I Will Begin Again

Yesterday I got on the local train headed in the direction of Onomichi or Fukuyama. There are many sites in both cities to the east of Hiroshima and I had planned on seeing both. Onomichi is about forty minutes away by local train, and Fukuyama about another hour beyond that.

I chose a seat on the train so that I could see out the window, and I began, as the train pulled out of HIroshima Station, to answer the many “Happy New Year!” emails from friends and students. (And let me just say that having email and internet on my cell phone is just a joy.) After about twenty minutes and four or five stops, the train had left the city limits. I looked up and there were trees and there were mountains and there was some big sky the likes of which aren’t often found in Tokyo.

I put my phone down and looked out the window at the scenery.

I love the trains in Japan. They are, for the most part, very convenient. They’re fast and cheap and they run on time, often down to the second, but certainly down to the minute. I love the trains in Japan, but sometimes I miss cars. Sometimes I miss driving. I miss the independence, sure, but I also miss the wandering in the car from place to place. I miss taking long drives and looking out the window and thinking and singing along to songs on the radio. I miss watching the land rolling by and rolling by and rolling by.

From Hiroshima to Onomichi, the land rolled by and rolled by and rolled by. I looked out the window and I thought and I listened to some music on my headphones and I watched the land roll by. I looked at trees and houses and fields where people are growing things, cabbages and radishes.
My phone buzzed and I answered another “Happy New Year” email. A student emailed back, asking what I was doing on this day and I sent back an email telling her that I was on the train to Onomichi and that the countryside was beautiful. I asked what she was doing. She answered back with a joke: Maybe you should walk to Onomichi, she replied happily. Then told me that she was drinking with her mom and dad. I laughed. My phone buzzed again and it was Kelly sending a picture of her new orange shoes. I answered back that I was jealous of her new orange shoes and she sent back a picture of Lewie.

And when the train reached Onomichi, I decided to stay on until Fukuyama. As we passed through the small city, I could see a line of people at a shrine. The line snaked around the corner, about a hundred people in the tiny town waiting to pray on New Year’s day. Someone made a comment about the line in Japanese to her companion.

I looked out the window and the land rolled by and rolled by and I looked out the window and thought. I looked out the window at the houses and fields and mountains and trees and after about another hour when the train came to Fukuyama, I decided to stay on to Okayama.

It was about another hour to Okayama.

Okayama is a moderately sized city of gray concrete--like Tokyo, but uglier and less impressive. It begins its ugly urban sprawl early and the view is less compelling and I stopped paying attention and instead napped on the way to Okayama Station. I hadn’t planned on seeing Okayama on this trip to Hiroshima, so I hadn’t spent time looking in my guidebooks for things to do in Okayama.

Oddly, I had met someone the week Ben left, an “emergency” (read: substitute) teacher who worked a single night at the Kaisha. Before we began, someone asked him idly what he would do over the New Year holiday and he replied, “I’m going to Okayama. One of the three big gardens in Japan is there.”

I thought, Hmmm, a big garden. I guess I’d like to see that. I dragged out my guidebook and it had little to say about the garden. It’s a big garden, was really the extent of the information about the garden. It’s called Korakuen, it added helpfully.

I thought, well, I did enjoy the three-hour ride on the train. I thought, maybe I’ll just have lunch in Okayama and get back on the train.

At Okayama Station, I got off the train and walked up to the information desk and got directions from the woman about which bus to take to Korakuen. She didn’t speak English and my Japanese is still just the smattering of useless stuff that I know and I apologized to her for not knowing the language and she handed me a handful of information about the park in Japanese that I couldn’t read and I found myself growing frustrated (but not showing it, because this is still Japan). I thanked her.

Part of the reason that I was frustrated was because I hadn’t had lunch. The train ride had been three hours and I hadn’t had much of a breakfast and I was hungry and when I’m hungry everything is colored with frustration.

I calmed myself down, exited the station and found the bus stop. All the information at the bus stop was in Japanese and I reconsidered the visit to the park. Standing outside the station, I thought, hell, I did like the train ride, maybe I’ll just get back on the train and come back to Hiroshima. So what if I don’t see the park. It’s just a park. I’ve seen parks before. I thought, okay, at least have lunch first. Eat something and calm down a bit more and then decide.

I came back into the station and found two cafes that looked fake French and I didn’t come to Japan to eat fake French food, so I walked into the first noodle shop and it wasn’t until I had walked into the shop that I saw that the menu was entirely in Japanese and that I would have to order in Japanese and I was hungry and frustrated and I already felt stupid from dealing with the woman at the information desk and I thought, hell, I did enjoy the train ride, maybe I’ll just grab something from the convenience store and eat it on the train on my way back to Hiroshima. The only thing that kept me from doing this was having been greeted enthusiastically by the women working behind the counter. I couldn’t walk out after that.

Instead, I studied the menu above the little window where I had to order. There was a mix of hiragana and kanji and I picked the one thing that I could read and I waited for my bowl of niku topped udon. I ate my udon and looked at the Japaneses information about Korakuen and I weathered the stares of the people around me and i carried my tray to the window and I went out to the bus stop.

I waited for the bus. When the bus came, I asked the driver if the bus went to the park and he answered in a volley of Japanese and I understood enough to get that no, the bus did not go to the park. I thanked him and went back inside. I spoke to another person at the information counter who assured me that, in fact, the bus did go to the park and I smiled and thanked him and I went back outside.

Hell, I thought, just hop the train back to Hiroshima. You don’t need to see a park. You’ve seen parks. Why do you need to see this park?

I had a smoke and calmed down and another bus came and by then I had memorized the kanji for Korakuen and there it was on the side of the bus, so I got on the bus.

And here, I want to tell you about how I figured out how much the fare was, but first, I want to explain a couple of things. One thing is that I think I’m passing for someone who speaks more Japanese than I do. First, I don’t look like your average tourist. I purposefully don’t haul around a huge backpack and I don’t wear my copy of Lonely Planet’s guide to Japan like a badge. I’m not in dirty, worn out sneakers with my dreadlocks pulled back with some piece of cool fabric I bought in Nepal. My nose isn’t pierced (anymore). I’m not that kind of tourist. Nor am I one of the big, red-faced, middle-aged, white-haired tourists in the expensive Columbia khaki-colored drip-dry adventure wear. I don’t have an expensive camera and I don’t wear my sense of entitlement like a badge. No, I’m used to dressing slightly better than the average young tourist and I carry a small bag and I don’t flash my guidebook and I usually approach anyone I’m going to ask for help with a polite “sumimasen” and I try to ask my question in Japanese and usually it’s a simple question so I can usually manage. Where things get fouled up is when the person I’m talking to assumes that this means that I am more fluent than I really am in Japanese. I don’t know much and it’s frustrating. I can pick up a lot from context, but when I’m traveling, the context is unfamiliar and so my comprehension drops from anywhere from 20-100% down to about 2% on a good day. The bus driver, the woman at the information desk, they don’t have any reason to speak English and I have every reason to speak Japanese, and I don’t. The misunderstanding is entirely my fault and so I don’t get angry about it, but it is frustrating sometimes.

The bus fare was 140 yen. How did I figure that out? Well, it was the result of a number of things: I watched the people who got off on the stops before me and I noticed that above the driver there was a lighted board. It was entirely in kanji, with the exception of numbers. I recognized the kanji for Korakuen and I watched as the numbers underneath the other stops lit up and when we got to Korakuen, I saw that the number said 140 and so I paid 140 and I got off the bus. That is the kind of navigation I do in Japan as a matter of course. I’m like Sherlock Holmes over here.

And, okay, so I got on the bus and I went to the park. At the park, I asked for and was given an English language guide. The ticket windows were closed, but people were streaming into the garden and there were men and women in green shirts directing everyone. I walked into the park and was greeted with a line the likes of which I have never seen in Japan. And this was not Tokyo, if you recall. This was not the last train out of Ginza before a holiday weekend. This was Okayama. This is a city one-twelfth the size of Tokyo. It was like a third of Okayama’s population had turned out to stand in line for--for what? I couldn’t figure out what was going on.

I recalled the line I had seen earlier from the train, the line of people waiting to get into the shrine to pray, and since this meshed with the way that I navigate in Japan, I checked my map to see if there was a famous shrine in the park.

In fact, there is a shrine in the park (more than one) but it wasn’t mentioned as being particularly important. I wandered around a bit, trying to figure out what was going on. I took a picture of the people in line, and as I was doing so, I noticed that other people were taking pictures. What were their pictures of?

I stopped, held still, faced the direction that everyone else was facing.

And then I saw them.

There they were, in the middle of the crowd, separated from the crowd by fences and an expanse of lawn and several small artificial streams.

There were a pair of cranes taking a walk in the garden.

Granted, they were surrounded by three handlers and thousands of people, but the birds? They were taking absolutely no notice of anything around them.

They were very calm, very stately, and they went about their beautiful bird business in such a way that showed that they were not in the least bit nervous. The people around them the same people who have hounded them into near extinction, were delighted. I was delighted.

Cranes? In the garden? On New Year’s Day?

That is powerful dream symbolism.