Memory III

Police get on my case, and I visit Korea   

I think it is well known that foreigners in Japan need to carry official ID at all times.  I gave this policy my own interpretation.  I only carried it when I felt like it.  My ID was my passport—I had not yet gotten my ‘alien registration’ card, small enough to fit in my wallet.  Since my passport was too big to fit in my pocket, I often went without, especially if I was only going around my local neighborhood.

At that time, snail mail was still crucial.  I had no telephone in my room, and anyway, calls to the US were just too expensive.  So, I tried to write frequent letters to my family.  I located the nearest (walking distance—oh the conveniences of Tokyo!) post office.  After writing a letter, I set off for the post office fairly early in the day.  On my return trip, I passed a ‘koban,’ a tiny police box, also known as a field office.  Every neighborhood has one, and the police try to establish relationships with the residents.  If nothing else, the police will leave a card for you to fill out with your name and contacts in case of disasters, etc.  But that was yet to come.  On that day, as I passed the koban, an officer stepped out and asked for my ID.  I couldn’t speak much Japanese, and he couldn’t speak much English, but he got his point across.  I got my point across—my passport is in my room, just down that street.  Well, that was not good enough.  I was made to wait, and in a few minutes a patrol car pulled up.  The officer opened the door, gestured for me to get in!?!?  Was I being arrested? Where were they taking me?  We drove for five or ten minutes, and arrived at a major police station.  I was taken to a meeting room? Interrogation room?  A plain-clothes officer, actually a detective, came to interview me.  His English was not so great, but enough to conduct a pretty thorough interview.  He asked my name, place and date of birth, and nationality.  He also asked for full names of my parents and siblings, and their addresses.  This was a pretty excruciating process, mostly because the way foreign names are transliterated into Japanese is pretty clumsy.  But we persevered and eventually the interview was finished.  Oh, I forgot to mention, I was in Japan on a tourist visa, but I had found a teaching job and was working.  So, the police decide they want to come to my room.  The room was not in good shape, as I was not expecting visitors.  They saw my class notebooks on the shelf.  They asked if I was working, and I said yes.  It is not illegal to rent an apartment on a tourist visa, but it is illegal to work.  I told them that I hoped to apply for a work visa (which required a visit to an overseas Japanese embassy to apply, and then either wait several weeks there, or return to the overseas embassy later to pick up the visa).   So, that was the end of that.

The closest embassy, and cheapest plane ticket, was in South Korea.  I was eager to follow all the rules, so I wondered whether I would need a visa to enter South Korea.  Rather than try to talk on the phone, I decided to go to the SK embassy to ask in person.  I got there around noon, and the embassy was closed for lunch.  The neighborhood was residential (and rather ritzy) but there was a little coffee shop/eatery nearby.  It conveniently had a glass case beside the door with food models, as many places in Tokyo did and still do.  Makes ordering much easier for those who don’t speak Japanese!  I saw a bowl of rice with a few unrecognizable vegetables on top, with red sauce.  One thing I did recognize was bean sprouts, which I liked, so I dragged the server outside to point out my choice.  When the dish was served, a manager or owner person came over and said ‘This is bee beem bopp.’ I was later to know this dish by the Japanese pronunciation, which is more like be beem bah.  It was pretty much like the model, and the little dollop of red sauce was a bit spicy. 

 
It turned out a visa was not necessary, but I got one just to be sure.  My trip to Seoul was an eye-opener.   South Korea at that time was at a lower level of development compared to Japan.  So, it was interesting to visit a new country, but some things were a bit difficult.  I think the streets of every city or country have distinctive smells.  For example, in Tokyo, you often encounter the acrid smoky smell of oily fish being broiled.  And soy sauce, and incense, and, in the summer, mosquito coils.  In Seoul, I could not escape the smell of garlic.  And, a coal-like smell from yontan, a cylinder of pressed coal powder widely used as fuel for heating and cooking in those days.  I stayed in a yogwan, a traditional economy-class inn.  The rooms were floored with a kind of laquered paper or something, and yontan was burned below to heat the floors.  It was very effective as a heating system, but it was hard to get used to the smell.  Also, the only control of the heating was to ask the manager to use giant tongs to insert or pull out the burning coal cake.   In the next room at the inn were a couple of non-Koreans.  They were great for helping me cope with various things.  They mentioned that it was common for guests of the inn to order food to be delivered from nearby restaurants.  They offered to order something for me, so I asked for bee beem bopp.  When it came, it was surprising, or maybe a little shocking.  It was a much bigger deal than the rice bowl I had near the embassy in Tokyo.  The Tokyo version had just a small bite of kimchi, the famous delicacy made from veggies pickled in garlic and hot pepper.  The Seoul version had like five dishes of different varieties of very hot kimchi.  And the hot sauce was about ten times hotter.  So, the sauce and the kimchi overdose pushed me way beyond my safe zone for spicy food.  (Maybe I was a bit more sensitive to such things in those days.)

I don’t remember what else I ate in Seoul, except for one time when I went to the coffee shop at the big multi-star hotel.  I was happy to get western food and escape the garlic cloud for a while. 

Memories II

Memories of Japan II

If you want to read these memories in chronological order, please scroll down to Memories of Japan I to start reading.

The Sakuradamon Gate, Imperial Palace Tokyo

Japan II

I began the gradual process of adjusting to life in a very foreign environment.  After a few months, a Japanese friend found an apartment just down the street that he thought would be much better for me.  It was!  It had two (small) room, tatami, and a tiny kitchen, and toilet (also squat type, but raised a bit).  Still going to the public bath, but I could do a lot more with the space.  I even had a tempura party there—actually tempura is pretty easy, just mix up some batter, dip anything you want in it, pop it into hot oil.  So easy, until it is time to clean up.  The whole tiny kitchen was covered with a fine layer of grease.  Oh well. 

I began to learn more about Tokyo.  My place was pretty well situated, about 20 or 30 minutes to the Imperial Palace.  My first English teaching job was at Marubeni, a major trading company.  The HQ building was across the moat from the palace.  The original plan of the city survives to some extent—the palace is at the center, with concentric ring roads as you go further out.  The pedestrian sidewalks around the palace have become a hot spot for runners—once around is about 5K.  So, the new hires at Marubeni had to do the run one Saturday; their time would be recorded in their personnel file.  So, I asked if I could join them.  That run was just so impressive—great and diverse views of the moat and castle walls.  There was an ancient wooden defensive gate, like 6 or 8 inches thick with heavy metal hardware and huge bosses.  It was propped open and the running path went through it.  The movie Shogun has just come out, and I felt like I had gone back in time going through that gate.  If you want more views, you can go inside the walls to see extensive gardens—no charge, you just get a tag when you enter, and return the tag when you exit so they can be sure no one is left inside at closing time.

By sheer luck, I had another great experience at the palace.  The emperor has had an official musical ensemble playing the ancient ‘gagaku’ court music on ancient instruments—a continuous musical tradition since the 10th century or so.  It turns out they give performances from time to time.  The tickets are free, but you have to know someone who is connected to get a ticket.  So, a connected person offered me a ticket!  So I hopped on the 20th century subway train, then walked through an 18th century gate, through antique gardens to the hall where I would hear music from the 10th century.  It was only slightly disappointing that the hall was modern. Very few structures within the palace walls survived bombing in WWII, so the music hall, the residential palace etc. are all fairly new.  The music sounds like outer space—maybe this was the origin of my interest in electronic space ambient music. 

Teaching the employees at Marubeni was interesting, but I began to feel that, as we sat in chairs around a table, wearing neckties and jackets, and speaking English, my experience was not as Japanese as I had hoped.  My friend said ‘I know a shamisen teacher! I will introduce you!’  So, he took me to meet Kineya Goshiroh, who was still a student at the prestigious Tokyo University of Music and Fine Arts, and still using his birth name, Minoda Shiroh.  I was still not speaking much Japanese at that point, but the notation of the shamisen music was in Arabic numerals, and I mostly just imitated my teacher.  It was through Minoda-sensei that I got involved in traditional music, related to the Kabuki theater.  Minoda-sensei took me to the kabuki theater, and we saw the play Kagotsurube.  The leading role was the famous Utaemon.  Later, Minoda-sensei introduced me to a classmate, Abe Hisae, who came from a family of hayashi drum musicians, who also played at Kabuki.  She would later be known as Mochizuki Tazae, and she was instrumental in allowing me to use a Mochizuki name, given by her father, Mochizuki Tazaemon X.  Once, when Tazaemon was playing at Kabuki, Tazae-sensei took me to the dressing room backstage, where I greeted Tazaemon.  Then my teacher showed me a door leading to a tunnel running under the theater.  It opened in the lobby.  We went into the theater to watch the show.  For free!  How does this work, I wondered.  My teacher told me to tell the usher I was a student of Tazaemon—studying by watching.  She also said standing was better, but if there were lots of empty seats it might be okay to sit.  That theater was torn down six or eight years ago, and a new one was built which is a pretty accurate copy of the old building.  However, I have only been to the new one once, and I did not confirm if the secret passageway was still there.

Memories of Japan I

 This bathhouse is now in an architectural museum, but it is similar to the one in my neighborhood.  The designers/carpenters usually build shrines and temples, in addition to public bathhouses.

 There is a mural to give bathers the feeling of being in nature, and Mt Fuji is the most common subject.

Coffered ceiling in the dressing area

I arrived in Japan in March 1978, starting what would be 36 years living there.  I landed at Haneda, the main international airport at that time.  The ‘new’ airport at Narita was not finished yet.  Haneda is on the edge of Tokyo Bay, which was pretty industrial in those days.  I rode the monorail into town; the views from the train were mostly lots of gray concrete warehouses and faint fluorescent street lighting.  I arrived at Moto-Hasunuma station in Itabashi-ku.  That neighborhood also seemed pretty gray, especially at night.  There were some small retail shops lining a narrow street, but they were all closed for the night.  My friend Kate guided me to the rooming house where my room had been arranged.  It was a small two-story frame building with about five tiny rooms on each floor, and a toilet at the end of the hall—yes, a Japanese-style floor-level squat toilet.  The room was not without its charms—it was floored with tatami, 4.5 mats in fact (about nine by nine feet).  Kate loaned me some bedding (I ended up sleeping on the floor the whole time I lived in Japan).  The room had a 0.5-mat space devoted to a square stone basin with a cold-water tap and a space for a single gas burner.  The ceiling was made of wood planks arranged on lath-like stringers.  There was a single bare bulb hanging from the middle of the ceiling.  The door to the room was a sliding panel fitted with a hasp for a padlock.  An English woman and a French man were living across the hall.  Another room was rented by an American, and there was a very cheerful elderly lady living next door to me.  The elderly lady just happened to leave a cooking pot and a cutting board in the trash soon after I arrived, allowing me to furnish my kitchen on the cheap.

Since I had arrived late in the evening, exhausted from an international flight, I went right to bed.  The next day, I was ready for a shower.  But, no bath in our building!  So I asked the French guy across the hall to take me to the public bath (it didn’t open until 4:00 PM) and explain the etiquette and procedures, etc.  It was only slightly traumatic—the female manager seemed curious about me, and dropped into the men’s bath (pretending that she needed to check the water temperature) just as I was sitting on the edge of the hot tub (very hot, so escaping by immersion was not an option).  Well, once your modesty is totally gone, things are easier.  And there was a lot I loved about that public bath.  It had large boulders built into the tub, so you could lean against the hot rocks for a heat ‘treatment.’ 

The building was owned by Mrs. Otsuki, whose single-family house was next to our building.  At that time, telephone sharing was a thing.  Of course, I am talking land-based, that is all there was.  It was very expensive to have a phone installed—it required a huge deposit, actually a bond issued by the phone company.   For what, I don’t know.  Anyway, it was quite common for people to call the next-door neighbor, who would go next door and bring the person to their home to talk on the phone.  My boss called me several times at Mrs. Otsuki’s house, so I becam rather familiar with her living room.  For my outgoing calls, I walked to the bank branch on the corner, which had a pay phone outside.  Those phones were operated by 10-yen coins.   For ten yen, you just got 90 seconds, I think, but you could put up to ten coins in the slot, to make longer calls.  Any unused coins would go in the coin return.  One day, I realized I had left 20 or 30 yen in the phone.  When I went back to the bank later in the afternoon, the coins were still there!

As I tried to familiarize myself with the takeout foods available in the neighborhood, one of my first discoveries was kappa maki.  It was a dish offered by a tiny, takeout-only sushi shop.  I was not very interested in ‘fishy’ sushi at that point, so I got the kappa maki.   The kappa is a mythical being said to live around rivers, and they are thought to love cucumber, maybe because of the wateriness.  The rice is rolled around cucumber spears and flavored with sesame seeds, and wrapped in laver sea vegetable sheets. I discovered a tiny bakery where they sold egg salad sandwiches made with their own bread, as well as twisted fried donuts dipped in sugar.  I got my own eggs from the neighborhood chicken-and-egg shop.  Out on the main street where the subway station was, there was a chain bento shop the sold cheap box lunches, just a few dollars for the cheap ones with salmon and sea greens.   I began to recognize some of these shopkeepers, and the barber who cut my hair, as patrons of the public bath.