Rice Stubble

December 30, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 20 Comments 

Things have been so hec­tic lately that I’ve had no time at all to con­cen­trate on the in­ter­net, let alone blog about any­thing. I haven’t even had time to get out for a walk or run, to take, pic­tures, or con­tact friends and fam­ily. First it was the end-​​of-​​the-​​year busi­ness of stu­dent tests and make up courses, at­tempted sem­blances of prepar­ing for the com­ing classes, and uni­ver­sity ad­min­is­tra­tion. All the other teach­ers had al­ready taken off while I sat in the of­fice typ­ing away. In one way it was good, be­cause I was just too busy to think about be­ing the only per­son in the en­tire school sit­ting there at night while a storm blew it­self to smithereens out­side the window.

The next step was look­ing for an apart­ment to move to. For the last two and a half months I’d been stay­ing at the uni­ver­sity guest­house to give my­self time to set­tle into the job, get used to the area, learn about where the best place might be to live, and re­lieve the enor­mous ex­pense of con­tin­u­ing to main­tain the old apart­ment where my wife will re­main un­til I’m set­tled down and she can find a place in Tokyo, while at the same time rent­ing a sec­ond apart­ment. I had to look for the cheap­est place pos­si­ble and think about some­thing that would al­low me to get around with­out a car. This of course lim­ited my op­tions pretty se­verely. The orig­i­nal area I wanted to move to, called “Toke”, which was ac­tu­ally quite nice and very con­ve­nient, ended up not hav­ing any apart­ments avail­able in my price range, so I de­cided to use a so-​​called “short-​​term apart­ment ser­vice” with the na­tion­wide com­pany Leopalace. I found an apart­ment in a small town called “Naruto”, which, location-​​wise is not bad, in that it is about a 15 minute bi­cy­cle ride from the uni­ver­sity, has a di­rect train con­nec­tion to Tokyo, is about an hour bi­cy­cle ride from the Pa­cific Ocean, sits right near a big area of hills and forests where I can go for the long walks that I’ve so longed to do, and has the ba­sic ameni­ties needed for daily liv­ing, but it cer­tainly is a run-​​down lit­tle place, and the apart­ment build­ing it­self lo­cated at the end of a drab and stark end of town. I keep won­der­ing if I’m go­ing to be all right, what with every­thing chang­ing, not know­ing any­one (and be­cause I am a for­eigner, very un­likely in mak­ing friends with any neigh­bors), and all that is hap­pen­ing with my wife still raw and un­cer­tain. So far apart­ment hunt­ing, within the mad­den­ing Japan­ese sys­tem (on av­er­age you have to pay six months’ rent when start­ing out, only two of which come back when you leave… and then even that maybe be dipped into by the land­lord for “clean­ing ex­penses”), is as al­ways a frus­trat­ing and in­fu­ri­at­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. Japan­ese renters don’t need guar­an­tors when us­ing Leopalace, but when I sat in front of the agent yes­ter­day be­fore sign­ing the con­tract I was in­formed, “You will need a guar­an­tor.” When I asked why, he re­sponded, while wring­ing his hands and apol­o­giz­ing pro­fusely, “Be­cause you are a foreigner.”

“What dif­fer­ence does that make?” I asked, feel­ing the bile quickly rise.

“Too many for­eign­ers sud­denly dis­ap­pear with­out pay­ing rent,” he said.

“Ex­cuse me, Sir, but that is an out­right lie. Japan­ese do the same thing. And I’m cer­tain that if you look at your records you will find noth­ing to sug­gest that for­eign­ers are less trust­wor­thy than Japanese.”

He looked ap­pro­pri­ately ashamed and then shook his head, “Be that as it may, you need a guar­an­tor. And you guar­an­tor must be Japanese.”

It was use­less to ar­gue. This hap­pened every­where in Japan, legally, and there was noth­ing a for­eigner could do. I wanted then and there to make all the thou­sands of Japan­ese liv­ing abroad go through the same ex­pe­ri­ence, many of whom have the au­dac­ity to come back to Japan and sub­ject for­eign­ers here to such racist poli­cies, with the un­end­ing ex­cuse, “This is Japan”, as if that ex­plains anything.

“Oh,” con­tin­ued the agent, “Even though the ad­ver­tise­ment for Leopalace says that it doesn’t mat­ter when you de­cide to leave the apart­ment… you can stay as lit­tle as two weeks if you like… we do have the stip­u­la­tion that if you leave be­fore ful­fill­ing the year-​​long con­tract you will have to pay a Â¥50,000 ($500.00) penalty.”

I thought I would grab his tie and twist it sev­eral turns too tight. “That’s cheat­ing,” I said be­tween grit­ted teeth. “Af­ter look­ing at all those apart­ments, read­ing your ad­ver­tise­ments, and you telling me all this time that I could leave any time, now you tell me that I have to pay more if I leave be­fore the year is done? Of all the underhanded…”

He smiled. “It’s still much cheaper than get­ting a reg­u­lar apartment.”

And that was the catch. It was true. I couldn’t ar­gue with him on that point. And I had no other choice.

Seething, I signed the con­tract and handed over the money. Things like this make me hate Japan and the Japan­ese. Con­stantly they have for­eign­ers over a bar­rel and legally there is noth­ing we can do to fight back. My Japan­ese friend who was help­ing me with all this gave me a glance and I could see the anger there… that at least re­minded me that not all Japan­ese are like Leopalace or agree with such prac­tices. Af­ter­wards my friend con­demned Leopalace with a few fierce, re­luc­tant tears. “I’m ashamed to be Japan­ese,” were the words that came out.

For the next week it will be pack­ing boxes, throw­ing away ac­cu­mu­lated junk, strip­ping the apart­ment of the last five years of my pres­ence. It is al­most like eras­ing my­self. Mean­while my wife lingers and the mem­o­ries ha­rangue her. She sent an email the other day talk­ing of hav­ing had night­mares. It seems as if every other sen­tence we say to one an­other is, “Are you okay?” We both smile and an­swer, “Yes, don’t worry about me,” in an at­tempt to al­le­vi­ate the worry and sad­ness of the other, but the truth is that we are both not all right. One per­son even said, I guess in an at­tempt to be un­der­stand­ing and help­ful, “You are not the first to go through a di­vorce and feel this way.” How do you re­spond to that? It is al­most as if I ought to feel guilty about be­ing sad and bro­ken up, as if I am some­how weak and im­ma­ture for the dev­as­ta­tion that my wife and I feel. Oth­ers say, “Make it swift and clean. Get it over with.” That might very well be the an­swer to how to deal with all this, but I sus­pect that there is no one in the world who re­ally knows what to do or has the right an­swer to any of it. Per­son­ally I can­not for the life of me un­der­stand peo­ple who end up hat­ing each other. It seems ut­terly self­ish and im­ma­ture, a com­plete un­will­ing­ness to ac­cept that the other is a sep­a­rate per­son, that things change, that just be­cause some­thing painful hap­pens or some­one you love needs to move on, you must there­fore re­sent the other per­son for their want­ing to do what they want to do. I will al­ways love my wife. She will love me. We love one an­other sim­ply for the other be­ing who they are. And that love ex­tends to each other whether we are to­gether or not.

Gosh, I ended up writ­ing about this per­sonal topic even though I didn’t want to re­veal such things on the blog. I guess hold­ing it all in­side is just too much. There is no one else to tell it to, so it has come spilling out here. I hope I haven’t stepped on anyone’s sensibilities.

One more day till 2007. I hope all of you have rest­ful and mem­o­rable hol­i­days. I’ll be think­ing of you.

Hot tea all around!

Peace and Good Medicine.

Ghost

December 14, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 12 Comments 

I’ve been haunt­ing the uni­ver­sity halls un­til the mid­night hours these last two weeks, try­ing to catch up on class prepa­ra­tion, and also try­ing to avoid go­ing back to the iso­la­tion of the guest house I’m stay­ing at. Not that stay­ing at the uni­ver­sity while every­one else is gone isn’t iso­lat­ing, but at least I have an in­ter­net con­nec­tion and can talk to peo­ple. And there is some pri­vacy in the room that oth­er­wise I wouldn’t re­ally have. Still, burn­ing the mid­night oil is no way to freshen up for the next day, and so yes­ter­day evening, tired of the mo­not­o­nous, though healthy, of­fer­ings of the lo­cal Seven Eleven, I de­cided to head out the other end of the uni­ver­sity and take the half hour walk to the Law­son con­ve­nience store lo­cated along the des­o­la­tion of the bypass.

Fog had rolled in from the sea and hugged the fields all the way to the shad­ows of the nearby hills. As I walked along the road, my foot­steps sounded loud in the still­ness. I pulled the flaps of my cap over my ears to stem the chill, and softly sang a line of an Abba song that just wouldn’t leave my head. The round-​​trip to and from the con­ve­nience store re­sem­bled a cir­cum­am­bu­la­tion of a grave­yard, even the huge lights of the bill­boards and pachinko par­lors cast long shad­ows across the as­phalt and de­nuded fields, so that as I walked a silent pres­ence fol­lowed me with pre­cisely timed steps.

I was pass­ing the back gate of the uni­ver­sity again, with its line of trees and bushes when sud­denly above my head there was a soft rus­tle. I looked up and thought I made out the form of a very large sleep­ing crow. It was hard to tell in the dim light. Then the fig­ure swiveled its head and gazed down at me with huge, moon­like eyes. A ural owl. The first wild owl I’d ever seen in Japan ever since I started watch­ing birds as a boy. The ela­tion that bloomed in me was hard to de­scribe. It was like a life­long gift, and the mo­ment I rec­og­nized the bird all sense of lone­li­ness, all sor­row, all the heav­i­ness of the past few weeks dis­pelled like smoke. I wanted to run to the near­est birder and tell them… “Look! Look! I’ve got to let you know what I saw! A ural owl! I ac­tu­ally saw a ural owl!”

But what bird­ers do I know around here? I smiled up at the owl and it seemed to nod in un­der­stand­ing. It turned its head away, looked up at the night sky, and lifted into the air like a whis­per. I heard the al­most ten­der swish of its wings as it flapped away into the darkness.

It was but a mo­ment, but it is a mo­ment I will re­mem­ber for the rest of my life.

Lonesome Bike Boy

December 11, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 8 Comments 

Time to take my time.

Open the door and stick out my hand, fin­ger the first bite of winter.

No mat­ter, a morn­ing with­out a roof makes up for the hours.

I of­ten wonder

about a life spent out be­yond the city limits.

It’s all tied together

in lat­tices of sto­ries and build­ing frames,

back along the old ways, when and where our tails meet.

Blow on your hands,

see the bil­low­ing breath of oth­ers who’ve stood here before.

Past, past doors and windows.

I can’t wait for a nod or a friendly hello.

The wheels grind crusted dust,

the hub of a pos­si­ble breakdown.

Sorry, sorry I have to go.

If you wait long enough

the sprouts sep­a­rate the asphalt

and con­jure up a pot­pour­rie we all remember.

It doesn’t take any sleight of hand

to dig and let loose the straw.

When I was a boy

the wind was my friend. I laughed

when the trees swayed and dragonflies

blew west into the set­ting sun.

Now I clutch my hat, brac­ing against the cold.

Hold on there,

why don’t you pick that up?

Every­thing has fallen here, but that doesn’t mean

any old toss­ing of litter

earns its place among the bones.

I re­mem­ber when Mama took me into the garden

and we buried Melanie (the hamster)

among the roots.

Soil dashed across her body,

for­ever clothed in loam.

The cat she set­tled in the stillness,

prick­ing her ears for

scratch­ing feet. A crow sailed

over, eye­ing branches.

She curled up, hid­den from view.

Ridiculous!

December 11, 2006 | Laughing Knees | 9 Comments 

It can’t all be se­ri­ous! I think I’ve been sound­ing more or less like a brood­ing tro­golodyte these last few weeks, as if all I do is walk around with a per­sonal cloud rain­ing on my head. Well, you can rest as­sured that I haven’t died quite yet. As ev­i­denced by this in­ter­ac­tion with my new com­puter, there are mo­ments in my thread­bare of­fice when even I can loosen the bolts a bit and come un­done. Hope this doesn’t make all of you lose faith in my sanity!

What to do? This place has got­ten me all twisted out of shape. At times I don’t know what is up or down and I have doubts about my own abil­ity to show some backbone…

Never fear! Every­thing that you thought was im­por­tant, is not. Every­thing you held most dear, an il­lu­sion. You can laugh it all off and never lack for material…

But, of course, it is then so easy to let it all go to your head, that in­dif­fer­ence and pool­ing of out­dated trivia…

All my life I strug­gled with what it means to be a truly good per­son. And the closer I come to the ideal, the more the mir­ror re­flects what looks like… a gnome?

I seem to be a di­chotomy, shoul­der to shoul­der with my own headaches… What’s that? You want me to pop the black­head on the end of my nose? Some­times I just don’t ap­pre­ci­ate be­ing frank with myself…

Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and just be your­self. No need for ex­ag­ger­a­tion. Even if all the color drains from your eyes.

Okay, I give up. I’d rather close my eyes and float away on day­dreams than shoul­der the bur­den of em­bar­ress­ment. Oh? I guess it’s true what they say… the best writ­ing comes when you skip the “I’s” and set­tle for the “he’s” and “she’s” and “they’s”. Why fo­cus on yourself?