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The Roads to Sata

Lost Japan

Travelers' Tales Japan 

Jason on Japan

I'd been anticipating the Oyama fireworks festival for several weeks, having heard from everybody that Japanese fireworks are the best in the world. As you can deduce from yesterday's article, I was not disappointed.

However, the most fiery part of the evening came not from the sky but from my coworkers at the English conversation school where I teach.

I had invited all of my students to accompany me to the event. Other English schools in the area had done the same and it was to be an evening of English teachers and students enjoying the show together.

The crowds that night were beyond anything I expected. Roads were closed, the bridge was packed. My student, Yoshiko, and I could not get the car across the river, so we parked and walked as quickly as possible through the crowd. By the time we arrived at the local school, our designated meeting point, one group was leaving. I stayed with Yoshiko and Yasu, another of my students, and waited to go with the next group. About 15 minutes later, we left.

We picked our way through the thickening crowd. I stepped over blankets and watched to make sure I didn't knock over a beverage or crush a child's fingers. The feeling in the air told me that launch time was near.

Our Japanese leader went to the wrong set of stairs along the river's edge. We found a clearing of sand and stood with cans of beer and food, thinking of ways we could join the rest of our group. Just then the first firework split the sky and all thoughts turned from logistics to enjoyment.

Or maybe not all thoughts. Flanked by Yoshiko and Yasu, I stared into the sky, completely absorbed and thinking of nothing more than the simple pleasure of seeing what fun we can have with explosives. I was loving the idea of so much effort being put into something not related to business when I saw the glow of cell phones light up around me. The Japanese English teachers dialed their counterparts in the other group.

I did my best to ignore what I thought to be a terrible waste of the moment. As the sky filled with more colors than my iris could admit, certain determined irises stared at backlit screens. After dialing, the callers began yelling into their phones over the noise of fireworks. I scooted my students a few feet away. The callers exited my peripheral vision and I could no longer hear their yelling.

A firework exploded to the size of Rhode Island. I watched its thousand tentacles descend toward me and imagined that, instead, I rose to meet it. My connection with the firework was ended by a tug at my sleeve.

"Jason-sensei," yelled Noriko, a Japanese English teacher, "we are moving to the other group."

"Now? The fireworks have started!"

"But this is not the correct place. We need to move."

"Who cares whether it's the correct place? We're at the river, the fireworks are exploding. We can barely move. Let's just meet up with everybody after the show."

"No, we have to go now."

She then turned back to the other teachers and they huddled in yelled conversation. I asked Yoshiko and Yasu if they wanted to move. They said no.

"Come on, Jason-sensei," Noriko said.

"That's alright. We're staying here. We'll catch you guys later."

I turned back to the sky and when I next glanced around me to share the thrill of a particularly large firework, Noriko and the group of teachers was gone. The show continued for another 90 minutes during which the three members of my group took turns running for beer, buying each other food, and trying to find a trash can for our leftovers.

The crowd churned. Girls flashed boys who laughed from the backs of their throats, a half-choked laughter through drinking and smoking and yelling. The river flowed in quiet ripples under the explosions, making for a striking effect of being sandwiched between sets of fireworks and swirling away into a night of total abandon.

When the finale took to the skies, tens of thousands of camera flashes added to the effect as tens of thousands of voices tried to scream above the explosions. Such mayhem overcame the crowd around our threesome that I would not have been surprised to discover the cause to have been a city livewire dropped from above. Screaming and jumping and laughter to the point of tears banished all thoughts. Our world had become a fireworks festival.

Coming off that high took awhile. The smoke blew across the river and cleaning crews marched behind the departing crowds. I've never seen cleaning crews as efficient as those dispatched in Japan. They are quick and thorough. Three hours after the city erupted into cacophony with all the attendant litter, you'd never have known that anything beyond a street lamp had been lit.

We walked a snaky line from the river, up the stairs, and across a fence where a policeman used a bullhorn to tell us and the other thousand crossing that we should walk around. His face remained the same and his pose never budged as the swarm of bodies proceeded to ignore his every word, proving once again that adherence to instructions is always more important than the result of following them.

Downhill from the oblivious policeman, we crossed another fence into a war zone of a parking lot lined by portable outhouses with no doors. The sight of everybody walking in and taking a leak without breaking conversation left us giggling our way to another set of snack booths for ice cream and more beer. Against my hopes, prices remained the same throughout the evening.

We rolled into the local English conversation school, filled with beer, eyes still reflecting the astonishing display, and emitting a jumble of English and Japanese and laughter. It ended the moment we exited the elevator into the school lobby.

Grim faces across the room fell on mine. The grimmest belonged not to Noriko, the teacher who had asked me to come with her and the other teachers to our official viewing area, but to Masako, a teacher who had been at the official area all along. She had spoken to Noriko over the cell phone during the display and was the one responsible for urging our group to relocate to the other area. She broke ranks to approach me, smiling sweetly over bitter thoughts. "Jason-sensei, where were you during the fireworks?"

"Watching the fireworks. Where were you?"

"With our students at the appropriate area. Why didn't you join us?"

"It didn't seem important. We took so long to find our place and the fireworks had already started, so I didn't want to start moving through the crowd again. The smart thing to do was watch."

Her face turned red. I know she wanted to knock me out cold on the floor, but her smile never gave way. She raised her voice and edged her words from behind it; to impress whom I'll never know, but it unnerved me more than a snarl ever has.

"It was stupid," she spat. "You don't know anything about Japan. You should cooperate with me. Taeko came by herself and Akira brought his nine-year-old son just to meet you. They left terribly disappointed."

"Why didn't you mention on the phone that some of my students were there? I stayed safely with Yoshiko and Yasu, the only students of mine I knew to have come."

She turned and huffed out of the building with the rest of a very disgruntled group. The room fell quiet. I pulled a beer from the cooler and changed the subject with Yoshiko and Yasu. We walked to the post-firework party at a nearby restaurant.

I stared at Masako's smile across the table at the restaurant. It was difficult to maintain my own. Looking at various photos of the evening, however, I see that I managed to do so. You'd never know that a barbed wire twanged in my mind or that I never tasted the blue drink placed in front of me, even though it was half-empty by the time I left.

I felt that I had done the right thing at the fireworks display. I met my students, stayed with them, and had a good time. Wasn't that the point? If Taeko and Akira and his son had really wanted to see me that evening, why didn't they walk with the rest of the group back to the local school? I couldn't see where I had gone wrong, nor why Masako was so upset.

I left early with my students, lying that I needed to catch a train. I said goodbye to Yasu and then walked slowly with Yoshiko through Oyama, past the glowing wands discarded on the street and the half-disassembled food booths.

"What's wrong?" Yoshiko asked me.

"What's wrong? Didn't you see what happened at the school?"

I explained it to her. She listened as we worked our way through kids trying to get freebies from the booths. By the time we reached the river and made our way across the bridge, I had aired my version of the evening's events. "I wonder how upset Taeko and Akira are?"

"There's no way to tell now."

"I know that. I didn't expect an answer."

"The fireworks are over and those people are gone. There's nothing you can do now."

The next day was a Monday and I had no classes to teach. I wanted to go to Tokyo to take care of some business, but instead I postponed my plans to make special trips around Ashikaga to gather two gift boxes and copies of the Japanese version of my Y2K novel. I brought my special signing pen with me to the school the next day and signed both copies of the books to their insulted recipients.

Taeko arrived on time for her class. I met her in the lobby, all grins, holding her gift box with the freshly signed book inside. She greeted me as politely as ever.

"I'm sorry I missed you at the fireworks on Sunday," I said.

"Yes, I'm very sorry," she replied. "I really wanted to be there but I just couldn't make it. I was very busy."

The box felt heavy in my hands. I tore a page from Masako's play book and fastened the smile firmly on my face. "What do you mean? I thought you were waiting to see me at the student viewing area?"

She hadn't been. I walked her to my classroom and tried to continue as usual, but couldn't. "Taeko, would you please excuse me for a moment? I need to speak with Masako-sensei about something."

I walked without smiling down the hallway and pushed open Masako's door. She sat on the opposite side of her table, preparing for her class. She looked up.

"Do you have a moment?" I asked. She joined me in the hallway. "See this box?" I held it up to her. "Guess what's inside? A gift for Taeko that took me all day yesterday to find. Can you guess why I felt the need to bring her a gift today? Because you told me she waited for me at the fireworks festival. What time would you say she arrived at the festival?"

"I'm not sure. I couldn't --"

"Of course you're not sure," I snapped. "She was never there. I just apologized to her and was about to give her this gift when she apologized to me for not joining us on Sunday."

Masako blushed and backed away and there was no smile this time. She said that she needed to get ready for class and that she would talk to me later. We returned to our separate classrooms.

I walked through my doorway, arm extended. "Taeko, this is a present for you. I need to explain." I told her the story. She replied at the end of my rushed outburst, "OK, I guess I should open it." She lifted the box lid and sat transfixed for several seconds. She had not known that I was a writer. She had never met a writer before. To see the name of her teacher in print on a book cover left her in a state of shock on top of the confusion she must have felt at receiving a present for the bizarre reasons under which this one came to her.

"Let me get this straight," her face seemed to say, "I never went to the fireworks so I'm getting an autographed book as a present from my teacher who is also the author of the book?"

What followed was a class devoid of any English lesson. Instead, we discussed literature and writing, and I discovered parts of Taeko's personal life that had never made it into classroom conversation before. Until that time, I had felt a barrier between us. There was nothing overt, no evidence to cite. Our classroom relationship simply eluded the closeness I felt with other students. That day, the closeness came within reach. Happily, it has stayed.

We walked to the lobby after class, Taeko with her gift under her arm and me with a satisfied spring in my step. Masako waited for us. She bowed deeply and apologized for the confusion, explaining that she hadn't actually seen Taeko at the fireworks, but had heard that she was present and looking for me. She bowed repeatedly. Taeko bowed too. I said it was OK, no problem.

Masako had been partially correct about Akira and his son, however. They were indeed at the fireworks festival and had expected to see me there. They were not at all upset, though, having noticed the sea of people around them and surmising that I probably had not intentionally stood them up. They came to the school Tuesday evening to meet me. I gave Akira his gift and watched it cause the same reaction it had caused in Taeko.

I discovered at the end of the day that Masako had emptied my wastebasket for me and left a napkin of candies on my table. For the rest of the week, she went out of her way to help me with my paperwork and asked several times each day if I needed anything.

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