Upcoming attractions

We’re slowly transitioning from bright, sunny, happy days where I ride my bike joyfully to school into the “if it doesn’t rain” season. I’ve been quite pleased with all the sun. I get up earlier, I feel like the afternoons are much loooonger, I’m not trapped on our bed with nothing but a space-heater and a super electric blanket to keep me warm. The kitchen is no longer the frozen wasteland it was this December, February, MARCH (although you wouldn’t know it by the amount of dishes I leave strewn around. The husband finally said this morning, “can’t you just wash your cereal bowl after you eat breakfast?” and I tried to think of a snappy reason why I didn’t have time for that, but I was putting on purple eyeliner at the time and, really, the man doesn’t ask for much. AND he lives in the exploded garment factory that is our bedroom with nary a complaint. It really shows how much he’s adapted his Virgo-esque standards to mine that last night he said, happily, “I’m just glad you’ve kept the clothes mess all in one room.” Awww, love.)

Whereas last year I felt claustrophobic during the month of June, unwilling to sheath myself in plastic to make a quick milk run on my bike, this year I have a car. Which means freedom! If I want to drive to the Amakusa islands to search for dolphins like some great scene out of Moby Dick well then, by golly, pack your bags Hana! We’re leaving next weekend.

My calendar for the next two months is chock full of THINGS we’re doing. Eating lunch with Johnathan’s host parents from Tokyo, buying pearls, taking a trip to Miyazaki, the last prefecture we need to hit on our seven-prefecture-all-island tour. My school year has been all jumbled up in an effort to keep the students from wilting like bad fruit in the August sun, and so Sports Day is now June 14th! I’m immensely happy about this turn-around because it means I get to see the Superhero Class wearing traditional robes and painting dragons onto billboards, and this time they are the leaders and have all the control. Out of the 27 leaders from the third year class–nine for each color: Red, Yellow (me!), Blue (Praju!)–EIGHT of them are from the Superhero Class. This means that no matter which color makes 20 bodies appear like a writhing snake, a familiar face will be at the front. I will have a special backstage pass because I know all of their names and have seen many of the girls naked (at the hot springs in English camp, not because I am a peeping tom. In fact, THEY have seen ME naked, which no one seemed to think was weird, so I went with it.). If it doesn’t rain there will be practices every day from now on, and not the secret practices they had in April when no one was supposed to be planning. These are Sensei-approved and make my life exciting because it means whenever I turn a corner I could be surprised by a taiko drum and a boy in a red headband and silk robe pounding a tribal beat.

Also if it doesn’t rain we will be having the 100th anniversary baseball game next Wednesday. I have never seen baseball played in Japan, although it is one of my goals for this summer to see the Fukuoka Hawks showdown in their home stadium. Praju just unearthed the flyers from our stuffed boxes and is relaying the school news to me, via translation. We’ve known about this baseball game, but we didn’t know who we were playing until today. Are you ready for this? We’re playing Hana’s school! The school where the kids live and breathe baseball and wear their hair cropped short and swagger around like professionals. Versus my school where on rainy days the boys practice by hopping up and down the stairs on one foot. I’m not saying that’s easy–I tried it once, at their insistence–but we’re likely looking at the face of defeat, which is sad only because it’s the 100th anniversary baseball game! And parents and other alumni will be watching. No pressure or anything boys.

I currently have piles of very detailed and time-consuming projects scattered across my desk. Finding a way to secretly give pictures to 120 students so that their faces don’t end up all over the internet? Writing letters to the Superhero Class for my going away party in July? I’m very sensibly trying to cover all my bases in the next 6 weeks so that when the heat and torpor of July swings my way I’m not clocked in the head by a typhoon and put out of commission for days. There’s so much involved in leaving a place: cutting off the cell phones, getting rid of the stuff, healing our burned couch. We’re a bit paralyzed by the amount of work it involves. Actually, I’m paralyzed by it. Johnathan is busy on his computer because he’s already done all of the things on his list. In fact, he’s ditching most of his clothes here because the fish diet and long bike rides to elementary schools have caused him to slim down considerably, AND his pants are stained with chalk dust. We’re cutting our losses. I, on the other hand, am trying to stock up on white shirts and black pants and jeans and other things I don’t want to make myself in the next five years before I get a chance to come back to Asia.

Our current plan, did you know this? We’re moving to Australia in 2009. It feels so lackadaisical and full of whimsy to just move to a place and find work of some kind. Perhaps working with our hands in a cherry orchard. Perhaps serving coffee. Mostly we’re relying on the goodwill of my Australian host family from high school and my two amazing host brothers (one of whom is married: a couple to hang out with!) to help us scrounge up a life in Melbourne. They ask what do we need them to do to help? It’s not what we need, it’s what we don’t need that they should be asking. I mean, not only do we need an apartment, but we need to know where to buy toilet paper. Thank you two for the strong backs you’re going to let us lean on. After two years of serious suit-and-tie work molding the young minds of Japan we’re excited to ride trams and climb the largest rock in the world.

But those are plans for the future and this is supposed to be about Japan. Upcoming attractions: pearl-procuring, Sports Day, the Arita pottery teapot search committee, sappy good-byes. And exams. But that’s a given by now.

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Packing up, shipping out

Auntie and Linds are home, we assume, because we’ve been getting emails from them that say: You must have my Japanese fabric. It is nowhere! that are followed twenty minutes later with oh! I just found it in the side pocket of my suitcase. Don’t worry! to which I want to say once and for all that we have scoured the apartment and have found no hair ties, no spare glasses, no extra fabric. NOTHING WAS LEFT BEHIND. We did find a curling iron burn on our grey pleather (I know) couch and as I was eating dinner the other night a shard of glass worked its way into my foot, so thank you for ruining our furniture and nearly causing a visit to the emergency room. We had a good time with you, too.

But I am kidding! and Linds if you ever read this, I mean, if the City of Phoenix doesn’t call this site “forbidden” and then phone you to explain yourself (true story, folks)–thank you for the note we got in the mail the other day. We particularly liked the purikura picture of you and Auntie in an ice cream sundae. I mean, if you’re leaving Japan with a good grasp of the purikura scene–our job is basically done.

We’ve been getting back into the swing of getting up early and taking trips to pottery towns in the rain. I purchased a nice sake set for my husband who doesn’t drink sake. That’s how much I like the pottery. I’m actively working to convince myself that five teapots is a good place to stop. FIVE TEAPOTS. Not to mention the number of small, handle-less teacups I’ve bought over the last two years. We have a luggage scale to ensure that our checked baggage is under 50 pounds, but I’d better hope no one notices me sweating as a heft my carry-on onto the security belt because it will have, at a minimum, 25 individual pieces of pottery nestled inside it.

The reality that we’re leaving K-town in two and a half months (right in the middle of typhoon season) is starting to sink in. We’ve been somewhat careful in accumulating things (except disregard that statement entirely when it comes to pottery) and yet we have so many THINGS. Wooden old people dolls, fabric cranes, towels with snow-covered cherry blossoms on them, cute plastic bowls, magnets, posters. MY BOOK COLLECTION. I have a master plan (by which I mean I’ve made lots of lists), and yet my main strategy appears to be surveillance. Piles of white polo shirts and short linen pants surround our bed and spill over into the living room and instead of sorting through my moth-nibbled sweaters and making room for the summer clothes in the closet I just hop between the shirts, reach into a stack to pull out a t-shirt and hope the whole thing doesn’t crash down in a fluffy cotton pile.

The husband is less than enchanted with this situation. He sorted his winter clothes into geometric bundles and secured them with twine. He asks me, “should I take these to a second hand shop or recycle them this morning?” while I’m wearing mismatched socks and smelling my undershirt to see if it’s clean. I’m eyeing my clothes to see what will make the boat home. I can tell, with a quick glance, whether a certain article of clothing has been washed in our disastrous excuse for a washing machine. The fabric will be faded and the sleeves so stretched out that the armpit holes hang down to mid-bicep. So I’ve decided no new clothing will be washed in Japan! I will save what cotton I can! I know it’s a naive resolution to make headed into the hottest and muggiest season of the year when I strip naked in the afternoons and sit, after school, panting under the air conditioner (not as sexy as it sounds), but this is the beginning of my detachment process. Most people pull away from friends and loved ones and gird their hearts in preparation for departure. Not me! I stop washing my clothes and spend my weekends buying ceramic plates in the shape of bamboo stalks.

This plan does cause me to wonder if I’ll get home and wish all my clothes looked faded and spun into felt by our machine. If I’d rather my shirts had small white lint balls from the polluted air and the stiff feel of shirts hung dry in the sun than look like regular American clothes. I mean, what better way to throw into a conversation that I used to live in Japan than in response to the question, “what happened to your pants?”

“Oh,” I’ll say modestly, “it’s just my washer in Japan, where I lived, used to eat these holes into the hem of all my pants. And this hole in the shoulder of my shirt? That’s from a poisonous centipede that crept up on me while I slept. Man, I miss it there.”

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The week, it was Golden: part 2

We’ve heard zipola from Auntie and Linds in Hiroshima except a hastily written and completely capitalized email from Auntie that read: LOST GREY SCARF. PLEASE CHECK STORE. THIS COMPUTER IS IMPOSSIBLE.

Tonight they’re scheduled to complete the last leg of their journey which includes a ride on the bullet train, a local train and then a walk to their hotel which is right across the “canal” from the international airport built on a man-made island. They are understandably nervous about this since after our extensive internet research the best advice we could give them was: just ask someone for help. We’re understandably nervous about this because Auntie does not have the best track record for keeping train tickets and in fact lost a single train ticket twice in the space of 20 feet.

I’d taken them to The Big City for a day of shopping last Thursday and we were carrying a few bags which included linen shirts for Linds and an unnecessary black ruffled vest for me, plus two tasty blueberry cheesecakes and an chocolate eclair (because the pastry shops! This is what they all love when they come to Japan. It actually is pretty shocking–the number of my highly educated, nearly bi-lingual students who want to make cream puffs for the rest of their lives. But I’m not judging. I like to lick whipped cream from my lips like a Cheshire cat as much as the next person.). We put our tickets in the till, took them out at the other side and walked over to the snaking silent lines for the train. Just as we’d dropped our bags to the ground Auntie patted her pockets and wondered, “now where did I put my ticket?” She didn’t have it in her pocket, in her purse, in any of our bags. So I took her by the arm and led her back along the (short) path we’d walked from point A to B and lo! There on the tiled white floor, backside up, was a single black ticket. “I must have just dropped it,” she said. To which I replied, “Yes, that is very strange.” Because you see, Internet, this isn’t the Paris metro where people throw dirty used tickets willy-nilly into the corners. This is Japan where the machine eats your ticket when you use it to exit the station. Which means there are NO dropped tickets lying about and no explicable reason why someone would let $6 fall from their hands like that. (Although it should be pointed out that this was hardly the first time she’d lost a train ticket. Once we’d had to beg a train guard to let her through saying the rest of us had our tickets, we’d all come from the same place and yes, the blonde one among us simply chose to jettison hers out the window). Back in line with Linds we re-shuffled things from one bag to another and just as we began stretching our legs in preparation for running to the train doors Auntie patted her pockets and looked in her purse and wondered (again with the butter fingers!) what happened to her ticket. It was found this time in her back pocket and when she held it up triumphantly Linds snatched it from her fingers and said quietly but firmly, “Mother, I will be keeping the tickets from now on.”

So you can see why I’m nervous they will lose their $200 bullet train tickets. Auntie kept peering over our shoulders trying to understand the train lines and routes we were explaining to Linds until finally her daughter sighed and said, “Mother, don’t worry about it. I will be in charge.” And Linds put all the train tickets into her travel case, snapped it closed and just when we thought the case was closed Auntie leaned back in her chair from the computer where she was selecting her virtual golf team and said, “Okay, but be careful not to lose them.”

Really.

The truth is I had a great time with them and even got to go into English teacher mode with Linds after Auntie pointed out she was headed to graduate school in the fall and wasn’t clear on her pronouns. This led to a lesson on the way to (where else?) a pastry shop in which we told Linds that “she” can do things, but “her” cannot. Her and her mother cannot do anything, we said. Her is possessive. We quizzed her, “Can one say ‘she, her and I went to the store?'” we asked. To which Linds responded, “no, her can’t go to the store.” And to which we added, her can’t do anything. Let this be a lesson to you future grammarians, teachers of English, things can be done to HER, people can hit HER and punch HER and ask HER on a date, but HER cannot do anything to defend herself. SHE can step in and do battle for HER, but the sad truth of HER’s life is that HER CAN’T DO NOTHING.

I introduced them to the delights of purikura, which, for the uninitiated, is a photo booth where you can take pictures of yourself perched on the thigh of a giant sumo wrestler or snuggled in a box of chocolates and then decorate the pictures with stamps of palm trees and swirly writing before they print out on sticker paper. It’s all in Japanese, it happens very fast and if you’re not experienced you end up with a bunch of pictures where instead of having your face squarely in the hole in the eggplant on the screen you have just one creepy eye peeking out below the stem. Our best picture is perhaps the one in which Linds and Auntie appear to be drinking out of flasks but which are, in actuality, their water bottles. Auntie swore they were easier to carry around, they fit in her purse because they were so thin, and plus it gave us the chance on busy trains to take a swig of water and then screw up our faces into a post-alcohol grimace.

At karaoke they danced and shimmied to Grease Lightning! and Linds downed the Gin fizzes in between doing the Charleston to the songs Cruella Deville and Friend like Me. We did a hot springs bath in a cave, ate raw horse meat, and fed pieces of charred bacon to a ferile tabby cat who kept creeping closer to my dangling feet with each smoking bite. Linds is a professional photographer working on a show called 98% organic! (exclamation point mine) and so we were on a constant scavenger hunt to find her things that were almost 100% organic, but not quite. Cement blocks made in the shape of rocks? A small natural tree growing from green astroturf? A bamboo grove growing around a hot red fence? As you can see, Japan is quite fertile ground for the 98% organic! artist set.

The trip also proved to be an ego boost for yours truly. I am now completely fluent in the basic conversation standards which include: where are you from? Do you live in Japan? My your Japanese is amazing, “jozu, jozu” they say! to which I shake my head and say, in the traditional Japanese way, no, no, no. It also heralded the arrival of spring and I am on my all-sandals-all-the-time kick. A box of clothes exploded all over our floor and given the limited closet space I now have to sort out the moth-eaten sweaters from the ones I want to send home and get a box on the slow boat back from China.

The heat has been turned up moving-wise and I’m trying to be the careful owl of leaving Japan and have left lists for myself strewn about my desk and in my bag. And yet, although owls seem to have a lot of common sense, that is a trait I have not yet adopted. Despite there being strict weight limits on airlines and despite the new rules about carry-ons and despite the fact that sending a fleet of boxes from this island back to the US is going to cost my weight in gold I am off tomorrow to a pottery town where I will be in search of heavy hand-made pottery of the Koishiwara persuasion to add to my already ridiculous collection of teapots.

Obviously I’m not so jozu at light packing.

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