In Anticipation of a Climbing Trip

There are plane tickets to buy, and a pickup truck with a topper, and new climbing equipment. How much will you have saved by the time you get back to Colorado? What about insurance, and taxes, and nights out? Get a job and it’ll be okay. Then you can afford car payments and rent, and student loans and micro-brews and fine salamis and cheeses. A job will sort you out. Then how fat you can grow. How comfortable you can get. If you’re lucky enough, you’ll pay all your worries away and you can be bored. Just work and never stop working and you’ll be just fine stupid.

That would be a good way to go back to America. Good American culture, right? Debt and food and a shiny four wheel drive pickup. Yeehaw Amurica! Here I come!

Or I could not work. Technically I have a job. It just doesn’t start until July. That gives me three months to do what I need to do. And there’s really only one thing that I’ll need to do—figure out why I left Japan.

That still won’t be enough time though. Who am I kidding. There’s too much. There’s tatami mats and shouji screen walls. There’s the countryside life of salutations from smiling children and scowls and stares from old men. There’s the kerosene heater in my living room in the winter, the sweltering loft in the summer, and the open windows and cool breezes in the seasons in between. There’s the feeling of leaving my friends who I speak Japanese with and who I understand like reading in the dark with a strobe light on. There are ramen shops, and sushi, and grilled clams on the half shell in Matsushima. There are long drives with climbing partners through country I’ve never seen. There are kindergarten and elementary school kids that think whatever I do is superhuman. Sugoiiiiiiii! they yell. Joshua-sensei jozu da ne…

There’s also Eriko—a woman who I love, and that knows me and loves me enough to say, “Go ahead. Go where you need to. It’s okay.” That's the kind of woman that is impossible to leave. With a broken heart and the guilt of breaking another I will be sitting in a big apartment with a shiny pickup outside and I’ll be drinking a six dollar bottle of microbrew. Yeehaw.

 

There’s therapy for that kind of thing, son. Get into God’s country and you’ll be sorted out.

The American desert cleanses. Look at the white bone of a cow carcass if you need an example. That’s what it’ll do. You’ll spend weeks there and the earth will drink in your tears and pour unforgiving sun on your depression. On soaring desert towers and thousand foot sandstone walls you’ll remember that you are he who climbs, who struggles and bleeds and sweats. Your struggle will become something physical, and therefore manageable. Get stronger and smarter and you’ll be able to climb what you thought was impossible. You’ll either end up better for it, or you’ll be beat by it. Both are good for you. And you will have dirtied and banged up the truck, and the beers will have run out and all you’ll have is a tent to go back to at night. And you’ll sit by the campfire with good friends, under an open sky with living and dying stars. And that’ll get you through.

 

My whole life has been spent trying to know what I ought to do-- what's the right choice for good living. I, like everyone else, have been the winner and the loser to such decisions. But there is a resoundingly clear lesson that has come from those experiences that guides me in when I don't know either way—spending more time in the wilderness is always good. I don’t know whether I should go back to America, but I do know that once there, the best thing to do is to get out into that big, healing American West. Once there, I’ll know if I made the right decision. Nature will simplify and clarify doubt, and it’ll make me confront myself, and it will give it to me straight. Either I messed up big time, or America is where I need to be. Either way, the message will come from the wilderness and I need to get there in order to hear it.

 

 

Writing Motivation

I have not been writing as much as I was before, and what I have written I haven't liked much. Hence the hiatus last month. I am working on a piece about my recent trip to Thailand, however, it doesn't look promising. I'll keep you posted if it makes it to the blog.

Below is a piece I wrote several months ago, which I also didn't like enough at the time, but I'm going to throw out there in case anyone is still checking the blog and would like to read another story. The story is called "Moshiwake Gozaimasen", which is a very humble way of apologizing in Japanese. It gives a little perspective of what teaching for a coorporation looks like. Perhaps you'll enjoy it.

All the best.

Josh

Moshiwake Gozaimasen

While in the teacher’s room at the junior high school, my phone illuminates, vibrates and displays the word “Interac” on the screen. It’s my company calling.

I step out of the room and try to answer the phone discreetly.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hello, Joshua?” a lifeless voice, as if poorly reading a script, says on the other end.

“Yeah.”

“Hey Joshua, this is Phil from Interac. How’s it going?”

“I’m pretty good Phil. How about you?”

“Yeah. Pretty good.”

Phil, an American from California, was recently announced as the new boss for my division of the Assistant English Teacher (ALT) recruiting company that I work for. In Japan, native English speaking teachers usually have to be contracted through a recruiting company. Though it is the easiest way to break into permanent residency in Japan, it’s a bittersweet deal; I’m able to live and teach here, but I have to work for a big corporation. For the first eight months or so it was tolerable. But recently the experience of working for Interac has been less than satisfying.

Phil continues.

“I’m just calling to check up on how things are going at the schools.”

I pause before answering, reminded of my parents’ advice to not complain so much, my teachers’ advice to stop challenging authority.

For the last month I have not been teaching as many classes at the junior high school that I hoped I would. The Japanese English teachers have been avoiding me, not asking me to come to their classes. When a few weeks of this behavior had passed I called Interac to see if they could help me find a solution. They assured me that they would talk to the teacher and solve the problem. As of writing this no change has occurred.

There are other problems too. A week earlier the company called me on my day off and told me that I was late for work at the elementary school. I looked at my schedule from the company. It read, “Day Off”.  I tried to convey this to the voice on the other end of the line, but she insisted that I was supposed to be at work.

“But I haven’t planned anything,” I explained.

“What do you mean?” she asked in a heavy accent.

“I mean I have no lesson plan for today.”.

“Well, why not?” she asked.

“Because it’s my day off.”

The conversation repeated that pattern enough times that I felt like it was going nowhere. Her solution was to just wing it from the textbook. This is something I can do, but hate doing; It’s bad teaching. But the lady on the other end of the phone gave me no alternative.

I went to work, making up a lesson from the textbook.

 

When Phil asks, “How are things going at the schools?” I pause, thinking of the past events and of my antagonistic pattern with authority figures.

“Yeah, it’s going fine,” I reply.

“Great,” Phil says, in a voice that does not convey ‘great’ so much as ‘good, I don’t have to ask follow up questions’. He continues, “I see here that we haven’t asked you the Happy Questions yet.”

I ask, “Happy Questions?”

“Yeah. For the company survey,” he responds.

I hesitate, considering whether he is joking or not. I conclude that he isn’t. “No, you haven’t asked me the Happy Questions yet.”

“Well, I’ll ask you now.”

The other teachers in the teacher’s room are now looking out at me, wondering why I am on the phone.

“Okay,” Phil says, “First question: Do you feel confused, anxious, or unsure of anything?”

This question doesn’t sound happy. I ask for clarification. “You mean at school, or in my daily life?”

“Uh, let’s say your daily life,” Phil responds.

Without a thought I say, “Of course. I’m living in Japan. I don’t speak Japanese.”

Phil shows a glimpse of personality, “Ha. I guess that’s right.” Then he quickly returns to the call script, “Is there something in particular that confuses you.”

“Yeah. Grammar, vocabulary, expressions. Language. Culture. Just about all of it.”

Phil appears to consider what I’m saying. “Well how are you coping with it?”

“It’s great. I love it. That’s why I came here.”

“Oh. Well, good. So there is no problem?” he asks.

“Not really,” I say, wondering if I’m being honest.

Phil continues with two more Happy Questions, both in the same vein as the first. I answer with a voice that hopefully quells my sarcasm.

When the conversation finishes Phil reminds me, “See you at the meeting on Saturday.”

Oh, yeah. Weekend meeting.

 

 

The meeting is in Sendai, a one hundred dollar, and one hour bullet train ride from where I live. The company will reimburse me for the expense in two months.

At the meeting, nearly a hundred other teachers are crammed into a meeting room with tiled floors, flat, square fluorescent lights overhead, and the first slide of a PowerPoint presentation projected at the front. The slide says “Training Meeting”. Everyone is dressed in business casual. Their facial expressions are the same dress code.

The room is an awkward size where using a microphone is too loud, but normal talking isn’t loud enough. The bosses choose to use the microphone. One particularly zealous young man, the Head High School Teacher, with hair just as jumpy and awkward as his personality, encourages us to move to the front.

“Hey guys! Plenty of space up here. Please move to the front. Don’t be scared.”

No one budges.

The young man laughs uncomfortably.

He tries again, “All right now guys, we need people to come sit up front. Someone has to sit up front.”

No one moves. It’s him against us, and he’s losing. What happens when a boss loses?

“Nobody wants to come to the front?” he asks rhetorically. He pauses, thinks, and says, “C’mon guys! I don’t smell that bad!”

Still, no one laughs.

A few late arrivals are herded into the front seats. The head high school teacher looks pleased. He is victorious by default. There is an illusion that someone has listened to him, that he is in control.

Phil stands at the head of the room, welcoming people to the meeting. He asks the late arrivals to stand up and come to the front.  The late arrivals are hesitant, but do as they’re told.

Phil asks, “Do you guys know what happens at a Japanese company when you’re late?”

Some of the seated teachers, ones who weren’t late, laugh. Whether they laugh because they think it is funny or because they want to show everyone else that they know the Japanese punishment, I am not sure.

Phil continues, “At a Japanese company, late employees stand in front of the others and say, ‘Moshiwake gozaimasen’ while bowing. So now, we are going to ask those who were late to do the same.”

I consider the cultural lesson. Interac is hardly a Japanese company. They come from Utah, allegedly as an undercover Mormon conversion mission in the 70s. All of the bosses and the CEO are foreigners. In fact, much of the training that follows will encourage us to not act Japanese, for reasons that are blatantly racist.

“Japanese teachers don’t have fun in their classrooms,” they’ll tell us.

“Japanese teachers don’t know how to create student centered activities.”

The list goes on.

But now Phil is telling the late arrivals to apologize in front of everyone. It’s a cultural lesson.

One by one they are handed the microphone, and one by one each says, “Moshiwake gozaimasen” while bowing. Some members of the crowd clap and cheer for the especially good bows and pronunciation. There are eight people that have to perform the punishment. The process takes about a minute. When the last one finishes, the crowd claps, happy for the demonstration but ready to move on to the meeting. That is, after all, why we came here on a Saturday.

The late arrivals start to move to their seats. Phil stops them.

“That wasn’t really good enough guys. You really need to bow. Hands on both sides of your body, look down, and enunciate clearly. You’re going to have to do it again.”

The late arrivals aren’t sure what to make of the idea. Some scoff. Others look blankly at him, trying to read his intent. The microphone is passed back to the front of the line. The first late arrival repeats his first way of bowing to a tee—an intended act of rebellion. The second and third late arrivals do a similar prostration. As the microphone goes down the line, the effort improves. Finally the last late arrival bows, says, “Moshiwake gozaimasen” and hands the microphone back to Phil. This time the late arrivals do not assume their right to return to their seat.

Phil remarks, “Much better. Much better. But you first three, you really need to bow.”

Two of the three late arrivals are clenching their jaws tightly. You can see them processing whether to bow, or storm out of the room, or leap at Phil.

One of the late arrivals asks, “Seriously?”

Phil nods his head. Yes, seriously.

Now the three do their best bows and say in their clearest pronunciation “Moshiwake gozaimasen.” They wait for Phil to accept it.

I imagine myself in the place of one of the late arrivals. The third bow would be it for me. But it’s not my fight. Or is it? Should it be? No. Not this one. If this keeps up, my fight will come. But this one, now, is not mine. I wish one of them would stand up to Phil. I’m also glad that I wasn’t late. This time it would not have to be me. My blood goes copper and molten.

Phil gives his decree, “Okay, go sit down.”

One of the three says something loud and angry that I can’t pick up, but is a threat to Phil. Phil seems to have not understood the words, but sees the rancor with which they were spoken. He makes a kind of surprised face, then regains his composure and starts the meeting. The late arrival sits in front of me and starts venting to those seated next to him.

“Fuck this! I’m not going to work for a company like this. That was ridiculous.”

The PowerPoint presentation starts and my brain quickly numbs to slides that tell us not to drink and drive, and to play games with students, and to make sure that the students enjoy their English classes.

Countryside Livin'

Before I can see the sun, the clouds beyond the hills in the east turn a live, pulsating pink. Another day in the countryside. The sun rises over the hills and takes the pink away from the clouds and leaves the skies azure. The morning frost on harvested rice paddies turns to vapor and mists the air. It’s chilly on these mornings.

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.

When There's No Plan B

For the last four months I’ve had visions of Buddhist monks in Himalayan mountains—Bhutan. We were ninety-nine percent sure I’d be there come January. Don’t daydream son. Stay in reality son. Ninety-nine isn’t a hundred.

Idle time at the junior high school, of which there is too much, had me squinting at a laptop screen patched with red robes, and bald heads, and elaborate masks, and mountain homes with wood smoke rising from the roof. The screen flashed and clicked and holograms played in my head and stayed with me long after the Shutdown wheel had disappeared to black.

You should’ve kept your mouth shut. You’ve been working on that—don’t get too excited too fast. Anything can fall through. You know that as well as anyone. Nothing holds. Especially when you cling to it. Why’d you hold so hard? You know better.

That weekend, at home, my phone screen held a blinding white message from would be future employers, with words like regrettably and unfortunate, and like that I had to let go. And when you cling hard, release is painful. You know that well too.

I sat gazing out from my window and sipped tea. Eriko was asleep in the loft above my kitchen. What to do? What to do?

Don’t be sad in front of Eriko. It’s not what the man does. Shrug it off. She was in the tsunami for Christ’s sake. You’ve got nothing to complain about. Dreams aren’t what you thought they were anyway. There is never just one. The next will be along soon. Let the cold ball swell inside of you, but only just enough, not enough to let it hurt badly, just enough to remind you that it’s there, that you cared about something. Then temper it. Make it small, infinitesimal. Keep it that way.

What’s next?

At night now other visions are playing. Visions of Rocky Mountains and arid winds blowing on canyon rock faces, and visions of brown and black and tan and white faces, and plaid shirts and bicycles. Visions of warm sun on humid grass in Wash Park, of university girls sunbathing in bikinis, of needy Adonises shouting loudly to their friends. Visions of what hoppy beer tastes like and dull hangovers and the dread of a lonely apartment. Of conversations jibing friends, of great distances, impossible distances, and of muscles taught while pulling onto boulders. They are visions that I try to make sense of.

 

You were supposed to be gone longer. The adventure isn’t over. You still need to move. It’s making it harder, sure, because It always makes it harder. You never let It win.

Reassess. And act mindfully. You have to become one of the good ones.

Is it time yet? By March it’ll almost be two years. It wasn’t supposed to be time, but what else have you got? What’s Plan B?

 

Flash Non-Fiction

Kindergarten. Day one:

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

“Oh! Hello!”

“Hello.”

“How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, you say, ‘I’m happy’!”

“I’m happy!”

“Yeah. Good job! One more time. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say ‘How are you’, you say, ‘I’m happy! Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Uh. Okay. Let’s try colors. What color is this?”

“Ba-roo”

“Good! Blue! What about this?”

“Led”

“Nice. Red! What about this?”

“Gu-leen.”

“Green. Awesome! Good job! Okay, see you!”

“See you.”

“Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye.”

 

Avalanches and Poison Ivy

I am my father’s son.

Last year my father told me that he was in an avalanche. He said that he set it off on purpose in order to test his knowledge of avalanche safety. When he jumped down hard onto the top of a cornice, it calved. He went down with it. In the tumult, he practiced what he had learned about surviving an avalanche. He back peddled his arms, like a swimmer, kept his head high, and tried to stay above the wet snow that poured down the mountain. When it was finished he was buried up to his neck, with one arm free. He dug himself out of the snow, looked up at the slope he just ridden down, then at the avalanche that he had caused, and assessed the event. Yes, he thought, I guess I do know about avalanche safety.

I have often returned from climbing at the boulders in the forest with a rash on my ankles and arms. It bubbles, turns a light, mostly inoccuous pink and spreads over the area for a few days before it gives up and retreats. It is always itchy but not painful. I asked a local forester if he knew what was causing it. He said lacquer trees. I looked up lacquer trees online but could not find anything that resembled the trees in the forest.

Returning to the forest I saw a vine that looked like poison ivy. Could this be the culprit, I wondered. I decided to test my knowledge of poison ivy by plucking a leaf from the vine, ripping it in half to expose the inner liquid, and dabbing it on my shoulder. The next morning a red rash appeared. Success, I thought. I know the plant that has been causing the rash! My experiment proved correct. But as the week progressed the rash grew worse, bubbling and pussing, turning deep red and black. A dark red line formed precisely where I had first dabbed the split leaf. The area itched and hurt and oozed yellow puss that wet my shirt sleeves. And though painful, I only thought, with pride, of the success of my experiment. Yes, I thought, definitely poison ivy.

Kindergarten, Day Eight

“Joshua Sensei!”

“Hello! How are you?”

“How are you?”

“I’m happy. How are you?”

“How are you?”

“No, I say, ‘How are you?’ You say, ‘I’m happy?’ Okay? How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Forget it.”

“Joshua Sensei- nan jin?”

“Okay, Japanese now? America-jin da yo.”

“How did you get here?”

“I came by car. Stop picking your nose and grabbing my shirt. That’s gross.”

“By car from America? Isn’t that far?”

“No, I didn’t come by car from America. I came  from Ishikawa-machi, where I live.”

“Oh, I see.”

“From America, I walked.”

“Eeeeehhhhhh??”

 

 

Bike Ride

The light of late afternoon is meant for me, it seems. It illuminates the street corner and the garden that extends like an annex connected to my apartment window, where I watch. Out there is my late afternoon Japan.

 

It’s not much to look at beyond the garden—a grocery store parking lot, the dull, cubed grocery store itself, and rural houses with tiled roofs whose corners curve up like burning paper. Each house has a garden and neatly trimmed trees, manicured like evergreen poodles. It’s all in perfect order.

 

I cannot see the sun low in the west. I watch the light growing on the tips of the cedar branches in the hills to the east instead. I can hear the laughter of young girls and the stamping of their feet. They’re chasing after their father, shouting at him to slow down while he peddles his bike away, pretending escape.

 

“No Papa, slow down!” they shout.

 

“Never! I am running away!” he shouts back.

 

“Don’t leave us papa,” they giggle, running after him.

 

The youngest daughter is in a child’s seat on the bike, behind her papa. She slaps at his back. “No papa! Wait for sister!” She laughs and doesn’t stop slapping his back. He laughs and keeps peddling.

 

He turns the corner where the garden ends and he too is illuminated by the comforting light of the sunset, the sun forever lowering in the west. His daughters dash and smile and laugh and run and say, “Slow down papa! Slow down!”

 

“Never!” he laughs, full of love and goodness and the warmth of the sun.

 

“Never daughters! I am running away!”

 

And they move past my view, down the road, as if running away.

 

 

 

 

Kindergarten, Day Twelve

 

“Joshua Sensei! Joshua Sensei!”

 

“Hello! How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“No ‘How are you’ ‘How are you’. You say, ‘I’m happy!’”

 

“I’m happy!”

 

“Okay good. Now, How are you?”

 

“How are you?”

 

“Right, let’s speak in Japanese instead. Are you happy?”

 

“Yes, I’m happy! Joshua Sensei, guess what?"

 

“What?”

 

“I went with my papa to Koriyama, and my papa said that Mickey was going to be in Koriyama, and when we got to Koriyama Mickey was there!”

 

“Really? Cool! Did you take a picture with Mickey?”

 

“Yes!”

 

“Cool!”

 

“And guess what Joshua-Sensei.”

 

“What?”

 

“Joshua-Sensei, I like, uh. I like ghosts. And I like zombies.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Yeah. I like ghosts and I like zombies. And that’s it.”

 

 

Eriko’s Question

 

Eriko makes dinner. I used to cook, a year ago maybe, when we first met, but now she cooks. I am tired at night and do not want to cook. I will do the dishes. Besides, she is a better chef than I, and we both enjoy her food more.

 

“This is delicious,” I tell her. “What’s your secret?”

 

“No secret. It’s just Japanese flavors—soy sauce, sake, sugar. You can put that with anything and it will taste nice.”

 

“But this is amazing. You must have some tricks that okaasan taught you. Your mother is a cook after all.”

 

“No. No tricks. Japanese cooking doesn’t have tricks.”

 

I’m not convinced. I eschew the etiquette I have acquired since being here and shovel juicy, thin sliced pork, and saturated eggplant and soft tofu into my mouth keeping the bowl just under my chin, scraping the chopsticks against the sides. Eriko sits beside me and looks up at me and smiles.

 

“Honto ni, oishii?” she asks.

 

“Yes, delicious.”

 

 

We climb the wooden ladder up to my loft and sit on the futon on the floor. We drink tea. Carla Bruni sings French to us from my phone. I don’t understand the French and only pay enough attention to let it relax me. It is a relief to care nothing about deciphering language when the hours are late in a foreign country; better still when there is a pretty woman sitting on my futon.

 

“Did you climb today?” Eriko asks.

 

“Yes. For three hours.”

 

“Do you want a massage?”

 

“Of course,” I say. “I always want a massage from you.”

 

I lay down and she begins to grab and knead my back. It is painful and it is good. When she started giving me massages she told me that she enjoyed giving them, that they relaxed her. She worked as a masseuse and enjoyed the work so much that she wants to start her own massage studio. I joke with her when I want a massage and ask, “Do you want to relax a little now?”

 

She kneads and pulls and stretches my back for twenty minutes or so. When she finishes I do not want to sit up. She leans back against the wall and drinks more tea.

 

“I think that you’re being so good to me because you don’t want me to leave,” I tell her.

 

“Of course,” she says. “I want to marry you.”

 

“You would be a great wife,” I say. “But you know that I don’t want to be married.”

 

“I know,” she says. “But I still want to marry you, and to have a baby.”

 

“A son,” I say.

 

“Yes. A son would be nice.”

 

“But I want to take my son to remote mountains," I say. "And teach him about those mountains and camp there with him for many days. There are not mountains like that in Japan.”

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“And he must be a rebel. In Japanese schools it will be hard for him to become a rebel,” I say.

 

“I know,” she says.

 

“But you would be a great wife, Eriko. And when I leave, you will be a great wife for a lucky man. And you will have babies and they will make you very happy.”

 

She smiles, thinking of her future children.

 

“And what will you do?” she asks. “When you leave, what will you do?”

 

 

I am not sure what I will do. I will not marry her, nor have that son, nor take him to those mountains. And Eriko will become like South America did-- where real experiences faded into illusory memories, dreamlike. I will wonder how real Japan was as I wonder now about the lake I camped at in Cochamo, and about the Quechua villagers in Peru, and about the sunset in El Chalten. And when I leave Japan I will wonder about Eriko, whether a woman like her existed, and whether we loved each other like I believed we did.