Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan

  I played, half-heartedly, at being a tourist. I read several pamphlets yet retained very little, other than the fact that Kanazawa was—and here I quote for accuracy—“old.” I wandered through a dozen temples strung out along the city’s many Temple Rows, where I took heaps of confusing slides that my family and friends have come to hate with a passion. (“This is Daimon Temple. It was—wait, no. This is Jomon Temple and it was built—wait a sec, sorry, this one is Daimon, the slides before were of Jomon—shall I go back?” Family members: “No! No!”)

  One did stand out: the infamous Ninja Temple, built in 1659 or 1643 depending on which guidebook was consulted. What a great place: A labyrinth of narrow corridors and sudden large rooms with unusually high ceilings (the better to do chanbara in), it was riddled with secret tunnels and hidden passageways. It even had a creepy suicide-room with, appropriately enough, no exit.

  By now I had checked off most of the sites in the guidebooks, except of course the museums. Kanazawa is infested with them, all with heavy, yawn-inducing names: the Prefectural Museum of Traditional Culture, the Cultural Museum of Prefectural History, the Traditional Museum of Cultural Crafts, the Craft Museum of Historical History … I’m proud to say I didn’t go to a single one. I have a theory about museums: they suck. People say they like museums, but they are lying. What they are really thinking about is, What’s for dinner? and When will this be over? You don’t enjoy a museum, you lump it, like cough medicine or opera. The only compliment I will accept about a museum, and only a particularly good museum, is that it is not as boring as most.

  I stopped going on field trips when I was twelve, and now that I’m a grown-up I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to. I don’t have to eat Brussels sprouts, study algebra, dance for Grandma, or raise my hand when I have to pee. And I sure as heck don’t have to go to museums. You can say what you want about my lack of culture, but stick with me and I can guarantee you, I won’t drag you through any museum that doesn’t feature giant stone vaginas. How many can promise you that?

  Not that I wasn’t dying for some diversion. After endless, interchangeable days that featured me keeping myself company by not going to museums, I was getting a little stir crazy. I was bored. I was restless. I began asking strangers if they wanted to practise speaking English with me. I started sitting up at the front of the bus and talking to the driver. I even considered opening my Japanese language textbooks; that’s how desperate I was for something to do.

  And then it arrived: the Sakura Zensen, up from the south like a tidal wave. Trees came alive. The streets frothed with colour and the tile rooftops of Kanazawa were buoyant, adrift on pink and white. The tsunami of spring, a typhoon of flowers. Suddenly Kanazawa didn’t seem so bad.

  Vignette: I am walking through Kanazawa’s ancient pleasure quarters when I see a geisha, wrapped in a silk kimono, just as she disappears through a doorway framed in cherry-blossom pink. A single-frame motion picture, a ukiyoe print—there, and gone.

  Geisha still exist in small elite numbers. They study art, music, conversation, and lovemaking. They are not prostitutes. Even the highest-class Monte Carlo call-girl would pale in poise and pride beside a Japanese geisha. Although many geisha are now aging dragons, the one I caught a glimpse of was as beautiful as porcelain. I wanted to follow her into that shadow world, through the gate, down the lane of cherry trees, to where her wealthy patrons awaited her arrival. But I didn’t feel quite like getting the shit kicked out of me just then, so I left my vision as it was, untouched and unspoiled. Geisha passing, early spring—another uncompleted haiku by Will Ferguson.

  11

  I RETURNED to Kenroku Gardens in the evening. Everything had changed. Crowds of revellers had staked out their trees. People were singing and laughing and tumbling together under overhangs of blossoms. I wandered among the celebrations, uplifted. “Come! Come!” Hands waved me toward their circle, if only as an honourary, temporary member. Men, faces pink, pranced about with neckties around their foreheads. Women egged them on, clapping hands in time and all but yelling, “Take it off! Take it all off!”

  Then, from out of the tumult, an English voice. “Excuse me please, are you from America?”

  It was an elfin man, a few years older than I, dressed in a corduroy jacket and a conspiratorial smile. He was wearing his necktie half undone, clearly the mark of a rebel. And so he proved to be.

  His name was Mr. Nakamura, thankfully not related to the one I had coerced into driving me to Kanazawa. Nakamura Two was an English teacher at a local high school, and he and the other teachers were having their annual Cherry Blossom Viewing Party.

  I was invited over to meet Mr. Nakamura’s circle of teachers, and I kept having these ambivalent flashbacks to my own tour of duty as a high-school teacher. Any minute I expected the kōchō sensei (like a principal, but with more power) to break into a long, ponderous speech exhorting the students to be ambitious and international and so on. But Mr. Nakamura’s colleagues were a relaxed bunch, and they welcomed me under their tree without a single speech.

  “My name is Yoshihiro,” said Mr. Nakamura. “Please call me Yoshi. You are from Canada? I was there once, in my college days. I went by train through the Rocky Mountains. You know,” his voice dropped, “my dream is to ride a motorcycle across North America, to see the Grand Canyon, the open sky.”

  I liked Yoshi. He had a soft, almost soothing voice and he spoke as though he were confiding in me at all times, as though everything he said was a secret and I was his accomplice.

  He showed me a picture in his wallet. “This is my little girl, Ayané. She’s three years old. Very cute. And this is my beautiful wife.” He held the photo out for me to see. “I became a teacher by accident,” he said. “I wanted to marry my wife, but at that time I had no steady job and I was sleeping on the floor of different friends’ apartments. It was very fun at the time. I had only my motorcycle and a beard. Well, kind of a beard. My wife thought I looked like an adventurer, but her family was dubious. They wanted me to have a good job. In Japan, being a teacher is a very respected job, and I enjoy English, so I became a teacher.”

  Yoshihiro was originally from Kumamoto City in Kyushu, and his wife was from the Amakusa Islands, where I used to live. It really is a small world: Yoshihiro had once taught English at Amakusa Nishi High School, where I too had worked. This common set of reference points created an instant and durable camaraderie.

  He tipped back his beer and, as I refilled it, he said, “My real dream was to be an animator. You know, for Japanese television. In Japan, this is a high-pressure job. My college friend drew animation for the television series Dragonball Z. Three times an ambulance had to come to our dormitory because he overworked so much.” Yoshi laughed; overwork is somewhat endearing to the Japanese. “I love science fiction. Do you know Japanese animation?”

  “Sure, I think it’s great,” I lied.

  He brightened at this. “Really? How about Godzilla? Do you know Godzilla?”

  Do I know Godzilla? The conversation shifted into high gear. We exchanged monster tales with that same breathless excitement sports fans get when they discuss their favourite teams, agreeing incessantly and interrupting each other’s stories. “Mothra! Did you see the time—” “Yes, when Space Godzilla—” “Right, and Monster Mogira!” At one point we even sang the “Gamora Monster Theme Song” (“Gamora is friend to all the children”), for which we received a hearty round of applause from the other teachers.

  “What’s the deal with Gamora?” I wanted to know. “A giant turtle that flies through the air by spinning like a Frisbee. Who could navigate like that? And after you land, you’d be too dizzy to fight.”

  On and on it went. I’ll spare you the details. Except one: did you know Godzilla can fly? It’s true. He fires a blast of energy from his mouth and projects himself backward through space, a method only slightly less stupid than Gamora’s. (Come to think of it, I’ve had morning breath that probably could have achieved the same e
ffect.) Oh yes, one more detail I learned from Yoshi: The name Godzilla has no connection to the word God, that is simply a misrendering of it in English. In Japanese his name is Gojira, from the Japanese words for “whale” (kujira) and “gorilla” (gorilla), making him a Gorilla-Whale. Isn’t that just the most fascinating thing?

  “My wife scolds me,” Yoshi said. “She scolds me because I buy my daughter Godzilla toys. But Ayané-chan likes them. She sleeps with Meca-Godzilla just like it’s a teddy bear. I don’t know. Maybe I should get her some dolls.”

  “Stick with Godzilla,” I said. “How many dolls have saved the universe, beaten up Mothra, and knocked over Tokyo Tower? Godzilla makes a much better role model.”

  “You should meet my wife,” he said. “She speaks English better than I. She studied Arabic in university. That is how she learned English.”

  “She learned English by studying Arabic?”

  “At that time there was no Arabic-Japanese dictionary. First she had to learn English. Then she translated everything from Arabic to English to Japanese.”

  “So why bother?”

  “It is a long story,” he said. “When she was young she saw Lawrence of Arabia. The film, do you know? It moved her very much. Her dream was to visit the Sahara someday, to see the pyramids, the Nile, and—how do you say it, like a temple, but Islam?”

  “Mosque?”

  “Yes, to see the mosques and caravans … It was her dream.”

  The past tense was revealing. “She never went?”

  “No,” he said, his voice as soft as a sigh. “She never went. Maybe someday.”

  Dreams. In Japan the word carries with it the nuance of illusion. To admit something is your dream is almost to admit that it is unattainable. Motorcycles across a continent. Housewives who dream of caravans. Outsiders who dream of stepping inside. Japan is filled with such dreams; dreams pervade it like the countless deities that inhabit every mountain, every rock, every island in every bay. They dwell in homes. Altars are built to hold them, they are appeased with small offerings, they are as intangible as mist, as unavoidable as air. Dreams deferred. One of the Japanese ideals is self-sacrifice, and the first thing sacrificed is usually one’s half-secret, intensely personal, unattainable dream. I remember a graffiti message on a temple wall, one of the first Japanese sentences I ever deciphered: Japan is a nation powered largely by sighs.

  Yoshi looked up at the blossoms above us. “We grow,” he said. “We grow and we compromise.” Then, after a pause, “I love my family. Japanese people are shy to admit such a thing. We think that if you say it, it loses some of its truth. But I don’t think so. I love my family, but someday I will drive across America in my motorcycle.”

  “And your wife?”

  “She will travel with caravans. Someday.”

  Someday. I used to think that in Japan “someday” meant “someday soon,” or “eventually,” but I was wrong. In Japan, someday does not exist in the future, it exists in an entirely different sphere of existence. It means “in another life, another time.”

  “And your daughter?”

  He laughed. “She will learn how to fly. Just like Godzilla.”

  “And destroy Tokyo?”

  “Oh, I don’t think so. She will be a cheerful monster. She is too kind to smash such things.”

  A Bedouin. A long-distance rider. A cheerful monster.

  “Wait till you meet my father,” said Yoshi. “He is very cheerful. Too cheerful. He speaks English. My mother doesn’t speak English, but she is very kind. Why don’t you come to meet them?”

  So we slipped away from the party, walking past pools of laughter and flowers lit in the night. His parents lived not far from the park, down a maze of narrow avenues, in a house tucked in beside a temple. The last time I met someone’s father was in Uwajima, and he turned out to be an A-bomb survivor. I hesitated at the threshold of Yoshi’s home.

  “Your dad,” I said. “He wasn’t in Nagasaki or Hiroshima or anything, was he?”

  “No, no,” said Yoshi. He slid the front door open and we stepped inside. “But he was a POW.”

  Damn. “Listen, Yoshi, your father’s probably asleep. I’ll go, okay? Maybe another time.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Yoshi. “I’ll wake him. Tosan!” He called out to the dark, sleeping house. “Tōsan!”

  A moment passed, and then a light flicked on and a silver-haired, sturdy-looking man came out. He was wrapping his bathrobe around his waist like a samurai answering a distress call. “Yoshihiro?” He put on his glasses and smoothed down his futon-tousled hair.

  “Ah!” he said when he spotted me, his smile as broad as Yoshihiro’s was soft. “Come in, buddy!”

  Soon we had roused the entire household. Yoshihiro’s wife came out and welcomed me with a sleepy bow. His mother smiled and fussed with her nightgown. Even little Ayané staggered out, rubbing her eyes lazily and peering at me with a rather annoyed expression.

  Yoshihiro’s dad was ebullient. “Sit down, sit down. We speak, okay? I study English every day, you want to see my notebook? I write English sentences and words, new words, proverbs, everything. ‘A penny saved is a penny earned.’ I show you my English notes.” He went to get them, but halfway across the room he was distracted by a photo album and he forgot all about his original errand.

  He came back with a stack of albums and opened one onto my lap. The photos inside were gloriously jumbled, completely out of order, much like the flow of the conversation.

  “Here, you see. This is Yoshihiro as a young boy, just a baby. Here he is on motorcycle in Kumamoto City. That’s where we are from, Kumamoto. Yoshihiro looks thin in this picture. Now he is fat a little, his wife is too good cook. Here is my wedding. Japanese wedding, very formal. Nobody smiles, too serious. This is Ayané, very cute. Here is Yoshihiro and Chiemi-san’s wedding. She speaks English, you know?”

  Green tea and sweets appeared as if having condensed out of the air. I was the only one who drank the tea. This is common; tea and small snacks are presented to guests as one might offer oranges to an altar—more in spirit than for actual sustenance. For a long time in Japan I had the uncomfortable suspicion that the tea was poisoned because no one else would touch it when I was around. It is a test as well. You know you have crossed the threshold from guest to friend when they join you in tea and snacks.

  Old Mr. Nak wanted to know if I was married. “You have a wife? No? Everybody say get a Japanese wife, right? Tell you Japanese wife is good, right?”

  I nodded, it was true. Everyone from street sweepers to company presidents had advised me on the merits of marrying a Japanese woman.

  Mr. Nak had other ideas. “Don’t marry Japanese woman. Whatever you do, don’t marry them. Japanese wife is very good—before the wedding. After the wedding—” He threw his hands heavenward in defeat. “Very strong.” Everyone laughed on cue, even Yoshihiro’s mother, who didn’t follow the English but was tickled to see her old hubby chattering away in another language. When she laughed her eyes disappeared into two perfect crescents, like upside-down u’s.

  “Before my marriage, wife is very gentle. Always bowing to me, saying ‘You want tea, you want saké?’ And if she need to—” He made a hand-burst gesture from his rear.

  “Fart?” I said.

  “Yes, when she need to do such thing, she goes into washroom. She turns on the water. She locks the door. And—poof.” He made the tiniest of sound effects. “But now she don’t care. Big noise—boom—just like thunder. You see the crack on the wall, over there? My wife make that.”

  By now we were all in stitches, especially Mrs. Nakamura, who enjoyed his fart gestures immensely. When Yoshi translated the above, she laughed herself into tears and then leaned across and swatted her husband on the arm.

  “Da-mé,” she said. “Stop it.”

  But he continued, lamenting with Chaplinesque expressions the fate of men married to Japanese women. He changed his face from pathos to stone face as he switched from husba
nd to wife, like a one-man vaudeville act. “Now I am old man. I am tired. When I say to my wife, ‘I am thirsty, please a little saké, please, please,’ she just look, like this”—he pulled a haughty face—“and she say, ‘So? Cup is over there, saké is in kitchen.’” He heaved a noble sigh and sadly shook his head. “Oh, Mr. Will, don’t marry a Japanese woman, they are like cats. They hide their claws.”

  Then he delved back into the photo albums. “You are going to Sado Island?” he asked. “Yes? Sado is good place. I went to Sado with my terrible wife last year,” and he opened another album. “See, we are here. In the round boat like a washing tub.”

  Sado Island is famous for a legend of a young woman who crossed the sea from the mainland in a large, barrel-like tub to visit her exiled lover. (I don’t remember how the story ends, probably in tragedy.)

  Among the tour photos were pictures of serious Japanese men in short-sleeve shirts, buttoned right up to the top, with cameras hung like albatrosses around their necks. There was only one woman in the group, Mrs. Nakamura, and there was only one person smiling—grinning, really—and that was Mr. Nakamura. The two of them stood out as clearly as real people in a wax museum.

  I looked at the photographs. “Why didn’t the other men bring their wives?”

  “Who knows?” said Mr. Nak. “Maybe they don’t like their wives. Maybe their wives don’t like them. It is old custom. Japanese men don’t travel with their wives so much. But not me. How can I go to Sado without my terrible wife?”