the Chinese characters gliding off the end of his brush were hardly the work of a dilettante.

His name was Junichi, he lived a few houses down, was in his junior year at university studying English literature and had been a student of Mrs Motohashi since old enough to hold a brush. We became good friends and soon I was spending an hour or more at his home several times a week, his mother stuffing me with cakes and cookies, the occasional lunch or dinner and endless questions about America. Junichi’s family was the second to take me into their lives and show me the depth and breadth of Japanese kindness and heart. Conversation with Junichi—half English, half Japanese—was always easy, but curiously enough he never asked questions about English, about his reading assignments, and in the same vein, I never asked him to reinforce Mrs Motohashi’s teaching or to correct my faltering brush.

In another year he graduated from university and completely unrelated to his study, accepted a job in one of the big department stores. I soon learned that Junichi’s path was not at all uncommon among university graduates, that very few indeed ended up in a job related to university study. But he seemed happy, continued to live at home and continued to visit Mrs Motohashi once a week for calligraphy lessons.

A year passed and though Junichi was still shy of the average age when Japanese men marry, his parents began to get ideas of ‘arranging’ something. The traditional arranged marriages once common in Japan still have small presence in modern times, though it is becoming more rare, especially in the big cities.

It worked out badly for Junichi. Through both sets of parents arrangements were made for Junichi to marry the daughter of a Buddhist priest, for him to be adopted into the bride’s family with the assurance that Junichi would one day take over as the head priest at the temple in Kyoto. Yeah, I know…from English literature to a department store and then to a Buddhist temple on a mountainside in Kyoto. I attended the wedding, and I offered my best wishes to bride and groom, and to both families (my Japanese somewhat better at this point). But then for reasons I was not party to, it all came apart after several months of marriage. From the little I heard, things did not work out as the bride’s father expected.

These days, many years after the broken marriage Junichi is an English teacher in a public junior high school in Tokyo. We lost touch after the marriage failed and he returned to Tokyo from Kyoto. It was almost twenty-three years later that I got a phone call from his mother. She gave me Junichi’s number, I called, we talked but then never did manage to meet again. Feels like I lost a friend.

Big City Flavors

Friday was a town day, beach and surf fading in my rearview mirror not long after ten o’clock, car’s nose pointed west toward the Toyota dealer fifty miles distant. Time for another of those maintenance checks. Sometimes I wonder if there’s anyone more helpful, courteous and efficient than the people at Toyota.

So, I was late getting home and after looking through the empty refrigerator for dinner material and then flopping in a chair with Bacardi and Coke to watch the fading light and darkening ocean, it eventually came to me that I hadn’t given any thought to writing some niblets for Scriblets. Pondering on that while the level in my glass slipped lower and lower, I remembered a recent book with page after page of dazzling photography. Tuttle Publishing put out in 2010 a new collaboration by Donald Richie and photographer Ben Simmons called Tokyo Megacity. It’s another of those large ‘coffee table’ type books that present all the good, beautiful, lyrical, modern, traditional and attractive things about Tokyo, megalopolis supreme. Below are a few favorite photos from that book.

Spring visitors stroll the hillside azalea gardens during a fine mid-April afternoon at Nezu Shrine.

His venerable old family speciality shop offers senbei crackers in Sendagi.

A young woman waits an arriving Fukutoshin Line subway in the Chichusen.

The modern fashion accessory, the cellphone, handy for coordinating a schedule and keeping in touch with friends.

A sarariman (office worker) passes through an old alleyway in Shimbashi.

Masterpiece tattoos revealed during the heat of the Sanja Festival.

The Yurikamome Elevated Railway glides past behind a fluttering Japanese flag.

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.

Tales of the Train

When you live in a city of 13 million people, and when half that number ride the train and subways each and every day, strange sights become commonplace. Not to say that such sights become any less strange, but rather not so rare. Tokyoites are in most cases unfazed by things they see on trains, and pay them little mind. In a sense, one has to tune out his surroundings to a certain degree, or gawking and cringing would become almost a full time activity. How many odd or nasty sights can we look at before they fail to hold any interest?

But then there are some like me who don’t give up too easily and happily fasten a surreptitious eye on spectacles from planet weird. Truth be told, I never lost my fascination for the weird, the wacky, the shameful or disgusting which is often a common feature on Tokyo trains. Let me share a few favorites.

MEMORABLE SIGHT NO. 1

Returning home late one night, I found myself seated not far from what appeared to be two businessmen, both sprawled on the floor near a door. Both were drunk, one passed out, shoes pulled off and tossed aside. The other was casually rummaging through the pockets and wallet of his friend, though he wasn’t taking anything. When the train reached the next station, he laid aside the wallet, reached over and gently nudged the other man’s shoes out the door and into the space between door and platform. I got off at the next stop wondering if the unfortunate man would ever figure out what had become of his shoes.

MEMORABLE SIGHT NO. 2

Found myself one afternoon opposite a still young grandmother having a hard time with her three rambunctious grandchildren, all between five and eight years old. The youngest boy took a large wad of bubble gum out of his mouth and threw it onto the floor of the train. Grandmother gasped, scolded the boy, then bent and picked the glistening lump off the floor. From her handbag she took a tissue and wrapped the gum in that before tossing it back on the floor.

MEMORABLE SIGHT NO. 3

The Japanese of all people are shy of confrontation. The average person will do his or her best to avoid situations where the usual hum or flow of public life is threatened. Most will resolutely ignore things that would provoke a response from many Americans or Europeans. Anyone spending time in Tokyo and on its trains and subways will eventually find someone, man, woman or child falling asleep on their shoulder. In my experience most Japanese will sit patiently—though uncomfortably—as a total stranger sleeps snuggled into their shoulder. And yes, there are the creeps who seek out a pretty female shoulder to sleep on. Poor girl, I sat across from a nasty example one day, this one an honest case of innocently falling asleep. A man had gradually sunk against the girl next to him, and while she nervously waited for him to wake up or shift to the right, out of her line of vision the man drooled a puddle onto the beautiful blue-violet of her mohair sweater.

MEMORABLE SIGHT NO. 4

(Warning! This last is not a pretty picture.)

Around Christmas and the New Year holiday season most people attend frequent parties. Restaurants and bars are usually packed, as are the trains. It is more common during this time of year to see drunk people on the trains and station platforms. The Japanese are very tolerant of people who have had a bit too much to drink, and don’t make quick judgments regarding the behavior of such people. On a Shibuya bound train during the bônen-kai (year end party) season I stood within splatter-range of a nasty accident. At Meidaimae Station, the stop nearest Meiji University, three college boys boarded the train, all of them barely able to stand, so drunk were they. They grabbed hold of overhead grips or bars to steady themselves. All three stood over and pressed against three seated people. The doors closed, the train lurched forward and in a sudden calamity one of the three boys threw up a stomach full of beer and noodles, all of it spewing directly down onto the head of the man seated in front of the boys. It was a scene from an engraving by William Hogarth. The inflicted man sat frozen with his mouth a perfect O, drips of vomit, chunks of corn and pork running down his face, while on his head hung a perfect wig of long white noodles. The young woman seated next to him poked at the bits that clung to her sweater. Before anyone could recover from the shock, the train reached its next stop, the doors opened and the three boys stumbled, tumbled off the train.

Big Cities have their wrinkles.

TOP PHOTO: One interesting aspect of this photo is the man on the right sitting almost under the dark pink sign on the window stating that it is a train car reserved for women only. Not really unusual, since many men ignore such notices, which are meant to alleviate the risk of ladies being groped on crowded rush hour trains.

MIDDLE PHOTO: Notice the total disregard of the drunk man by surrounding passengers.

BOTTOM PHOTO: “Coughing on the Platform”

Modeled on the painting of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, this beautifully done 1979 ‘manners’ poster about smoking hours is titled “HÔMU DE CONCON” and is a play on the French cancan dancers. Concon is a coughing sound in Japanese, and ‘hômu de’ means ‘on the platform.’ The words at the bottom left state the hours smoking is NOT allowed on train platforms: morning from 7:00 to 9:30, and evening from 5:00 to 7:00.

As of a few years back smoking is not allowed at ANY time on train platforms or in stations, apart from the rare smoking corner at some stations.

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.

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.

Missing Doutor

Forgot where I was today, and for a moment was on my way to a coffee shop no longer within reach. A month ago it had been my habit for a long time to spend an hour or so each day in a cozy shop not far from home in Kugayama, Tokyo. A favorite table up and away from the tobacco smoke, an almost attic, full of sunlight, green plants and quiet space, where I sipped coffee, read or worked on first or later drafts, where I felt sort of cloistered and at peace. I forgot for just a second this afternoon and told myself I was going for coffee and to look over a new book at Doutor in front of Kugayama Station.

I don’t mind Starbucks, and was even in one today, but it isn’t really a first choice. A different kind of place attracts me, one with a little less decor and less inflated prices. My regular for a long time was Doutor Coffee. There are probably more Doutor shops in Tokyo than Starbucks, and that’s saying something, because Starbucks has a huge presence in most sizable cities of Japan. Tea is the traditional drink, but Japanese also like their coffee, and there’s no shortage of places to get it.

The absence of a local coffee shop is something I’m now learning to live with. Oh, sure, I could drive up the street and have coffee in a diner, or chain bakery, but merely a place that serves coffee is not the point. I want a place that offers a quiet corner with good light and the invitation to sit for awhile over coffee, book or conversation. I want a place where I know before going in that coffee and sandwiches are good, and the staff friendly, but unobtrusive. Basically, I want a regular place not far from home that offers the all-around comfort I enjoyed at Doutor.

Times are, when working away from home, away from the iMac and the books at hand, that the work gets a boost and the pages come fast. Nothing in, or at hand but pen and paper and the flow unencumbered. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to achieve that in Starbucks. What I have to do now is hunt down that un-Starbucks type of small coffee shop, hidden somewhere along a sandy backstreet, or maybe over the five and dime.

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A curious news flash from London…

A British woman has suddenly started speaking with a Chinese accent after suffering a severe migraine. Sarah Colwill believes she has FOREIGN ACCENT SYNDROME, which has caused her distinctive West Country drawl to be replaced with a Chinese twang, even though she has never set foot in China. The 35 year-old from Plymouth, southwest England is now undergoing speech therapy following an acute form of migraine last month that left her with a form of brain damage. There are thought to be only a couple of dozen sufferers of foreign accent syndrome around the world.

First Time

16 Days…

About two years before arriving in Japan with the intention of staying, I came with the thought of staying for only a short time, but lingered from July through December of 1980. The visit was intended to determine whether or not I would be comfortable here for an extended stay. It all worked out very well, and I came close to staying on even beyond six months.

I had been studying Japanese for two years, and in the course of that had become good friends with a Japanese woman in Los Angeles, there for a year studying business. She was returning to Tokyo soon and encouraged me to go for a visit, even offering a place to stay. So, I coordinated some time away from work and study and set off for my first look at the place I had been dreaming of seeing beyond the pages of books.

I got to Tokyo in late afternoon and I can still remember the vibrant, geometrical green of rice paddies I viewed from the bus driving in from Narita, at that time only in operation two years. Most of those rice paddies are gone now, with construction and outward expansion erasing the incomparable green of rice fields in summer.

The green passed and I caught my first sight of Tokyo, a collage of concrete, neon, power lines and cars and trucks beyond counting. The people seen from above seemed as numerous and as busy as a stirred ant nest. Hot and humid, the climate was visible in the rolled up trousers and wilted tank top undershirts of bicycle delivery men, and the sagging ties of businessmen. My enthusiasm at these first-time heat steamed sights of Tokyo made me feel like L’il Abner on his first trip out of Dogpatch.

My friend met me at the bus terminal, knowing I would never find my way alone to her apartment one hour away. Not a big place, it was still comfortable for three people, and though not in the center of town, getting about was easy. At that time the stations did not have signs in English, but the simple kana characters were easy enough by then for me to read. In spite of my language study, speaking was hard and understanding even more so. My first thought was that no one spoke like the conversations in my Japanese textbook.

Those first few days in Tokyo I walked about the city awed by a neon dazzle that colored the faces of crowds, a concrete vastness of tall buildings and throbbing sound, little that matched the romantic descriptions in books and imagination. Instead, Tokyo was a sweeping deluge, a three-car crash on the senses. The city in motion was almost a disturbing sensation. New York quiet by comparison, Tokyo ground its teeth, shrieked and groaned, hissed and whispered in breaths sweet and foul. Overhead electric-colored signs flickered and buzzed; underfoot, a constant grumble and churning under the streets. The city whispered with a tactile rumble of life, and I reveled in the intoxication of it, standing on street corners basking in the merciless glow of fantastic urban blight.

In the weeks to come I learned to like sushi and pickled plums, but to hate nattô, the gooey but popular fermented soy beans. I lost myself in shops, stores and museums, walked for mile after mile, watched sumô and baseball, and attended festivals, performances and ceremonies. I bought the just-released Walkman and became a fan of singer, Sada Masashi.

My friend and her entire family treated me like one of the family, and introduced me to the Japanese countryside. Surely my introduction to the living Japan would have been far paler without each of them, and especially Kumiko. To this day she is one of my dearest friends and I thank her for the years of support.

In early January, 1981, just after the New Year holidays I left Japan and returned to Los Angeles, to work and to more Japanese study. It would be nineteen months until my return to Japan.

Hot-Pot Party

Taking another turn away from talk about pens, ink and paper today. This is a big party season in Japan, though not particularly related to Christmas. Year end is traditionally a time for parties in Japan, a time to laugh about, moan about and cheer about the events that did or didn’t transpire over the course of the year. No doubt there is some moaning in particular corners, but for the most part it is a time when friends and co-workers loosen belts, let down the hair and go all out to have an evening of good food, good fun and lots of beer. It’s an evening for toasts and short mock ‘speeches’ reviewing what was good about the year drawing to a close. Without exception everyone has a good time and goes home either leaning on a friend’s shoulder, or wobbling to the train station. On one point the Japanese are very serious, and that is about driving after one of these parties. No one drives to year end parties, but depend upon trains to get them safely there and back. Something you have to admire about the Japanese, their determination to stay out of the driver’s seat when having even a single glass of beer.

Tonight was the night for a group of my co-workers to get together in Shinjuku for a Chinese hot-pot evening. Not the first time we had chosen this particular restaurant, but our second, following a memorable evening of food and drink there last year. Everyone everywhere is no doubt familiar with Chinese cooking, but there are varieties, and the speciality at The Copper Bowl (a facile translation) is spicy hot meat & vegetable soups, cooked at the table. Servers bring large tureens of seasoned broth to the table, along with platters of beef, pork and shrimp and vegetables, while everyone at the table lends a hand to do the ‘cooking’ as the waiter or waitress ferries more platters and more drinks to the table. Pretty much an ongoing feast for two hours. Usually I am not a big fan of Chinese food, but I make happy exception for the food at The Copper Bowl. Both times at this restaurant, by the end of the party I was able to get up from the table without feeling stuffed and overfed, but completely satisfied with delicious food. To be honest, I’m not sure I can say the same about my intake of beer and grapefruit sours. But wisely, like most others I too wobbled to the train and not the car.

Toward the end of the party, several people offered comments on the year passed, our work together, and the satisfaction that almost everything worked out as we’d planned and hoped. Always good to share with friends the feelings of work done to satisfaction.

As a note of interest to readers unfamiliar with Tokyo prices, there were twelve people in our party, all eating and drinking as much as they desired for two and a half hours, and the bill at end of the evening was $875.00.