I kiss a sleeping Eriko on the forehead and
say goodbye. This week we are speaking all Japanese so that I can improve. I
get frustrated easier during such weeks and feel less of a man.
Eriko stirs slightly and opens her eyes.
“Itterashai,”
she says, before falling back asleep.
“Ittekimasu,”
I respond.
The kerosene heater in my tiny living room
hums and blows heat infused with a hint of gas fume. What’ll kill me first, the
fumes or the radiation? None of it. Silly thinking. There is nothing wrong with
this place.
As I descend the outdoor staircase of my
apartment building, a second grader on her way to school spots me and stares
wide eyed. She is not one of my students, but I opt to quiz her English skills
anyway.
“Hello,” I say.
She ponders, still wide eyed, and says
shyly, “Ohayou gozaimasu.”
“How are you?” I ask.
She smiles and almost shouts, “I’m happy!”
while putting both hands into the air. When she runs off, I am left with the
impression of having topped out a long easy rock climb in the sun.
The children of the town do nothing but act
like children and in doing so enrich every moment in town. During the weekend,
I emerged out of the forest after a day of searching for hidden boulders and
started down the road to my home. After a few minutes I heard the distinct
pitter-patter of tiny feet following me. I peered over my shoulder and there
stood a body all of one meter tall, a curious smile across his face. Again, as
the girl had done, the boy was considering this silly foreigner walking through
his family’s farmland.
He stared up at me and stated proudly, “I’m
carrying money.”
“Oh yeah,” I responded. “How much?”
“This much.” He held out a bill enough to
buy a good dinner and smiled a big smile. The air sent a mischievous breeze
that stole the bill from the boy’s hand and sent it turning quickly up the
road. In shock the boy ran after it and slammed his foot down on it. Got ya! He
ran back to me and followed me down the road. I asked him questions but only
got mumbles in return as the boy stared fixedly at his bill.
On another occasion, a group of boys, maybe
five or six year olds, saw me coming out of the supermarket adjacent to my
house.
“Look!” one shouted, pointing at me,
beckoning his friends to witness the oddity too.
“Look at that guy! It’s a…It’s a…It’s a
Chinese guy!” the boy shouted.
“Chigau
yo!” I said laughing. “I’m not Chinese! I’m American.”
The boy looked confused. The only
foreigners that he knew about before me where Chinese.
When I go to work in my K-Car, (the K stands
for micro, I think), I listen to Buena Vista Social Club. Ibrahim Ferrer must
have grown up in Japan too, in this countryside. The melody fits perfectly. I
enter the middle school thinking in Spanish and when I greet people buen dia almost escapes my lips. I
revert. Adjust. Guttural ‘gozaimaaaas.
The vice principal had a black eye and a
busted up arm last week. Before that he was jovial and good natured. He used to
ask me questions which I answered in Japanese and at the end of it I don’t think
that he believed that I could speak any Japanese at all. Now he looks
melancholy and removed. His hair is always disheveled and he does not ask me
any questions anymore. I do not know what happened.
I am not a teacher here at the middle
school. Let’s face it. That was the sacrifice for living in Japan. The dream is
fading now, as it should, and in its place is another cage. Are you just
replacing one cage with another every time you do this? Sure, as we all are if
we aren’t living in trucks and climbing rocks every day. But don’t forget the
interim. Don’t forget that before the boredom sets in your whole being was
alive with challenge. Language, culture, food, people. When you escape one cage
you get to be free for the interim and you get a chance to be better. What you
become in the interim is what this is all about. Are you a good man yet? It was
a good interim, but it’s over now. You’re just on daily routine.
The school day ends early and I am back on
the serpentine valley rode watching the view flow against me. Old farmers
riding bicycles and ladies at the rice paddies with sickles in hand and the
fall colors behind them. I get out of my car and walk towards the apartment and
I am stopped by a voice speaking Japanese.
“You have finished early today, Sensei,” says an old woman on her way to
the supermarket.
“Yes. I have finished early,” I reply.
“Can you speak Japanese yet?” she asks.
“A little.”
“Ah. Not yet then, huh?”
“A little,” I say.
She smiles, different than the children
smile, and hobbles off, bent over and happy. I walk up into my apartment, open
the door that is always unlocked and slip into the living room where once again
I will eat dinner, sleep, and awake again to my life in the Japanese
countryside.
