August 14, 2005

I was recently in Kumamoto City in order to attend a three-day prefecture orientation. I learned there that there are 174 of us in Kumamoto prefecture alone. I also learned that some, if not the majority of JETs (those participating in Japan Teaching and Exchange) are not the kind of people you want to invite to your house. As a group (especially at bars) they are completely obnoxious. They certainly, however, make up a collection of well-educated and diverse folk (many are from the UK, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, some are even from Jamaica).

Anyhow… On Thursday night I went out to see this huge fireworks display that was to happen near the grounds of one of Japan’s largest castles—Kumamoto Castle. The event was extraordinary. There were tens of thousands of people, almost all Japanese. Although the 70 or 80 new and returning JETs that were in the city were all invited to meet up somewhere at the event, very few traces of them could be found (and found they were in the form of very brief sightings of only about three of them). The fireworks lasted about 45 minutes, and they were spectacular. The gigantic crowd, most of which were sitting on the grass before a giant stage that featured some sort of techno-pop Japanese dancing and singing group, would “ooh and ahh” whenever the fireworks came in huge exciting spurts or once when they shot up these multi-colored flowers that consisted of individual rockets that would spin in disorderly directions all over the place as if each one were a heat-sensing missile heading for a twisting target in the sky. But besides these it was not the fireworks that made the show extraordinary, but the crowds and the amount of glowing attention that they—a group that appeared to contain almost 100,000 people—seemed to offer to the display above them. The giant crowds not only looked up at the fireworks, but they also carefully followed the patterns, pinnacles, and abnormalities of the show.

When the fireworks subsided the crowds that were up in the castle’s grounds came storming down the various exists. I went down one of the main exit ways and experienced the sea of heads bobbing on the descending path lined with cherry trees and those circular lamps that hang from power strings. I was the tallest that I could see, almost a head taller than most of the crowd. I also had the lightest hair of anyone that I could see (save those wise old folk who had achieved silver hair). But, oddly enough, I did not feel foreign or bizarre. Not once on this whole trip have I felt like so many white travelers seem to feel; I have not felt as if I were a blatant foreigner, as if I were always stared at or gawked at.

I came back to Ubuyama with my supervisor, Yuusuke Nakamura, and his 19-year-old daughter Haruka. They had met me in Kumamoto in order to drive me home the 75+ minutes it takes back to the inaka. In the inaka I was well fed and my thirst was quenched. I was offered to stay at their home, which is 6 km away from mine, and I took the offer (it was the second offer I had received from them). I decided to sleep there not to party the night away (Haruka, for example, had left to party in a neighboring city with her old friends from high school), but because Obon (Buddhist holiday) had started and Nakamura-san had invited me to come to his family’s graves across the rice patties from his home in order to put fresh wildflowers (that were to be collected in the morning) on them.

I want to take a moment here to describe the goodheartedness and hospitality of my dear supervisor and his wonderful, fascinating family. I now have spent many hours with Yuusuke, his wife, his kids, and his parents. They have fed me, taken me out to fancy dinners, supplied me with beer, shochu, sake, and tea; they have taken me to Mt. Kuju and to Oita City. They are not only a superbly gracious family, but they are a very interesting one as well. Yuusuke’s parents, who are in their early seventies, are both active farmers. They grow various vegetables, including daikon (Japanese radish, which they pickle), tomatoes (large and small), rice, and pumpkins; they have a cow and an adorable calf that licked my hand with its rough milk-lapping tongue, they have five reddish-brown chickens, and they even have a little turtle. Yuusuke, who works on the board of education (BOE) for (our) Ubuyama village, has bridged the gap between the traditional lifestyle that his parents still live on in his own home and the technologically advanced lifestyle that almost all urban Japanese seem to live. For instance, there is a GPS tracking device with two LCD displays (one for the front, and one for the back, of his car) in one of his three new-ish vehicles that also doubles as a DVD player and satelitte television. He has also discontinued the family practice of farming and his daughters do not seem to be heading in the direction of their grandparents. Yuusuke’s wife, who works in the nursery (pre-school) all week also prepares most of the meals for the family, which are always contain multiple dishes of very well made Japanese foods (so in this way Yuusuke and his wife are acting traditionally). Additionally, Yuusuke maintains traditions by practicing Shinshu Buddhism (for which he has an elaborate goldish shrine) and through honoring Shintoism (mostly in the form of keeping wish tokens that he buys at the Aso Shrine for his cars and house (they are meant to protect one’s family, make one’s wishes come true, or protect one’s car)). The two little shrines are right next to each other, each on the very edge of a room with tatami mats. The three daughters, two of which I will be teaching this year, seem to getting more worldly and more posh than their parents. Thus the trend seems to be drifting further and further from the traditions. That said, they all seem to get along very well. And I think they are an extraordinary family, one that illuminates some of the gigantic movements in Japanese culture that have come to fruition in the past century or so.

I also wish to mention that only Haruka speaks English with a level of proficiency; with the rest of the family communication is very slow.

So, I wake up after a night of mediocre sleep at about 7am so as not to miss the proceedings that I was told I would attend. Yuusuke and I drove to find his father at about 8am in the family’s farmland ten minutes away from the house. His father had found and nearly killed a Japanese viper or Mamushi as they are called here. Its remains were awkwardly and uncomfortably curled up and resting on the bed of his father’s mini-Honda truck. This was the first time that I saw this deadly snake, in fact, it may have been the first deadly snake that I have ever seen other than a California Rattlesnake (which are very rarely deadly). Later in the day after watching the snake regain some of its strength at the Nakamura residence, grandpa skinned the snake and wrapped it around a wooded stick to cook. I was surprised at just how beautiful the diminutive snake body (they are a small species) looked in the nude, without its brownish, patterned skin. It was like a glass sculpture, but not quite as clear. An hour later, well after grandpa had said (in what I thought was a joke) that the snake would be lunch, I tried snake for the first time. It was baked almost to a crisp, its bony body was very crunchy, somewhat like chicken. It is supposed to be excellent for the immune system and I was feeling a little sick, so….

After visiting a hydro-thermal electric plant 15 minutes away, after pouring water on the Nakamura family’s gravestones and putting the fresh flowers which grandpa had picked when he found the snake, my exhausted body was taken home where I sit here now as I type.

So far living in Japan has changed me greatly, although mostly in almost indescribable ways. I no longer fear any foods. I have learned to look at meats—whether they be fish, snake, or horse—as much more equal entities. When I eat meat I try to think of it was ingesting a piece of the animal’s soul. They are giving me important nutrients that will help me live long and be healthy as long as I live. Cow intestines may taste bad, but they won’t kill me; half-dried gooey squid on a stick may seem to be a weird concept, but it tastes pretty good. If it doesn’t kill you it probably has nutrients. And if it died to benefit you, you may want to at least be thankful.

Besides my thoughts about meat I have gained a much more positive outlook on the human species in general. In college I saw and heard about some pretty god-awful aspects of human behavior and by the end of my four years I was pretty down on our whole species (my friends were, however, almost always there to help remind me of the good). But after living here I have met so many nice, intelligent, and content people. Not only are they content, but they are humble as well. This is particularly important because there is nothing worse than an arrogant bastard who is content (but usually their contentedness is very short-lived or declines with age, as does their arrogance). When I went into the city, however, I was reminded of the discontent that seems to have spread (probably starting more than a century ago) around most urban areas. But this I feel is at least partly because it is fashionable to be discontent, or at least to appear discontented.