By Dan Mackie

For the Valley News

 This is the second of two parts in my miniseries about my recent trip to Japan. In part one I was guilty of Writing Under the Influence of Jet Lag, which bagged me for a week upon my return. I felt like a cartoon character who’d been knocked on the noggin. Little bluebirds circled my head, tweeting sweetly.

 International jet lag had all the queasiness of a hangover, but without the pain. My soul left my body and rode the jet stream to Europe. I dozed during Jeopardy (7 p.m.) and woke at midnight, ready to surf in Hawaii. My stomach thought it was time for ribs in New Orleans. Every experience was an out-of-body experience.

 Eventually the fog lifted, and my circadian clock arrived in West Lebanon. Here I will stay for awhile, and review the photos (nearly 500 — don’t ask for a slide show) that are proof positive that I was there, even though I felt a little like Alice awakening after a strange dream.

 Stage two of our odyssey took us to Kyoto, a city of more than a million that was mostly spared during World War II and still has an abundance of older buildings. We stayed our first night in a traditional-style hotel, where I confirmed that I am not suited to sleeping on the floor on a thin futon.

 After I successfully got off the floor, we went into the city and found a three-hour guided walking tour led by “Johnny Hillwaker,’’ an elderly Japanese man whose brochures said he was famous. He must be; you can Google him and read that his real name is Mr. Hajime Harooka. Apparently, we weren’t the first to hear him quip that his professional name is Johnny Hillwalker, not Johnny Walker.

 Johnny took us straight-away to an impressive and impressively large Buddhist temple. It claims to be the largest wooden structure in the world, a fact that must make fire inspectors twitch in their sleep. A new sign out front was covered with slogans in various languages. “Now, Life is living you,’’ it said in English, which is something I’m going to have to ponder.

 We walked to small shops where they make paper fans by hand. Some of these businesses have been in the same family for hundreds of years. Johnny told us that young people are abandoning the life, feeling there’s not much future in fans. America’s former industrial workers feel their pain.

 Johnny explained to us that most Japanese are Buddhist. Also, most Japanese are Shinto. As I understand it, Buddhist monks take care of birth and death and the Shinto priests handle much of the stuff in between. Shinto practitioners wash their hands, ring a bell and say a prayer for good fortune, which is more ceremonial than our lottery machines.

 The next day we rented electric-boosted bikes, which meant I had to play dodge-the- Japanese on the sidewalks. It was a blast, until I crossed a curb at a bad angle and tumbled and rolled onto the sidewalk. “Are you all right?’’ my son asked me. It just so happened that I was, except for a scraped elbow and a bruise that would soon resemble an aged eggplant.

  That night we ran into a strange scene, something I am always up for. Hundreds of people jammed a small street as if there’d been an Octomom or Lindsey Lohan sighting. Apparently, a gaggle of geisha had finished a stage performance and were returning back to wherever the geisha go, so tourists and natives hounded them with the intensity of a thousand flash bulbs. We stayed until we were ashamed of ourselves, and moved on.

  Then on to Tokyo, where I learned humility. It’s a city of more than 13 million, so it could eat and spit out Vermont and New Hampshire, and nearly all of New England. We got around by subway, mostly, which wasn’t easy, since the main station seems to have a half-dozen levels and tentacles (subway lines) going in all directions.

 We saw daringly original architecture: skyscrapers seemingly made of brillo pads, or beach glass, or whatever the architect was smoking that day. We saw a park where Japanese men dress up as rockabillies and break dance. Nearby, others dress like anime cartoon characters and pose for photos with tourists and other grinning idiots.

 We took the train to Yokohama, where we watched a baseball game without subtitles. Japanese baseball fans cheer only when their home team is at bat, and they are lead in chants and songs by flag-waving enthusiasts and fans who just happen to bring a horn along. It’s actually loads of fun, although I missed the spontaneous bitterness of Fenway Park, where people curse long-buried managers, or umpires who blew a call in 1975. (Ed Armbrister may still have a bench warrant out for his arrest in Boston.)  But Japan is a pep squad nation. I think they would cheer anyone if someone sounded a horn.

 This, of course, is unthinkable in America, where the individual’s right to be a lout is protected in the Constitution, Facebook policies, and cell phone contracts, which once signed shall never perish from the earth.

 The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.

  

By Dan Mackie
For the Valley News
I spent nearly two weeks recently as the Upper Valley’s unofficial ambassador to Japan. After such a voyage of discovery people tend to ask — how was it? Although I have spent many years typing professionally, words nearly fail.
Japan is familiar and distant, gorgeous and crass, a place where you feel alone in the crush of a crowd. Dorothy couldn’t have felt any more out of her element in Oz. In the subway station in Tokyo people pour by at such a pace that it feels like a frenzied time-lapse film. You’ve a definite feeling that you’re not in the Upper Valley anymore.
I flew there to visit my son, who is finishing a two-year stint as a English teacher in Sendai, a city of a million that you probably never heard of. It calls itself the tree city, although trees are one area where New Hampshire and Vermont have it beat.
We took trains (so fast they would qualify as runaway trains here) to Kyoto and Tokyo, where I spied giant power lines as we neared the city. I thought of Godzilla, who was famously tough on infrastructure. After a childhood dose of monster and World War II movies I hadn’t kept up with Japan, except for its exports: TVs, cars and, more recently, baseball players.
But ready or not, here I was …
We began in Sendai, a city that’s too busy working to fuss much with tourists. I was lucky to be there on a weekend when the cherry blossoms were in bloom, which meant it was time for Hanami, flower viewing. Hanami fans ponder the fragility of beauty and life, and others ponder the wonders of fermented beverages as they settle on tarps in the park. After many hours they stagger (and I do mean stagger) home.
The gaijin, (foreigners), take to this like ducks to duck sauce, or water. Heavy drinking is an international language, and my son’s friends and I were invited to share a tarp with folks from England, Australia, and Canada, our amiable neighbors to the north. Although they were younger than I, they were friendly and eager to chat with me, which I attributed to their missing the company of English-speakers. I avoided youth-repellant topics like retirement planning, but had little to offer in areas such as death metal music.
In ensuing days we visited several Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, and the family mausoleum of the city’s founding warlord, who in battle wore a helmet much like Darth Vader’s. Atop his headgear was a giant crest resembling the Nike swoosh. Such are the cultural observations I can offer.
We traveled outside the city to Matsushima, a bay dotted with little islands covered with little pine trees. This is one of the Japan’s scenic gems, so inspiring that a famous poet wrote a haiku to show he was at a loss for words:
Matsushima ah!
A-ah, Matsushima, ah!
Matsushima, ah!
We ate lunch at a restaurant that struggled with its English language menu. Although a word or two of English is common in signage in Japan, sometimes things go awry. This menu offered several local craft beers. One was said to be “the popular type that there is not a habit and does a throat, and it is refreshing.” Another featured “the fruity fragrance that used wheat germ. Taste of authority of preference.”
Though Japan’s grasp of English seems superior to most Americans’ grasp of a second language (or first), other examples jumped out. I saw a sign for “T-sharts,’’ and for beers that were either “style-free’’ or “action-free.” An airport sign apologized to anyone who was “amazed’’ by the complexity of the place. A sports drink is named “Porcari Sweat.” I’d have to be awfully thirsty.
Although we Americans like to think we are No. 1, in some areas it just isn’t so. Japanese vending machines put our Coke-Pepsi oligarchs to shame. From two or three machines abreast consumers get about three dozen offerings, including the aforementioned Porcari Sweat. Japanese convenience stores are also superior, with better prepared food (don’t knock rice balls until you try them), not to mention employees who welcome you when you enter, bow and thank you when you leave, and generally treat you as a visiting dignitary.
I spent a day in one of my son’s schools, where the students wear uniforms, bow and thank the teacher after every class, help serve lunch, and join in cleaning the building after classes are over. Yes, their schools are different.
Back at my son’s apartment, we watched a bit of Japanese TV, which is, you may have heard, zany. Panels of celebrities do silly things on studio sets as colorful as amusement park midways while exclamations burst onto the screen, perhaps the Japanese equivalent of “shazam!” or “yowza!”
One night my son and his friends persuaded me to join them at karaoke, something I have never desired to do. Our karaoke escapade was in booth, thankfully, and not on a stage. I debuted singing a duet, Brown-Eyed Girl, by Van Morrison. My voice struggled, but my American partner told me that I “rocked.” I did no such thing, of course, but he has learned the power of politeness in Japan.
Next time: Kyoto and Tokyo.
The writer lives in West Lebanon. He can be reached at dan.mackie@yahoo.com.