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Jason on Japan
Twelve
Years of Friendship
by
Jason Kelly
10/25/1999
A Strange Path to Kokura
Standing
in the visitor line at Narita customs, I noticed something
pleasant. The line for residents was entirely Japanese. A
thick column of black-haired people wound its way through
ropes to the paperwork desks. Imagine that. I found Japanese
people in Japan. In America, the lines for residents and visitors
look exactly the same. There are Chinese, Japanese, French,
Nigerian, Russian, Mexican, Brazilian, and Canadian people
intermixed among both lines. There is no such thing as an
"American" appearance.
There
is, however, a Japanese appearance and I'm not it. I stood
in the line set aside for people who didn't necessarily have
black hair and a love of raw fish. It felt wonderful to be
a visitor to a pure culture. There would be no Little Tokyo
next to Koreatown three blocks from Chinatown and only a wine
bottle toss away from Little Italy. I wouldn't eat sushi while
watching somebody at the restaurant next door put salsa on
their tostada. I would just be in Japan with Japanese people
speaking and writing Japanese.
The thrill of it hit me as I shuffled through the visitor
line. I thought back to the unlikely beginnings of this trip,
my first to Asia. I'm the author of three money management
books called The Neatest Little Guides , published
by PenguinPutnam in New York. They're good books and they
provide me with a comfortable living, but business writing
has never been my dream.
I
wanted to be a novelist since the day I read John Steinbeck's
Of Mice and Men on the side of a mountain near my home
in Colorado while horses grazed nearby. Soon after, I wrote
my first novel for a class assignment in seventh grade. It
was a science fiction story that my mother transcribed for
me on a manual typewriter using thick pages that she hand-sewed
together. I illustrated it myself with colored pencils. The
teacher graded it an "A," and my dream of writing
for a living grew stronger.
Only
one Japanese book remained in my mind long after I read it,
and I've wondered if that's because it too accompanied me
on a horseback ride through the Rocky Mountains. Snow Country,
by Yasunari Kawabata, could have taken place in any of the
valleys near my boyhood home. Even the title in Japanese,
Yuki Guni, seemed somehow familiar when spoken into
a Colorado winter storm. I remember shoveling snow in the
twilight of January, six months after reading the book. I
paused to exhale a lungful of mist. The sound of my shoveling
dissipated and I looked over the mountain silhouettes. The
second line from the novel says that "The earth lay white
under the night sky." I realized then that I am from
the snow country. Yuki Guni is not just in Japan, it's
also in Colorado.
To my
snow country came a Japanese exchange student named Takayuki
Nishida. He lived with my family for half a school year, sleeping
in the bedroom next to mine. We owned the basement of my family's
home every night, telling jokes, wrestling, and smuggling
nude magazines under cover of darkness. This last nasty habit
of ours led to one of the most embarrassing moments of Taka's
life.
He came
to me one night looking sheepish. "Jason," he began.
"I think America has rude magazines with pictures. I
think the pictures have no fuzzy part."
I learned
that Japanese pornography fuzzes out genitals so the good
people of Japan see no evil. As a teenager at the time, I
knew exactly what Taka was after. "Oh, you want to see
some porno magazines?"
"Yes."
So my
friends and I took great fun in finding the lewdest publications
on the market. We had older kids buy them from stores. We
snuck them from parental collections. We even ordered a couple
through the mail using our own money. In short, we did everything
all American teenage boys do to see sex. The difference is
that we did it for our Japanese friend who could hardly believe
his eyes. In time, Taka amassed quite a collection.
One day,
my mother did some housecleaning while Taka and I were in
school. Because he had never smuggled anything in his life,
he was unfamiliar with the fine art of hiding loot in his
bedroom. It never occurred to me or my friends that we should
show Taka where to stash his loot. Thus, when my mother went
to dust his nightstand, she saw breasts and tongues and bottoms
sticking from under the clock. Other body parts protruded
from beneath pillows and hung over the edge of his desk. She
promptly removed every offensive magazine and threw them in
the burn can.
A feeble
knock came at my door that evening before dinner. "Jason,"
Taka said. "Come here."
We walked
to his room and he gestured from bed to nightstand to desk.
"All gone."
"What
did you do with them?"
He lowered
his face. "I think mother took."
"Everything?"
My first thought was of all the work that had gone into the
first-rate collection. Looking at Taka, I saw that his concerns
ran much deeper. "Don't worry," I said, still not
getting it. "We can get you some more."
"No,
Jason. This is so shame. I am almost die."
A call
came from upstairs. "Jason, Taka, time for dinner!"
"I
cannot," he whispered to me. "I just cannot. I will
never eat. I cannot see mother. I must hide." His eyes
darted around the room.
"She
found the magazines, what makes you think she won't find you?"
We
joined the family for dinner. My mother didn't say a word
or change her behavior, but then again, she didn't need to.
Taka ate two bites all night, never looking up from the floor.
Halfway through the meal, I moved his dinner knife over to
my plate. No need to tempt him into a hari-kiri suicide
just before dessert.
Our pranks
continued getting us into trouble. Taka and I arrived home
late one night and were met at the door by my father. He was
very angry with me. His voice rose and my voice rose until
I became so humiliated in front of my friend that I smashed
a lamp against the wall. My father threw me toward the stairs,
demanding that Taka and I go to our rooms. I swore and threw
more objects in my room. Taka tiptoed over to see why I was
still making so much noise.
"Why?"
Teen rage crackled in my eyes. "Because I hate this house,
that's why. I'm getting the hell out of here. Are you coming
with me or not?"
"Go
outside?"
"Yes!
Let's go. We don't need this crummy place anymore. Just you
and me. We'll find our own place."
"Uh,
Jason, I cannot. This is very bad. Your father say go to rooms."
"Forget
him! We're out of here." I pushed Taka's shoulders toward
the basement door.
He turned violently. "Jason, no! You always bad boy."
His eyes narrowed. "When you are man, I think you will
be yakuza."
Even
within my rage, I had to laugh. The yakuza are Japanese
mafia. I was flattered. Wait until my friends heard that Taka
considered me mafia material.
One
of our more memorable adventures was camping with my family's
pit bulldog in a sub-zero snowstorm. Despite our winter sleeping
bags, tent, and stove, we nearly froze to death. It became
so unbearable in the middle of the night that we gave up our
pride and jammed all three of ourselves Japanese, American,
and pit bull into one sleeping bag covered by the remaining
two. We shivered the night away, breathing dog breath and
praying for sunlight. Just when we thought it could get no
worse, the dog started passing gas so profusely that we could
barely inhale. Taka kept gasping one word over and over, kitchigai.
It means crazy, he explained. I had to agree.
I smiled to myself in line at Narita and quietly said kitchigai.
That night, I would see Taka for the first time in twelve
years. We had exchanged photos, but hadn't sat in a room together
since we were boys. During those twelve years, I graduated
from the University of Colorado with a degree in English and
wrote manuals for IBM in Silicon Valley. I wrote five novels
during evenings and weekends, none of which were accepted
for publication. My Neatest Little Guide series enabled
me to leave IBM to write for myself full time. That's when
I wrote the original novel about the Year 2000 computer crisis,
the book that would eventually bring me to Japan. I called
it Y2K It's Already Too Late. My agent tried selling
it to New York publishers, but none would take it.
I believed
in the book, however. The other five that had been rejected
did not deserve to be published. They were my practice novels.
But this one was different and I could sense that New York
had made a mistake. I determined to self-publish the story
while my agent, Doris Michaels, sold the foreign rights.
The book became a hit in the United States, rising to the
top of Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble bookstores. At the
1998 Frankfurt Book Fair, Doris spoke at length with Shoko
Kishio, an editor in Shueisha's translated books division.
Shoko was so impressed by the excitement from Doris that she
bought the book for Shueisha and published it in Japan February
1999 under the title Panic Y2K.
Even
Taka got in on the fun. I named one of the novel's Japanese
characters Takayuki Nishida in honor of my buddy. His friend
came to him at work one day and said, "Taka, you are
in this book."
"No,"
Taka replied in characteristic melodrama, "I don't believe
it."
"Yes,
it is true," his friend said, pointing to the page. Taka
read his name and then had to sit down from the excitement.
He explained this to me in an email that made it seem as if
he'd been chosen to lead Earth's next mission to Mars.
Panic
Y2K sold 30,000 copies in the first month. Shueisha was
pleased with the strong sales and invited me to Japan on publicity
tour. That's what led me to the visitor line at Narita airport.
My briefcase held the directions I would need to catch a shinkansen
bullet train to Kokura station near Fukuoka, where I would
see my Japanese friend for the first time in twelve years.
Foreigner
Foibles
The
shinkansen departed at precisely the correct time,
something I am not accustomed to. I expected to wait for awhile
beside the tracks until the train moseyed its way to the stop
at Tokyo Station. But it was there, ready to go when I arrived
and it left at the very second it was scheduled to leave.
I, on
the other hand, was not operating nearly as well. Armed with
Japanese phrase books and notes from a Japanese culture awareness
program held for traveling businessmen, I tried talking my
way from the airport train stop at Tokyo Station to the correct
bullet train that would take me to Kokura.
I
stopped an unsuspecting gentleman near a vending machine.
He moved slowly after having purchased the tiniest can of
juice I had ever seen and was thus easy prey for me. It looked
to me like he would finish the entire can in a single swallow.
I pounced while there was still time. "Sumimasen,"
I said, knowing that means "excuse me." His
eyebrows lifted and he leaned slightly in my direction. "Hai,"
he replied.
Uh oh.
Now what?
"Um,
I'm looking for the shinkansen to Kokura."
He stared
blankly at me, waiting for something intelligible to come
out of my mouth.
"Do
you speak English?" I tried slowly. It seemed that if
I spoke slower he might magically understand this foreign
language of mine. And he did! Unfortunately, he could speak
only one word back to me and it was said with such force that
I knew he meant it: "Sorry."
Undaunted,
I whipped out my Japanese phrase book and began flipping around
for some way to ask him for the train to Kokura. My face turned
red as he grew impatient. "Train," I said. Flip,
flip, flip. "Terminal?" No, that didn't help. "Where?"
I tried.
His face
grimaced in frustration. He swept his arms in a wide motion
that seemed to indicate everywhere.
"Here?"
I asked. I realized with creeping embarrassment that I had
just asked a man in a train station where I could find a train.
He nodded,
then showed me his watch. He had to go. "Sorry,"
he said again, and walked away.
English,
I thought. I need English badly. I picked up my bags and kept
walking. The woman at the information booth examined my ticket
to point me in the right direction. I trudged through the
station, arms clutching my luggage and weakening with every
step, until I finally found the sleek bullet train. There
was no number on it, however, and the words scrolling across
the digital readout were all in Japanese. I went to my assigned
seat anyway, just glad to get the heavy bags out of my hands.
The train could be en route to Hokkaido for all I cared. On
second thought, I decided to make sure I was in the right
place.
A woman sat angelically across the aisle. She held a small
box on her lap and one of those tiny cans of juice. "Sumimasen,"
I said, once again exhausting my entire knowledge of the
Japanese language in a single word. "Hai," she
answered with a smile.
Uh oh.
Here we go again.
I
saw a corner of the phrase book peeking cruelly from the seat
pocket in front of me. It seemed to laugh, knowing what I
was about to endure. I turned away from it. "Kokura?"
I asked, and pointed to the train floor. I hoped she would
understand that I was not asking if Kokura was beneath us
but, rather, if the train was going to Kokura. She smiled
again, a lovely smile, and said "Hai, Kokura."
Then she indicated with her hands that I should stay right
where I sat.
"Thank
you."
"Arrigato,"
she corrected. I repeated it and she said "Do
itashimashite." I looked it up in the evil phrase
book. It means "You're welcome."
We raced
south for six hours to Kokura station. I watched the scenery
of Japan turn from city to country and back again. For all
the talk I'd heard about Japan being so crowded, I was impressed
by the acres of open space between towns. Orchards and cherry
trees and mountains arranged themselves beside the train tracks.
People worked in fields next to trucks as I've seen across
America's heartland. Women hung laundry from wires on their
apartment porches. Kids rode bicycles. An old woman walked
slowly across an intersection while an endless line of cars
sat idling patiently.
A line
of cars in Japan contains about three times as many vehicles
as a line of identical length in America. Why? Because the
cars are about one-third the size. I saw cars on the streets
that could have just as easily been carried under the driver's
arm as driven around town. I half wondered if they were instant
cars just add water and thought they might expand when
it rains. Some cars looked like motorcycles with two extra
wheels and a roof. I wasn't sure that I could even fit inside
them.
I began
to worry. What if Taka drives a car that small? I might need
to drape myself across the roof as he drives us back to his
home.
The woman
across the aisle had finished her box meal and swallowed the
single mouthful of juice from her can. A girl paraded through
the cabin periodically selling food from a cart. I was too
nervous to order from her in front of all the people around
me, so I decided to sneak up to the food cabin and pick out
something there.
None
of the boxed meals showed pictures of their contents. I looked
over the counter for some kind of assurance that I wouldn't
be dining on eyeballs or tails or anything still breathing.
The girl sparkled with politeness as I stood wondering what
to do next. The line of businessmen behind me grew.
"What's
in these?" I asked.
That
sent her into a near panic as she flung her hands wildly in
front of her face. "No, no," she said, indicating
that she doesn't speak English. I detected an impatient tapping
of feet in line behind me. I pointed at a box, shrugged, then
motioned putting food into my mouth. She understood that and
produced a three-ring binder full of photos. She began turning
the pages and pointing to individual boxes like we were buddies
from summer camp reminiscing over a photo album.
The
man behind me rubbed his forehead and whispered to the man
behind him, "Gaijin." Foreigner. In this
case, a stupid American who couldn't even choose his own dinner.
I quickly
pointed to the photo with the smallest number of gooey substances.
I retreated to my seat with the box meal and two tiny cans
of juice. The darkening countryside warped past my window
as I opened the meal, broke my chopsticks apart, and proceeded
to finish everything before the first bite reached my stomach.
I bent
close to the container, one eye squinted in amazement. It
was a study in miniaturization. Each compartment was barely
large enough to hold a golf ball. It occurred to me that the
reason Japanese eat with little sticks is the same reason
people use tweezers to extract splinters. You can't fit fingers
into the little compartments to grab the food! In America,
we would call the arrangement in front of me an appetizer,
or even a sample. In Japan, it's a meal.
Distressing
the Japanese
An hour
before Kokura, I reviewed my notes from the Japanese culture
awareness program. The list of "American habits that
distress the Japanese" not only provided a humbling self-inspection,
but a lot to remember. Behavior is, after all, second nature.
I couldn't simply turn a switch on the back of my head and
enter Japan mode. Here's a handful of bad American habits
from the list:
*Talk
too much
*Interrupt
other people
*Don't
listen enough
*Are
too direct at asking questions, giving opinions, and poking
fun
*Do not
appreciate the importance of certain formalities in Japan
I could
have added another: Are idiots when ordering box meals in
public.
The last
item about formalities in Japan was particularly important
to me. I had studied up on formalities ahead of time and prepared
myself for three big ones.
First,
give and receive business cards with two hands and an air
of gratitude. I would not toss mine at people, nor scribble
on theirs in front of them. To further show my respect toward
Japan, I had a friend translate my business cards into Japanese
and even printed the cover of Panic Y2K on the Japan
side of the card. These would serve as my bilingual paper
ambassadors. Five hundred sat ready for action inside my briefcase.
Second, always give gifts to people even if the gifts are
humble. To that end I carried a half-suitcase of candy and
bathing soaps and trinkets from Los Angeles all wrapped in
paper from the Disney movie, A Bug's Life. I wanted
the presents to have a distinctly American feel to them. At
first, I thought of giving assault rifles and hunting knives
to capture Americanism at its finest, but decided on the niceties
instead. Every gift was made in the USA.
Third,
never ever ever ever walk into somebody's home wearing shoes.
The shoes are always taken off at the doorway. This one is
sacred. Only the world's most insensitive boor would trudge
filth into a Japanese home. I pounded the shoe custom into
my head by taking my own shoes off inside the doorway of my
home for weeks before my trip. I was well-trained and confident
that I would impress my Japanese hosts with the most basic
of their rituals, removing my shoes before stepping inside
their homes.
Taka met me at Kokura station. There he stood after twelve
years, looking exactly the same as before. I showed one hand
with my little finger held down as if it had been cut off
yakuza style. I knew as soon as he laughed that he
remembered the night in my family's basement when he said
I would grow up to become a yakuza. Despite his rough
English and my nonexistent Japanese, the mutual affection
glowed between us. The most important communication requires
no words.
Taka's
car was as big as my own, much to my relief. I tried getting
in the wrong side, of course, an omen of other inevitable
mistakes to come. We arrived at his apartment just past midnight.
I assumed his wife and son, Ikuyo and Hiroki, would be asleep.
I assumed wrong.
Taka's
front door swung open to reveal a disarmingly innocent woman.
There should have been music playing in the background and
heavenly light bathing the entryway. Her hands folded politely
at waist level in front of her, then opened in greeting. Her
eyes crinkled happiness.
Mesmerized,
I let myself float toward her. She was the lantern, I was
the moth. I moved through the doorway and, in my bewitched
state, stepped a shoe onto the tatami mat floor. The smile
snapped off her face and she cried out. "Aahhh!"
I froze.
"No,
Jason!" Taka said fiercely. Ikuyo clutched her hands
over her mouth. "Your shoes!" Taka pointed. "Take
off. Always take off in house!"
All
those weeks of training. All my reading. All the promises
I'd made to myself. All for nothing. When the true test arrived,
I failed miserably. I felt like explaining. If you hadn't
married such an otherworldly creature who charmed me out of
my senses I would have remembered. But what was the use? They
wouldn't have understood.
Attack of the Digital Toilet
Once
I successfully transferred from shoes to slippers, the hospitality
flowed freely. Ikuyo showed me to my room and read small English
phrases to me from a pad of paper. "Nice to meet you,"
she said softly. Hypnotized, I said it was nice to finally
meet her as well. "You are very kind," she told
me. Yeah, I thought, it was very kind to have brought some
American dirt to your home on the bottom of my shoes. Anything
else I can do for you tonight?
She
presented me with a basket of gifts so thorough that I wondered
if she knew I was traveling alone. I crowed over the pair
of pajamas, a razor, shaving cream, a toothbrush, toothpaste,
towels, washcloths, a comb, soap, shampoo, and at one point
I think I saw a partridge in a pear tree. It was as if she
expected me to arrive naked on her doorstep.
"Would
you like a bath?" Taka asked.
"Now?"
"If
you want."
Well
that was quite all right, but Ikuyo had already prepared the
bath water for me. She walked me to the bathroom and showed
me the deep tub and wall-mounted shower unit. Never wash in
the tub, Taka explained. Always wash before getting into the
tub. Then why get into the tub at all, I wondered. For relaxation,
he said. Ikuyo sometimes spends up to an hour soaking in the
tub. Sometimes the two of them soaked together, he added nonchalantly.
No kidding.
If I was married to Ikuyo, I would probably spend only one
hour per day OUT of the tub.
Ikuyo
served snacks to Taka and me at a short table in the living
room. We knelt on pillows as she walked back and forth from
the kitchen. I required no box meal photos this time. When
all the items sat on the table, Ikuyo knelt slightly to the
left and behind Taka. Her hands folded onto her lap. Her face
turned downward with a smile kept just below the surface as
her husband and I filled in details of twelve years gone by
on opposite sides of an ocean.
I awoke
around 4:00 AM. The many cups of green tea had gone through
my system quickly. I tiptoed to the bathroom, careful to close
the door before turning on the light. After relieving myself,
I went to flush the toilet. A panel of digital buttons faced
upward from the side, each labeled with Japanese characters.
I couldn't tell which one would flush the toilet.
I didn't
want to leave waste water for Taka or Ikuyo to see in the
morning. I could only imagine their impression of me. First
the shoes and then the toilet. How dirty could this American
get? I had to try my luck with the buttons. I pushed one colored
red.
The
toilet made an electronic sound like a robot moving one of
its arms. A nozzle emerged from under the back toilet bowl
rim and shot a strong stream of water up out of the bowl at
the bathroom wall. I put my hand over the stream of water,
scattering it in all directions. I managed to direct the main
force of the jet into the toilet bowl while frantically pushing
other buttons on the console to turn it off. At last, the
nozzle stopped squirting and returned to its resting position
under the rim.
I surveyed
the bathroom. Droplets of water clung to the toilet seat and
dripped down the wall. I mopped them up and in the course
of drying the side of the toilet happened upon a silver lever.
This looked quite familiar. Feeling worse than after the box
meal ordering incident, I pushed the lever to flush the toilet,
washed my hands, and returned quietly to my bed pad on the
tatami mat.
Feeling
Fat at Yufuin
Ikuyo's
breakfast was large enough to have brought smiles to an American
family. She not only served traditional Japanese breakfast
foods, minus anything that could be considered bait, but she
also served American foods like bacon, eggs, and toast. I
was touched by the gesture and ate my share. I had to move
quickly to keep the food from getting into the hands of Taka's
adorable toddler, Hiroki.
The
nice part about having Hiroki around is that he and I could
communicate. He made baby noises and an occasional word, I
did just about the same thing when trying to speak Japanese.
He would smile, I would smile. He would turn his head to one
side, I would copy him. He repeated words I spoke to him in
English with a perfect American accent. Then he'd turn around
and repeat words from Ikuyo in a perfect Japanese accent.
He's not even two years old and he's already bilingual.
Taka
and I left for the hot spring resort town of Yufuin later
in the morning. As I bent over to put on my shoes, Ikuyo arrived
with a shoehorn to make the job easier. She handed Taka his
packed bags and handed me another gift. There is something
magical about that woman.
I marveled
at the ocean inlets and fields of rolling tea plants as we
drove into the mountains. We penetrated a dense layer of fog
and needed to exit the highway for a small winding road. This
would delay our arrival by as much as an hour, Taka said.
"That's
fine with me," I replied. "I'm enjoying the scenery.
The patchy fog makes it even more beautiful."
He nodded.
"Fine with me, too. If no fog, no Taka."
"What
do you mean?"
He
reminded me that after bombing Hiroshima, the U.S. dropped
the second nuclear bomb in its arsenal on Nagasaki. But that
wasn't the intended target. When the B-29 Bock's Car left
Tinian Island on the morning of August 9, 1945, it flew to
Kokura. The thick clouds over Kokura that morning forced the
pilot to head toward the backup target of Nagasaki. It too
was covered by clouds, but a tiny opening allowed the bomb
to fall to earth and kill sixty thousand people. Those sixty
thousand would have been in Kokura if not for the weather,
and they would have included Taka's grandparents. Thus, if
no fog, no Taka.
He had
asked me months prior to my arrival what I would most like
to see in Japan. I told him a hot spring and he promised to
find the best one on the island of Kyushu. As soon as we came
off the dirt road, greeted the hostess, and were shown to
our room, I knew he had succeeded.
Our room
was big enough for a family of four, making me sad that Ikuyo
and Hiroki hadn't joined us. In the middle sat a low kneeling
table with a heater underneath and a skirt around. There was
tea available at all times, so we could push our bare legs
under the table heat and drink tea to keep our upper bodies
warm. The only sounds were our voices and the croaking of
frogs outside the paper walls.
After
a two-hour meal in the main lodge around a teapot suspended
from a fifteen-foot ceiling chain, Taka wanted to visit the
springs. I had my choice of rock or wood. I chose wood. We
donned our robes and wooden clogs, then clacked our way along
the stone path. He turned the sign to say that the private
spring was now occupied. We entered and he immediately got
naked.
I stood
in shock at my designated shelf while he swirled cool water
in the near-boiling spring. I didn't relish the thought of
walking stark naked into the water with my friend. I had put
on several pounds since we lived together in Colorado. I took
a deep breath and reasoned that Taka probably wouldn't notice.
I opened
my robe when he looked back at me. "Come on, Jason!"
I returned the robe to my shoulders. "I know," I
said. "Just a minute." I finally took off the robe
and walked nakedly into the spring where my friend whom
I had never seen quite this way squatted nude by the water.
"Ready?"
"For
what?" I asked, fear rising along my neck.
"To
get in."
"Oh,
that. Sure."
We stepped
into the water and I immediately stepped back out. "Taka,
this is cooking temperature." He waved me off with his
hand and let himself sink slowly into the broth. I followed
as calmly as possible, half expecting to smell seasonings
in the water. We spent the next couple hours getting in and
out of the heat, walking to the rain barrel on the back deck,
dumping wooden buckets of cold water on our heads, and exchanging
world views. We perched on opposite sides of the spring, legs
dangling into the water, when Taka made a rather blunt observation.
"Too
bad you become so, mmm...fat."
"Excuse
me?"
He repeated
it. There was no expression on his face. He poured another
bucket over his head.
"Oh.
Yes, it is too bad," I said. "Thank you for noticing.
It's too bad you've become so, mmm...ugly." I kept my
face expressionless and poured a bucket over my head.
"Ugly?"
"Yes,
extremely. It's a wonder Ikuyo lets you out in public."
"Hmm.
Maybe you only a little bit fat."
"Maybe
you're only a little bit ugly."
Not
as Long as I'd Like
Ikuyo
and Hiroki were delighted to have us back home the next day.
The royal treatment began at the doorway as soon as we arrived.
Ikuyo paraded food back and forth from the kitchen again,
until we ordered sushi to be delivered that night. It was
my last evening with the Nishida family. I went to bed feeling
sad.
At Kokura
station, Taka wrote a note in Japanese that I would use to
find my way from Tokyo station to the Imperial Hotel, thereby
saving me the humiliation of using the phrase book with strangers.
While he worked on the note, Ikuyo took me to a small shop
to buy me a lunch of her choosing. There was no line of impatient
businessmen behind us. She carefully picked what she knew
I would like and paid for it. I tried paying myself but she
would not let me.
The train arrived. Ikuyo handed me a slim envelope and kissed
me on the cheek. I hugged Taka goodbye and kissed Hiroki on
the forehead. I had barely stepped onto the shinkansen
when it pulled away from the station. I waved from the window
until I could no longer see my friends.
In minutes,
the train was out of the city. I slumped down in my seat by
the window to open Ikuyo's letter. Warmed outside by the sunshine
and inside by that morning's homemade breakfast, I opened
the unsealed envelope and extracted the most carefully penned
letter ever put to paper. Her penmanship was so exact that
I thought for a moment she had typed it on a computer using
a handwriting font.
The letter
thanked me for visiting her family. She said she was nervous
to meet me because Taka told her that I am a famous writer
in America. "But," she wrote in broken English,
"you was gentle and friendship, wonderful man."
She apologized for her small home and for not being able to
do anything for me. "I regret," she concluded.
She had
just shown me three perfect days in her home. I couldn't have
been better taken care of or more content on my train ride
back to Tokyo. Yet, her letter expressed only a desire to
have done more for me.
One line
stood out from the rest of the letter. She wrote, "You
couldn't as long as like, could you?"
I looked
out the window. Gentle mountains like those of Yufuin rose
away from the tracks. On my lap, I felt the weight of the
lunch Ikuyo chose for me. I heard Hiroki's high-pitched laughter
in my mind and the note from Taka crinkled in my pocket. "No,
Ikuyo," I whispered toward the passing mountains, "I
couldn't."
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