It is time for a bit of reflection. Not that I am an unreflective person or this year has been unreflective, as I have had more time alone, to think than in most other periods of my life, but it is always easier to reflect when things are beginning or ending. My time in Japan is drawing rapidly to a close. I thought the weeks would go more slowly than this. Only last week, I was counting the days until I leave. Now I worry that I do not have enough time in which to prepare to leave. It takes some preparation when leaving a place after inhabiting it for nine months. I don't want to draw any parallels to wombs, pregnancy, or childbirth, but it is a tempting metaphor.

During my stay in Japan, despite my resistance, and my chosen refusal of customary social behavior, I have not resisted everything. I do hope that many things did sink in, and that I will come to realize those things more and more in the coming weeks. There were many things that were too simple to resist. It is impossible to resist the slow changes in daily habits that occur when one moves to a drastically different location, takes on a drastically different set of jobs and roles and expectations. I was unable to resist the experience of the seasons. I was unable to resist noticing the land around me, and so many of the differences between this culture and the one in which I grew up. Some of these differences are challenging to understand on more than just a superficial level, but I know that I have felt some of these differences on a level nearing understanding. I was unable to resist the process of reflection that began the moment I set foot on this land during the humidity of summer. I have witnessed typhoons that I was drawn to compare to the tumult of my emotions during that season. I have spent hours alone with and without books, and while riding trains, and these hours have been etched in me like a story, or a finely carved image that will only be revealed at a later date.

This is reflection for you.

One other thing that I need to say is that leaving one's home country for another is not always about escaping. It is mostly about finding. I could say that it is about searching, but that is cliché. But a search inevetably takes place if something is to be found. I was not really intending to escape anything when I left the place I was before, but I was trying to find a certain center that I seemed to have lost. I am not sure that I can say that I have completely found that core, but I have begun to build it up into the beginnings of something that sits in myself, that is myself.

Sometimes I need to remind myself that I have not lost the capacity to contemplate, and analyze and evaluate, and finally to articulate. Perhaps my vocabulary has shifted from what it once was. It is simpler now, but that may also make my words a bit easier to understand, and ultimately, a bit more real. I have not closed myself off from the world, only opened my eyes onto a new part of it. My world is now larger, even if some people will never be able to see that larger world in me. I have had many moments of silence, and many moments when creativity seemed like something I left in another life, but I do not believe that I lost a success in keeping silent, or in having few words. Even if the vocabulary that I gained can not be articulated in a language, I understand that I did gain something of a new vocabulary. This vocabulary is not Japanese, nor is it English, but rather a vocabulary of spirit. It is the self, that I have been building, and will continue to build as I step in and out of countries and communities, homes, friendships, and associations.

In the mean time, I will continue to muse. I encourage anyone who happens to come across this to do the same.

On Insects

The coming of spring marks the return of the insects. Until I came to Japan, I never thought much about insects. Mosquitoes were my occasional tormentors when I traveled to tropical climes, but I never gave much thought to cockroaches or giant wasps or strange flies that seem to breed in mysterious places in my living quarters and strange insects that I am convinced chew holes in my clothes and prevent me from touching any article of clothing that has not been recently washed or stored in a very safe place. I have yet to see the insect hordes return to my apartment, but I woke the other morning to find a very large wasp outside my window. I know the cockroaches will return soon. Japan seems to be plagued with cockroaches, the likes of which I have never seen before. They come with the heavy heat of summer, I presume.

on being alone

The loneliness hasn’t hit me in a while. I can only assume that this is because I am going home soon and it is customary for people to place the kind of hope in the future that they are never able to harbor in the present. And I like waking up in the morning to the sun coming in through my windows and knowing that I can wake, shower, and lie in a pool of sunlight on my tatami with a book and a hot mug of tea without having to worry about the existence of any other human being or the fact that it is not as early as I would like it to be. It is easy to pretend that the day is newer than it really is without anyone else around to remind you of the time.

Mine is a self-centered life because there are very few other people in it at the moment. Sometimes I would rather that my life could be populated with others, but that is just not how it is at the moment. In the mornings I am never lonely until the day draws toward noon. After I have had my cup of tea and read a short story or a fragment of a novel, and showered and perhaps gone for a run or a walk and started to cook lunch, I begin to itch for something else to do, but then of course, there is the prospect of going to work in the afternoon where I do more of the same. I read. I eat snacks to pass the time while my thighs grow more and more robust. I try to tolerate children who cannot understand a word that I utter. I try to tolerate the endless conversations about the weather with the adults. In the summer we talk about the humidity and the coming of the typhoons. “I hear this summer is the hottest in years.” “I hear there hasn’t been a typhoon this big in your lifetime.” In the autumn we talk of the falling leaves. “Yes, leaves change colors in the autumn in America too.” In the winter conversation is about the cold. In the spring, we speak of blossoms. “I went to hanami on Sunday, they say.” “There are beautiful blossoms in Nara prefecture. I would like to go there someday.” It is when I hear these sorts of conversations that I know I am bored. I tried to read a book about this sort of boredom, the kind that kills all inspiration and drives a person to laziness. The book was too disturbing at the time. I thought it would drive me into the same state of intellectual stagnation that the protagonist faced. I stopped reading the book, but I still think about it sometimes when I cannot think of anything that could possibly please me.

When I come home at night, I know that there are important things that I must do. I must write to magazine editors and inform them that I would make a good candidate for an internship. I must fill out tax forms and design the cover of a zine. I must plan the vacation that I aim to take during the week before I return home. But I enter my apartment at 9:30 pm and it is inexplicably lonely. The dishes from lunch lie unwashed in the sink. There is no pool of light warming the tatami. I am tired of reading trashy novels in bed to pass the time. I know that I will not have any new email as all my friends in Washington or California, or Colorado (or wherever they may be) have been asleep for hours now and I checked my email before I went to work. I find that I want to eat another snack to fill the emptiness. I want cereal with milk, or canned peaches and yogurt, or cheese and crackers, or perhaps just another cup of tea, but I am unable to decide. Eating is not a substitute for companionship. Perhaps if I eat enough chocolate . . .but I know that will not change how I feel. In the morning I will feel different, just as long as the sunlight remains on my tatami and I can sit on a blanket with a book while my hair dries leaving faint scent-traces of shampoo in the air. In the morning I can read something about vampires and it won’t have the ability to induce strange dreams. In the morning I can plan my vacation and write to magazine-men and wash the dishes from today’s lunch. In the morning I can eat peaches and yogurt or cereal and milk and drink a fresh cup of tea. In the morning I can dream more of my future. Tonight, I will take my chick-lit novel to my bed and read until I am bored enough to sleep. Or perhaps I’ll leave that until tomorrow as well.

cherry blossoms

Every year in Japan, winter dies with the birth of Sakura, cherry blossoms. And when the blooms erupt all over hillsides, and in parks, looking almost snow-like, people emerge from their homes en-masse to picnic beneath the trees. Cherry blossoms are so popular that they have become cliché. People in the past composed glorious haiku about them pop stars today sing songs about them, and parents name their little girls after them. I would think adults would grow cynical and tired of the tradition of hanami, the cherry blossom viewing party, but neither young now old seem to grow weary of this seasonal occurrence. The blossoms are only around for a few weeks and everyone wants to take advantage of the change in the weather, not to mention, an excuse to party. People grill lunch on portable barbeques while gazing at the volume of pink overhead, the wind comes, the floating petals look like snow, and the scene is just, oh so Japanese.

Sunday Cherry Blossoms

The cherry blossoms are in full bloom all across Japan. Everyone is spending the few Sundays that are graced by the blooms outside under the trees.

matsuyamacastle

Matsuyama Castle

blossoms in hiroshima

abombdome
Originally uploaded by the ghostis.

The atom bomb dome is a ghost of a terrible past set in the midst of a modern city that almost wants to forget its phantoms. The dome is preserved as a memory, a terrible memory. But blossoms emerge in the spring-time even in front of this terrible ediface that begs a memory of something so unlike flowers.

superlovers

superlovers
Originally uploaded by the ghostis.

Are you a superlover? Do you wear your hair like Elvis? Do you sport aviator shades and dangle a cigarette from your lips? Do you have it written on the back of your plaid flannel shirt?

a cash based economy

Before I came to Japan, I heard that most people who live here rely primarily on cash. This means that people do not frequently use credit cards and that stores that actually take credit cards are relatively rare. This invariably makes certain things a bit difficult, like ordering things on the internet and buying plane tickets from travel agents in other cities. But the Japanese have managed to get around all this. There are bank transfers for things like buying plane tickets, and COD for ordering English language books off the internet. For everyday shopping, there is good old fashioned paper money.

Because I have been living in Japan for the good part of a year I now know that it is common for people to carry the equivalent of a few hundred dollars in cash around with them in their wallets when not intending on actually using the cash to make a hefty purchase. But I have never, until last night, witnessed anyone whip out a very large sum of money in public and proceed to arrange it in plain view of anyone who might happen to be looking. The train heading east from Matsuyama was not particularly crowded after it emptied out at Imabari. An older man stepped onto the train at Iyo-Saijo who looked like the usual old-men train passenger. He was wearing rather non-descript old wool pants, a jacket with a chest-pocket and carrying an Adidas draw-string tote bag that some people might use to carry athletic shoes. After taking a seat, he proceeded to open the bag, and take out a wad of 5 10,000 yen notes which he displayed in such a way that allowed me to count them before he rolled them up and zipped them into the pocket of his jacket. After an interval of a few seconds, he reached into his bag again and pulled out another stack of 10,000 yen bills. He did the same with these. Just when I thought he was done, he repeated this procedure again. After zipping the three rolls of money into his pocket, he patted it down to evaluate his arrangement. After deciding that it was not sufficient, he pulled all three rolls of cash out of his pocket, stacked them into one large wad, rolled them one last time, and put them back into the pocket. There were no less than 10 10,000 yen notes in the roll. And he didn't seem to be at all concerned that he had pulled out this sum of money in public and I had seen him complete the entire procedure. I began to wonder if he had been betting on the races and happened to be very lucky that day.

Now I understand the nature of Japan's cash based economy a bit better.

This country

My goodbye was a tear that flashed against a window for a moment
As a plane rose into the air.

My welcome was the thick, wet of summer
and the violent hum of the cicadas
that threatened to drown my ears.
The air was comparable to the center of a tear.

On the train,
I cried
Summoning every filiment of moisture
That had settled in me over the years
Decorating the underside of my skin
In ornate twinings
And multitudes of sea matter
That the dull, wet country
Would exorcise.

My experience
was a vast blank
Gray
In my eyes,
Ironically zen.

It was hard to imagine any place less voluptuous
Despite the heat of summer
With the incessant chirp of lewd insects
Scraping at the heated earth,
With the constant scuttling of cockroaches that
Haunted every dwelling like small, dark, metallic ghosts.

It was difficult to imagine anything but a closing of my spirit in this country
When I was seeking something more akin to an unfurling.

My goodbye will be an expectant tentacle reaching
For the beginning of a summer
Filled with the odor of the sun sucking at ripe grapes and drying grasses.

festival umbrellas

festival umbrellas

It is supposed to be spring but it is raining. It is raining on a festival day and the only thing one can hope to do is huddle under a plastic umbrella on the sea wall eating tako-yaki and ice cream waiting for the rain to pass.

Chosa

Kanonji residents are extraordinarily proud of their chosas-large, ornate pallanquin-like portable shrines bedecked in gold-braid and elaborate upholstery that the city's men pull through the streets in the annual autimn harvest festival. They are so proud of this ancient rite, in fact, that they hauled out all of the city's chosas to host the ancestral festival on overdrive in celebration of Kanonji's 50th anniversary. Weeks before the festival-day, all the neighborhood men gathered to asseble the chosas and make them ready for the day. On the Suday of the festival, the chosa-barers dressed in a uniform of workers' garments and a traditional hapi jacket emblazoned with neghborhood names. Upwards of 100 men pulled each three-ton chosa to the parking lot of Areake beach where the festivities were to take place.

Thousands of people had gathered to watch the different neighborhoods compete against each other in chosa lifting contest and carrying races. Some people came from as far away as Osaka to join in the festivities. Unfortunately, it was drizzling on this particular Sunday, and by mid afternoon, it had begun to rain. Many of the chosas were covered in transparent plastic to keep off the rain, but the contests were still raging. Men hefting chosas to the sound of encouraging words and whistles blended together to form the cacauphony that marks this unusual ritual. Neaby vendors had set up to keep the crowds appeased with tako-yaki and beer, crepes and soda, and chocolate covered bananas. Girls in mini skirts and high heeled boots chatted underneath umbrellas. Boys with Elvis hair and plit-toed construction-workers' boots waited their turn to join in the competition. Small childred were licking ice cream cones. Men were drinking been. Everyone was celebrating in the rain on a day that was supposed ot have fallen into spring.

chosa

Osaka on the Weekend

The midget sat on the faded plush train seat, her feet dangling in the air several inches from the floor. She was accustomed to other people’s stares. The mountain climber, though he was getting on in years, was taking advantage of the coming of spring. That morning he donned his red hat and vest packed his backpack and headed off to catch the train. He had not anticipated sitting next to the midget. The spring equinox is a national holiday in Japan so the trains were bustling on this particular Sunday. When we all exited the train at Sakaide Station, I lost sight of the midget and the mountain climber.

In Okayama, students dressed to graduate were ordering coffee at Starbucks, taking care not to spill the hot beverages onto their immaculate kimono. On the train platform, everyone seemed headed for Osaka. People were already lined up a half hour before the train was set to arrive. One young woman who seemed to have repressed gothic fantasies by the look of her hairstyle, and her purse, was walking back and forth on the platform with her mother trying to find the best place in the line. Neither wanted to be seen near the woman with the joke-shop worthy buckteeth.

The train arrived to the sounds of “I’ve been working on the railroad” right on time and the throngs rushed for the doors anxious to get seated. I managed to squeeze into a seat across from the pseudo-goth woman who promptly put her large, gray and black purse in her lap and fell asleep with her mouth open. When the train finally stopped at Umeda Station in Osaka, everyone streamed out of the train-cars into the mass of people thronging through the station. It had been a long time since I had set foot in a large city and it was difficult to navigate through the pedestrian traffic swarming through the station.

Namba was teeming with people as well. And the people looked a bit more polished than the people on Shikoku. Their jackets were crisp and looked expensive. Or alternately, they were costumed like no one on Shikoku can ever get away with. The gothic Lolita girls swarmed through America Mura drinking in stares. A clown couple sat in the concrete plaza waiting for something. Goth shops beckoned.

By the time I headed off to Karaoke with the group of friends I had met up with earlier that evening, I was not exactly in the mood for singing. When I finally attempted a song my voice came out off-key and cracking. The internet café where we decided to spend the night was not much better, but since all the love hotels were booked, it appeared to be the only option within price range at that time of night. The plastic cubicle that guarded me was not a barrier against the sounds in the room or the smell of cigarettes that permeated every pore of the odd place. I went to sleep to the sound of phones ringing and woke up to strange rustlings at least every half hour. One hundred stories were taking place in that room, but they were all guarded from each other by the blue, plastic cubicle walls.

Gloomy Bear

Gloomy and artist
Originally uploaded by the ghostis.

It is a busy afternoon in America town, Osaka’s own answer to the persistent Japanese fascination with all things American, including clothing found in American thrift stores and marked up to exorbitant prices. Gothic Lolita girls stroll the streets in pairs showing off their French-maid style dresses. Outside the Gloomy Bear shop, a plush, Gloomy mascot attacks passers by. Only a few escape without at least a slight mauling. Inside, the artist is signing merchandise. The shop sells everything from key chains and stuffed toys to giant attachable Gloomy arms in several colors to fulfill strange fetishes. After completing the signing session, the artist exits the store to pose with the Gloomy Bear outside the store. They sit on the curb together while fans snap pictures.

Gloomy advances on his prey
Originally uploaded by the ghostis.