Our Year In Tokyo

Tokyo is where I read ‘The Pillow Book’, ‘The Tale of the Shining Prince’, and ‘The Dream of the Red Chamber’, and where I felt the alluring mystique of the east enfold me in its gentle clasp. Camellias bloom in fall, azaleas in spring and ornamental kale is planted alongside winter sidewalks. Jungle crows caw atop the water tower and metal rooftop of our house sheltered in its compound; feral cats slink along alleyways.

Initially, we lived at The Pegasus Apartments close to Aoyama dori. At night we joined throngs of pedestrians on tranquil autumn evenings. Bicycles, motorbikes, motorcycles are entrusted unlocked, to parking areas. Ancient bonsai sit on sidewalks adjacent cramped homes. At night downtown scintillates in neon blaze. Strolling broad boulevards we pass impressive hotels, the Imperial palaces and upscale shops. Deeper into the city, constricted streets force vehicles to proceed with caution. Most residents live in crammed concrete apartment blocks. Futons hang out the windows of each tiny apartment during the day creating doily-festooned facades. Firefighters garbed in white moon-man uniforms hand-pull wheeled gear into these unnamed, numbered streets. At intersections stand cobans, box-like structures manned by police, area maps on the walls. If in doubt, enquire.

Traffic is heavy but accidents few, car horns rarely used. When drivers stop for red lights, they shut the ignition. Most cars are a variant of cream or white. Black cars are driven by the Yakuza. Japanese taxi drivers are uniformed in cap and white gloves, wielding feather dusters to flick dirt from their vehicles. Should a few centimeters of snow fall in winter panic ensues, chains are fitted to tires.

Buildings under construction or renovation are enclosed in scaffolding; engulfed in huge white tarps. Construction workers wear white coveralls, soft helmets and white felt boots resembling camels’ feet. Roadwork takes place at night, the restored surface opened to morning traffic.

Tokyoites are polite and reserved. The standard response, answering the telephone is “mushi-mushi?” No one can explain what it means. There is a collective quiet in the city, despite its size and habitation. The exception to the general hush is a melodic chime heard throughout the city at five o’clock. This is my signal to walk to a little corner store for the Maiinichi shimbun. There are street vendors hawking roasted yams. Impulsively, Japanese engage westerners in public discourse, happily grasping the opportunity to practice English.

Tokyo summers are unrelentingly hot and humid. Exiting air conditioned interiors, one recoils upon reaching the street as though slapped with a scalding, wet towel. Every block or so throughout the city large automatic dispensers vend hot tea, coffee or cold sport drinks.

Daily food shopping prevails. One visits the fruit- and vegetable-monger, the rice shop, teashop, fishmonger, florist, hardware merchant. Shop fronts open to the street, are shuttered at night. Since leaving Japan I’ve never tasted fruit so sweet, vegetables or fish as fresh. The bustling, expansive markets near Ueno Park offer food and clothing in bazaar-like abundance.

Tokyo boasts singular districts of shops devoted to cookware, footwear, meats, fish, books, electronics, and motorcycles. The city’s neighbourhoods resemble an assemblage of multitudinous villages. There are kissaten (coffeehouses) and soba (noodle soup) cafes; temples and shrines, parks and botanical gardens with ponds full of giant gold, silver, and orange carp.

In Yokohama we visited a doll museum. Close by we entered an antique shop and there I bought my very own Gosho Ningyo, a fat-faced, ornately dressed doll astride a hobbyhorse. Bordering the Pacific Ocean, Kamakura is a city of temples, one devoted to the Great Daibutsu, a towering bronze Buddha. Another temple is dedicated to a Buddha accredited as the protector of lost babies. Tiny replications of Yesu are placed around the temple grounds and people leave babies’ playthings and clothing in poignant remembrance.

In a cupboard in our foyer a large black bag sat on the floor. For special occasions. It held some canned food, flashlights, first-aid kit, water bottles, hard hats, and candles. I liked to ‘forget’ its presence. And although we knew we should stand in a protected area of the house during an earthquake, somehow we never did. On those occasions when one occurred, we would sit there, facing one another, absorbed in the strangeness of the house, the ground beneath it, shaking ominously, a rattling heard from the kitchen, pictures wobbling on the walls. When, on occasion, it happened outside, it was even stranger, and we were transfixed by the sensation charging the atmosphere about us, wondering when it would stop, if it would stop, and finally it did. The earth did not open to receive us. Then we would wonder when the next one would occur. Where would we be? How long would it last? Then we forgot about it.

We joined an international travel group; mostly Japanese, some foreigners, and traveled week-ends by bus to tea plantations, traditional Ryokan (inns) and once to Hamamatsu, where the kite festival takes place, rural communities vying against one another, manipulating giant kites, lines arrayed with knives. The winners, whose kite survives airborne, exult in their martial skills.

With that same group we traveled the coast to Okuyama, staying overnight at a Zen Buddhist temple nestled in the hills and forests outside the village. There, bathers scrub themselves seated on little stools before entering the steaming communal bath. One sheds slippers for wooden clogs to enter the communal bathroom, balancing over floor-level 'toilets'. We slept on futons in a tiny tatami-matted room and rose at five to participate in the morning’s service. I thought my legs would never recover from assuming the Lotus position.

In the sprawling Temple buildings, one adjoining another, I discovered echoes of Umberto Ecco’s Name of the Rose. Following breakfast of miso soup, rice, raw egg and chai, we wandered the Temple grounds and heard, from an embankment towering above us a divine chorus of men’s devotional voices. As we followed a narrow dirt road toward the village two tonsured monks in flowing robes passed in a Mercedes Benz.

We joined Friends of the Earth and took a series of subway trains, buses and railway trains, passing outlying communities, finally reaching trailheads where our group of about a dozen dedicated mountaineers would ascend mountains to explore landscapes infinitely dissimilar to any we’d trekked before.

To again stroll Omotesando on a Sunday, or Shibuya, or Giain Higashi dori; to promenade along the Ginza, or through Ueno Park under cherry blossoms; to see the Temple of the 47 Ronin where the earth shuddered underfoot, or the Asakusa Kanon Temple by the Sumeida River where the Floating World of the Geisha once flourished - is to dream.