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Since I wasn't really free over the weekend, they decided to give me Monday mostly off, and start my classes on Tuesday. In the morning, I finally won my battle with the phone system in the apartment, and convinced the thing to let me dial out. (Long story, but basically there's some sort of internal switching thing inside the apartment which allows for multiple line phones and things, and a fax machine. If I have the computer pretend to be a phone, then the thing doesn't recognize my modem's off-hook attempts, and I never get a dialtone. However, I finally figured out where the fax plugged into the system, and that works fine.)
So for now I am making long distance phone calls to pick up my email.
Except that I cannot seem to get the mail software to work right, so things are a bit odd...And debugging the problem long distance by email (when email isn't working right) is tricky! Thanks to Marshall, local Mac god, things are looking up, somewhat.
Lunchtime I got my first taste of what I think is the local equivalent of a diner. Maybe not quite the same, but a small, mom & pop kind of restaurant, with inexpensive food. I had a wonderful fish called "mutsu," with a miso-based sauce. Yum! I'm not sure if we have mutsu in New England; Lily thinks it's called "butter fish" in Hawaii, but that doesn't ring any bells. My dictionary isn't any use, either...
In the afternoon, I met with several of the Hakubi staff who have been working on the Hakubi home page, including Mr. Mizushima's daughter, Yumiko. Turns out she's just my age, and she speaks some English, so it's very easy to communicate. Another, Mr. Yamada (who I call Yamada-kun so as not to confuse him with Yamada-sensei) speaks English really well, and seems to know the most about computers and Internet stuff. The third staff member, Ando-san, doesn't speak English, and my technical Japanese is pretty non-existent, so the other two have to translate for me. Slow, but it works. They've got a page up now, but want to redo the whole thing. I'm psyched that I can be useful, in addition to coming here to learn things. They gave me a tour of their compter setup, and the Mac I can use. It's all running the Japanese version of the Mac OS (well, of course) so all the menus are in Japanese, and all the application programs are also in Japanese. This is going to be interesting. Do I know what "Save File" is in kanji? Don't think so...
Lily's hard at work transcribing a tape for Mr. Mizushima. Seems he went to NASA and saw a space shuttle launch sometime last year, and has a tape of a talk one of the NASA folks gave, and wants it translated, so first it has to be transcribed. So here's poor Lily, trying to understand this technical jargon...which turns out to have been my major. Yet another opportunity to be useful, here, so I'm pleased.
Dinner was again with Mr. Mizushima and a group of Hakubi director-level and senior teachers. This time it was a wonderful soba restaurant (Prof. Miyagawa, my boss at MIT, has been raving to me about this restaurant for the last I-don't-know-how-many months.) There's course after course of cool stuff, and, it being late spring, sake served cold. More rounds of the "Will Anne Really Eat This?" discussion ensue, and everyone agrees that it's great that I like the food. (Americans must have a really bad reputation as either not liking fish at all, or being very reluctant to try odd things, or maybe both.)
While I'm on the subject of odd food, I should mention the Japanese fondness for slimy things as food. There's no other good word I can think of in English, and unfortunately "slime" has nothing but negative connotations. One of the dishes tonight involved the leaf buds of a pond plant, each one encased in a little bubble of this...interesting...substance. It sounds completely horrible in English, I know, but it was really good. Guess you had to be there.
No doubt more on the subject of slime, later.
First thing this morning, I was invited to the monthly meeting of the company-side of Hakubi (the part that runs the school, business-wise.) I had to give a (thankfully, very brief) speech, just to say hello. To keep things as simple as possible, they had me do it in English, and Mr. Mizushima, who also introduced me, translated. Pretty painless.
Then it was off to "Hanayome" school. This is the traditional Japanese bridal school, where they teach people how to apply the traditional makeup, wig and kimono for a bride. If you've looked at my "personal" homepage recently, you've seen the result.
While it was always clear to me from the photos I had seen of Japanese bridal outfits that they were complex, I was unprepared for the real thing! They started with the wig (much lighter, they told me, than in the old days. Can't imagine what that was like.) and then all sorts of padding to make my rather Western-shaped body conform a bit more to the ideal (read, cylindrical) Japanese figure. Various layers of under-kimonos, sashes, and then the kimono and obi (wide brocade belt), everything in white. They were all so pleased with the result that we went downstairs and they pulled Mr. Mizushima out of a meeting to take some pictures. Picture this enourmous Japanese bride (with unusual features) cruising around through rooms full of Japanese businessmen, trying desperately not to trip in the tiny sandals, and to hold the (amazingly heavy) kimonos up off the ground...Quite a sight, I think.
Then they wanted to try out another wedding kimono, this time a glorious orange. (Good thing my hair was under that black wig, or it would have clashed interestingly.) More rounds of photos, and then it was back to my regular boring clothes.
In the afternoon, I had an origami class where we discovered that the information that I had been doing origami since I was 6 had not been transmitted properly. We had a great time, anyway, and I taught the teacher (a Mrs. Megishi) my friend Michael LaFosse's butterfly, and we talked about how real Japanese people view and use origami.
The headquarters office staff were in a packing frenzy, getting ready for a Hakubi tour of Toronto, so I hung out and helped with random stuff. We all went out later for dinner at a local pub/restaurant. More interesting (ya, slimy) food, great sake, and a lot of work getting around my lack of language skills. Kuroki-san struggled valiantly with the translation efforts, and I did my best to come up with at least words, if not actual sentences. Hopefully I'll improve...
Another inevitable thing you notice in Japan is that, of course, they drive on the other side of the road. I find that I am always looking in the wrong direction to check for cars, and have to keep reminding myself to stop and really look both ways before I do anything. I've narrowly missed walking into bicycles several times.
A less obvious side effect of this is that the trains go on the other side, too. I inevitably am looking in the wrong direction every time a train pulls into the station. And it messes up my sense of direction, so I'm constantly confusing north and south, as a result.
And if you think rotaries in MA are scary, just try going around them in the other direction!
In the morning, I continued working with Lily on the NASA tape. Plus I spent a while with Kuroki-san, who will have the interesting task of translating the thing, explaining a bit how a Space Shuttle launch works, base concepts of orbital mechanics, and the like. He admitted that actaully he'd hated math and physics in high school, and was amazed that I knew all this stuff. I find it all pretty entertaining.
Lunch was an even spiffier sushi restaurant than the last place, in the Hotel New Otani where Shigeru (my boss) is staying while he's here in Tokyo. This time I got not to be the focus of attention, since the lunch was in honor of Shigeru's visit, not mine, and it was rather nice for a change! I am the first to admit I'm something of a ham, but this much time in the limelight is a bit overwhelming. The sushi chef did have fun challenging me to eat stuff (once we got past the "I'll try anything except natto (the fermented bean stuff") part of The Food Conversation.)
The afternoon was my very first Kimono class. Hasegawa sensei was endlessly patient, and Lily was there to help translate (plus she practiced putting one on, too, which was actually very helpful, as I could look at things while she was working on the back part of the obi, etc.). There are, in the Hakubi style of doing things, anyway, at least 15 separate articles that end up on your body (not counting the socks, and various temporary things you use to help tie the obi.) And, of course, they all have names! Guess I have some homework to do.
Had a big design meeting for the Hakubi web site. It went really well (now I really have homework to do!) and afterwards we all went out to yet another local pub/restaurant. Yumiko-san (Mr. Mizushima's daughter) is quite a sake expert, and they were all determined to introduce me to the finer points of the stuff. Of course, by the end of the evening I had pretty much forgotten all the names of the stuff we were drinking...Ah well. I have discovered a wonderful snack to accompany sake - it is, if you can believe it, grilled dried stingray wings, served with a spicy mayonnaise dipping sauce. I love it.
There is a small restaurant that I pass every morning on the way to the school, and it's situated such that the kitchen door is visible from the street. Today when I walked by, the cook was washing rice - in a special rice-washing machine! It makes perfect sense, when you think of it, but it had never occurred to me that they'd have a machine. (It's usual to wash Japanese rice until the water runs clear. Considering the amount a restaurant must go through in a day, this is a great idea.)
Today, all day, was Kimono class. It's really fascinating, and amazingly all my origami practice has finally proved useful! All the tucking and folding and things are a lot like origami, especially when you're done and have to fold everything up just so. The last year of sailing has paid off, too, in that I'm better at visualizing and tying knots, and that's way useful when you're working on this thing behind your back.
I am amazed at my Kimono teacher's ability, too, to sit in seiza (the traditional kneeling posture) for hours on end, and get up gracefully afterwards. Without messing up the kimono.
It's hard to say much, here, about kimono class. The process is difficult to describe in words. The president of Hakubi, Mr. Mizushima, has written a poem about the kimono, and in it he talks about the kimono as a "friend," someone who can keep you company. It sounds odd, but I think I understand it a little. The process of putting on a kimono is very personal - you have to adjust it specifically to your own shape and size, and many of the proportions you pick for the adjustments are based on the length of your hand, or finger, or your height, etc.
After I was done with classes for the day, I decided to brave the supermarket. It's pretty overwhelming, at first, but I wandered around and stared at labels a lot. I think I managed to not buy anything I didn't mean to (no rat poison instead of soap, or anything.) I even fixed myself dinner (simmered beef and daikon radish, rice and some pickles...Hardly haute cuisine, but it was good.)
And I needed to do laundry, so I spent a while sitting in front of the machines with my kanji dictionary in hand. The washer was easy, and I figured out which box of powder was the detergent, and which was the all-fabric bleach. However, in spite of (I thought) decoding the dryer instructions, I cannot seem to get it to stay on for more than 2 minutes. Very odd. Well, I will just hang everthing to dry.
While I'm on the subject of grocery stores, I should mention the produce section. I've seen some nice produce sections in stores in the states, but nothing beats Japan. Everything is nicely packaged (in small quantities! Makes it easy to shop for one person, actually) and beautifully displayed. And everything is really, really fresh. It's great. And they have all this very interesting stuff. Right now, ginger shoots are in season, so there are all these baby ginger roots (with about 10 inches of green shoot still attached) in artfully arranged piles. They're yummy sliced, and eaten raw with miso paste.
After two days of Kimono class, I got a change in pace and today went to do Kumihimo. This is the art of braiding the cords that go around the obi to hold it in place. As I love knots and things, I was thoroughly captivated by the whole thing. There are a variety of "looms" (that's probably not the right word, as this isn't actually weaving) that you can use, depending on the design you're working on. This morning's was a wonderful contraption that pulls up (via a hanging weight and some pulleys) on the cord you're working on to keep it straight while you're working on it. So you are braiding downwards, while the thing pulls the finished cord up and away from your hand. (Ok, it is hard to describe in words. Sorry!)
Anyway, it turned out I was reasonably good at it, and in the morning I finished the length of cord they had set up that they figured would take me a good part of the day. So Lily and I went off to lunch while they pondered what to do with me in the afternoon.
When we got back from lunch (cold soba, dipped in a yummy sauce) they had set up a more loom-like aparatus for me, and started a wide braid, with something like 25 lines in it. This was even better than the morning's stuff, and I had a grand time chugging along and turning out braid. This took a surprising amount of upper body and hand strength (kind of like in weaving, you have to beat the braid into place after each weave with a long flat piece of bamboo) and I was glad for the strength and calluses sailing practice had given me this spring.
At the end of the day, they decided to tell me that, actually, that particular loom is only used by 3rd year students, and I was the first foreigner to every use one there. They had figured I did so well in the morning, it would be interesting to see how I could handle the big loom...I was a bit blown away by this, needless to say. But all in all, it was pretty cool.
Lily's officemate, Ogawa-san, it turns out, does haiga, brush painting with colored ink and accompanying haiku poems. When she found out I did sumi-e, she offered to do a little haiga class, and of course I said I'd love to! So after my braiding class, we met in one of the conference rooms and did some painting.
It was really interesting to work with color, for a change, and Ogawa-san is very good, so it was great fun to watch, and try to copy some of her pieces. Just to complete a rather mind-boggling day, she was kind enough to give me a set of the ink pallettes to take home. I continue to be bowled over by everyone's generosity...How am I ever going to repay everyone's kindness?
In the evening, several of us went out for dinner (yes, even more things I cannot name, but all of which were pretty good; including more stingray wings, only this time not dried, but deep-fried.) The conversation turned to karaoke at some point, and when they found out I had never been to do karaoke in Japan, we of course had to go. Thankfully, most of the karaoke places in Japan are nothing like in the States, where you have to stand up and sing in front of the whole restaurant. Instead, here you have "karaoke boxes" which are tiny rooms with their own sound and video system. You only embarass yourself in front of a relatively small number of people, then!
So, I tried a couple of songs (they had a surprisingly large collection of English language songs) and most of it was pretty off key. But we had fun anyway. It was especially nice for me to have company and a fun night out, it being Friday, the night I usually go out with the gang at home. I think I am starting to get a bit homesick, and tonight made a big difference to me.
A product I wish they had in America - sugar syrup, in little containers. (Maybe we have it, but I've certainly never seen it anywhere. Well, a few restaurants sometimes serve it in little pitchers with ice tea in the summer, but that's it.) It's everywhere, here, and they always serve it to you with ice coffee and tea. I'm going to get some in the grocery store, and bring it home with me.
Saturday was offically "free time" but I decided that I needed a bit more practice with the Japanese version of Photoshop on the Mac at the school, so I spent the morning working over there. (Ya, ok, I'm a geek. Well, and the weather wasn't very nice, so I didn't feel like doing tourist things.) Saturday, it turns out, is a busy day at the school (makes sense, actually) and so a lot of the staff work on Saturdays, and take another day of the week off. So Yamada-kun and Ando-san (two of the folks from the Hakubi web group) were around, and we had lunch together. I had spaghetti, and had to eat with a fork. As it was the first time I'd used a fork since I got to Japan, it was kind of weird...What a surprise.
And then, in the afternoon, I met Prof. Naito and his wife and some of his friends to go see a half-day of the Tokyo spring Sumo Tournament. (YAY!)
Sumo is another of those things that is hard to describe. As a sport, it sounds pretty odd (though, really, all sports are pretty odd, if you think of them objectively) but seeing it in person is amazing. Some of the wrestlers are, of course, astonishingly fat, but all the good ones are also really, really strong, agile, and quick. And they all have a tremendous presence when you see them in person. It was quite impressive.
In between rounds and things many of the lower-ranked wrestlers wander around the halls of the stadium, and sign autographs and things. Walking past them was the first time I felt short, here! These guys are not just large compared to your average Japanese person, they'd be large anywhere.
Afterwards Prof. Naito and his wife took me out to dinner, and we caught up on what he'd been doing since he visited MIT in January. They've invited me down to Kamakura for the day tomorrow, if the weather's good.
Most Japanese trains and subway cars have hanging handles for passengers to hold on to, in addition to the usual metal poles. These hanging handles are, for the most part, exactly even with the middle of my forehead. As a result, I am constantly hitting my head on them when I get up from my seat. My gut level reaction to hitting something about that height is, of course, that I'm hitting the pole, so I flinch massively every time, and look like a complete idiot. Wonder if I'll ever get used to them? (Or maybe just get used to flinching all the time?)
Today was, after yesterday's rain, a gloriously cool, bright, sunny day. So I headed off for Tokyo Station, and caught the train south to Kamakura.
Prof. Naito met me at the train station, and we changed to another train (a monorail, actually) and headed first to the seaside town of Enoshima. It's a real beach/resort town, and is in the middle of a beautiful bay. There was a good, stiff breeze, and the bay was full of sailboats. The sight made me really, really homesick, but it was really nice to see, anyway. We went to the local aquarium, and tried to figure out what the names of all these fish might be in English (with only marginal success.) There is a small sea-world like place, and we saw the dolphin show, which was fun, and then took the short train ride up the coast to Kamakura itself.
I'd been there once before, so we went to places I hadn't seen already. One was a neat temple built around a spring in a cave. Apparently, someone once washed some money in the water of the spring (I couldn't quite get to the bottom of the story as to why they did this, originally) but afterwards they made lots of money, and credited the good fortune to the magical properties of the spring. Word of this spread, and many people came to try it, and all the ones for whom it worked paid to have a torii (the special wooden archway you see at shrines and holy places) built along the path to spring. There are quite a few, so maybe there is something to it. So we put a handful of coins in one of the baskets provided for us, dipped it into the water, and tossed a few in the box in front of the alter, and asked the spirit of the spring to look kindly on our fortunes. Dunno if it will work, but it was fun anyway.
We also stopped in and visited Prof. Naito's sister (who lives right near the money-washing spring shrine) and her family. There I got to interact with her grandson, a cheerful little three year old. I understood almost nothing he said, but I did discover that tickling is not language dependent.
Kamakura, being a great tourist attraction, also is a great place to shop for souvenirs, and Prof. Naito kindly put up with a walk down the main drag while I gathered small things to take home. He also knew of a really nice paper shop, and I stopped in a bought a large quantity of calligraphy paper. The owner of the shop said she could do mail order stuff, too, so I may have finally found a reasonable way to get good paper!
Then we headed off to dinner at his house. It turns out he has a dog and two cats, so I got my fill of four-footed company, too. (Sorry, Turbo and Cleo, I just had to let them sit in my lap!)
In addition to his amazing micro-origami, Prof. Naito is also hard a work on a human-powered helicopter. His pilot, a graduate student at a local university, is also a triathlete (no surprise). He came to dinner, too, so we had an interesting time talking about the helicopter project. I got to see the (top-secret) current design, too! But I promised not to say anything about it, so I guess I'd better change the topic.
An easy train-ride home to Tokyo capped off a terrific day.
On the way home, I got to experience (again) one of the strangest Japanese train-riding habits - sleeping. Really, everyone sleeps on the train and the subway. It's as if the whole country doesn't get enough sleep (which, given their work and commuting schedules, is probably true.) Even on the subway, many, many people, regardless of the time of day, will just sit there with their eyes closed, and at least nap. In the evening it's much more noticeable. There's something still really odd about sitting there in this silent train car, surrounded by people with their eyes closed.
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Copyright 1997 Anne R. LaVin
This page's URL: http://www-japan.mit.edu