In the Presence of Okaasan*

I've heard it said that Japanese children are the most docile on the planet.  While I would agree they are some of the best-behaved children I've ever seen, I think you have to zoom out a bit to see what's really going on.  There you will see a mother who is completely present with her child.  She's not texting or talking on the phone; she's not reading or watching TV; she is right there, and that is all the child needs.  Mother and child eat together, with mommy working the chopsticks; they walk down the street together holding hands; they have long conversations that are apparently very, very funny.

Especially cute are mother and daughter, and if you are lucky enough to catch three generations of Japanese females together--grandmother, mother, and daughter--you will know you have just witnessed human devotion at its zenith.

These two kids just met in the waiting room of a shinkansen terminal.  The little girl is with her grandmother, her mother having stepped away for a moment; the little boy is with his dad.  The little boy has a toy that fascinates the little girl, and I just couldn't resist:

* "Mommy"

Ryokan -- the Traditional Japanese Inn

I had thought to save my ryokan stay for Kyoto, the last leg of my tour of Japan, but I unwittingly reserved two nights in a traditional Japanese inn when I booked my stay in Nozawa Onsen through Hotels.com.

Walking into my tatami-floored room at Kawamotoya literally took my breath away--it is just so very zen--and of course I knew I was in the right place when I saw the spiral painting on the wall of the alcove.  I found sitting in this space to be some of the calmest sessions I had across Japan.

At first it was a little hard adjusting to the strict protocol of ryokan.  When I went down to the onsen, I wore the wrong robe.  Then when I went to breakfast the next day, I wore the right robe but my sash fell off while I went through the breakfast buffet. Fortunately, I'd worn linen pants and a jersey under the robe, so my wardrobe malfunction was not a total disaster.  I felt a little better when the waitress who picked up my sash tried to tie it back around me, then said, "I'm Korean.  I don't know how they tie this thing."

But it was the host and hostess of Kawamotoya  that made my stay such a delight.  They went out of their way to make it as fulfilling as possible, even offering a great deal of assistance when my camera went on the fritz.  And the food...  Breakfast on the second day was traditional Japanese, with locally caught trout and some of the best miso soup I've had here, all while sitting on the inn's streamside terrace.  Really a beautiful experience.

Nozawa Onsen

As per my usual MO, I arrived in Tagori-Nozawaonsen Station with no more information than a hotel name and a general notion that it would require a bus and a taxi to get there.  I asked the Japan Rail station attendant if it would be possible to just take a taxi from the station to the inn where I was booked, and he said yes—for 3000 yen.  Yikes, I thought, but I figured I’d just eat it since I’d already paid for the room and was going to have to take a taxi part of the way anyway.

I was gathering all my stuff together when this older gentleman turned to me and asked in pretty good English where I was going.  I showed him on the map that the JR attendant had given me, and said I was going to take a taxi.

“3000 yen is very expensive!” he exclaimed, his eyes wide in disbelief.  I agreed wholeheartedly.

“How about you go with us and split the fare?”  It was then that I noticed he was with his wife and a younger woman, probably his daughter. “Sure!” I said.

“Okay—we three in back seat; you in front,” he clarified.

“Works for me!” I said.

On the way up to town, the old man had a lengthy exchange with the driver—they could have been talking about baseball for all I knew—then he tells me in English: “I just told our driver that this is most inconvenient.”  I agreed out of politeness, and told him how convenient the onsen is to the train station in Aso.

“Ah, Aso-san!” all three said from the back seat.  They are from Tokyo, and had just come up to Nozawa Onsen for a day trip to the hot springs, which are extremely popular in this Olympic ski town located in the mountains of northern Nagano Prefecture.  Combine Glenwood Springs with Breckenridge, scatter several Olympic venues around, then surround it all with a dense green mix of evergreen and deciduous trees instead of the Rocky Mountains, and you’ll have a pretty good picture of Nozawa Onsen.  We parted company at the Kawamotoya inn, formal thank-yous exchanged all around.  I am confident they had a lovely time in one of the many onsen near the inn, while I, on the other hand, had a great hike up to the local Buddhist shrine, perched high on the side of one of the several mountains looming over town.

That night I had dinner at a small family restaurant called Atarashiya.  As I sat for a moment after a very tasty meal of chicken, rice, and eggplant, the young waitress in jeans and a blue “Fitch 1892” t-shirt slid the glass backdoor open, stepped lightly across the open water channel and through the herbal bonsai grove, then out to a low-hanging tree branch, where she proceeded to carefully select and pick a number of leaves.  When she came back in, I asked her what she had picked.  She showed me the small, pinnate leaves in her hand; then she clapped her palms together to activate the flavonoids and held her hand out for me to smell.  I closed my eyes, inhaled deeply, and was swept away by a minty-rosemary scent that was just heavenly.  She then took the herbs straight into the kitchen and worked them into whatever she was cooking.  No wonder the meal was so tasty!

The following day I had hoped to see the Japanese macaques, or snow monkeys, for which the area is famous, but I soon learned that in the summer they stay very high in Jigokudani Yaenkoen park, which is quite far away.  Only in wintertime do they come down to visit the natural hot springs of Nozawa Onsen.  Wow, that’s too bad, I thought as I strode off to ride the gondola to the top of the mountain for a really nice walk on the top of the world.  It would be cool to see the Fire Dance Festival on January 15th too…

Hey, wait a second … I get January off!

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Nagano -- Japan's Half a Mile High City

I logged my first geocache find in Japan at the Zenkoji Exit of Nagano's shinkasen terminal.  According to legend, Princess Nyoze of India was afflicted with a terrible disease that no one could cure.  Her faithless father cried out to Shakyamuni Buddha to no avail, but when he called the name of Amida Buddha with all his heart, Amida cast a light upon the sleeping princess and she was instantly healed.  It seemed appropriate, then, that my own journey to Nagano should begin at the foot of Princess Nyoze offering thanks and flowers to the Buddha of Zenkoji Temple (no, the cache site is not in the picture).

The story of Princess Nyoze captures the essence of Pure Land Buddhism in Japan, where a highly personal form of Buddhism is centered around Amida Buddha, who is worshipped as personification of the incomprehensible.  Unlike the historical Buddha of 400 B.C., or Dainichi-nyorai, the transcendental, all-encompassing Buddha, Amida Buddha is approachable.  You can touch him, and he responds to your deepest desires.

Walking away from Zenkoji Temple, I chanced upon Kitano Cultural Center and stopped in to see what it had to offer.  It turned out to be a children's museum of Japanese art, but there was no one else there so I went through the museum and thoroughly enjoyed it.  The docent loved having someone to show the museum to, and she carefully explained each of the pieces to me.  While looking at each piece of fearsome armor worn by an Edo Period samurai, I wondered about the cute, little bunny rabbit on his helmet.  She told me that the bunny was a highly valued fetish for the samurai: the bunny has large eyes, so he can see on all sides; he has large ears, so he can hear clearly; he's very fast; and, most importantly, he has many children!

I found Nagano to be the most pleasant city I've visited in Japan: very clean and pedestrian-friendly, with more culture and less glitz.  It's about half the elevation and half the population of Denver, Colorado, but otherwise very similar in its setting at the base of the Japan Alps.  One can easily see why this charming city was selected to host the 1998 Winter Olympic Games.

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Where I Dine When I'm in Aomori

Now that's fresh seafood!

The squid seem agitated with one another;

the sea snails look perplexed, but

the sea cucumber's like, yeah whatever.

Art and Air at Aomori Museum of Art

Art and Air, the current exhibit at the Aomori Museum of Art chronicles artistic responses to the universal dream of flight as well as Japan's complex relationship with flying machines.  It also provides a global perspective that the typical tourist is not likely to encounter in Japan.  Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence to support this is the fact that none of the descriptions beyond title are presented in English or any other language, which is most unusual here.  With the exception of a fantastically whimsical display of theatrical backdrops that Marc Chagall did for the New York City Ballet, this exhibit is of Japanese art, by Japanese artists, for a Japanese audience.

The only room in which photography is allowed is a display of Open Sky 2.0, a fun piece of aeronautical art that actually flies using a glider tow winch.  The glider is surrounded by walls of manga and video displays of the glider in flight.

In my opinion, the strongest piece on display is “Returns” (1996) by an artist whose name is not Romanized on the label.  The painting depicts a swarm of Japanese Zeroes flying in a Möbius strip formation, infinitely strafing Manhattan.  The point of view is a fish-eye lens directly over the Empire State Building.  The concept is clever, the execution flawless, the effect chilling.  I do not know how 9/11 might have altered the Japanese audience’s response to this piece; I only know that it hangs on the wall in Aomori today.

If our feelings of fear and outrage toward Nazi Germany’s aggressions are captured in the image of a swastika-branded Stuka dive bombing a European city, and if our shock and dismay over Japan’s relentless determination can be summarized in the image of a stricken Zero going kamikaze on a U.S. battleship, then Japanese disgust and animosity toward America is held in the image of a B-29 Superfortress flying over Mt. Fuji.  They really hate that plane here.  In photographs, the plane appears smug and taunting; in paintings, it is always crashing.

When the Land of the Rising Sun is backed into a corner, the response appears to us as one of swarming.  In the first half of the 20th century we retaliated against Japan’s swarming militaristic response to lack of natural resources; in the second half we enjoyed her swarming industrial response to military strictures, which came to us in the form of Hondas, Walkmans, and Trinitrons.  Like us, Japan is trying to figure out some response to the economic malaise we’re all suffering in the post-industrial 21st century.  Whatever form that response takes, you can rest assured it will appear to us as a swarm, much like this installation piece of origami airplanes strung on wires overhead:

For me though, the most thought-provoking piece is a huge display of video images apparently shot from a Raptor drone.  As I was unable to read the kanji descriptions, I have to trust that the graphic of a drone set in a compass rose showing its heading as it flies over Tokyo means that the video was actually shot from a drone flying over the city.  As various landmarks come into view, the camera outlines each image as though pattern recognition software is analyzing it and displaying geo-tagged labels for that object.  Occasionally the camera zooms in on people—a man crossing a busy street, a couple kissing in a row boat.  Whether the images were actually produced by an intelligent drone or are merely the artistic rendering of such possibilities, the implications are clear: the next threat from the skies will come in the form of tiny, unmanned aircraft that are operated remotely or, worse, programmatically.  That Mr. Obama has so enthusiastically embraced this technology is my greatest disappointment in his foreign policy; for others will follow his lead, and we are not going to like the result, whether it's paparazzi drones with cameras or terrorist drones with warheads.

Didn’t anybody read Islands in the Net?

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Traveling at the Speed of Time: Shinkansen

Shinkansen are bidrectional; the seats are turned, not the train.

In activating my Japan Rail Pass at Hakata Terminal in Fukuoka, the trilingual Japan Rail agent wrote out by hand the stations and times at which I would have to make transfers, from shinkansen to local trains to buses, in order to travel to Aso in Kumamoto Prefecture.  When I asked her for the train numbers she said, "Hmm...  I think times are better."  That should have been my first clue to what riding the shinkansen is all about.

Shinkansen is a clock

You used to hear an expression in America:  You can set your watch by it.  It may be that this was once even said about trains, but I have not heard it used in quite some time now.  Even when it was appropriate, the expression still implies a separation between some object and the clock that is marking its timeliness.  That separation does not exist on shinkansen.  As Frank Lloyd Wright noted, form and function are one, joined in a spiritual union--and that is the relationship shinkansen has to time.  There are thousands of vehicles running simultaneously, including shinkansen, local trains, and buses, moving millions of people all at once.  They all arrive on schedule, stand only briefly, then depart on schedule.  If a train were ever to do otherwise, it would send a shockwave across Japan: the incredibly complex switching of trains would be in turmoil; workers would not arrive at work on time; the entire country would lack harmony.  That errant train would be like a dust mote in fine clockworks: it would seize the movement, stopping the clock.

They manage to cram four seats in where we can only get six.

Shinkansen is a system

And like any clock, shinkansen is a system of components that all work together to create a singular movement; it is not simply a streamlined train that can slip through the air at 100 yards per second.  One of my greatest surprises was the lack of places to sit in the terminals.  Being used to the cavernous train stations of America, with people sprawled everywhere waiting for their train, I presumed there would be some equivalent here, but I could never find more than the small (yet air conditioned!) waiting rooms where mothers tend their children for a few minutes before boarding.  Then I realized: the waiting room is on the train.  Connections are synchronized, so they arrive and depart on schedule.  Terminals are relatively small, given the number of trains and people served, and getting from one platform to another is quick and easy.  Shinkansen is all electric, so there are no smelly, sooty diesel engines requiring ventilation within the terminal, and no fuel stops enroute.  All shinkansen tracks are either elevated or subterranean, so there are no dangerous railroad crossings, and all tracks are paired for bidirectional operation, thus no sitting on sidings.  Shinkansen is strictly for moving people; freight trains run on a separate system of surface track.

All train personnel bow every time they exit the car.

Shinkansen is a discipline

Everybody involved in shinkansen, including all train personnel and passengers, approach the system with discipline.  When a shinkansen train arrives at its final destination, a swarm of uniformed staff appear out of nowhere to thoroughly clean and service the train within just a matter of minutes.  When finished, they proudly line up alongside the immaculately clean train before being released from duty.  When the doors open--two per car except for head and tail, which are half-sized--all passengers board quickly and politely.  There is plenty of room for baggage, which is all carry-on, and passengers adhere to the number, size, and weight limits.  Passengers clean up after themselves before exiting the train, which is also smooth as the movement of fine clockworks.

There used to be an expression for whirlwind travel:  If it's Tuesday, this must be Belgium, from the 1969 movie by the same name.  In Japan that translates as: The time is 11:42; therefore, this is Kumamoto.

Now I see just what that Japan Rail agent in Fukuoka meant.