Above: (top) a girl rides down from a shrine that rests up a semi-steep hill. Instead of walking the path (which actually wasn't strenuous), many people took the lift up. Under that is a picture from Suizenji Park where the beautiful landscape architecture rests with a less than appealing backdrop of modern architecture in Kumamoto city.
Below: a Honda is blessed at Fujisakigu Shrine in Kumamoto City. And below a father takes a photo at the same shrine.
At times I personify a country; maybe everyone does it. Japan, in the scheme of my personifications, has become an intimate friend since I have come here (Japan has always been at least a distant friend thanks to her wonderful nori, maki sushi, and pickled daikon that I ate growing up thanks to my mother's wonderful cooking and her intimate relationship with the Japan she remembered for those first seven years of her life). Just like many people I know, the countries I am friends with have troubles sometimes (especially my home country) and I try to be mindful of them.
Below: a small shrine in Ubuyama.
Japan, like any friends, has her quirks, her things that can get to you. But she is so charming, so beautiful (with such an acute sense of aesthetics), and for all her seriousness she has an excellent sense of humor. Not to mention her natural water hot spas and her deliciously pure water (where I am) and her shochu (Japan's mild, healthy vodka usually made from rice, sweet potatoes, or wheat). Her people are surely what make her what she is. But it's not just the people that are alive today, it's also the generations long past. Those people of old made her who she is and some might say that many of the people alive today are forgetting that legacy or replacing it with something else. It is a notion that has gained widespread acknowledgment both within and outside of Japan. You don't have to see The Last Samurai to know that the traditions of Japan have seen drastic makeovers and, in some cases, like in the case of the samurai, they have, practically speaking, been put to rest completely.
Although there is not much I can do I am a little concerned about Japan(and Ubuyama)'s future. Like in Italy, and many other aged civilizations, the birthrate has steadily dropped here. The population is getting increasingly older and schools are shutting down (the two elementary schools in my town are being combined as one is nearly empty (but oh so nice and I will miss it)). There are two large, empty hotels in my small town (that I know of). I am scared that this could turn into a ghost town. While there are people (and realistically there always will be because, for example, enough city people want to move somewhere quiet and beautiful and Ubuyama is as good as any) the town is alive (couldn't realyl call it vibrant), and only a little depressed-ish at times. But I know that it has seen much more vivacious days... (there are going through a recession here, but it has become, I think, an unusually long-lasted one).
I am neither an economist nor a historian of Japan, but she is my friend and she means increasingly more to me as I get to know her better.
The kids here are the most promising aspect of the place. If they could only keep their brilliance into adulthood and lively up themselves as adults in this town. But many of them may be destined to move to a city, or at least out of Ubuyama.
However, just as there is hope that we will remember to keep the sap of youth filtering through our bodies, there is hope that towns like Ubuyama that make up the heart of the countryside will keep the sap of youth in their bodies.
Above: some of my coolest, oldest students (third years at junior high, equivalent of American 9th grade) in Ubuyama (of course).
So I'll try to be a good person here to this town and time will tell how she fares. I do happen to think that the JET program is going to have a dramatically positive impact on this country as it probably already has. Bringing so many young people from all around the world to live here and befriend the people will leave a very positive legacy especially in the smaller cities and towns in Japan. In some way I think that we JETs (and other foreigners living in Japan) are the revolution despite being almost completely unawares. I guess that makes me a government mandated revolutionary.
I hope you guys are well wherever you are.
1 comment:
Perhaps. The future lies with the children and all that.
Yet it still hurts me every time a 3 year old shouts "gaijin!" at my face and scurries away to hide behind his mother.
But those are contained incidents, I guess. For one I'd like to see foreigners penetrating every part of society, not just language teaching. It's too easy to keep us at bay that way, too easy to stereotype the foreigner in his gaijin role. It'll happen eventually (or so we hope), but Japan is in many ways still as provincial as it was 100 years ago.
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