Day Four

DAY FOUR (06/12/08, 6:30am)

Finally a long night’s sleep! I went to bed around 10:30 and woke up at 6:15. Now I am back on the same couch, looking through rain-splattered windows at a rather deserted Tokyo. Not many cars and even fewer people on foot seem to be moving about at this hour.

Yesterday morning I had breakfast on the 40^th floor of the hotel (the top). Some traditional American food was served—French toast, eggs, bacon and sausage, fruit, Danishes of various sorts—but there was also a range of Japanese dishes such as cooked cabbage, seaweed salad, miso soup, fish, and cured apricot that tasted like a mouthful of salty vinegar. I didn’t try everything but I will make a point of trying it all at least once in the next few days.

View from Breakfast Room

After breakfast we went to a one-hour orientation speech covering important background information we should know about the program, expectations, and logistics for the next three weeks. Then we boarded buses for a tour of Tokyo. Our first stop was the Diet, a government building where the house of representatives meets. With 160 teachers filling the long corridors, one tour guide from the Diet up front, and one of our own group tour guides translating for everyone, it was often difficult to hear what was being said. Many times I only got smidgeons of the conversation such as something about a mysterious stain on the carpet that could not be explained since no one had ever stepped there before or a gold clock worth 100,000,000 yen (one million dollars) that could be seen on the mantel place in the emperor’s waiting room or something about there being fossils in the marble walls (someone did point out a fish and two shells that I could barely make out on one wall).

Following the tour of the Diet we went into the Asakusa neighborhood of Tokyo for lunch and some shopping. We ate in a tempura restaurant. We sat on tatami mats and cushions much like in the restaurant I went to on my first night here. I sat at the vegetarian table where each place was neatly set with a variety of fried vegetables, a bowl of sticky white rice, a salad with a delicious sesame dressing, a bowl of miso soup, and a tangerine. Everything was quite delicious. It was funny to watch us Americans struggle with the chopsticks, stabbing chunks of tempura or ripping it into smaller pieces with our hands and then awkwardly pinching it with the chopsticks only to drop it in the dipping sauce and splash ourselves.

After eating, we had about one hour to wander the surrounding area before meeting to take the bus back to the hotel. Right outside the restaurant was the gate to a Buddhist temple followed by a long stretch of densely packed shops selling trinkets, snacks, and souvenirs. There were kimonos, little plastic cats with bobbing heads, decorative paper umbrellas, traditional wooden sandals (some of the wedding sandals were on platforms about 2 feet high!), packaged cookies and rice crackers, and dozens of other little doodads. The experience was one of true sensory overload.

Across from some of the shops I saw a bunch of mothers on bicycles arriving at what appeared to be a kindergarten to pick up their children. Little kids in navy and white sailor uniforms with bright yellow shoes and straw hats came running and jumping into the play area where mothers loaded them up in the back seat of their bicycles and road off with them into the busy streets. I was fascinated by this scene and wanted to take pictures but a sign posted right in front read “No’t take photographs” so, trying to be a good ambassador from my country, I abided by the rules and put away my camera.

The long row of shops eventually led down to the main entrance to the shrine where people were fanning themselves with incense and buying paper fortunes. I place a 100 yen coin in the appropriate slot and then shook a metal canister full of sticks, each one with a different symbol on it. I then turned the can upside down and plucked out the stick that emerged. Finding the matching symbol on a wooden box, I opened the box and pulled out the first sheet of paper. The tradition goes that if you get a bad fortune you are supposed to tie it to some branches (there is a designated place to do this beside the shrine). If it is a good fortune, you keep it. My fortune was both. It was called The Final Small Fortune and it read:

“Happiness and trouble comes one after another fortune and damage visit you one by one. Your hair changed gray, in spite of your age young, it is because of your hard work and too much care and its pains. The spiritual trouble will come to you repeatedly, hundred and thousand times. But your superior senior will stop them, to keep your way open to the future. Your request is hard to be granted. The patient get well but late. The lost article will be found. Building a new house and removal are both well, but fortune is a half. The person you wait for comes late. If someone escort you, you can start a trip. Both marriage and employment are fortune but half.”

It was clearly a mixed bag, so I decided to keep it.

After reading my fortune I rushed to catch the bus back to the hotel where we went to a grand banquet hall to watch a kyogen performance, a type of classical Japanese theater. It was one of the most bizarre performances I have ever seen. The two performers, one a slave and the other a master, performed the story of a slave who wanted to get out of working so hard and traveling long distances on errands so he made up an ailment, a cramp in his leg. When the master did some kind of ritual healing to get rid of the cramp, the slave said that the cramp could not be done away with because it was an inherited cramp. He explained that all of his siblings before him had inherited the land, the family business, the family heirlooms, so that all that was left for him was a cramp. Realizing that the slave was faking it, the master led the slave to believe that there was going to be a great feast at the household where the slave was supposed to go for his errand, and everyone was going but the master had excused him from the trip on account of his cramp. Not wanting to miss a feast, the slave explained how his inherited cramp, being that it was from his family, was a gentle cramp and it could be reasoned with. He explained to his cramp that a very important event was about to occur and he would be forever grateful if his cramp would retreat just this once, and of course it could return any other time if it would let him be pain-free today. The cramp, being an understanding cramp, let up and the slave was miraculously able to walk. The master then explained that he was happy to know that the cramp could be reasoned with and could disappear if the slave wanted it to. He then explained that the feast was a lie and he sent his slave packing to do his duties and go on the long errand.

All kyogen plays are typically comedic plays with happy endings (no one dies and relationships are restored to their proper order). The plays usually are about simple, down-to-earth, everyday conflicts. There is rarely any deep evil and even criminals are not so bad because they will invariably fail at their crime.

What struck me the most about the play was the way in which the actors delivered their lines. They said everything very slowly and deliberately in a lyrical way with their voices starting on a low pitch, quickly jumping to a very high pitch, and then gradually working their way back down to the low pitch in a staccato. It was very strange to hear.

A couple hours after the play we had a reception with several more speeches followed by a toast and a buffet-style Japanese dinner. Running on so little sleep, I was straining to keep my eyes open. I wanted to get to know my fellow teachers and the Fulbright Scholars (Japanese people who studied in the US and came to this reception to meet us) but I just didn’t have the energy. Clearly others were having the same thought because the crowd grew smaller and smaller well before the event reached its scheduled end at 8:30.

Well, I need to get going to breakfast now and then to a full day of presentations from 9:30-4:00.