松陰庵尼寺

I

I am going out on a warm spring Sunday in search of... I'm interested in cracks and crevasses--backwaters that the thrust of time hasn't molded in the same way as the great in tune mass of Ferris wheel turnings. 

On a bridge over Yada river I stopped to watch some large carp(?) swimming gently to stay stationary and had a conversation with a cute older Japanese woman who also liked the river. She too was surprised by the size of the fish.

松院庵 Plum blossoms

Over the river I sniffed around the area that Yumiko grew up--trying to sense shadows across 25 years of change. The new buildings and Plexiglas car ports didn't see her playing here. Around the back side of the block an abandoned building, gate falling in, the yard a wild tropic chaos, an old sleeping Japanese wooden house, might have heard her voice...

Up the hill, nose pointing north with the Shonai river in my imaginative periphery, I circumnavigated a large wall for a whole block that looked like it had been left to go it's own way. When I found the fourth side and the gates I started taking some shots of the grounds of the somewhat mysterious grounds and a lady who live acroos the street told me that if I wanted to I could go in a take pictures. Here are some:

This is still in the city

Stone in the empty temple

Notice the curvy wooden beam

A quite old building with thatched roof

Not a person moved as I poked around wondering. Everyone had moved on past. The lady from across the street told me, "Yes, the main building is very old but that pine tree is very old." She told me that it was a nuns' temple and that she had allowed me in because she had been there but in the future I should not believe I could enter freely. I understood and appreciated her kindness and my adventurer's luck.

I wouldn't think that 松院庵 will remain this way for long but you never know what will happen in Japan. Things seem to move in illogical ways.

PS  We've been cleaning out our home for almost two months and one of the bottlenecks is that (because of the recycling regulations) trash it is very hard to get rid of. (This has the effect of causing people to accumulate all sorts of garbage.) That being said it is very easy for the culture to let go of old Japanese ways--beautiful wooden houses not repaired but torn down and little shops are replaced by bigger shopping centers. There are same economic engines and pressures everywhere, I guess. ではまたね。

Art Bike with Wings

Art exhibit at the end of the ride

 If I ran for president it would be on a platform of the simple intelligence of bikes. I had a good bike in NYC and used it with fever, crossing the Brooklyn bridge, shooting to the Grand Army Plaza farmer's market. It was my method of travel when we lived by the Lower East River in Red Hook, but Lynn Hill and New Hampshire distances put my biking in a moribund state.
Mr. Goe (real name) is a JAL pilot who was leaving Nagoya and had a lovely Land Rover bike that he was happy to sell me. Recently I've have been whipping around exploring Higashi ku and looking at the snow covered mountains that beckon in the distance. Today we would be happy with parks and an art show at the end.

With Kaime in front of me we made for Heiwa Koen (Peace Park-- which, as it turns out, is occupied to a great extend by the no longer living). We climbed a great hill and at a temple on the top there was a priest burning something (it reminded me of the ghats on the Ganges in Varanasi). Down at the pond we ate our lunch and watched some Japanese and  ducks fishing. (Of the two groups the ducks were more graceful, active and hopefully somewhat more successful than their human counterparts.

K plays for the ducks

 We pedaled back to Chayagasaka Koen (Tea Shop Hill Park) and Kaime climbed on the sundial.

climbing

 

.
From there we headed back down the hill and homeward where close to the Nagoya Dome at a College of Education there was art show by the students of Yumiko's old college art teacher,
We had to park our bike down in the subterranean labyrinths (but there were conveyor belts to help you bring the bikes back up on the way out.)

It was good to go to an art show again--it's been such awhile--and it was just minutes from our home by foot or bike.A nice aperitif  after riding up and down hill-- boy in front of me--through city streets, searching for that elusive Japanese view. Here were young artists full of ideas and passion doing it--learning to do it. It put me in a moving, curving state of mind--like surfing--that I like a lot.

It's doubly fun to look at art in foreign countries. Somehow the language element falls away and my local biases and prejudices are somewhat suspended.

Anvil Zone

Fish in a pond

Green and light blue plays

Right in the middle

The wind blows

About your lips

And dreamed

I heard a quiet time

In the anvil zone

Ever if ever

A line could hold

So much

And dreamed

I heard a quiet time

In the anvil zone

Ever if ever

A line could hold

Most dear to me

So much

 

Pulsing

Toward the middle

Rocking

Pulling,

Toward the abyss

Intermittent showers

Spirits in the next room

Cut the lights

Such simple strokes

A silhouette

Legs by early morning

I exhale pools

Blow out green and violet

And watch you crying

Colored world

Seems like a fine day today. Big interview at 1:30. I'd better go out and explore...日本。ではまた。

Mr. Murakami and the straw donkey

Perry in Yokohama

When I was working on the Dream issue for the Cold River Review I had a dream that was woven into a  Haruki Murakami novel. It gave me some confidence that I would be able to interview him for the issue. In Mr. Murakami's worlds the lives of somewhat flat heroes are layered through tunnels of the subconscious and the surreal. That played right into the fantasy that my dream had meaning to not only me but to him. But as many threads in his novels do the anticipation ended without any tidy resolution. Time past without the interview.The dream comes up again.
I'm looking at a picture of Admiral Perry's black ships. The Americans and the Japanese on the sea-saw. Freedom and individually on one side and conformity and cooperation on the other. The attraction of opposites. Inexorably drawn by the strong contrast.
For years I've had this recurring dream of being in Japan--usually I'm entering the complicated labyrinths of the subway systems. Usually trying to remember the way to get to a friend's and to also try to once again gain my footing in Japan. There are always little shops selling sushi and other Japanese delectables. "I must be in Japan again," I think to myself with both excitement and anticipation. So I most naturally assume.

the Tokyo system

Well, "I must be in Japan again," I thought outside a little shop in a larger store (mall?) as I had a déjà vu that was so strong I had to sit down to let it pass. I really lost track of what was what--a kind of spiral of some strange awareness that I only hear an echo of, crashing on me. How to decipher any of it.

shopping

Always the non in non-conformist, the one who gave the teacher pains, I find myself so inextricably drawn to this culture of rule, protocol, hierarchy, custom and conformity. Why?.
What is totally amazing to me is that this group mind works--(at least on one level) a well tuned Miataki machine.
On the way at 7:30 PM to teach I'm baffled by how the buses not only come exactly on time but that the bus stops have an audio announcement telling that bus so and so is going to be arriving shortly. In Japanese and English. 凄いですね。
While waiting for an interview in an overly hot room my flu/cold started really hitting me. I felt faint and dizzy, heart started skipping and palpitating. I was lost in a Murakami moment of torture, blood spurting all over, for all my demons we're getting in their punches. My body might have been sweating a little--maybe I had a fever--but inside I was truly being roasted. The only way out that I came up with was the sword of beneficence--chanting and smiling-- while I was being carved up.
I got back to Sunadabashi just in time to pick Kaime up from his school. Walking back home with him, talking and drinking Grape Fanta; the wind was strong enough for a good kite day.

Today I am sick enough not to go out but the demons are sleeping...mostly. (The dead body in the locker by the swimming pool woke me up even though it being there was totally reasonable.)

OK to Love a Second Time?

Cold with a windy wetness that cuts right through to the you of you, especially if you've been walking all day. It turns me on. It makes me so happy to be using my legs as a method for covering the distance and seeing over the horizon, or in this case more correctly past the next group of buildings and intersections. I feel the earth move under my feet. The tatami maker I talked to smiled and looked at me as if I must be joking . . . thinking that having 5 tatamis recovered would somehow bring the price down per tatami.

A local Jinga

Down by the banks of the river Yada I finally had a chance to talk to one of the "pirate" gardeners. I meant to just ask him if I could  take his picture but we got to talking about gardening and he urged me to join--the next plot was available he said. He smiled and laughed a lot as did I. I want to do it. Farming on public land in the heart of a major city is so spicy. How could the pirate and the gardener in me resist? Fun, fun! And to shoot the video of the river, the gardeners--city in the background and my garden. Very sweet revolution. After smiles and handshakes I forgot all about taking the picture.

A  View of The Yada River

Kaime's 1st day at his "保育園"--his Japanese kindergarten. He's really being thrown into a different sea but he seems game for it and I'm so excited to hear his report when he comes home this afternoon. The boy prattles on in English non-stop and I wonder if being surrounded by kids who don't get it will slow him down or if he'll gracefully segue into Japanese.

 

Kaime practicing

push and pull

Tradition vs. innovation, the practical vs. aesthetics and the collective vs. the individual.
These "which ways" as Kaime calls them are the bones of culture and language and our own personalities.
As we hunt for a school for Kaime having these things line up in a way we like seems such an important matter.
To a large degree we crossed the Hudson Bay and the Arctic Circle and came here to offer Kaime an expanded view--a view different from the one he might get if he grew up exclusively in Acworth.
Of course I look at the Japanese aesthetic with freshness of non-native eyes too. I am continually surprised.
The other day we went to meet a violin teacher--quite an accomplished violinist--who by pure luck and chance is living right here in the same group of buildings. When we went in her door it was like a contest of apologies, Ms. Morimoto was apologizing about the size and quality of her home and Yumiko was apologizing about our intruding into her lovely space. I had a hard time believing it, but they were very serious about going through all the twists and turns.
American are from the wild wild west. The  private space and individual characteristic are thought to be as scared as one right to own collect and in some cases carry firearms. The politics is a canvas of colorful if not always so thoughtful preachers; carnival barkers pushing ideas that they try to wind into the DNA of the constitution and the "Founding Fathers." Barak Obama and Sarah Palin are in the ring and sweaty, their fans and cynics in the stands hurling expletives and foul smelling refuse while the whole thing is being broadcast live. Across the seas, here in Japan the many colorless bureaucrats deal out of the public eye. Few of the greater public have much interest in these drama less machinations and individual politicians remain in the background unless scandal catches them with their hand in the jar. They do, however, get the job done. The streets are immaculate, the trash is recycled in ever more sophisticated ways and yesterday I saw bank upon bank of solar panels, the largest solar setup I ever seen, being installed between the different directions on a large highway. The people I was with didn't seem to notice.
The first time I came to Japan I was struck by the quality of the shared infrastructure.The trains, buses, roads the public baths, the schools, the health system. The idea of team work--which is little more than a cooperative competitive alliance in the US--is a kind of group consciousness here. Politeness and protocol rule over individual expression and creative rebellion.  On a bus a little chime and a soft sounding recorded voice, along with an updating information screen, lets you know what the next stop will be. The driver warns you two times, "走します"as he carefully starts the bus moving.  
Though it is so impressive and I love the way things actually work and the people are polite I am by nature drawn to the rebels and pirates. I'm fascinated by the "pirate" gardeners down by the Yada River. City, highway, buildings and trains all around and these native souls are doing something so natural and old it trumps the building and the city's goings on by it's humanness.

We'll grow a garden of some size here--tsubaki are already blooming here--whether just on our terrace or we'll find a plot somewhere close--or maybe I'll go join the pirate gardeners....

10 flights up

Watch what you dream for it might come true.

I spent the last 11 years trying to see if I could live "more lightly" on the earth. I believed that by pulling back from the greater economic system of consumption and waste I would not only live closer to my ideals but also have a richer deeper experience. In some regards living the way we have been allowed for more control as far as consumption is concerned--we didn't need to buy as many things wrapped in plastic--and could produce a certain amount for our own needs and when we had goats and made cheese (sounds cliche) we produced some for others too. But the distancing ourselves from the greater structure or even living lightly seemed to become a phantom. Most country people drive a lot and often in big trucks. They heat large spaces for their nuclear families. They love high tech gadgets and fly places to visit the friends and family. The most concerned people, "the alternativos," as Jim Merkle called them use more stuff and resources than city dwellers. In fact NY state's relatively low per capita carbon footprint comes not from the vast unused lands but because many people live in NYC. Surprise surprise. Collective living not exurbia in less toxic. This is/was a painful revelation to me. The other part of the equation was that, as Adam Lobel kindly pointed out to me one time when he had just finished a world travel with the Sakyung, the world is marching in another direction. Try as you like to take less plastic bags more smart phones and disposable electric toothbrushes are being manufactured every day. If the consumption slows there's a great printing of money so that the parade can continue.
So here I am, away from beautiful Acworth and my body feels lighter than in years. Why did I feel so suck? Why was I so stuck? What happened to the country gentleman that I believed I could become? I couldn't seem to balance the country life and the cultural life--a juggler who forgets which ball to watch.

Now back in a city with lots of people I don't know, streets I don't know, a large river (the Yada which means Arrow Field) to run and walk along, I am excited!. Why do I like the unfamiliar so? Kaime seems the same too. Though his mom is stressed about his schooling and whether he will be ostracized in 1st grade, he is full speed ahead and excited by it all. Whew, life is amazing! I can't believe any of it. It is too vast and wonderful and strange.