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.