Hi
everybody!
It’s
Sunday morning for me, and I am still recovering from my cold, which has left me
with a hoarse cough. I didn’t go to aikido last night because of it, and instead
stayed at work to get ready for my Tuesday night classes. I have another Area
Teachers’ Meeting in nearby Yonago on Tuesday afternoon, so I won’t have my
usual Tuesday afternoon time to prepare. This meeting will be about interview
techniques. From now until April is our busiest time as we try to line up more
students from the high schools and universities for the summer. Teachers are
required to conduct short interviews with students with a twofold purpose: to
assess the prospective student’s class level, and to be so darn interesting and
fun the student signs up on the spot! (No pressure, though…) The interview is
conducted like a mini-lesson, with small talk before and after. Ideally, we have
about fifteen minutes, but sometimes we may only have five (in between classes,
for example). Ryoko, the branch manager, calls the five-minute chats “Hello
time!” I had my first “Hello time!” yesterday with Yoko, a woman who has just
moved here and is looking to meet new people and practice her English. Melanie
and I tag-teamed, so Yoko got to meet us both separately and talk with us. We’re
“different kinds of fun”, as I said to Melanie later. She’s very high-energy,
and I’m quieter but easy to talk to.
I
dreamed last night I was in a store looking at stamps with Japanese kanji
on them, trying to pick a Japanese name for myself (like Asians often take
Western names when they come to the West). I was thinking about ume
(apricot), because it used to be a popular girls’ name in Japan, or usagi
(rabbit) since it already kind of a nickname, although I wasn’t sure about
the less than positive aspects the animal could represent – timidity, weakness,
et cetera – and I had almost decided on unagi (eel), for reasons my
role-playing buddies will understand, when I woke up. My dream life is very
interesting these days. Other dreams I have had here have
included:
-
zombies
pursuing me very slowly, chanting “otsukare sama deshita” as I try to
escape. “Otsukare sama deshita”, or “Thanks for all your hard work”, is
the Japanese set phrase said throughout and at the end of the day to all your
co-workers. I had this dream in December, when I was feeling particularly
overwhelmed by my work.
-
More
dreams than I care to remember reliving the summer, with Jennie Raymond popping
up to paint old shacks in bright, clashing colours, et cetera. Sometimes it is a
different place, or different plays, or different people, but always there is a
sense of something left unfinished. I have a lot of regrets about the
summer…
-
A dream
where Kiersten Tough (dressed as a hillbilly) and I are driving along a track in
the forest pursuing a hawk with tattered wings. When we get to an old
broken-down house in the woods, Kiersten takes out a shotgun and takes potshots
trying to hit the bird without success.
-
A very
powerful, positive dream where the zombies appear again and a great demon is
creating chaos. With the help of Ben and Sue from Zuppa Circus, I go out the
doors of an airport and walk alone into a swamp to get a great power from a
witch there in the form of cards like Tarot cards. When I come back, I can fly,
and all I have to do is say, “You can’t touch me” and the zombies are powerless.
I walk into a windstorm that is knocking everything else down around me and
fight my way up to the demoness, Shaitan, who cuts out the winds and turns out
to be very reasonable once we get to talking.
I was
telling you in my last missive about the
buke yashiki, or samurai house,
that I visited with Seiji, but I didn’t get to finish my description. The house
and its outbuildings are at the bottom of a bamboo stand on a hill, facing the
moat surrounding the castle. It is the largest samurai house still remaining in
Matsue, and was built in 1730 for the Shiomi family, who were middle-ranking
samurai attending the local daimyo, or lord. From the outside, all you
can see is a long plaster wall with a tiled roof along the west side of the
moat. The front gate in the wall also included rooms for servants (now a ticket
kiosk). Within the enclosure there is an old stable and a standing one-room
structure, now used for tourists who want to sit a moment and rest, where
servants used to prepare food for the house. I loved the age of the place, and
the simplicity and elegance of the house and gardens. Everything is natural:
stone, wood, plaster and tatami mats. The few personal belongings
displayed are beautifully made. I wanted to go back in time, to see this place
when it was bustling with servants and the samurai and his lady, in
hakama and kimono, waited to attend on the lord of the
castle.
Next
door to this place is an old and famous soba restaurant with a beautiful
pond of brightly coloured carp in its courtyard. Soba are buckwheat
noodles, usually thin and greyish in colour; they can be prepared any number of
different ways. I haven’t eaten there yet, but I like soba and I’m looking
forward to trying it.
We also
went to the museum and
residence of Lafcadio Hearn (or Yakumo Koizumi, as he is
known to the Japanese), which also faces the moat. Hearn, as I have said before,
was a Westerner of Irish-Greek heritage who came to Matsue to teach in 1891. He
fell in love with Japan and wrote many books on Japanese myths, history and
nature. He is much beloved here. The museum is very small, containing
photographs, personal belongings (many of his tobacco pipes are preserved here,
as are his shelves and favourite cushion), manuscripts, sketches and early
editions of his books. He married a local woman, the daughter of a samurai
family fallen on hard times. Pictures of him show a rather thin,
retiring-looking man with downcast eyes, a high forehead, strong nose and bushy
moustache. He is usually presenting the right side of his face to the camera,
since his left eye was blinded in a sporting accident when he was young and he
was very self-conscious of it. A special exhibit in a separate room included
images from a comic book about the adventures of Lafcadio Hearn in Japan, with
special coloured prints made for the exhibition, and some paintings by Hearn’s
third son, Harumi.
The Hearn residence, between the museum and the samurai house, is three private
rooms in an old house. Shoes off at the door, of course. The rooms are bare
except for a high desk and chair that Hearn used for writing. (As with many
Japanese homes then and now, bedding was put away in the morning and laid out
again at bedtime; there are no rooms used only as bedrooms.) The floors are
covered with tatami mats, and sliding walls with glass panes open on a
gorgeous garden retreat on three sides of the house. I can see the attraction of
the place for a quiet, imaginative soul like Hearn. It is a place made for
peaceful contemplation and pleasant hours.
The last
place we went on Monday, in the late afternoon, was Gessho-ji Temple. I had read
about it, and was very curious. It took us some time to find it, as Seiji had
never been there. It is in a wooded, hilly area to the west of Matsue. We passed
through the light-coloured walls of homes in a residential district, past a
Buddhist graveyard high on a hill and a few other temples and
shrines to get to
Gessho-ji. In the parking lot was a collection of Buddha-like bronze statues in
an alcove, about six of them of various sizes, all dressed in little red
hand-knit bibs. I asked Seiji about them. The bibs, like those worn by very
elderly Japanese, signify age and respect. Each statue represents a different
aspect of the god. As we paid to go in, I got distracted by two inscrutable cats
that had curled up together on their haunches on a rock nearby and sat
contemplating us. Seiji said maybe they were the reincarnations of two of the
daimyo (military lords) buried here. We made our way along a raised path
of stone blocks through trees dappled gold in the late afternoon sun. We
followed its first turning to the left, and following the stones, stepped
through an intricately carved wooden gate and found ourselves gazing over a
little stone bridge at a moated stone tomb surrounded by long, even rows of
carved stone standing lanterns. The tomb contained the remains of Matsudaira
Naomasa, the first daimyo of the Matsudaira clan, who governed here from
1638 to 1666. We crossed over the stone bridge and walked on time-worn
flagstones green with moss towards the lichen-covered stone tori (gate)
and raised platform on which stood a stone tomb surrounded by a low stone fence.
Fresh-cut flowers and bowls of water had been left before the tomb. It was a
quiet, solemn place. I asked Seiji if the lamps were ever lit, and he said in
August, during Obon, the weeklong festival when the dead are supposed to return
to their homes, and the living return to their birthplaces to pay respect to
their ancestors, he thought the lamps might be lit. The thought of this place on
a summer evening with lights flickering like fireflies about the stone
resting-places of the dead gave me a delighted shiver.
Returning
to the path and continuing our walk, we climbed very steep stone steps to
another carved gate revealing yet another tomb. This was the tomb of Lord Fumai,
the seventh daimyo of the Matsudaira, and the man responsible for
perfecting and popularising the tea ceremony in this area. Looking to our left,
we could see many more tombs and stone lanterns among the trees, linked to each
other by stone steps and mossy pathways. Even on a pleasant February afternoon,
in bright sunlight, this place seems the sort to attract spirits, liches and
banshees. I read later that Gessho-ji holds the tombs of nine daimyo from
the Matsudaira family, and the mother of the first daimyo, for whom this temple
is named.
We
wandered about the graves, a little spooked by the eeriness of the place. But
although the tombs fascinated me, we were both looking for
THE TURTLE. And we
found it at the end of our wanderings. There is a
huge stone tortoise with a
stone pillar on its back in the north of the graveyard. Legend has it that the
pillar was placed on the back of the statue to prevent it from getting up and
lumbering around the graveyard at night, scaring people. Standing upright, I
looked directly into the glazed stare of the statue. Uneasily admiring the
massive clawed feet, the thick neck and the carefully detailed shell, I secretly
prayed that it wouldn’t move.
I think
I will come back here in June, when the hydrangea bloom. There are more than
30,000 hydrangea shrubs in the cemetery and it is supposed to be very beautiful
then.
Because
of my cold, I’ve been neglecting my Japanese homework this week so I have a lot
to catch up on. But I did learn some useful phrases this
week:
nodo ga
itai desu = “My
throat is sore.”
netsu ga
arimasu = “I
have a fever.”
kaze o
hikimasu = “I
have a cold.” (literally “I carry the wind”)
byo ki
desu = “I’m
sick.”
Handy.
On
Wednesday, I got a notice from the post office that a package had arrived for
me. I picked it up on Thursday morning on my way to work. The return address was
from The Odd Book, my stepfather’s bookstore, and I happily displayed my
treasures from home to Ryoko and Mayumi-sensei. I got a one-person Bodum coffee
press and a pound of organic coffee from Just Us! Coffee Roasters, a pair of
brightly-coloured socks hand-knit by my mother, a used copy of George Orwell’s
Keep the Aspidistra Flying (presumably because I mentioned Orwell when I
wrote about C.S. Lewis; I’m looking forward to reading it), and a Tupperware
container full of organic 100% peanut butter. Peanut butter is rare here, and
since it is sold alongside other spreads for toast like Nutella and chocolate
spread, I’m convinced that it has more sugar than peanuts in it. I’ve had coffee
every morning since. It took six weeks to reach me, but it was worth
it!
Despite
my cold, I had a really good time teaching on Friday and Saturday. I had five
private lessons, one group lesson and three grammar classes. Masaki, the tennis
coach, came on Friday. He’s getting over the death of his dog two weeks ago, and
has been very busy, but I always like to see him. Yukiko is a young woman
preparing for a home stay in Australia; she asks lots of questions and has lots
of energy, so I think she’ll get a lot out of her trip; she’s so much fun to
teach. Masafumi, a professor at the University, is also fun to teach. He has a
great sense of humour. And I had my last class with Atsuro this week; he has
submitted his thesis, and has to defend it next week, so he was a little sleepy.
Hironobu, the fireman, was a little low-spirited; he said there were a lot of
fires and accidents this week, and several people died. He is a dispatcher right
now, and he had a busy, demoralizing day. Only my Discovery class at 8pm on
Friday, was hard. Everyone was so non-responsive I wished I had a cattleprod.
Zap!
It seems
more than half of the people I know have something like hay fever this week; bad
allergies, with itchy eyes and a runny nose. Since it’s considered rude to blow
your nose in front of people, the constant sniffing around me has been driving
me crazy!
I think
that’s about it for this week. I’m thinking of everybody. Please take care of
yourselves, and keep in touch. I’ll write again soon.
Sarah