tengutake

Ah, my sweet monkey! What shall we do now that we’ve reunited. Shall we dine? Hmm… all that trouble sneaking you in only to sneak you back out. Alright, climb back down my balcony and take off your monkey suit in the bike parking lot. We’re crossing the parking lot to eat at the comfortable and convenient Oiwake Dormitory!

Be sure to take off your shoes! Yes, we need slippers for our dormitory, shoes for the parking lot, and guest slippers for the dormitory dining hall. These are the shoe boxes for the “Oiwake Boys”. Young men, being what young men are, often have too many shoes to fit in one shoe box. No matter! The extra pairs can be squeeze in on top of water pipes!

And here we arrive at the door to the dormitory. I omitted pictures of the lobby because some people were meeting there. You can tell where you are supposed to gather in Japan because there are two machines: the first is a grandfather clock, the second is a drink machine. Perhaps you are familiar with these items from video games. Perhaps it seemed unlikely that there would be a grandfather clock in a police station. It’s not. You can see the hours on the door: breakfast from 7:30 to 9:00, lunch from noon to 1:00, and dinner from 6:00 to 9:30. The prices are reasonable: Breakfast $3.60, Lunch $2.50, Dinner $6.60. Breakfast is worth waking up, but if you come early you’ll notice that the dormitory loudspeakers are calling the Oiwake Boys to exercises!

Mandatory group exercises? The meals must be pretty spartan, right? Not really. There’s always a choice “setto A” or “setto B” laid out for examination. Note that there are also two bowls next to the plates. We’ll come back to those. Today’s choices weren’t my absolute favorite, but the meals range from “good” to “great” depending on what you like to eat. (Actually, the “setto B” was pretty good, but not too photogenic. It was a sweetish, coconut shrimp. Tasty!) But how do you get the food? Just state your preference at the window! You can see one of the chefs laboring away in the background. They’re pretty cool because they have awesome chef uniforms with hats and scarves. But what are those bowls on the counter?

More choices! Awesome! I’ll let the curry-ladling chef give you the run-down: “Well, sir, today we have a fresh salad with lettuce, cucumber, and boiled daikon, or a pickle salad with cabbage, carrot and cucumber. There is lotus root and seaweed, or tofu soup.”

Let’s not get the soup. Why not? Because there’s unlimited miso every night. And there’s unlimited rice. Along with hot and cold tea. I’m not getting the pickle salad, either. Is it that I hate pickles? No. I love pickles. And every night I raid the pickle and condiments bar. There’s pickles: pickled daikon, pickled cucumbers, pickled plums and… some other pickle. There are also condiments: mayonnaise, teriyaki sauce, ketchup, soy sauce, and salad dressings. If you are American, some of these may be surprising. The pickled plums are a little challenging for beginners, so just take one. The mayonnaise has wisely followed the delicious French formula rather than the American model of “food lube”. The ketchup is more “Hunt’s” than “Heinz” making it better than average, but not better than America’s best ketchups. Here’s a little secret, though: Kikkoman has been selling you defective soy sauce for years. I never ate it in America because it tastes like brown liquid salt. In Japan, it’s a symphony of flavor.

Here’s the finished product! Itedakimasu! Oh… looks like I did get the pickled salad after all. Sumimasen. Very nice meal at a very sensible price! So, in the upper left you can see that I covered my rice (gohan) in pickles. I love pickles. Is there more than one umeboshi? Well… I’m not a beginner. I hated my first 3. The shrimp were pretty good. I don’t like Japanese curry so much. I’m not a big fan of Indian curry, either. Really, I’m here for the rice, the lotus, the fish, the pickles, the… well, there’s lots of good things. So what is the evening’s entertainment?

We can watch TV! I generally don’t like to include pictures of people, but let me tell you some things about watching TV. There will be some guy watching with you. In fact, if he can, he’ll try to explain the Japanese to you. Fun fact: Japanese people find Japanese television as weird as Americans find Japanese television. It’s pretty lurid and goofy. Now, I’ll tell you another funny story about the Oiwake Boys. You can hang out and watch TV until 11:00 after dinner, but food disappears long before then. One night, three guys brought in GIANT bowls and loaded up on about 2 pounds of free rice each, covered with pickles and sat down to watch goofy TV. Good times!

Before you leave, drop off all your trays, plates, bowls and utensils at the washing window. Believe it or not, they can bring you a knife, fork and spoon if you want. I never want it, but you’d be surprised how resistant some folks can be to hashi (chopsticks… although I’ve never been able to successfully chop anything with them). Ah! some etiquette — never two sets of hashi reaching for the same piece (even to help break it) and never one set of hashi stuck in gohan as a holder. Both recall funerals! Now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

See these signs? They give you clues and ideas. I hope your climbing skills are good. Put on this monkey suit. Now meet me over by my balcony. There’s a stairway up the side of the building, so you can crawl out on the terrace and get on my balcony. (Oddly, I have this weird fear every night as I draw back the curtains that there will be a corpse on the balcony. I’m not sure where that fear came from.)

So… here we meet on the balcony. It’s like Romeo and Juliette, except Romeo’s on the balcony and Juliette, well, she’s in a monkey suit isn’t she? I think the view is nice enough but the last person who had this room moved out in 2 days because he couldn’t stand looking at the “decrepit” house. Then they moved him too close to the loudspeakers of the building next door. What’s the worst part of being peevish? Nothing ever feels right. Technically, I’m not allowed to open the window because of you monkeys. Also, smoking on the balcony is straight out.

This is my desk. What have we got? The tallest stack of books is a journal my boss edits. The smaller stack of books are my feeble effort to learn Japanese. The bluish big square thing is a calendar the Ministry of Health gave me with reminders to get a check-up, or swim this week, or go running, or eat carrots on tuesday, or stop smoking. The two books in the corner were written by a German friend. What’s in the center of the desk? It looks like a peanut butter sandwich that I had completely forgotten about until this blog post.

This is my living room (for those of you with a literary bent). It’s also my bedroom, which brings us to the obvious: this is where the … uh, magic… is … uh… supposed … to NOT happen, actually. So, that’s my bed which is “semi-futon”. And the sheets are on top of the armoir. And there’s my computer… and a telephone for which no one ever gave me a phone number. Hey, Anonymous, if you can figure it out and call me, I’d actually be excited. Notice how nice and white the walls are. Yep — this is the very finest in monastic (Buddhist or otherwise) living. I’m alone in this section of the building. There are a handful of reasons for that. None of which are too interesting, really. There’s a Thai guy next door but the other rooms belong to security staff, so you know we observe lights out down here. Actually, I figured out the trick: close your shade and only have your desk lamp on after 11 p.m.

Now, this… this is where the magic happens. More specifically, the magic is the fact that the mirror is heated. No matter how hot and steamy it gets in there, a little square of the mirror remains free of condensation. Pretty exciting. I have to admit, some design elements of Japan have induced jealousy in me. I guess one interesting point is that the whole bathroom unit was assembled off site by the Toto Corporation and inserted into the building. It’s good enough that if you are a gaijin building a house, consider ordering in a Toto bathroom.

Here’s my kitchen. I’ve got some pots and pans there in the rack above the sink. The same guy who hated the decrepit house complained for 20 minutes about Japanese sinks, but actually, they’re pretty cool, with a nice trap to collect vegetable material. The baby fridge down there even has a freezer. What’s on the counter? A pan, some cups, some hacha I saved from my bentos, an (empty) bottle of sake I bought for a friend. A robot that I bought for a little boy who lives in Minnesota but then I couldn’t figure out how to get it to him. My plan? Dress him up like a monkey and send him here to claim his robot. What isn’t here? Yeah… the heating element. Japanese stoves are often separated from the kitchen. Mine was broken. It hasn’t come back yet, so I use other people’s kitchens. Like tonight, my monkey lady-friend, I’ll take you somewhere special.

People have asked me where I live and what it is like. In fact, before I knew what I was getting into, I promised people that I’d bring them to Japan for vacation. Silly me. I would if I could, but let’s take a look at where I live. It’s pretty nice, very modern, but also very Japanese. I’d point out my room, but if I don’t know you and you recognize the building, I’m not particularly keen on sharing that information with you. My hands are just about full keeping the monkeys out. Monkeys? Yes, you’ll hear about them soon enough — as the signs say, they aim at your combini bag. Signs? Yes… first, let me invite you in.

Now, take off your shoes and put them in your shoe box. No, not on the wooden shelf for your indoor slippers — put them on the vinyl shelf for your outdoor shoes, bata. (Bata is about the the worst insult — it means stupid. If you don’t even know how to wear shoes, expect it at least once.) How do we learn to wear our shoes? Look at the signs. I told you there were signs.

If you look closely, the sign is in furigana. That means the difficult kanji characters are glossed with the kana so you know how it should be read. If you’re a bata gaijin like me, this means that you can slowly pronounce the sign correctly only to be unable to understand anything. That’s why they put English on the bottom. Please do not make fun of “Engrish”. It is likely better than your Japanese and can usually be understood. English signs are a courtesy that help me survive. I’m pretty careful about my shoes because it’s one thing I can do right. Other things are more difficult.

I can’t understand much of this sign at all, but I think I’ve found a good strategy for compliance. How about I just not touch that box in the lower left hand corner at all. Seems like the consequences could be pretty dire. How do I know? Well, I have a precedent in this next sign: “Items left in the hallway will be disposed of”. I’m not certain if I get a warning or if the disposal is  instantaneous, but I’m not inclined to tempt fate. I’ll just keep my hands to myself and my items out of the hallway, thank you.

Other rules seem pretty obvious, even if I can’t tell you why they exist or specifically what the rule is. ”Except for emergency”? Baby, if there’s an emergency, touching whatever this is is pretty low on my list of priorities. I’ll be trying to figure out what is being announced over the loudspeaker. Yes, we have loudspeakers that can make announcements to all our rooms at once. Last time this happened was an early morning call to go pound ricecakes. Before that, there was a 7:30 am call for a ski-trip. At least they don’t call us to 6:00 am exercizes like the place next door. Now, we can hear their loudspeaker, but we don’t have to obey.  Probably, you think I’m being rough on the place. I invite you to consider that I’m not complaining. Last year, when I was trying to join the Navy, many people asked me: “How could you live with all those rules?” No one asked this when I said I was going to Japan. Rules seem to be like the weather. No one is certain how they get made, but we deal with them. I don’t think this is normal for Japan, though. I think this because a Uigur we live with has complained about the rules to me in private. I have specifically omitted 2 white-board filled with postings, rules, schedules and announcements because they contain personal information (like who won the debate contests, who went snowboarding this week-end, etc.) However, the rules have over-filled the white-boards and spilled onto the wall.

See the red stop-sign with the hand? Yeah, residents only after this point. I’ll have to leave you here. Beyond this point, mixed genders in a room is frowned upon. Don’t worry. I lived like this in High School, too. I’ll figure out a way to get you in. Part 2 is scheduled for my room. If I were still in High School, I’d sing a song about it being “Ladies’ Night” but … really… that’s not going to happen. I could tell you a story about they last person whose… extra-curricular activites … drew some attention but I feel bad for the guy. (Any mention of his name will be edited.)

So… six weeks *after* I moved to Japan, I finally got around to posting an entry. Why? Because whenever you make a break in the continuity of your life, there are numberless plans that get lost and dreams that get forgotten. People who never break the continuity of their lives can focus on their parochial goals and achieve some degree of satisfaction, but other lives aren’t so simple. So why am I stopping back? I just wanted to share some views of Japan. All of Japan goes on a little holiday that starts around Christmas and extends to Twelfth Night. The dates are approximate — for me, Christmas was important enough that my team had picked it as a target for an editing project. Thus, on Christmas Day, we all got together to hand in our project. New Year’s Day, however, was important enough that we had to meet on 2 January, because 1 January was too important. What did I do with the downtime? I went mountain climbing… or, walked the trails behind my apartment. What kind of stuff did I see? Let’s take a look…

So… More or less as soon as you enter Kibune Jinja, you pass by this waterfall. The picture hardly does it justice. The thin trickle of water starts about thirty feet above your head and splatters on to the rocks below. In January, this results in a thin coating of ice on everything. The little structure at the bottom is a “lantern” and at night, they are nice with a little warm fire going inside. However, early one morning I found that some of these lanterns actually held a lightbulb!

I’ve heard that ruins never inspire original thoughts. The path up the temple was strewn with “ruins”… or perhaps “parts”… Snow is not so common in Kyoto, so it’s nice to see a little covering of moss and snow. When structures collapse, parts get saved to rebuild other structures. So, it’s hard to say if these are ruins or parts. There’s not too much of a nostalgic sentiment for the old structure, since we haven’t even gotten to see where the structure is going.

What is the purpose of climbing up Kibune? At the top, you can see these roots. Much of the literature mentions the beauty of these roots, which some people have found amusing. In fact, two weeks later, the image of these roots stays with me. I found myself comparing the roots of Kurama to the roots of other mountains. Rumor has it that Reiki was discovered here.