Arriving in a new place evokes a wonder like no other. I became a sponge, soaking up the busy city of Osaka. I flew out of Grand Rapids to Detroit on Sunday afternoon, spent the night in the air, and landed in Japan on Monday as the sun was setting. My ears heard Japanese jibberish of Shizuka and her friend. I was numb with 17-hour flight jet-lag and the sheer fact that I was halfway across the world with one solitary acquaintance.
We settled temporarily into a tiny apartment with a strange bathroom. A red bucket was to be turned upside down to sit on as a hand-held stream was under my control. The next morning we commenced the walking. I mean, activities. Oh how my dear feet did ache. We strolled for hours through markets filled with fish, rice, octopus and delicious-sizzling meat on a stick. We rode subways and I became great friends with “Udon.” It was a warm, buttery bowl of noodle soup that was my favorite choice instead of raw fish or shrimp with eyeballs still hanging on for dear life.
Shizuka mapped out our itinerary for the two week trip. We spent a rainy day at Universal Studios with two of her friends- Naoko and Haruna. Her smiles were often, her English conversation with me bright and silly. She was home and I came with her. Her happiness added a beauty to her already-adorable face. Her friends Naoko and Haruna whipped out their English dictionary and shyly asked me proper-staged textbook questions. Sometimes they were bold, sometimes embarrassed to practice their broken English aloud.
We wandered around rainy Universal Studios, riding rides and chatting. A welcome break in a covered area rested my newly-sore legs. Shizuka bought us some harmless looking potato/fried bite sized snacks. I looked at it, knowing I was in foreign territory and asked what it was. “I will tell you after you eat it. It’s good! Try it!” She looked suspicious but I felt brave. I popped it in and looked around to hear what my taste buds were whispering. A little chewy. Warm. Not bad. She smiled, “It is an octopus tentacle in the middle. Just a small one. But it’s good, right?” A warm tootsie-roll octopus-pop. Wonderful. Before the two weeks were done, I tried cow intestine – (a little stringy and very chewy) and cow tongue- (tough meat but good). We ate rice and egg omelet dishes with ketchup on top, vegetable and fried egg roll crispy appetizers. We sat on the ground at some restaurants and used chopsticks all the time. I got pretty good at it, except when I stabbed my chopsticks straight up in the middle when I was finished with my lunch one day. Shizuka hurriedly took them out. “That is very bad. Don’t do that.” Whoops.
The most amazing meals I have ever delighted in were at the Japanese tables. A skillet is built into the middle of the table and the raw meat is placed on separate dishes, cold and pink. The sizzles begin and the rice is dished into bowls, as well as a soy sauce mixture in a smaller bowl. I can almost taste the bursting, juicy meat and sauce in my mouth once again. So incredible. Shizuka was right when she spent months convincing me to come to her country. “The food is so good. We eat more than fish! I promise!” I brought sauce home with me but couldn’t create a twin experience for my family. Shizuka taught me how to eat rice with chopsticks. I was doing it wrong- adding sauce to the rice and making it slide off my chopsticks instead of leaving the sticky rice clumped together on top of a bed of two thin chopsticks. She worked patiently with me as I adjusted to the temporary normal I found myself in.
It was the first weekend since I had arrived on Monday. I already had a preview of her bunch of friends at a dinner buffet on Tuesday. We took a million pictures, and it was the first time I realized everyone flashed the peace sign around for every picture and the photographer would say “hai-chizu!” it is similar to the way we say “Cheese!” I rode on the back of Shizuka’s bike in a long pink skirt, defying traffic and dark skies to meet her friends. I knew the beach weekend with her four friends was going to be wild because it started out with playing on the railroad tracks while we waited for our train to take us to the beach cottage. (That may have been my idea). Mountains soared all around us and Shizuka had shown me the water-soaked rice fields on the way there. We giggled and ran around like old friends, even though they had just met me and I didn’t know ANYTHING they were saying. I could understand why Shizuka was so happy though, and I knew we were going to have some fun.
We played on the beach and wandered along the shore, built a sand castle with tunnels that met in the middle where we all clasped hands and tried to take pictures. The girls got right to work with the skillets and hot pads, whipping out delicious meats, rice and soup for dinner. We ate from one big middle platter and I felt like an adopted and very welcome friend.
The next day we were a bit hung over after the giddy Saturday we had. We visited a mountain tourist attraction and rode individual ski lifts up to the top. I heard the loudspeaker bark something in Japanese, and Shizuka jerked her head towards me and yelled. “He says you have to stop shaking the seat back and forth.” Whoops. Good thing I had a translator.
We got back to town and said goodbye to her friends. Shizuka and I had a lot of time to walk and explore Japan as simple friends enjoying the summer together. We went shopping, visited a museum, and paraded around arcades full of fun photo booths. We climbed in together, snapped a few fun pictures and then doctored them up on the screen with stickers and words and colorful silliness.
Her brother’s friend chauffeured us around to botanical gardens and Buddhist temples tucked near the mountains of Kyoto. We saw glorious flowers, coy fish and bamboo gardens. We dined in restaurants, were given warm washcloths to cleanse our hands before devouring the delicious meat and rice that I had come to love. He had smooth Asian skin and spikey hair. She kept whispering to me how cute he was and I nodded in agreement. She blushed when they talked, always a turn of a grin on her young lips.
As the blissful older guy left, her cousin took his place. He was goofier, tall with black-rimmed modern glasses, preppy clothes and a smile that took up his whole face. He couldn’t have been much older than us and he had a lot of fun with Shizuka. They talked and laughed and I stared at my surroundings, enjoying the foreign yet peaceful hours lapsing around me. But when we drove home as the darkness fell, my warm fuzzies for our tour guide disappeared. The trek home brought us through winding back country mountain highways. I gripped the seat in terror. His laughing and jovial conversations with Shizuka quickly felt hazardous to me as I sat quietly in the middle backseat. The speed of his little car revved higher and my fear became paralyzing. I pictured the worst and entertained the awful idea of literally flying off a cliff. I couldn’t take my eyes away from the road- unlike the driver who constantly looked back and forth to talk with Shizuka. I watched the headlights dance up and down the pavement and wished he would slow down a bit. The nausea only stopped when he returned us safely to the home for the night. I said “Arigato” but what I really meant was, “You almost drove us off a mountain, you reckless hooligan!”
Our last four days were spent in Shizuka’s cousin’s beautiful home. Shizuka’s aunt and uncle- Obasan and Ojisan- attended to us in every way. A windy staircase brought us to our own large bedroom upstairs, and the bathroom was on the first floor. Their fancy toilet had a button on the side that sprayed water. I asked Shizuka about it, and she delicately explained its use for “extra cleaning.” The bathtub was filled to the brim with hot water every night, and a covering protecting the steam from sneaking out. I was getting used to taking “showers” while sitting on the bucket and single-handedly washing off with the sprayer. I still needed practice. The tub’s purpose was for after your shower, but I wasn’t brave enough to climb in, knowing others would come after me.
Her aunt and uncle were generous and kind, and I wanted to bottle up their hospitality and take it with me. Her aunt was warm and inviting, and scurried around caring for us. Her uncle was stoic but kind in his own way by his mere presence. Their daughter lived with them, and she was more of a bundle of energy and a powerful presence. She was ready to go shopping as the morning sun rose every day. Her long hair thinned on its way down from the crest of her hair and bangs to the curling-iron doll-like tips. She had an itty-bitty waist and her thick makeup made her look like a Japanese princess, but she acted more like a queen. It was as if she always woke up that way. I could tell she was hard to keep up with.
We arrived late afternoon and hauled our luggage upstairs. Shizuka’s family had put together a full-blown oriental dinner for us. Shizuka feared the worst when she saw what they had been working so hard on. She looked cautiously at me before we sat down to eat.
Sushi.
A pit grew in my stomach when they placed a fancy wooden tray in front of me, four inches tall, lined with two rows of sushi and one lonely cooked piece of fish. I hated at that moment that I was a picky eater, and in all of my time in Japan- this was the very worst moment. I was nauseas. I didn’t know what to do, because there was no other food on the table. Everyone had sushi. Everyone else was excited to eat their sushi. But they all stared at me. Sushi is meant to be eaten in one full bite and I saw no utensils. I couldn’t cut it into smaller pieces to pick out the rice, tackling it in portions. I had no way out. I stared and stared until I couldn’t prolong the inevitable a moment longer. My stomach refused and I felt childish. I figured I could at least handle the cooked fish, even though I refused to eat fish even in America. The exterior was gray and slimy, barely cooked. I missed home more in that moment than ever before. I could feel their eyes on me, but tears filled mine and I couldn’t even bear the texture of the fish in my mouth. I gagged and barely swallowed my first bite. I looked to Shizuka on my left and said, “I’m sorry” and went upstairs to be homesick all by myself.
On a trip overseas, there is bound to be a breaking point, and that was mine. Not being able to communicate fully, walking miles each day, relying on Shizuka for everything constantly, learning and practicing strange ways of showering/eating/culturing. The sushi set down in front of me in love wasn’t something I wanted to reject. But it was and unappetizing surprise and I just had to push it away. Shizuka explained to me later that they wanted to show me a true Japanese welcome, and she had no idea. I laid down and let the tears escape safely, knowing the night of rest would heal me.
The dinners following that episode were some of the most creatively delicious foods ever created! I was stunned by the perfection and flavor of all the meats, sauce, eggrolls, potato dishes and desserts. I poured out my thanks incessantly to make up for the first night. Their faces lit up when I said “Oishi!” with such enthusiasm. Delicious!
Shuzuka’s cousin took us to a place near the mountains where they make paper. A short Japanese man led us around and instructed us each step of the way. We held large wood templates in a basin of water and shook it side to side for sixty seconds. It was a thick gluey substance and the frame hung heavy in our thin arms. The guide lifted out the large brown frame and set it out to dry. The water settled and the pulp thickened. We used color dye to decorate our paper and we proudly took them home to show off. We had made paper and it was strangely empowering.
While shopping, Shizuka helped me pick out a brightly colored Yukata. It was a lighter, summer-version of a kimono. We stood in her aunt’s room as she helped us wrap the cloth around us and tied the thick band around our waists. Shizuka and I pinned our hair up and giggled as if it were Prom night. They brought me wooden sandals that platformed my 5’5’’ self two inches taller. We struggled down the stairs and walked to a nearby bar to show off our traditional clothing to her friend. I waddled in the long-tight robe and felt very un-oriental. Shizuka looked beautiful and we strode together in our fancy garb down the sandy streets. It seemed very fitting to end our trip in the traditional clothes of her country. The country I visited for a short minute but would remember forever.
Three years later, I flew to Chicago for Spring Break to visit Shizuka months before getting married. I knew our time was short. She lived in a tiny studio apartment and talked about how much she didn’t like to cook. Fashion school was hard and the girls were quite witchy. She pulled out a long blue evening gown that she had made, shocking me with a gift of her talent once again. It was funky and silky and strange and gorgeous because she made it with her own two fashionista hands. She projected a picture on the wall and we sketched together. I cleaned her kitchen and we walked Navy Pier and saw a movie. It was so refreshing to be in our American/Japanese tandem again. It was our last time together. She gave me mascara. “It’s so snowy and windy and rainy all the time, I can only wear waterproof.” I smiled. Her eyes looked tired, and I could tell she couldn’t wait to get back to Japan. She liked our French fries and had learned a valuable tool- English. But her heart belonged in her country. She said, “I want to get married and be Mom.” Now she is, and she’s home. She is married with an adorable little girl and a baby boy on the way. I miss all those special things about her and wonder if I will ever see her again.
Shizuka gifted me with her friendship, an intangible feeling of love and acceptance at all times. She showered me with kind words on a daily basis and trusted me with her tears. Her sweet demeanor put me at ease in the rough waves of uncertain high school teenage seas. We supported each other. We taught each other. We ignored the opposites of our culture and embraced the common thread of true friendship. We pushed through the barriers of language and misunderstanding to braid a beautiful, unique relationship.
I never thought the blue and brown leather photo album she gave me would actually be filled with photos of my little white self amidst a sea of Asian mountains and smiling oriental faces. She won me over. She brought me to her world and home safe again. She pried open my eyes to the beauty beyond my front door, and no price can be found for that. I wonder if my high school class hadn’t split in two and I lost all my friends… would I have noticed Shizuka? My friendship with her didn’t make me popular. But giving up ten friends for one Shizuka was worth it, and if I had to go back… I’d stay for her.
Related: Japan Part 1: Math is Universal
No comments:
Post a Comment