Japan.
“Japan”. Linger on the word a moment. Let it rise and fall like a wave inside your brain. Feel it. “Japan”.
Japan at last.
The day we left it was raining. Very lightly. Mist, imperceptible, the gray sky bending and blending with the sidewalks and streets and lapping against the old, exhausted bicycles still chained beneath the overpass.
Again a train rumbled above me with a sound like thunder.
Would I want to live here? I’ve been asking myself this question since I arrived (there was no resisting it) and I am surprised by the answer:
I don’t think so.
This trip was incredible, an amazing first experience, but for all that I don’t know if I want what Japan means to me – my private, internal Japan of the last twenty years – challenged by living here. Maybe that isn’t fair. Maybe I owe it to the country and to myself to accept it for what it is and not just to protect what I want it to be.
But then again maybe people need ideals and (let’s be honest) delusions – about themselves, a place, another person – to get by; a release valve for the pressure that can build up over the course of a lifetime.
Maybe a healthy adulthood is measured, in part, by the ability to touch both what is and what is not, to walk in both the world as it actually is and the world as you’d want it to be.
It is a difficult thing learning what dreams to defer, what hopes to bury, but when we do so I think we free ourselves to appreciate what we so often take for granted – the miracle of a blooming flower; that the sun is warm and good; the act of giving love and of receiving it; a great book – as affirmations that, yes, there is something precious about life, a mystery that wears no words, a beauty we cannot communicate, a worth that is beyond any value we can reckon.
Drops of rain streamed along the window as the plane I was on broke through the clouds and into the sunshine.
Two hours later, I was home.
Sunday 24 May 2009
Japan: Day Three
Nara is about an hour by train from Osaka.
It’s a pleasant trip. You cross rivers and wend your way around and through low laying mountains. If it is spring wildflowers will be in bloom on either side of the tracks. On the day I travelled there alabaster clouds were drifting through an impossibly blue sky.
The city itself is small – a population of just under 375,000 souls in an area of about 260 square miles – but, having been Japan’s first capital, it is steeped in cultural tradition and history: sake is said to have been created in Nara sometime during the early Edo period; Nara Women’s University, one of only two such universities in Japan, is located here; the city is replete with ancient shrines and temples; and it is famous for it’s cuisine including it’s vegetables, Yamato chicken, and even sake flavored ice cream (which I, very regrettably, did not get to try for myself.)
With all these fabulous foodstuffs just begging to be tasted can you guess what your intrepid band of travelers feasted on after arriving in Nara? Was it a light lunch of Nara-zuke pickles? Miwa-somen noodles, perhaps? Or maybe we just wanted a snack and settled on rice cakes with a cup of Yamato-cha to wash it down?
Ladies and gentleman we had coffee and donuts.
Sometimes it’s life’s simple pleasures, y’know?
After gorging ourselves on one of the world’s most perfect food combinations we headed into Nara proper. One of my goals on this trip (right up there with playing “Street Fighter IV” and digging the vintage videogame scene) was to explore a Shinto shrine. Nara would not disappoint me in this regard, but I had to tackle another goal first: tracking down a maneki neko, a “lucky cat”.
If you’ve eaten at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant in the states you’ve seen a “lucky cat”. It is a feline of porcelain or sometimes brass usually propped up next to the cash register waving its paw like it’s high-fiving an invisible friend. I have a pal here in Korea who fancies them and I wanted to get her a souvenir – surely it wouldn’t be difficult tracking one down in Japan, I thought. Surprisingly (and distressingly on this my last full day in the country) I couldn’t find one anywhere.
Luckily the first street we turned down was lined with one gift shop after another. You know the place: tourist traps masquerading as “authentic [enter wherever you’re taking a vacation here] goods” stores, a regular black hole with designs on your pocket book. It took some trying but I finally found a “lucky cat” – literally just after I’d given up and purchased a different souvenir.
Maybe it should be Murphy’s Universal Laws?
Right in the heart of this merchandise maelstrom I saw my first Shinto shrine. Up a flight of stone stairs and between two shops stood a torii – the iconic gateway of Shintoism – and beyond that the shrine itself. The shrine was closed so I couldn’t get a good look inside, but I did spy a number of stone lanterns and red-bibbed statues beyond the locked gates. From within I could hear the methodic tolling of a bell.
Japan has the lowest number of Christians per capita of any country in the world; something like just 1% of the population identify with Christianity. Growing up as I did in Mid-West America, the gleaming buckle of the Bible Belt, I’m not used to this. Even Korea, which has the highest number of professing Christians of any East Asian country, wasn’t too unlike home in that regard. Neon crosses glow in abundance here in the Land of Morning Calm. So it is interesting to witness firsthand a culture shaped by the currents of a different mythology, a different set of conventions.
And for a kid who cut his teeth in the Protestant tradition as it is practiced in America’s Heartland, it doesn’t get much more different than Shinto. The indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto, which means “the way of the gods”, is a blend of ancestor worship and the belief that kami, or gods, preside over the living, dead, and inanimate things of nature. It was the state religion from the 1870’s until Japan’s surrender at the end of WWII and, while few people today are strictly Shintoists, the religion still plays an influential role in Japanese society.
From pop culture (many of the bad guys I conquered in videogames when I was younger were – you guessed it! – kami from the Shinto pantheon) to higher brow film and literature, Shinto still informs a large swath of modern Japan’s culture.
A travel blog – and even one as rambling and digressional as is this one – probably isn’t an appropriate venue for exploring the dialectical relationship between religions and the societies and cultures that form, support, promulgate, and resist them. It is just that Japan offers such a fascinating picture of a culture mediating and coming to grips with an outside influence – in this case the Christian tradition of the West.
Consider the above a disclaimer for the following.
Regardless of your religious affiliation (and clearly this is not a conversation about religion that intends any theological implications), if you have lived for any period of time in the West the cultural legacy of Christianity has left a mark on you: architecture, film, (certain) social mores, traditions, the “culture wars”, literature and poetry and the visual arts, the list reads as long as you’d like it to. In these ways and many others Christianity has been a guiding cultural influence in Western nations. Not so in Japan. In fact, for much of the time since its introduction by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th-century the Japanese – the ruling body especially – were hostile to Christianity. (The book to read is Silence by Shusaku Endo.)
This hostility has generally abated post-WWII but it has been replaced, as evidenced by the very low number of Japanese Christians, with a collective shrug. Christianity as a religion just doesn’t seem to resonate with the Japanese. What does seem to resonate, and in a big way, is Western culture. Of course this is Western culture with a distinctly Japanese twist: Walt Disney’s Pinocchio inspired Dr. Osamu Tezuka’s “Astro Boy” series as did the horrors of atomic warfare; you can enjoy a shrimp burger with a side of squid fries at the McDonald’s in Osaka; the English language has seen a number of mutations in Japan that have yielded words like beeru (“beer”) and serufu esutiimu (“self esteem”). And in much of the Western culture the Japanese absorb, parts of Christianity get absorbed with it. Not so much doctrinal aspects of the religion (I’m not familiar with any anime based on the “Apostle’s Creed”) but more the mythological underpinnings of the faith.
View a film like Kurosawa’s Hakuchi – an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot – and you realize that while Christianity as an act of devotion may not appeal to the typical Japanese there is something about the religion, that same something that has spoken to artists for nearly two millennia, that is a viable source of creative inspiration. The faith itself may have fallen on hard soil, but its cultural influence has taken root.
Having hijacked this entry with an essay let me steer us back to a sunny spring day in Nara, Japan.
Down the street and as the souvenir shops begin to peter out you come to the entrance of the relatively sprawling Nara Park. The Nara National Museum is on the park grounds as are a number of splendid shrines and temples including Todai-ji, the world’s largest wooden building. In addition Kasuga Shrine - a magnificent temple complex originally built in 710 and then subsequently demolished and rebuilt in identical fashion every 20 years according to the strictures of purity and renewal inherent to Shinto - is located here. All well and good but I had myself set on seeing one thing: tiny deer.
The legend has it that the god Takenomikazuchi-no-mikoto (you think his friend’s called him “Tak” for short?) showed up in Nara Park years ago riding a white deer. Since a deity manifesting itself on earth is a pretty big deal people began regarding deer in the area as divine and the messengers of the gods. In fact, killing a deer in Nara was a capital offense until the 17th-century and Nara deer weren’t divested of their divinity until after the fall of Imperial Japan. Divine or not these deer and their descendants got pretty friendly with humans and, while they’re not domesticated, they are certainly tame.
I imagine I looked like a largish man-child in a petting zoo; my fist full of barley cakes with which to make new furry friends, my movements slow and steady but betraying an obvious excitement. Also: jumping and frolicking and gamboling (me, not the deer) and just generally dewing up with joyful tears.
I dunno. I just really like little deer, I guess.
The deer were pretty non-plussed with the food I had to offer (although one sneaky bastard made a meal of my map) but they were kind enough to indulge my petting and picture taking.
I spent the remainder of my last full day in Japan wandering about Nara on foot: discovering neighborhood shrines; chatting with (or attempting to chat with) some kids catching tadpoles in a creek; drinking more coffee and eating more donuts (cut me a break it was vacation); then back to Osaka to pay another visit to “Big Tiger” and gobble up an aquarium worth of sushi.
I’d be packing my bags that night.
It’s a pleasant trip. You cross rivers and wend your way around and through low laying mountains. If it is spring wildflowers will be in bloom on either side of the tracks. On the day I travelled there alabaster clouds were drifting through an impossibly blue sky.
The city itself is small – a population of just under 375,000 souls in an area of about 260 square miles – but, having been Japan’s first capital, it is steeped in cultural tradition and history: sake is said to have been created in Nara sometime during the early Edo period; Nara Women’s University, one of only two such universities in Japan, is located here; the city is replete with ancient shrines and temples; and it is famous for it’s cuisine including it’s vegetables, Yamato chicken, and even sake flavored ice cream (which I, very regrettably, did not get to try for myself.)
With all these fabulous foodstuffs just begging to be tasted can you guess what your intrepid band of travelers feasted on after arriving in Nara? Was it a light lunch of Nara-zuke pickles? Miwa-somen noodles, perhaps? Or maybe we just wanted a snack and settled on rice cakes with a cup of Yamato-cha to wash it down?
Ladies and gentleman we had coffee and donuts.
Sometimes it’s life’s simple pleasures, y’know?
After gorging ourselves on one of the world’s most perfect food combinations we headed into Nara proper. One of my goals on this trip (right up there with playing “Street Fighter IV” and digging the vintage videogame scene) was to explore a Shinto shrine. Nara would not disappoint me in this regard, but I had to tackle another goal first: tracking down a maneki neko, a “lucky cat”.
If you’ve eaten at a Chinese or Japanese restaurant in the states you’ve seen a “lucky cat”. It is a feline of porcelain or sometimes brass usually propped up next to the cash register waving its paw like it’s high-fiving an invisible friend. I have a pal here in Korea who fancies them and I wanted to get her a souvenir – surely it wouldn’t be difficult tracking one down in Japan, I thought. Surprisingly (and distressingly on this my last full day in the country) I couldn’t find one anywhere.
Luckily the first street we turned down was lined with one gift shop after another. You know the place: tourist traps masquerading as “authentic [enter wherever you’re taking a vacation here] goods” stores, a regular black hole with designs on your pocket book. It took some trying but I finally found a “lucky cat” – literally just after I’d given up and purchased a different souvenir.
Maybe it should be Murphy’s Universal Laws?
Right in the heart of this merchandise maelstrom I saw my first Shinto shrine. Up a flight of stone stairs and between two shops stood a torii – the iconic gateway of Shintoism – and beyond that the shrine itself. The shrine was closed so I couldn’t get a good look inside, but I did spy a number of stone lanterns and red-bibbed statues beyond the locked gates. From within I could hear the methodic tolling of a bell.
Japan has the lowest number of Christians per capita of any country in the world; something like just 1% of the population identify with Christianity. Growing up as I did in Mid-West America, the gleaming buckle of the Bible Belt, I’m not used to this. Even Korea, which has the highest number of professing Christians of any East Asian country, wasn’t too unlike home in that regard. Neon crosses glow in abundance here in the Land of Morning Calm. So it is interesting to witness firsthand a culture shaped by the currents of a different mythology, a different set of conventions.
And for a kid who cut his teeth in the Protestant tradition as it is practiced in America’s Heartland, it doesn’t get much more different than Shinto. The indigenous religion of Japan, Shinto, which means “the way of the gods”, is a blend of ancestor worship and the belief that kami, or gods, preside over the living, dead, and inanimate things of nature. It was the state religion from the 1870’s until Japan’s surrender at the end of WWII and, while few people today are strictly Shintoists, the religion still plays an influential role in Japanese society.
From pop culture (many of the bad guys I conquered in videogames when I was younger were – you guessed it! – kami from the Shinto pantheon) to higher brow film and literature, Shinto still informs a large swath of modern Japan’s culture.
A travel blog – and even one as rambling and digressional as is this one – probably isn’t an appropriate venue for exploring the dialectical relationship between religions and the societies and cultures that form, support, promulgate, and resist them. It is just that Japan offers such a fascinating picture of a culture mediating and coming to grips with an outside influence – in this case the Christian tradition of the West.
Consider the above a disclaimer for the following.
Regardless of your religious affiliation (and clearly this is not a conversation about religion that intends any theological implications), if you have lived for any period of time in the West the cultural legacy of Christianity has left a mark on you: architecture, film, (certain) social mores, traditions, the “culture wars”, literature and poetry and the visual arts, the list reads as long as you’d like it to. In these ways and many others Christianity has been a guiding cultural influence in Western nations. Not so in Japan. In fact, for much of the time since its introduction by Portuguese missionaries in the 16th-century the Japanese – the ruling body especially – were hostile to Christianity. (The book to read is Silence by Shusaku Endo.)
This hostility has generally abated post-WWII but it has been replaced, as evidenced by the very low number of Japanese Christians, with a collective shrug. Christianity as a religion just doesn’t seem to resonate with the Japanese. What does seem to resonate, and in a big way, is Western culture. Of course this is Western culture with a distinctly Japanese twist: Walt Disney’s Pinocchio inspired Dr. Osamu Tezuka’s “Astro Boy” series as did the horrors of atomic warfare; you can enjoy a shrimp burger with a side of squid fries at the McDonald’s in Osaka; the English language has seen a number of mutations in Japan that have yielded words like beeru (“beer”) and serufu esutiimu (“self esteem”). And in much of the Western culture the Japanese absorb, parts of Christianity get absorbed with it. Not so much doctrinal aspects of the religion (I’m not familiar with any anime based on the “Apostle’s Creed”) but more the mythological underpinnings of the faith.
View a film like Kurosawa’s Hakuchi – an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Idiot – and you realize that while Christianity as an act of devotion may not appeal to the typical Japanese there is something about the religion, that same something that has spoken to artists for nearly two millennia, that is a viable source of creative inspiration. The faith itself may have fallen on hard soil, but its cultural influence has taken root.
Having hijacked this entry with an essay let me steer us back to a sunny spring day in Nara, Japan.
Down the street and as the souvenir shops begin to peter out you come to the entrance of the relatively sprawling Nara Park. The Nara National Museum is on the park grounds as are a number of splendid shrines and temples including Todai-ji, the world’s largest wooden building. In addition Kasuga Shrine - a magnificent temple complex originally built in 710 and then subsequently demolished and rebuilt in identical fashion every 20 years according to the strictures of purity and renewal inherent to Shinto - is located here. All well and good but I had myself set on seeing one thing: tiny deer.
The legend has it that the god Takenomikazuchi-no-mikoto (you think his friend’s called him “Tak” for short?) showed up in Nara Park years ago riding a white deer. Since a deity manifesting itself on earth is a pretty big deal people began regarding deer in the area as divine and the messengers of the gods. In fact, killing a deer in Nara was a capital offense until the 17th-century and Nara deer weren’t divested of their divinity until after the fall of Imperial Japan. Divine or not these deer and their descendants got pretty friendly with humans and, while they’re not domesticated, they are certainly tame.
I imagine I looked like a largish man-child in a petting zoo; my fist full of barley cakes with which to make new furry friends, my movements slow and steady but betraying an obvious excitement. Also: jumping and frolicking and gamboling (me, not the deer) and just generally dewing up with joyful tears.
I dunno. I just really like little deer, I guess.
The deer were pretty non-plussed with the food I had to offer (although one sneaky bastard made a meal of my map) but they were kind enough to indulge my petting and picture taking.
I spent the remainder of my last full day in Japan wandering about Nara on foot: discovering neighborhood shrines; chatting with (or attempting to chat with) some kids catching tadpoles in a creek; drinking more coffee and eating more donuts (cut me a break it was vacation); then back to Osaka to pay another visit to “Big Tiger” and gobble up an aquarium worth of sushi.
I’d be packing my bags that night.
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Japan: Day Two
Here in my old age (I’ll turn thirty next month) a good night’s sleep has gone from the occasional recreational activity it was in my teens and early-twenties to an inescapable biological necessity.
I reckoned I would need a minimum of six hours a night to get the most out of this vacation and to that end the capsule bed served me well. It provided, far and away, the best sleep I’ve ever received at a hostel. And, really, that is selling it mighty short: snuggled away in my snug coffin-like cubicle, sealed by a heavy curtain and resting my head on a pillow filled with what I think were dried beans, I sawed logs like a regular Lunestean lumberjack.
After a light breakfast (my stomach was all back flips and butterflies) S., Y. and I set out for Kyoto.
If you’ve only got a couple of days in Japan I think Osaka – situated about two thirds of the way down Honshu, the archipelagos biggest island – is a great base of operations. Not only does it offer a whole smorgasbord of sights, sounds and activities on its own but, thanks to Japan’s incredibly efficient railway system, it’s well connected to some of the country’s best known cities.
An hour after leaving Osaka we arrived in Kyoto.
Our destination was Nijo Castle. This castle (really a complex of palaces, gardens, a koi filled moat and pond, all enclosed by a massive stone wall) was built in the early-seventeenth century by the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. (Although building on the castle wouldn’t be completed until 1626 during the reign of Tokugawa Iemistsu, Ieyasu’s grandson.)
The castle was crawling with people. From that Friday through the following Wednesday (April 29th – May 5th) Japan was celebrating “Golden Week” – a sort of grab bag of different holidays during which most Japanese are off school and work. While many locals leave the country for a trip abroad at this time it seems the ones who stuck around all came to Nijo Castle that afternoon. Absolutely packed. But it wasn’t just Japanese here on this day: I heard Chinese, French, English, Korean and German (or maybe Dutch?) along with a number of tongues I couldn’t identify being spoken.
Kyoto – the imperial capital of Japan for many years and rich with the country’s ancient history – is a city for tourists and Nijo Castle is one of its top attractions. Despite this popularity, though, the castle doesn’t smack of the kitsch and slapdash of similar headlining acts. (Venice disappointed me in this regard.) There is gravity about the place, a seriousness and solemnity, as when you visit certain temples or cathedrals. Which isn’t meant as an endorsement of the culture that built it; any judgment – pro or contra – of a culture, and especially one so far removed from my own experience as is Japan under the Tokugawa, demands more than a course in college and a couple days spent visiting to be a judicious assessment.
I just mean to say that there is something about the place that inspires quietness. And I don’t think I was the only one who felt this way: amidst the scores of people there was no yelling, no running. (Of course they could’ve just been bored but I doubt it. History is cool, man!)
Hiking to the top of a tall stone rampart I was treated to a view of not only Nijo Castle but also greater Kyoto. A few women in traditional kimonos (which Kyoto is famous for) made their way valiantly up these granite steps. No small feat in itself but all the more impressive considering their garments. Their kimonos were fashioned in muted colors (compared with the brightly colored hanbok Korean women sometimes wear) and printed with subtle designs. Tied in the back with an obi sash the long, narrow skirt of these kimonos stretched to the women’s ankles and forced them to move about in dainty, shuffling steps. The zori sandals that completed the outfits sighing along the stones at this complicated footwork.
After Nijo Castle I decided to take a walk on my own. The day was sunny and bright; just right for exploring a new city; and sometimes there’s nothing as pleasant as wandering alone in an unfamiliar city on a sunny day.
North of the castle was a residential area: squat houses with curly-cue tiled roofs standing shoulder-to-shoulder like commuters on a packed train; a couple of parks; little restaurants giving off delicious smells; people out riding bikes and kids playing in the streets. In some places it was still and quiet, very peaceful.
I watched a young father chasing his daughter along a path ablaze with sunlight and flowers of yellow and orange; the little child giggling, the father beaming with as much pride as the sunlight and the flowers. How many times have I watched this scene on the other side of the world? There is more that binds us together than differences that divide us.
About an hour into my walk I noticed my stomach growling. Hungry butterflies? I was hungry but I wasn’t starved – a snack would do.
I eventually settled on a café called “Colorado Coffeeshop”, a quasi-swank eatery decked out in an odd combination of baroque and Americana: high-backed chairs and bar stools and soda fountains; ornate crystal chandeliers hanging from a frescoed ceiling. Like if Maderno had designed diners instead of basilicas.
The problem with this place (I didn’t have a problem with the gaudy décor) was that it was located right next to a big hotel. In my experience restaurants near big hotels usually offer fare that is tasty in inverse proportion to its costliness: you pay a lot for a little. But I was ready to sit down and take a break so “Colorado Coffeeshop” it would be.
I ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The sandwich – a hot ham and cheese on white bread – wasn’t anything special but it did the trick. The coffee on the other hand was excellent. And, while it was pricey, it didn’t break the bank. So that was good. I decided to read a little bit over lunch. (Figured I’d paid for the real estate, right?) I brought Murakami’s “Dance, Dance, Dance” with me. The first Murakami novel I ever read. I’m a sentimental guy.
After lunch I ducked into a 7-11 and grabbed an ice cream for dessert. Munching the ice cream I strolled back through some neighborhoods, wandering, content to be a strange apparition, a momentary anomaly, in the rhythm of another people’s life. Before too long I came to a commercial part of town and happened upon a Starbucks. You can’t have too much coffee on vacation, I say.
I’m not particularly fond of Starbucks (I could take it or leave it and, as a matter of fact, I would’ve preferred something a little more off the beaten path) but they had room on their patio and that sold it for me.
Sitting down was good. With the exception of lunch I’d been walking or standing (the train was crowded) most of the day. Travelling in a foreign land is both exhilarating and exhausting simultaneously – doubly so when you’ve been living overseas for any amount of time. There is a definite thrill that comes with experiencing a new culture – new languages to grapple with; unusual (to you anyway) customs; sights and sounds and foods and people – it’s all very exciting but sometimes you just want to sit down with a Coke and Big Mac or some other “comfort culture” item. For better or worse globalization can usually accommodate this need.
Maybe it wasn’t just the patio but the familiarity of Starbucks that I was looking for.
Sunday afternoon. People watching. Nico’s “These Days” repeating on my iPod. Now this is vacation.
I was to meet the girls back in Osaka around nine. I’d need at least two hours to make it on time so I finished off my iced Americano and trotted off for the train station.
The remains of the day featured conversation with (presumably) yakuza gangsters; the capture of a live mouse in a very crowded mall; sake and takoyaki and cross-dressing geishas.
Japan is quite amenable to adventure.
I reckoned I would need a minimum of six hours a night to get the most out of this vacation and to that end the capsule bed served me well. It provided, far and away, the best sleep I’ve ever received at a hostel. And, really, that is selling it mighty short: snuggled away in my snug coffin-like cubicle, sealed by a heavy curtain and resting my head on a pillow filled with what I think were dried beans, I sawed logs like a regular Lunestean lumberjack.
After a light breakfast (my stomach was all back flips and butterflies) S., Y. and I set out for Kyoto.
If you’ve only got a couple of days in Japan I think Osaka – situated about two thirds of the way down Honshu, the archipelagos biggest island – is a great base of operations. Not only does it offer a whole smorgasbord of sights, sounds and activities on its own but, thanks to Japan’s incredibly efficient railway system, it’s well connected to some of the country’s best known cities.
An hour after leaving Osaka we arrived in Kyoto.
Our destination was Nijo Castle. This castle (really a complex of palaces, gardens, a koi filled moat and pond, all enclosed by a massive stone wall) was built in the early-seventeenth century by the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, Tokugawa Ieyasu. (Although building on the castle wouldn’t be completed until 1626 during the reign of Tokugawa Iemistsu, Ieyasu’s grandson.)
The castle was crawling with people. From that Friday through the following Wednesday (April 29th – May 5th) Japan was celebrating “Golden Week” – a sort of grab bag of different holidays during which most Japanese are off school and work. While many locals leave the country for a trip abroad at this time it seems the ones who stuck around all came to Nijo Castle that afternoon. Absolutely packed. But it wasn’t just Japanese here on this day: I heard Chinese, French, English, Korean and German (or maybe Dutch?) along with a number of tongues I couldn’t identify being spoken.
Kyoto – the imperial capital of Japan for many years and rich with the country’s ancient history – is a city for tourists and Nijo Castle is one of its top attractions. Despite this popularity, though, the castle doesn’t smack of the kitsch and slapdash of similar headlining acts. (Venice disappointed me in this regard.) There is gravity about the place, a seriousness and solemnity, as when you visit certain temples or cathedrals. Which isn’t meant as an endorsement of the culture that built it; any judgment – pro or contra – of a culture, and especially one so far removed from my own experience as is Japan under the Tokugawa, demands more than a course in college and a couple days spent visiting to be a judicious assessment.
I just mean to say that there is something about the place that inspires quietness. And I don’t think I was the only one who felt this way: amidst the scores of people there was no yelling, no running. (Of course they could’ve just been bored but I doubt it. History is cool, man!)
Hiking to the top of a tall stone rampart I was treated to a view of not only Nijo Castle but also greater Kyoto. A few women in traditional kimonos (which Kyoto is famous for) made their way valiantly up these granite steps. No small feat in itself but all the more impressive considering their garments. Their kimonos were fashioned in muted colors (compared with the brightly colored hanbok Korean women sometimes wear) and printed with subtle designs. Tied in the back with an obi sash the long, narrow skirt of these kimonos stretched to the women’s ankles and forced them to move about in dainty, shuffling steps. The zori sandals that completed the outfits sighing along the stones at this complicated footwork.
After Nijo Castle I decided to take a walk on my own. The day was sunny and bright; just right for exploring a new city; and sometimes there’s nothing as pleasant as wandering alone in an unfamiliar city on a sunny day.
North of the castle was a residential area: squat houses with curly-cue tiled roofs standing shoulder-to-shoulder like commuters on a packed train; a couple of parks; little restaurants giving off delicious smells; people out riding bikes and kids playing in the streets. In some places it was still and quiet, very peaceful.
I watched a young father chasing his daughter along a path ablaze with sunlight and flowers of yellow and orange; the little child giggling, the father beaming with as much pride as the sunlight and the flowers. How many times have I watched this scene on the other side of the world? There is more that binds us together than differences that divide us.
About an hour into my walk I noticed my stomach growling. Hungry butterflies? I was hungry but I wasn’t starved – a snack would do.
I eventually settled on a café called “Colorado Coffeeshop”, a quasi-swank eatery decked out in an odd combination of baroque and Americana: high-backed chairs and bar stools and soda fountains; ornate crystal chandeliers hanging from a frescoed ceiling. Like if Maderno had designed diners instead of basilicas.
The problem with this place (I didn’t have a problem with the gaudy décor) was that it was located right next to a big hotel. In my experience restaurants near big hotels usually offer fare that is tasty in inverse proportion to its costliness: you pay a lot for a little. But I was ready to sit down and take a break so “Colorado Coffeeshop” it would be.
I ordered a sandwich and a cup of coffee. The sandwich – a hot ham and cheese on white bread – wasn’t anything special but it did the trick. The coffee on the other hand was excellent. And, while it was pricey, it didn’t break the bank. So that was good. I decided to read a little bit over lunch. (Figured I’d paid for the real estate, right?) I brought Murakami’s “Dance, Dance, Dance” with me. The first Murakami novel I ever read. I’m a sentimental guy.
After lunch I ducked into a 7-11 and grabbed an ice cream for dessert. Munching the ice cream I strolled back through some neighborhoods, wandering, content to be a strange apparition, a momentary anomaly, in the rhythm of another people’s life. Before too long I came to a commercial part of town and happened upon a Starbucks. You can’t have too much coffee on vacation, I say.
I’m not particularly fond of Starbucks (I could take it or leave it and, as a matter of fact, I would’ve preferred something a little more off the beaten path) but they had room on their patio and that sold it for me.
Sitting down was good. With the exception of lunch I’d been walking or standing (the train was crowded) most of the day. Travelling in a foreign land is both exhilarating and exhausting simultaneously – doubly so when you’ve been living overseas for any amount of time. There is a definite thrill that comes with experiencing a new culture – new languages to grapple with; unusual (to you anyway) customs; sights and sounds and foods and people – it’s all very exciting but sometimes you just want to sit down with a Coke and Big Mac or some other “comfort culture” item. For better or worse globalization can usually accommodate this need.
Maybe it wasn’t just the patio but the familiarity of Starbucks that I was looking for.
Sunday afternoon. People watching. Nico’s “These Days” repeating on my iPod. Now this is vacation.
I was to meet the girls back in Osaka around nine. I’d need at least two hours to make it on time so I finished off my iced Americano and trotted off for the train station.
The remains of the day featured conversation with (presumably) yakuza gangsters; the capture of a live mouse in a very crowded mall; sake and takoyaki and cross-dressing geishas.
Japan is quite amenable to adventure.
Monday 11 May 2009
Japan: Day One
There had been some confusion; something lost in translation, I suppose.
The three of us (me and the two girls I was travelling with) were supposed to have rooms booked – couch surfing to be exact – prior to arriving in Japan but, for whatever reason, it fell through. Our flight was Saturday morning and Friday afternoon I got a call from S. Every hostel/hotel/hole-in-the-wall she contacted was full. No room in the inn. She was obviously concerned.
But what can you do? We certainly weren’t going to cancel our tickets. Destiny isn’t going to be thwarted by so arbitrary a detail as a place to stay; things usually have a way of working out.
And there’s always park benches.
As it turns out we didn’t need to resort to getting our camp on. At the last moment S. managed to get us two rooms at a “capsule hotel”. The rooms where we stayed (the girls bunked together; I had my own pad) were little more than walk-in closets with capsules to sleep in. These capsules – just big enough to squeeze yourself into – were like hotel rooms in miniature: mattress, pillow, tiny TV, radio, climate control and reading light. (I looked but couldn’t find a Gideon’s Bible.)
Of course we had to find the place first. We took the train from Kansai International Airport to Shin-Imamiya Station near downtown Osaka. Somehow I wound up carrying most of our luggage.
Outside the station it reeked of piss and garbage. Not exactly a sketchy part of town (do those even exist in Japan?) but there weren’t rows of Ritz-Carlton’s or Hiltons lining the streets either. A whole fleet of bicycles locked up beneath the underpass; bodies at rest; chrome flashing and fading into shadow by turns whenever a train rumbled above us. Old men squatting over a game of “Go”; gambling, cursing and yelling. Vendors set up on the sidewalks hustling, hocking all manner of wares: household appliances; art; a prodigious selection of pornography; some vintage videogames.
It was this latter item (the games, not the porn) that caught my eye. I picked up a copy of “Dragon Quest V” for 300 yen (about three bucks.) Widely regarded as the finest 16-bit RPG to never receive an official English translation this title, originally published for the Super Famicom (SNES) in 1992, was only formally localized and released in America earlier this year. Until then getting your hands on a copy was something of a castle in the sky – or at least a very expensive purchase on EBay – for videogame collectors and aficionados. So I was thrilled to be making this (portentous as it would turn out) transaction.
The guy doing the selling – an older gentleman of few teeth and questionable odor – seemed awfully pleased with the sale so I thought I might’ve been had. But still, it would have only amounted to a couple of dollars so I couldn’t have been taken for too bad a ride. And more importantly: “Dragon Quest V”!
While I was all aglow with unabashed geekery the girls were in a Lawson’s trying to get directions to our hotel. A Japanese man very kindly offered to take us there. It was about a half block back up the street. We’d walked past it a couple of times.
After storing our bags the three of us decided to head to Namba, an entertainment district in downtown Osaka, for the night’s festivities. It was getting on towards dusk when we arrived and Namba was already a blazing Shrine to Neon. I thought they liked it lit up here in Korea but this was ridiculous; if I’d been a moth I would have probably just died then and there: sensory overload.
One of the things I was set on doing in Japan was getting in a few rounds of “Street Fighter IV”. I’ve already written at some length about my relationship with this franchise so I won’t rehearse that here but this has been a goal of mine for a while; to test my mettle against competitors who are routinely ranked as the best in the world. It isn’t a major goal, sure, but, like what Dr. Pausch recommended in his “Last Lecture”, it is an attainable one. And those are good to have; grease in the gears of bigger dreams.
The girls were pretty understanding the first couple of times I drug them into an arcade (they even played a sit down racing game) but this understanding was on the wane by arcades three and four. By arcade five I figured I’d be going it alone. But I was not to be daunted in my quest for a “Street Fighter IV” cabinet! Turns out five was my lucky number. The game was displayed on a big HD screen near the center of the arcade and all things considered I didn’t do too badly: I won six out of ten matches. There were slaps on the back; communal “oohhs” and “ahhs”; the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. An international brotherhood of geeks.
We had ramen for dinner: piping hot and incredibly delicious. If noodles have a Platonic ideal this was it.
What happened next was, for me, nothing short of phenomenal. However it involved vintage videogames. And I’m going to write about it now. At length. Certainly at more length than common courtesy would allow. So feel free to skip to the end if this isn’t your cup of tea.
[Begin Paul’s Epic no-wonder-I’m-thirty-and-unmarried Nerdsplosion]
The store was called “Big Tiger”.
Newer games on the first floor: this generation; PS2 and PS1; some GameCube games; a dusty and unloved Xbox in a shroud of bubble wrap stuffed in the corner. It was all interesting enough. But it was upstairs – up the Stairway to Heaven – where the real joys awaited discovery: used and new vintage.
The distinct sounds of popular Famicom (NES) games like “Super Mario Bros.” and “Zelda” played like a chorus of 8-bit angels as you ascended the stairway to the second floor. (If you grew up in the 80’s you’re probably humming these tunes right now. Amazing how Koji Kondo (the composer of many iconic videogame soundtracks, including the two mentioned above) was able to create such memorable music with such limited technology.) The walls were lined with posters of childhood favorites – Little Mac, Bonk, Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Quest” character designs – that blurred past like you were moving through a time warp.
And the games! It was like discovering a cache of buried treasure that I’ve been studying the map to for twenty years: Super Famicom games (boxed + instructions “Final Fantasy VI”?!); MegaDrive and PC Engine games and systems; every iteration of Gameboy from its monochromatic origins to the Technicolor sunset of its final version; the various armamentarium – plush toys, promotional posters, controllers and chords and carrying cases – of two and a half decades of videogame culture.
I purchased three MegaDrive games: “Phantasy Star II”, “Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium”, and “Shining and the Darkness”. All three were had for just over 500 yen.
The first two were largely the creation of Rieko Kodama. Although not as well known a figure – either in her native Japan or abroad – as, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, or even Hironobu Sakaguchi, her works (mostly videogames) are well-loved by those familiar with them and she has had a big, if largely unheralded, influence on the role-playing (RPG) genre.
The “Phantasy Star” series (specifically the numbered entries; that is, not the on-line iterations) is, for a number of reasons, my all-time favorite videogame series.
Back before Blockbuster gobbled it up there was a little Ma and Pop video store in my old hometown called “Showcase Video”. The guy who ran the place – an obese loudmouth whose fingers and shirt were always stained with popcorn grease – was a real unpleasant dude, but Showcase was they only store in town that rented SMS games so he had me by the short and curlies.
It was $2.99 for the weekend and you had the game till five the following Monday. (And that was five pm on the dot. Even a minute over and you got slammed with an extortionate late fee. I remember my Dad shouting this usurious racket down more than a few times.) I was too young yet to be working (mowing lawns was still a few summers away) and cash on hand was a rarity so I didn’t get to rent a game every weekend, but when it did happen it was a real treat.
And of all the SMS games I rented (and I think I eventually rented them all) “Phantasy Star” was tops.
The game itself was pretty revolutionary. One of the earliest console RPGs it featured a massive quest and pseudo 3-D dungeons that pushed the SMS’s technology to the limit. At barely ten years old, however, I wasn’t aware of the game’s historical or technological significance. All I was aware of was how much ass it kicked.
I’d never played anything like it. This game was wholly unlike the run-jump-rinse-repeat platformers (think “Super Mario Bros”) I was familiar with: there was very little action; I spent a lot of the game walking around talking to townspeople; when I would finally sally forth from the city limits I’d usually end up getting slaughtered in short order by a giant bee or grasshopper or some other angry insect; I was constantly getting lost with no idea how to progress. And it was a totally engrossing experience. It certainly didn’t hurt that Reiko Kodama’s character designs paid more than a little homage to “Star Wars”, a franchise I was – surprise, surprise – pretty into at the time.
Just before Showcase Video was finally vaporized by the Blockbuster Death Star in the late-nineties they had a going out of business sale. It’d been years since I’d been in there; I doubted if they’d even still have SMS games on the shelf. But they did. And in one of the most memorable purchases of my life I asked the owner (no longer the obese and draconic man of my youth but now his equally obese and draconic son) if he’d take a five spot for “Phantasy Star”. “Yea, whatever”, he said. “It’s not like anyone plays that old shit anyway.”
And now I can add the Japanese copies of “Phantasy Star II” and “Phantasy Star IV” to my collection of old shit. Awesome.
What a place was “Big Tiger” and how appropriate that it should be named after an animal that, through the fiction of Jorge Louis Borges, has come to represent the magical and unattainable – childhood in retrospect – to me.
It is a rare thing when the dream isn’t outstripped by reality.
[End Paul’s Geektastic Excersise in New Games Journalism]
I met back up with the girls at close to eleven o’clock. (Clearly they weren’t about to have anything to do with my weepy trip down memory lane.) We decided to finish the night up at “Sex Machine”, a BBQ dive-cum-James Brown shrine. The Godfather of Soul in the form of cut-outs plastered to the walls, a passable likeness in oil paint done by one of the stores proprietors, and a miniature wooden effigy among other relics, was there to preside over the serving of cold beers at a reasonable price.
You can’t make a place like this up.
Outside a trio of call girls were seeing their johns off from the love motel above us; inside the place throbbed to sixties rock and roll, soul, and jazz. James Brown and jazz, hookers, Japan on a Saturday night: I was ready at any minute for one of Murakami’s protagonists to enter the bar looking for a missing cat or girlfriend.
After some brief taxi tribulations (what trip to a foreign land would be complete without it?) the three of us decided to call it a night and headed back to the capsule hotel. It had been a busy day and Kyoto was the plan for tomorrow.
The three of us (me and the two girls I was travelling with) were supposed to have rooms booked – couch surfing to be exact – prior to arriving in Japan but, for whatever reason, it fell through. Our flight was Saturday morning and Friday afternoon I got a call from S. Every hostel/hotel/hole-in-the-wall she contacted was full. No room in the inn. She was obviously concerned.
But what can you do? We certainly weren’t going to cancel our tickets. Destiny isn’t going to be thwarted by so arbitrary a detail as a place to stay; things usually have a way of working out.
And there’s always park benches.
As it turns out we didn’t need to resort to getting our camp on. At the last moment S. managed to get us two rooms at a “capsule hotel”. The rooms where we stayed (the girls bunked together; I had my own pad) were little more than walk-in closets with capsules to sleep in. These capsules – just big enough to squeeze yourself into – were like hotel rooms in miniature: mattress, pillow, tiny TV, radio, climate control and reading light. (I looked but couldn’t find a Gideon’s Bible.)
Of course we had to find the place first. We took the train from Kansai International Airport to Shin-Imamiya Station near downtown Osaka. Somehow I wound up carrying most of our luggage.
Outside the station it reeked of piss and garbage. Not exactly a sketchy part of town (do those even exist in Japan?) but there weren’t rows of Ritz-Carlton’s or Hiltons lining the streets either. A whole fleet of bicycles locked up beneath the underpass; bodies at rest; chrome flashing and fading into shadow by turns whenever a train rumbled above us. Old men squatting over a game of “Go”; gambling, cursing and yelling. Vendors set up on the sidewalks hustling, hocking all manner of wares: household appliances; art; a prodigious selection of pornography; some vintage videogames.
It was this latter item (the games, not the porn) that caught my eye. I picked up a copy of “Dragon Quest V” for 300 yen (about three bucks.) Widely regarded as the finest 16-bit RPG to never receive an official English translation this title, originally published for the Super Famicom (SNES) in 1992, was only formally localized and released in America earlier this year. Until then getting your hands on a copy was something of a castle in the sky – or at least a very expensive purchase on EBay – for videogame collectors and aficionados. So I was thrilled to be making this (portentous as it would turn out) transaction.
The guy doing the selling – an older gentleman of few teeth and questionable odor – seemed awfully pleased with the sale so I thought I might’ve been had. But still, it would have only amounted to a couple of dollars so I couldn’t have been taken for too bad a ride. And more importantly: “Dragon Quest V”!
While I was all aglow with unabashed geekery the girls were in a Lawson’s trying to get directions to our hotel. A Japanese man very kindly offered to take us there. It was about a half block back up the street. We’d walked past it a couple of times.
After storing our bags the three of us decided to head to Namba, an entertainment district in downtown Osaka, for the night’s festivities. It was getting on towards dusk when we arrived and Namba was already a blazing Shrine to Neon. I thought they liked it lit up here in Korea but this was ridiculous; if I’d been a moth I would have probably just died then and there: sensory overload.
One of the things I was set on doing in Japan was getting in a few rounds of “Street Fighter IV”. I’ve already written at some length about my relationship with this franchise so I won’t rehearse that here but this has been a goal of mine for a while; to test my mettle against competitors who are routinely ranked as the best in the world. It isn’t a major goal, sure, but, like what Dr. Pausch recommended in his “Last Lecture”, it is an attainable one. And those are good to have; grease in the gears of bigger dreams.
The girls were pretty understanding the first couple of times I drug them into an arcade (they even played a sit down racing game) but this understanding was on the wane by arcades three and four. By arcade five I figured I’d be going it alone. But I was not to be daunted in my quest for a “Street Fighter IV” cabinet! Turns out five was my lucky number. The game was displayed on a big HD screen near the center of the arcade and all things considered I didn’t do too badly: I won six out of ten matches. There were slaps on the back; communal “oohhs” and “ahhs”; the thrill of victory, the agony of defeat. An international brotherhood of geeks.
We had ramen for dinner: piping hot and incredibly delicious. If noodles have a Platonic ideal this was it.
What happened next was, for me, nothing short of phenomenal. However it involved vintage videogames. And I’m going to write about it now. At length. Certainly at more length than common courtesy would allow. So feel free to skip to the end if this isn’t your cup of tea.
[Begin Paul’s Epic no-wonder-I’m-thirty-and-unmarried Nerdsplosion]
The store was called “Big Tiger”.
Newer games on the first floor: this generation; PS2 and PS1; some GameCube games; a dusty and unloved Xbox in a shroud of bubble wrap stuffed in the corner. It was all interesting enough. But it was upstairs – up the Stairway to Heaven – where the real joys awaited discovery: used and new vintage.
The distinct sounds of popular Famicom (NES) games like “Super Mario Bros.” and “Zelda” played like a chorus of 8-bit angels as you ascended the stairway to the second floor. (If you grew up in the 80’s you’re probably humming these tunes right now. Amazing how Koji Kondo (the composer of many iconic videogame soundtracks, including the two mentioned above) was able to create such memorable music with such limited technology.) The walls were lined with posters of childhood favorites – Little Mac, Bonk, Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Quest” character designs – that blurred past like you were moving through a time warp.
And the games! It was like discovering a cache of buried treasure that I’ve been studying the map to for twenty years: Super Famicom games (boxed + instructions “Final Fantasy VI”?!); MegaDrive and PC Engine games and systems; every iteration of Gameboy from its monochromatic origins to the Technicolor sunset of its final version; the various armamentarium – plush toys, promotional posters, controllers and chords and carrying cases – of two and a half decades of videogame culture.
I purchased three MegaDrive games: “Phantasy Star II”, “Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium”, and “Shining and the Darkness”. All three were had for just over 500 yen.
The first two were largely the creation of Rieko Kodama. Although not as well known a figure – either in her native Japan or abroad – as, say, Shigeru Miyamoto, or even Hironobu Sakaguchi, her works (mostly videogames) are well-loved by those familiar with them and she has had a big, if largely unheralded, influence on the role-playing (RPG) genre.
The “Phantasy Star” series (specifically the numbered entries; that is, not the on-line iterations) is, for a number of reasons, my all-time favorite videogame series.
Back before Blockbuster gobbled it up there was a little Ma and Pop video store in my old hometown called “Showcase Video”. The guy who ran the place – an obese loudmouth whose fingers and shirt were always stained with popcorn grease – was a real unpleasant dude, but Showcase was they only store in town that rented SMS games so he had me by the short and curlies.
It was $2.99 for the weekend and you had the game till five the following Monday. (And that was five pm on the dot. Even a minute over and you got slammed with an extortionate late fee. I remember my Dad shouting this usurious racket down more than a few times.) I was too young yet to be working (mowing lawns was still a few summers away) and cash on hand was a rarity so I didn’t get to rent a game every weekend, but when it did happen it was a real treat.
And of all the SMS games I rented (and I think I eventually rented them all) “Phantasy Star” was tops.
The game itself was pretty revolutionary. One of the earliest console RPGs it featured a massive quest and pseudo 3-D dungeons that pushed the SMS’s technology to the limit. At barely ten years old, however, I wasn’t aware of the game’s historical or technological significance. All I was aware of was how much ass it kicked.
I’d never played anything like it. This game was wholly unlike the run-jump-rinse-repeat platformers (think “Super Mario Bros”) I was familiar with: there was very little action; I spent a lot of the game walking around talking to townspeople; when I would finally sally forth from the city limits I’d usually end up getting slaughtered in short order by a giant bee or grasshopper or some other angry insect; I was constantly getting lost with no idea how to progress. And it was a totally engrossing experience. It certainly didn’t hurt that Reiko Kodama’s character designs paid more than a little homage to “Star Wars”, a franchise I was – surprise, surprise – pretty into at the time.
Just before Showcase Video was finally vaporized by the Blockbuster Death Star in the late-nineties they had a going out of business sale. It’d been years since I’d been in there; I doubted if they’d even still have SMS games on the shelf. But they did. And in one of the most memorable purchases of my life I asked the owner (no longer the obese and draconic man of my youth but now his equally obese and draconic son) if he’d take a five spot for “Phantasy Star”. “Yea, whatever”, he said. “It’s not like anyone plays that old shit anyway.”
And now I can add the Japanese copies of “Phantasy Star II” and “Phantasy Star IV” to my collection of old shit. Awesome.
What a place was “Big Tiger” and how appropriate that it should be named after an animal that, through the fiction of Jorge Louis Borges, has come to represent the magical and unattainable – childhood in retrospect – to me.
It is a rare thing when the dream isn’t outstripped by reality.
[End Paul’s Geektastic Excersise in New Games Journalism]
I met back up with the girls at close to eleven o’clock. (Clearly they weren’t about to have anything to do with my weepy trip down memory lane.) We decided to finish the night up at “Sex Machine”, a BBQ dive-cum-James Brown shrine. The Godfather of Soul in the form of cut-outs plastered to the walls, a passable likeness in oil paint done by one of the stores proprietors, and a miniature wooden effigy among other relics, was there to preside over the serving of cold beers at a reasonable price.
You can’t make a place like this up.
Outside a trio of call girls were seeing their johns off from the love motel above us; inside the place throbbed to sixties rock and roll, soul, and jazz. James Brown and jazz, hookers, Japan on a Saturday night: I was ready at any minute for one of Murakami’s protagonists to enter the bar looking for a missing cat or girlfriend.
After some brief taxi tribulations (what trip to a foreign land would be complete without it?) the three of us decided to call it a night and headed back to the capsule hotel. It had been a busy day and Kyoto was the plan for tomorrow.
Sunday 10 May 2009
on the eve of a journey
Japan.
“Japan”. Linger on the word a moment. Roll it about your brain like a hard candy on your tongue. Savor it. “Japan”.
Christmas Day 1988. It was a Sunday. Still my favorite day for Christmas to fall on. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve back then. There wasn’t a lot but my Mom and Dad did their best. And my sister and I were always amazed. That Christmas after we got home from church my folks asked my sister and I to check behind a curtain in the family room, said they thought they saw something back there. We raced. The curtain was yanked away. Sega Master System (SMS). Incredible. And that set the course. That planted the seed.
The games I played on the SMS – “Alex Kidd”, “Alien Syndrome”, “Phantasy Star” – were weird. G.I. Joe this was not. These were games with flying cats, kids that played rock-scissor-paper against creepy demons, space curiosities that were as “cute as they were deadly” (a direct quote from the “Fantasy Zone” game manual). I didn’t know it at the time but these games offered an almost undiluted experience with one element of then contemporary Japanese pop culture.
And I loved it.
Pretty soon after that Christmas in 1988 – if not in actual conjunction with the event – I was introduced to Saban Entertainment published cartoons like “Noozles”, “The Little Bits” and, most importantly, “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics”. More Trojan horses from the Land of the Rising Sun.
It was in junior high when I began making the connection between these artifacts of my childhood and the country they came from. It wasn’t like it is today in America where otaku culture is, if not mainstream, at the very least a well-represented niche. My love of Japanese pop culture at the time wasn’t so much a product of the social isolation I experienced as a means of reinforcing it. This was long before (culturally speaking) the advent of the internet and message boards offered a place for shy basement dwellers to congregate (sort of) and stroke each other’s vanity while exorcising the aggression that would likely get their asses kicked at school so I had no one with whom to share my interests. And even when there were kids around I could talk to they didn’t know about (and weren’t generally interested in hearing about) the obscure videogames and cartoons that so infatuated me.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki came next. “Princess Mononoke”. October 1999 at the Palace in Kansas City. I remember I was in love with this girl at the time and she sat next to me during the movie. Her hand occasionally brushing against mine, electricity shooting up my arm and through the rest of my body every time she did so. I remember this. I remember how crazyoverwhelmingmaddeningexciting it is to be head-over-heels for someone at that age whenever I watch this movie again. And it’s really nice.
She’s married now with a beautiful baby. A family started.
More Studio Ghibli films followed: “The Cat Returns”; “Nausicaa”; Spirited Away”; "Howl’s Moving Castle”. I introduced these to my younger brother and sister and viewing them together became something of an event for us: what we would end up calling “watching a Miyazaki”.
In October 2001 I was rummaging about in a used bookstore that has long since vanished and thought I’d take a chance on a book by Haruki Murakami. I’d never heard of the author but the cover - a sheep in a suit - caught my eye. The book was “Dance, Dance, Dance”. Continuing a trend: I loved it. More Murakami – notably “Norwegian Wood” and “Sputnik Sweetheart” – followed. As well as Tanizaki, Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Endo. What started with videogames and comics was now an insatiable appetite for Japanese literature.
My junior year of college (2005, what a year!) I enrolled in a Japanese culture class at UMKC. Dr. Ebersole. No cakewalk. That year (and that semester especially) was an ordeal that was in some ways made easier by this grey-headed academic sadist grinding his boot heel into me: I completely lost myself in my studies. And it was great to be adding more to my understanding of Japan than just what I’d gleaned from pop culture and the reading of a handful of novels.
And then in August 2007 I moved to South Korea. To a city about as far from Japan as is my hometown of Kansas City from Saint Louis. Why Korea and not Japan? It’s a good question. Part of it was pragmatic: student loans to pay off and Korea seemed (and has thus far proven) to be the more remunerative of the two options. But mercenary considerations are only a part of the picture. (And let me add that my time in Korea has been amazing; I’d not trade this experience for anything.)
I think I may not have yet been able to confront Japan. The Japan that exists within me – the private Japan I’ve been piecing together for more than two decades, a place within my imagination so infused with nostalgia – exists within me and nowhere else. Reconciling this fantasy with the reality of a Japan of people and buildings and waiting on trains and paying too much for a bowl of noodles and culture shock is a tall order. Sometimes we stay in bed not to sleep but to keep dreaming.
“Japan”. A journey twenty years – and almost an entire life – in the making.
So am I ready now?
Does it matter? I leave tomorrow.
“Japan”. Linger on the word a moment. Roll it about your brain like a hard candy on your tongue. Savor it. “Japan”.
Christmas Day 1988. It was a Sunday. Still my favorite day for Christmas to fall on. We opened our presents on Christmas Eve back then. There wasn’t a lot but my Mom and Dad did their best. And my sister and I were always amazed. That Christmas after we got home from church my folks asked my sister and I to check behind a curtain in the family room, said they thought they saw something back there. We raced. The curtain was yanked away. Sega Master System (SMS). Incredible. And that set the course. That planted the seed.
The games I played on the SMS – “Alex Kidd”, “Alien Syndrome”, “Phantasy Star” – were weird. G.I. Joe this was not. These were games with flying cats, kids that played rock-scissor-paper against creepy demons, space curiosities that were as “cute as they were deadly” (a direct quote from the “Fantasy Zone” game manual). I didn’t know it at the time but these games offered an almost undiluted experience with one element of then contemporary Japanese pop culture.
And I loved it.
Pretty soon after that Christmas in 1988 – if not in actual conjunction with the event – I was introduced to Saban Entertainment published cartoons like “Noozles”, “The Little Bits” and, most importantly, “Grimm’s Fairy Tale Classics”. More Trojan horses from the Land of the Rising Sun.
It was in junior high when I began making the connection between these artifacts of my childhood and the country they came from. It wasn’t like it is today in America where otaku culture is, if not mainstream, at the very least a well-represented niche. My love of Japanese pop culture at the time wasn’t so much a product of the social isolation I experienced as a means of reinforcing it. This was long before (culturally speaking) the advent of the internet and message boards offered a place for shy basement dwellers to congregate (sort of) and stroke each other’s vanity while exorcising the aggression that would likely get their asses kicked at school so I had no one with whom to share my interests. And even when there were kids around I could talk to they didn’t know about (and weren’t generally interested in hearing about) the obscure videogames and cartoons that so infatuated me.
The films of Hayao Miyazaki came next. “Princess Mononoke”. October 1999 at the Palace in Kansas City. I remember I was in love with this girl at the time and she sat next to me during the movie. Her hand occasionally brushing against mine, electricity shooting up my arm and through the rest of my body every time she did so. I remember this. I remember how crazyoverwhelmingmaddeningexciting it is to be head-over-heels for someone at that age whenever I watch this movie again. And it’s really nice.
She’s married now with a beautiful baby. A family started.
More Studio Ghibli films followed: “The Cat Returns”; “Nausicaa”; Spirited Away”; "Howl’s Moving Castle”. I introduced these to my younger brother and sister and viewing them together became something of an event for us: what we would end up calling “watching a Miyazaki”.
In October 2001 I was rummaging about in a used bookstore that has long since vanished and thought I’d take a chance on a book by Haruki Murakami. I’d never heard of the author but the cover - a sheep in a suit - caught my eye. The book was “Dance, Dance, Dance”. Continuing a trend: I loved it. More Murakami – notably “Norwegian Wood” and “Sputnik Sweetheart” – followed. As well as Tanizaki, Mishima, Kenzaburo Oe, and Endo. What started with videogames and comics was now an insatiable appetite for Japanese literature.
My junior year of college (2005, what a year!) I enrolled in a Japanese culture class at UMKC. Dr. Ebersole. No cakewalk. That year (and that semester especially) was an ordeal that was in some ways made easier by this grey-headed academic sadist grinding his boot heel into me: I completely lost myself in my studies. And it was great to be adding more to my understanding of Japan than just what I’d gleaned from pop culture and the reading of a handful of novels.
And then in August 2007 I moved to South Korea. To a city about as far from Japan as is my hometown of Kansas City from Saint Louis. Why Korea and not Japan? It’s a good question. Part of it was pragmatic: student loans to pay off and Korea seemed (and has thus far proven) to be the more remunerative of the two options. But mercenary considerations are only a part of the picture. (And let me add that my time in Korea has been amazing; I’d not trade this experience for anything.)
I think I may not have yet been able to confront Japan. The Japan that exists within me – the private Japan I’ve been piecing together for more than two decades, a place within my imagination so infused with nostalgia – exists within me and nowhere else. Reconciling this fantasy with the reality of a Japan of people and buildings and waiting on trains and paying too much for a bowl of noodles and culture shock is a tall order. Sometimes we stay in bed not to sleep but to keep dreaming.
“Japan”. A journey twenty years – and almost an entire life – in the making.
So am I ready now?
Does it matter? I leave tomorrow.
mea culpa
three and a half months.
that is an awful long time to leave a blog unattended. all the usual excuses apply: ive been busy; im lazy; my dog ate my computer.
honestly part of it (although it hardly accounts for the entirety of my negligence - three and a half months?!) is that ive done some travelling: China and Japan. in that order. although im going to blog about them in reverse.
so that will get things started once more, a little travel blogging. i know that the four or five of you who happen by here have probably heard most of these stories via email and, to make matters worse, im not going to post any photos (i doubt it, anyway) with these reflections. humor me, i guess.
three and a half months is far too long to leave a little blog on its own.
keep it up and the next thing ya know im gonna get a call telling me "manisamap" was seen drinking behind the bleachers or got caught with a joint in his bookbag. some parent i am, geez...
that is an awful long time to leave a blog unattended. all the usual excuses apply: ive been busy; im lazy; my dog ate my computer.
honestly part of it (although it hardly accounts for the entirety of my negligence - three and a half months?!) is that ive done some travelling: China and Japan. in that order. although im going to blog about them in reverse.
so that will get things started once more, a little travel blogging. i know that the four or five of you who happen by here have probably heard most of these stories via email and, to make matters worse, im not going to post any photos (i doubt it, anyway) with these reflections. humor me, i guess.
three and a half months is far too long to leave a little blog on its own.
keep it up and the next thing ya know im gonna get a call telling me "manisamap" was seen drinking behind the bleachers or got caught with a joint in his bookbag. some parent i am, geez...
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