Back to Japan

Where to start? The last month’s writing energies have been siphoned off to other efforts: trying to say something inspirational to a school-full of folks looking for good news, as I get ready to take over the Headship at Saint Michael’s; trying to revise novel number one so that someone will take a second look at it, a third look and then, God willing, launch the thing; trying to write little notes to accompany the photographs, coming from Sendai, where I’ve been since the 29th of March.

Sendai, Japan, that is, Miyagi Prefecture, in the region known as Tohoku, “East-North” in the cool latitudes of upper-middle Honshu. Robin and I lived here for six months, back in the the spring of 2006, and so the place feels like home, but it is mighty exotic, if we sit back and consider, and if this had been our first visit, culture shock would likely be extreme, although back in the States sushi and sashimi are not the unusual things they were in the ‘70s. He and I met through the Berkeley-Sakai Sister-City Student Exchange program: I was in the 1973 batch going to Japan and he went in 1975; we met at a party for the incoming Japanese students in 1974. He was seventeen, I was eighteen, and thereby hangs a tale. How long have we been married, now? Thirty-one years? The good news is that being in the same office all day and a small apartment all night doesn’t seem to be a bad thing…

When we were here in 2006, it had been 33 years since I had last been in Japan, and picturesque Godai-do shrine in Matsushima Bay (go online and admire it: it is adorable!) was open that spring, as it is, once every 33 years… some kind of significance there, I expect. But I was first in Japan as a little girl of 8, on our way to India, where we would be for nearly four years, with trips home every year, after the first summer, and those taken slowly through intervening opportunities of the Levant, Europe, and Asia. I recall staying at the Ginza Tokyu Hotel, and learning from a tall, slender waiter to ask properly for water: o-mizu, kudasai! and also remember standing on the cold shinkansen platform, waiting and waiting for a bullet train that would never come: the only time the bullet train was stopped on account of snow in its entire history, and that was its first year of operation. Instead, we had to take a plane to Kyoto, a low-flying commuter plane, probably a DC-3, and when Fuji-san was announced as being outside the right side of the plane, you can bet that it was justoutside the right side of the plane, gleaming gorgeous with a mantle of snow. And much else… that’s another book lying written and unread, which needs sprucing up and sending out again!

But what of Sendai, city on the beautiful Hirose-gawa, winding like three rivers through the heart of town, past the wooded hill where its founder, Date Masamune, lies entombed in a splendid reproduction of the Momoyama style tomb that burned to the ground in the blitz? Sendai, with its backdrop of mountains, looking out to the sea like a small San Francisco? It is called “the city of trees,” since after the war it was rebuilt in the image of a new, more beautiful, culturally-rich, forward-looking place, a place with broad boulevards lined with zelkova and cherry trees, with a symphony orchestra, a chamber music group, several choirs (including the wonderful Sendai Baroque Ensemble, which we heard sing Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Christi at the local Baptist church, the night before Easter), and a classical music competition (everybody you talk to seems to have a daughter who studies clarinet or piano). It is a place where if you drop a glove or a necklace or a set of keys, it is put on the nearest high surface, awaiting your return, a place where, as you take your morning run beside the river, you see eagles, swooping to clear the high school campus of mice or try to snag your sandwich, pheasants peering bashfully at you through the willows, ducks both plain and extremely fancy, poking along the shore, brilliant, black-and-white wagtails skimming the surface of the water, and loons, fishing in mid-stream. The tips of the tree branches are blushing pale green or pale pink, and the sakura are daily expected: the venerable weeping cherry in the courtyard of the Institute has dark-red buds ready to open on the next sunny day.

And the people! The people greet you as you run with a courtly nod and an ohio-gozaimasu! as you pass them with their beagles, or as they pass you with their far-superior running skills. And when you compliment the hearty old ladies, doing their exercises with a cheerful genki desu! (roughly “you are very healthy!” or “you’re terrific!”), they smile delightedly back. People at a concert of baroque music will sit on folding chairs or will stand, rapt, for two hours of serious, heart-felt attention. When you eat at that Italian restaurant in the basement of the mall, and you forgetfully leave una buona mancia (“a good little something for the hand” – in Italy or France, about $1.00), the waiter chases you with it, up the stairs. Children gape at you – not that many like you, hereabouts – and when you look in the mirror, you think gosh, you really are pretty odd-looking! Oh, there’s just too much. It is a great place to write, that’s for sure.

If you’d like to read what I wrote about visiting Shiogama, just to the north of Sendai, after our last visit here, go to the 2009 edition of youarehere, the journal of creative geography, at www.u.arizona.edu/~urhere/, and look for “On the Shores of Sendai-Wan.”

ja, mata!