O-Hanami

I wrote this a week ago--nearly.

In Tokyo, the weather is such that it's spring then it's not then it's spring again then it's not.

Today it was not spring, but last Saturday, when I wrote this, it was.

A Fish Out Of Water

Every morning the train I take from Higashi-Mukojima to Asakusa crosses the Sumida river. Many mornings my eye snags on familiar things: The word “concrete” written in hiragana on the side of a round metal building with a worn, rusted exterior; the enormous gold sculpture atop the Asahi building that reminds me of a bacterium with a thickened flagellum, but which everyone assures me is really an artistic interpretation of a single bubble of carbonation in a beer; the blue tiled roof of what I assume is a temple or shrine. The sensuous curves of the shrine’s (or temple’s) traditional blue tiled roof stand out against the linear planes of modern Tokyo and the building seems always in shadow, dwarfed as it is by its more modern neighbors. I’ve been telling myself for months that I’m going to wake up early enough to stop in Asakusa and find that temple--just to have a look at it, just to satisfy my curiosity about it. But of course I never have.

Recently, the sakura (cherry trees) along the Sumida have been in bloom, and I have been telling myself for a week that I would get up early and walk along the Sumida before work. it’s a promise I’ve made and broken every day for a week.

Just before the train crosses the Sumida, it slows and the conductor begins the announcement that accompanies our arrival at Asakusa. “Asakusa. Asakusa shuten des’...” (“Asakusa. Asakusa Terminal...”) followed by a list of the subway (“...Asakusa-sen, Ginza-sen wa onorikai-kudasai....”) and JR train lines that connect with Asakusa, then there’s a perfunctory thank you for riding the Tobu line and the train crosses the Sumida. Just as the first car reaches the other side of the bridge, the engine cuts out and the train glides silently into the station.

I have crossed the Sumida almost every day since I’ve been in Japan. I cross it at least ten and sometimes thirty times a week. I have made the same commute more days than not in the last nine months and anymore I sleepwalk through it, exhausted. If I have a seat, I wait until I know the side the train doors will open, then I stand and head for the appropriate door so that I might minimize my time to and through the ticket gates, down the stairs instead of the escalator, a diagonal cut across to another set of stairs, down to the Ginza line, past the basement entrance to Matsuya Depaat’, past the Pronto coffee shop and the counter where salarymen buy their tickets from a machine and exchange the tickets for bowls of ramen that they eat standing.

As I come down the hall toward the ticket gates to the Ginza subway line, I check the board beyond the gates for the next train so that I can choose the closest gate to the third flight of stairs that descend to the subway platform. The earlier train shaves three minutes off my commute. Once on the subway car, I take a seat and sometimes I turn on my iPod and I doze through the ten stops into Ginza.

I live like a salaryman.

I sleep, commute, work, eat, and drink--in that order. It’s a relentless routine and in this city the pressure is to follow it to the letter, so everyone who works full-time in Tokyo does. Maybe on the weekends they golf or shop, but during the week, they sleep, commute, work, eat, and drink--and they do it in that order.

But tired of living the Tokyo salaryman’s dull life, I decided to actually do something today. This morning, I got out of bed, ignored the laundry, ignored the cleaning, ignored the rest of a night’s sleep. I took a shower and downed a few cups of coffee trying to get The Brain in gear, and left the apartment a few minutes before ten a.m.--which is the earliest I’ve been out of the house in a month.

Because any commute that heads me in the direction of central Tokyo necessarily takes me to Asakusa, I decided to slop there first and walk along the Sumida-gawa, down among the sakura that I see everyday as I am going to work.

I always exit Asakusa station going in the wrong direction. It doesn’t matter which direction I want to go, nor which direction I went last time to get to the same destination, I always exit the station going the wrong way. Making my way around the station meant crossing both under the tracks then a street where I waited for the light to change next to a trio of middle-aged women in spring kimono. They chatted seriously among themselves and with an elderly man in a suit and hat. The women seemed to be humoring the man in some way that didn’t involve smiles, but that was beyond the usual humoring of men that women do the world over.

I waited for the light and I crossed the street and walked down a short alleyway between two buildings and there they were, sakura cherry trees in full bloom. I walked a little way, a few steps really, and then I was standing completely shaded by the trees.

I have stood in the shade of a trees before.

I have stood in the shade of rain forest trees so thick that their canopy blocked out most of the light and their gnarled trunks absorbed most of the ambient sound. I have stood in the shade of sequoia trees, hiked in the the open space between the enormous trunks of the quiet giants. I have stood in the shade of white-trunked, yellow-leaved aspen trees, the trees that David’s grandfather call quakies, because of the delightful way their leaves shiver in the slightest breeze. I have stood in the shade of trees before. But this was different.

Beneath the canopy of the sakura’s ethereal pink blossoms, the light seems purified and the air takes on a different quality. The air and light feel different. It’s similar to the feeling that you get when you step out into the quiet of the morning after it’s snowed. There is a pure and quiet feeling of things being newly formed or newly un-formed. Standing in the shade of flowering sakura has that same feeling, but it is without the cold of winter, and the feeling, to me at least, was unfamiliar to spring.

It was early in the day for most Tokyoites, so the walk along the Sumida-gawa was not crowded. Blue tarps were spread out along the walk, and many were occupied by one or two people at most--some napped, some read quietly, some talked on their cell phones or to each other. Many more of the blue tarps were devoid of people, though they had signs with names and dates and times written on them to indicate when their occupants would be taking possession of these prime bits of real estate.

I strolled about a half mile along the river, passing through a small fair-like area where there were tents and food stalls set up and people were eating yakisoba and hot dogs and oden and tori-niku and drinking Asahi and Chu-hi and sake. At one end of this small fair, I stopped to use the toilet and when I came out, I noticed a row of bags and helmets emblazoned with the Yakult Swallows baseball teams’ emblem. A woman was making an announcement, and I walked around to one side of the stage where the Yomiuri Giants were standing, in uniform. (Spring training? Reminding the locals to get out there and support their local baseball teams?) I passed through the tents and crossed the Sakura-bashi (Cherry Blossom Bridge) and I strolled down the other side of the river.

A busy highway runs over the park, which struck me as very Japanese: here is this beautiful and traditional place, let’s put a highway over it. It’s the Japanese mix of progress with tradition that sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t. After a couple of hours among the cherry blossoms and auto exhaust, I couldn’t decide whether this one works or not--and maybe that’s the best way.

The far side of the river (meaning: the side not close to the station) was a bit more crowded, and the food stalls had begun in earnest to hawk their offerings. It was just after ten in the morning, and people had begun to drink in earnest, old women and men chugged from tall cans of beer, and the individual glasses of sake (about twelve ounces a go with a pop top) that are sold in conbini and at all the stands were being consumed in earnest. At one end of the park, a sumo wrestler in a deep blue and white robe stood at the railing that lined a small platform at the top of a flight of stairs. He looked out over the sakura. I took his picture.

As it neared eleven, the walk began to become crowded with people. I passed several blue tarps upon which parties had begun in earnest. They were generally young men, some of them already red-faced with liquor. Their shoes, neatly lined up just off the tarp, was a contrast to their boisterousness. (Well, they were boisterous for this place, though in America, they would have seemed as demure as nuns probably.)

I thought I might leave the park and stop at Senso-ji and offer a prayer as thanks for the morning, and then I came around a bend in the path and there was the blue-roofed shrine that I see from the train every morning. The tall torii had gone gray as the carved stone animals that stood on pedestals around the main building. As I waited to pray at the main building, I took a picture of a bull, its head curled coyly to one side. Then I took a go-en (five yen) coin from my pocket, tossed it into the collection box, bowed and bowed my head. I didn’t clap twice to call the gods because they seemed already to be there. I prayed, remembering everyone I’ve lost since coming to Japan. I bowed again, and turned to see a group of old people in wheelchairs having their picture taken beneath the torii at the other end of the grounds.

As I left the shrine, it was still early in the day. I had promised The Brain a very large coffee from S’bux as a reward for getting us out of the house so early and with a minimum of fuss. There is a S’bux in Asakusa, but as is always the case when I get near the station, I headed in the absolutely wrong direction. Again I had to cross and recross the street until I could orient myself, and finally doing so, I went into the S’bux where I had breakfast (a pepper ham and coleslaw sandwich (these things seem very normal after a while) and a blueberry scone and a very large coffee). I sat at the window in the second story, watched people on the street, and wrote in my journal. I wondered if I should go to Ueno see the sakura there and perhaps also take in the Prado exhibit at the Tokyo National Museum. I wasn’t sure I was up to it, but I had to go to Ueno anyway, since it is where the closest Mizuho Bank ATM is--or at least the closest that I know about.

I finished my coffee and headed back to the station, which was just about at zoo level.

Tokyoites don’t get out much before noon on the weekends (unless they’re retired or not yet school age), but by noon, the stations are jammed with people. Asakusa station was no exception. I stood on the subway train from Asakusa to Ueno.

At Ueno, I thought, what the hell? I’ll check out the sakura here, too. The station was busy, and the street was extremely crowded, but nothing prepared me for the park itself. Ueno park is large. It’s not Central Park large, nor is it Imperial Garden large, but it’s big enough to hold 1300 sakura trees, a pond that one can rent boats to traverse, six museums, a zoo, and several wide expanses of lawn as well as many temples, shrines, statues, and homeless people. So, it’s large. The sakura line a wide path that stretches nearly the entire length of the park, and they were in full and glorious bloom, and beneath them, in the beautifully purified light, every Tokyoite had turned out to express their gratitude and awe. The crowd bordered on unbearable.

For me, the crowds are not nearly as horrible as they might be for a Japanese person. I mean, I come from a culture where we often jostle each other. It’s not that the Japanese don’t stand hellishly close to one another on the subway when they have to, but they only do it when they have to, and they never, never jostle one another. So that’s one thing. Another thing is that I’m taller than virtually all of the women and most of the men (with the exception of the younger men, who are getting taller generationally). What this means is that I can see over the heads of the people around me, so that it’s not like standing in a crowd, exactly, because I can still see things and so it doesn’t register to my American mind as a crowd. (I think this was made clear when I was back in the States in February, and I was standing behind a group of men and I realized that I had become accustomed to being able to see over people’s heads and that not being able to do so was a bit frustrating.)

But the crowd in Ueno? Was the very definition of crowd. Normally, in non-hanami season, the walk from one end of the tree-lined avenue to the other takes ten or twelve minutes. But on Saturday afternoon during hanami, it took almost forty minutes to make the same walk. This was made even worse by the fact that on each side of the path (which is about six meters wide), the ubiquitous blue tarps had been spread out and o-hanami were taking place. The new path was about three meters wide, and in that space, thousands and thousands of people shuffled along, a few steps every ten seconds or so. The trees were beautiful--and I had a lot of time to appreciate their beauty, because I sure as hell wasn’t going anywhere fast.

O-hanami is one of the great equalizers in Japan. On one tarp would be cheap yakisoba take-out and bags of wasabi potato chips and beer and chu-hi in cans and a group of drunk teenagers while on the tarp right next to it there would perhaps be a man in a suit playing a shamisen and people in business dress and kimono eating nigiri-sushi and drinking sake from porcelain cups. There was at least one film crew in the middle of the crowd and several photographers had set up tripods, which the crowd dutifully went around. Interestingly, despite the incredible number of people and the staggering amount of alcohol involved in the proceedings, I didn’t see a single police officer, nor did I see a single argument or display of anger or frustration. People generally shuffled along and pointed upwards, up at the sakura in bloom, saying, “Kirei ne? Sugoi kirei!” (Beautiful, aren’t they? Awesomely beautiful.)

I made it to the other end of the park, the end where the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum was happening, and I thought about going in to see the Prado exhibit--then I immediately nixed the idea when I saw the people streaming in and out of the museum. The last show I saw was the Hiroshige exhibit and it was not a great experience, as the small woodblock prints were hung at eye-level--Japanese eye-level--which meant a lot of stooping for me to see anything close up. And, too, I looked at the museum, at the advertisements for the glorious paintings and I thought: I can’t look at art after looking at so much nature. So I didn’t go in.

However, instead of turning and heading straight back through the crowd that lined the sakura path, I decided to go the long way around the park, behind the science museum, back to Ueno station. I was glad I did because there were a few random sakura in bloom along the sidewalk and row upon row of homeless men, displaced from their usual park haunts, were standing along the sidewalk. I won’t say that they were enjoying hanami, but they were talking with one another, and making my way down the sidewalk meant passing about seventy homeless men. (I did not see any women among them.)

In the States, this situation--passing along between two rows of homeless men--would have filled me with a fair amount of apprehension. I have, in America (and other countries), encountered homeless who are aggressive in their panhandling tactics and who become belligerent when denied. But the homeless men and women in Japan are not aggressive. They do not panhandle. They are often given money, but they don’t ask for it. They do not harass passersby. They are quiet and calm and often spend their time sitting on unfolded newspapers or cardboard boxes, reading. Their clothes are not very clean, but the men are mostly clean-shaven. There is a kind of disquieting dignity to the lives they seem to lead.

I passed among them and I crossed the street behind the National Science Museum and I looked up at a sakura in bloom and that was when I saw the whale.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure I’ve seen the whale before. I mean, how could I have missed it? I’ve walked the road behind the science museum more than once, so I’ve probably been amazed by the life-sized replica of a blue whale before yesterday. But suddenly there was the whale, diving head-downward, disappearing into a sea of cherry blossoms.

A Fish Out of Water

The whale was on my right, and both a young man with a yellow nylon backpack and I stopped to take a picture. We each snapped our photos, then he sped off on his bike and I continued on my way. I saw him again about ten yards ahead. On my left, across the street, there was a shrine. I could see a bride in traditional dress and her groom, also in traditional dress. They were standing stock-still, posed, and though I could see the bride, the groom was obscured by the photographer who was busily taking photographs. I stopped to watch. The bride was stunning in the traditional white Shinto wedding kimono, the sakura in bloom behind her. I took in this wonderful sight, then the photographer stepped out of the way and I could see that the groom was a gaijin. All at once, my admiration for the bride withered and I felt a mixture of pity and sadness for her. It wasn’t just the sheer sore-thumb-ness of the gaijin groom in a traditional dress not of his own tradition, but of the need for someone in the pairing to have either insisted or even merely requested the adherence to a tradition that was alien to at least one of them. That sounds strange, so I will try to explain.

There is something inherently fish-out-of-water about foreigners in Japan. Sure there are few non-Japanese in Japan (less than one percent of the population of Japan is non-Japanese, and most of those foreigners are non-white and live and work in Tokyo). So the numbers tell you something. But there are cultural myths about foreigners, too (one traditional song tells about a little girl who is stolen by a blue-eyed stranger, and parents often quiet non-behaving children with the threat of a stranger coming to take them away), but some of the difference is built into the language. By that, I mean that, in Japanese, the word for “different” is the same word used for “wrong.” The sign-language for foreigner is the little finger pointed at the eye, meaning, looks different. And the other day, I asked Aki how I could compare two things in Japanese. “How do I say, ‘Ken is like Ryuji’?” I asked Aki. She answered, “Ken wa Ryuji o mitani.” (Ken looks like Ryuji.) Things that look alike are alike. Things that look different are different. And nothing beneath the surface seems to matter.

Maybe.

A Fish Out Of Water

At Ueno, I decide to head to Nippori, to Yanaka Cemetery, which is one of my favorite places in Tokyo. I got off at Nippori station and thought about the walk through the cemetery and I realized that I was exhausted, hanami’d out, and wanted nothing so much as a nap. I went back through the station, stood on the platform, and waited. The train pulled in, the doors opened, and I was confronted by four large foreign women with big suitcases. I stepped on the train, turned to face the doors, and stood there among them.

Here’s the thing about gaijin in Japan. At first, the feeling is of absolute isolation. Even in a city the size of Tokyo, I can go days and days without seeing another foreign face (with the exception of New Guy, who I see four days a week). Out and about in the city, I can see one or two a week or, if there’s something going on, twenty or thirty in a day. (I remember Ben once coming in from lunch and remarking, “There are a lot of gaijin in Ginza today, ne?”) So, yes, it sometimes seems as though I am the only foreigner in Tokyo. But when I encounter another foreigner, a curious thing happens to me: I resolutely ignore them.

Okay, so I’m not a friendly person in general. Even in the States, I ignore most people, but one would think that, in Japan, the relative scarcity of gaijin would lead to a kind of solidarity among those who are here. However, that seems not to be the case. Not only do I ignore other foreigners, but they ignore me. We avoid eye-contact. We avoid speaking. I have even come so far as to avoid getting on a subway or train car with another gaijin. Why? Because I want to spare the Japanese passengers the anxiety of sitting in a car with more than one gaijin. Honto ni, that’s the real reason.

So I got on the train and went back to Ueno, and I walked into The Garden supermarket and bought a box of Kellogg's All-Bran cereal and some frozen blueberries (the only place in Tokyo I’ve seen them) and some yogurt, and I came back to Higashi-Mukojima. In Higashi-Mukojima, I stopped for some sushi take-out and a couple of 1.5 liters of Diet Coke, and I came home and ate. Then I crashed, sleeping like a baby for several hours.

O-Hanami

The teachers at The Kaisha had planned an o-hanami that was, I found when I emailed, canceled. I was glad because I hadn’t wanted to go. My usual routine on Saturday nights is to go grocery shopping for the week at the market across the street--then eat everything I bought in one go. But instead of doing that, The Brain said: Go to Shibuya.

I’m not sure why The Brain wanted us to go to Shibuya because Shibuya is on the other side of Tokyo, almost an hour away, and it was already dark and I was tired and...The Brain took us to Shibuya where we went to the seven-story Tower Records and browsed for an hour before buying a copy of Bust, a feminist pop-culture-type magazine, and a book of essays called In Defense of Eros by a woman named Siri Hustvedt.

But that was only a distraction for why I was really in Shibuya.

A Fish Out Of Water, Or, Why I Was Really In Shibuya

I know this is already long, and I’m not sure I can long-story-short it at this time, but I’ll try.

Walking into Shibuya station, i went up the stairs to catch the Ginza subway, and I ran for the train that had just pulled into the station. I jumped on the train just behind a tall man who turned to face me as soon as he was on the train. As I swerved to go around him, I saw that he was a tall, middle-aged white guy, a gaijin, and that he had turned to make sure that the other members of his family--his tall gaijin wife, and their two enormous gaijin teenaged sons--were able to get on the train. They were, and they were accompanied by an older, well-dressed Japanese woman who seemed to be acting as their guide.

Normally, I don’t get onto subway cars if there is already another gaijin on the car. Too high a concentration of gaijin makes the Japanese very nervous, and five in one car is just an invitation to a very uncomfortable ride, but this time I decided to just forgo my usual rule and take one of the many empty seats.

I sat, pulled out my iPod and started to read a magazine. Two women and a man sat across from me and immediately began to make fun of the gaijin on the train. Of course, they were speaking in Japanese, and I think they thought that I couldn’t hear them since I had my earphones in. I did have my earphones in, but the iPod was off because I wanted to eavesdrop on the loud gaijin family and their guide.

The women and man across from me weren’t being particularly subtle as they made fun of the other gaijin, but it was subtle enough that I would have missed it if it had been my first week in Japan. I pretended to read my magazine as I watched them surreptitiously. They poked each other and laughed behind their hands at the tall goofy gaijin and his tall goofy wife and their tall goofy sons. They glanced at me from time to time, but I didn’t seem to be paying any attention.

After a moment, I thought I’d try to manipulate the energy on the train by changing things about myself. (That sounds crazy, a bit, but it often works. I’ll explain it another time in the spirit of long-story-short.) took off my headphones but kept reading my magazine. The trio across from me continued to make fun of the gaijin. I assume that they assumed that I didn’t understand their words. Then I pulled out my cellphone, flipped it open and began to read my email--and they froze. After a minute, I looked up and the two women had put their heads down as if asleep and the man was stone-faced, staring straight ahead with pursed lips.

Let me explain: Without the cellphone, I’m just another gaijin who probably doesn’t understand Japanese. I’m just another traveler who knows how to ask what time it is and how much it is and has a guidebook that they consult every other moment. But with the cellphone--ahhh...I’m connected. I’m not just passing through this place. I probably have friends that I’m emailing--and, who knows, that email could be in Japanese. At the very least, I know enough Japanese to get a cell phone--and I’m sticking around long enough to sign the minimum one year contract. I’m connected. In one fell swoop, I went from being just another gaijin to being someone that was not so easily classified and the trio had no idea what to do with that information.

A few stops from Shibuya, a group of perhaps five or six young businessmen got on the train, as did an older married couple. There was a seat on either side of me left empty as other passengers exited the train, and the older married man indicated to his wife that she should take the seat to my right. The woman did, and I immediately shifted one seat over so that the husband could sit next to his wife. He thanked me and I did a seated half-bow (which is all that’s required) to acknowledge his thanks, and he sat.

The trio took this in and again, I shifted somehow in their view. I put my cell phone away and pulled out my magazine. The goofy gaijin talked loudly, as gaijin are wont to do on the train, but which Japanese almost never do. The gaijin husband was very tall and very gangly and goofy and loud--every gaijin stereotype rolled into one enormous gaijin--but suddenly my presence and my actions made mocking the other gaijin impossible.

The women pretended to sleep. The man with them remained stone faced.

As we neared Toranomon, the gangly, goofy gaijin called to his sons (who had taken the teenager-ish position of situating themselves as far from their parents as they could--but certainly within earshot) that they should get off on the next stop. He was joking, but his gestures (an over exaggerated pointing at the door of the train), made the Japanese on the car goggle.

“Oh, he’s having fun,” the gangly, goofy gaijin wife said to their Japanese guide.

At Toranomon, the whole gangly, goofy gaijin family got off the train, and as they did so, something made the father guffaw, a loud, “Haw-haw,” that reminded me of the time that Ben saw Jun from a train and whistled to get Jun’s attention and Jun (Japanese through and through, trained never to whistle) told me later, “I didn’t see that it was Ben whistling, so when I heard it, I thought, Stupid, fucking gaijin.

The businessmen turned to each other and were on the verge of laughing at the stupid, fucking gaijin until one of them spotted me and remained as stone faced as the man across from me. The others, noticing his sudden stillness, turned to find its cause and the very instant they saw me, another gaijin on the train (who had escaped notice perhaps by virtue of being quiet and well-behaved, Japanese-style), a current ran through the group and they all froze.

Not one of them said a word.

Who’s The Fish Out Of Water?

The discomfort on the train was palpable. The Japanese around me had absolutely no idea what to do with a quiet gaijin who was connected enough to have a cellphone and well-mannered enough to notice and make room on the seat for two people to sit together.

I am a fish out of water here, a thing to be stared at, a thing to be intentionally not stared at. I am a fish out of water here, but it seemed for a moment to those watching that I was not precisely the same fish out of the same waters as those other gaijin.

Fish Out Of Water

I am on the train from Yokohama with the Ex-Student--this was back in November, when we were dating--and he says to me, “You’re not--” I don’t remember his exact words, but it was something to the effect that I was not ordinary, not typical, not typically American, not typically female. He tells me that he, too, is not typical, not typically Japanese.

Every book about Japan will tell you that culture shock in Japan is particularly acute because the differences between Western and Japanese culture are profound. There are several stages to culture shock. There is the initial honeymoon phase, when everything is dazzlingly, dizzyingly new and amazing and everything seems worthy of admiration and respect. As that wears off, there are stages of denial. There are the inevitable feelings of judgment, anger and sadness. There is a stage, for those who stick it out, of acceptance. One can never truly fit in and not fitting in is uncomfortable and that discomfort must be dealt with, must somehow become accepted by the one who feels it. Finally, there is a kind of adaptation, a stage when one’s feelings become broken in, the way new shoes are broken in.

I knew this, felt this. But that the culture I find myself part of now also undergoes this kind of breaking in process was unexpected. It was like the time I first heard in a physics lecture about the force of gravity and that I pull on the earth with the same force that the earth pulls on me. I remember that The Brain just boggled at this information. How can that possibly be true? I really pull on the earth with the same force that the earth pulls on me? But--?

The teacher explained that because of the differences in our masses--the difference between the mass of the earth and the mass of the individual--were such that I didn’t move the earth as much as it moved me.

That is true of Japan, of the Japanese. Pitted against a culture, I am moved and I feel it. But, too, the culture is moved and feels it. It feels it with the same exact force that I feel it. It may not move as much, but it moves some, it shifts some to accommodate me--and perhaps the discomfort is somehow shared.