Waking Up in Sendai

The day starts very early, here in Sendai, because there is something distinctly off-kilter about our time-zone, here. The sky begins to get light at about 4:45 AM and the local temple on the bluff above our apartment rings its big bell at 5:00 AM. Having become used to the good, hard tatami-style mattress of our bed (and being wise to the good, hard pillows, I brought my own squishy old feather pillow from home), and the comforters that don’t tuck in and are a bit short for large gaijin like us, so that we wear good, warm socks, I am sleeping better, but still, when the temple bell goes, it is pretty much time to get up. Or one can at least start pondering life in general, doze a bit, and then get up at 6:00ish. The other thing that keeps one from sleeping well here is all the interesting new things one learns – this was a much worse problem, the last time we were here…

After maybe going for a run along the river, after first saluting Jizu in his little shrine at the trail head (patron Buddhist saint of children; the shrine is well-lit, locally famous, and visited night and day), having some cereal or toast (of the large, square, white variety) and beautiful local eggs (very orange yolks!) or maybe a fishcake or two (or cream cheese from Walmart, which owns the local Seiyu Grocery chain) and some good Maxim coffee, and juice from the 7-11 (combini – convenience stores – are a real necessity to life here, serving as latterie to buy milk and food and underwear and manga and also where you pay your power bills, get cash…), we carefully manage not to take showers while the other person is either shaving or doing dishes (no dishwashing machine), so that the water is super-hot.

Once all ablutions, beautifications, and dressings are completed, we pack up our computers in our packs/shoulder bags, try to decide which coat to wear and whether or not we should be wearing long-johns today or take our clear-plastic umbrellas or what, shoehorn ourselves into our shoes by the front door (leaving behind our slippers, facing inward for our return later), lock up and descend the 4 floors to the ground. There, we can turn either right or left, and will wend our way along the narrow, tidy, sober, well-paved streets of Kome-ga-fukuro (our neighborhood) to get east and north to the main road, across which extends the university, a matter of 15 minute walk or so away. We might pass the little mom-and-pop store which mostly sells sake and gardening supplies, or the gorgeous traditional house with its generous garden, or the amazingly attractive corner café with its tiny garden of trees and flowers, or the gardens with the various camellias, always in bloom: huge and pink, with long yellow centers, small and red, with bright yellow centers, pink and many-petalled, like roses, white and poetically fading to brown, all with their perfect, glossy, dark leaves. The star magnolias are ready to burst into incredible bloom, like huge white roses, and without any leaves, as yet: Robin has coined the word magnolificent to describe them, the plums are fading, and the pink sakura are about to amaze the world, along the river, in gardens, everywhere.

Enough for now! Tomorrow: the rest of the day!