Travel broadens, they say. It certainly changes things. It forces a person to adapt, if only
temporarily.
I won’t pretend to explain Japanese
culture in one (or even several) blog(s) especially when some have spent a
lifetime trying to understand (think Arnold Toynbee). Here are a few customs I had to adapt to.
We called upon the Goodwife’s elderly aunt at her “group” home (we would
probably refer to it as assisted living).
We were ushered to her room.
Barely had we said our hello’s before a table with folding chairs
appeared along with a shallow bowl of rice crackers and three cups of tea.
Eventually, Auntie’s stepdaughter ferried
us the two or three blocks to Auntie’s home where we were housed during our
stay. Our hostess entered the house
before us, and put the teakettle to the fire the first thing. While she opened windows and showed us around,
the kettle heated up and soon, we had a cup of tea.
Okay, we were guests. Now the next morning, we were to wend our way
back to Auntie’s group home, two or three blocks away. I can forgive myself for what happened,
because as a country bumpkin, I rely on the sun and moon and horizon to
navigate. No trick at all to lose me
among streets and houses and traffic.
Still, I thought I could find my way. We had a debate right outside the door. We came down the hill to get to the house. No, we came uphill, I insisted. I led her downhill, to the left, down further
to the gas station. Then I got confused
and lost my resolve. Maybe this was the
way we had gone to the market place before we went to the house.
The Goodwife prevailed. Back up the hill we went. We turned here, we turned there, we continued
to climb, and soon, we really were lost.
There was an advantage, for me.
We were high enough to look out over the “village”. We were standing near a lot, maybe half of a
city block, full of tea plants. I
surmised the tea plantations, which we could now see, are what enable the
Japanese to refer to this as “country”, meaning rural.
The buildings are a mainly one or two
stories with only an occasional high rise.
There are city lots planted to vegetables. Country.
We were lost for the second time in two
days. Yesterday’s ambling was
forgivable. Our instructions were to
leave the train station and turn left.
In all fairness to out
instructor, it would have been difficult to give detailed instructions from
memory.
The Goodwife had the address on a slip of
paper, but there were no street signs.
“We don’t put street signs up in the smaller places. Everybody knows the streets and where they
are,” one of our Good Samaritans explained.
Okay.
It was approaching one p.m. when we arrived
at the train station and made reservations with the ticket agent for our next
leg of our journey. We made some initial
inquiries from a few people with vague results.
I was hungry. It would not do to show up at Auntie’s
hungry. Upon the recommendation of some
businessmen the Goodwife approached, we drug our suitcases into a little pub
run by a couple probably in their 60’s.
The proprietress knew the place we wanted to find. A smart young man (she referred to him as
“doctor” or ‘teacher”) sitting at the counter two feet away couldn’t help
overhearing the conversation. He dug out
his smart phone and showed us a route to take.
After the young man left, the proprietress
came to our table with a hand-drawn map.
She didn’t trust the smart phone.
Besides, she said, there was an easier way to get there. Maybe we couldn’t follow her map, so she
would go part of the way with us. In the
end, she took us right to the door of the group home.
Getting lost on that first day was
forgivable, if not having smart phone or GPS is forgivable in this day and
age. But how was it possible not to be
able to find do our way two or three blocks in broad daylight?
As we gazed stupidly out over streets,
fields, and rooftops, a delivery truck approached the intersection. When it stopped, the Goodwife asked the
driver how to get to Auntie’s group home.
He apologized, saying he wasn’t from this vicinity and didn’t really
know much about this town.
He turned right and headed downhill. After discussing it for a moment or two, we
followed him down the same street.
Before we got very far, here came the driver uphill toward us, afoot,
with a young lady in tow.
He had parked his truck, gone into another
assisted living facility, and procured the help of one of the employees. He probably told her there were two crazy
Americans wandering around hopelessly lost, could she help us? Anyway, he turned us over to the young lady
and got on with his business.
The young lady took us back up the hill,
made a couple of turns, and took us to a facility she was sure we were looking
for. But it wasn’t.
She got out her smart phone and had a
confab with an associate from her workplace.
Together they thought of another place that met the Goodwife’s
description. Back down the hill we went
to where the truck driver had parked, to the young lady’s place of employment.
Nothing
would do but we must step inside and have a seat in the foyer of her workplace
while she went and brought a car around.
We were parked on a bench in the entryway. Almost simultaneous with us hitting the
bench, two cups of tea, iced this time, appeared on a tray before us. Our entire stay at the facility couldn’t have
been four or five minutes, ending when our hostess parked just outside the door
and came to get us.
We had had our obligatory cup of
tea.
The young lady took
us on a five-minute drive. We started
down the hill and I said, “Ah, route 30.
I recognize this street.” She and the Goodwife had a short exchange, the result of which was
the Goodwife snickering.
“She says that 30 is the speed limit
sign.”
We came to the same gas station to where
we had walked earlier, the place where I let self-doubt rule. I recognized it, too. She turned the corner and right next door was
Auntie’s group home.
We thanked the young lady profusely and
went in to see Auntie, and have some more tea.
It seems that anyone who sets foot in your house must be treated to a
cup of tea.
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