I did manage to take the right bus this time (really, after more than a year in Korea this shouldn’t be a problem) and after just two short hours (it takes me longer to get from my house to the airport than it does getting from the airport to China!) I touched down in Hangzhou.
Waiting at the airport for me – snacks and colorful “T. Paul Buzan Welcome to Hangzhou” sign in hand – was my friend C. Unfortunately, C. was also waiting for me at the airport yesterday (I couldn’t get a message off to her until after she’d left her apartment) so I was all kinds of apologetic at first.
I promised to make amends through dinner and/or drinks and the ever amiable C. seemed satisfied.
My little bus hiccup at the start of this journey notwithstanding I’ve gotten to a point where essential day-to-day Korean – getting around by cab, ordering food, telling a girl she looks pretty – isn’t too tall an order. So it is strange to be back in a place where I have all the linguistic aptitude of a babbling infant. Bacon once wrote, “He that travels into a country before he has some entrance into the language goes to school and not to travel”. With my Mandarin limited to just “hello” and “thanks” I reckon I’ll be putting Bacon’s maxim to the test.
C. on the other hand, who is on her fourth year in China, was wheeling and dealing in sounds that only confused me and before you knew it we were being herded (along with more people than I thought reasonably safe) onto a very crowded bus.
My view from the bus gave me my first taste of China: narrow, three and four-storey buildings built along the highway (they reminded me of tenement housing in NYC) with scraggy looking gardens in front of them (popular housing with the nouveu-riche, I learned); an incredible number of people riding about on bicycles; a preponderance of Western establishments like Starbucks and McDonald’s; lots of big, shiny buildings with men in suits milling about them; foreign cars of every make and model – Mercedes’, Fords, Audis – on the road.
I try my best to travel with no expectations or preconceptions about a place. In travel, as in much of life, these tend to lead to disappointment; or, at the very least, they can obscure the true nature of a thing making it hard to appreciate it for what it is. But I couldn’t help finding myself surprised by my first impressions of China: everything was so new, so modern, so moneyed. I don’t know what exactly I may have been expecting, but I guess that wasn’t it.
On our way into Hangzhou proper C. and I made a couple of transfers and each bus (improbably) was more crowded than the last. Despite the crowds I noticed a serious reluctance on the part of the locals to sit next to the two chatty foreigners. That much is similar to Korea. I wouldn’t call it rudeness so much as a certain shyness. And perhaps, at least in my case, it is well-founded: I usually reward the brave or desperate soul who sits next to me with a (no doubt obnoxious) degree of talkative friendliness.
When we arrived at Hangzhou Normal University (where C. lives and teaches) a light rain was falling – more like a mist, actually. We made our way through the drizzle and throngs of students to the dormitory C. shares with her friend J. Although J. has her own (by Korean standards) ridiculously spacious apartment she shares one with C. (they refer to their set-up as a “trial marriage”) and a grumpy, overweight cat named “Xiao Fu”. After introductions (J. offered me the sole use of her apartment during my stay – awesome!) the three of us headed off with another teacher for dinner at a local French restaurant.
The food I ordered – salmon pasta and an incredible tomato basil soup – was excellent. There was also wine. I couldn’t give you the specifics (my tastes are provincial: I eat like a Viking and drink like a peasant) but it was tasty and complimented the meal very well. And it was so good to be eating something that wasn’t rice or fermented cabbage for a change.
Now don’t get me wrong: I love Korean food. I mean I L-O-V-E it. When I finally make my way back to the States it is gonna be hard to go without my daily dose of gimchee. But when you’ve been eating one type of food pretty exclusively for a year-and-a-half a little variety, and especially variety of such a delicious quality, is awfully nice.
A few hours and a full belly later we headed back to the dormitory. Decided to keep things chill the first night: I got a big week coming up.
Friday, 19 June 2009
Monday, 15 June 2009
China: Day One
NB: In early-February 2009 I took a trip to China. Although I wrote my impressions down as I travelled, I am only now getting around to posting them.
China Day One:
I missed my flight.
In my haste and excitement I took a bus to Incheon City instead of taking one to Incheon Airport. Sadly the two places aren’t as close as their shared name might imply and I arrived at the airport just moments after they shut the gate on China Air Flight C34.
Not exactly an auspicious start to my travels.
Luckily I was able to reschedule my flight for tomorrow (thanks Lottie! You’re a gem!) so it isn’t exactly a disaster. Just an extra four hours on the bus.
But, hey, so long as I take the right bus next time you won’t hear me complaining.
China Day One:
I missed my flight.
In my haste and excitement I took a bus to Incheon City instead of taking one to Incheon Airport. Sadly the two places aren’t as close as their shared name might imply and I arrived at the airport just moments after they shut the gate on China Air Flight C34.
Not exactly an auspicious start to my travels.
Luckily I was able to reschedule my flight for tomorrow (thanks Lottie! You’re a gem!) so it isn’t exactly a disaster. Just an extra four hours on the bus.
But, hey, so long as I take the right bus next time you won’t hear me complaining.
No. 9
The boy standing in front of my desk at school is in the third grade. Nine years old. Smaller than the other boys his age; his friends call him “anchovy”. He’s a good kid: listens during class and gets a kick out of using English.
Today, like most days, he’s all smiles.
But it isn’t just his good nature that has him grinning. Today he’s showing off. There’s a gap right in the middle of his mouth; a hint of white pushing through the cradle of an old baby tooth.
Only in childhood (and maybe among some professional fighters) is a missing tooth cause for jubilation, a badge of honor. My little friend wears it well. He is all semi-toothy grin and exuberance; obviously elated at this rite of passage and (perhaps?) the prospect of having less territory to cover toothbrush in hand at the start and end of his day.
He couldn’t be excited about a visit from the Tooth Fairy.
Her wings don’t carry her quite so far as Korea. Over here there is a custom in which children take their lost teeth and pitch them with all their might onto the roof of their home or a neighborhood building.
There is something about the idea of these milk teeth in gutters or on rooftops, orphaned, cut-off from the current of other childhood mementos – school pictures, a stuffed animal, a blanket – that makes me sad.
A tangible reminder of innocence and youth surrendered to the unreliable services of memory.
Today, like most days, he’s all smiles.
But it isn’t just his good nature that has him grinning. Today he’s showing off. There’s a gap right in the middle of his mouth; a hint of white pushing through the cradle of an old baby tooth.
Only in childhood (and maybe among some professional fighters) is a missing tooth cause for jubilation, a badge of honor. My little friend wears it well. He is all semi-toothy grin and exuberance; obviously elated at this rite of passage and (perhaps?) the prospect of having less territory to cover toothbrush in hand at the start and end of his day.
He couldn’t be excited about a visit from the Tooth Fairy.
Her wings don’t carry her quite so far as Korea. Over here there is a custom in which children take their lost teeth and pitch them with all their might onto the roof of their home or a neighborhood building.
There is something about the idea of these milk teeth in gutters or on rooftops, orphaned, cut-off from the current of other childhood mementos – school pictures, a stuffed animal, a blanket – that makes me sad.
A tangible reminder of innocence and youth surrendered to the unreliable services of memory.
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
No. 8
The thing about most figures of speech is that they don’t typically signify anything in a literal sense.
For example, are clams actually happy? If you “sleep like a baby” wouldn’t you in fact be waking up hourly to squall and suckle? And what about the familiar expression “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck”? That old chestnut bantered about during flu season or after a night of heavy drinking. I mean, people obviously aren’t likening a hangover to being smacked by a Mack, right?
Of course not. Well, not most people anyway. But I imagine there are a handful of folks out there who can lend credence to that worn-out platitude through their own personal experience.
As of last Saturday I can count myself among them.
Lucky me.
It was one of those early-summer weekends that are vouchsafed to us as gift, an apology maybe, for the imminent heat and humidity of July through September. The breeze was fresh and cool, the temperature temperate, the sky painted in the blue of childhood summer vacations; the kind of weekend that screamed, “Ride em if ya got em, boys!”
That was all I wanted out of my Saturday: a nice, leisurely ride about town on my bicycle. It had been raining the weekend before and the one before that I’d had friends in town so it was going on the better part of three weeks since I’d last been out. And with the weather about to take a turn towards the hellish I admit to feeling a touch of desperation.
Maybe that was the problem. You want something too badly and it clouds your judgment; impairs your perception and makes you susceptible to being blindsided.
I didn’t see the truck coming. There were two vans parked at the curb and I – incredibly stupidly – took the crosswalk blind. Sure I had the green but this is Korea. The Koreans are a lot of great things, but safe driver’s aint one of them.
When he hit me – flush on my left side – I went airborne. No doubt through years of action movie conditioning it was like I could see my body in third-person spinning, none too gracefully, head-over-heels and spilling, with equal awkwardness, all over the asphalt. I rolled a few times and staggered to my feet. I’d been hit with enough force to have my wallet knocked outta my back pocket; coins were gleaming in the sun. My bike was totaled. I was bleeding hard from my foot.
I was pretty banged up and would need near twenty stitches in my heel but, rather miraculously, no broken bones. In fact, I’ve yet to break a bone, so I’ve still got that going for me. But I think this has effectively put the kibosh on my dreams of becoming a professional foot model.
All in all I count myself lucky. Well, as lucky as you can count yerself when getting hit by a truck is involved. It sure could’ve been a lot worse.
For example, are clams actually happy? If you “sleep like a baby” wouldn’t you in fact be waking up hourly to squall and suckle? And what about the familiar expression “I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck”? That old chestnut bantered about during flu season or after a night of heavy drinking. I mean, people obviously aren’t likening a hangover to being smacked by a Mack, right?
Of course not. Well, not most people anyway. But I imagine there are a handful of folks out there who can lend credence to that worn-out platitude through their own personal experience.
As of last Saturday I can count myself among them.
Lucky me.
It was one of those early-summer weekends that are vouchsafed to us as gift, an apology maybe, for the imminent heat and humidity of July through September. The breeze was fresh and cool, the temperature temperate, the sky painted in the blue of childhood summer vacations; the kind of weekend that screamed, “Ride em if ya got em, boys!”
That was all I wanted out of my Saturday: a nice, leisurely ride about town on my bicycle. It had been raining the weekend before and the one before that I’d had friends in town so it was going on the better part of three weeks since I’d last been out. And with the weather about to take a turn towards the hellish I admit to feeling a touch of desperation.
Maybe that was the problem. You want something too badly and it clouds your judgment; impairs your perception and makes you susceptible to being blindsided.
I didn’t see the truck coming. There were two vans parked at the curb and I – incredibly stupidly – took the crosswalk blind. Sure I had the green but this is Korea. The Koreans are a lot of great things, but safe driver’s aint one of them.
When he hit me – flush on my left side – I went airborne. No doubt through years of action movie conditioning it was like I could see my body in third-person spinning, none too gracefully, head-over-heels and spilling, with equal awkwardness, all over the asphalt. I rolled a few times and staggered to my feet. I’d been hit with enough force to have my wallet knocked outta my back pocket; coins were gleaming in the sun. My bike was totaled. I was bleeding hard from my foot.
I was pretty banged up and would need near twenty stitches in my heel but, rather miraculously, no broken bones. In fact, I’ve yet to break a bone, so I’ve still got that going for me. But I think this has effectively put the kibosh on my dreams of becoming a professional foot model.
All in all I count myself lucky. Well, as lucky as you can count yerself when getting hit by a truck is involved. It sure could’ve been a lot worse.
Sunday, 24 May 2009
Japan: Postscript
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.
“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.
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.
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