In trying to understand the mystery of Life, men and women have followed many different approaches. Among them, there are the ways of the scientist and mystic, but there are many more; the ways of the poets, children, clowns, shamans, to name but a few. These ways have resulted in different descriptions of the world, both verbal and nonverbal, which emphasize different aspects. All are valid and useful in the context in which they arose. All of them, however, are only descriptions, or representations, of reality and are therefore limited. None can give a complete picture of the world. The Tao of Physics- Fritjof Capra
This year, winter in Japan, at least where I am living, was so mild and I was so busy that there were very few moments spent loathing the cold weather and short days and I have really great memories from the past 2 months. It only snowed twice here and both times it never stuck, so I was able to ride my bike around town every day without fail. I use my bike like a car, to go to school, to buy groceries and life essentials and get just about anywhere within a 6km range so if it snows it makes just about every part of my day take so much longer. It was a great winter.
One of the first really fun activities that Chika and I did was take a class on coffee roasting. It was at a little soba noodle restaurant in Tokyo that we had been to twice before. The owner used to live and work in Kyoto at a traditional coffee shop and learned how to roast small batch coffee by hand there. It took place in the morning and there was only one other man there. The owner, who usually has a very stern and serious look on his face while preparing customers’ dishes, turned out to be a real chatterbox and we spent the first 45 minutes chatting about who we were and where we come from. We were a little worried because the class was only supposed to be two hours long and almost half was finished by the time we ever started to talk about coffee. Luckily the class went over by 2 hours and we even ended up eating a really nice lunch with the owner and his wife of soba noodles, Japanese pickles, and sake. We roasted our coffee in a little metal mesh flat basket over a gas stove. It takes about 10 minutes start to finish. He has a really interesting coffee bean mill that is made of stone and so much fun to use. Just about everything in the shop had a story behind it, from the stain glass windows, to his clothes, to all of the pottery and calligraphy scattered about. It was really fun and incredibly rewarding to listen to his musing about life and food in Japanese and be able to follow most of what he was saying. We each got to roast a batch of coffee and then grind it up and taste how each of us did. Fresh coffee beans brewed well taste almost like wine or a liquor and you can really taste the differences between coffee beans from one country to the next. I went out and got everything that I need to roast at my house and have done it I think 7 times now but still don’t have it down perfect. It is really difficult to make it consistently the same way and control the temperature but it is always gratifying to drink coffee that you have some sort of time invested into. I have only had to throw what I roasted away once because it was so so bad, but most of the time it is pretty drinkable and sometimes 80% verging on good. Now I just need to start growing my own beans…
I also went on three relatively big trips during the past two months which is a lot even for me. The first was very memorable because it was my first time to the complete other side March 20th, 2015 of Japan, the Japan sea side, and because it was with Chika, her mother and her mother’s friend Katou-san. It was my first time to travel with Chika’s mother and she as well as Katou-san are so energetic and happy all the time. They were a real joy to travel with. We took a bullet train getting there which cuts right through the huge mountains in the middle of Japan. We left really early from snowless Tokyo at 6 in the morning. An hour later when I woke up we were in snowiest place I have ever seen. It was amazing how quickly weather can change when one goes up into the mountains. I think snow packs differently here in Japan than in Wisconsin because it stays on top of where it lands and just piles and piles up. So on top of a hand rail for example, instead of sliding off, it will pile up a foot tall. And on top of every larger flat surface there was probably 6-8 feet of snow. Roads are also amazing there because the road is completely clear of snow but then directly next to it there is a snow wall 8 feet tall. Apparently in other parts of Japan they have snow walls like that over 20 feet tall, well over the top of buses that go there as tourist attraction.
Anyways, we spent our first night gorging ourselves on a local fish, Yellowtail, prepared a dozen different ways that was in peak catching season. It was made more fun because Chika’s mom’s deaf cousins, who are from the area, joined us. Her cousin’s wife, who is also deaf, was the life of the party signing, clapping, writing notes, laughing, drinking and eating with so much energy. It was fun because the meal was right in our room so after we were finished, the staff told us to go and enjoy the baths and when we got back they had cleared everything away and set up our futons for us.
The next day Chika and I said goodbye to the other two and we went to a city called Kanazawa which was a quick hour train ride away. I am really happy we got a change to visit this city because it has so much to offer. Behind Kyoto, it is the biggest city to have escaped any bombings during WWII so there are still a lot of old and beautiful neighborhoods, temples and architecture to see there. Practically beautiful was a very large old garden called “Kenroku-en” which we got to see at night time all lit up. In Japanese gardens where snow falls they do this very elaborate support system with ropes for the branches so not a single one breaks under the weight of the snow. All the ropes connect to a long bamboo pole that runs along the tree’s trunk and it makes for a very interesting effect. Also on the list was the beautifully designed 21st century museum which was having an exhibition about architecture after the big 3.11 earthquake that hit Japan. It also holds many interesting and some famous works of contemporary art. We really loved a section that was dedicated to furniture designed for dogs. It was all crazy cute and people in this world are so very creative. Last was a very old all wooden neighborhood that was home 100 years ago to tea houses where Geishas would entertain rich men. We went to a cool coffee shop and later attended a tea ceremony at an old geisha house. One of the famous crafts from the city is gold leaf which I didn’t know much about before but is really amazing stuff. They pound it so thin that if you touch it, the stuff literally disappears. The nice old man doing the demonstration gave us a big smile, put a sheet in his palm, closed his hand and when he opened it, it had completely disintegrated. Amazing stuff. People were very nice and it was a great city to walk around in. One American, running an espresso bar there took 30 minutes to give us maps and planned out a tour for us. He also served the best espresso I’ve had yet here in Japan.
Next up was a ski trip that took us back to Nagano and actually to a place that Chika and I had visited before in the summertime called Sugadaira. Our group was the biggest that we have travelled with as of yet including, Ben, Ezra and his girlfriend Saaya, Lucas, Chika and I. It was a big package tour that are popular here so we didn’t have to bring anything at all. We just showed up in Tokyo early in the morning and they drove us to the hill in a bus, gave us skiis and snow clothes, and that night our hotel came and picked us up at the hill and drove us to where we were staying. It was perfect for everyone except for Lucas who always has such bad luck traveling it seems. Especially when he is following the plans that I give him which may be part of the problem. He was coming from a different part of Japan and took his own transportation there. Unfortunately the bus stop was 2 miles from the actual hill and he ended up having to walk the whole way. Other than that, our trip was happily disaster free. It was most people’s first time, or one of the few times ever skiing before so the first day we spent a lot of time just trying to stand up after falling down. In the first 3 hours, we were able to finish 3 runs. I am quite an experienced skier but that first day skiing was the most stressful experience I have had yet in Japan. Chika couldn’t stand up after she fell down (which happened every 20 feet), so every time, I had to stand there while she struggled for 15 minutes trying to stand up. I thought that if I helped her every time stand up then she wouldn’t learn how to do it for herself. I just couldn’t understand why someone couldn’t stand up, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to me. I also lacked the basic Japanese vocabulary to really help more than just taking her skis and putting them the way they are supposed to be. “Put your skis parallel to the downward slope” would have been a great phrase to study before taking on this adventure. All I could say was “Chika concentrate” and I was getting so angry even the most basic Japanese was difficult to say and she was yelling at me “James, I’m concentrating too hard to understand English right now, SPEAK JAPANESE”. The next day, after apologizing (from Lucas’s camera) and realizing that this is supposed to be a fun experience, not ski boot camp, we had a wonderful time. Chika by the end of the day could stand up by herself, do the snow plow, and get on and off a lift. This meant I could do two runs and then meet her at the bottom by the time she had finished her first one. It worked out perfectly. All the beginners improved greatly and I got my ski legs back by the end of the day and was sliding down the slope like a snake on water. It felt so great and it reminded me how much I love skiing. I give my father so much credit for teaching me, my mother and brother and so many of my friends how to ski. He is a much more patient man than I and a better skier.
Months ago, during a boys night at Ben’s new beautiful home, we asked two guys who have lived in Japan for much longer than us if they had any suggestions of places that we should visit before we leave the country. They both recommended this hot spring in Gunma called Takaragawa onsen which is famous for its outdoor bath bordering a river. Right when I got home, I talked with Chika and we had our trip planned that next week. It turned out to be a very interesting experience because I got really sick and ran a super high fever the whole first day. Luckily our hotel was in a little tiny town without a whole lot to do so I didn’t feel so bad about sleeping all day in our beautiful hotel room. Japanese hotels are really amazing and unlike any others that I have ever stayed in the world. Normally they are overly Japanese and beautifully decorated. You get to wear a nice Japanese style robe the whole time, go into the wonderful bath as many times as you like and experience really nice Japanese architecture. This one was a little out of the way from anything so for really cheap we got to have a really amazing and enormous room. The next day, after having passed out once on the bathroom floor during the night from a super high fever, I actually felt pretty good apart from being tired and my back hurting from having hit the old fashioned radiator on my way down. The outdoor bath took a really long time to get to and required two buses, a train and a taxi to get to. It was worth it and we spent 4 hours going in and out of three outdoor baths, surrounded by snow with a gushing river running them. It was especially interesting for a couple of reasons. One was because it was a mixed gender bath. Women could wear bath towels wrapped around them so unfortunately I was deprived of seeing even the slightest bit of skin. The other reason was that one of the baths was on the other side of the river so everyone had to scamper naked over this sketchy little rope bridge in the freezing mountain air to get from one bath to the other. Apparently this onsen used to have bears that would enter the baths with customers but it is illegal now. They were rescued after their mother was shot by a hunter and brought up by the hot spring owners. They had lots of pictures and advertisements featuring scantily clad women hugging a bear in the hot water. Only in Japan.
On sadder note, apart from all of these big vacations I also had to attend three funerals in the past two months. All three died really young and all were rather tragic circumstances. I was happy to have been invited though and get to see them all one last time. Japanese funerals consist of a viewing of the body at a big funeral home where you light some incense and bow and show your respect to the deceased’s family. All the while a Buddhist priest is chanting sutras and ringing a bell giving a bit of a spooky effect. Then you leave and go and have a meal with everyone that attended. The meal, which is right at the funeral home, normally consists of sushi, friend vegetables, pickles and beer/alcohol. Then when you leave you get some sort of gift for having come like tea or seaweed or cake. Before you enter into your home afterwards, you have to sprinkle salt on yourself to make sure you are pure again after having been by a dead person. Everyone is cremated here and then put into a big family plot. I only went to the funeral home ceremonies but apparently there is another at the home right when a person has died where they are just laid out on their futon in their room and you bring some gifts like food that they like or beer or something like that. All three ceremonies that I attended were very similar and I guess most of them in Japan follow that same style.
Other big news in my life is that for the past couple of months Chika and I have been getting everything together to apply for a yearlong working holiday visa in New Zealand and we were finally able to send everything in and we have been accepted. That means that I will return home to the United States after my contract here ends in Japan and then probably after Jonah’s birthday in the middle of October I will fly out to New Zealand for a year. We still don’t know exactly what we will do but I envision a year of picking fruits, working at a coffee shop, skiing and biking and possibly living out of a minivan for a couple of months. Nothing is set in stone yet for living but we have a visa, we will be there for a year starting in October and we will figure out the rest as we go.
Spring has mostly arrived here in Japan and the first of the spring blossoms, the peaches and plums have already come and gone in Chiba. Next are the cherry blossoms which should come within the next couple of weeks. Ben and I might get a sneak peak because we are going way down south to the island of Kyushu for a week long bike trip, leaving later this afternoon. Kyushu is known for its onsens and nature so I think it will be a very satisfying and adventurous trip. I hope that you all are doing well all over the world and I will be seeing many of you pretty soon actually in the summer.
Til then, lots of love,
-James