To Be Among People on Streetcars and Trains

"Is that a religion book?"

I looked up, startled. I was not used to being addressed in public, especially in English on this nearly empty twilight train out towards Gifu. The other passengers, stragglers who are bound for the end of the line as I am, rarely have a word for me as tightly wrapped up around themselves as they are. My silent companions in raw umber light as the sun sinks lower over the rice fields. Even more surprising was the small older woman who addressed me, her meek demeanor belied by a strong voice.

"Excuse me?"

She pointed directly at the book in my hands. "Is it about religion?"

I closed the small paperback. The book was one of two I keep on hand for commuting. Novels that I can start from anywhere; familiar stories that are more a linked serial than a cohesive narrative, so I can pick and choose where I begin, and then read for as long as I can. One is a battered copy of Cat's Cradle I bought a few years ago in a tiny used English book shop when I lived in Rome. The other, the one currently in my hand, is a Kerouac my brother bought me for Christmas half-jolkingly after I made fun of him once too often for liking Kerouac.

Her wrinkled fingers hovered over the dharma splashed across the cover. "A book of religion?"

"Ah," I breathed, understanding. I tried my best not to laugh. "Sort of."

She smiled, and the creases in her face grew deeper. "Are you interested in Buddhism?"

"I was," I answered truthfully. "I guess I still am." I looked at the worn paperback in my hands, the Dharma on the cover slightly more faded than the Bums beside it. "This isn't really about Buddhism."

"No?"

"It's fiction."

Her smile turned unexpectedly bright, teetering on excitement, and I marveled for a moment at how easy conversation with her was. I was out of practice - I had learned, after enough time here, to close myself off to people when I am traveling alone. When one is often purposefully ignored, it's easier to believe that you blend into the background.

"I have read some fiction," she said then almost mischievously, as if we were sharing a secret. "English fiction."

I tried, and failed, not to look surprised. It dawned on me then how easily her words came to her. No stilted pauses, no raised eyes and searching for words - just easy flowing, accented language.

She was small and unassuming in the way that many other women who have made it old age here are; hunched over with measured movements, wispy hair and deep wrinkles in her face. A woman like so many others, one that I would just as easily ignore on the afternoon train as the rest of the populous pretends to look past me. What had her life been, I wondered for a moment, that she spoke English so well.

"Your English is very good," I told her simply.

Her shoulders raised slightly, an almost involuntary motion, as if to disregard the compliment.

"What do you read?" I asked instead.

Her crinkled eyes stayed on me, and for a moment I thought she looked mischievous again.

"Drama," she pronounced. "Great romance. I like Nora Roberts."

I thought then of those paperback romance novels, the ones you can buy for a few dollars in the supermarket that end up lining the walls of rental houses or my mother's beach bag, and tried again not to laugh.

"I know those," I told her. "I've never read them."

"They are very good," she said with the gravitas of someone recommending Henry James, but then proceeded to giggle. It was rough and throaty, but no less genuine.

Conversation lapsed, and we joined the silence of the rest of the train car. I felt my own failure at not responding, but I knew nothing more to say about Nora Roberts. I searched for the words beneath my tongue, just behind my lips, but I could not find them. I alone seemed uncomfortable; she smiled still contentedly at me.

The train lurched towards a station, the gears creaking as they slowed on the tracks, and she rose from her seat by the window. I quickly jumped to make way for her, but she moved with careful, deliberate steps around me.

"They have happy endings," she said suddenly, and I looked just as startled as when she first spoke to me.

"Sorry?"

"Happy endings," she repeated slowly, as if I were the one speaking a second tongue. "Nora Roberts books."

She paused a moment, like she was thinking deeply about it.

"I like happy endings," she decided finally.

I smiled sincerely. "I do too."

She graced me with a smile one last time, the type that intensified the many lines and creases and years in her face, and walked off the train - leaving me with a punch-drunk and dumbfounded look and a vast number of questions that would never get any answers.

I sat back down as the train churned to a start again, but I did not open my book. I did not distract myself with music or thoughts of work or anything else. Instead I sat, staring out the train windows at the low sun and the rice fields, and thought only of happy endings.

Reason 5,431 to Love Japan

Last week, I gave into one of my sporadic tendencies to be a hermit and decided to spend the night in. My days off the last few weeks, though fun and fantastic, have been been entirely too busy for the secret recluse hiding inside me. The perfect remedy, in my mind, was a Saturday night to myself.

It was a warm night, as it has been getting progressively warmer, and my balcony door was open to let the breeze in. (I refuse, even as of this moment, to use my air conditioner yet. It's a stubborn exercise in self-denial, but I know that once it goes on, I won't ever turn it off. And my electricity bill will end up suffering, because this country doesn't believe in insulation.) I was lying on my bed beside the open balcony, and despite the bad TV I was watching, I still managed to hear it. The sound of drums and flutes, of chanting and traditional music.

Intrigued, I clicked off the computer and went out onto my balcony. And what was I greeted by, but this:

A full-blown traditional procession right below my apartment.

If you can tolerate my impromptu, shaky camerawork, you notice that float strung high with lanterns. Inside the float there were seated mechanical shamisen players whose heads clicked back and forth like figurines on an antique cuckoo clock. Adult men in happi coats guided the float, and when it reached the end of the block, grunted and shifted the entire structure one hundred and eighty degrees. Men, women, children in yukata then pulled the entire construction down my street with giant ropes as the music from the float spurred them on.

On a normal day, my street is nothing exceptional to look at. A bicycle repair shop and takoyaki stand line along the street with an Italian restaurant, various cafes, and the side entrance of a university. It's downright unremarkable. But as I stood on my balcony for twenty minutes, watching the harmonic procession, I finally found something beautiful in it as I was wrapped up in the ceremony of it all.

And it's moments like that when I truly love living in Japan. When I take a night in, and happen to witness a surprise Summer festival. The loveliness of custom floating by the bright lights of convenience stores and restaurants.

Though of course Summer festival means, of course, Summer, and we are about two days into rainy season and I already hate it. The air feels sticky all the time, and the rain is just a constant mist. Despite showering just before I left for work, I came home itching just to wash the air off me. I'm counting the days till the end of June. Which is when we have just humidity without the precipitation accompaniment.

I predict I break down tomorrow and put on my air conditioner. But as for now, I'll sit by my open balcony door over my ordinary street as the misty breeze keeps me somewhat cool.

"With a Side of Kanji, Please"

I did something absolutely mortifying today.

I take private Japanese lessons every Thursday morning, and this morning was no different then usual. My typical Thursday schedule consists of me rising around 9, showering, downing a cup of coffee, reviewing a few last minute notes, and then shuffling off to a 20 minute subway ride in the hopes of showing up at the Higashi Betsuin Women's Center by 11. I am usual not fully aware at first, but having to think in another language wakes you up quicker than you can imagine. So I breezed in at 10:55 this morning, and finally feeling the effects of my caffeine intake, started to excitedly talk to my teacher about my plans tonight. But my verbal barrage took a turn towards the worse as my own stupidity quickly reared its head, and my teacher reacted to it.

The conversation alone can convey my faux pas. So, for the mixed reasons of a better explanation as well as for entertainment value, here is the conversation. Translated and transcribed, to the best my memory serves.

(Kate walks in to see Keiko sitting at a table.)

Keiko: Long time no see! How are you?

Kate: Great, thanks. How about you?

Ke: Great. So do you have to work today?

Ka: No, actually. Tonight my students and I are going out for dinner.

Ke: In Kanie?

Ka: No, Takaoka. I'm going to Kanayama first, then Takaoka for dinner at 7. (Kate pauses, an uncertain look on her face.) An end of the year party!

(Keiko does a slight double take, then gives her a confused glance.)

Ka: (repeats uncertainly) End of the year party...? (looks frantically through her dictionary)

Did I say it wrong?

Ke: No, no. Usually they're in December. Between Christmas and New Year's.

Ka: Oh its November. What's today then?

(Keiko keeps the confused look on her face.)

Ke: Today is a holiday.

Ka: (genuinely curious) Really? What?

(Keiko blanches slightly in surprise, as if it had been obvious)

Ke: Kate, today is Thanksgiving.

(Kate gives a long pause)

Ka: Oh.

END SCENE

Keiko then went on to laugh, saying that she had went to a Thanksgiving party the night before, while I was clearly looking forward to Japanese traditions. She went further to say that today, she was the American and I was Japanese.

I laughed too. I just find it sad that my Japanese teacher had to remind me that today was Thanksgiving.

Oops.

It's not like I didn't know of its approach either. All week, people asked me about the holiday, and if I was going to eat turkey on Thursday. ( And to which I replied, while I would love to, how in the world would I prepare it? This is my cooking area:

I can't bake cookies, let alone a whole turkey.)

So even thought I knew it was coming, talked of it all week, on the day of, for some inexplicable reason, it completely slipped my mind. I feel like a horrible American.

One would think the thought of the food alone would keep it foremost in my thoughts. How I salivate over the thought of the Thanksgiving treats today. And one look at my "oven" is proof enough how much I miss baked goods. And while I do miss the food from home, I am fine subsisting on what I do. In fact, it makes me appreciate it more. So if I find really great food like that from home, the scarcity makes the taste that much better.

For when I find a really great cheese in a country severely deprived of fermented milk-based food products, I gratefully shell out the high price and relish it that much more when I finally eat it. And when, on a whim, I decide to pay 500 yen for that tiny bunch of grapes, the wait alone makes the grapes that much better. And ethnic foods, like Mexican and Indian, the kinds I took for granted in their abundance, become special places to find and eat at. (One in particular, Mugal Palace, has become almost a weekly pilgrimage spot. Besides making me a bit of a connoisseur of Indian food for all the items I have tried, it is hands down the best Indian food I've ever had in my life.)

But in truth, and as expected, I now live on a highly Japanese diet. To what I'm sure would be

my mother's chagrin, I haven't had pasta or hard bread in months. I eat rice all the time, and various stir fry are the main dishes I consume.

I even eat salad with chopsticks.

In fact, I have even discovered some food items I will sorely miss when I leave Japan. The fried gyoza found in the food stores are out of this world. Asahi makes this yogurt granola bar that not only is amazingly delicious, but has become my weekly Wednesday afternoon snack. There is a spicy tofu and rice dish at my local convenience store that I cannot live without. And in a country of crab flavored potato chips, I have fallen in love with Azuki Pepsi. And it actually tastes like Azuki paste, or sweet bean paste, a staple of most Japanese desserts.

Which is another odd item I have grown to love.

But eating out is truly the height of my diet in Japan. The food is not necessarily expensive, or well seasoned, but its comforting and filling without being overwhelming. Scrumptious is really the only appropriate word. And izukaya food is designed to be communal, so the whole atmosphere is as social as the food is delicious. From the grilled meats and nabe pots to tabasaki to salads with unnecessary corn. I enjoy it all.

(And deciphering the menus at such establishments is always an added treat, because there are usually several characters none of us can read. Believe me, jokes like "the Kanji salad" or "I'll take the tomato, garlic, and Kanji" seriously never gets old.)

But all that aside, at my end of the year/secret Thanksgiving dinner tonight, though I was surrounded by the Japanese foods I have come to love, I was dreaming of pumpkin pie and cranberry sauce. Mulling over mashed potatoes. Fantasizing about stuffing. Pondering the delights of hot biscuits.

And desperately wishing I had an oven.

And sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler

Yesterday was my friend Amelia’s 24th birthday.

Amelia is laid back almost to a fault, her effortless humor and even keel personality making her a someone you always want around. So I knew before hand, her birthday would be celebratory, but easy going. And because she had never been so close to a beach in the summer, despite having a birthday in August, she chose to spend her birthday at the beach. So yesterday, we traveled to Utsumi for a day on the shore.

We left Nagoya station late morning, loaded down with coolers, towels, and a general sense of quiet contentment. The train was full at first, with people and our own buzzing excitement, but as the railroad car drove along and people filtered out, only are voices were left. We stayed on the line till the very last stop, a long, winding trip through mountains; the sticky heat kept outside as we crisscrossed quiet towns dotted along the way. As the tracks petered out, we climbed out of Utsumi Station and, after a few mumbled directions in broken Japanese, headed towards the beach.

And the day ended up being all we had wanted; and really, all we expected. In other words, it was quite perfect.

The water was calm and low and warm; as crystal clear and reflective as the peerless blue sky. The sand itself was fine and white, and it slipped between our toes like cool powder. We lay down sheets and towels and heaped on the beach like a sprawling mass of cloth and bags. We lazily relaxed on the beach all day, languidly drinking and eating; a constant stream of food instead of a respectable meal. We laughed loudly with short bursts of impromptu singing, taking breaks here and there to sprint towards the cool water and splash around in it like children. We jumped on tubes and threw beach balls, while some of us covertly stalked the others with 100 yen store water guns. (And in truth, the hunt was always better than the actual attack, for the stream it produced was tiny at best, but the playful fear of an unexpected raid much more gratifying.)

When the sun turned down and set over the ocean, the orange ball low in the sky, I stood in the surf of the calm twilight sea with Caitlin and watched the others enjoy the slowly emptying beach. A few still half heartedly swimming, a few digging in the sand for no other reason than to do it, and everyone else sitting sun warmed and eased on the towels.

And as the sky turned inky, we reluctantly left the deserted beach and found a Tiki Bar a little up the shoreline. It was small with gaudy decorations evocative of tropical islands, but the drinks were cool and the food delicious and we whiled away the rest of the night there. We deciphered the menu, the English words masked in katakana, the foreign sounds rolling off our tongue as we tried to make them fit the words we knew them to be. We tried to play a drinking game to which I’m still not sure the rules, or when you had to drink, and it turned into all of us trying to come up with as many adjectives for each letter of the alphabet as we could. (It’s hard to play, Caitlin later said, when you do it with people with a good vocabulary.)

Tired, relaxed, our sun reddened cheeks turned redder by the alcohol, we finally head towards Utsumi station after ten. It was only after we arrived at the station that we discovered that the last train left at 10:39.

We got there at 10:44, five minutes too late.

Utsumi is one horse town, to borrow a homegrown colloquialism. We saw very few people in the town during the day, and no one at night. Everything was dark and shut down; a sleepy town closed down for the night. Plopping down in the middle of the darkened and empty train station, despite half formed ideas, we all knew there was no way to get back to Nagoya that evening. Someone suggested a bar to kill a few hours, someone else brought finding a hotel. And, well, because I was calm and content, 23 years old, and on vacation, we all collectively decided to sleep on the beach.

There was something reminiscent of home as I pulled on the orange hoodie I fortunately packed on a whim and sauntered down to the cool sand of the beach at night. A few chuckled at the obscene color, and I realized they had never seen the delightful color scheme of my alma mater before, so I joked along with them. There was grumbling about the situation as we sprawled out once again on the beach, but this time with a very different humor.

And a little time later, as we laughed nearly manically at something not all that funny, I realized it was the half-crazed laughter of spontaneity and ridiculous situations, as well as trying to make the best of it.

Wiping the tears from my eyes as my sides started to hurt, Doug said with quiet humor, “Who would have thought a year ago I’d have to be sleeping on a beach in Japan for the night.”

As I rolled onto my back and looked up at the stars, I echoed the sentiment in my head. The idea resonated, for who would have thought I would be in this situation, even a year ago? Which lead me to wonder where will I be on this day next year, and the one after that? Staring up at the endless constellations blinking flirtatiously back at me, life seemed vast and limitless in that one moment. The opportunities I have, and the ones that I create, shape my life. And the life I live, the adventures and events I then choose for myself, leave me with no regrets. These thoughts settled in my mind as I wrapped myself up in my towel and drifted off to sleep.

At 5:17 this morning, I woke up on the beach as the first light crept into the sky. Shannon was already stirring, cardboard she had found to sleep on already being carted towards the trash. (I poked fun at her for sleeping on it. She told me, with no lack of humor, she did it to really get the homeless person experience.) The rest of us rose, bleary eyed and silent, and telepathically decided to head out in time for the first train. Our silence was a great contrast to the noise of the day and night before.

As we trekked back the station, a route we were unfortunately becoming very familiar with, we somehow settled into pairs several yards apart. Amelia herself ended up next to me as we walked noiselessly along the road. The sky was the grey of early morning, and it diffused on the shops and houses still closed up. Despite the sour mood of everyone for having to have slept about 4 hours on the beach , I felt a small bit of optimism creep into my mind. The kind I relish, but others tell me can be quite annoying. Smiling slightly, I turned to Amelia.

“So, how was the birthday?”

Amelia greeted me with a smirk and a raised eyebrow which spoke volumes in and of itself.

And knowing Amelia, I thought that was all I was going to get. But after a brief moment, she laughed.

“Well I’ve never slept on the beach before,” she replied tartly. “So as far as new experiences go, it was a definite success.”

The smile that had been threatening fully erupted on my face, as I joined her in her easy laughter.

“As far as new experiences…” I repeated. “And later, it will make a hell of a story.”

She flashed another wry smile, as if that would make it all worth it.

We slipped back into quiet as we reached the road leading to the train station, the first trains of the morning already waiting on the tracks to take us back to Nagoya.

And no matter where I am next year, no matter when I end up in the future, I know I’m lucky for where I’ve been. For the choices I make. Because no matter what I do, I know I’ll always have one hell of story.