japan: koya-san, kyoto, kyushu

by sanae

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I’m worried I won’t find my mother at the airport in Tokyo. I see her walking her usual stride: tiny quick steps, sometimes when she is in a rush her torso moves faster than her legs. She sits down next to me with excitement. We’re both like schoolgirls, bubbling, we haven’t returned to Japan in ten years. We arrive in Osaka yawning from the long flight. The small plane from Narita was almost empty. Most of the passengers were asleep during the turbulent flight, but I stared down at Mt. Fuji, emerging from the clouds like a blue nipple. The flight attendant told us in her melodious voice that the turbulence would not affect the safety of the aircraft. We eat cucumber pickles and onigiri grilled in shoyu. The rice ball has a hot brown crust. I eat two in five minutes, drink water, and go to sleep. The next day we wake up at five, our stomachs so empty we can hear them echoing as we brush our teeth. We eat a gigantic breakfast of rice, miso soup, pickles, tiny white fish (baby anchovies), gyoza, sticky rice, soft-boiled egg, and seaweed. The streets of Osaka are quiet, clean and smooth, like the surface of a manicured nail. The only sound is the beep of the streetlight when it turns green. At lunchtime we sit at a counter and watch a man pour batter onto cabbage for okonomiyaki. He makes two for us: one with cabbage and pork, the other with green leeks and pork. One is draped with a shoyu lemon sauce. We stab at them with our chopsticks while they sizzle on the hot metal plate.

Koya-san is in the mountains. There are Buddhist temples at every curve of the road. We stay at two different temples, though our favorite is Eko-in. I like its simplicity, and though the food is better at the other temple according to my mother, I know I’ll be returning to Eko-in. There’s a sign above the faucet saying: Only water comes out. It should say, only cold water comes out. The instructions for morning meditation say, “if you have difficulty sitting on the floor during meditation we can provide you with a chair.” I laugh imagining myself sitting in a tall chair while my mother is on her knees with the monks. After meditating at six we are greeted with a shojin ryori feast, the Zen Buddhist cuisine. My mother’s friend tells us that it is difficult for women to travel alone in Japan because hotels are hesitant to rent a room to a single woman. Why? I ask. Because women have a history of hanging themselves with the belt of a yukata robe, she says. She mimes the gesture of strangling and points at the wooden beam above our heads. We continue eating our vegetarian breakfast. We are told that the monks grind sesame for hours to make gomadofu, sesame tofu.

I walk down the winding, wet road and come across colorful wind chimes flapping outside a small café. I’m transported to my Rudolf Steiner years in Australia. Bon on Shya Café is owned by a French-Japanese couple. She is French and he is Japanese, a musician, fluent in Italian, French, and English. Véronique is an artist and has drawn a beautiful children’s book. My mother wants to purchase it but they haven’t found a publisher yet. Véronique’s childhood reminds me of my own. She was born in the US and moved to France when she was nine and then traveled the world. She lived in Greenpoint as an adult, and arrived to Japan with her husband seven years ago. How did you choose Koya-san? I ask. She shrugs and smiles. I ask if living in the mountains is difficult. She says not particularly. Some days are difficult, but living in a city has its own hardships.

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It takes six days to feel at home in Kyoto, to know the layout as if its my own: the circular bus system, the roads that appear shorter on a paper map than by foot, the hidden boutiques my mother scouts out with a discerning eye. My mother says she belongs to another Japan, an old, traditional Japan, and she refuses to go to Tokyo. In Kyoto we visit the imperial palace, in Arashiyama we eat green tea ice cream the color of wet seaweed, we seek shade in an architecture store that sells wooden carved cups along the Philosopher’s Walk, we trek up and up through the orange Torii gates in Inari Fushimi with mosquitoes trailing our legs, we test Japanese brushes on the backs of our hands at an old broom store, in the entrance of a guest house we sit through an earthquake jolt while a maiko-san lights her customer’s cigarette and tells him about a strange man who frightened her, we caress indigo trousers at an Aizome workshop in a secret back room and we follow the Aizome master to the bus stop because he worries we will get lost. He waves goodbye with his blue-dyed finger.

Kyushu is another island, true, and it feels like the end of the world, with each train we board pulling us farther and farther away from the center. This is where my ancestors are from. My mother’s great-grandfather is from Sanga, a town so insignificant we don’t stop, though we pass it by train four times. In Karatsu we touch beautiful ceramics and drink tea with the vendors. We lunch on fried pork cutlets, miso soup, rice, and pickles. We eat grapefruits from the market by the train station and we lose ourselves on the way to the potter’s workshop. But along the way we find a café with wooden tables and coffee served in handmade bowls, made with soil from the mountains nearby, and we eat ice cream with a sweet syrup and azuki beans, my mother’s favorite. We take a train from Hakata to Sasebo and a second train from Sasebo to Hirado, and then we drive onto the island of Hirado across an impressive red bridge that seems to be the only attraction in the area. A man tells us all the young people have left or are leaving. Hirado is a ghostly town on the edge of a magnificent, curved bay, with water smooth as a lake’s surface and dark green mountains rising behind. It feels like a forgotten town, aside from the red bridge that connects Hirado to the main land. My mother is happy when she spots adolescents playing tennis. Not all the young ones have left yet, she says. We stay in a big hotel, large enough to hold hundreds and host conventions, although it appears empty. The hotel is half moon-shaped to follow the shoreline and each bedroom receives a perfect view of the ocean. A tinkling music plays in the entrance and I notice a young man slumped over a chair, asleep. There are dozens of drab chairs that seem to serve no particular purpose. Our room has two twin beds covered with frayed blankets and a tiny bathroom that belongs on a boat. It’s entirely made of plastic, though the plastic is warped and brown along the edges, and the mirror hanging above the mirror is scratched. We eat a sweet cake soaked in honey and dusted with sugar, a local specialty brought to Japan by the Portuguese. After dinner we bathe in the public outdoor baths with a view over the black bay.

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Our last days are spent at Kurokawa Onsen. We hop from onsen to onsen and we eat long, elaborate meals at night. We ask that they don’t serve us the horse meat sashimi. In the morning we drink glasses of cow’s milk from Mount Aso cows. I pray for shirasu (tiny fish) to eat with my rice during breakfast and instead I’m given a flat salted fish, dried in the sun and grilled over hot coals. The flesh is dense and shiny with oil. My mother, like a spider spinning a web, swirls natto with her chopsticks and pours it over her rice.

Gochisosamadeshita!

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The full list would be too long, but here are the bare bone highlights:

Koya-san
Eko-in
Bon on Shya
730 Koyasan, Koya-cho, Ito-gun, Wakayama Prefecture 648-0211, Japan
Things to see: Okunoin Temple

Kyoto
Yoshikawa Inn (tempura restaurant, the best I’ve ever had)
Ippodo Tea for teas of all kinds
Aizenkobo workshop
Kiso architecture store
Things to see: Philosopher’s walk, Imperial Palace, Kiyomizu-dera Temple, Gion, Ginkakuji, Arashiyama, Kinkakuji, Nishiki Food Market, and Torii Gates at Inari Fushimi.

Kyushu
Evah
Macrobiotic restaurant, you can also find their delicious obentos at the train station
To visit: Hirado, Karatsu, Nagasaki, and Kumamoto.

Tokyo
Crayon House, my favorite place to find Japanese children’s books
3-8-15 Kita-Aoyama, Minato-ku, Tokyo

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