The Eye of the Storm

July 26

I left Osaka and took up an offer to stay with a woman living in the Japanese alps who was involved in a government funded rural revitalization project. My first stop was Kyoto where I stayed for a couple of nights, and then I made the 5 hour trip by train and bus.

I had a big emotional breakdown the morning I was supposed to leave and drank a half a bottle of chocolate sauce and then went running in Nagai Park - so I ended up leaving way later than expected. My backpack was super heavy and I was moving slowly and eating my feelings as I made my way to the train station: persimmon wrapped sushi roll, green tea ice cream, boiled egg, bento box with soba noodles, and an especially tasty fruit and whipped cream sandwich.

I eventually made it to a quaint wooden hostel in Kyoto that was a short walk from a wall of shrines and temples. In the common area there was a red-haired dude at the shared computer wearing a Grimes t-shirt, so I said hi to him and it turned out that he was also from so-called Canada (rural Eastern). He (Arthur) was a self professed geek and we quickly got into a big discussion about comics and underground music. We decided that we would meet up later on that evening and became fast friends.

I spent the rest of the day wandering around aimlessly checking out traditional architecture and for the first time in weeks I saw a lot of other foreigners around.

Afterwards, Arthur and I met up and explored the main temples up on the mountain that overlooks the city. One of them was all lit up and there were three little wooden chariots in the centre of the temple's courtyard. On our way back to the hostel we wandered around Gion, saw two geishas, and a waning moon was glowing dimly beneath hazy clouds. There were a lot of people out in yukatas and the pacing of everything was a lot slower and more tranquil than Osaka.

The following morning just after 6am I hiked up to one of the temples again by myself and there were monks in black robes chanting. When I came back down to Gion, there were monks dressed in white chanting at another temple. After I got back to the hostel I decided to go on a hike to the outskirts of town and took the bus out to a beautiful village framed by layers of large rounded mountains, some with temples atop of them; and there were little pods of wooden houses with thatched roofs tucked into green rice fields.

In the afternoon Arthur and I met up again and we went to an art gallery where they had youkai patches – demons and spirits from Japanese folklore. I got one of a monster who waits at the temple gates and doesn't let any evil spirits in, and one of a wind spirit born of fire who can only be seen by the pure of heart. Another youkai was born out of discarded rage and paralyzes victims with a noxious smell, and one was a woman who elongates her neck and strangles animals with it. Another was a ghost who appears after 100 ghost stories are told, and some were cats who take the form of humans after devouring them.


July 28

Arthur and I decided to go to Nara together, and I saw a giant Buddha for the first time, which was so powerfully striking that tears started streaming down my face. I really wasn't expecting it. Afterwards we saw the oldest wooden building in the world, and then we were both spiritually rebirthed out of a wooden nostril. On our way back to Kyoto we hiked through a 7th century tree grove and saw a city view of Nara at night.

Arthur was a solid, mellow dude and we ended up sharing a lot with each other about our lives. He had worked as a long distance bus driver and studied to be a trail guide, and he was going to be in Japan for 6 months immersing himself in the culture. It came out that we were both bullied pretty bad growing up, only I fought back and he internalized everything. Don’t really think one is better than the other.


Monday July 29

I left the hostel and headed to the main train station in Kyoto. My host, Hotaru, booked the connecting bus for me and said that it would be pink with cherry blossoms on the side of it; but when I arrived at the transfer point all of the English disappeared and there were no foreigners around, so I panicked a little bit wondering how the heck I was going to find the bus as I traversed through the tightly packed waves of humans moving quickly and with purpose to their various destinations. I tried a few random exits, stared blankly at some intricate maps that I couldn't understand; and then I randomly happened upon an exit that led out to a sprawl of parking spots where a line of buses were parked, including a bright pink one with giant cherry blossom branches on the side that left shortly after I boarded! It's times like this in the midst of traveling when everything somehow converges that I know there definitely is a higher consciousness at play in the world.

On the way to the village we drove through a heck of a lot of tunnels, and one of them went on and on through terrible blackness for several haunting minutes. I figured that people surely must have died in there over the years.

As night started to fall, we passed through a valley cradled by huge tree-bedecked mountains, and there were pockets of mist hovering above the crests like translucent dancing ghosts. Then we came down into another more narrow valley and I was dropped off at a small bus station where I was picked up by the friendly and energetic Hotaru who was surprised that I made it without a cell phone, and said that the trains are extremely confusing even when you can read Japanese.

 

We immediately drove to one of Hotaru's friends' place deep in the mountains and had a delicious dinner of wood fired pizza, noodles on ice salad with fresh local tomatoes, salted cucumbers, boiled eggs, tofu with fish flakes and sticky rice balls with sweet miso sauce - and a lot of coffee, which I don't drink very often, and I ended up bum boarding down some steep country roads and giving skateboard lessons to two of Hotaru's friends. Everyone was extremely friendly and seemed very interested to have a foreign person in their midst.

A few of us returned back to Hotaru's place and when we were all sitting in the living room together there was an earthquake. The room started warbling and everyone just continued chatting and eating like it was nothing.

The next morning was was misty and moody, and I decided to stay behind and go to an onsen with one of Hotaru's friend's while she went to her morning meeting. The onsen was a similar idea as the bath house in Osaka with natural springs of hot water, only this place was some kind of magical paradise with indoor and outdoor pools and greenery all around.

When Hotaru came back from work she made some cucumber salad, and I watched in awe as she sliced it into paper thin sheets and massaged it with vinegar and salt for us to eat with salmon and rice balls (I gave up on trying to stay vegetarian). As soon as we were done eating, Hotaru and I set off through the winding countryside again, her smiling and clutching the steering wheel wearing black gloves up past her elbows and large thick sunglasses.

 

We briefly visited a Buddhist temple up in the mountains and then headed to the rice fields that Hoturu was tending to as part of her work contract. There were wisps of soft pale pink clouds painted above the huge mountain ranges that framed the road we were driving along, and we followed a a river deeper into the folds of green. Yet even in the most remote areas, there was gaudy cement paving all around; giant waffles of thick concrete muzzling the banks along the roads. And the mountains kept trying to reclaim the road, sending rocks into the lane and vegetation into the empty spaces. In every small town we passed there were construction sites with bored looking workers in fluorescent vests smiling as they waved us through.

 

After tending to the rice fields we stopped at a corn stand and everyone there was really excited to see us. Then we stopped at Hotaru's place briefly and prepared for an overnight stay in another remote and beautiful area.

Our destination was at the top of a hill on a steep ridge in a small, old wooden house overlooking a sea of mountains. There was a wood fire bath outside and huge potted plants and gardens all around. Gunshots went off periodically to scare the monkeys away, and it was the only break from a constant hum of insect chatter. In the centre of the living room was a coal barbecue, and and we all gathered around. The man we were staying with was overjoyed to have guests, and he told me that he was a big fan of 50’s rock n' roll music from America. It was strange that so many people were obsessed with the pop culture and lifestyle of a country which had so brutally and mercilessly devastated them..

A few other colleagues from Hotaru's work showed up and we had a huge meal with gigantic shrimp, lamb, beef, pork, corn, zucchini, homemade Japanese pickles, 4 year old ume plum wine, whiskey and wine. We had an eggplant taste test with blind folds on, roasting each eggplant over the barbecue, to see which burgeoning farmer grew the most delicious ones. The area we were in had experienced a big population decline (from 12,000 to 400 in 40 years) so the government was trying to attract people to live in the region and get young people involved in agriculture, and everyone I met aside from the host was lured to the countryside with government incentives.

 

We slept on some tatami mats in a spare room and I crashed out hard after so much heavy food and a few shots of liquor.

I woke up early in the morning and went outside and watched the morning mist slowly diffuse from the surrounding mountains. There were rows of gigantic bamboo trees on the fringes of the property, and looking beyond that were lush forests, pixelated into 100 different shades of green - light, bright, soft, neon, iridescent, deep, dark, mossy and earthen, with hints of rusty orange. The noise in my mind softened into the landscape, and our host woke up shortly afterwards and lit up the coals in the centre of the living room so he could warm up an earthenware pot of tea. Afterwards we had steamed rice, squash, fish and pickles; and then Hotaru and I set off into the winding roads again.

We drove through a small village and came across a sparkly-eyed farmer woman who had thickened knuckles on her gnarled hands, deep wrinkles on her face and a hunched back. Her skin was painted by the sun with dark maroon blotches and fine freckles, and she smiled with her whole face. She excitedly spoke to me in super fast Japanese that I couldn’t understand, and then proudly gave us a bag full of corn.

Further down the road we passed by a group of young locals and they were all on their phones and looked unenthused about life. Hotaru said that most of them end up leaving the villages after high school.

We stopped at Hotaru's apartment, and then drove up into the mountains again where we checked out the eggplant farm that was the focus of her work. It was harvest season so there was a lot of sorting and packing going on; and the whole system was very intricate with each eggplant being weighed, wrapped and labelled. It was very very hot but everyone was smiling and joking around with each other like it was nothing, and old timers from the village came by to help out and give advice.

  
  

We ended up getting invited to a small celebration at a Shinto shrine by some of the local farmers. They were building a new enclosure for a 15th century shrine; an intricately carved wooden structure with dragons and lions protecting the sanctuary within. The shrine had been in a very remote, difficult to access location up in the mountains that was no longer being regularly visited, so they wanted to protect it and bring it closer to town.

A man dressed in a pale blue ceremonial robe and a brown cap knelt on a pillow at the foot of the shrine holding a wooden paddle and a scroll. First he sang and then he bowed, and then he grabbed a large branch and swept it from his right shoulder to his left, first in small circles and then progressively larger circles. The other men bowed. Then the main dude fanned the branch behind himself again, right to left, creating a gentle breeze. Then he handed smaller branches to the other men who first bowed to him and then stood in front of the alter, each with a branch in hand, and then they bowed twice, clapped twice, bowed once again - and then everyone smoked cigarettes and drank a lot of locally made sake!

 

It was incredible to be a part of the whole thing, and so cool that they were open to sharing and having photos be taken. The only thing I lamented, which came up continually during my time in Japan, was the lack of any female representation.

Hotaru had spent time living in the Philippines and she told me that in their government the ministers were nearly half women, yet in Japan there were only one or 2 women in the cabinet. She said that Japan is the most sexist country in Asia.

On our way back we stopped at a small museum with artifacts from the ancient history of the region, and as I looked at recreations of scenes from the past, I felt sad about the brutal industrialization of the landscapes all around me.

  
  

  

      
      
      
      
    

After the museum we stopped in at the home of a local painter and manga artist. He was a super cool dude and like nearly everyone else I encountered: jumped out of his skin at the presence of a gaijin.

We had a quick visit and then drove to a remote onsen tucked away in the mountains and there were some good vending machines and drink dispensers in the lobby. I was getting used to having everyone stare at me, and I was very fortunate to have Hotaru translating and explaining things to me everywhere we went.

On our way back to her apartment we stopped in the main village that she worked out of and we visited a TV Station at night where I met the mayor and the vice president of the town. Everyone was very inviting and I hung out for an excruciatingly long meeting. When we finally left the stars were out and we didn't make it back to Hotaru's until it was quite late. As with Maki, Hotaru worked 12-16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week.


July 31

I went to Hotaru's work with her for the morning meeting, and at the entrance to the building they had peaches, grapes, chickens, eggplant, corn, peppers, apple juice and eggs for sale: the spoils from the rural agriculture initiatives.

After the meeting, we drove up to the eggplant farm again, visited some other friends of Hotaru's that lived in the countryside, and then we went back to her apartment building and hung out with her neighbour, Itsuki. He was from Osaka so he prepared some okonomyaki after hearing that I was a big fan. We watched bizarre Japanese TV, checked out his VHS and DVD collections, and he showed me some manga about youkai. Everyone in Japan seemed to have a manga library in their home.

After dinner we watched fireworks from his balcony and then we drove up to the source of all the noise where there was a big festival happening. It was at a large mental hospital overlooking the small town where Hotaru lived and there were rows of tables set up in front of a stage where coloured streamers and lanterns were hung. A school band played, then flamenco dancers came out, and then a hard rock cover band played, who were fronted by a woman dressed in cowboy attire with long black and red tassels. Fireworks were going off constantly and there were some merchants sprawled out including a super friendly middle-aged couple who were decked out in vintage clothes selling CD's of their psych-rock band.

I was introduced to a guy called Jeremy who was Coast Salish and had married a Japanese woman. He'd been living in the little village for over 10 years and he told me that I was the first foreign person he'd seen there since he arrived. There were some English teachers in bigger towns not too far away, but it seemed that it was rare for foreign people to visit these very remote areas.

It was great to talk to him and he had a lot of hilarious things to say about Japan, and echoed the sentiments I'd heard from other foreigners who'd lived in Japan for long periods of time: he would never fit in or be accepted there but he was used to it now, and when he went home he felt reverse culture shock, and he couldn't see himself living anywhere else now.

We also ran into the very drunk mayor of the town, and when we were driving home Hotaru ended up telling me some things that were hella upsetting. During one of her work meetings, they were all talking about a recent incident where a woman was attacked and violently beaten near to death. She said that the mayor remarked (openly to her and all of her colleagues) that he couldn't understand why the assailant hadn't raped her before leaving her in the park where she was found, and what a waste that was.

When I had first met the mayor and Hotaru was showing him my youkai patches that were sewn to the breast pockets of my jean vest (where she pointed her finger), she told me that he asked "can I touch too?".


Thursday August 1

Hotaru had a day off so we drove to a town that was famous for it's puppet museum. Once we got to the town we went to a small family restaurant that was famous for it's fresh made noodles, and we ate Soba served cold and perfectly cooked with a specific sauce just for Soba and nothing else. Then we checked out the museum, which had highly detailed puppets on display that were from a stop motion animation film based on some stories inspired from Chinese mythology. After the theatre we stopped at another magical and serene countryside onsen.


Monday Aug. 5

I felt like it was time to give Hotaru a break from constantly feeling like she had to entertain me so I did some research about Wwoofing in the area, and I heard back right away from a host that wasn't too far away..

The Wwoof hosts lived deep in the mountains, and Hotaru drove me out there after her work.

 

Japan really wasn't the kind of place you just show up to with your backpack and think that you can cruise around like a free spirit, and having no plans made my experience quite challenging, that's for sure. I probably should have gone somewhere like Costa Rica or Bali. Probably the reason why I got a flight for $200 is because Japan in the summer is brutally almost unbearably hot. And I probably should have learned at least the very basics of communication. But I did not.

A few minutes after Hotaru dropped me off, my hosts went out to the fields and left me with their 3 young children who were excited to play on my skateboard and I showed them how to bum board.

 

It was nice that the kids felt so comfortable with me, but the following day the youngest boy started punching me and scratching at my face and screaming uncontrollably. The other boys would laugh or just leave the room and run around outside, and I didn't feel like I could respond in any way without also being physically harsh, so I just let him go for it. I later on read that part of the culture in Japan is that children are allowed to do pretty much whatever they want until they're 5 years old, and then it abruptly ends.

Outside of the time spent looking after the 3 boys, I was spending 8 hours a day doing farm work in the hot heat with two aunties who also lived on the property. They were awesome and I really admired how hard everyone worked in Japan and how they found humour and strength in day to day life, but the whole arrangement kind of sucked, and it wasn't exactly a work exchange where I was learning new skills - I was just free labour. I had had a similar experience Wwoofing on so-called Cortes Island, and I had heard similar stories from other Wwoofers; so it was unfortunate that so many people were taking advantage of the program.

The only person who spoke English at the home was the husband and he wouldn't communicate with me at all. It was like I was invisible to him, and I remembered experiencing a similar type of vibe from many men who I worked with in the film industry. There would be times that I would go out on a big film set and I'd be the only representative from the make-up fx shop, and I had also built the prop and knew intimately how it worked, yet some dickweed director (cough cough Dolph Lundgren) and producer (pretty much every male producer I encountered) wouldn't acknowledge my existence, or speak to me directly. They'd do everything through the 1st AD. Yet when I showed up with one of my male co-workers, he would be humanized and communicated to respectfully.

Oh ya, and the fucking flies! There were flesh eating flies taking chunks out of my ankles and any exposed skin, and then creeks of salty sweat would seep into the bite wounds. Ugh.

  

On my third day there we went to a gathering at a local community hall and they had a bamboo noodle luge. All of the kids were given bamboo bowls and chopsticks, and then noodles and cherry tomatoes and mini eggs and candies were sent down the luge. It was super cool.

Afterwards the kids were given large newspaper rolls to use as swords and they were all running around whacking each other. The 3 year-old maniac who would come at me from behind and punch into my spine was also violently attacking his older brothers, and if they would come after him he'd run over and hide between his mom's legs. All of the men hung out drinking Ahahi and paid no attention to their children. But everyone seemed happy in their roles and like they had purpose, meaning and community.

I reflected on the benefits and comforts of having strong family roots and a core cultural identity, and contrasted it with my own aimless, disconnected life.


August 8

Gunshot sounds would go off regularly to scare away wild pigs and monkeys. Nearly all of the appliances talked, and the washing machine weighed my clothes and told me how much detergent to put in. And the toilet had a complex control panel on it that would play flushing sounds to muffle one's bodily functions.

**

I was left with the boys again and the eldest, who was 10, started having a screaming fit over some homework; it went on for like 30 minutes.

After lunch I was back out in the fields with the aunties in the sweltering heat for 6 hours. And then back into the house to help with dinner.


August 9

I woke up in the large, sparse room I was sleeping in in the middle of the night, slid my slippers on, quietly opened the sliding doors that led out into the hallway, crept down the stairs, and then crept out the back door and into the greenhouse where the family had pet birds living in cages. It was after midnight and I fed them natto and fish flakes. By morning they transformed into giant Onis and started tearing up the vegetable patches. By lunch the Oni were giving birth to octopi out of their ear canals, and the family tried to contain the octopi by putting them in the bathtub where they amalgamated and transformed into a beautiful maiden who wrote manga comics and made takoyaki for the children. But the takoyaki was actually birthing sacks for more Oni demons. And the maiden was actually a cat demon who stole the body of their grandmother who died the previous year. She was building up a Youkai army so they could invade South Korea and steal their bandwidth, cause the internet in Japan sucked.

**

After a week, I decided that I wasn’t cool with the arrangement. Honestly, they were a really nice family overall, but I was crying myself to sleep every night and feeling more isolated than ever; and I was feeling like I needed to get to a bigger city. Molly (my awesome friend from Taiwan who I met when I first arrived) had been pushing me to go to Ise and do a work exchange at a guesthouse there, so I contacted them and they got back to me right away about a volunteer position opening up in a week.

Hotaru was happy to come and pick me up, though when she arrived the woman in the house apologized for her boys behaviour so I knew that Hotaru had told her everything that I written to her about my experiences. I also realized that our family friend probably told Hotaru everything about my mental health and substance abuse struggles, and that was probably a big part of why she was going out of her way to help me. It felt so horrible to be so infantilized and to feel so powerless, and to have nowhere to go and be so confused; and I felt bad that Hotaru had to drive me around everywhere. And I knew that I was constantly committing social faux pas, though every time I asked I was enthusiastically told that it was no problem - but I could feel the vibes.

I knew that Hotaru didn't really know what to do with me, and I didn't know what to do with myself, but she really tried to support me. I also knew that she got a social boost by parading me around with her, so I jumped in to trailing along with her for even more work functions and social escapades. But the lifestyle and constant stimulation was becoming overwhelming.

I was really regretting not being able to speak any Japanese. I was spending time studying it, but I couldn't absorb anything, with the culture shock, the heat, the hectic pace of everything and the constant emotional breakdowns. I had previously been able to shred my way through textbooks and inhale manuals, but my brain had become a glob of goop.

I was confronting the difference between idealization and actualization, and how I had made up various intentions about what my experience was going to be - but they were totally unrealistic given the short amount of time I was going to be in Japan. I had put a huge amount of pressure on myself to return back to my former self and become strong, functional and healed, but there was a long road ahead, and that road would become a winding path, and that path would become a multidimensional fractal.. I was never going to be the same again, and that was hard to accept, and it was hard to figure who I was in the aftermath of my psychosis. I'm still figuring it out almost 15 years later, because everything has needed to change and everything is lot.

My body shut down completely. I wasn't menstruating and my digestion was fuct. I was bloated all of the time and felt like crapola and was super fucking depressed. But I was determined to stick it out, and I felt like it was important to have the experience: to be completely uncomfortable, and alienated, and in a world totally different than my own.

 

On one of our excursions Hotaru took me way out into the countryside to visit some friends of hers who were growing rice. The landscape stretched out over lush fields that extended out to the foot of mountains in the distance, and it was easy to forget about population density and gentrification on the edge of the world where life was being lived as it had been for thousands of years.

We drove on and visited another family of farmers who grew corn and had a beautiful coy fish pond.

 

In retrospect, my heart was starting to open; and the vulnerability and helplessness I endured helped me get out of my brain and start to truly empathize with others (and myself).

And the onsens were a sanctuary.

During one visit where I went by myself a group of young girls were huddled together, pointing and staring, and talking about me and smiling shyly. I waved to them and smiled back and then a few more minutes past while they talked amongst themselves in hushed tones, and then a girl broke away from the group and came over and said hi to me. In that setting it somehow felt perfectly natural to meet each other for the first time completely naked, and it was such a pure interaction. We talked awkwardly for a while, mutually in awe of each other in the most wholesome way, and then she went back to her friends. I really appreciated being around such down-to-earth country folk.

The next evening Hotaru took me to visit a group of farmers living deep in the mountains who were all especially warm and friendly. We drank some sake together, and through Hotaru they told me that they had been cast out from society many generations ago. I didn't understand all of the history they were trying to explain but I think they may have been Burakumin. There were also a couple of people living there who were originally from Okinawa. They were all real salt of the earth people: open hearts, generous, and big authentic smiles.

On our way back to Hotaru's we visited a woman who was making ume plums and was very proud of her techniques. Many people had plums fermenting in some nook in their kitchen or garage; and being a huge fan of macrobiotic cooking, I was very excited to try these sacred homemade treasures.

 

July 14

Hotaru's neighbour, Itsuki, invited us out for Karaoke and ramen in a nearby town. He did the driving and had a very new car that smelled like it was fresh from the factory. The air conditioning was blasting and he had some very pungent air freshener. He drove fast along the curved roads and we passed by construction sites, Shinto shrines, rice fields, fields of wild flowers, honour boxes of veggies for sale - and he was playing a mix of Classic 80's love songs like I'm on Fire by Bruce Springsteen and Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Middler. The sky had a feint veil of haze over it, giving it a soft blue hue, and a waning quarter moon hovered over us like a glow worm. There were rows of vending machines and small family graveyards near small villages, and we drove through a lot of tunnels.

The Karaoke place was out of this world with a full menu of food, tons of drink vending machines in the lobby, and we were brought into a private room with sleek vinyl couches and a huge screen. Actually it was my worst nightmare to sing in front of people so intimately who I hardly knew without any alcohol in the middle of the day, but I went along with it. Istuki and Hotaru were very good singers and sang some Michael Jackson and Kylie Minogue. I struggled my way through some Cyndi Lauper and then Hotaru and I sang a Tiffany song together. They pretended that my singing was really good and were both a lot of fun.

I felt woozy and car sick on the way back after drinking too much orange juice and eating greasy noodles. More 80's music was played, more tunnels enveloped us into darkness, and clouds gathered on the horizon as the sun went down, reflecting back blossoms of pink and fiery orange. We arrived home late in the night and I knew it was a big deal for them to make time for me as Itsuki woke up very early to work at a nearby Edamame factory and Hotaru would have another full day of meetings and farming.

 

The next day I stayed back at Hotaru's and had a breakdown in the bathroom, silently squeezing out tears and rage. I hated myself and I hated the world and I didn't know what the fuck to do about it. I also hated being in Japan. I was bloated, sweating, stressed out, dissociating, and anxious, and everything was moving too fast.

**

My memories are patchy and fragmented, but at some point after getting out of the hospital I had a nervous breakdown and burnt and destroyed almost everything I owned. Then I booked a one way ticket to Australia.

It was difficult to accept that my healing was mine alone to bear, after I had been such a huge support person for so many others throughout my life, but I just had to accept that I was on my own rugged life path and no one was going to pick up the pieces after me. Yet I also had the feeling like I was being protected and taken care of in other ways that I can't explain, otherwise I would surely be dead.

And I had something precious: FREEDOM.

**

Later that evening, we drove to a town called Wago way out in the distance (which I guess applies to everywhere we went) and went to an onsen, and then we watched some Obon celebrations with Taiko drumming and dancing at a Buddhist temple. Obon is one of the most important festivals of the year, and it's a bit like Day of the Dead or Samhain where ancestors are honoured and the veil between the living and the dead becomes very thin. So much detail went into the decorations, the clothing, and the food; and I felt very honoured to be a part of the ceremonies.

  

The next night we drove to another town and ran into a bunch of Hotaru's co-workers from the eggplant farm. We stayed out all night watching the last of the festivities.

  

By 4:00 am people were napping periodically and kids were hanging out, drinking tea, eating rice balls, and reading manga comics; and men wearing yukatas with fans tucked into their belts were drinking Asahi beer and locally made sake out of ridiculously huge brown bottles.

  

As the sun came up the streets started to fill with people who were going to parade to the local temple. The last of the celebrations were super enthusiastic because the ancestors were leaving and their living relatives were asking them not to go.

Things really lined up, as after Obon Hotaru was going to visit her family near Nagoya, which would be on the way to Ise. But first we had a rest day, and I hiked up to the Buddhist temple near Hotaru's place as the sun was going down.

   

  
     

  

 

 

 

  

Aug. 17 2024

On our way to Hotaru's dad's place we stopped in a little town and visited an agricultural secondary school where they were growing pears and apples and a mix of vegetables. It was really interesting to see everything that they were doing and the scope of Hotaru's work. She had done a lot with her life: University studies, writing, social activism in the Phillipines, flamenco dancing, farming and singing.

Given all of that, and her extensive social life, it was difficult for me to understand why I saw signs of jealousy from her immediately after we arrived at her father's house. When he showed a lot of interest in my travels and life experiences, that were somewhat unique, Hotaru became red in the face, and I could tell that it was upsetting for her. I also felt terrible because I knew by now how restricted so many Japanese women felt, and I knew that I had so many freedoms that Hotaru would likely never have.

This was a dynamic that has repeated itself many times over in my relationships with women, and I still don't know how to deal with it. I thought she was the coolest and wanted to be her friend, but I kind of shrunk in myself because I didn't want to create tension. Nonetheless, we continued to have great discussions and she showed me her family graveyard, the ancestor room, and her incredible book collection. I was also brought along on more adventures, including a visit to another amazing onsen; and I was asked to come to the family Obon shrine where they burnt three rolls of dried birch. When we returned back to their home they put their relatives back into the bhutsudan, which is like a big cabinet that has a shrine inside.

  

Hotaru’s father and aunt lived together in a newly built house (the original one had burned down) and the town was surrounded by 360 degrees of mountains in the distance that always seemed to have halos of clouds around them - and there was a soft hum of insects in the background. Almost everyone had a farm, from commercial apples to the small hobby farm of my friend's father. And like many of the other older people I had met through Hotaru, her parents were separated and living in different homes, but not officially divorced.

 

The city had a population of 100,000, which was quite small for Japan, and it had a very rural feel to it, though social customs dictated that everyone must have new things all of the time, so even the farm vehicles looked quite fancy. I remembered when I was in the countryside in New Zealand and I ended up driving in a truck that had Japanese writing in it, and I was told that the old vehicles get shipped there, as they still run perfectly, yet get replaced every couple of years.

On my second day there Hotaru's mother showed up and they were planning to go to a performance together. They offered for me to join but I was sensing that in this case Hotaru really wanted to spend time with her mom on her own, and I was happy to stay back and read - so I declined. Hotaru did suggest that I go to the vegetable market with her Dad.

Hotaru's Dad and I got along really well and we talked a lot about life, art and poetry. He shared many things with me about his early life and going to University. An interesting facet of Japanese society is that students work excruciatingly hard during grade school but when they hit university they really get to slack off. He told me that although he was meant to be studying biology, he spent most of his time at university reading philosophy books down by the river near the school. I was like: "But aren't you a biology teacher now?" He was like: "Ya, hahahahahaha!"

There was something really sacred about these times I ended up spending with people when they were completely relaxed and away from all the the daily toils of life, and I felt like on the whole people in Japan treasured human connection in a way that's often missing in the West. I also thought about how I might feel if a friend of mine really connected with my dad (who I was also somewhat distant from), and it would be hard for me too. Even though it was difficult to navigate and I felt quite awkward, I still felt like I was getting to have such a rare and unique experience.

Arthur and I kept in touch for most of our travels and were having some parallel experiences. He also went and Wwoofed in a remote area and came up against a lot of culture clashes; and he also had some very cool cultural experiences, including a similar post-Obon honouring at a family grave. We talked a lot about food, and how specific everyone was about sauces; and he got to eat some matcha soba (!). Even though we eventually lost touch with each other, I still remember fondly the communications we had, and it seemed a little less lonely knowing he was also going through a roller coaster ride of experiences.

I slept on the floor in the ancestor room which had thin doors and walls, and I was often woken up in the night by guttural wheezing that seemed to fill the walls, and I couldn't make out where it was coming from. It was reminiscent of a scene in Dario Argento's Suspiria film when, after maggots from spoiled meat infested their rooms, young women from a dance school had to sleep together in one of the big dance studios, and the main character Suzy was disturbed by the presence of the sleeping headmistress, who was concealed behind a curtain and could only be seen in shadow.


August 19

I watched Hotaru's aunt whip together tofu and sweet rice powder, roll it into balls, boil them and then cool them down with cold water. They were extremely delicious.

Hotaru lent me a book called "Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Darkside of Modern Japan", and it helped me understand a lot of what was going on under the surface culturally. In the 90's, in order to boost the economy the government started promoting erroneous construction projects all over the country, and Japan became the biggest construction site in the world. Remnants of this still remained and it explained why we were constantly going through construction sites all throughout the countryside, and why there were bridges, pathways, boardwalks and cement steps everywhere. They were mostly "make work" projects, and the politicians who endorsed them got financial subsidies.

The author called Japan a "kindergarten state" where the government controlled every aspect of people's lives. He also talked a lot about group identity and obedience, and how people are ostracized for not conforming. One of the most interesting things I read about was about "park moms" who meet up in parks and all dress the same and dress their kids the same. And then there were outcast moms who were called "park gypsies".

I spent my last evening with Hotaru and her family at an onsen. The moon was shining down over us in the outside area, which was tucked into the mountains.  

Before I left, her dad gave a me a really cool postcard with some art that was done by one of his students.

(will post this once I get it scanned, it's so beautiful)