Ribbons of Fate
and Other Tales of Japan
Matt Comeskey
The Love Hotel
The Atomic Dome
Sitting Seizure
Golden Week
Mr Miura’s Medicine
The Vampire Room
And many more …
Ribbons of Fate
and Other Tales of Japan
Matt Comeskey
The Love Hotel
The Atomic Dome
Sitting Seizure
Golden Week
Mr Miura’s Medicine
The Vampire Room
And many more …
Ribbons of Fate
and Other Tales of Japan
Text copyright © Matt Comeskey, 2010
Produced by Graham Bathgate
Illustrated by Lance Barnard
Designed by Joanne Aitken, The Little Design Company
Published by FineLine Press
242 Main Road South,
Paraparaumu, 5032
New Zealand
Print management by Kapiti Print Media Ltd
ISBN 978-0-473-17795-9
This book is copyright. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any
means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without
the permission of the publisher.
A 2010 publication of FineLine Press
www.finelinepress.co.nz
A Few Words
from the Publisher
I
would like to thank everyone who has been connected with “Ribbons
of Fate”, especially the writer, Matt Comeskey. In these stories he has
created pin-point accurate sketches of Japan and its people in a subtle and
evocative way. You will find much in this book to delight and inform you
whether or not you are a Japanese reader, a non-Japanese resident of Japan
long-term or for ever, a visitor to “Nihon” for the first time, or someone
simply interested in the Far East.
Equally deserving of thanks and praise is the team of people who have
been involved in the production of “Ribbons of Fate”. The cover illustration
by David Martin is based on the statues at Otagi Nenbutsu-ji temple,
mentioned in the story, “Typhoons”. The artwork on the inside pages was
created by Lance Barnard of Paraparaumu, New Zealand. It is the first time he
has attempted to draw in something like “sumie” style, which he described as
an interesting experience, one which he enjoyed because it was so different
for him. Beth Lindsay did the editing and gave substantial advice; Diane
Benge did the final readings and made great suggestions; Junko Comeskey
carefully checked the Japanese words and meanings.
Joanne Aitken has again worked her magic as she did in “Forty Stories of
Japan” – the overall design here evokes the spirit of the stories. A special
thanks to Chris Benge of Kapiti Print Media for the print management and
the frequent excellent advice on everything to do with publishing. Finally,
thank you to Allan Murphy, long-term resident of Japan, who gamely took
photos and provided informed advice from the front line.
May I recommend that you look first at “Five Waterfalls” (p.12) to find out
about one of the main characters featuring in many stories; you should also
read the Introduction by the author. Thus, fully prepared, you can dip willynilly into these delicately-told tales of Japan.
Graham Bathgate, FineLine Press, November, 2010
Contents
Introduction by the Author
1. Arrival
2. Five Waterfalls
3. Chilli Brosse Encounter
4. The Yamasaku Inn
5. The Eel Bone
6. Yoshi and Mariko
7. A Lively Lunch
8. The War Diary
9. Golden Week
10. Sitting Seizure
11. The Cockroach
12. Shirakawa Village
13. Mr K
14. Winter Wish
15. The Atomic Dome
16. Hayashi-sensei
17. The Love Hotel
18. The Red Caps
19. The Ghost of Yoneyama
20. A Swim in the Pacific
21. The Fox by the Lake
22. Typhoons
23. The Speech Contest
24. The Vampire Room
25. Mr Miura’s Medicine
26. Marriage
27. Ribbons of Fate
28. Afterword
Glossary
7
9
12
16
24
28
31
35
39
43
51
56
59
62
67
70
73
79
83
87
90
93
98
105
110
117
122
126
133
137
Introduction
by the Author
A
fter five months in Toki City, Japan, I hit a serious speed bump.
One day, at the school I taught at, I felt ill and went home early. I
collapsed into bed and stayed there – for a week. All I could think about
was returning home to New Zealand. I didn’t eat, hardly drank, and the
thought of going back to work and teaching English to forty students all
day terrified me. I wanted to pack it all in. Teachers came to check up on
me, bringing rice porridge and fresh fruit. My supervisor fussed and worried,
and nervously reiterated the terms of my contract. I managed to hang on
the few more weeks till the end of term when I could reconnect with my
old life in Wellington, New Zealand. At the end of my brief Kiwi holiday, my
family literally pushed me back onto the plane to Japan. “Nothing but a bit
of culture shock,” they said.
After the long return journey, I remember trudging miserably up the dark,
narrow street from the train station to my tiny apartment, dragging my
suitcase through icy puddles and dirty snow, silently cursing Japan. When
I reached the apartment, I curled up in my futon feeling sorry for myself.
That night while I slept, a fresh blanket of snow fell over the city. I got up
early, threw on several layers and set off on my bicycle through the streets
with my camera. Something seemed different. Even for a Sunday morning,
the place was deserted. I rode a short distance to the banks of the Toki River.
Mist hung low around the foothills on the outskirts of the city and cranes
poked about among reeds on the frozen river bank. Peering through the
camera’s viewfinder, I began to take photos. I took a wide-angle panoramic
shot of the bridge that connected the two halves of Toki. I captured frosted
potted bonsai trees outside homes. In a derelict park I snapped a snowman
wearing an instant ramen (noodles) cup for a hat. I stood by a row of vending
machines and sipped a can of hot chocolate. That was the beginning of
seeing the place in a whole new light, and from that morning on, for the next
two-and-a-half years, I dreaded the day I would leave Japan.
INTRODUCTION
7
I became enamoured with the beauty of the place, the all-night karaoke clubs,
the fresh fish, the trains that were always on time, the clockwork predictability
of the routines and the heated toilet seats. But best of all, I liked the people.
Nihon-jin (Japanese people), are often unfairly stereotyped as conservative,
meek, conformist – even robotic. Perhaps they can be when they need to be.
In New Zealand, the Second World War has left a residue of prejudice, Kiwis
holding on to an unfavourable image of the people we fought. But what I
discovered were Japanese characters – hilarious, outgoing, generous, caring,
empathetic, eccentric, gracious and forthcoming – who helped me to unravel
some “ribbons of fate” that had, for a long time, been tying me up. This book
attempts to capture my experiences in simple vignettes, glimpses that focus
on a single moment, a character, an experience or a situation that stood out
to me. It is my hope that this collection of stories will portray the wonderful
diversity of the people of Japan and the lovable qualities of the particular
individuals I came to know – and love.
Mist hung low about the foothills on the outskirts of the city and cranes poked
about among reeds on the frozen river bank.
Peering through the
camera’s viewfinder,
I began to take photos.
I captured frosted bonsai
trees outside homes.
8
RIBBONS OF FATE
1
Arrival
I
anxiously followed my fellow exchange teachers as they disembarked from
the bullet train at Gifu Hashima station. A chorus of cicadas welcomed us,
“min miiiin-ing” shrilly from the wilting gingko trees that lined the station
car park. In contrast to the heaving platforms of Tokyo, only one elderly
lady and a flutter of sparrows graced this remote platform. As the Hikari
express whined quietly on its way, the shiny steel tracks behind it shimmered
under the severe midday sun.
I remained at the back of the group as we stepped onto a narrow escalator
that plunged into darkness. In the dim foyer below us, a throng of Japanese
teachers craned their necks upwards, eyes staring anxiously, many holding
signs with the name of the person they were waiting for. I dabbed at my
forehead with the back of my blazer arm and started searching for my
name among the crowd. By the time I arrived at ground level, an American
acquaintance was already halfway through a loud and dramatic selfintroduction in Japanese. Her middle-aged supervisor, holding a sign saying
“Gifu Prefectural High School” bowed timidly in her direction, then almost
apologetically to the other teachers around him. My British mate chose
the direct approach – with a firm but friendly grip he took his Japanese
counterpart by the hand and shook it vigorously while reciting a wellpractised introduction.
I ran through my carefully choreographed preamble over and over in my
head and scanned the remaining signs for my name. “Hajimemashite, watashi
wa Matt desu, hajimemashite, watashi wa …”
“Excuse me?”
I felt two light taps on my right shoulder and turned to see a young Japanese
woman smiling at me. She had auburn hair and unnaturally curly eyelashes.
ARRIVAL
9
In the sea of grey and black suits, she was striking, wearing an electric
blue dress-shirt, three-quarter length ivory cargo pants and a fashionably
latticed white leather belt complete with diamante-encrusted buckle. She
raised a manicured hand to her lips and uttered faintly, “Matto?” She held
up a crumpled piece of refill paper. My surname was spelt wrong and she’d
run out of room halfway, so the last three letters had shrunk and squashed
against the edge of the sheet.
“I am Hana. It’s nice to meet you.”
I wiped excess palm sweat onto my woollen trouser legs and took her out­­
stretched hand, shaking it weakly. My basic Japanese language skills deserted me.
“Hi, I’m Matt, nice to meet you, too.”
“I am not your supervisor. She is away on business. I hope it is okay?
“Yes, that’s totally fine,” I answered, following Hana as she skipped down the
front steps of the station and into the blazing hot July sunshine. I noticed
she was wearing cotton.
“Are you a student representative?” I asked.
“Oh no! I’m not a student,” she said, blushing. “I’m a teacher, we will be
working together.” She laughed, and waved at a dark-suited man beside a
glossy black 1980s Toyota Crown. I had never expected my very own driver.
He bowed deeply, opened the boot of the car and extended his hand. As I
gripped it I realised his real intention had just been to take my hand luggage
from me. “Oh, uh, thanks,” I said, and we proceeded to do an awkward dance
from side to side before he silently relieved me of the bag and placed it
carefully in the spotlessly clean boot. He bowed again, and then spoke at
me in Japanese. I didn’t understand a word.
“Gidday, thanks for the, uh, for taking my bag.”
He looked slightly puzzled, smiled crookedly, and gestured towards the
open back door. As the sedan pulled away from the station inwardly I kicked
myself, vowing to make a better first impression when I met the senior
staff at school. I recalled an e-mail from my future supervisor some weeks
earlier, about the importance of starting out on the right foot with Japanese
colleagues:
“Matt-san do you know Japanese introduction? You should do this
introduction on first day at school. Make sure in particular you try nihongo
10 RIBBONS OF FATE
(Japanese language) introduction with Kōcho-sensei (principal) and Kyōtosensei (deputy principal). Kōcho-sensei is kind man. He is bald, but friendly.
Kyōto-sensei is sometimes strict. Please try to impression him.”
Hana and I chatted nervously in the back seat for the opening few minutes
of the journey. Our driver seemed to have a mission as, with considerable
effort, he weaved through the narrow streets, speeding past small shrines,
vending machines, pagoda-style houses and modern apartment blocks until
we were coasting along a four-lane highway flanked by emerald-green rice
paddies.
“Today is such a hot day,” Hana said, in an effort to bridge another silence.
“Yes, I didn’t realise it would be this hot.”
“It’s 41 degrees. Everybody is talking about the weather today. It is the
hottest day on record in this prefecture since weather records began.”
“Wow,” I said, loosening my damp collar’s stranglehold. “How long have they
been keeping records?”
Hana thought for a moment and leaned forward to the driver. The two of
them had a brief conversation then she sat back and smiled pleasantly at me.
“Kyōto-sensei doesn’t know exactly, but perhaps they have taken weather
recordings for fifty years in this area.”
“Kyōto-sensei?”
“Ah, yes, that is Kyōto-sensei. He is our vice-principal. Kyōto-sensei offered
to drive today to pick you up. He is a very busy man, so it is very kind of him.
He wanted to meet you very much.”
Kyōto-sensei peered at me in the rear-view mirror and held my gaze until,
with an acute sense of self-consciousness, I smiled meekly and turned away.
It was clear that I had “impressioned” him quite enough for one day.
Outside, in the record-breaking heat, the highway rose and dipped and
at times disappeared into a tunnel. Every click of Kyōto-sensei’s odometer
brought me closer to my new life, deep in the heart of Japan.
ARRIVAL
11
2
Five Waterfalls
I
spent my first three weeks as a full-time assistant English teacher waiting
for the students to finish their summer holiday. To fill in time I set myself
the task of replying to the 300 welcome messages that they had written to
me before going on their break. Over a week I crafted thoughtful replies,
consisting of lines like “Dear Masahiko, Thank you for your interesting
questions. I am an Aries, I don’t know my blood type, I am not married and,
no, I don’t like watermelon.” Each reply was unique, complete with a small sketch related to the questions
it answered. I decided to enclose them in miniature envelopes. At the hyakuen store (Two-Dollar shop) one evening I had noticed some wonderfully
decorative envelopes, about a third of the size of regular envelopes. I bought
300 and spent two full days carefully inscribing the name of each student,
inserting my reply and sealing each envelope. Several Japanese teachers
stopped to look over my shoulder during the process, and even offered
advice, none of which I understood. Some came back a second time for a
word or two. It seemed my substantial effort on behalf of the students was
paying dividends in the staffroom.
It was while I was sealing the last of the envelopes that I noticed a young
woman hovering again around the desk directly behind me. I couldn’t tell if
she was a student out of uniform or a teacher. Perhaps it was the fact she’d
been bustling about for a few days, but hadn’t made eye contact, that led
me to assume she was a student. It was now that she chose to introduce
herself. She sidled over and glanced at the 300 newly sealed envelopes on
my desk.
“Hello, you must be the new assistant teacher,” she said confidently.
“You speak English!”
12 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Yes, I’m an English teacher, we’ll be working together. My name is Junko. But
you can call me Bee.”
“I’m Matt – nice to meet you. But why ‘Bee’?”
“My sister calls me ‘mitsu-bachi’, which is Japanese for honey bee. She thinks
I have the shape of a bee.”
“You don’t look like a bee to me, but I’ll go with it. Why didn’t you say
something before? I’ve been dying to talk to someone!”
“Well, you looked so busy I didn’t want to interrupt.” She motioned towards
the pile on my desk. “But I am free this afternoon, so why don’t we go out
for lunch?”
“Sure, I’m ready anytime. What do you suggest?”
“I know a place. It’s a short drive from here. I’ll just finish up and then
come back and get you.” She picked up a pile of books from her desk and
started towards the door before turning abruptly and coming back. “Oh,
and I wanted to tell you something else.”
“Sure, what is it?”
She leaned in close and said in a slightly hushed, confiding tone, “Those
envelopes you are putting the letters into … they’re traditionally used for
giving to the bereaved. You shouldn’t give those to students. I’m surprised
no one told you earlier. See you soon.” And with that, Bee was gone.
On the way to lunch, we got onto the subject of names again. It was obvious
we had both been starved of the English language for too long.
“My German host family called me ‘June’ because it’s easier to say than
Junko. My father called me Junko because I was born in June. But I think the
real reason was that his childhood sweetheart was called ‘Jun-chan’, so that’s
what he called me when I was little.”
She braked sharply at a pedestrian crossing and bowed to an elderly man
who passed slowly in front of us.
“My English host family called me June too, and my English host father once
called me ‘Pet’. I thought that was really cute.”
On the outskirts of the town, the scorching asphalt road wound its way
steeply uphill. Bee drove at a snail’s pace, with both hands at twelve o’clock.
A large truck that overtook on a blind, sweeping corner blasted us with its
air horn but Bee didn’t flinch.
FIVE WATERFALLS
13
“The first time I stayed with my English host family, I had really long hair. I
wanted to cut it, so their neighbour, a hairdresser, styled it in a really short
bob for me – almost as short as yours. Can you believe that? They said
I looked like an acorn, so every time I wrote to them after that, I drew an
acorn. One on the first page, two on the second, and so on. I like to draw, I
teach the art club at school.”
We picked up some sushi and iced lemon tea at a konbini (convenience
store) before continuing. Ten minutes later, we approached the gates of a
large scenic reserve. A troop of monkeys scampered across the road in front
of us and disappeared beneath a lilac tree. “This place is called ‘Gohou no
Taki’, or ‘Five Waterfalls’. We should eat outside today since it’s so hot.”
We left Bee’s jeep in the deserted car park and she led me along a dusty trail
through dense woodland. Above, the forest canopy was a kaleidoscope of
summer green and the deep blue of the sky. I followed her as she carefully
climbed the steep, rutted path that led across five red elfin-like bridges –
each spanning one of the waterfalls. At the summit, overlooking a valley of
buna-no-ki (Japanese beech trees), we found a smooth rock to sit on.
Bee handed me some sushi. The rice was tucked neatly inside thin tofu-skin
pockets. “These are called inari-zushi, named after the Shinto god of rice,
‘Inari’,” she said. “The messengers of Inari are foxes. See how these sushi
corners are pointed? They are supposed to look like foxes’ ears.”
The rice was sweet, and the iced lemon tea still refreshingly chilled.
“So, tell me about you then, Matto-sensei. We should get to know each
other if we are working together. How many people are in your family?”
“Well, I have a mother, a sister and a brother.”
“No father?”
“He died when I was 17.”
“My father is dead, too,” Bee replied.
“What did he die of?” I asked.
“I’m not sure. He was very ill for many years. He mostly lived at the hospital.
One day, I was at home looking after my younger sister and they called me
to say he died. I was only 13, and I didn’t know what to do.”
“That’s really tough.”
“He was blind since birth, but he enjoyed playing the organ for church and
14 RIBBONS OF FATE
he studied Braille. He was very internationally-minded. That’s why I studied
English after he died. I taught myself by listening to the radio every night. I
think he would be proud of me being an English teacher now.”
Soon, it was my turn. Bee quizzed me about my father and the events
surrounding his death. Even after five years, it was still a painful topic for me.
I’d flown 10,000 kilometres to distance myself from it. We talked late into
the afternoon as the sky turned gunmetal grey and a brooding anvil-shaped
cloud cast us in shadow. The valley, now cooling, pulsed with cicada song.
“Look at the time, we’d better start going back,” Bee suddenly said.
“Teachers often take long lunches during the vacation, but this one might
be noticed.” As she talked she held her hairpin in her mouth. “Usually,” she
continued, as she tied her hair into a ponytail, “teachers go out in groups,
not in pairs. We wouldn’t want to start a scandal ...”
She smiled and stood up, put her wire-rim glasses back on, and jumped off
the rock. As I followed her back down over the five waterfalls to the car park,
I realised that she did remind me of a bee. Exactly why, though, I couldn’t say.
FIVE WATERFALLS
15
3
Chilli Brosse Encounter
E
very Wednesday night, a friend of my supervisor took me out for a
meal. His name was Hiro. The first time we met, he arrived on the stroke
of 7.00 p.m., swung open the car door and gestured to the passenger seat,
saying “Ah, Matto-sensei, you’re welcome, please.”
We exchanged a handshake and a series of small bows and Hiro began
driving. We turned off the main highway and were soon cruising at speed
through a dark and unfamiliar forest. Despite the fact that Hiro’s Toyota
Caldina was automatic, he shifted up and down through second, third and
fourth gears repeatedly on sharp corners. When not grappling with gears he
quizzed me on my favourite foods, my blood type, my love life and various
aspects of New Zealand culture. He laughed hysterically at my answers,
beginning almost every reply with “Ah, actually,” and finishing alarmingly
often with “You are very nice guy!”
After forty minutes hurtling through the spooky forest, we found what we
were looking for: a minuscule noodle house. It glowed in the warm red light
of two hanging lanterns. In a nearby rice paddy that appeared luminescent,
scores of singing frogs croaked out a symphony. Only when Hiro slid open
the rickety old restaurant door were they silenced for a moment. Shouts of
irasshaimase! (welcome!) flooded out into the valley. Inside, an elderly, redfaced man, a kerchief tied on his head, smiled and bowed at us from behind
the counter. A weary woman, who I guessed was his wife, gestured to stools
at the bar and handed us hot oshibori (hand towels). In the far corner,
three young men in mechanics’ overalls slurped noodles at full volume. Hiro
ordered for me without explaining the menu, and I sat watching the old chef
sweat over pots of boiling water while Hiro told the old crone all about my
private life.
16 RIBBONS OF FATE
Over a bowl of steaming tonkatsu ramen (pork cutlet noodles) and three
cold beers, I found out more about Hiro. His engagement to a local woman
had been recently called off. It was one of the first things he mentioned,
but he didn’t elaborate. He worked as a technical engineer for Toyota; in his
spare time he was an avid scuba diver and underwater photographer. Keen
to improve his English, he hoped that I could meet him on a weekly basis
for a meal and English conversation. I had a feeling about Hiro, there was
something intriguing about him.
After paying for the meal and my beers, Hiro dropped me home right on the
dot of nine, the exact time he had promised. By the dim glow of the car’s
interior light we bowed several times and shook hands twice. As I got out, I
sensed him hesitate. He sucked his breath in and through his top teeth for
a few seconds.
“Ah, actually… Matto-sensei,” next Wednesday I come here at same time.
Okay?”
“Sure, that’d be great.”
“Ah, you are very kind guy.”
“Thank you, and the same to you. Good night.”
“Actually, do you know ciao?
“Yeah, I know ciao.”
“You are a smart guy, Matto-sensei.”
“Uh, thanks.”
“Ciao!”
And with that, he was gone.
During our second dinner at a Denny’s restaurant, Hiro declared plans for
us both to take a weekend trip to Izu-hanto, a small peninsula just south
of Tokyo, famous for its hot springs and picturesque coastline. He told me
all about the itinerary, detailing which highway stops we’d rest at; where
and precisely what we would eat for dinner, and the small minshuku (bed
and breakfast) he wanted to stay at. I felt slightly awkward. My first instinct
was to say no. After all, I still really didn’t know him all that well. I was also
getting slightly tired of plans being made for me by others. However, out of
respect for his feelings and our budding friendship, I accepted.
The following Saturday morning, a minute before the promised pick up time,
the phone rang and, gingerly, I answered.
CHILLI BROSSE ENCOUNTER
17
“Hello?”
“Ah, hello, it’s Hiro.”
“Hi, how are you?”
“Actually, I am fine. And you?”
“I’m good.”
“Really!?”
“Yeah…”
“Oh. That’s great Matto-sensei. Actually, in one minute later I will be at your
house.”
“All right, see you soon.”
“Okay, ciao.”
As I put the receiver down, I could hear his car idling outside.
We hadn’t been on the expressway long when Hiro turned to me and said,
“Matto-sensei, do you know chilli brosses?”
“Ah, no.”
“Really?!”
“Really.”
“This is strange ...”
“You mean the band?”
“Excuse me?”
“The Red Hot Chilli Peppers, you mean?”
“The what?”
“Um, you mean the chillies that you eat?”
Hiro laughed hysterically. “Oh no! You don’t eat chilli brosses!”
“Well, what the heck are chilli brosses, then?”
“They are Japan’s national symbol. All Japanese people love chilli brosses!”
I was perplexed. How could I not know about these things, Japan’s national
symbol? We continued a few kilometres, me trying to figure out what he was
talking about, and him chuckling quietly about my poor knowledge of Japan.
About three minutes later he pointed to our right and exclaimed “Look,
there are chilli brosses, do you see?!”
18 RIBBONS OF FATE
On the side of the expressway a line of trees were about to come out in
bloom.
“Cherry blossoms?” I said. “You mean cherry blossom trees?”
He looked utterly exasperated. “Matto-sensei, this is what I said! Chilli
brosses! You are so funny guy!” He shook his head in disbelief.
Several kilometres of semi-awkward silence followed.
As midday neared, we pulled into a rest area on the Tomei (Tokyo-Nagoya)
Expressway for a bite. Hiro chose mayonnaise rolls and vending machine
coffees for us both, ignoring my pleas about not drinking coffee. I followed
him outside to sit at a picnic table next to a couple of young women. We
opened our cellophane packets and both took a bite of the bread rolls. Hiro
was still chuckling to himself about the chilli brosses. He seemed to have
trouble letting these things go. I suddenly stopped mid-bite.
“Hey Hiro, shouldn’t we have paid for these rolls?”
“Excuse me?”
“These bread rolls, don’t we have to pay for these?”
“Ah, so sorry Matto-sensei, could you repeat?”
“Pay …” I said, shaking the roll in front of him. “Do we need to pay for
these?”
He stared at me blankly.
“Pay … for … these?” I repeated, slowly.
“Ah, yes. Actually, do you know, many Japanese enjoy may-on-naise on their
bread,” he replied slowly, while wiping a smear of the stuff from the corner
of his mouth.
“No, not mayonnaise! Should we pay for these? Buy? Purchase?”
He scratched his head, then turned and smiled in the direction of the young
women.
I took a 1000-yen note out of my pocket and held it in front of him. He
furrowed his brow, squinted intensely at the money and then at his own
half-eaten roll. Suddenly, he leapt from the table squeezing the remaining
‘mayo’ out of his bread, snatching mine, and racing off towards the counter
leaving me alone at the table with the two cans of coffee. The young women,
in unison, cupped their hands to their mouths and giggled. I reddened and
made a hasty getaway. I found him at the counter, apologising profusely
CHILLI BROSSE ENCOUNTER
19
for not having paid. Because Hiro had squeezed the rolls so hard, the girl
at the cash register was having trouble scanning the bar codes. Eventually
he showered the counter with coins and we scuttled back to the car. As we
pulled away from the rest area and back onto the highway, he bowed several
times in the direction of the shop.
Perhaps in an effort to forget about the mayonnaise roll incident, Hiro
informed me with enthusiasm that we would soon be driving past Mount
Fuji. I began scanning the skyline, hoping to catch my first glimpse.
“Fuji-san is very magical mountain,” Hiro told me. “Goblins and ghosts live
at bottom of mountain.” He paused for dramatic effect. “If you climb Fujisan, you move from normal world into world of Gods and Death. It’s special
thing. Would you try to climb Fuji-san one day, Matto-sensei?”
“Yeah, I’d definitely like to try,” I replied, still peering at the passing
landscape in search of the mountain and wondering with dread if Hiro was
about to invite me to climb out of the normal world with him.
“You are not afraid of spirits on this mountain?”
“I’d be more worried about a volcanic eruption.”
He looked sideways at me, confused. Then he said somewhat seriously, “You
are very brave man, Matto-sensei.”
Suddenly, above us, it appeared. How such a huge mountain could materialise
out of nowhere was astonishing. As we continued along the highway, it sat,
a perfect cone towering above us. Disappearing behind clouds it would
suddenly re-emerge, outrageously big, dominating everything around it.
Despite its immense beauty, Fuji-san really does have a dark side. At the
base lies Aokigahara forest, one of the world’s most popular locations for
suicides. The same year that Hiro and I drove past, some 200,000 hikers
ascended Fuji-san to enjoy the spectacular views, and about 80 people
chose to end their lives in its shadow.
By mid-afternoon we had reached Numazu city, the gateway to the Izu
peninsula. Hiro informed me that the city was famous for its onsen (hot
springs) and, of course, he had already lined up a visit to the best one. We
had pulled into the car park and were just about to get out of the car when
he turned to me with a look of grave concern.
“Matto-sensei, you should know something about Japanese onsen.”
“Oh, you mean about going naked.”
20 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Ah, actually, yes, I think you know that, but…”
“What is it?” I asked, starting to feel worried.
“Uh, how do you say … do you have … under your clothes … I don’t know
this word.”
He trailed off, staring intensely at a nearby tree, as if trying to uproot the
thing with his eyes.
“Hiro, I’m sure I’m fairly standard under here, nothing that the old boys in
there won’t have seen before.”
For a moment he looked confused then he laughed loudly.
“Hah! Oh no, I don’t mean… uh…”
Apart from feeling slightly embarrassed, I was now confused.
“Irezumi… we say that in Japanese, but I don’t know in English. Sometimes
we say tattu. Do you know?”
“Oh, tattoo? Do I have a tattoo?” I was relieved to get this awkward
conversation back on track.
“Sugoi, (Great) Matto-sensei! You know meaning. So do you have?”
“No, I don’t have any tattoos.”
“Ah, I am so happy, Matto-sensei. I forgot to ask you before. If you have tattu
you cannot enter here.” Relief was written all over his face.
Inside the onsen we sat side-by-side on stools a foot high, scrubbing
ourselves clean in front of several elderly men and an overly inquisitive
eight-year-old boy.
“Don’t worry, he has never seen a gaijin (foreigner) without dress before,”
Hiro laughed. It wasn’t so much the boy I was worried about. Every time I
looked back towards the pool, a beetroot-faced geriatric in the far corner
pointed his hands to the general vicinity of his nether regions and gave me a
double thumbs-up. Wildy uncomfortable thoughts raced through my mind.
Despite this, I continued rinsing myself with warm water from a wooden pail
before finally getting the all-clean nod from Hiro. We slipped quietly into
the searing water, sinking until our chins broke the surface. Hiro placed a
wet flannel on his head and exhaled loudly.
“Hiro, in other countries, Japanese tattoos are popular. Why are they so bad
in places like this?” I asked, mostly in an effort to keep myself from passing
out in the steamy heat.
CHILLI BROSSE ENCOUNTER
21
“Ah, actually, irezumi is traditional Japanese mark on body. It is often
meaning yakuza,” he replied, pronouncing the word for the Japanese mafiatype gangster in a reverent whisper. “Many years ago, irezumi was, how do
you say, not allowed, by Japanese government. So marking the body became
popular with criminality people. Now, tattu is allowed by government, but
when we see someone with marks on body, we think this often means
trouble. So onsen like this does not allow tattu people.”
After a minute of silence, during which I thanked my lucky stars for not
having that tiny chrysanthemum stencilled on my inside leg, Hiro lifted the
wet towel from his eyes and said with a very straight face, “I’m glad you are
not a tattu, Matto-sensei. You would have had to stay in car.”
As the last of the sun was disappearing behind the steep hills of the Izu
Peninsula, we arrived in the village of Heda. Hiro had arranged to take me to
a well-known seafood restaurant called Uoshige.
“Many famous actors come here to eat fresh items from very deep sea,” he told
me. Then he turned and added with a serious look, “Especially comedians.”
We parked on a narrow side street and stepped out into the cool evening
breeze. The town smelled fishy. Seagulls perched on the eaves of ramshackle
wooden houses. Somewhere a bell tolled. Old fishing boats were in their
moorings for the night. They bobbed up and down in the choppy waves
of the harbour. Fishermen squatted aboard untangling fishing nets in the
fading light.
Following the seawall that lined the main road of the bay, we soon found
the deep-sea fish restaurant. In typical Hiro style we arrived at exactly the
time he had promised: 5.00 p.m. sharp. The restaurant door was firmly shut.
“Ah, shimatta!” (Damn, I’ve made a mistake!)
“What’s wrong?”
“Actually, ah, this restaurant is closed.” He looked genuinely heart-broken.
We stood silent for some time, hoping the chef was just running a little late.
Next to us a seagull dropped a large shellfish on the seawall. The creature
swooped down and began to pick at the fresh meat from among shards of
shell. My stomach groaned. Finally, Hiro said, “I will call them now and ask if
they are open later tonight.”
I crossed over and stood on the opposite side of the road and watched
spindly coils of smoke drift over the village. It came from a flaming 40-gallon
drum on the jetty. Several fishermen stood around it warming their hands.
22 RIBBONS OF FATE
I heard Hiro talking to someone on his keitai (cell phone). Curiously, he
then began to apologise, performing repeated shallow bows to no-one in
particular. He excused himself several times before popping his keitai into
the little leather bag on his waist. When he saw me watching, he composed
himself with an air of self-consciousness, then sidled across the street.
“What’s the story?” I asked.
“Actually, ah …” He didn’t know how to put it.
Suddenly the restaurant door slid open and a puzzled waitress stepped
out. She ushered us inside to a small table with a red-and-white checkered
plastic covering. We sat under a poster of a four-foot tall spider crab. A
diorama of mounted fish encircled the walls. The diners around us were
already well into their meals – I presumed they were comedians.
“I guess we should have pulled the door harder,” I offered.
“I recommend the swordfish sashimi (raw fish)” Hiro replied.
After a filling and delicious meal of fresh swordfish, barracuda, sea urchin,
and a delicacy peculiar to the village – giant spider crab – we bade the chef
and other customers good night, leaving the restaurant amid loud shouts
of appreciation and frenetic bowing. By now a full yellow moon hung low
over the harbour, the narrow shingle beach below the seawall sparkling
under its light.
Cherry blossom. “They are Japan’s national symbol.
All Japanese people love chilli brosses!”
CHILLI BROSSE ENCOUNTER
23
4
The Yamasaku Inn
A
fter a long day on the road to the Izu Peninsula, it was time for me
and my travelling companion, Hiro, to turn in for the night. Hiro had
booked us into a minshuku (bed and breakfast) and I was looking forward
to a quiet and comfortable night. We stopped by a konbini (convenience
store) on the way back from dinner. I followed Hiro around the store as he
bought half-a-dozen cans of Asahi Super Dry lager, a packet of freeze-dried
squid, wasabi-flavoured (horse-radish mustard) dehydrated peas, morsels
of processed cheese and two chocolate bars called ‘Crunky’. Three minutes
later we arrived at a run-down house with a crooked sign above the door.
The bulb over the sign had blown out. I could barely make out the moonlit
name “Yamasaku.”
“Matto-sensei, this is the minshuku. We will stay here tonight.” If Hiro felt
apprehensive, he was trying hard not to show it. Clutching his overnight bag
and the konbini goodies in one hand, he knocked three times on the door.
A light flickered on in the hallway, followed by the relentless loud yapping
of a dog. The door had creaked open only a fraction before a small, hairy
terrier skidded through and attached itself to Hiro’s pant leg. He tried to
shake it off while bowing and apologising to the old woman who slid around
the door in pursuit. After thirty seconds of sincere apologies in stereo from
both parties, the old woman parted the dog from Hiro’s trousers with a
broom handle and, content that its work was done, the beast trotted back
off into the house.
The lady ushered us in, but when I stepped into the pool of light cast by
the lamp in her hallway, she was aghast. “Gomen, gomen!” (Sorry, sorry!)
she crossed her hands over her chest, “So sorry, no English!” she looked
to Hiro to help her out. Patiently, he explained that he would go over the
rules of the house, especially footwear practices and how to use the bathing
24 RIBBONS OF FATE
facilities and that there was no need for her to worry. This seemed to set her
slightly more at ease, and she led us upstairs to our room.
Almost immediately, I sensed something odd. One wall of our room was
completely covered in old photos of high-school baseball teams, coloured
ribbons, and certificates. Somebody’s clothes (bagged in plastic) hung in
the wardrobe. A strong smell of mothballs and kerosene pervaded the place.
The old lady reappeared carrying two towels. She explained hurriedly that
there was only enough hot water for one bath between two guests and that
if we wanted a hot bath we’d need to shower first using cold water, also that
there’d be no breakfast service because her husband was ill and she was
looking after him full-time, and that one of the windows was jammed slightly
open so we’d need extra blankets to sleep with and that those blankets were
in the cupboard under several bags of old clothes. She paused for a breath,
before confiding that this room belonged to her son. Then her face turned
four shades of red and she hurriedly bowed twice, wished us a peaceful
night’s sleep and slid the shōji (paper screen) doors firmly shut.
Hiro rolled out two futons in ceremonial fashion. Carefully he placed the
snacks on the floor in the middle of the room. We opened a beer, proposed
a toast to intercultural friendship and drank for a minute. From outside, the
deep moan of a distant foghorn rolled in. I studied the photos pinned to
the wall and asked Hiro to translate some of the certificates and colourful
ribbons for me. Mostly they were high school ribbons for debating and
accounting. I felt uneasy about staying in someone else’s room.
Hiro opened the dried squid and slid the packet across the tatami
(traditional Japanese floor mats) to me. The open window shutters framed
an exceptional view: quiet waves lapping, rustic fishing boats, long, bright
reflections stretching out into the ink-black harbour. Across the sea, the
lights of Fuji City twinkled like those of Wellington City from my family home
in Eastbourne. It could have been the beer, but I felt I’d been here before.
“Matto-sensei, you are feeling natsukashī.”
I took a long swill from my can and placed it gently on the tatami.
“Natsukashī?” I repeated. “Meaning?”
Hiro’s brow furrowed and he looked the word up on his electronic pocket
dictionary while I rummaged through the konbini bag for the Crunky.
“Ah, actually, it means ‘dear, beloved, feel a yearning for, feel nostalgic
about.’ You feel this now, neh, Matto-sensei?”
THE YAMASUKU INN
25
Not long after, Hiro began snoring. Prising the empty beer can from his grip,
I covered him with one of the duvets and an extra blanket from the bottom
of the cupboard, extinguished the kerosene heater and closed the shutters.
Before switching out the light, I looked at the photo wall again. There was a
graduation picture from high school and a Polaroid of the lady’s son next to
an earnest looking older man. I presumed that was his now ill father. I flicked
the light off and made my way – arms extended – to my futon, burrowing
under my bedding like a mole, trying not to think of far-away family and
friends. I tossed and turned for a long time. Eventually, the day’s excitement
and the conversation with Hiro faded and, sleep overcoming me, I dreamt
of home.
I awoke in a cold sweat. It was pitch black and there were sounds of laughter.
Hiro was snoring loudly. Outside the window I could hear men’s voices.
My watch read 4.18. Crawling out of bed, I opened the shutters a fraction
and peered out. The waterfront was buzzing. Fishermen huddled in small
groups, talking, smoking, joking. Farther around the shore there were two
or three fires in drums, flames licking out of the tops. Oddly enough, a
woman wearing an apron was hanging washing on a line below me. It was our
landlady. Dazed, I inched back to my futon, pulled the covers over my head
and sank back into another uneasy sleep.
Hiro’s tidying woke me up. It was 8.00 a.m., and the room was drenched in
brilliant sunlight. The mutt downstairs yapped persistently. It seemed I was
last in the village to wake up.
Later that morning we drove smoothly up a steep road lined with Oshima
cherry trees and I asked Hiro how normal it was for people to be hanging
washing at the ungodly hour of four o’clock in the morning.
“Ah, yes. The minshuku lady,” he began, “she is a very kind lady. But she is
also very, ah, how do you say, difficult lady.”
“What do you mean by difficult?”
“Ah, actually,” he thought hard. “I asked that lady about her family,” he said,
putting rather too much emphasis on the last word. “She has a sick husband,
and her son, he passed away, so she works hard every day. She has many
difficult things in her life. Kawai sou obāchan,” he added – ‘poor old woman’.
As we drove, ashen cherry petals fluttered down like passing spring showers.
26 RIBBONS OF FATE
The open window shutters framed an exceptional view: quiet waves lapping,
rustic fishing boats, long, bright reflections stretching out into the ink-black
harbour.
THE YAMASUKU INN
27
5
The Eel Bone
O
n the homeward leg of our road trip to the Izu Peninsula, my friend
Hiro and I stopped for lunch in Fuji City at a kaiten-zushi (conveyorbelt sushi) bar called Jumbo Zushi. Hiro was anxious for me to try the crab
soup and a variety of raw treats. Sushi would not have been my first choice
after having already consumed plates of deep-sea delicacies the previous
night in Heda Village. In fact, I had been wondering all morning if it was the
meal of spider crab and sea urchin that had played a part in my sleepless
night. Nevertheless, I was soon seated before a rapidly-moving stainless
steel sushi carousel. Hiro grabbed at coloured plates, thrusting them in
front of me one after the other.
“This is tobiko, flying fish. Please try!” he said, excitedly. “And this I think
you know, ika, squid.”
I already had a mountain of plates to get through and had yet even to pour
some soy sauce into my dish.
“Actually, do you know unagi?”
“Eel?”
“Yes, ah, you know well. This is good.”
He pulled a small plate of grilled freshwater eel off the line then neatly
snapped apart a set of cedar chopsticks for me.
“Come on, Hiro! Eel is too easy,” I joked, “you’re going to have to try harder
than eel to give me something that’s a challenge.” I popped the whole piece
in my mouth. There was a moment of great taste before I felt a small bone
lodge itself firmly behind my jaw. It was tiny and sharp, and it had pierced
the back of my throat. Each swallow began to feel more painful.
28 RIBBONS OF FATE
Hiro began to gorge himself on plates of red seabream, Spanish mackerel
and swordfish. I excused myself and found my way to the bathroom. Once
behind a locked door, I carefully pushed my index finger back into my throat
to try to get at the eel bone, but it was stuck fast. With the second attempt
to dislodge it, I ended up with my head deep in the toilet bowl. Realising I
wasn’t going to get it out anytime soon, I rejoined Hiro with some reluctance.
“Hiro, I have an eel bone stuck in my throat.” I told him as casually as I could
muster, so as not to create alarm.
“Oh that’s good. I ordered crab soup for you; it’s delicious – do you know
it?”
“Hiro, I actually have a bone stuck in my throat and it might be hard to eat
anything else.”
“Oh, no, no, don’t worry.”
“Do you understand what I just said?”
“Yes, but I promise it’s not hard to eat. And it has no bones; it’s just got a
soft shell.”
“Excuse me. I’m going to the bathroom again.”
The second time I was equally unsuccessful with the bone, but managed to
rid myself of the mandarin I had eaten for breakfast. I became convinced
that forcing copious amounts of food down my throat might just dislodge
the bone. I returned to the restaurant and sculled my now lukewarm crab
soup then violently downed two pieces of Skipjack tuna, a fistful of baby
octopi and the largest Californian roll the place had to offer. Soon enough I
was back in the bathroom, the bone still stuck. It was all or nothing. Forcing
four fingers into my mouth, I clawed at the back of my throat. No luck, but
plenty more regurgitation.
Hiro seemed delighted with my new-found ravenous hunger. I came close
to freeing the bone with a piece of raw shrimp, which encouraged me to
launch into a new, frenzied round of eating: a five-dollar plate of snapper
followed by an eight-dollar portion of bluefin tuna and a ten-dollar plate of
raw oysters – which were far too slippery to snare the bone.
After a final turbulent and altogether unsuccessful bathroom visit, I trudged
to the counter in considerable misery to pay for my half of the meal. I left
the restaurant with less food in my stomach than when I came in, and a
pocket sixty dollars lighter! And so began the three-hour drive back, Hiro,
THE EEL BONE
29
me, and the eel bone, to the soulful tunes of Diana Ross and the Supremes.
I could have killed the inventor of ‘continuous play’ for stereos.
During the journey home, I found the only way to get at the bone was to
quack like a duck. At first Hiro looked alarmed, but then seemed to accept
that it was just a quaint foreign habit. I spent the entire trip trying not to
quack too loudly, in constant fear of throwing up all over his spotlessly shiny
car interior. It wasn’t until later that night, long after Hiro had dropped
me off that I managed to remove the offending bone with the help of my
toothbrush. And so the weekend trip to the Izu Peninsula ended with the
extraction of one tiny eel bone and a fresh appreciation of Japan and my
peculiar new friend, Hiro.
30 RIBBONS OF FATE
6
Yoshi and Mariko
M
y connection with Japan began when I was four years old at
Playcentre, in New Zealand. My sister and I met two Japanese
children, Yoshi and Mariko. I have hazy memories of those days, back in the
early nineteen-eighties. Yet it wasn’t long after arriving in Japan in 2001
that my early memories came flooding back, memories of Mariko and Yoshi
in particular. I began to feel close to unravelling whatever subconscious
connection it was that had bought me to Japan. Each time I went to a new
location with Japanese friends, a small voice inside me seemed to proclaim,
“Ah, here at last!” It was a comfortable feeling in what should have been a
very unfamiliar place.
I have a dream-like memory of going to my young friend Yoshi’s house in
Wellington. I don’t recall any conversations we had, we were only four at the
time, but when I think back now I can picture him clearly. My sister struck up
a similar friendship with Mariko; they were both six, and I remember our few
outings all together, as a group of four. The memory of going to Yoshi and
Mariko’s house is one of my earliest. It was a large black-and-white house on
a hill in the well-heeled suburb of Kelburn, near where the cable car slides
past the university. Yoshi’s father was a diplomat, and he had moved to
Wellington with his family for a short time, I guess two years or so.
It was raining very hard the day my sister and I arrived at the house. Yoshi’s
mother had just finished baking a batch of biscuits. I still remember the
smell; although I can’t be sure, I think now they were green tea-flavoured
biscuits. We sat at a huge table with a crisp, clean, white table cloth. Under
the stairs in the hallway was a dark cupboard. I was fascinated by the way
Yoshi’s mother smiled at the end of each sentence she spoke, and I remember
the impression, even at that tender age, of a woman unnaturally beautiful.
It’s funny what you notice when you are four years old. We crunched the
YOSHI AND MARIKO
31
thin biscuits, which she served alongside tiny cups of warm green tea while
speaking softly to her children in Japanese. The house was cosy and warm.
Outside, the rain fell in heavy sheets and the sodden branches of a kowhai
tree scratched wildly at the window panes.
Sometime later, Yoshi, Mariko, their beautiful mother and unseen father
disappeared from the big house on the hill and I never thought about them
– until one wet day, twenty years later.
I was waiting for a bus on a clammy summer’s evening. The sky suddenly
darkened, then opened, and everything was awash – bright with glowing
brakelights, shiny bicycles and colourful umbrellas. Commuters rushed for
cover, mothers pulled their children through the hordes of shoppers and
sararimen (company employees). As I watched the Japanese people going
about their daily business, rain-soaked children held close by immaculately
made-up mothers, for a moment I found myself back in time, standing dripping
wet at the entrance to Yoshi’s hallway, carefully taking off my gumboots
before being led into the kitchen. As I snapped back to the present moment
at the bus stop, the smell of those biscuits lingered for a few seconds. I
wondered what had become of Yoshi and Mariko in the previous two decades.
Had Yoshi become a young salaryman? Was he even in Japan? I questioned
whether he would remember me. I wondered, too, if Mariko was married with
children. Maybe their mother now had grandchildren to bake for.
Some days later I sent an email to the Japanese Embassy in Wellington. I
asked if it was possible to find the name of the diplomat who had been
working in Wellington at that time, but they were not able to divulge the
information. Anyway, what would I say if I ever found the family? Would I get
on with Yoshi? He might not speak any English now.
I had the same memory with my friend, Hiro, one Wednesday night. He took
me for dinner to his sister Kiyoko’s house. When we arrived I removed my
boots and was led into a kitchen, to a large table, and I sat down among a
real Japanese family.
Being a foreigner in Japan made me feel like a four-year-old again at times.
I followed Hiro into restaurants like a youngster. He ordered on my behalf
and we spoke in a childlike way, slowly in simple sentences. I also tried to eat
whatever was put in front of me, regardless of how I felt, in a way to please
whoever was at the table. I received praise for my use of chopsticks, or my
ability to peel a mikan (mandarin) the Japanese way.
32 RIBBONS OF FATE
Kiyoko’s two young daughters had peered at me from hallway shadows as I
entered the house. Now they sat close to their mother and fixed their large
dark eyes on me, turning away in embarrassment when I pulled a funny face.
Everything seemed to tug at my memories from Yoshi and Mariko’s house
all those years ago.
I enjoyed talking with Kiyoko’s husband, Hiroki, about the culture, sports
and beer of our respective countries. When I looked at him I saw Yoshi as
he could be today – a red-cheeked, round-faced man, dabbing at beads
of sweat with a small hand towel as he masterfully mixed pieces of tofu,
vegetables and meat into a steaming bowl in the middle of the table. As I
talked he grunted and nodded, as if he knew what I was saying, but every
time I finished, he looked anxiously at Hiro for a translation.
Kiyoko became the image of that kind, beautiful mother, clearing away
plates and refilling drinks, smiling at me every time I said anything. This was
different from any Japanese meal I had experienced so far. No chefs yelling
“thank you!” and bowing deeply as I arrived and left, no staff excusing
themselves and apologising each time they came near the table.
At one point, the conversation turned to what surprised me about Japan. I
told Hiroki that before I arrived I had thought I would see geisha (traditional
female entertainers) walking around the streets. He thought that was hilarious.
These days, most Japanese people have never seen a geisha themselves.
After Kiyoko had tucked the children in, Hiroki recounted what I had said,
and soon after, with a shy giggle, Kiyoko placed a photo album in front of
me. Inside, were photos of her and a friend on a previous sightseeing trip
to Kyōto, dressed up in full kimono as geisha. While I was looking through
the album she silently poured the finest gyokuro (expensive green tea) into
china cups, ornately decorated with hand-painted cherry blossoms.
It was dark as we left. Rain was just beginning to fall. Kiyoko gave me an
elegantly wrapped box of tea leaves, and Hiroki, apologising for his poor
English, shook my hand again and made me promise I would come back for
dinner again soon. Then Hiro and I were off, leaving behind a family that had
opened up those memories again, of the house on the hill and the strange
smelling biscuits. There really is something quite magical about eating a
real Japanese dinner with a real Japanese family. I can’t help but wonder still
about Yoshi and Mariko. I’m grateful for them planting in my mind the seed
of a fascination for Japan as a child. Perhaps they lived close by. I wondered
if they would remember the little boy with the wet hair and shiny gumboots.
YOSHI AND MARIKO
33
It was a large black-and-white house on a hill in the well-heeled suburb of
Kelburn, near where the cable car slides past the university.
34 RIBBONS OF FATE
7
A Lively Lunch
I
t was lunchtime. Bee and I had driven all morning to reach the seaside
city of Toyohashi, and we were famished. The air was salty and the sun
was out, but the September breeze delivered a surprising chill. From the car
park of a small seafood restaurant, Bee pointed out a large building in the
distance that clung to the side of a sharp cliff.
“I visited that hotel once with my mother and sister. We took the train all day
to get here and stayed only one night. It was six months after my father died,
so my mother wanted us all to go on a trip. That was exactly 20 years ago.”
“So you were only thirteen? And your sister must have been … ”
“Eleven. We’d never been on a long trip before. I’m amazed my mother even
considered it. She counted all the stops so we knew when to get off.”
Bee’s mother had been blinded in a childhood accident.
As we walked across the car park a sudden gust whipped the sand in twirling
spouts around our feet.
“You know the thing I remember most about that trip?” She paused at the
restaurant door, waiting for me to open it. “A couple of days before we
went, my mother took us to a department store. My sister and I each chose
a dress. It was the first time that ever happened. Usually we got hand-medowns from cousins.”
“That was the most memorable part of your trip to Toyohashi?”
“Uh huh,” she said, screwing her face up slightly. “That was a really big thing
for me.”
Before being shown to a table, we were guided to a small marble trough. In
it several large fish were swimming around.
“Oh, what fish do you want to eat?” Bee asked.
A LIVELY LUNCH
35
“Uh, why don’t you choose?” I wasn’t prepared for our lunch to be eyeballing
us on the way to the table. She considered the specimens for a minute
and then pointed one out. A waiter with a large white net sprang forward
and caught the creature in one swift movement before excusing himself and
disappearing with it into the kitchen.
We sat near a window. Through several layers of encrustation of old salt
spray on the glass I could just make out the hotel on the hill.
“So what did it look like?”
“What did what look like?”
“The dress you chose?”
“You think it’s strange that the dress was the best memory from my trip? It’s
something you probably wouldn’t understand, anyway. ”
“No, that’s not what … Really, I think it’s a sweet thing to remember. What
colour was it?”
“Grey.”
She picked up the drinks menu and studied it in silence. Outside I watched
two mangy seagulls scrapping over an old instant ramen (noodles) container.
A few minutes later our fish arrived, complete with head and tail, served on a
mountain of ice. The chef had sliced it up finely so the body in between was
presented in bite-sized pieces – no scales, no bones, just a neat pile of the
freshest sashimi (raw fish). I couldn’t wait to get into it.
Hovering over the meat with my chopsticks, I almost dropped them in shock.
The fish was still moving! A tiny flicker of gills … I looked up at Bee, who was
staring hard at it. Then the fish opened and closed its mouth.
“This thing is still alive! What the hell! Are you serious?”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise they would serve it like this.”
The fish was now sucking air in and out. It seemed to look pleadingly at me
with round, black eyes.
“But it’s in pieces! How can it still be alive? How can you eat this? It’s just
wrong!” I exclaimed, as Bee took a piece of the fish with her chopsticks. She
paused, put it down on her plate and carefully placed a flower over the fish’s
moving gills. The flower started bobbing up and down, so she covered the
flower with a large leaf from the garnishing.
“This way of preparing fish is ikezukuri. It is a delicacy in Japan, I’m sorry – I
didn’t realise I had ordered it in this way. I shouldn’t have.”
36 RIBBONS OF FATE
She looked down at the table. She was ashamed. “It is not nice for some
people, even some Japanese people. You don’t have to eat all of it.”
“Darn right I’m not going to eat all of it! I’m not going to eat any of it!”
“But, you should try one piece, at least. You shouldn’t waste this fish.” She
looked at me, almost sympathetically.
“Don’t be sorry for me, be sorry for the fish!”
“Well, I do feel sorry for you. This meal is going to be expensive.”
For a second I pondered how she could accidentally order this in her own
native tongue. I stared out the window and tried to ignore my rumbling
stomach.
“You know, when I was eight, I remember sitting at a table with a lot of adults.”
She rearranged the garnish in several different ways with her chopsticks as
she talked.
“They were drunk and having a party – loud and drunk. There was a live
fish on the table, like this one. I remember a man pouring sake (rice wine)
in the fish’s mouth. He said if the fish drank the sake, it wouldn’t feel any
pain. I felt sad for the fish, but I believed what he said. I remember the sake
overflowing from the fish’s mouth.” She took the largest leaf on the plate
and laid it softly over the open eye of the fish.
“Do you want them to take this away?”
“I just don’t want to touch it.” I said. “I don’t really get this. I don’t get how
it’s still alive, for one, and I don’t get how people think this is acceptable. I
guess you shouldn’t waste it though, that’d be even worse, given what the
poor creature has been through already.”
“Do you know what the biggest regret of my last trip to Toyohashi was?”
“Let me guess … grey wasn’t your colour?”
“I remember a big banquet in a long dining room at that hotel.” She motioned
to it through the window. “We could see the ocean from our table. There was
a beautiful sunset. My mother ordered us the best fish – red snapper. It was
the most delicious sashimi I had ever tasted. During the dinner there was a
performance. It was a Hawaiian-type dance – with hula and everything. I was
so interested in the dancing that I stopped eating my fish. I’d only had a few
pieces, but when I looked back down, my plate had been cleared. They took
it away and I hadn’t even noticed. That was my biggest regret, not finishing
my snapper.”
A LIVELY LUNCH
37
She hadn’t touched the fish on her plate while she’d been talking. Now, as if
waiting for his cue, the waiter, who had observed my reaction – along with
several other diners – shuffled over and asked politely if, perhaps, maybe,
he could possibly take the fish away. He looked at Bee, who looked at me. I
looked at him and shook my head, no. He looked at Bee, who looked at him
and shook her head, no, apologising for the trouble. He bowed and sidled
back off to the kitchen. I looked at the other diners. They looked down at
their plates.
It had been 20 years since Bee had been back in Toyohashi. I wanted
her memories of today to be special as well. I picked up my chopsticks,
apologised inwardly to the fish, carefully took a piece of its flesh, dipped
it in soy sauce and popped it in my mouth. The taste and texture were
sensational. I’ve had nothing like it since, and doubt I ever will. Despite that,
I only ate the one slice.
Bee finished the plate, eating slowly and carefully, with respect – checking
and rechecking with me several times. As it turned out, we would both leave
Toyohashi that weekend with no regrets.
Hovering over the meat with my chopsticks, I almost dropped them in shock.
The fish was still moving!
38 RIBBONS OF FATE
8
S
The War Diary
ome years before I went to Japan, I was on the couch one day watching
television when my dad sat down next to me.
“You might be interested in this – it’s your grandfather’s war diary.”
He handed me an old logbook. The faded brown cover said “Woods’
Australian Diary for 1943”.
My dad continued, “You know, it was against the rules to keep records like
this on the minesweeper. If he had been caught he probably would have
been court-martialled. The only reason he got away with it was seeing as he
was the radio operator he could keep it under lock and key in the control
room. Have a read if you want, it’s a pretty special book.”
Up until then I had never thought of Granddad fighting in the war. I flicked
to a random page. It was faded yellow and the blue ink near the bottom was
blotted and water stained. Under the date Saturday, March 6 it read:
“Received news that ‘Task Force’ that passed through yesterday got two
Jap cruisers and several planes. The force was referred to as the ‘Tokio
Express.’ Air raid warning in early afternoon – gun’s crew closed up. Planes
over Russell Island. ‘Task Force’ up there. 20 Zeros after them. All clear by
2:30pm. Colour Red again at 9pm. No planes.”
Granddad’s handwriting was a mixture of cursive script and capital letters.
Code words were scattered throughout the pages. Interesting, I thought, as
I handed the diary back.
A few weeks later I was sorting through some of Dad’s things after his
sudden death. At the bottom of his workbox I found the diary. That night
I took it to my room and read it from cover to cover. In the light of recent
events, Granddad’s wartime writings had taken on a new kind of significance
for me. When I finished the diary I wrapped it in clear plastic and stored it
in a box under my bed.
THE WAR DIARY
39
Four years passed, life went on. About two weeks before leaving for Japan,
I went to visit Granddad. We made small talk as he leaned on his kitchen
bench, smoking cigarettes, staring out at the garden. He was a man of few
words. I recall Dad confessing to me once that he never really knew what
to say to his father. It seemed their main topics of conversation revolved
around various aspects of sport and Lotto draws. Although I couldn’t
remember many ‘fun’ memories of Granddad, I loved him and I felt he loved
me, in his own suppressed way.
“Well, I guess this is it. I’m off in a couple of weeks.” I had the feeling I might
not see him again, and I hated goodbyes.
“So, you’re really going then, eh?” He took a long drag on his cigarette and
crushed it meaningfully into an ashtray.
“Yep, I’m really off. I’ll write you some letters and tell you how it is.”
He paused for an age. “You wouldn’t catch me heading over there.” His eyes
were trained on a fantail in the plum tree outside his window. “Wouldn’t
trust those little buggers as far as I could throw ’em.” He turned and looked
at me squarely for the first time.
“Come on, Granddad, things are different now. I’m sure it’ll be fine.” I
stepped towards him to give him a hug and he put out his hand. As we
shook he leaned in close.
“You look after yourself, boy.”
A card arrived for me two days before my departure. Inside, in simple capped
handwriting it said:
“To Our Matt. Hope you have a good flight on Saturday and I’ll be thinking of
you in the air. Try to teach those ‘Nips’ some decent manners – if possible.
Will look forward to progress reports while you are away. Bon voyage. B Com.”
I filed the card in the back of the diary under my bed and set off that
weekend for Japan.
I sent a few letters to Granddad during my first eighteen months in Japan,
but I didn’t hear back. I wanted to tell him about my students and the lovely
people I had met, how welcome I was there, and about Bee. We had become
very close and she planned to come home with me at Christmas time. I
wasn’t sure how Granddad might react to meeting her though. I imagined
no Japanese person had ever set foot in his house, and I wasn’t sure how
he’d feel about it now. I wrote another letter and enclosed a photo of myself,
and a photo of Bee. I visualised him throwing her picture away, or sealing it
40 RIBBONS OF FATE
back up in the envelope. I just wanted him to be ready when she walked in.
In November of my second year in Japan I got word that Granddad was sick.
“He’s on oxygen all the time now,” my sister told me over the phone. “He
had to give up smoking and he’s really gone downhill.”
Sure enough, by Christmas time, things weren’t looking good for Granddad.
Bee and I headed back to New Zealand, and on a sunny December afternoon
we drove up to see him. On the way, I explained the situation. “So, he served
in Guadalcanal. He might use some bad words about Japanese, but don’t
worry, it’s just how they used to talk. Whatever happens, it’s not your fault,
Granddad’s old …”
“OK, let’s just see what happens,” Bee said, smiling.
When we entered his house, my aunt called us into the sitting room.
Granddad sat wheezing in his armchair clutching an oxygen mask to his face.
As we walked in I saw the photos of Bee and me in two frames sitting on top
of his piano. I hugged him, and turned to introduce Bee, but she beat me
to it. Springing forward, she chirped, “Hello Granddad, it’s lovely to finally
meet you!” She put her arms around him, and, slowly, he raised his arms and
wrapped them around her.
He seemed to improve during our visit, enough to come off the oxygen and
speak with us a little. Before we left, I had a moment alone with him.
“Granddad, I’ve got your war diary at home. I’ve looked after it since Dad
died. I wanted to ask you a favour.”
“You want to take it over there, don’t you?”
“Well, if it’s all right with you, I reckon my students would be interested to
see it. But Granddad, I’d understand if you didn’t feel OK about that.”
“You know, I never dreamed they’d get their hands on it.” His chuckle turned
into a rasping cough. “Not in a million bloody years. But you can do what
you want with it.” He smiled and reached for his oxygen again.
Back in Japan, I took the diary to school one day and used it as the feature
of an English lesson. My students were 17 years old, but didn’t know much
about the war. It wasn’t a widely-taught history topic in school. But they
listened quietly as I showed them the pages, the old cover, and the map
of Guadalcanal at the back. As I placed it under the magnification of a
document imaging camera at the front of the room, a small black-and-white
photo slipped out of Granddad from his navy days. His youthful face now
appeared on each of the student’s television screens. The girls went crazy.
THE WAR DIARY
41
“Eeeeeehhhhh!!! Kakkoī ne!” (Handsome! Cool!) they shouted, and asked
me to pass around his picture. Even the boys now wanted to touch the book
and thumb through the pages. His picture had sparked a connection with
them. I watched a boy at the back as he carefully turned the pages, and I
was struck by how delicately he treated the diary. Like a precious artefact.
I heard Granddad’s words: “Wouldn’t trust those little buggers as far as I
could throw ‘em.“
Before I had a chance to write to him about the reaction of the students to his
diary, I received news that Granddad had died. They told me that after days
of suffering in a hospital bed, he suddenly sat bolt upright, opened his eyes,
smiled and reached out with open arms before lying back and passing over.
The faded brown cover said “Woods’ Australian
Diary for 1943.
Granddad’s handwriting was a mixture
of cursive script and capital letters.
Code words were scattered
throughout the pages.
42 RIBBONS OF FATE
As I placed it under the camera
at the front of the room, a
small black-and-white photo
slipped out of Granddad from
his navy days.
9
Golden Week
I
t was “Golden Week”, a three-day holiday at the beginning of May, and
the whole of Japan seemed to be on the move – most people were going
from cities to their hometowns by rail or air, some getting away to a ‘second
house’ in the mountains or on a sunny coastline. Bee had suggested a road
trip to Ishikawa-ken, a peculiar-shaped prefecture on the northern coast
of Honshū. Famed for its picturesque coastline, it juts out into the Sea of
Japan like a hand on the map with a crooked, pointing finger.
I spent the first three hours of the trip wishing we’d stayed at home. It
seemed we weren’t the only foolish sheep who’d decided to join the flock
and take to the roads. On the outskirts of Mino city, it took just under two
hours to crawl a punishing two kilometres. The heat and traffic conspired to
produce a volcanic atmosphere in the car and we began arguing – whether
we’d taken the best route, how our timing could have been smarter, why
Japanese insist on navigating by traffic lights rather than street names,
which way round the road map actually went, and why Pavarotti was a
poor choice of music for a traffic jam. At one point, a shrivelled old woman
wearing a surgical mask and driving a mobility scooter overtook us. I swear
she winked at me as she buzzed by. We watched her in smouldering silence
as she gradually disappeared in a haze of heat and angry tail lights.
It was a relief when we finally pulled off Highway 156 at the town of Shirotori,
and began to ascend a marvellous spiral road that twirled us 60 metres
skywards onto a mountain pass overlooking the Gujo valley. Way below,
the folk-dancing inhabitants of Gujo-Hachiman rinsed their vegetables and
washed their clothes in the town’s pristine waterways and canals. Despite the
beauty of the surroundings, though, I was reminded of a recent newspaper
article, reporting a strange and concerning presence in these hills.
“GIFU (Kyodo) – A caravan of vehicles covered in white material and carrying
GOLDEN WEEK
43
about 50 members of a Pana Wave cult that believes doomsday is imminent
was on the move in the mountains of Gifu Prefecture. On early Saturday
morning the convoy travelled a short distance along a sightseeing road on
the forest border of Hachiman and Yamoto townships.”
These peculiar people were protecting their ‘queen’, a woman inside one
of the white vans, in an effort to keep her from being contaminated by
electro-magnetic waves. The group would completely cover their vehicles
in white sheets, erect white, domed tents on roadsides and don white anticontamination suits. They had predicted that in May the Earth’s magnetic
poles would flip over, resulting in the deaths of most humans on Earth. Now,
they were driving around the countryside looking for a safe place to evade
the Apocalypse.
I was scanning the forest road ahead for Pana Wavers when Bee spoke for
the first time in forty minutes.
“Why don’t you talk when you drive?”
“Because I can’t multi-task.”
“Don’t you want to talk to me?”
“Of course.”
“Well, let’s talk then.”
I turned the stereo down and tried to think of a good conversation starter.
“Why is this holiday called Golden Week?”
“No idea,” she replied.
“Well, what does it mean to you?”
“It’s a chance to go away on holiday, for one thing.”
“Did your family go away for Golden Week holidays when you were younger?”
“Not really.”
“What did you do then?”
“Mostly, I remember playing around outside our house with my friend.”
Bee had grown up in a tiny unit at the base of a run-down apartment block,
flanked by an abandoned factory, a Lawson’s convenience store and a
mechanic’s yard. Her mother still lived there.
“What was your friend’s name?”
“Maki-chan.”
44 RIBBONS OF FATE
For someone keen on a conversation, Bee was making this remarkably hard
work.
“Well, what did you and Maki-chan used to do during Golden Week?”
“We liked to look for tadpoles in the rice paddies around our neighbourhood.”
“What else did the two of you do?”
“That’s about the main thing I remember.”
“Do you still keep in touch with Maki-chan?”
“I don’t really want to talk about Maki-chan,” she said, staring out the
passenger window.
The first city we arrived at in Ishikawa bore my name, which I took as a
rather good omen. By the time we arrived, Bee had defrosted somewhat and
we stopped to snap pictures of signs that read ‘Matto Town Hall,’ ‘Matto
Library,’ and ‘Matto Cultural Centre.’ My innermost sense of self-worth now
thoroughly invigorated, we headed for the base of the Noto Peninsula.
Near Hodatsu, in the golden light of the evening we turned off a toll road
to join a fast-flowing line of traffic on the sands of a vast surf beach. After
coasting several kilometres on the compacted sand we pulled over just
beyond the reach of the waves and stood on the edge of the Sea of Japan
(as it’s known to Japanese people), the East Sea (as it’s called by South
Koreans), and the North East Sea (as North Koreans know it). We stretched
our legs and dipped our toes in the cool water. The sand beneath us shook
with the vibrations of the vehicles whistling past.
That night we lay in separate futons in the dark at a tiny ryokan (Japanese
inn). For some time we listened to the crashing of waves in between the gaps
in beach traffic. Bee’s breathing had become quiet and she hadn’t moved for
several minutes, so I was startled when she suddenly said: “Why did you ask
so many questions about Maki-chan?”
“I was just curious about your friends. I like getting to know more about you.
It seems you don’t have much time to see your friends now that you are a
teacher,” I replied.
“Well, she was my only real friend when I was growing up. She lived in the
apartment above us. Apart from Maki, I didn’t have anyone else to play with
– except my little sister.”
Moonlight filtered through the small window frame of our room. It slowly
crept across the floor to where we lay.
GOLDEN WEEK
45
“I have a memory of Golden Week, if you’d like to hear it.”
“Yeah, go on.”
“It was the first day of the holiday, and I was excited about going to look for
tadpoles with Maki. She wasn’t home though, so I rode my bicycle to the
park next to school. There was a canal there where you could sometimes
find a lot of interesting creatures. I was looking around in the long grass
when I heard a group of children from my class at school. They were playing
and singing songs in the playground. When I went nearer to them I saw Maki
in the middle.”
I peered at Bee, and she pulled the blankets up around her face.
“So what happened next?”
“Well, when Maki saw me, she started to run away. She was giggling –
ashamed or something. It was strange. The other children followed her. I
wasn’t sure why Maki did that. I was really confused. She was supposed to
be my friend. I rode back home and when I arrived I saw her brother. He was
an older boy, and he was often mean to me and my sister. One time he threw
a stone and hit my sister in the lip, making it bleed.”
“Sounds like a real charmer.”
“Not really. I asked him what Maki was doing with her friends.”
“And what did he say?”
“He said it was her birthday party.”
I felt my face heat up. After a long pause I blurted, “Well I hope you didn’t
invite her to your next party.”
“No I didn’t, actually.”
“Good for you – serves her right.”
“I never had a birthday party,” she answered.
I sat listening to the ocean for a couple of minutes. That wasn’t quite the
Golden Week memory I had anticipated. The half-metre gap between us
suddenly seemed far too wide. I edged across to snuggle up to her, but she
was already asleep.
During the night, a thick layer of mist crept in from the sea. As we set out
in the morning it was still hanging over Highway 249. On one side of us lay
terraced rice paddies, completely waterlogged. On the other side, choppy
ocean waves danced under the reluctantly receding mist that threatened to
sneak back in and swallow the coast road and everything on it.
46 RIBBONS OF FATE
We arrived in Wajima City at noon, just as the popular morning market was
closing, and wandered among the empty stalls in search of something to eat.
An old lady in a pink headscarf looked up from stacking her daikon (large
white radishes) and bowed to us, crinkling her weathered face. A spiteful
breeze bristled in from the ocean, and carved its way up the main street.
The old lady’s smiling face tightened and she clutched at her headscarf with
both hands as the orange canvas cover above her flapped wildly in a temper.
We ducked through the dark doorway of a café, into a world dripping with
mahogany and exquisite, locally-crafted lacquer ware. The Bill Evans Trio
drifted through Waltz for Debby while we sipped strong-tasting black coffee
from undersized cups. The steaming brew was made from beans roasted
and ground in the café and ancient well-water sourced from a spring deep
beneath our table.
Getting back onto Highway 249 was harder than expected. After threading
our way through Wajima’s warren of narrow streets and reaching a major
intersection, I saw a sign saying “249” and “Suzu City” over a right-hand
turn arrow. Approaching the traffic lights, I turned into the right lane and
indicated right. Soon we were wending our way up a tight street that twisted
through a cluster of old houses. Everything, including the sky seemed to
darken and close in on us the farther we drove. A corner looped back so
sharply that there were several strategically-placed mirrors. Then around
the corner the road came to an abrupt end, and in front of a decrepit garage
several young children were searching for beetles and centipedes in the
dirt. They looked up, surprised to see a car. I peered at them through the
windscreen and, upon seeing a strange foreign face, they scattered in all
directions. Swearing loudly, I reversed with some gusto, probably crushing
several beetles in the process, and tried again to find Route 249. As I
complained about the twisted logic of Japanese road signs and lamented
the fact I seemed to be doing an inordinate number of u-turns on this trip,
Bee remained silent.
To her credit, she also didn’t say a word that night in Takaoka as I proceeded
to get us lost near the railway station and drove the wrong way up a one way
street. I was taking corrective action when a local skidded to a stop beside
us, wound down his window and started waving his arms and screaming
furiously at me. I craned my head out the window to respond, letting him see
that I was a gaijin foreigner. “You, go back!” he barked in his best English, to
which I replied in my most sarcastic Japanese, “Honto ni?” (Oh, really?). He
pulled a mean face and screeched off into the night.
GOLDEN WEEK
47
The following day we headed home. The road was straight, lined with family
restaurants and garish pachinko (pinball machine) parlours. Although the
day was fine, visibility was limited by a filthy haze that hung low over the
road. Above the filth, the distant Hida Mountains stood between us and
home, 270 kilometres to the south. The thought of traversing the mountains
after two days of intense driving threatened to give me conniptions. What
we encountered, though, was the most wonderful road.
From the foothills it led up through tunnel after tunnel. The majority of
tunnels I experienced in Japan were poorly lit. In them Japanese drivers tend to
switch their headlights on instinctively, and some are so long that you forget
you’re in them. When you eventually emerge it takes a few minutes for the
eyes to readjust. But the tunnels on Highway 156 were different. Instead of
the usual thick grimy walls, the tunnels were supported by concrete columns,
allowing natural light to seep in, and enabling us to glimpse the sheer cliffs
and the deep blue lakes that filled the gorges below. A perfectly cambered
road wound in and out of the tunnels, lending the driving a fun, arcadegame quality. We would emerge onto bridges suspended so gracefully over
valleys that twice we stopped to take pictures of the structures themselves,
ignoring the breathtaking views that surrounded them. It was a welcome
change from the rusty gas station signs, webs of power lines and run-down
noodle shops that had bordered this same highway just an hour before.
As we approached the floor of the Kiso Valley, we passed old gassho
(traditional thatched-roof houses). Farmers in straw hats bent ankle-deep
in mud were planting rice in the sunken paddies around their homes. We
stopped at Magome, once a ‘post-town’ on the Nakasendō trail that had
welcomed travellers en-route between Kyōto and Edo (Old Tokyo) during
Japan’s Edo period (1603–1868). Today, Magome has been restored
to its former feudal appearance. In bygone times the town flourished,
packed with bustling inns and bars, with horses and riders at the ready
to transport government officials to the next “station” on the trail. Now,
along with busloads of a different kind of tourist, we wandered the narrow
cobbled streets.
Thinking that we had come to the end of one of the tapering roads, I turned
back, but Bee had found a staircase winding up behind one of the houses.
“Let’s see what’s up here.”
“It looks private, maybe we shouldn’t?”
48 RIBBONS OF FATE
“We’ll be fine – it’s called exploring,” she said, without hesitating.
I followed her up past a slow-turning waterwheel, onto a levelled gravel
courtyard lined with weeping cherry trees. In the late afternoon, the place
was cast into shadow. The air carried a distinct chill, but it hadn’t stopped a
party of locals setting up an open-air meal at the far end of the courtyard.
“I told you this place isn’t for tourists. Let’s get out of here,” I said and
pulled at Bee’s jacket.
One of the locals shouted and motioned to us. A dozen or so others turned
to stare. Walking tentatively to where they were sitting, Bee apologised for
the intrusion.
“Please, sit!” the man said kindly in Japanese. Several others hurriedly cleared
a space for us at the table and gave up their cushions. An elderly woman
scooped steaming miso soup from a large boiler pot into two paper cups
while the man introduced us to the various characters around the table.
The broth was strong and dark, full of chunky vegetables. The long table
was packed with yakisoba (fried noodles), grilled fish, dishes of brightlycoloured pickles, mountains of potato, grated raw daikon, sliced persimmons
and chopped strawberries. We stayed a while, eating and drinking. None of
them spoke English, but they joked with me in Japanese, faces flushed from
the locally brewed rice wine.
It was twilight when we farewelled these good people of Magome. As we
left the courtyard and made our way down to the quiet street, they stood
and raised their paper cups. With the car in sight, Bee took my arm and led
me to a small roadside pond. She climbed down the bank and knelt among
the short reeds then beckoned for me to follow. I crouched beside her,
motionless for a moment. Laughter from the dinner party drifted over the
smoky air of the valley.
“Look, around the edges there, can you see them?”
Among the reeds in the shallows, dozens of tiny tadpoles darted to and fro,
vanishing under clumps of floating algae when Bee’s fingertips broke the
water’s surface.
GOLDEN WEEK
49
I followed her up past a slow-turning waterwheel, onto a levelled gravel courtyard
lined with weeping cherry trees.
50 RIBBONS OF FATE
10
Sitting ‘Seizure’
O
n the morning of my school’s bunkasai (cultural festival), I arrived in
the staffroom to find a yellow ticket on my desk. As I picked it up, I
felt an all-too-familiar presence creep up behind me. It was Takada-sensei,
beaming his usual crooked smile, exposing a bottle-green strand of seaweed
between his top teeth. “Matto-sensei, this ticket is my gift to you. Do you
know sadou?”
In the staffroom, Takada-sensei sat opposite me, almost invisible behind a
tall stack of books that I had purposely and painstakingly piled up over a
period of several months. I had never warmed to him as much as I had to the
other teachers. He had a habit of starting every conversation by explaining
something culture-specific to Japan, then asking if New Zealanders had
anything similar. When I would shrug my shoulders and answer no, he
unfailingly responded by nodding his head with irritating, slow movements,
smiling and saying, “Ah, yes. Just as I thought – this is very special, very
Japanese.” While his immense pride in Japanese culture and history was
admirable, his impromptu mini-lessons on the wonderful ways of Japan and
its people had begun to wear a bit thin. That strand of seaweed was well
and truly stuck in his teeth.
“I know sadou, it is ‘Japanese tea ceremony’,” I said, studiously examining
the ticket.
“Yes, but it is a special Japanese tea ceremony. Only in Japan can you see a
real tea ceremony like sadou.”
“Ah, yes, just as I thought. Very special,” I replied, with a slow nod.
“Today the sadou club students will perform a demonstration. I will take
you to it.” He said this rather conspicuously in Japanese, looking around the
room as he spoke. Several teachers nodded approvingly in robotic unison.
SITTING ‘SEIZURE’
51
Being part of a club was compulsory for every student at our school. The
most popular were the ‘Baseball Club’ and ‘Brass Band Club’. Some lesserknown clubs were the ‘Ham Radio Club’, ‘Abacus Club’ and ‘Tea Ceremony
Club’. In my time at the school I had never had anything to do with the
tea ceremony club, so I was looking forward to the demonstration. In
hindsight, I should have been a tad worried, as attending a traditional tea
ceremony should strike fear into anyone not accustomed to sitting in the
seiza position. ‘Seizure’ would be a better word because it means kneeling
on the ground and tucking your legs underneath you so that your backside
rests on your heels. You soon find yourself trying everything possible to
keep the weight off your ankles. As you ease down for the first time, you
get the sensation that they are about to pop. I was accustomed enough to
sitting like this for short periods, but the snail’s pace of the first kimonoclad student who entered the room to get proceedings underway told me
that I was in serious trouble.
The young student was immaculately dressed and visibly nervous. It took
me a few moments to recognize her as Yuko, one of my ichinensei (firstyear) students. Yuko was a quiet, diligent girl who blushed every time I
approached her in class. Whenever I asked her a question in English she
giggled timidly into her delicately cupped hands. Today, she shuffled silently
into the room, balancing a long ladle on top of a wooden pail. As she passed
through the doorway she brushed against its frame, causing the ladle to
shift slightly to the right. She stopped, and reversed out of the room, reentering shortly after, the ladle balanced perfectly.
While this was happening, I noticed a tiny old woman sitting in the far
corner of the room. She was dressed in full kimono with her grey hair pulled
back in a bun so tight that her face wore a permanent grimace. In a softlylit alcove behind her was an exquisite ikebana (arranged flower) feature of
chrysanthemums. Above that was a large wall hanging with jet-black kanji
(written characters) scrawled on it. Takada-sensei followed my gaze. Sensing
an opportunity to help me understand another special aspect of Japanese
culture, he asked the old lady what was written on the wall hanging. She
turned to face him in a series of protracted and painful looking movements,
and replied that the written characters depicted an ancient and wise proverb.
She bowed deeply towards us and swivelled stiffly back into position. Not
content with that, Takada-sensei followed up with, “But what does it mean?”
She hesitated for a few seconds, bowed awkwardly, apologised several times
and announced that she had not the foggiest idea.
52 RIBBONS OF FATE
During this brief exchange, Yuko had managed to kneel opposite us. She
seemed to be trying to remember what to do next. The old woman’s eyes
now darted to and fro between Yuko’s hands and the tea implements. I
began feeling so nervous for her that I mercifully forgot about the throbbing
pain in my swelling ankles.
With trembling hands, Yuko picked up a bright orange cloth from the
pristine floor. She folded it four times with origami exactness and used it to
polish the rim of an empty, glazed bowl in front of her. She then unfolded
and refolded the cloth, wiped it repeatedly up and down the length of an
already spotless wooden spoon, then tucked it niftily into the folds of her
kimono.
Next, she lifted a pot of boiled water and put it down with the same hand.
The old woman cleared her throat and, without moving her pursed lips,
hissed “Migi, hidari …” (Right, left …). Yuko blushed deeply. She repeated
the manoeuvre, this time with both hands. The old woman twisted her face
even tighter and nodded.
While Yuko swirled the water and tea powder with a bamboo whisk, four
of her classmates shuffled into the room wearing long, silk kimonos. The
girls presented each of us with a bean-paste cake the size of a bottletop, covered in green matcha (finely milled tea powder). To pick up these
morsels, toothpicks were thoughtfully provided on the side of the plate.
Takada-sensei kindly showed me how to stab the cake with the toothpick.
“Like this, Matto-sensei,” he said as he skewered it violently and chomped
down on it chewing noisily without closing his mouth. He seemed to be
doing everything he could to ruin the dignity of this ceremony. I used my
toothpick to slice my cake in two, much to his amusement. The morsel, while
tasty, was sticky and difficult to swallow, and I was the last one to finish. I
hoped I might get my green tea in time to wash down the powdery bean
paste, but the tea was still being whisked.
It was at this point in the ceremony that the most extraordinary thing
happened. Takada-sensei, who was certainly not known for deft timing,
blurted out another question in Japanese. This caused the old woman
to turn her gaze away from Yuko, at which precise moment the poor girl
completely lost her grip on the bamboo whisk and dropped it from a height
of thirty centimetres onto the spotless virgin tatami (traditional floor
matting). I watched, my mouth hanging open, as the whisk bounced off
the floor and was neatly scooped up by Yuko as if she’d done it all her life.
SITTING ‘SEIZURE’
53
Those of us watching remained expressionless. The old woman missed it
completely. I caught the hint of a smile on Yuko’s lips when she realised she
had got away with it.
By the time I eventually received my bowl of tea I was beginning to consider
amputation below the knees. The thought of this enabled me to relax and
begin to enjoy the experience on a whole new level. Takada-sensei informed
me that I should place my left hand beneath the bowl while rotating it twoand-one-quarter turns clockwise with my right. Once that was done I was
free to drink it. Despite the fact that the vessel was about the size of a
regular soup bowl, it contained only four mouthfuls of brilliant green frothy
tea in the bottom of it. After all that preparation, it seemed almost wrong
to guzzle it down in a few seconds. But, as Takada-sensei delighted in telling
me, the splendour lies in the procedure, the movements, the discipline, the
grace of it all – not in the tea itself. It might have been the pain, but I
actually found myself absorbed in what he was telling me.
After the drinking, the procedure was reversed. The empty bowls were
collected by the other girls, who floated in and out of the room throughout
the ceremony. Yuko carefully unfolded and refolded her cloth several times,
wiping various utensils between movements. Just when I thought she had
removed every blemish and mark from the whisk, she would launch into
another round of polishing, transferring the cloth from right to left, folding,
unfolding, left to right, folding. Every fold, every wipe, every hand transfer
was being watched intensely by the old woman. She cleared her throat
repeatedly, whenever something was put slightly out of place and she
squinted and jutted her head forwards like an old crane.
After it was over, I hobbled out into the dazzling afternoon sunlight. Takadasensei patted me on the back and said in Japanese, “She is still a beginner.
That wasn’t real sadou, because all movements in real sadou are perfect.”
I smiled and nodded, but didn’t know quite what to say in return, except,
“That was fun.”
“Yuko-chan ganbarimashita!” (Yuko tried her best!). He reverted to simple
Japanese, perhaps thinking that he might get more of a response. As we
reached the staffroom door he turned to me, bowed slightly and repeated
his point. “I’m sorry that was not so special, Matto-sensei. But today I hope
you maybe learned a little about sadou.”
I sat down at my desk and turned his final comment over in my mind. Not so
special? I recalled Yuko entering the room once, twice, her trembling fingers
54 RIBBONS OF FATE
and flushed cheeks, the absolutely perfect pick up of the bouncing whisk –
the wry smile.
Takada-sensei was already halfway through a steaming hot bowl of rice. He
peered round the wall of books and grinned at me. I nodded, smiled back,
and limped tenderly away to the kitchen for a cup of green tea.
The old woman’s eyes now darted to and fro between Yuko’s hands and the tea
implements. I began feeling so nervous for her that I mercifully forgot about the
throbbing pain in my swelling ankles.
SITTING ‘SEIZURE’
55
11
The Cockroach
I
had been in my apāto (apartment) in Toki for two months and the humid
summer rendered it like a sauna, perfect for insect life. If I stood at a
certain point, it was possible to have my left foot in the kitchen and my
right foot in the living room, my left hand in the toilet cubicle and my right
hand in the shower room and, at a stretch, my head in the laundry. It was
the only place I’ve ever lived where I could literally be everywhere at once. I
enjoyed being alone there, eating and sleeping at any hour I pleased, doing
the cleaning when I felt like it and indulging in long showers whenever the
mood took me. But late one sweltering summer’s evening, after yet another
luxuriously tepid twenty-minute shower, I realised that I wasn’t quite as
alone as I thought.
Clad only in a towel, I delicately took the few steps from one side of the
apartment to the other. I noticed that my fridge door was slightly ajar. It
was a small fridge, and as I bent down to close it, I came face to face with
a gokiburi (cockroach). I froze. The size of it was a shock – it would have
covered the palm of my hand. We locked gazes momentarily before we both
shot off in opposite directions – me to grab the “kokuro-chess” spray, the
cockroach to find a suitable hiding place.
In the moments it took me to find the spray, the goki had disappeared
somewhere into the clutter of my pots and pans cupboard. I had managed
to lose my towel; I stood naked in the middle of my kitchen, a can of noxious
chemicals at the ready. In Japan, not only are gokiburi huge compared to
New Zealand cockroaches, and maybe those of other countries, but they
are darker, shinier, quicker off the mark and worse still, they fly. The thought
of this critter going straight for my jugular, or any other part of me for that
matter, was not good, but neither was the thought of leaving him unfound,
and going to bed, where he might later seek refuge from the heat in the cool
56 RIBBONS OF FATE
sheets of my futon. So, I waited, poised and vulnerable, but ready to deal to
him if he made a run.
Japan is full of bugs, not all of them as creepy as the gokiburi. Hotaru
(fireflies) are revered and romanticised by Japanese culture, and akatonbo
(dragonflies) are widely known as symbols of courage and strength. Closer
to ground level are up to 80 species of the spectacular-looking kabutomushi (stag beetles) – collecting and breeding these colossal insects is a
much-loved, traditional pastime for many Japanese. Then there are the azuki
hebi (harmless brown snakes) that bask in the sun on footpaths, and their
deadly relatives, mamushi (venomous vipers), that slither around marshes
and farmland looking for rats and birds to devour. I once had an encounter
with mukade (poisonous centipede). One of them marched through the
entrance of my classroom one morning, while my students climbed the
walls, screaming. Japan is also home to the world’s largest hornet, known
as ō-suzume-bachi, (giant sparrow bee), a monster with a seven-and-a-half
centimetre wingspan and a hefty stinger that is capable of killing a grown
man.
But I had a beast closer to home to deal with. From below the sink I heard
a faint knocking sound and swung open the cupboard to catch a glimpse
of the creature’s back-end scrambling over my wok and vanishing into black
recesses. I stood for a long time, still naked, plotting the bug’s demise. The
clock struck midnight. I flung open a random cupboard a few times and let
off several long bursts of spray. My mind began to wander. There was by
now a fine mist of bug spray drifting around the apartment. Perhaps it was
hallucinogenic – suddenly I had vivid recall of an experience from years
before.
I was five years old, playing on a steep bank next to our house in Wellington.
The bank plunged down into a deep gully full of thorny blackberry bushes.
As I clutched at handfuls of vines to help me go down the slope, a weta
dropped from the canopy above and landed square on my chest, its spiny
legs sticking to my shirt. Its beady black eyes peered at me, gigantic
mandibles waving at my gaping mouth. Arching two hind legs, it made a
hissing sound. Weta, endemic to New Zealand, are true giants of the insect
world, competing easily with anything Japan has to offer. As a young boy I
was aware of the existence of this craggy critter, but had never encountered
it in the flesh. Now I had one attached and crawling on my chest; instinctively
I shrieked and scrambled up the bank to get help. The more I struggled, the
THE COCKROACH
57
more tightly it clung to me, digging its spikes to avoid falling off my shirt.
My father must have heard my cries, because he was there to meet me as I
rushed through the front door pointing to the weta and sobbing with fear.
Making little fuss, he pried the insect from my shirt and released it onto a
branch of a tree. I never again went down that bank or wore that shirt.
From below the sink I heard a faint knocking
sound and swung open the cupboard to catch
a glimpse of the creature’s back-end scrambling
over my wok and vanishing into black recesses.
It had been twenty years since that experience, but I still held fears of large
insects. Somewhere along the way I had also picked up an aversion to flying
things. The idea of the gokiburi bouncing around my apartment walls was
enough to keep me awake and waiting all night if necessary. After nearly 45
minutes – as I was contemplating wrapping a towel around me – two feelers
slowly poked up over the edge of the cutlery drawer, one of many liberally
sprayed areas, then it made a run down the side of a cupboard door. I aimed
and sprayed, but missed as the fiend weaved across the kitchen floor. As it
bashed around among my footwear in the genkan (entrance) I edged past
and swung the front door open. After a few well-placed kicks at my shoes,
I finally managed to encourage it to scuttle out into the night. I stood in
the doorway, victorious, elated and naked. As I bade my gokiburi oyasumi
(goodnight) and slowly closed the door, a gigantic brown moth buzzed past
me and headed straight for the light in the living room.
58 RIBBONS OF FATE
12
Shirakawa Village
F
our hundred years ago, in a village nestled among the northern
mountains of Japan’s Gifu prefecture, a group of resourceful sonmin
(villagers) set about fixing a problem that had plagued them for generations.
Each winter brought icy, howling winds and thick blanketing snowfalls to the
district known as Shirakawa-go, and for several months a year every family
huddled indoors, living and working peacefully while the gusts whistled down
the slopes of the valley and shook their homes. At night the village folk lay
listening to groaning roofs that struggled to hold up accumulating layers of
snow. By summer, the roofs were in need of repair as a result of the crushing
blankets of snow that for several months had steadily rotted away the once
fresh thatch leaving it weak and soggy. In order to slow the destructive forces
of winter and to lengthen the life of their homes, the villagers of Shirakawago came up with a simple plan. They decided to build houses with roofs so
steep that layers of snow, no matter how sticky or thick, would simply slide
right off. While it was a simple idea, the trick was in the technique, for the
houses – some up to four storeys high – were built without using a single nail.
The life of each house began with erecting enormous support pillars, to
which numerous beams were fixed using specially crafted wooden dowels.
Unsurprisingly, the outstanding feature of each home was the roof. To build
it, up to 200 villagers would clamber onto the 60-degree triangular frame
over a two-day period and affix bundles of straw thatch, bound together by
branches of saplings. Thanks to these steeply pitched roofs, each finished
house resembled a kind of equilateral triangle, and they became known as
gassho-zukuri, a Buddhist term describing the shape of a devotee’s hands
in prayer. The efforts of the villagers met with success. No longer did they
lie awake in fear of being crushed to death; they stretched the five-year
re-thatching cycle to thirty years; and four centuries later, the very same
houses had been added to the exclusive World Heritage List, the site
SHIRAKAWA VILLAGE
59
earmarked for special government protection and attracting interest from
people all over the world. With ingenuity, cooperation and a considerable
amount of straw, the villagers adapted skilfully to their surroundings, and
were able to construct the most ingenious farmhouses in Japan.
Upon entering one of the houses, I was overwhelmed by the smell of
smoke. This was not something I had expected inside a World Heritage
protected home made entirely of flammable material. The smoke came from
a smouldering fire set in a square central hearth in a small room. Spindles
of the stuff floated up and disappeared through a ceiling of thinly slatted
cedar. The slats were caked with generations of soot.
Two men sat quietly by the fire. One of them noticed me, addressed me
in broken English and ordered me to join them. It seemed he wanted to
have a chat. Both were unshaven and red-faced, quite possibly inebriated.
I wondered if they lived in the village, or if they’d missed the bus back to
wherever they belonged. At the hearth, sitting cross-legged, they looked
like a pair of moving mannequins, the sort used to recreate historic scenes.
“Amerika-jin desu ka?” (You’re American?)
“Iie, Nyū-jīrando-jin.” (No, I’m a New Zealander.)
“Nihongo jōzu desu ne …” (Your Japanese is good …).
“Sou, demo nai.”
If there was ever a retort to win you instant friends in Japan, this was it. I
used it often. Literally, it means “I might be good, but I’m not that good.”
This response, after receiving a compliment from a Japanese person, always
caused raucous laughter and guaranteed further praise and a special place
in the hearts of anyone within a five metre radius. On cue, the men laughed
heartily, until their eyes became even more bloodshot and their chortles
disturbed the peace of the empty floors above.
“Sit, sit!” one of them implored, but I politely declined. I knew where
conversations like this were bound to lead: nationality, age, marital status,
blood type, “You like Japanese girl?” and so on. I climbed up a steep staircase
onto the second floor to look around. At the far end of the gloomy room
that ran the length of the house, I could see the men below me through
the slatted floor. I scaled another two flights and stood, alone, under the
meeting point of the giant roof next to the frame of an open window.
Mountains towered above the valley, still snow-capped long after the skifields had been closed for summer. Below, wild mountain violets framed a
sodden rice paddy bathed in mid-afternoon sun.
60 RIBBONS OF FATE
The open fire below and its smoke once served several purposes. The fire
was a good way to keep warm, and essential for cooking, while the smoke
was crucial in preserving the thatch of the roof and wooden frame of the
home, slowing decay by warding off dampness in the winter. But the warmth
from the fire in each home also played an important role in the household’s
annual harvest of silk. The regular, controlled heat helped the family’s
silkworm eggs to hatch, and kept the cold-blooded larvae snug throughout
winter, meaning a single home could produce hundreds of kilograms of silk
each year. Along with silk, paper and gunpowder, the business of producing
rice was essential to villagers. On account of the need to conserve land
for rice cultivation, up to 50 people would live in a single house at a time,
sometimes several generations of the same family. They lived on the ground
floor mostly, leaving the floors above for the silkworms (which were moved
from floor to floor at different times of the year) and for the storage of
tools, such was the size of these nail-free homes.
Today in Japan, Shirakawa-go and nearby Gokayama village are the only
remaining examples of thatch houses of their kind. Families still live in the
original homes, carrying on daily life as normally as they can; housewives
seem oblivious to the throngs of intrusive tourists taking pictures of them
hanging underwear out on the line, and husbands are daily captured on film
while taking out the rubbish and pulling up weeds.
Through the window I watched a group of Japanese tourists snapping
photos of a toddler who knelt on the porch of his three-hundred-year-old
house. While they took pictures they called out to the little fellow. He didn’t
look up once. He was far too absorbed in eating his ice-cream before the
sun melted it.
Upon entering one
of the houses, I was
overwhelmed by the
smell of smoke. This
was not something I
had expected inside a
World Heritage protected home made entirely
of flammable material.
SHIRAKAWA VILLAGE
61
13
Mr K
T
he night I first met Mr K, I was drinking at a small yakitori (grilled
chicken) bar with an Irishman. Jimmy Kearney lived two-and-a-half
hours from me by slow train, in a tiny town called Sakashita. Despite the fact
that the Japanese pronunciation is Sa-kash-ta, Jimmy, with an accent thicker
than a pint of Guinness, liked to say that he lived in ‘sack of shitter’.
“Picked myself up an arubaito,” (part-time job) he said as he plonked two
green apple-flavoured chūhai on the table. This stuff is fruit-flavoured
shōchū, a rice liquor stronger than wine or sake. Jimmy didn’t drink it for
the taste of fruit. We both taught English. He’d recently been asked by
the local board of education to soften his accent, as his students couldn’t
understand him.
“Bit of extra income to go with this teaching lark. You’ll never guess what I’m
doing on my weekends.” He took a long swig and sat back, smiling.
“Voice-over work?”
“Nope.”
“Selling hot sweet potatoes in the street?”
“Not even close.”
“Handing out packets of tissues at train stations?”
“Okay, think about this. You know how Japanese people like to have westernstyle weddings?”
“Yeah, the traditional white wedding. I’ve seen those fake churches around
the place.”
“Well, it’s not the real thing if it doesn’t have a celebrant, right?” He yanked
two pieces of crispy chicken skin off a skewer with his teeth. “Wouldn’t
seem right without your token priest up the front, now would it? A nice
62 RIBBONS OF FATE
gaijin foreigner priest, with all the gears?”
“Jimmy, please tell me you are not pretending to be a priest for money.”
“Why not? It’s cash in the hand, and they don’t seem to mind. All they want
is for me to stand there, mumble some passages in English from a handbook
and pronounce them married. No harm done. I’ve even got one of those
white things priests drape around their necks.”
“That’s terrible. You’ll go straight to hell.”
“Ah,” he said, through a mouthful of asparagus and bacon. He waggled a
long finger at me as he swallowed. “You see, I would be worried about that,”
he drained his glass, leaving several icebergs in the bottom – “if I believed
in God.”
Being an atheist clearly had its benefits.
We were several drinks into our evening when I noticed a Japanese man
staring at me from across the bar. He had close cropped hair that had been
bleached orange, and a black leather jacket slung across one shoulder where
his arm should have been. While his friends joked around the table smoking
and drinking, his eyes were fixed on us.
“How do you think he lost that arm?” Jimmy asked under his breath.
“What arm?”
“The arm that used to be attached to the shoulder of the guy you keep
gawking at.”
“I’m not gawking! He just keeps looking across here.”
“Be careful of guys like him. Guys like him can be really friendly, or really
nasty. Trust me – I’ve made that mistake before.”
If there was one thing about Jimmy, it was his ability to spin a good yarn. He
was the kind of guy that could keep you hanging on his every word, even if
you knew he was fibbing.
“About a month ago I was drinking at my local, a place not unlike this,” he
said as he scanned the room. “Two gents that looked like him, dyed hair,
leather jackets, came over and introduced themselves.”
“In English?”
“Aye, in English. One of them bought me a drink. The two of them got me
quite liquored. I was enjoying myself. Suddenly, one of the guys stood up
and said in English, ‘Do you know samurai?’ So I said, ‘Yeah.’ Then he said,
MR K
63
‘I have a samurai sword at my house. You come to see it.’”
Jimmy paused to order two plates of beef tongues. Again, the guy across
the bar was staring. This time he smirked. I looked away with a slight feeling
of dread.
“So I say, ‘Maybe some time I will.’ And this guy, he smiles at me and puts
his hand firmly on my shoulder.”
Jimmy gripped my shoulder and dug his fingers hard into the bone. I wasn’t
sure if it was an imitation or him being dramatic.
“Then he stands up and says, ‘No. You come now. My house.’ ”
Now it was Jimmy’s turn to glance at our ‘friend’. Looking back down at his
half-empty glass he muttered, “Yep, just like those guys over there.”
“So what happened next?”
“Well, I said, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ And that’s when it happened.”
“This doesn’t sound good.”
“You’ve got that right. Without warning, this guy lurches at me and lifts me
off the ground by my front buttons. His face is bright red, and he starts
screaming at me in Japanese. His mate steps in, and I think he’s going to help
me out. Then he starts up at me, winding up like a flaming jet engine. I have
no idea what they are yelling, but I know it’s definitely not good.”
“So how’d you get out of it?”
“My old mate the chef comes around and gets in between us. He knows me,
so he explains something to them calmly in Japanese and eventually they
pipe down, throw some coins on the counter and leave, slamming the door
behind them.”
“What was it he said?”
“Oh, just something about me being a man of the cloth.”
“Are you serious?”
“Nah, I think he explained it wasn’t a gaijin custom to visit someone’s house
before you know them, and that I hadn’t meant to offend them.”
“It’s scary how they could get so angry over such a small thing.”
“Yeah, but you have to remember, they invited me in front of other Japanese
people, and by turning them down I probably embarrassed them – it’s that
whole ‘saving face’ thing. But what choice did I have? If a strange guy invited
you home to see his samurai sword, what would you say?”
64 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Yeah, point made! So you think they were yakuza (Japanese mafia)?”
“Maybe. Or the local bike gang. What are those guys called?”
“Bōsōzoku.”
“That’s it, those jump-suited boy racer bikers. Well, the thing with those
guys is that if you mess with one, you mess with the group, and they can be
pretty unpleasant.”
“Are you worried about meeting up with them again?
“Why do you think I’m drinking in this hick town?” He smiled and clinked his
glass against mine. “Nah, I’m not worried. Being a foreigner can really get
you off the hook here sometimes.”
The significance of that comment was about to be brought home to me in a
way I could never have imagined.
We downed another couple of drinks and I needed to go to the bathroom.
The air in the bar was now thick with smoke from cigarettes and frying greasy
chicken skin, and the floor was swaying slightly. The toilet was located at
the rear of the restaurant. There was only one, so picking your moment was
important. As I got to it I noticed the door was slightly ajar. With a hefty
pull I swung it wide open.
Facing me was the one-armed man. His pants were around his knees and he
was doubled over, struggling to pull them up. My mind went entirely blank.
Of all the stupid, dangerous, embarrassing things I could have done to the
man, this was undoubtedly the worst. He panicked, scrambling to stand up,
clutching at his jeans frantically with his arm, his face blood red.
The human brain can be amazing in times of crisis. In a millisecond, I mentally
rattled through every Japanese word I knew to do with humble, abject and
sincere apology. However, given my state of slight inebriation, the instant
between finding the word and actually saying it went horribly wrong. As
if slightly detached from my own excruciatingly embarrassed self for a
moment, I heard myself exclaim loudly in Japanese, “Arigatō!” (Thank you!)
I had just walked in on a probable gangster in the loo with his pants down
and thanked him for the experience, at the top of my voice.
I then blurted, “Excuse me! So sorry – please forgive me,” in Japanese. It was
too late. He finished buttoning himself up, grabbed his jacket from the back
of the door and pushed past me back to his table.
I sat, fully clothed on the toilet for a few minutes with my head in my hands.
MR K
65
Eventually, I returned to Jimmy.
“You have complications in there?”
“You could say that.”
After a few minutes, I looked up and noticed Toilet Man was back in his seat,
acting as if nothing had happened. Our eyes met and I bowed apologetically.
Soon after, the waiter approached us and set two green apple chūhai on our
table. “From Mr K,” he said, and nodded towards the one-armed man. Jimmy
looked at the drinks, then at the man, then at me.
“What’s all this about, then?”
“Just drink it and don’t ask,” I said, raising my glass and bobbing my head
respectfully to Mr K.
Mr K then leaned across his table, raised his glass and said in a loud voice,
“Thank you!” Then he laughed long and loud, and repeated over and over,
“Thank you, Thank you! Ari-GA-tō!”
The toilet embarrassment didn’t stop me going back to that bar, but there
was no more drinking with Jimmy. He returned to Ireland not long after.
I often saw Mr K there though. On all of these occasions, at some point
during the night, he would send a drink across to my table and make a kind
of toast with his one arm raised high – “Arigatō! Thank you!”
“Daikichi” yakitori bar.
66 RIBBONS OF FATE
14
Winter Wish
T
he view of the Hirugano Highlands was spectacular. The midwinter
sun glimmered on distant peaks and the crisp air was utterly still.
Standing at the edge of a very steep slope with nowhere to go but down,
I was petrified. I had only just mastered snapping into my skis. Behind
me stood Mizuno-sensei, a senior colleague, tall and charismatic, who
was hosting Bee and me for the weekend at his bessō (second house). A
seasoned skier, he had invited us to Hirugano to drink beer, eat mitarashi
dango (rice flour dumplings covered in sticky soy sauce and sugar syrup)
and to go skiing. It didn’t seem to bother him that I was a complete novice
at the sport.
“Mizuno-sensei, this is probably not a great idea.” My teeth were chattering,
more from nerves than the cold. A gloved hand clasped my shoulder.
“Don’t worry.” His English was rudimentary, but he seemed to know how to
utter some comforting words. “I am a lion, Matto-sensei.”
“A lion? Okay, but I’m not sure how that is going to help me.”
“You are lion cub,” he continued.
“What?”
He smiled at me, but I couldn’t see his eyes behind his mirrored goggles.
“I will protect you.” As he said the word ‘protect’, he gave me an almighty
shove. The last thing I heard was his booming laughter and a loud call of
“Ganbatte!” (Do your best!). After that it was just my shrieks of fear blown
away in the rushing wind as I hurtled towards hundreds of skiers with no
controlled way of stopping. The previous time I’d been skiing was in New
Zealand, where I had ended up crashing into a line of people waiting for
a ride on a ski lift. While disentangling myself from the queue, both my
calf muscles had cramped. I remember people swearing at me while they
WINTER WISH
67
untangled themselves from my skis, leaving me to slide painfully headfirst
down the remainder of the slope.
Now I had to think fast. I was careering straight for a busy car park at
the bottom of the hill. Japanese skiers politely dived for cover as I came
barrelling through them yelling “Sumimasen! Sumimasen!” (Sorry! Sorry!)
Then I saw it.
A Mitsubishi Pajero parked on the opposite side of the small wall of snow
and ice that I was on direct course for. A mother was helping her two children
out of the back door, blissfully unaware of the human torpedo on skis. I
yelled, “Look out! Get out the way!” but it was too late. I hit the wall head
on and slid up and over it. Thankfully, the Pajero was a few inches to my left.
The family was now cowering at the back wheel with their hands over their
heads. I came down on one ski, with the other ski crossed over behind me
and landed in a puddle of icy water and gravel.
After apologising to the woman and her children, I turned to see the faint
outline of Mizuno-sensei, still at the top of the slope, jumping wildly and
pumping his fists in the air.
On the way out of the ski field he delighted in retelling Bee about my wild
ride from his perspective.
“My son, not trust his Japanese father. But today I teach trust. He very
afraid, but good student,” he chuckled, before flailing his arms about,
leaning forward in a downhill stance and shouting “Excuse me!! So sorry!!
Excuse me!!”
“It’s a shame I missed your downhill run,” Bee turned and said with a
sympathetic smile. “Mizuno-sensei tells me you ski very well on one leg,
though.”
I was glad to have given him a laugh, but more relieved to have avoided
broken bones. There was, however, no point in getting mad about it.
Mizuno-sensei was one of my favourite colleagues. At work, students and
teachers alike revered him. His looks defied his age – he had been Bee’s
teacher when she was at high school. Perhaps because of that, he seemed
slightly protective of her in the staffroom, as any teacher might be of a past
student. He was clever, but extremely humble, he wrote poetry, built his own
house, cooked oishī (delicious) Japanese food, and he treated me like a real
friend, rather than a curiosity. On many occasions, poor Bee had sat with
drooping eyelids, translating for us as we waxed lyrical in our two languages
68 RIBBONS OF FATE
about literature, art, history, politics and culture. I appreciated being asked
about deeper topics than the seasons, sport and sheep. In retrospect, I am
certain that Mizuno-sensei knew about me and Bee, but he never once let
on. Not even after rounds of whiskies and sake (rice wine) when the three
of us were huddled around his fireplace engaged in deep and meaningful
conversations. We felt safe with Mizuno-sensei.
The sun had gone and icy winds blew through the streets of Hirugano. We
parked at the entrance to a leafy walking track and Mizuno-sensei bought
us a hot can of Nittoh Royal Milk tea from a nearby vending machine. We
followed him a short distance up the track to a small pond and a signpost.
A stream slowly trickled from the pool down towards the car park. Bee
translated for me, as Mizuno-sensei explained.
“He says this is the actual source of the Nagara River, a famous river in
Japan.”
As Bee spoke, Mizuno-sensei hunched down and scanned the damp ground,
before picking a three-pronged leaf. He held the leaf out to me and explained
something in Japanese. I took it and looked at Bee.
“He says you should drop the leaf in the stream and make a wish.”
Mizuno-sensei grinned widely. “Go!” he said with authority.
I dropped the leaf and made a wish. It swirled around for a few seconds
before being carried gently downstream. Mizuno-sensei’s leaf followed soon
after. He took a long swig from his tea and came over to me. His breath
was steamy in the cool air. He said a few words to Bee, patted me on the
back warmly and motioned for us to head back to the car. We followed him
down the track under a dreary sky. As we trudged, Bee clasped my arm and
uttered quietly, “He said he wishes that both leaves make it all the way to
the Pacific Ocean.”
I dropped the leaf and made a
wish. It swirled around for a few
seconds before being carried
gently downstream. Mizunosensei’s leaf followed soon after.
WINTER WISH
69
15
The Atomic Dome
I
n the shadow of Hiroshima’s Genbaku (Atomic) Dome, Bee and I noticed a
little girl sitting on a low concrete wall. While her parents snapped photos
nearby, she swung her legs from side to side and sang to herself, happily
ignorant that the sky directly above her had once been split asunder in one
of the most violent explosions in world history.
On the morning of August 6, in 1945, a boy of ten named Shigeru Orimen
picked up his bento (lunchbox) and set off for work. He and his classmates
were part of a volunteer party, helping to demolish buildings at Nakajimashinmachi in order to make fire breaks. In this time of strict food rationing,
Shigeru always looked forward to lunchtime. That day, his mother had
lovingly packed daikon (white radish), potatoes, rice and barley into his small
metal bento box. Her husband and older son were away fighting on the front,
so she liked to put extra time and love into preparing young Shigeru’s lunch.
As he began work in the early morning sunshine, Shigeru was unaware of
a four-ton bomb nicknamed “Little Boy” hurtling down towards him – a
bomb that would instantly end his life and that of 66,000 others. In the
following days, months and years, over 100,000 more innocent people
would gradually succumb to the after-effects of the nuclear explosion.
At 8:15 a.m., 580 metres above Hiroshima’s Industrial Promotion Hall,
Little Boy exploded at a temperature far hotter than the surface of the sun,
instantly destroying everything within a three-kilometre radius. The building
at the centre of it all is now named the Genbaku – or Atomic – Dome. It was
situated directly below the explosion, so the fireball entered the building
through the roof. As a result of this direct downward blast a portion of the
walls remained standing.
A few days after Little Boy fell on Hiroshima, Shigeru’s distraught mother
arrived at Nakajima-shinmachi to look for her son. Walking slowly past a line
70 RIBBONS OF FATE
of small, burnt bodies, she stopped instinctively in front of one. She noticed
the arms of this child protectively clutching something, and carefully she
turned the body over. Wrapped in the charred remains of two arms was a
melted metal box, filled with the blackened remains of a lunch – the lunch
that she had packed. On the inside of the lid, his surname, Orimen, was
clearly visible. His last act had been to clutch his lunch box to his stomach.
Bee and I sat watching dozens of children running and playing around
the skeletal remains of the building before we headed towards the open
expanse of the Peace Park. The sun slid behind a heavy bank of clouds and a
slow trickle of rain soon became a downpour. The path leading back to the
Genbaku Dome became a bright river of bobbing umbrellas. We headed for
shelter at the A-bomb museum.
There were some shocking exhibits, in particular a section of concrete wall
with glass shards embedded deeply within it. The wall had been over two
kilometres from the hypocentre of the blast. There was a human shadow
on concrete steps, frozen in time by the intensely bright explosion. A bent
and melted pair of reading glasses that had been fused to the ridge of the
nose of a burns victim. There was a tricycle, whose three-year-old rider
died of burns from the blast. The boy’s grief-stricken father had buried
his son together with the bike in his backyard. Forty years later the boy’s
remains were dug up for transfer to a family grave, and the charred and
rusted tricycle was loaned to the museum.
Although there was an immense crowd inside, it was eerily quiet as people
stood transfixed before television screens and photographs of the victims
and their belongings.
From the moment we left, I remember mostly feeling angry. I was upset at
lunch because the fried rice wasn’t fried properly. I was irritated by the waiter
who kept replenishing my green tea after every single sip. I was enraged
when the person serving me at the Lotteria fast-food joint that afternoon
got my order wrong. I was irate that we had to wait thirty minutes to get into
an okonomiyaki restaurant for dinner when I didn’t even want okonomiyaki.
I couldn’t have cared less that the savoury pancake dish of cabbage, batter,
pork and other assorted ingredients was a Hiroshima specialty. I was
frustrated that everything I jotted in my notebook was dull and uninspired.
Growing up, I had read about the bombing. I knew the story of Sadako and
her thousand paper cranes. Being in the place for real, hearing and seeing
so many shocking accounts of the blast victims who had been annihilated
was deeply touching – and distressing.
THE ATOMIC DOME
71
When people look back at the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
some cite the war-time atrocities of the Japanese and argue that the
bombings were necessary to force Japan’s surrender. Some refer to the
invasion of mainland Japan that would have otherwise taken place, and the
lives of over a million allied soldiers that were potentially saved. Others
think of it as a large-scale US experiment to gauge the effectiveness of
a new weapon to scare Stalin and keep the Russians in their place. After
my visit to Hiroshima and the Peace Museum though, I think mostly about
young Shigeru and the special lunch he never ate.
The Genbaku Dome was situated directly below the explosion, so the fireball
entered the building through the roof. As a result of this direct downward blast
a portion of the walls remained standing.
72 RIBBONS OF FATE
16
Hayashi-sensei
H
ayashi-sensei was an English language team-teaching colleague. He
had a wispy, undeveloped moustache, and on his thin, mouse-like
face he wore dark aviator-style sunglasses that he never took off. Although
he was an English teacher, he didn’t seem to speak a word of the language.
In fact he hardly spoke to anyone, even in Japanese. When we first began
team-teaching I was more than a little nervous.
After a few words to the students to open the class, he glanced at me
through his shades and gestured as if to say “they’re all yours”, then he
wandered down to the back of the room to observe. I had created handouts
with pictures of various food items on them. I passed them around. The
topic was “Likes and Dislikes”. The kids, usually an enthusiastic bunch,
seemed nervous to have Hayashi-sensei standing at the back of the class. I
tried to get them to volunteer answers in English, but after a few desperate
minutes I resorted to my trick of pulling a numbered chopstick from a jar.
“Number 32! Miki, that’s you, please stand up and tell me something that
you like and something that you don’t like.”
She slowly stood up.
“I like …” she began, turning to her friend pleadingly, who offered an answer
under her breath. “Banana,” Miki finally said in a half-whisper.
“Okay, that’s great, Miki. Now what is something that you don’t like?”
Her friend’s head plonked onto the desk. Miki was stranded. She stared
awkwardly at me. Hayashi-sensei stood down the back, chewing on his lip,
glaring through his dark, vacant sunglasses. In this kind of stalled situation,
I often resorted to speaking Japanese. I wasn’t supposed to (it was in my
contract) but things were getting desperate, and my odd way of speaking
Japanese often got a smile out of the students, if nothing else.
HAYASHI-SENSEI
73
“Watashi wa ringo ga suki desu,” (I like apples.) I said. This seemed to
perk them up. I continued: “Dakedo, kyūri ga kirai desu.” (But I don’t like
cucumbers.) A few laughs, and a ghost of a smile from Hayashi-sensei. This
seemed to be doing the trick. I went on with more confidence: “Watashi
wa natto DAIKIRAI desu!” (I HATE natto!) Natto is a concoction of sticky
fermented beans that many Japanese people love, but which smells
like unwashed long-used woollen socks. To follow up, I tried to think of
something I really loved. The idea of octopus came to mind. Since coming
to Japan to live I had become fond of eating octopus (usually deep fried)
and I was sure this would surprise the class. Conjuring up my best and most
enthusiastic Japanese, I said loudly “Boku wa, TAMA daisuki da yo!”
There was a stunned silence. Riotous laughter followed. The girls covered
their faces and three boys fell off their chairs, one after the other. I
was perplexed – surely the fact I loved eating octopus couldn’t be that
outrageous. I glanced at Hayashi-sensei. He shook his head slowly from side
to side and turned away from me. What on earth had I said? No one was
going to be brave enough to tell me. I spent twenty minutes walking around
the class as the students worked in groups, but each time I went near them,
especially the girls, they recoiled in horror. The one exception was the boy
who high-fived me, but I wasn’t sure why.
When the bell sounded it was a relief for all.
“Please stand up, everyone.”
The students seemed keener than usual to get out of the class today.
“Goodbye, see you tomorrow.”
“Goodbye, Matto-sensei” they groaned.
Hayashi-sensei was waiting for me as I left the room. We walked down the
stairs to the ground floor and headed for the staffroom.
For the first time, perhaps ever, he spoke in English.
“Matto-sensei, you should be careful when speaking Japanese in class.”
“Maybe you’re right. I’m not sure what happened back there. Why should
confessing to liking octopus be so surprising?” I replied, frustrated.
“You didn’t say octopus. Octopus is tako.” Two slender eyebrows appeared
over the rims of his shades.
I shook my head.
“You said tama. This is short for kintama – ‘golden eggs’.”
74 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Okay, so maybe I like golden eggs,” I shrugged.
“Kintama,” he said, with a wry smile, “is slang for ‘testicles’, Matto-sensei.”
A couple of months later I was teaching a different group of students,
while Hayashi-sensei stood in his usual spot at the back of the class, doing
a stunning impersonation of a Japanese Emperor. Amazingly, I still hadn’t
seen his eyes, and I was actually beginning to get comfortable with his
shades and moustache. I felt we had both got over the ‘tama’ incident. It
seemed Hayashi-sensei was beginning to respect my way of teaching and
the effort I put in, to provide quality learning materials for the students
and to engage them in English that was both fun and educational. Today, I
was teaching “how to do a self-introduction in English”. I had demonstrated
by introducing myself, complete with pictures of my family and home,
back in Wellington, New Zealand. Now it was the students’ turn. All they
had to do was stand up, say their name, how old they were, how many
family members they had, and one interesting thing about themselves.
We had moved halfway around the class, and I had been impressed by
the number of competent introductions. Now though, it was Yūto’s turn.
Yūto was captain of the baseball team, tall, cool and popular with the
girls. He didn’t enjoy English much, and he was often disruptive in class,
talking with his friends and refusing to do what was asked of him. When
I requested that he do his self-introduction, he sat and smiled, ignoring
me. I repeated the instruction, but again got a disrespectful response.
I wasn’t going to stand for it this time. I blurted out angrily for him to
stand up immediately and perform a self-introduction: “Yūto-kun, ima
tatte kudasai! Jisatsu shimasu yo!”
There was an audible intake of breath from the group, and Yūto’s face
turned a deep shade of crimson. He stared intensely at his desk and didn’t
flinch. The students averted their eyes from me. Hayashi-sensei sprang to
the front of the class and knelt down next to Yūto, speaking rapidly and
firmly in Japanese. I’d never seen him move so quickly. He then approached
me and asked me to continue the exercise without Yūto’s input.
After class I thanked Hayashi-sensei for dealing with Yūto. As we stood in
the foyer of the classroom, heavy rain pelted against the windows. I began
to justify raising my voice in Japanese, and he looked at me, confused, for
a second.
“Matto-sensei, you wanted to ask Yūto to do a self-introduction,” he began.
“Self introduction is jikoshōkai, not jisatsu.”
HAYASHI-SENSEI
75
“Ah, I see. Then what did I tell Yūto to do?” A dreadful sense of déjà vu
descended on me.
He pushed his sunglasses high onto the bridge of his nose with his index
finger.
“Commit suicide,” he said.
That afternoon, during the school cleaning period, I spied Yūto standing
at Hayashi-sensei’s desk, head bent, looking contrite. I approached him
and apologised for the incident during class, then asked Hayashi-sensei to
explain to the poor boy that my choice of words had been a terrible and
unintentional mistake. Yūto then expressed some regret to me in English,
and we shook hands. He never once gave me trouble again during a lesson,
and I, in return, never strayed far from English during class – at least not in
the presence of Hayashi-sensei.
The last meaningful conversation I ever had with Hayashi-sensei was at the
bōnenkai (end-of-year teachers’ party). He was part of a small group of
teachers who were to be transferred to another high school, so we were
sending them off with a banquet at a local restaurant. The dinner began as
a semi-formal affair. We sat at low tables on the tatami (traditional Japanese
floor mats) and ate a full-course meal of sashimi (raw fish), tofu, crayfish,
assorted grilled meat and salted fish. The beer was served from long-neck
bottles, poured into 200ml glasses that forever needed refilling. After the
meal, teachers typically moved around the tables to pour drinks for each
other and chat, joke and laugh.
After pouring me a beer, the deputy-principal had just shuffled off when I
espied Hayashi-sensei alone at the far end of the table. Grabbing a fresh
bottle of lager I sat down opposite him. In spite of the fact it was late in the
evening and the room was dimly lit, he was wearing his dark glasses.
“Matto-sensei, welcome,” he smiled, and cleared a space for the bottle. He
poured me a glass and I returned the favour.
“Thank you for an interesting year,” I said, as I clinked my glass against his.
“Yes, it was a very interesting year.”
“So, Hayashi-sensei, tell me something about yourself, I would like to hear
about your life,” I said.
He smiled and thought for a moment. “Ah, I like beetles,” he offered. “I’ve
liked beetles ever since I was a boy.”
“Oh really?
76 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Yes, I have quite a large collection.”
I refilled his glass, he emptied it.
“Where do you go to find beetles?” I asked.
He thought for a moment before replying: “These days, mostly in secondhand music stores.” Then he laughed, and a set of crooked, yellow teeth
appeared under his moustache. It was the first time I had seen them.
“Ah, the Beatles! I like them, too.” I said. “What about your family? Can you
tell me about them?”
“I have a cat and a wife,” he said dreamily.
“Oh, what’s her name?”
“Scruffy”, he said, only it came out ‘Scluffy’.
I smiled and started to top his beer up, but from somewhere on the table
he’d already managed to unearth a small bottle of sake and two tiny cups.
He filled them until they overflowed onto the table cloth, and passed one
to me.
“Well, what do you normally do on the weekends? Like tomorrow, what will
you do?”
“Let’s see … we enjoy listening to records and walking beside the river,” he
said.
“Do you have any children?” I asked.
“No, my wife only wanted a cat.”
“Your wife sounds interesting.” I pictured the two of them at home and
wondered if he ever took his glasses off for her. After a respectful moment I
asked, “What’s she like?”
“Well, she is very pretty. She always greets me at the door when I get home.”
He glanced anxiously around for another flask of sake as he emptied its
dregs into my cup.
“That is very thoughtful of her!” I said.
“Yes, I think she is very Japanese.”
“Sounds like it.”
“She is also very affectionate.” He then winked, and took a rather dramatic
swig from his teeny cup.
“Oh, I see. Well, you are a lucky man.”
HAYASHI-SENSEI
77
“Yes, we have a lot of fun together. She is very, ah, how do you say… playful.
I think I have trained her well.”
I rather quickly drained my cup and wondered quite what I had started here.
What else was he about to divulge?
“Yes, she has such a satisfied life,” he said. I could only imagine what his eyes
were doing behind those glasses. “On cold nights,” he continued, “my wife
even lets her sleep on the end of our futon.”
I smiled inwardly at the cross purposes.
Then, without warning, he leaned in close, so the end of his tie was
drowning in soy sauce. He planted both hands on my shoulders and said,
quite unexpectedly, “Matto-sensei … you lost your father.”
I didn’t know what to say for a second. He reached up and carefully took his
glasses off so I could see his eyes for the first time. They were kind eyes –
genuine, honest and deep. It was a mystery why he kept them hidden.
“For a boy to lose a father it is a terrible thing,” he said. “A terrible thing.”
His eyes were now welling up with tears. Perhaps he was speaking from
experience.
“Matto,” he continued, “you are a good teacher.”
“Thank you, that means a lot,” I replied.
Now he leaned in so close I could feel the bristles of his moustache on the
outside of my ear.
“I think you will be happy, Matto-sensei.”
He placed his glasses back on, and with his hands cupped behind his head,
he lay back on the tatami and sank straight into a drunken sleep.
Hayashi-sensei stood in his usual spot at
the back of the class, doing a stunning
impersonation of a Japanese Emperor.
78 RIBBONS OF FATE
17
The Love Hotel
L
ove hotels in Japan cater for those in need of discreet liaisons or
married couples wanting to have a few hours to themselves away from
the pressures of parenthood and family life. Such establishments can be
found in all Japanese cities. They are usually highly conspicuous in their
loud colour and tacky design, with gigantic roof-top flashing hearts or
oversized neon coconut trees. Couples can secure a room for amounts of
time ranging from 15 minutes (for lunchtime business meetings) or up to a
whole night for lovers wishing to make it last.
On a warm July night, Bee and I embarked on a mission to investigate a love
hotel. Glancing in my rear-view mirror to make sure no one was following us,
I took a highway off-ramp and we coasted down a narrow street towards a
rabu hoteru (love hotel) called Happy Dream, filled with nervous anticipation.
As we circled the building looking for a parking spot, I noticed that most
cars had large metal sheets with pink and yellow stripes resting against
their front grills. Bee informed me that these coverings were for customers
anxious to hide their registration plates. A cunning plan, but I couldn’t help
thinking a quick glance behind the metal mask would immediately confirm
the suspicions of spouses on the prowl. The registration plate covers were
the first of many super-discreet devices we were to encounter that evening.
I found a free parking space. We got out and sneaked around the car like
special agents about to rescue a group of hostages. As I stealthily rounded
the rear of the vehicle I noticed that Bee had a large convenience-store bag
full of munchies and bottles of drink.
“What’ve you got those for?” I whispered.
“Just in case,” she answered, and with a slight wiggle of the nose she was
inside the main building.
Upon entering the foyer I noticed a distinct lack of desk staff. Instead, on
THE LOVE HOTEL
79
the wall behind the counter, there was a big photo chart of all of the hotel
rooms. Two vacant rooms were backlit, giving us a choice of where to spend
the night. We decided on room 407, and as I pressed the corresponding
button on the desk with a control panel like on a captain’s bridge the
backlighting faded from the wall-chart and a flashing arrow to my left
indicated that we should enter the waiting lift. So far so good; we had not
been seen by a soul. The operation was going exactly to plan. We stepped
into the lift and began to ascend. On the walls were some diagrams of what
seemed to be a beach-style lilo mattress being used by a couple of women,
who were demonstrating various captivating positional manoeuvres. So
intriguing were these diagrams to Bee that soon after leaving the lift I found
myself standing completely alone in a dark corridor. The only real light to
be seen was coming from a nearby sign with a flashing arrow and number
407. Bee and the lift were descending once again to the ground floor. For
a second I imagined I had been the victim of a cruel joke, stranded for the
night in a love hotel by myself. Things got even worse when a door opposite
me swung open to reveal a man and a woman – she was still buttoning
herself up! I frantically tried to look busy, becoming engrossed in a poster
on the wall which was written entirely in Japanese, save for the words ‘Joy’
and ‘Video’, and with a picture of a man in a Superman-style cape straddling
some sort of missile or rocket ship. They must have thought I was some sort
of pervert, standing in a shady corridor waiting for couples to leave their
room so I could leer at them. Thankfully they seemed as embarrassed as I
was, and shuffled past to a second lift just around the corner. Meanwhile,
Bee was on her way back up.
Without a word she slipped out of the lift and strode past me to the door
of 407. The size of the room immediately surprised me. It was bigger than
my entire apartment. Some of the room contents were also unexpected,
particularly the Nintendo game console and karaoke unit. I examined the
contents of the mini-vending machine on the counter. There were gadgets
in there for which I couldn’t actually conceive of legitimate uses, no matter
how much prior knowledge and experience I mustered. I opted for safety
and opened the fridge. Similar battery-powered items were packed in there
as well, leaving the unit entirely lacking in any consumable items whatsoever.
From her bag of goodies, Bee produced a nice bottle of French red, which
we set about drinking out of tea cups. We then toasted our semi-successful
entry to the hotel. I used this opportunity to tell her about the incident in
the corridor which she seemed to find a little too hilarious for my comfort.
80 RIBBONS OF FATE
We discovered that by turning the television on, a pink neon light was activated
above the bed. This gave the room a cosy glow, and I was disappointed we
could not get the light to work without the television. It would have been a
great help if one needed to go to the toilet in the middle of the night. The
selection of programmes was great: Japanese drama, soccer, golf, blue movie,
motor racing, blue movie, more drama, blue movie and so on. I was interested
in the motor racing; however Bee convinced me that we should investigate
all the channels.
It must be said here that pornography positively pervades the darker side of
Japanese society. For those looking for it, it’s everywhere. Or in some cases
it’s there when you’re not looking for it. Only a week before, I had been
sitting beside a man on the bullet train who spent the entire time flicking
through an extremely explicit comic book without any regard for the woman
on the other side of him or the poor young girl serving him coffee and
sandwiches. It seems that because the explicit content is in comic form it is
socially acceptable, or at least goes unchallenged. Indeed one of the major
social problems that you do not often hear about in Japan is schoolgirl
prostitution, much of which happens in places like the Happy Dream.
In order for adult movies to be legally sold and rented, all the explicit parts
have to be blurred out – the showing of the private parts is illegal in Japan.
So much so, that after a few minutes I found that my intense squinting was
beginning to give me a headache.
I was filled with angst the next morning about how we would pay and then
get out of the place without being seen by anyone. The challenge of going
unseen was by now rather addictive: it fulfilled some sort of secret desire
in me to do something totally anonymously in a country where everything I
did, including buying cereal at the local supermarket, was keenly observed
by children and students, and even little old ladies, who all wore a stunned
expression as if conducting a problem-free transaction at the checkout
counter was something they had never expected from such an awkward
foreign-looking person.
Bee called the front desk to say we were checking out and within minutes
our television screen flashed up a display of our entry and exit times and
subsequent room charge. This, I guessed, was to avoid having to wait at the
counter while the cashier carefully tallied up the bill. We made it safely to
the elevator and descended to the ground floor where I hoped there would
be no queue of customers. As I stepped into the foyer I was startled by a
THE LOVE HOTEL
81
woman’s voice coming from behind a black screen to my right. Two small and
wrinkled hands appeared from the bottom of the screen and I carefully slid
the cash into their grasp.
Now, for those who feel that I have left out a lot of important information,
allow me to finish with an old Japanese proverb: Sugitaru wa oyobazaru ga
gotoshi. / Too much is as bad as too little …

Love Hotels are usually highly conspicuous
in their loud colour and tacky design, with
gigantic roof-top flashing hearts or oversized
neon coconut trees. Photo by Allan Murphy.
82 RIBBONS OF FATE
18
The Red Caps
I
t was a stifling Sunday afternoon. Bee and I had been together for over
a year now, but still none of our colleagues or students knew. Being
discovered put Bee at risk of being transferred at the end of the year, and
the scandal that it could have sparked among the parents of our students
was just not worth the risk. One problem with keeping things quiet was that
it meant we had to be careful not to be spotted together on the weekends
in our small city of Toki. As we sat under the air conditioner in my apartment
sipping chilled green tea the afternoon ticked by.
“Let’s go to the movies,” Bee suddenly enthused.
I’d never been to a movie theatre in Japan, and the thought of sitting in a
cool, dark room for two hours seemed like a brilliant idea. According to Bee,
the theatre was in Komaki City, a 40-minute drive south towards Nagoya,
where we’d be safe from the prying eyes of our students.
“It’s somewhere near a bowling alley,” she said with a confidence I didn’t
think to challenge. We set off with a map, which I was convinced would be
useless, as most streets in Japan don’t have names. And the identification of
buildings, if they do have numbers, seems random. Number 132 can be right
next to number 45 and opposite number 4. In the next life, I pray I don’t
come back as a bike courier in Japan. Most people seem to navigate their
way around the city from memory or by global positioning satellite. We had
neither, and as we neared the outskirts of Komaki City our 90-minute buffer
started to look tight.
“Okay, we are here, so where is this bowling alley of yours?”
“Go through twelve traffic lights …”
“What if they’re red?”
“What?”
THE RED CAPS
83
“Red?”
“What’s red?”
“The lights.”
“No that’s orange. Orange means hurry up.”
“One down, eleven to go ...”
“No, that was a minor light, I mean 12 major ones.”
“What’s the difference?”
“You can’t tell the difference?”
“They are traffic lights. How do you tell the difference?”
“I look at the map. They’re marked on the map.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
While I launched into a tirade about the scant logic of all things Japanese,
Bee continued to do an incredibly convincing impression of someone who
knew exactly where she was going. She acted this part so well that after a
while I relaxed and started to enjoy the scenery. Trees lining the road were
wilting in the hazy heat as we found ourselves passing back out of the city
and into what looked suspiciously like countryside.
“Seems like we’re heading out the other side …”
“So it does.”
Several rice paddies whizzed by.
“I haven’t seen a traffic light for a while ...”
Bee was either too engrossed in her map, or choosing not to hear me.
A few minutes later we arrived at a sign: “Welcome to Ichinomiya City.” I
pulled over outside a defunct karaoke bar named “Happy Paradise.” It had
seen happier days.
“Strange place for a movie theatre …”
“What are you trying to say?”
“Nothing.”
We sat in silence for a minute. Our movie started in just under thirty minutes.
“What shall we do then?” I asked.
“You should ask for directions at that gas station.” She pointed to a station
about 500 metres up the road.
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“You want me to ask?”
“Yeah, maybe you’ll do a better job of getting us there.” She folded the map
seven times and crammed it violently into the glove box.
As soon as we pulled into the forecourt, several uniformed men in large
red caps surrounded the car. It was as if we’d just crossed some kind of
threshold into a Super Mario Brothers game.
“Hello! Welcome! Fill her up? How’s your ash tray? Windows need a clean?”
There were questions in Japanese flying in all directions. In my best pidgin
Japanese I tried to make clear that we needed directions to the movies. As
one of the men explained to us how to find the movie complex, the other
two polished our wing mirrors and cleaned our front and back windscreen
wiper blades. I took the opportunity to fill up with petrol, and handed over
a ¥5000 note to one of the red caps. While I waited for him to return with
my change, a diminutive elderly man in an oversized hat suddenly appeared
at my window and flashed me a toothy grin. He asked for forgiveness before
leaning through the window and giving the dashboard a thorough wipe with
his handkerchief. As he stepped away, the other attendant returned with my
change. He also produced a map that he had drawn on, showing us how to
get to the movie theatre.
“Hidari,” (left) he said, pointing to where we should head. He ran to the edge
of the forecourt to guide me out, while his teammates, caps in hands, stood
either side of the car, bowing graciously. I pulled onto the verge of the road,
and the red-cap leader danced out into oncoming traffic with one arm up
to stop the cars, the other arm wheeling like a windmill for me to go. It was
an athletic performance, almost robotic. The drivers of the other vehicles
stopped and waited patiently as I pulled out in front of them. Driving away, I
could see in my mirror the shrinking figure of the man in the red cap bowing
deeply at the roadside, his performance over, perfectly executed.
For all the strange logic of the place, I couldn’t help appreciating the
dedication to great service. Thanks to the red caps, we got to the movie
with five minutes to spare.
We bought tickets to The Time Machine, a modern adaptation of the H.G.
Wells classic I had read as a youngster. By the time we went into the theatre,
it was jam-packed, so we had to sit right at the front. We were so close to
the screen that the peak of my cap blocked my view. After a while I began to
relax into the plush seat and enjoy the cool air.
THE RED CAPS
85
It was a good story. The main character had just travelled 800,000 years
into the future. He was coming to after suffering a serious knock to the head,
and was about to meet his futuristic hosts. You could sense the tension
rising. The audience was captivated. But at that precise moment, without
any warning, the image on the screen changed and a pair of cartoon capedcrusaders – bearing a remarkable similarity to the red caps – had hijacked
the story. As laser bolts blasted from their hands and they flew round in
tight circles I wondered what an earth was going on. Not one person near
me flinched. Everyone just sat there passively watching what was obviously
an entirely different movie. Bee smiled, bemused. I turned round to look
at the rows of people behind us. A few were chuckling and talking, but
no one seemed to be taking any action. In fact, they seemed genuinely
embarrassed at the turn of events. A minute later the curtains came down.
A thin, pale Japanese man with oversized glasses came skidding down the
aisle and began to bow repeatedly, apologising, informing us that the movie
had indeed suffered a technical problem. He scuttled away covered in deep
shame before returning and to assure us with more apologies that everyone
in the theatre would receive a free ticket as we left. The curtains rose once
more and The Time Machine resumed.
Driving home, I made a mental note of all the major and minor traffic lights.
Bee and I returned several times to the movies in Komaki City over the
following year. Each time, full forecourt service from the red caps made for
the perfect curtain raiser.
Driving away, I could see in my mirror
the shrinking figure of the man in the red
cap bowing deeply at the roadside, his
performance over, perfectly executed.
86 RIBBONS OF FATE
19 The Ghost of Yoneyama
J
apanese people often recommended I visit Hokkaido, the large island at
the top of Japan. “It’s very much like New Zealand,” they would say. “So
many cows and sheep, you really must go there to see how beautiful it is.”
I took the opportunity one summer when Bee travelled to Europe for three
weeks. She courageously lent me her car, and I convinced Tom, a friend who
was teaching English at another local high school, to come with me. Tom was
an American, who in less than 12 months had managed to master enough
Japanese to put a two-year veteran like me to shame. Our mission was to
reach the northernmost point in Japan, Cape Soya.
We departed on an afternoon in early August. It was hot enough to melt
tarmac, and our silver kei (undersized) car was packed with camping gear,
food and beer. Our first milestone would be the coastal port of Aomori on
the main island of Honshū, two days drive north, where we would catch a car
ferry to Hakodate City. It was a long day coasting up the Chuo expressway
past Nagano and through Nīgata on Honshū’s Japan Sea coast. Near the tiny
seaside settlement of Yoneyama we turned off the expressway and followed
a narrow rural road that hugged the coast. Beside a one-lane bridge a dusty
side road dropped steeply to a dry river plain. We set up camp by the river.
As the sun set we reclined in deck chairs, sipping half-litre cans of Kirin
lager, nibbling on convenience store ‘sea-chicken’ (tuna) sandwiches and
swatting at the local mosquitoes.
The singing of crickets echoed around the river basin. The sky turned smoky
black and for the first time in ages I could see stars. It was then I realised we
hadn’t brought any lamps or torches with us. By now I couldn’t actually see
Tom, even though he was only a few feet away.
“Hope we are allowed to camp down here.” Tom’s voice had a solemn edge
to it, drifting out of the darkness.
THE GHOST OF YONEYAMA
87
“We should be fine. Besides, who’s going to see us in this lack of light?”
“Dorotabo, maybe.”
“What?”
“You don’t know about dorotabo?”
“Go on.” I leaned forward and waved a fresh can of beer around until I felt it
touch him. It disappeared immediately.
“Dorotabo …” Tom said as he cracked opened his can, “… is the name for a
ghoulish farmer who comes back in the afterlife to protect his old plot. They
say dorotabo will only appear at night, and will wander around screaming
and moaning for their land.”
We sat in silence for a good half minute. It had become distinctly chilly. All
I could hear was the far-off croaking of frogs.
“You want to know the most terrifying thing about dorotabo?”
“Not really.”
“They aren’t like your everyday spirits, the ones you can put your hand
through. Dorotabo manifest themselves as bona fide, solid phantoms.
They’re the real deal.”
As he said this, a bony hand clasped my upper arm and latched on tight,
shaking me, spilling my beer.
“You idiot! That’s not funny!” I shouted, with undisguised panic.
The hand patted me on the head. I heard Tom shuffle backwards and ease
into his chair.
We continued drinking and soaking up the peace and quiet, until he
suddenly blurted, “What the heck is that light out there?”
Not one to be fooled twice, I answered, “Yeah, nice try.”
“No, seriously, what is that?” Now it was his turn to sound scared.
About 30 metres in front of us, like a soul from another world, a ghostly
orange orb hovered. Soon after, another one cut a swathe through the inky
darkness, followed by a few more, gliding silently in the direction of the sea.
We were both spooked. Was a dorotabo about to come calling? As far as
we knew, there was no one else around for miles. We scrambled over to the
riverbank and watched a flotilla of luminous Will-o’-the-wisps sail past. Then
we heard the rumble of an engine. Two headlights bounced towards us down
the rutted path from the one-lane bridge. We fumbled, hands outstretched,
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back to our chairs and sat tight, fearing the worst. For a second or two our
tents were illuminated. A flat-deck truck pulled up within spitting distance, a
dark figure climbing out and slamming the door.
It was pitch-black again. Slow footsteps trudged straight towards us. As
they neared, Tom broke the silence.
“Konbanwa …” (Good evening). He sounded like a scared little kid. The
footsteps stopped then walked directly into our midst. A torch light flicked
on to reveal the kindly face of an elderly man carrying a bulky steel toolbox
and several reels of fishing line.
“Ah, konbanwa, ojama shimasu! ” (Oh, good evening, sorry for intruding!).
He bowed, turned abruptly and traipsed off in the direction of the riverbank,
miraculously avoiding several guy ropes and the chilly bin.
We watched as the fisherman baited his lines by torchlight. Attached to
the lines were small lanterns, each giving off a warm orange glow once lit.
He gently cast his lines from the water’s edge. The lanterns flickered and
bobbed up and down and were slowly carried away by the river current.
I awoke to the potsu-potsu (pitter-patter) of rain on canvas. It was half past six.
I was surprised to find four other campsites had sprung up around ours during
our slumber. A few dozen metres farther up the river bank a father and son
were halfway through a breakfast of steaming hot rice wrapped in nori (dried
sheets of seaweed). I waved and they bowed back in perfect synchronicity.
Puddles of rain had gathered at the door of Tom’s tent. He poked his head
out and managed half a smile. We packed the sodden gear into the car and
headed back up past the bridge and on to the road to Aomori. Tom laughed
at the absurdity of the night’s events, especially about how high I’d jumped
when he clutched my arm after his dorotabo story. At our first petrol stop
though, I noticed he was quick to buy a torch and extra batteries.
Dorotabo …” Tom said
as he cracked opened his
can, “… is the name for a
ghoulish farmer who comes
back in the afterlife to
protect his old plot.
THE GHOST OF YONEYAMA
89
20 A Swim in the Pacific
T
om and I were traversing the ridgeline high above Muroran City,
Hokkaido, in our tiny car. The temperature gauge was creeping
up with each slight rise in the meandering one-lane road. Far below, the
sprawling cement factories and colourless shipping yards framed by Tom’s
open window were a sharp contrast to the dazzling blue North Pacific Ocean
out of mine.
With one arm dangling outside of the car and a sunburned foot resting on
the tiny dashboard, The Oracle read from his guide book.
“Muroran – the Ainu people knew this place as ‘the bottom of a little slope.’”
“Right, but does it tell you how they got to the bottom? There’s hardly even
a goat track leading down to that water!”
After exhausting all possible routes to the out-of-reach shoreline, I pulled
over in irritation at a rest stop that looked over a deep gully and out to the
ocean. A blanket of impenetrable foliage dropped vertically 50 metres then
levelled out to where the distant outer edge draped over jagged black rocks
and dipped into breaking waves.
“Come on, let’s go,” Tom exclaimed, throwing a towel at me.
“Go where?”
“What do you mean ‘where?’? I can’t stand it any longer!” he shrieked,
jumping from the car. “I’m going in!” He ripped off his T-shirt and clambered
over the three-foot high log fence erected to separate impetuous sightseers
like us from certain doom.
“Wait! Haven’t you seen the sign?” I pointed to a large red signpost that
Tom was standing under. It featured the international symbol of a stick figure
climbing, with a giant line diagonally across it. Beside it was the slightly less
90 RIBBONS OF FATE
well-known, but just as understandable symbol of a stick figure, dripping
with sweat, surrounded by a sizeable nest of angry snakes.
“Come on, the snakes won’t be poisonous! And besides, look at that
beautiful water!”
“You mean look at that beautiful water smashing onto those razor-sharp
rocks!”
“All right, you stay here. If I’m not back in thirty minutes, send out a search
party!”
Without another word he dropped over the cliff into a mass of tangled
creepers and vanished. For a brief time I could hear the sounds of branches
snapping and whoops of what I hoped were joy.
About twenty minutes passed and he still hadn’t appeared from the jungle’s
edge at the shoreline. I was peering through my camera’s zoom lens while
mentally running through my plan of action should he never reappear, when
a middle-aged woman approached. She greeted me and spoke very slowly
and thoughtfully in Japanese.
“Dangerous,” she said, pointing to the cliffs.
“Yes, dangerous,” I replied with a smile and a nod.
She dabbed at her forehead with a white handkerchief and eyed the towel
around my neck.
“You like to swim?”
“Yes, I do.”
She paused for a long time and peered out to sea, as if she’d lost something
important out there.
“No swimming here.”
“I understand.”
“Very dangerous.”
She seemed to be trying to tell me something.
“Yes, I understand.”
A faint shout echoed up the valley. Straining our eyes, the woman and I
peered as Tom, infinitesimal now, leapt up and down on one of the rocks
and dived headfirst into the waves. I squinted hard, watching him resurface
before turning to the woman. Her eyes were saucers.
A SWIM IN THE PACIFIC
91
“A strange foreigner,” I said.
“I understand,” she answered, meaningfully.
A further thirty minutes passed before Tom reappeared from a small hollow
in the creepers beside the car. He looked worn out and was covered in
painful looking scratches.
“Hornet sting,” he said, holding up a swollen right hand. “Barnacle graze,”
he continued, pulling up the left leg of his shorts.
“At least you avoided the snakes,” I offered.
“At least I did,” was all he could manage.
That night we watched the sun set from a rocky beach at Cape Erimo,
a long, pointed body of land that extended south towards Japan’s main
island, Honshu. Known as “the backbone of Japan”, Cape Erimo is famous
for its relentlessly heavy mists, but as we set up our tents in clear evening
light there was no sign of any fog. The temperature of the black water felt
sub-zero and the beach was filthy, strewn with plastic containers, rubber
gloves, tin cans and glass bottles. Although we’d driven through the town
in daylight, by the time we had set up camp and settled in for the evening
we hadn’t seen a single living soul. Our welcoming party turned out to be a
scruffy stray cat that crept in shortly after sunset and sat on the outskirts
of our circle. Despite our efforts to bring it in, the creature kept its distance,
studying us cautiously with bleak eyes glowing brightly in the firelight.
We toasted marshmallows over the fire using wooden chopsticks as skewers,
and gazed at a string of far-flung twinkling fishing trawlers out at sea. On our
third round of toasting, Tom howled painfully. The cat rocketed down the
beach. I turned to see him holding a flaming chopstick in his left hand while
balancing a partially burning marshmallow between the thumb and index
finger of his right hand – the very same hand that the hornet at Muroran
had stung.
“This place is cursed!” he screamed, bounding down the rock-strewn beach
to the grubby water. He bowed with his hand in the shallow waves, and
released a torrent of English expletives – and a few choice Japanese ones
too – before traipsing wretchedly back to the campsite and disappearing
into his tent for the night.
In the early hours of the next morning, just as the guidebook promised, a
heavy mist established itself over the Cape, smothering everything.
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21 The Fox by the Lake
“
Lake Akan. A place of mystery and beauty,” my American friend, Tom,
read from the travel guidebook.
“I’m more concerned about the mystery of where we are going to camp
tonight,” I said, scoping the road ahead for signs of a camp-ground.
Tom and I had just driven 300 kilometres from Cape Erimo at the southern
tip of Hokkaido, and official campsites in Akan National Park seemed hard to
come by. We finally found a holiday park only to discover it was chock-full of
Japanese tourists who had booked much earlier in the summer. While driving
around a lonely lakeside road, we spotted a decrepit sign that pointed
directly into fir trees on the side of the road.
“There! It says ‘kyanpu’, that’s ‘camp’ in katakana. Let’s try that place,” said
Tom.
Squeezing the car between two colossal tree trunks, we manoeuvred down
a rutted, dirt driveway that twisted through a shady forest. Eventually we
emerged onto stunning grassland that rolled right up to the edge of the
lake. A willow tree stood alone in the middle of the field, and I parked under
the shade of its branches. Not far from the tree was a simple outdoor
kitchen facility. Next to that was a bath-size concrete pool full of crystalclear, steaming spring water. The entire site was deserted.
“What are you thinking?” Tom asked.
“Too good to be true?” I answered.
“There must be a catch.”
“Where are the campers?”
“There’s not even anywhere to pay,” he observed.
“Why is it so quiet?” I surveyed the landscape for signs of life.
THE FOX BY THE LAKE
93
“Let’s work it out after a dip in the lake,” he suggested.
We leapt about in the cool water for a few minutes then stood waist deep
looking back at the car under the lonesome willow tree. The lake was deathly
calm. I could see every single grain of sand beneath my feet.
“Do you think we should stay here tonight?” I asked.
“I’m thinking this might be one of those movies where the two foreign
campers are murdered in the dead of night by a crazed, axe-wielding
maniac,” Tom answered.
“Or a dorotabo, (ghost of a farmer) maybe?” I added, in a nod to a Japanese
ghost story Tom had tried to scare me with two nights before.
Despite our reservations, we set up our tents and quietly sipped Baileys and
milk from plastic cups. A strong wind was starting to blow in from the lake’s
surface and the sky had clouded over. We tried to start a fire, but the wood
we had gathered was too damp, so we scouted around trying to find drier
pieces. While searching, Tom noticed an old farmhouse tucked away behind
spruce trees at the far end of the camp-ground.
We got back to our campsite in time to see a bushy-tailed, golden fox
creeping out under the flap of my tent. In its mouth was a roll of toilet paper.
I shouted to Tom, startling the fox and causing it to bound across the open
field and disappear into the undergrowth.
Tom dropped his wood near the fireside. He shook his head slowly, saying,
“This is not good.”
“I know! That was our last roll!”
“No, foxes aren’t good. They can be really bad luck. Little wonder our fire
won’t spark.”
“Don’t be daft – it’s just a curious wild animal looking for food.” I began
blowing on the smoking embers, hoping the fire would take hold. It was
going to be a cold night.
“Shape-shifters,” Tom said, as he snapped a long branch in two. “Many
Japanese people believe that about foxes. Haven’t you ever been to see
kabuki theatre? It’s full of spooky fox masks, and Japanese literature is
dripping with references to foxes. They trick people. They can become
invisible, or change into human form. Some can breathe out fire. That’s
what some people around here will believe. I guarantee that they don’t mess
with foxes.”
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“Well, we could do with some fire right now. Do you think we could convince
it to come back and breathe on this wood?”
“Seriously, I don’t think it’s a great omen that a fox just went sniffing around
inside your tent,” Tom retorted. I couldn’t tell if this was another dorotabo
moment, or if he was genuine.
“It’s thought that some foxes have the ability to turn otherwise normal
people stark-raving mad.” He stared at me without the hint of a blink.
“Remember those glowing lights we saw back in Yoneyama? Well, the first
thing I thought of was hoshi no tama (star balls). I have read up all about
Japanese folklore. Magical foxes are said to carry these around on their tails
and in their mouths. Hey, let me ask you something.”
“Go ahead.”
“They say that the more tails a fox has, the more dangerous it can be. How
many tails did you see?”
“Just the one, Tom.”
“Well, you should be safe then. But I’d keep your tent zipped up tight
tonight if I were you.”
After dinner, still without a proper fire burning, Tom suggested we knock on
the door of the old farmhouse he’d seen earlier. “We might be able to offer
them some money or something. Before they come looking for it ...”
The thought of going near the place gave me the creeps, but I had to agree
it would look better for us to at least take some initiative.
The two-storey house was run down. Roof tiles had fallen off, fragments of
some of them lying at the sides of the weed-ridden path leading to the front
door. Darkness had settled in, and no light was apparent inside.
We knocked and waited. Eventually, a faint porch light flickered on and the
door creaked open to reveal a tiny man with a thin, pointed face.
“Konbanwa.” (Good evening) He was unusually calm for someone living in a
remote forest who had just found two foreigners on his darkening doorstep.
“Konbanwa,” Tom replied, returning the greeting in his most pleasant
Japanese. “Sorry to disturb you, but we wanted to camp here tonight.”
I was envious of the ease with which he had picked up the language, despite
me having lived in Japan for longer.
“Sakki, ikede oyoideru no mitta zo,” (Yes, I saw you swimming in the lake,
earlier) the old man replied.
THE FOX BY THE LAKE
95
“Ah, sumimasendeshita,” (Oh, I’m very sorry) Tom bowed. He asked how
much the man charged for a night’s camping.
“Tada dayo.” (It’s fine, no charge). He waved his hands back and forth.
Tom insisted, but the man politely refused any payment for staying on the
land.
“Yukkuri shite ke!” (Please enjoy your night) he said, as he took a step
backwards into his shadowy hallway.
We both bowed deeply and bade him goodnight.
“Chotto … ano …” (Wait … ah …). He stepped back onto the porch so we
could make out his face clearly in the dim yellow bulb-light. “Kitsune ni kī
tsukerō,” he said, with a concerned nod.
Tom turned and looked at me with a curious expression.
“What’d he say?” I asked.
“He said to beware of foxes.”
The door closed, the light went out and we were left standing in the
darkness.
Perhaps the fox was a good omen after all. Returning to the campsite, Tom,
in frustration at our lack of fire, kicked the stubborn pile of wood and it
miraculously burst into flame.
During the night the wind swirled in fierce gusts around our tents. I awoke
shortly after midnight and through the tent fabric I saw a faint light dancing
about on the outskirts of our campsite. When I crawled outside and poked
my head into Tom’s tent he was fast asleep. I sat for several minutes,
searching the murky forest border for signs of light. As I was giving up, the
bobbing orb appeared again. It snaked in and out of the fir trees at the far
end of the campground. When it finally emerged from the trees, attached
to it was a shadowy human form, almost certainly that of the old man who
we had met earlier. I crawled back into my sleeping bag, puzzled. Unusually,
when I awoke the next morning, I couldn’t remember my dreams.
We were eating cornflakes for breakfast when the tiny man appeared from
out of nowhere, right between our tents.
“Ohayo!” (Morning!) he said, with a broad smile. “Yoku neta ka?” (Sleep
well?)
We thanked him for allowing us to stay on his property. I learned through
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Tom’s translation that the camp-ground used to be a popular spot for
tourists until the holiday park opened farther up the road. Now, visitors
were infrequent, and the man no longer saw the grounds as a source of
income. Tom told him about the fox that took our toilet paper. The man
chuckled and smoothed the top of his balding head with his hand. “Is that
why you warned us about the foxes?” Tom asked, in Japanese.
The man contemplated for a while, then spoke slowly and clearly so Tom
could follow: “What I should have warned you about are the bears. The
foxes are merely a nuisance, whereas the bears are a genuine danger.”
We got back to our campsite in time to see a bushy-tailed, golden fox creeping
out under the flap of my tent. In its mouth was a roll of toilet paper.
THE FOX BY THE LAKE
97
22
Typhoons
T
he northernmost point of Japan, Cape Soya, lies just 43 kilometres
from the coast of Cape Crillon, the southernmost point of the
Russian island of Sakhalin. When we arrived, Tom and I were hoping to catch
a glimpse of Russia, but the sky was overcast and visibility across La Perouse
Strait was limited. The main car park was full of tour coaches and the shops
packed with omiyage (souvenir gifts), such as tofu flavoured with sea urchin,
and hundreds of varieties of chocolate, key rings and postcards. Although
there wasn’t much sun, we donned our swimming shorts, hobbled down the
gloomy beach over sharp rocks and waded into the water directly in front of
the large triangular monument celebrating the northernmost tip of Japan.
No one else was near the water, not even fully-clothed on the shoreline. As
we waded farther out into the Sea of Okhotsk, we noticed that the water
wasn’t up to our knees and it wasn’t getting any deeper. Fifty metres out the
water was still only shin-height. Eventually we lay down, dunked our heads
under and rolled around in the chilly waves, before heading back to the
shore. By the time we got there, Japanese tourists were lined up along the
fence of the main car park energetically snapping photos of us.
Perhaps it was the dull weather, or the long days together in a tiny car, but
that night, our second-to-last in Hokkaido, we were both ready for home.
A berth on an overnight car ferry from Tomakomai to Nagoya awaited us,
and as I double-checked the tickets by torchlight under canvas at a small
campground in Wakkanai, torrential rain and violent gusts of wind lashed my
tent. Tom swore loudly as he unzipped the tent fly and barrel-rolled in. He
was drenched from head to foot.
“The guy at the office said there’s a typhoon coming. It’s due to hit land on
Saturday night. When’s our ferry?”
“It says here we depart from Tomakomai on Saturday at 6.30,” I replied.
98 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Morning?”
“Evening.”
“Damn! This is a big one. Killed four people already down south, dozens
injured. Some airlines have cancelled flights. Should be some ferry ride!”
I usually find the sound of a storm comforting at night, but that night, under
rolling, distant thunder I drifted in and out of disturbing dreams.
By morning our tents and gear were so sodden we decided to head for a
backpackers in Sapporo City to celebrate the last night of our trip under a
roof and on proper mattresses. Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido and the
fifth-largest city in Japan, has just under two million inhabitants, around one
third of Hokkaido’s population. On our arrival in the city we discovered it
was the eve of the Toyohira River Fireworks Festival, and we drove the wrong
way up a four-lane road causing panic among hundreds of motorists. We
ended up facing the wrong way parked roughly on a footpath, thankfully
only a few hundred metres from the backpackers we were looking for.
Once settled into our room, Tom took off in search of beer while I tried to get
an hour’s sleep before we headed out to the festival. Being the sole driver
was really starting to take its toll. After a couple of thousand kilometres on
the road and some late nights I needed rest. I awoke a little later to see the
silhouette of someone creeping into the darkened room. Still half asleep and
thinking it was Tom, I yelled “Boo!” The silhouette screamed. As he put on
the light I saw a crazed-looking man with a shock of wiry blonde hair and
wild blue eyes. “Hi, I’m Wes,” he drawled in an American accent.
Not long after our introduction, Tom returned and the three of us chatted
about Typhoon Etau, which was bearing down on the Eastern side of the
island. “You guys must be crazy to take a ferry out of here tomorrow,” Wes
chuckled.
“It’s probably safer on the open water,” Tom argued.
“True, but it’s getting out into open water that’s the dangerous part. That
typhoon will be strongest as it smashes onto land, and you’ve got to get out
of port while that’s happening.”
“Are you always this positive?” I asked Wes, as he ran a palmful of yellowish
wax through his hair.
“Sorry guys, didn’t mean to scare you. I’d just keep an eye on the ferry
schedule tomorrow – don’t be surprised if they cancel. Anyway, what is it
you said you were up to tonight?”
TYPHOONS
99
“The two of us are going to see the fireworks and drink some Sapporo
Draft.” Tom said.
“Sweet,” Wes replied. “When are we leaving?”
The streets were full of kimono-clad men and women, dance troupes of
headband-wearing children, and even traditional geisha. Most of the crowd
was making its way to and from the Minami Ohashi Bridge, the site of the
evening’s spectacular fireworks display.
Wes led us to a spot beside the bank of the Toyohira River, where he
produced three half-litre cans of Sapporo Draft from his backpack. Heavyset clouds had taken on an eerie glow above the bright city; the air felt
electric.
“Perfect night for hanabi (fireworks),” Wes said, as he held his can up to the
heavens “It seems like the typhoon’s not going to ruin the party. At least
not tonight, anyway.”
“So what do you know about Japanese typhoons?” Tom asked. “What can
we expect if we get caught up in this one?”
“Well, they can be pretty wild,” Wes said, looking serious. “I’ve experienced
a few big ones in my time here.”
“I don’t know,” I interjected. “The last time a typhoon came to Toki City,
they cancelled school for the day and warned us all to stay indoors. It
turned out to be nothing worse than a bad Wellington southerly, minus the
sub-zero temperatures.”
Wes and Tom both looked blank.
“Back home in New Zealand, it seems we’re on the receiving end of southerly
gales like typhoons every few weeks. Our storms don’t really cause much
damage.”
“Yeah, but there are many more millions of people here, and the majority
of the population lives near the coast. Also, a lot of people here die in
typhoons because they do crazy things.”
“Such as?” Tom asked, eyebrow raised.
“Okay, like when was the last time you climbed up on a roof? You hear a
typhoon’s coming, and you want to quickly get up there and fix that loose
roof tile. Bang! ‘Man falls off roof and dies in typhoon’. Or you have a fishing
boat? Uh-oh, typhoon’s coming, better get down to the water’s edge and
check everything’s tied down. ‘Fisherman drowns while securing moorings,
100 RIBBONS OF FATE
typhoon claims another victim.’ That’s what puts the fear into people here,
fatalities. Typhoons claim victims and create havoc for public transport and
infrastructure.”
As we sat in silence, I wondered how this weather bomb might affect our
journey home the following day.
Wes then began a story.
“I used to live in Kyōto. One day I was exploring the local area on a bike.
I got to this tunnel, which looked like it wound deep into the mountains.
It was a narrow one-way tunnel and I couldn’t see the end. Not the sort
of tunnel you should enter on a bike. So I turned around to go back the
way I’d come, and I noticed this weird, dark forest beside the road. It was
a Saturday morning and I had time to kill, so I decided to take a peek. Talk
about freaky. It was like walking into another dimension. There were bizarre
little statues everywhere, all covered in moss. They looked out at you as you
walked up the main path of the place.
I wandered through the grounds until I found a temple. Beside the temple
was an entire wall of these peculiar little effigies. They were all unique in
character, some looked like people, some like little monsters, some played
instruments, and some danced, most of them had big grins carved on their
faces. There was even a surfing statue. And there was a tiny old man there,
a real one, just sitting on a flight of steps. At least he looked old, the way
he sat there. He must only have been in his late fifties. It was just the two of
us, and the wall of grinning stone heads. I sat next to him and he gave me a
brief history of the temple. It was founded in another part of Kyōto around
700ad by an Empress. But it was destroyed by a great flood of the Kamo
River. So it was rebuilt on a mountain. Then in the 1200s, during a civil war
the main temple was razed. In the early part of the twentieth century, it was
relocated to this spot, the one I cycled past that day.”
“That’s pretty interesting, I’d like to go there and check it out,” Tom said.
“But how did we get from typhoons to the temple?”
“Well, the temple and its grounds had suffered their fair share of rotten
luck over the centuries. In fact, the locals reckoned it was the unluckiest
temple in Japan. And, sure enough, the bad luck kept coming. In 1950, a
typhoon ripped through Kyōto, causing widespread damage to the temple.
The residents were at their wits’ ends, and the damage was pretty severe.
For five years, the place stood in disrepair. Then in 1955, a head priest, who
happened to be a brilliant carver, was appointed. Over the years, he invited
TYPHOONS 101
people in and taught them to carve statues. Eventually, there were 500 little
rakan, or Buddha that had been carved and placed inside the grounds by
the priest and others. The figures weren’t done in an ordinary style. They
were carved to look jovial and friendly, not the fierce or frightening sentinels
you often find at temples.
The old man told me if it hadn’t been for the typhoon, the temple wouldn’t
have been blessed with such unique guardians, the 500 faces. I told him
that I liked the place, because the faces of the statues brought to mind
different people I had met in Japan. All the different characters – there
seemed to be an uncanny resemblance to every individual person I could
recall. The old man smiled, and then told me he came for a different reason.
Beckoning for me to follow him, he walked a few steps to a section of the
wall beside the main temple. Standing on tiptoes, he put his hand on the
head of one of the statues. It had a flat head and a round face. Its eyes were
closed, and its hands were clasped together in prayer. ‘In the late 1980s,’
he said, ‘my young son and I carved this stone fellow, under the guidance
of that master carver, the priest. I have fond memories of that time. Two
years ago, my son was killed in a landslide while clearing a road not far
from here during a typhoon. I come here on weekends to visit our statue
and remember him. On the one hand, because of a typhoon, we were able
to build that memory together. On the other hand, because of a typhoon,
memories are all I have of him.’”
While Wes was recounting the last part of his tale, the first of the festival
fireworks burst into life over the river. Whoops and applause rose from the
riverbanks. The three of us watched in pensive silence for a long time, until
a fading cluster of golden embers drifted silently to earth and the people
around us packed up and shuffled off back towards the city centre.
We followed a dancing man in a white yukata (summer kimono). Tucked into
a sash around his waist, he had a paper fan with a large red carp emblazoned
on it. On the back of his head he wore a fox-face mask. In the busy part
of the city, streets were lined with makeshift beer bars, illuminated by red
and white hanging lanterns. We managed to squeeze into one of them. Wes
ordered the beers and Tom struck up a conversation with a local gent whose
face was red from alcohol, directly across the table from us. He wore a neck
tie and baseball cap, both at odd angles, and he was flanked by two of the
prettiest women we had encountered on the trip. The man asked us where
we were from and what we were doing, then gestured to the women sitting
beside him.
102 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Sapporo women,” he blurted in Japanese, “are the most beautiful in Japan.
Do you agree?” The three of us nodded, the women batted their eyelashes
and laughed into cupped hands. He ordered another round of beers, which
were passed to us down the line of anonymous bar patrons. “Do you like
magic?” the man asked. He obviously had a few tricks up his sleeve. He put
a cigarette into his mouth and one of the women lit it for him. After inhaling
and breathing the smoke out through his nostrils, he held the cigarette
between two fingers and said, “If I do a trick, will you buy me and my friends
a drink?”
We agreed. He curled his tongue to form a tube, inserted the cigarette and
pulled both tongue and lit cigarette back into his mouth, before closing
it. Then, contorting his face dramatically, he rotated the burning cigarette
180 degrees inside his mouth and poked the unlit end out past his lips.
The two women burst into applause. He performed the same movement
again, rotating the cigarette inside his mouth before popping it out right
way around, still lit.
Not long after that, I remember dancing arm-in-arm with Wes and one of the
women, belting out a Spandau Ballet hit in a smoky underground karaoke
(singing) bar. I don’t know how or when we returned to the hostel.
Tom and I sneaked out early the next morning, leaving Wes still snoring.
We drove to the port of Tomakomai where we found an onsen (hot spring)
and soaked in a pool of blisteringly hot water as the memories of the night
before drifted away. Outside, the rain fell harder. Our ferry was delayed
three hours, so we sat in the car watching the car park of the terminal
slowly filling with rainwater. Eventually, a group of men in helmets and white
overalls waved us onto the ship and in our cabin we toasted to a successful
trip as the ferry pitched up and down. We were moored to the wharf late
into the night. As the ship’s captain and crew studied weather reports and
waited for the go ahead I slept properly for the first time in days. When I
awoke we were well out to sea. We heard that Hokkaido was under a natural
siege with over 400 millimetres of rain and heavy winds causing widespread
flooding and setting off killer mudslides.
I sat at the stern of the ship in mid-morning sunshine and took shelter
from the stiff sea breeze. In our wake, a flock of black-backed gulls bobbed
up and down on the surface of the water, some giving chase to the boat,
darting and swooping around us as we finally steamed down the eastern
coast of Honshū towards home.
TYPHOONS 103

Standing on tiptoes, he put his hand on the head of one of the statues. It had
a flat head and a round face. Its eyes were closed, and its hands were clasped
together in prayer.
104 RIBBONS OF FATE
23 The Speech Contest
T
hrough a film of light mist on the window of the Nagaragawa (Nagara
River) train, I watched the rays of the early morning sun spilling across
a valley on the outskirts of Gifu City. Beside me sat one of my students,
Mizuki. We were going to the Gifu Prefectural Speech contest. The first prize
was the chance to compete in the National High School English Speech
Competition in Tokyo.
I had met Mizuki on the very first day I arrived at our school in Toki City.
She and a few of her friends had come to school in the middle of their
summer holiday to meet me. Mizuki had introduced herself confidently
in English, while her classmates gawked sheepishly at the ends of their
slippers. I had no idea at that time how lucky I was to have met a student
with such an uncanny knack for English. She understood almost everything
I said – her language ability allowed her to communicate with me on a level
the other students could only have dreamed of. In the next 18 months
Mizuki played an important part in my adjustment to the school and my
teaching work, and I believe I helped her with English. Where she had once
regularly paused to get her tone right, or think of her next question, the
two of us now chatted away naturally, like old friends. Her ability in English
turned the Japanese notion of senpai/kohai (mentor/protégé) on its head,
as her senior English Speaking Society clubmates regularly looked to her for
guidance and support. Predictably she had breezed past her older English
speaking peers to win our own school English speech contest, earning her
the right to compete for today’s prefectural title.
“Do you think I’ll win?” Mizuki asked quietly.
“I think you have a great chance.”
“But our school has never won this contest. In Gifu there are many good
THE SPEECH CONTEST 105
English speakers.” Mizuki was correct – our school was a ‘commercial’ high
school, known for turning out students who excelled at commerce and
computing, not English.
“I know, so everyone will be surprised when you speak,” I said, smiling.
“Besides, you have to win.”
“Why?”
“Kōcho-sensei (the principal) promised something great if you win.”
“What did he promise?”
“Well, you know that the best speaker today wins a trip to Tokyo, right?”
“Yes.”
“Normally a teacher has to go with them. So, I suggested that Taguchisensei (Bee) could go with you, if you win.”
“Oh, I like Taguchi-sensei.”
“But that’s not all. Because our school has never won this prefectural
contest, we convinced Kōcho-sensei to promise to send me as well!”
“And he agreed to the promise?”
“He sure did. So, Mizuki, that’s why you have to win today,” I said, giving
her a friendly punch on the shoulder to counter the psychological pressure.
The train pulled into Gifu station and we switched to a local bus to take us
to the high school for the contest. We waited patiently as a group of girls in
dark blue uniforms filed past us to sit at the back.
“They are the Kakamihara high school students,” Mizuki whispered, as the
last of the girls passed us. “That school has won this contest many times.”
As the bus wound through the city, the girls from Kakamihara began to
practise their speeches loudly in English. I realised how wide the gulf was
between the ‘conversation’ English of our commercial high school and the
‘academic’ high school. I suggested Mizuki run through her speech in a
similar manner.
“I can’t,” she confessed, “not in front of these girls. They are all san-nensei
(third-year) students.” For the first time, Mizuki seemed to doubt her own
ability. I didn’t want to push her. I knew that we had a tough morning ahead
of us.
The contest was officially opened with a speech by a representative from
the board of education. His long introduction almost sent everyone into a
106 RIBBONS OF FATE
profound slumber, including the competitors.
The first speaker was a terrified boy. He mounted the stage tentatively,
dressed in a dark, military-style uniform. The oversized front buttons were
secured tightly up over his Adam’s apple. He composed himself before
launching into a talk titled “Believe in You.” He stuttered in places, and at
one point completely lost his place. As the four-minute mark approached
he tried to speed up, but halfway through his concluding sentence a bell
rang out and a stern-looking woman in a monochrome suit stood up and
announced that the poor boy had been disqualified for failing to finish in
time. His already pale face turned ashen and he shuffled back to his seat,
his knuckles clenched tight and white. I spent the next ten minutes mentally
preparing a nasty letter of complaint with a plan to send it in straight after
the contest – unless of course we should happen to win. The competition,
though, in the baleful control of the dispassionate timekeeper, moved
rapidly. A girl from a private high school spoke eloquently on “The Secret
to Happiness,” although I was disappointed that her secret was merely to
“appreciate everything you have”. To her credit she had done all that was
expected of her, had spoken with a confident grace and, most important,
had stayed within the time limit.
“My Pet Turtle” was the topic of choice for the next speaker. The unfortunate
boy spent most of his talk glancing nervously at the timekeeper, who spent
most of the talk with her finger poised over the bell. Happily, the boy managed
to wind up within the allocated time – unhappily, the speech concluded with
his turtle dying. It was smart to go for the sympathy vote, but I imagined the
judges weren’t having any of it.
The next two speakers were the girls from Kakamihara. Both were supremely
confident speakers of English. The first spoke about body language,
beginning her speech with her arms dramatically crossed over her chest.
The scowl planted on her face was so convincing it took me a few moments
to figure out it was all part of an act. During her talk she moved very cleverly
through a range of other moods, and ended a picture of happiness. The
next young lady gave a rousing talk called “The Freedom of Speech”. She
conjured up imagery which Martin Luther King would have been proud of.
I couldn’t help but wonder how the United States, maybe even the world
might have been a different place if there had been a four-minute time limit
that day at the Lincoln Memorial.
At long last it was Mizuki’s turn. She stood and nodded towards the judges,
THE SPEECH CONTEST 107
then surveyed the audience with practised confidence.
“Did you know that Russian people put jam in their tea?” She nailed the first
sentence with perfect inflection and emphasis.
“I was shocked when I saw my friend Natalya do this, but it was the first of
many wonderful things she taught me about Russian culture.”
Mizuki’s story of making friends with a Russian girl during an international
youth camp was delightful. She cleverly used the topic to present an
insightful story of self discovery, describing in stirring detail the new world
that had opened up to her through this first genuine intercultural friendship.
She was halfway through illustrating how she had let go of ingrained notions
about foreign cultures when a hair-raising sound came from the street below.
“Yaaakiii iiimoooooo … Yaaakiii iiimoooooo …”
Mizuki looked at me, panicked and stopped mid-sentence. I frantically
motioned for her to continue.
“Yaaakiii iiimooooo … Yaaakiii iiimooooo …”
It was getting closer and shriller. Mizuki remained frozen. This ghostly cry
was the traditional call of a street vendor selling yaki imo (baked sweet
potato). This now vanishing service was usually the work of elderly men, and
the eerie, drawn-out song that hailed from loudspeakers on flat-deck trucks
was something I’d encountered only once before in my neighbourhood one
gloomy night. I’d never heard of anyone trying to flog sweet potatoes at
this hour of the morning on a Sunday. Despite the intrusion though, Mizuki
managed to start again and, thankfully, several seconds later the seller’s
desperate pleas trailed off. But the interruptions weren’t over. In the last
section of her speech, as the timekeeper reached for her bell, a troupe of
bōsōzoku (young motorcycle gang members) roared past the school, creating
a virtual sound vacuum in the room for some seconds. I glanced over at the
timekeeper and mercifully she took her finger off the bell to allow the speech
to continue. I could have hugged her. A short time later, Mizuki wrapped it up,
thanked the audience and left the stage in as dignified a manner as she could
muster. She slumped down in the seat beside me, distraught.
“They couldn’t hear me,” she whispered. I grinned and told her she’d done
a great job, but I feared she was right. After the last speaker had finished,
we went outside and sat in the sun on the steps of the auditorium, nibbling
on convenience-store chocolates. Inside, the judges huddled in intense
deliberation.
108 RIBBONS OF FATE
“How did I do?” Mizuki asked, folding her chocolate wrapper into a tiny
origami crane.
“Mizuki, you were amazing. It was even better than when we practised. I’m
very proud of you. Whatever happens, remember there are two million
people in this prefecture.”
“So?”
“Well, that means there are a lot of high school students. This group today
is the top 15 English speakers. That’s an excellent achievement in itself.”
The results took ages to come. Several officials made speeches before
any winners were declared. The judge’s announcements were delivered in
painfully slow fashion and were a surprise to everyone. Third place went
to the freedom of speech fighter from Kakamihara. Runner up went to the
private school girl who claimed to have the true secret to happiness. Clearly
she had expected to win because she didn’t look too thrilled when her name
was called in second. Finally, the long-awaited announcement. I suspected
the body language expert from Kakamihara would take the supreme award.
So did the rest of the audience. She was already graciously accepting pats
on the back from her team members.
“In first place, and the winner of a trip to the National High School English
Speech contest in Tokyo …”
Mizuki looked at me and shook her head hopelessly.
“Toki Commercial High School … Mizuki Kawano!”
There was a series of muffled gasps from the back of the room, followed by
a round of generous applause. Mizuki strode to the stage and accepted her
winning ribbons and trophy. For the first time in the school’s history, Toki
Commercial High was going to be represented at the National High School
English Speech Competition.
Mizuki, Bee and I were bound for Tokyo – with the generous blessing of
Kōcho-sensei.
THE SPEECH CONTEST 109
24
The Vampire Room
B
ee and I had arrived in Tokyo with high hopes for our student, Mizuki.
Along with 46 other hopefuls, she had competed at the National High
School English Speech Competition. While she had performed brilliantly,
the poor girl was no match for the winning speaker, who had obviously lived
abroad and perfected her grasp of the language, with the kind of irritating
buoyancy and overblown gesturing that home-grown Japanese kids had no
hope of ever replicating naturally. Mizuki didn’t make the top ten, but we
were still immensely proud of her. As a reward for her hard work, we offered
to take her out to a restaurant of her choice for dinner. We sat in our hotel
room, looking out over a darkening street in Aoyama while Mizuki thumbed
through a restaurant guide.
“I like this one,” she said, passing the guide to me and pointing to an advert
for a gothic-looking place called The Vampire Room.
“Are you sure you want to eat at a vampire room?” I asked.
She nodded.
I showed the advertisement to Bee. “It says here ‘Dracula” and “Castle”. It
sounds like it might be a bit, you know …”
“Fun is what it sounds like,” Bee said. “And besides, you said it was Mizuki’s
choice, since she did such a good job today.”
“I guess, but …”
“But nothing,” Bee snapped. “That’s her choice, and that’s where we’ll take
her.”
Mizuki listened with interest.
Emerging from the Ginza subway station we entered a scene from the
film Blade Runner. Solid walls of dazzling neon signs lit up the rain-soaked
110 RIBBONS OF FATE
street and flashing commercials danced across the mirrored-glass panels of
buildings.
“What do you think?” Bee swept an arm over the sparkling vista. “They say
that real estate in Ginza is the most expensive on Earth.”
A building in Ginza was worth over NZ$100,000 per square metre. I patted
the wallet in my back pocket protectively in preparation for the evening ahead.
The three of us stood in nervous anticipation as the elevator climbed to
the seventh floor of La Paix building. The doors slid open to reveal a bloodred, pulsating corridor. The walls were clad in scarlet velvet, behind them
strobing lights. The underlit floor was a flickering path of blood cells. As
we left the elevator and stepped into the aorta-like corridor two JapaneseFrench maids bowed and batted fake eyelashes at us. These servant wenches
wore black corsets with frilly white lace, and sheer black three-quarter
length stockings. Mizuki – as per school policy – was herself in full uniform.
She politely returned the bow and took off towards the left ventricle. I
imagined the debriefing for the Tokyo trip in the principal’s office at school
on Monday morning and feared I’d just made a bad career move.
When Bee and I caught up with Mizuki, she was standing at the entrance of
a large circular room, filled with what looked like black columns from ceiling
to floor. Each one emanated a faint glow. Ominous piano notes seeped
through the room. A full-size coffin lay in the corner, covered in clotted red
wax dripping from two crimson burning candles. The candles sat on top of
human skulls – I could only hope they were replicas.
“Sugoi!” (Great!) Mizuki squealed with obvious delight.
One of the maids gestured for us to approach a black column. She attempted
to pull the hem of her tiny apron down to a more acceptable level as Mizuki
skipped past. The columns were in fact black velvet drapes; within each was
a small table, complete with dimly glowing candelabra. We sat down and the
maid asked for our drinks order. Bee ordered two Bloody Marys and a Blood
Clot, which, to my immense relief, arrived as a raspberry and lemonade. The
drinks were served in heavy steel goblets.
“Well, Mizuki, this is a great place. You got us all here to Tokyo and you
made a fantastic speech today, so kampai! (cheers!) Here’s to you, and to
your successful future with English,” I said, raising my weighty goblet with
difficulty. As we clunked our vessels together the opening organ notes of
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor drifted through the room, lending the
moment a surreal quality.
THE VAMPIRE ROOM 111
While we were waiting for our main courses, Mizuki asked Bee how she
had become an English teacher. I knew that Bee hadn’t had a privileged
upbringing. Her father had been blind at birth, and her mother had been
blinded in a childhood accident. The two had met at a school of massage for
the visually impaired, married and had two girls. Bee’s father had succumbed
to illness at 42 and passed away, leaving her mother to raise two daughters
single-handed while working full-time as a masseuse from her living room.
Bee spent her teenage years sharing a cramped living space with patients
who took every spare second of her mother’s time.
“Well, my father always told me to be internationally-minded,” Bee began,
“so after he died, at night I began to listen to a small radio that I kept
beside my pillow. Every weeknight I listened to an NHK English conversation
programme for fifteen minutes. At first, I couldn’t keep up with the
instruction, but after a few weeks I began to practise repeating the phrases
in the short pauses after the instructor’s words. I joined the English club at
school and I really liked my English teacher. He encouraged me a lot. I was
like you, Mizuki, I went to a vocational high school not renowned for its
English programme. My major was accounting.”
“So did you ever do a speech, like me?” Mizuki asked.
“Well, when I was your age I was very shy. In my last year of high school, my
English teacher left, and I was sad. He believed in me, and he was the only
adult I felt comfortable speaking English with. My mother was supportive,
but she couldn’t speak a word of English. One day, I was called to Kyōtosensei’s (the deputy principal’s) office. I was very frightened, because I
thought I had done something wrong. During my lunch break I knocked on
his door and went in. He asked me to sit down.”
“Kowai!” (Scary!) Miyuki squeaked.
“Yes, it was very scary. He said he had heard me singing songs in English
the day before.”
“And you got in trouble for that?” I asked.
“Ah, no, he wasn’t angry. He said he was impressed with my English
pronunciation.”
“What songs were you singing?” Mizuki asked.
“Papa Don’t Preach and Material Girl, by Madonna. I used to sing those a
lot.”
Mizuki looked blank.
112 RIBBONS OF FATE
“I didn’t realise what the songs were about until I got to university,” Bee
laughed. “Anyway, Kyōto-sensei said there was a municipal English speech
contest coming up, and asked if I wanted to enter. I had never been in a
speech contest, so I didn’t know what to do. But something inside me made
me say ‘Yes!’ without really thinking.”
The story was starting to get interesting when our meals came. Bee’s slices
of raw fish appeared in a miniature coffin, and Miyuki’s claw of crab on
shredded salad arrived with a serving of what looked like common tomato
sauce in the shape of an elongated cross. I had ordered crypt-shaped
schnitzel, which came adorned with a mayonnaise cross and a sprinkling of
tiny rose petals.
“So, what happened at the contest?” Mizuki asked.
“Well, I wrote a speech and practised at school and at home for a whole
month. My speech was about work ethics, and how you should choose your
job not based on salary or status, but on what you are good at and what
you like to do. My mother told me once she became a masseuse because she
wanted to help others. I liked this idea, so I wrote about it. I was so nervous
that even when I practised, I could hardly make it to the end of my speech.
But my mother encouraged me. She would say ‘Yes, you have a good flow
now. You sound fluent’, even though she didn’t understand a word I was
saying. On the day of the contest she was working, and the teacher who was
supposed to come with me had to do something with the baseball club.”
“Oh no, so what did you do?” Mizuki looked worried.
“I went alone. When I arrived, there were about 200 people in the audience,
and 30 speakers. They told me I was first. I was nervous, but because I
didn’t know anyone in the crowd, that somehow made it easier. I had my
speech in notes in my pocket, but I was afraid to take them out in case I was
disqualified, so I recited it from memory. I noticed speakers after me had
their speeches in front of them! I didn’t know we were allowed to read our
speech. No one told me.”
“Did you win?” Mizuki was on the edge of her seat.
“Yes, I did! I won, and I think I was the most surprised person there. I didn’t
even know what the prize was until they announced it.”
“Was it a trip to Tokyo?” I asked.
“Even better – it was a trip to the United Kingdom to attend a two-week
long international Youth Camp, and a three-week homestay.”
THE VAMPIRE ROOM 113
“Subarashī!” (Wonderful!) Mizuki squealed.
“The Mayor of Kani City gave me 30,000 yen spending money, and I got
free air tickets and accommodation for 40 days abroad. I also won a huge
trophy, which I had to carry home in the middle of an extremely hot summer’s
day. My mother was delighted. But what she didn’t realise was that if I went
overseas for that amount of time the following year, I wouldn’t be able to
get into a good university course for accounting.
“But you obviously did get into a good university, because you became a
teacher,” I said.
“Well, yes, and that’s thanks to a good teacher friend of yours, actually,”
she answered.
“You know Mizuno-sensei, your Japanese ‘father’?”
I was overcome with visions of flying downhill uncontrollably on skis while
Mizuno-sensei, ‘the Mountain Lion’, looked on proudly.
“Mizuno-sensei was a teacher at my school at that time,” Bee continued.
“He understood my situation, and he worked hard to find information about
courses I could take after I returned from Europe. It’s because of him that I
became a teacher. Now we work together as teachers. Isn’t that wonderful?
Mizuki, you have the same kind of opportunity with English. You can do
anything with your life, and you’ve proved to me and Matto-sensei that
you have something special. Keep working hard at English, and believe in
yourself, we know you will be a big success in the future.”
Bee drained the rest of her Bloody Mary and sat back with a smile.
It had been a long story, and I had a sudden urge to find the bathroom. I
set off and was soon wandering, confused, among the warren of twisting
and throbbing arteries that flowed out of the main room. Suddenly there
materialized before me a chap with an unusually gaunt face and a long,
black overcoat. Like something out of The Rocky Horror Picture Show he
drifted up beside me and beckoned me to follow. He led me to a door
with a picture of Dracula on it. I turned to thank him as I pushed the door
open, but he had vanished. As I turned and glanced in the mirror, I saw a
jagged crack across my face – every mirror in the room had been artfully
shattered.
When I got back, Bee and Mizuki were engrossed in conversation.
“Mizuki is quite a fan of vampires, it seems,” Bee said.
114 RIBBONS OF FATE
“Yes, I like vampires,” Mizuki replied. “I liked Interview with a Vampire, and I
have seen Bram Stoker’s Dracula, too.”
“Ah, now I see why you wanted to come here,” I said, nodding.
“Yes, western vampires are well-known in Japanese culture,” she said with
some authority, “but there are no Japanese vampires, they don’t exist.”
I noted this with some relief.
“We do have a similar creature called a nukekubi. They look like humans in
the daytime, and at night they become monsters, not a little like vampires.”
It seemed Mizuki still had some work to do on English turns of phrase.
“Their heads come off their bodies at night,” Bee added, “and they hunt
around looking for people to bite. By the way, we ordered dessert already. I
chose a honey and bread dessert for you.”
Mizuki shot me a funny look. Perhaps this liberty Bee had taken on my
behalf had alerted her to something going on, something more than just
professional colleagues.
“But how do nukekubi find people if their heads are bodiless?” I asked,
getting back to the story.
“Their heads float,” Mizuki answered, matter-of-factly. “In western culture, if
you want to kill a vampire, you stab it with a stake.”
“Through the heart,” I added.
“Yes, or, you push it into sunlight,” Mizuki countered. “With a nukekubi, you
just hide its body while its head is floating around somewhere else. Then
when morning comes, it can’t find its way to the body and it dies in the
sunlight.”
“Mizuki,” I said, looking straight at her.
“Yes?”
“I think we just found you a topic for next year’s speech contest.”
The velvet drape was dramatically pulled aside to reveal a maid carrying
two delicious chocolate desserts and a loaf of bread on a silver platter. She
placed the desserts in front of the two girls and the bread in front of me. It
was just a plain white loaf, unsliced, drenched in sticky honey.
“What is this?” I asked, incredulously.
“That’s your honey and bread dessert,” Bee smiled.
THE VAMPIRE ROOM 115
“But it’s just bread and honey!”
Mizuki stifled a giggle. I cut into it with a knife and fork. Inside was nothing
but fluffy white bread.
“I can’t eat a whole loaf of bread – I just had a main course!” I said,
exasperated.
“Sorry, it sounded good on the menu, ‘Honey Bread’,” Bee said, while Mizuki
nodded seriously.
“This is one very weird night,” I said. Bee glanced sharply at me, so I added,
“One very weird and wonderful night, thank you, Mizuki, for the interesting
choice of restaurant.”
When it came time to pay I didn’t feel like thanking anyone. The skeletal
man in the black cape appeared from the curtain folds behind the counter.
“Dōmo arigatō gozaimashita,” (Thank you very much), he said, revealing two
long pointed canines. “Okaikē wa yon-man go-sen en ni narimasu.” (That’ll
be ¥45,000, please.)
I could feel the colour draining from my face. The meal had cost the
equivalent of three days wages for me. Bee did her best to distract Mizuki
while I frantically searched every pocket of my wallet to pay the ghoul.
Returning to our hotel by subway, Mizuki slept sitting up, an impressive
feat that I had yet to master. As the carriage thundered through the dark
beneath the streets of Tokyo, Bee took my little finger in her hand.
“I hope the price wasn’t too much for you,” she said.
“Well, Bee, let’s just say it took a real bite out of
my savings.”
She thought for a while. I figured the pun
was lost.
“Matto,” she finally replied. “Your sense
of humour sometimes … sucks.”
“Like something out of The Rocky Horror
Picture Show he drifted up beside me and
beckoned me to follow. He led me to a door
with a picture of Dracula on it.”
116 RIBBONS OF FATE
25
Mr Miura’s Medicine
I
first met Mr Miura at my inauguration as head teacher of the BAEC club.
Among other things my predecessor had left me was this lucrative parttime job, teaching English to four elderly Japanese men once a week. For
an hour each Monday evening, I was paid the king’s ransom of ¥10,000
– equivalent in 2002 to NZ$200 – and my beer glass was kept brimming
while we pursued conversational English. BAEC stood for ‘Beer Assisted
English Club’ – the four ‘boys’ delighted in telling me this at our first
session in a Taiwanese restaurant. The group was made up of an ironworks
company president (also local volunteer fire chief), a construction company
manager (who regularly flew an hour to South Korea for afternoon golf), a
photographer and a dry-cleaner. The dry-cleaner, Mr Miura, was the unlikely
leader of the group; diminutive in stature, he sat looking nervous and
reserved in the sessions, working on his next joke.
After introductions we tucked into delicious Taiwanese dishes. It wasn’t
long before I got a taste of what the future lessons would be like. The
Photographer peered down the length of the table and shouted, “Mr Miura,
please, another drink?”
The Iron Works President responded immediately: “Ah, no, no, (crossing his
arms repeatedly) Mr Miura, dangerous, no, drinking dangerous...”
“Why dangerous?” I asked, with some concern.
The Golfer jumped in with an explanation: “Ah, Mr Miura, his insides are so
bad.”
“I see …” I had been hoping for more information. It came from Mr Miura
himself,
“Mmm, yes, sadly my doctor, he says, ‘ah, Mr Miura, you have no alcohol now’.”
“His doctor worries about Mr Miura going ... poof!” Mr President chimed in.
MR MIURA’S MEDICINE 117
“Poof?” I repeated cautiously not knowing quite how I should take it.
The rigorous nodding of heads showed considerable consensus over the
meaning of ‘poof ’, but my puzzled look produced an explanation.
“Yes, if he drinks he will explode,” added the Photographer, saying the last
word with such emphasis that I couldn’t help smiling.
“Explode?” I said, helping myself to another bowl of fried rice. A new round
of beers was placed on the table and Mr Miura reached desperately for one.
Now it was the Golfer’s turn to take poor old Mr Miura’s story to a new level.
“Yes, explode, his heap will explode.”
“His heap? What on earth?” I was perplexed. Their previous teacher had
warned me they were a handful, but this was getting wacky.
“Yes, my doctor told me my heaps will go poof.” Mr Miura shook his head,
woefully. “He told me, ‘Please, no drink, Mr Miura.’ ”
“I see, but I don’t understand ‘heaps’ exploding.”
All four reached inside their jackets for their electronic dictionaries. A
translation race ensued. The Golfer was quick off the tee.
“Ah, here it says – ‘Heeem-moo-rooids’”
“Haemorrhoids!” You mean his piles will explode?” I exclaimed, with a look
of mock terror.
“Yes, my heaps will go poof!” Mr Miura cried.
“That is terrible, Mr Miura!” I countered.
“Yes, yes! This is awful,” he laughed, while raising his glass. “Cheers!”
Amidst raucous laughter, Mr Miura drained his glass.
Over the years that I taught the BAEC boys I became particularly close to
Mr Miura. He had a wicked sense of humour and a twinkle in his eye that I
looked forward to seeing each week. I enjoyed challenging him with complex
topics of conversation. Sometimes I tried teaching him points of grammar,
but his old eyes would glaze over and I’d have to switch to a game or a
debate of some sort.
They all enjoyed one game, the Japanese version of “Who Wants to be a
Millionaire?” Before arriving at class I would create a host of interesting
multi-choice general knowledge questions, and cut up handfuls of fake
paper money. As each question was answered correctly during the game, I
would raise the potential pool of winnings. The four of them were like young
118 RIBBONS OF FATE
children as they vied to win the most money. When an answer was given,
I would pause for a painfully long time, staring at each of them till they
had to turn away in suspense. “Fiiiinaru ansa desu ka?” (Fiiiinal answer?) I
would say, in my best impersonation of the popular Japanese TV game show
host. This would send them into spasms of laughter, but I would keep a
straight face right till the end, before gasping either “Sēkai!” (Correct!) or
“Zaaannen!” (What a shame!).
After a year of teaching BAEC I noticed some changes in Mr Miura. He
lost a lot of weight, and his tendency to shake and wobble was becoming
much more pronounced. One night he drank a strange, purplish concoction
instead of his normal beer and whisky. I asked him what he was drinking.
“This is special medicine,” he said, with a wink.
“Are you sick?” I asked.
“No, I am just old, please no worry about me. My doctor, he give me this
medicine, but I’m so good, okay?”
“Okay …” I said, not very convinced.
Every Monday night from then on, Mr Miura sipped purple medicine from
his tall glass.
Soon, the ‘boys’ found out that I had a Japanese girlfriend, and they politely
tried to coax out of me who she was. I don’t know why but I was loath to
give them a name, so would divert them from the issue, joking and turning
the questions back on them. I had a feeling that I shouldn’t say. After all,
Bee and I had kept our relationship under wraps in case it was discovered by
our school, the likely outcome being a transfer for Bee to another campus.
It was lucky I didn’t tell, because as it happened one BAEC member, ‘The
President’ regularly played go, a strategically-demanding board game, with
the principal of our school. I desperately tried to come up with original
excuses for Bee not to attend when she was invited. But after two years,
and with the end of my contract in sight, Bee and I were happier to relax
the rules. I trusted that the boys would understand the need for discretion
outside the club. One Monday night, much to the BAEC boys’ excitement,
Bee and I attended a lesson together. I was excited too, especially for her to
meet Mr Miura. I had told her all the stories about him. He had become like
a Japanese grandfather to me and I was proud to introduce her.
“Everyone, this is Junko,” I said as we entered the room. Three of them
cheered and clapped, but Mr Miura sat there with the oddest look on his
MR MIURA’S MEDICINE 119
face. For a second, I feared he’d had a stroke. But he wasn’t the only one in
shock. Bee was staring back at him, her mouth wide open.
“Miura-san?”
“Junko-san?”
Mr Miura looked at me. “This is Junko-san?” he stuttered in disbelief.
“And this is Miura-san?” Bee parroted.
Despite the conversation being conducted entirely in English, I looked
helplessly at Bee for explanation.
“Mr Miura was the one who awarded me the prize when I won the English
speech contest all those years ago,” she said. “He organised my whole trip
to the UK and Europe. He changed my life!”
“Junko-san?” Mr Miura was in a happy state of shock.
So my much loved Japanese grandfather had played an instrumental role
in setting Bee on the path to a life of English, which eventually led to her
meeting me. Throughout the evening, the two sat recounting old times. I
watched Mr Miura sipping his medicine. His hand trembled as he held the
glass to his lips, and he furrowed his brow in concentration each time he
carefully placed the glass back on the table.
On the way home I asked Bee what she thought was wrong with him.
“Perhaps it’s true, what he says. He’s just getting old. He’s a wonderful man.
He always has been. But he must be tired now – he still works full-time at
his dry-cleaning business. But he has such a strong spirit. Try not to worry
about him.”
But I did worry, especially that when I left Japan, I wouldn’t see him again.
I dreaded the last BAEC class. When the night came, Bee and I met the boys
at a traditional Japanese restaurant. As always, the meal was on them, and no
expense was spared. I sat close to Mr Miura. At various points throughout
the night he put a frail arm around my neck and repeatedly asked me with
a wobbling chin, “Matto, will you email me from Nyū-jīrando?” I promised I
would.
“Don’t worry,” he assured me, pointing to his purple drink. “I will keep
drinking my medicine. Someday you will come back and we will have class
again.”
Bee and I sat on the last carriage of the train, waiting for the doors to close.
The BAEC boys huddled on the platform outside our window.
120 RIBBONS OF FATE
“You’ll see him again,” Bee said as she patted me on the thigh.
“Well, maybe if he keeps drinking his medicine, he will be able to hold on
until I can come back.”
“What medicine?” she asked.
“His purple medicine, the stuff he has been taking for the past year.”
“That’s not medicine.” She looked at me with kindness. “Is that what he told
you?”
I nodded.
“That’s shōchū (a strong liquor) mixed with sweet bean paste.”
“A home-made mixer? But why would he tell me it was medicine?” I said as I
stared out at Mr Miura. His face was without expression.
“He doesn’t want you to worry about him.”
“I don’t even know what’s wrong with him!”
“He didn’t tell you that either?”
“Tell me what?”
“He has Parkinson’s disease.”
Mr Miura didn’t wave or bow with the other BAEC boys as the train
accelerated away. He just stood there, as still as I’d ever seen him, until his
tiny frame became a speck on the platform.

Over the years that I taught
the BAEC boys I became
particularly close to Mr
Miura. He had a wicked sense
of humour and a twinkle in
his eye that I looked forward
to seeing each week.
MR MIURA’S MEDICINE 121
26
Marriage
F
our months before my contract was to end, I announced at school that
Bee and I were going to get married. The first class I told was made up
mostly of girls.
“Everyone, I have some special news to tell you,” I said, as the students
packed up to leave.
“Matto, rubu, rubu?” (Love, love?) Aiko called out from the second row. A
few girls giggled.
“Yes, that’s right,” I replied.
Squeals of delight.
“Japanese girl or New Zealand girl?” Maho burst out.
“Japanese. We will get married soon.”
“EEEEHhhhhhhhh! KEKKON? (Whaaaat! MARRIED?) Dāre? Dāre?” (Who?
Who?)
“Well, you know her…”
There were gasps and screams, and a dozen possible names flew around the
room all at once.
“Picture?” Erika pleaded. Everyone else joined in. “Shashin, shashin, Matto!”
(Photo, photo!), they chorused.
“Okay,” I said, turning on the document camera at the front of the class.
Forty pairs of hands frantically switched on their television sets. Slowly I
edged a Polaroid photo under the lens, until Bee’s face appeared on the
monitor above me.
There was a second of silence before the explosion. They knew Bee well,
she had taught them. Some jumped up out of their chairs, others sat
122 RIBBONS OF FATE
dumbfounded, one girl burst into tears. Before I knew it, a mob was crowded
around the document camera taking photos of the tiny Polaroid on their cell
phones. “We send to friends!” they shrieked with excitement.
That night Bee and I were enjoying a quiet meal in a local noodle shop
when a wizened old lady in a kimono approached us and bowed deeply.
“Omedetou gozaimasu.” (Congratulations) She was the grandmother of a
girl who attended a school I’d never heard of. “I recognise you from your
picture,” she said to Bee.
The response from other teachers at school to our announcement had
been more subdued than that of the students, but no less delighted. The
question most of them were too shy to ask was what would happen next.
My work visa was due to expire and, having reached the maximum working
term of my contract, I couldn’t renew it. In their minds, for Bee to quit as
a teacher would be quite unthinkable. In Japan, a teacher is equal in social
status to a doctor or lawyer. The pay is excellent, and it is a guaranteed job,
for life. Teachers in the public school system who reach retirement age not
only get a valuable golden handshake, but also remain employed for some
years with no obligation to actually teach classes.
Bee had worked hard to become a teacher and with only eight years under
her belt, had just begun her career. But she had decided that she wanted to
quit and come to New Zealand to begin a new life with me. A few weeks after
she had handed in her notice to school, she showed me a paragraph about
her in the newspaper. In a prefecture of two million people she was the only
teacher that year to leave her job voluntarily.
We got married at the Town Hall in Bee’s hometown, Kani City. The witness,
a young woman behind the counter, happened to be an ex-student of Bee’s.
It was the afternoon of my twenty-sixth birthday. The whole deal cost us
the equivalent of $8 NZ. Afterwards, we sat on a concrete stop bank and
watched the grimy water of the Kani River flow past, as the rasping sounds of
machinery rose from a cement factory on the opposite bank. We held hands
as the sun set then wandered to a nearby Italian restaurant to celebrate the
day with an authentic risotto, wheeled out on a silver trolley and garnished
with parmesan shaved by the chef himself who came out probably to look us
over. As we ate, we planned the second and third parts of our wedding – a
church ceremony and a café party.
Bee’s mother was a member of the congregation at a tiny Calvinist church.
In a country where only 1% of the population is Christian, to be Calvinist is
MARRIAGE 123
extremely rare. When we asked if we could be allowed to hold our wedding
in their tiny riverside church, the church members were hesitant. But, thanks
to Bee’s mother and her late-father’s long-term involvement in the church
community, we negotiated a deal whereby we would attend bible class once
a week for eight weeks to prepare us for the ceremony and our future
lives, in return for being married there. So, every Thursday night, instead
of enjoying beer and chicken wings at our local bar, we drove an hour
to Minokamo City, and sat in front of the Pastor as he read breathlessly
in Japanese from the Bible. On the second week, I resorted to pulling
individual hairs on my legs under the desk to stay awake. Bee wasn’t able
to translate during the sessions, and this subtle form of self-torture was all
I could do to keep my eyelids open. In addition to the classes, we attended
a church service every Sunday morning, practised hymns in Japanese and
went to church social functions. The congregation was accommodating
and friendly – I appreciated the lengths they went to in helping me to feel
part of the group.
“My father used to play the organ at church every Sunday,” Bee said, as
we drove home one day. “He was only allowed home from the hospital on
weekends. My mother and sister and I would fight over him, we all wanted
to sleep beside him, play with him and talk to him. But every Sunday, I
remember sitting in the little room out the front for Bible class while my
father played the organ for the adult’s service. And after the service was
over I remember other children climbing all over him, laughing and having
fun – other children, with my father. The father I waited all week to see and
spend time with. That was difficult, because I was often jealous. But children
seemed to warm to him so easily.”
On the first day of May we were married in the church. Unlike the crass,
fake churches built specifically for ‘white’ western style weddings in the big
cities, this Calvinist church was refreshingly plain. The only frill in the place
was an unpretentious elongated cross made of sapphire-blue glass, which
was embedded in the wall behind the altar. An opera singing friend of Bee’s
came all the way from Tokyo to perform for us. She sang to the sound of the
harmonium that Bee’s father played years before. Unluckily, the instrument’s
internal bellows had a small air leak, and the panicked organist had to pump
the foot pedals three times as fast as usual to hold the long notes. My
mother and her partner had flown from New Zealand for the occasion and
sat in the front row while Bee and I exchanged vows in Japanese. During the
service I had my father’s favourite silk tie folded in the breast pocket of my
124 RIBBONS OF FATE
suit jacket. That evening we partied at a jazz café and Bee, after changing
into a full kimono sang a solo and made a sweet speech in English. We
performed karaoke with friends until late, and I spent our honeymoon night
squashed between Bee, my mother and her partner in my tiny living room.
By the end of the summer, our first as a married couple, our time in Japan
was drawing to a close. Having finished her teaching job at the end of the
previous school year, Bee had been off work for some months in the lead up
to our wedding. With the ceremony now over, she flew to my family home in
New Zealand a week before my departure, leaving me to finish up at school,
prepare my apartment for a handover to my successor and say good bye to
my Japanese friends.

That evening we partied at a jazz café and Bee,
after changing into a full kimono, sang a solo
and made a sweet speech in English.
MARRIAGE 125
27
Ribbons of Fate
O
n my final Saturday in Japan I sat alone writing notes for the new
English teacher about how to conform to strict neighbourhood
recycling laws, which buttons to avoid pressing on the heated toilet seat
and how to use the space-age rice cooker. Just then the phone rang.
“Hello, Matto?”
“Yes?”
“It’s Chiemi.”
I had first met Chiemi at a local bar three years before. She was exquisitely
attractive, slim, with long, dyed brown hair and an immaculate sense of
fashion. She had a chihuahua, which went everywhere in her handbag. In my
time in Japan Chiemi had become an acquaintance – one of those people
Bee and I occasionally shared a drink and a laugh with, then didn’t see for
a few more months. I’d talked with her one-on-one only a couple of times,
and aside from being impressed with her self-taught English, I found her to
be a thoughtful and sensitive person.
“Hi! How are you Chiemi?”
“I am fine. You are going soon to New Zealand?” she asked.
“Yes, I fly out on Wednesday evening.”
“I’m sad you will go,” she said. “I will miss you.”
I smiled. Would she really miss me? It was a sweet thing to say, but I felt as
though neither of us had really made the effort to connect on more than
just a fleeting social level.
“Well, I will miss you too, Chiemi. I’d like to see you before I go, if I can.”
“Tomorrow?”
“Ah, sure, tomorrow would be good. Do you want to meet me at the bar?”
126 RIBBONS OF FATE
“I’d like to pick you up,” she said. “Ten o’clock in the morning? I want to take
you somewhere. Is that okay?”
“Sure, that’d be great. I’ll be here at ten.”
“I am so happy,” she replied. “See you tomorrow, Matto.” She hung up.
It was a particularly crisp autumn morning. The sun was already high above
the red hills of the city when Chiemi rolled up in her Toyota Hilux. Her hair
was hidden under a New York Yankees baseball cap. She wore a white v-neck
t-shirt with silver sequins on the front, tight blue jeans with a designer belt
and brown suede boots. Despite being in her early 30s she would have
passed for a high school student. I jumped in and we headed towards a
neighbouring city.
“Have you been here before?” she asked, as she turned right into a familiar
looking car park. “It’s a temple called Ehōji. I wanted to bring you here so
you will remember something beautiful about Japan.”
I had been to the temple grounds before, but I didn’t want to ruin her
surprise. Besides, I had never visited in autumn, and the place looked
completely different in fiery reds and yellows. Together we walked down a
winding path through forests of bamboo and sugi (Japanese cedar tree).
The temple was at one end of the grounds, looking out over a large, carpfilled pond. Several small bridges arched over smaller streams and the white
gravel beside the paths was raked artistically in unbroken wavy lines. As we
wandered, we marvelled at the beauty and peace of the temple.
“Shall we sit?” Chiemi eventually asked, pointing to a low, mossy stone wall
that overlooked a small round pond with a tiny island in the middle. We
made ourselves comfortable and sat in silence staring out over the pond.
I had the urge to throw a pebble into the still water, but instead I picked
up a burgundy-coloured leaf from the gravel and smoothed it thoughtfully
between my fingertips.
“I’m so happy you found love,” Chiemi said, with a smile. “Junko is beautiful.
You are a lucky guy.”
“Yes, I am lucky,” I replied.
“And she is so lucky, too.”
“Hah, you might need to give her a few years and ask her again.”
“But it’s true. She is so lucky. I will never find true love.” Her brow furrowed.
“Don’t be crazy, Chiemi!” I replied. “Just look at you!”
RIBBONS OF FATE 127
“Just look at me? Why do you say that?”
“I’m just saying that anyone would be lucky to have you in their life. You’re a
wonderful person, and I’m certain you’ll find true love one day.”
She looked up and smiled, half-heartedly. “No one wants an old woman like
me.”
“Chiemi! You are 32!”
“Sō desu ne (That’s right). I’m too old.”
“Not where I come from.”
“I’m not beautiful, like Junko.”
“You are beautiful,” I replied, quickly adding, “like Junko.”
“I want to come to see you in New Zealand,” she said. “I want to stay with
you and Junko. She will be the perfect wife for you, I am sure. I want to see
you as a happy couple.”
“Any time, Chiemi, come and stay for as long as you like.”
“Thank you. You are a very special friend.”
Was I such a great friend? I suddenly felt regretful that I hadn’t put more
effort into our friendship over the past three years. If only we had talked
like this earlier. I’d always assumed she was busy with some hidden pop-idol
boyfriend in Nagoya, but now I realised she was alone.
For lunch, Chiemi took me to a restaurant on a hill overlooking the city. It was
the same place Bee and I had eaten at on our first official date some years
earlier. When she dropped me home, Chiemi walked me to my apartment
door and became very formal.
“I hope you have a safe trip back. Thank you for today, it was special to me.”
We hugged lightly on the doorstep, a brief, Japanese-style hug, and she
turned and walked away without looking back.
“Email me!” I called, as she got to her truck. She bowed in response and
smiled, before getting in and driving away.
That night I drank alone at the bar where I’d first met Chiemi, turning over
the events of the day in my head. It had been a pleasant outing, but for
some reason it had left me feeling unsettled.
Wednesday arrived, my last day in Japan. I waited outside for my ride to
school with suitcases packed and all my remaining wordly belongings
arranged in the apartment – ready to become someone else’s. I realised it
128 RIBBONS OF FATE
was the first time in three years that I had gone to school without my bicycle.
Rather than feel sad, I focused on what was ahead: a farewell speech in the
staffroom, a car ride to Toki station, a train ride to Nagoya, a changeover
to another train line then onto an airport shuttle to speed me to Nagoya’s
brand-new international airport. On the way to school I nervously double
checked my tickets.
When I arrived in the staffroom it was business as usual. I sat at my
desk making sure my drawers were tidy and checking that the necessary
instructions for the English syllabus I had painstakingly created over three
years were ready for the next foreigner. At half past ten I was asked to speak
to the teachers; I did so in Japanese in special formal style before walking
around the staffroom and saying sayōnara to all those I had worked with.
Over the school PA system I heard my name in an announcement. Kyōtosensei (the deputy principal) was letting the students know I was leaving.
This was it. With my bag in hand, I slid out of my indoor slippers for the last
time, laboriously laced up my shoes, stepped out into the courtyard where
the car was waiting and climbed slowly into the back seat. From above, I heard
my name being called, and looked up to see dozens of students hanging out
of upper-floor windows, waving their sweat towels in circles and calling out.
“Bye-bye, Matto-sensei!”
“Come back to Japan!”
“Rabu rabu (Love love) Matto!”
“Sayōnara!”
At the school gate a few staff members stood in a neat line. As we passed
them I waved and shouted goodbye from the car’s open window. Most of
them bowed, but one of them, a school office worker with whom I had
become close friends, broke away from the line suddenly and ran after the
car, clasping my hand, shouting, “See you again, Matto!” As the car picked
up speed, he let go my hand then tapped twice on the side of the car. I
craned my neck around to wave from the back window and saw him panting
heavily in the street, still waving.
After checking in at the airport I had two hours before the flight. Though I
was excited to be returning to New Zealand to start my new life with Bee,
I was extremely sad about leaving the life I had built in Japan. I sat in one
of the main lounges turning my boarding pass over in my hands, wondering
when I’d be back in Japan again. Suddenly, from behind, a faint voice uttered
my name.
RIBBONS OF FATE 129
“Matto?”
Surprised, I turned to see Chiemi, in jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and woollen
beanie, standing behind my chair.
“Chiemi! What are you doing here?”
“I came to say goodbye. I didn’t know if I’d find you.”
“I’m so glad you did. It’s no fun waiting alone. Thank you for coming all this
way.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I saw a good gyōza (fried dumpling) restaurant
on the floor above.”
In the tiny restaurant overlooking the new airport runway, we ordered a
plate of gyōza and two nama-chū (medium drafts) of ice-cold Asahi beer.
“Can I tell you something?” Chiemi asked, as the gyōza arrived. “Some
Japanese believe that when people are born, they have an invisible ribbon
tied around their little finger.” She delicately dipped one of the dumplings
into a porcelain dish of soy sauce, rice vinegar and chilli-infused sesame oil.
“That’s interesting. I’ve never heard of that,” I answered.
“Well, many people believe this. Can you guess the point of the ribbon?”
“I’d say for hospital identification, but perhaps not if the ribbon’s invisible …”
“Well, the other end of the ribbon is tied to the little finger of that person’s
soul mate. Do you know soul mates?”
“Yes, I know soul mates.” I really wasn’t too sure where this was going.
“The person goes through life, and no matter where they go or what they
do, the ribbon never breaks. As the years go by, the ribbon gets smaller and
smaller. It leads two soul mates to each other. They meet and realise that
all along, everything that has happened in their lives has led to this other
person. Do you want another beer?”
“Let me get it.” I ordered two more beers and another plate of dumplings.
“That’s a nice thought, Chiemi. I’d like to believe it’s true.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Maybe you and Junko were tied together by such a ribbon?”
The thought was an intriguing one. I recalled the things that had led me to
Japan, to the tiny city of Toki: Yoshi and Mariko whom I’d met as a small child;
130 RIBBONS OF FATE
a growing fascination with Japan throughout my school years; my English
literature degree; my father’s death at the young age of 46; my wanting
to get away from New Zealand so badly; failing the selection process for a
Japanese teaching job only to be called up at the last minute; and the fact
that I had had no choice in where I was being sent. I had literally stepped on
the plane to Japan blind and headed into the unknown.
It was the first time I had thought about that series of random events, my
ending up in that school, in that particular year, with Bee sitting beside
me in the staffroom. Then I thought about Bee: about her listening to the
English radio programs all those years before; about her deputy principal
overhearing her singing and suggesting she enter the speech contest; about
her winning the contest and going abroad which put her on the path to
becoming an English teacher. I remembered her inviting me to lunch that
first time and about our afternoon together at the Five Waterfalls. Perhaps
we had been connected in some way strange way after all.
“So how far do these ribbons stretch?” I asked Chiemi, as she sipped her
beer.
“Across oceans,” was her reply.
Before I entered the customs area, Chiemi placed her hand on the back of
my neck and gave it a few squeezes, friendly-massage style.
“Don’t be sad, Matto. You will see Junko soon, and be happy with your new
life. Come back to Japan and visit, you have many friends here who want to
see you again.”
It was the chirpiest I’d seen her in our last few encounters. But as I walked
under the gateway to line up for customs I saw there were tears streaming
down her face. I was shocked, and felt I should go back, but it was too late.
I waved and she covered her eyes with her hands. I fumbled in my pockets
for my passport, and when I looked back up she was gone.
As I waited in line, I realised that Chiemi embodied everything that was
wonderful about Japan – the thoughtfulness, the humility, graciousness,
beauty, the powerfully pent-up emotion of the place, extremely veiled.
Surrendering my ‘alien registration’ identification card at the airport border
I passed into international no-man’s land. It struck me that although I’d lived
in the heart of Japan for three years, it was only now that I was beginning to
feel the beating of this heart.
I dialled my home number from a payphone outside a duty-free shop. Bee
RIBBONS OF FATE 131
had gone back to New Zealand a week early, and was with my family, waiting
for me. After a long pause I heard her voice, small and crackly from across
the Pacific. In one sense, my Japanese life had come to an end; in another
sense, it was just beginning. I was going home.
From above, I heard my name being called, and looked up to see dozens of
students hanging out of upper-floor windows, waving their sweat towels in circles
and calling out.
132 RIBBONS OF FATE
Afterword
The more memories I turned into stories for this book, the more curious
I became to find out what had happened to the people in them. Bee and
I now had a four-year-old son, Yoshi, and I was beginning to fear that if I
didn’t act soon to get back in touch with some of these characters, I might
not have the chance to introduce him to the people who had played such an
important role in those three great years of my life in Japan.
First, I tracked down Hiro of the “Chilli Brosse Encounter”. He was working
for a Japanese-owned engineering firm in China. He was married and had a
baby boy, Ken. Just months after Ken’s birth, Hiro had accepted a three-year
contract to work abroad, and could only communicate with his new family
irregularly, via Skype and telephone. Hearing of his posting made me think
of a conversation we had years before, during one of our Wednesday night
meals:
“Actually, ah … Matto-sensei, do you know what the world’s most spoken
language is?” he had said, noodles dangling from his chopsticks.
“Um, Spanish?”
“Muy beuno, sensei, but you are wrong. I’ll give you a clue. Actually, do you
know what a mikan is?”
“A mandarin?”
“Tadashī! (Correct!) You just named the Number One language. You are a
very clever guy. I think for me it is very important to study Mandarin and
English to excel in my job. I want to speak Mandarin so I can go to China to
work for a big Japanese firm.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear he had managed to follow his ambition.
Next – with Bee’s help – I discovered a website that Mizuno-sensei of
“Winter Wish” had created, devoted to all the things he loves: his ‘other’
life in Hirugano, his second house in the mountains, traditional Japanese
cooking, therapeutic hot springs, home-made smoked cheese, nature walks
AFTERWORD 133
and poetry. With an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, Bee and I browsed
through photos of his house, trees and flowers from the tracks we walked
with him, and sketches he had drawn of local scenes around his retreat. Bee
added her translation under my email to my Japanese ‘father’, and we sent
it off. It had been seven years since he pushed me down that mountain
slope – and six since I had last seen him. After all this time I had no idea if
I’d hear back.
About a week later, a reply arrived from Mizuno-sensei. I eagerly awaited
Bee’s translation.
“Dear Matto-san and Junko-san, Congratulations on having a boy. I hope
one day my wife and I can visit you in New Zealand. I am a school principal
now. I cannot take long vacations, but I still try to get away to my house in
Hirugano for weekends. I am in the house now. Spring has arrived. Mount
Haku is shrouded in mist. I wish you were here to see it.”
Mizuno-sensei, the man who had set Bee on the path to becoming a teacher
had now reached the pinnacle of the teaching profession itself.
Eventually I made contact with Mizuki of “The Speech Contest”. Her message
appeared one day in my inbox with the subject line, “Hi, from Toshiba!” It
read:
“Hello Matto-sensei, I’m working for Toshiba now. My job is in management.
I am the youngest manager here. I work at a huge factory in Kawasaki, near
Haneda Airport. This is not what I expected, because I dreamed to wear a
cool suit, and work at a high-rise building in the middle of Tokyo. But I feel
that this will be a great experience in my career, so I just need to do my best
in my job now.”
This message brought back fond memories of the meal that Mizuki, Bee
and I had shared at the Vampire Room. We had talked about work ethics,
and about how Mizuki’s diligence and drive would make her successful. It
sounded as if we hadn’t been wrong so far.
Returning to New Zealand, I had stayed in sporadic contact with Mr Miura
of “Mr Miura’s Medicine”, via online chat and the occasional email. He had
been delighted to hear about the birth of Yoshi – especially as his grandson
had been born around the same time. We promised each other that one
day the two boys would meet and speak together in Japanese and English.
The thought was a truly happy one. Gradually, though, Mr Miura appeared
online less frequently, and then he stopped answering his emails altogether.
134 RIBBONS OF FATE
Some nights, in the months that followed, I would lie awake uneasily, my
mind replaying the times spent with Mr Miura. I would fret, wondering if and
how I would ever find out if something should ever happen to him. I doubted
that anyone from his family would think to call Bee and me in New Zealand.
While working on this book, I sent another long email to Mr Miura’s email
address. This time it bounced back. His account had been closed. I became
desperate for news of him, hounding Bee to search through all her old
address books for a chance phone number. Eventually she found an old
business card for “Miura Dry Cleaning”. There was a mobile phone number
handwritten on the back. We called it several times two nights running with
no luck. Finally, on the third night, Mr Miura’s wife answered. She told us
that he had been seriously ill in hospital for five months. It was pneumonia,
she said. While he was still in good spirits, he had lost the ability to talk, and
was very weak. News of his condition was a blow to both of us, for he had
played an important role at various points in our lives. I can only hope that I
do make it back to Japan soon to have another “English class” with him – as
we had promised each other all those years ago.
My swimming friend, Tom of “The Ghost of Yoneyama”, returned to the
United States to study ceramics, and subsequently became a yoga
instructor. When I look at a map of Japan I often find myself tracking the
route we took around Hokkaido in Bee’s undersized car. Each corner of the
island represents a rocky beach, a sandy cape or a leafy campground which
carries fond memories.
A few days after my 32nd birthday, a pink envelope turned up in the mail. It
was postmarked ‘Gold Coast, Australia’ and the address was neatly written
by hand. Inside was a birthday card:
“Happy Birthday! Long time no see, Matto! I hope you are well. I am living
on the Gold Coast now. I married a nice Aussie guy. I have been here for
two years. I went back to Japan recently. Do you remember our friend, Mr
K? He just opened his own bar! I had a drink there. He sends best wishes to
you. Please come here with Junko to visit me in Australia. Miss you! Chiemi.”
(“Ribbons of Fate”)
I recalled then, for the first time in years, our conversation at Ehōji temple
– the cynical look she had given me when I had assured her she would find
love. Then the poignant farewell we had shared on my final day in Japan.
I smiled, too, at the news about Mr K of “Mr K” running his own bar. I
wondered if he’d installed more than one toilet in the place.
135
Turning the card over, I noticed Chiemi had added a note. In her pretty,
cursive handwriting it read simply: “P.S. It was true about the ribbons.”
Those twisted ribbons of fate brought about one event, though, that made
me question the idea of destiny altogether. I was away on business in 2009
when I received a call from Bee to tell me she had been diagnosed with an
invasive form of breast cancer. She was typically obstinate about the whole
thing, but over the following few weeks as she waited for an operation her
nerves frayed.
Bee’s condition required two operations. Throughout each of them I waited
anxiously, mentally rummaging through the memories of our life together.
Only three years earlier she had given birth to Yoshi a few doors down the
corridor from where she now lay. I spent a lot of time wondering about
where life was going to lead us next.
The surgeon who removed her cancer marvelled at how early it had been
detected. In his experience, such a small tumour had never been detected
by a patient. Given the aggressive nature of the cancer, if left for just several
more months it would likely have been a different outcome for Bee. But
after six weeks of radiation treatment, she was given a clean bill of health.
Lastly, there is Yoshi. Sometimes I look at him and suppose that he has an
invisible ribbon around his little finger. I imagine who he might be attached
to, and whether those people are nearby or “across oceans”, as Chiemi put
it. I wonder if the course of his life will lead him, as mine led me, to Japan,
and I hope that one day he will read this book and discover – in a funny kind
of way – how he came to be.
Sometimes I look at Yoshi and
suppose that he has an invisible
ribbon around his little finger.
I imagine who he might be
attached to, and whether those
people are nearby or “across
oceans”, as Chiemi put it.
136 RIBBONS OF FATE
Glossary of Japanese Words
Introduction by the Author
The Yamasaku Inn
futon (bedding)
minshuku (bed and breakfast)
bonsai (miniature pot-grown)
konbini (convenience store)
ramen (noodles)
wasabi (horse-radish mustard)
karaoke (singing)
gomen! (sorry!)
Nihon-jin (Japanese people)
shoji (paper screen)
Arrival
futon (bedding)
tatami (traditional floor matting)
nihongo (Japanese language)
Kōcho-sensei (principal)
The Eel Bone
Kyōto-sensei (deputy principal)
kaiten-zushi (conveyor-belt sushi)
Five Waterfalls
Yoshi and Mariko
Hyaku-en store (Two-dollar shop)
sararimen (company employees)
konbini (convenience store)
mikan (mandarin)
buna-no-ki (Japanese beech trees)
geisha (traditional female entertainers)
Chilli Brosse Encounter
kimono (traditional garment)
gyokuro (fine, expensive green tea)
irasshaimase! (welcome!)
oshibori (hand towels)
A Lively Lunch
tonkatsu ramen (pork cutlet noodles)
ramen (noodles)
minshuku (bed and breakfast)
sake (rice wine)
onsen (hot springs)
sugoi! (great!)
sashimi (raw fish)
gaijin (foreigner)
The War Diary
Ah, shimatta! (Damn, I’ve made a mistake!)
kakkoī! (Handsome! Cool!)
keitai (cell phone)
sashimi (raw fish)
GLOSSARY 137
Golden Week
Mr K
ryokan (Japanese inn)
yakitori (grilled chicken)
daikon (large white radishes)
arubaito (part-time job)
Honto ni? (Oh, really?)
yakuza (Japanese mafia)
pachinko (pinball machine)
arigatō (thank you)
gassho (traditional thatched-roof houses)
yakisoba (fried noodles)
Winter Wish
bessō (second house)
Sitting Seizure
bunkasai (cultural festival)
mitarashi dango (rice flour dumplings
covered in sticky soy sauce and sugar syrup)
ichi-nensei (first-year)
ganbatte! (Do your best!)
kimono (traditional garment)
sumimasen! (Sorry!)
ikebana (arranged flower)
oishī (delicious)
kanji (written characters)
sake (rice wine)
migi/hidari (right/left)
matcha (finely milled tea powder)
The Atomic Dome
Genbaku (Atomic)
The Cockroach
bento (lunchbox)
apāto (apartment)
daikon (slices of white radish)
gokiburi (cockroach)
hotaru (fireflies)
Hayashi-sensei
akatonbo (dragonflies)
bōnenkai (end-of-year teachers’ party)
kabuto-mushi (stag beetles)
futon (bedding)
azuki hebi (harmless brown snakes)
mamushi (venomous vipers)
mukade (poisonous centipede)
ō-suzume-bachi (giant sparrow bee)
genkan (entrance)
oyasumi (good night)
Shirakawa Village
sonmin (villagers)
The Love Hotel
rabu hoteru (love hotel)
The Red Caps
karaoke (singing)
The Ghost of Yoneyama
kei (undersized)
kirin (giraffe)
konbanwa (good evening)
potsu-potsu (pitter-patter)
nori (dried sheets of seaweed)
138 RIBBONS OF FATE
The Fox by the Lake
Mr Miura’s medicine
dorotabo (ghost of a farmer)
Fiiiinaru ansa desu ka? (Fiiiinal answer?)
kabuki (classical Japanese dance-drama)
Sēkai! (Correct!)
hoshi no tama (star balls)
Zaaannen! (What a shame!)
konbanwa (good evening)
shōchū (Japanese liquor)
sumimasendeshita (I’m very sorry)
tada dayo (It’s fine, no charge)
Marriage
Yukkuri shite ke! (Please enjoy your night)
rabu rabu (love love)
chotto… ano… (Wait … ah …)
kekkon (married)
kitsune ni kī tsukerō (beware of foxes)
dāre (who?)
ohayo (good morning)
shashin (photo)
yoku neta ka? (sleep well?)
omedetō gozaimasu (Congratulations)
kimono (traditional garment)
Typhoons
omiyage (souvenir gifts)
karaoke (singing)
hanabi (fireworks)
Ribbons of Fate
yukata (summer kimono)
sugi (Japanese cedar tree)
karaoke (singing)
sō desu ne (that’s right)
onsen (hot spring)
sayōnara (good bye)
rabu rabu (love love)
The Speech Contest
gyōza (fried dumpling)
Nagaragawa (Nagara River)
nama-chū (medium drafts of beer)
senpai/kohai (mentor/protégé)
Kōcho-sensei (the principal)
Afterword
san-nensei (third-year)
Tadashī! (Correct!)
yaki imo (baked sweet potato)
bōsōzoku (young motorcycle gang members)
The Vampire Room
sugoi! (great!)
kampai! cheers!
Kyōto-sensei (the deputy principal)
kowai! (scary!)
subarashī! (wonderful!)
Dōmo arigatō gozaimashita, (Thank you very much)
Okaikē wa yon-man go-sen en ni narimasu.
(That’ll be 45,000 yen, please.)
139
“Poignant, affecting stories of cultural interchange.” Graeme Lay, novelist and short story writer
By the time I eventually received my bowl of tea I was beginning to consider amputation below
the knees. The thought of this enabled me to relax and begin to enjoy the experience on a
whole new level. Takada-sensei informed me that I should place my left hand beneath the bowl
while rotating it two-and-one-quarter turns clockwise with my right. Once that was done I
was free to drink it. Despite the fact that the vessel was about the size of a regular soup
bowl, it contained only four mouthfuls of brilliant green frothy tea in the bottom of it.
After all that preparation, it seemed almost wrong to guzzle it down in a few seconds. But,
as Takada-sensei delighted in telling me, the splendour lies in the procedure, the movements,
the discipline, the grace of it all – not in the tea itself. It might have been the pain, but I
actually found myself absorbed in what he was telling me. Sitting ‘Seizure’ p.52
“Matt Comeskey’s wry, subtle stories capture those fleeting moments in which Japan is revealed
to the vigilant.” David Geraghty, A Snake in the Shrine, Otago University Press
Facing me was the one-armed man. His pants were around his knees and he was doubled
over, struggling to pull them up. My mind went entirely blank. Of all the stupid, dangerous,
embarrassing things I could have done to the man, this was undoubtedly the worst. He panicked,
scrambling to stand up, clutching at his jeans frantically with his arm, his face blood red.
Mr K p.62
“As a long-term resident of Japan I loved reading these delightful tales, told with charm, delicacy
and wit.” Naomi Arimura, Forty Stories of Japan (‘Puppy Kindy’, ‘A Japanese Xmas’)
In the moments it took me to find the spray, the goki had disappeared somewhere into the clutter
of my pots and pans cupboard. I had managed to lose my towel; I stood naked in the middle
of my kitchen, a can of noxious chemicals at the ready. In Japan, not only are gokiburi huge
compared to New Zealand cockroaches, and maybe those of other countries, but they are darker,
shinier, quicker off the mark and worse still, they fly. The thought of this critter going straight for
my jugular, or any other part of me for that matter, was not good, but neither was the thought of
leaving him unfound, and going to bed, where he might later seek refuge from the heat in the cool
sheets of my futon. So, I waited, poised and vulnerable, but ready to deal to him if he made a run.
The Cockroach p.56
“Matt Comeskey gives us unvarnished accounts of Japan life with a universal warmth. Good short
story tellers leave the reader wanting more – this young writer succeeds admirably.”
Allan Murphy, Forty Stories of Japan (‘Communication at a Crossroads’, ‘Ohenro’).
Matt Comeskey was an assistant English teacher in a Japanese high
school from 2001–2004. He currently works as an educational publisher
and lives with wife Junko and son Yoshiki in Wellington, New Zealand.