Surreal Escapes

What else was I supposed to do? I was stuck in the mountains for days with no food, and the mountain beast walked right under my ishi uchi tana I had set up on the cliff side so I pummeled it. I had no way to start a fire as everything was drenched from the incessant rains, so I ate it raw.

Ok, so maybe the mountains were really a city and the rain was barely a drizzle, the first I’d seen all week. And maybe the cliff was actually a bar stool in a nice restaurant. And no, I didn’t actually kill the horse. But I did eat it, and it was raw. And it was delicious. Known as basashi, this local dish of Kumamoto is made of thin, bite-size slices of raw horse meat and dipped in garlic and soy. The meat was wonderfully tender and had a flavor better than any steak I have ever eaten. It was a bit on the pricey side, but well worth it.

Basashi wasn’t the only new food I tried while I was in Kyushu. I sampled Kumamoto’s other specialty, karashi renkon, as well. Lotus root stuffed with mustard and bean curd, battered, then fried. Delicious. Chicken Namban is well known in Miyazaki, but I tried tuna Namban instead. Fried tuna chunks with a light sweetness and served with a tartar sauce. Delicious. In the small castle town of Obi, I ate obi-ten, which is made of minced flying fish, tofu, sugar, and miso, deep fried. Good, but not quite delicious. Finally, in Fukuoka, I had my first meal of okonomiyaki, a strange pizza/pancake with vegetables and whatever else you’d like in it. Delicious, but actually a specialty of the Kansai region, so I will have to try the real thing back in Kyoto.

…but now it reminds me of everything. Well, not everything, but certainly much more than it used to. I’ve been here in Japan for nearly two months, and some of my best memories have come from getting lost. Racing blindly through the streets of Tokyo to make it back to our youth hostel before the front door was locked. Meandering around Kamakura until being invited to picnic with some Japanese men. Drifting through the back streets of Kyoto and seeing a geisha in a rickshaw. Stumbling into a subway station to discover an underground mall. And many times just happening across a serene shrine or temple. Some of the best moments come when you get off the well-worn tourist path.

Last week in Kyushu I discovered that riding the trains until I get lost can be just as easy, and can get me even more lost than I ever could on foot. I ended up in the most out of the way place with no way to get anywhere in time to do anything. Trying to avert a disastrous week, I rearranged my plans with the help of a travel agent in the station, and with help from a man in line for the travel agent. He spoke some English, so he did some translating between the travel agent and me. He then treated me to lunch, stopped by his house to show me his garden, treated me again to cake and coffee at his friends’ shop, and finally took me to my hotel.

I was amazed by his generosity and friendliness, and it was a fun chance to speak Japanese. As it turns out, he was the first of many kind people that I would meet during my travels. And as always, getting lost turned out to be a memorable experience.

I recently returned from a whirlwind tour of Kyushu, the third largest island of Japan situated to the south of the archipelago. The island doesn’t seem that big on a map, but I found plenty to do and could have easily spent two weeks there instead of one. My original plan was to do a lot of hiking in the northern half of Kyushu, but a combination of a travel mishap and the realization that I wasn’t well enough prepared for these hikes led me to change my plans. I still fit in a few nice treks in the mountains, as well as some urban hiking, and even a day on a bike. The weather was beautiful all week. I ended up spending a lot more time on the trains than I was expecting, but this wasn’t all bad since there was always gorgeous scenery to watch go by. I made excellent use of my Japanese while I was out on my own and I feel like the week really helped me improve. I have a few good stories from my trip, but I’ll save those for later posts.

Denshijisho – an electronic dictionary. It eliminates the need to own a library of dictionaries and probably costs less too. After some debating, I bought one for $130 in Akihabara and have never looked back. I can read menus with it. I can go to the store and actually know what I’m buying. I can communicate with anyone. It may be slow, but it lets me learn in situations where I would otherwise learn nothing, and probably get nowhere. My denshijisho can go anywhere and do anything.

Actually, that’s not true. It shouldn’t go in my back pocket because it does not make a good seat cushion.

I was out with my colleagues one night and as often happens, a topic arose that was difficult to discuss. I opened up my dictionary and saw a big black spot obscuring much of the screen. Luckily I didn’t really need the denshijisho anymore. I had no English words to describe my shock.

Repairs were going to be $100 and take almost a month. I decided to look for a new one and pay the extra $30 to have this invaluable tool back instantly. I found a store with my denshijisho model, but it was $40 more expensive than I was expecting. Now I wasn’t sure if getting a new one was worth it. I tried explaining my situation, how sad and terrible it was that I sat on my old denshijisho, in hopes of getting a lower price. The clerk spoke no English though, and I’m pretty sure he couldn’t understand my Japanese at all. Luckily, and I do mean luckily, there was a British fellow standing in the next aisle over. He happened to overhear my conversation, and just happened to speak Japanese. He explained my situation to the clerk and was able to get him to sell it for the $130 price point I was looking for. Someone must have been looking out for me, because it is rare to see a foreigner, let alone one who speaks Japanese fluently.

To the casual observer, the tea ceremony may appear to be the most boring and senselessly rigid ceremony in existence. Why must I endure the torture of seiza, the Japanese style of sitting? What makes tea special enough to be ceremonious about? It’s not so much about the tea, as it is about escaping from the chaos of reality.

The ceremony starts as soon as you walk through the door, removing your shoes and washing your hands and mouth at the font to leave behind the filth of outside. The host conducts you into the silent and pristine tea room. Sweets are served in a precise manner, and must be eaten as precisely. The thick green tea is prepared with exact movements. There is no chaos. The sweets, the utensils, the cup, and the simple decorations must all be admired. There is beauty, which can often be hard to find in reality. Everything has a clear purpose, which is not always the case in life. Like the samurai of years past, one can always find comfort and sanity in the peace of the tea ceremony.

Kaiten–sushi, literally rotation–raw fish. Rotating sushi? Well, in a way. A kaitenzushi is a sushi bar that uses a conveyor belt to transport the sushi plates. I went to one for the first time while I was in Tokyo. It was an intriguing experience. And delicious…well, mostly.

Normally when I walk into a restaurant, the first thing I worry about is getting a seat. Here though, I had to take a few moments to observe the many little plates of fish as they twisted and turned all around the room, almost as if they were alive and swimming. I soon realized that my friends were walking ahead of me, so I hurried to catch up to them as they sat down at the bar near the center of the large room where several chefs were preparing the sushi.

The way a kaitenzushi works is simple. There are differently designed plates, and each plate has a price associated with it. At the end of the meal, the waitress tallies up the plates; in this case, using RFID. The meal was fun and adventurous. Each plate of sushi was its own little piece of art to be admired as it drifted by. A few plates that I picked I should have done just that, admire them, and not eat them as the textures weren’t quite appetizing, particularly the squid. Overall, it was enjoyable, if a little on the expensive side. We need to Americanize these…kaiten-cheese cake anyone?

Before coming to Japan, I sought advice from many people who had experienced this foreign land. There was one common statement among them all: Japan is safe. I got the impression that this stemmed from an inherent honesty and respect in Japanese society. This may very well be true, but while in Tokyo, I witnessed something that may be another reason for the lack of crime.

The police are vicious and should be feared.

One day as we were walking around Tokyo as a class, we stopped while sensei explained the significance of a building. Nearby was a parked car with two policemen holding a man to its hood. Shortly, sirens approached and a van rolled up. Police climbed out, as if they were clowns from a clown car, and descended on the man. Trouble was obviously brewing, so we thought it best to move along. As we walked away, several more officers barreled down the sidewalk past us. All counted, there were nearly thirty police on the scene. You have to wonder, was this guy especially evil, or is this how all crime is treated in Japan? What could he have done? Maybe he was just trying to transform reality in a way that it didn’t want to be changed.

The word city is a surprisingly difficult to define, but there is at least one word that should be in any definition. Concrete. As a substance, it plays an integral role in the construction of a city. As a state of being it is antonymous to a city’s nature. A city’s borders’ are vaguely defined and change with time. Inside its borders, buildings are razed, built, and remodeled. The inhabitants create a living, breathing beast with as many varied locales as there are varied emotions in the people who walk its streets. To put it abstractly, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would recognize a city.

And so would I. When I arrived in Japan, I was swallowed whole by the largest city I have ever seen. Tokyo is a city so large that it has multiple skylines. So large that from the 48^th floor of the Metropolitan Government Building near the center of the city only a sea of endless buildings can be seen. So large that in the two weeks I was there, I feel like I only scratched the surface of this incredibly complex place. A quick glance at the multicolored spider web train and subway maps alludes to this complexity. Traveling these lines leads to a variety of experiences. The strange electronic world of Akihabara; the eccentric night life of Roppongi; the high class shops of Ginza; the peacefulness of one of the many parks; the beauty of a Shinto shrine. Tokyo is certainly an interesting world.