Every good travel story involves a quest,
the search for the Holy Grail. Leaving
Nikko, we had three days left in the Tokyo area. We had two quests. The first was to find the family shrine or graveyard.
Off to Shibuya, about a ten or fifteen
minute train ride from our hotel. We
must negotiate the You-Tube famous Shibuya Crossing.
Five or six streets meet like spokes of a
wheel leading to a hub, in a popular area.
It doesn’t work to let automobile traffic and foot traffic move in the
same direction. We stood and waited for
the walk light. With the walk signal,
pedestrians move from all points of the compass to all points on the compass. It was raining.
Like horseless knights, we forded the
stream of umbrellas. The Goodwife had
not been there in nearly 50 years.
Things have changed. We had to
find a landmark to get our bearings.
The faithful dog statue provided an
anchor. Like Odysseus’ loyal dog Argos,
this dog waited faithfully for his master.
Unlike Argos, however, this dog’s master died. The faithful dog took up the watch over the
burial site. His statue was still there,
watching.
How to find this proverbial needle, a
shrine in a nation of shrines, in this haystack of streets, buildings, cars,
busses, masses of people? First, we must
shed the male disinclination to ask for directions. After all, we were in a nation of people, in
Rick Steve’s words, willing to help you.
Besides, I was only the squire.
The Goodwife was the knight managing the quest. We had already asked countless people for
help finding our way on this trip.
We started with two policemen, one in the
train station, the other in the nearby bus station. The next landmark we sought was a “skyscraper”
of five or six stories that housed a movie theatre. Yes, they both remembered the building. Both remembered it being demolished. They both pointed us in the general direction.
We followed that famous philosopher Yogi
Berra’s advice: we found a fork in the
road so we took it. Two girls, standing
by a pedestrian bridge over one of the five or six wheels spokes that channeled
auto traffic to the Shibuya hub, were handing out Jehovah’s Witness literature.
The Goodwife approached the nearest and
asked if she knew of any shrines in the adjacent area. She put aside her pamphlets and consulted her
smart phone. There were six in the immediate
area. Not much help.
We
crossed over the channel. A man idling
on the corner of another street wasn’t much help. We decided that it would be best to approach
an older person, one who maybe spent their life here. The first one we came to was running a men’s
clothing store, a small storefront place with no customers when we went
in.
He knew of the old movie theatre, and the
shrine that stood nearby. He said we
must cross the busy street we had paralleled.
He drew us a map. He said we
would find a Seven-Eleven where we should turn right.
We walked a quarter of a mile to a
pedestrian bridge that would take us across the busy highway. Back down the same street, we went, this time
on the other side. We went down the
street the haberdasher had directed us to take, but no Seven-Eleven.
We did find a “Con-Vee”, Japanese for
convenience store. That must be it. We turned and found a construction site
guarded by an old gi-chan. He knew immediately
the shrine we sought. He directed us to
a temple and instructed us to ask one of the priests who took care of the
cemetery.
We found the temple in a short city block. An older priest was putting out old rice for
the birds when we approached him. He
knew right where the shrine was, but he wasn’t familiar with the family
name. He went into the temple and soon
returned with a much younger priest in tow.
This young priest was in charge of the “headstones”.
He led us about two more blocks and Voila!
There was the cemetery. He strode
without missing a beat to the family shrine.
He even knew the Goodwife’s cousin in charge of the family shrine.
The priest explained that the cemetery
wasn’t as big as the Goodwife recollected because the state had exercised its
right of eminent domain, not once but twice, to reroute streets and to make way
for real skyscrapers.
He said they had to move the shrines
containing cremains twice, but there probably wouldn’t be a third move because
now they were too small to matter. I
felt a need to document the moment.
Without defacing anything, I could think of only one way to make our
mark.
Though the priest knew the male side of
the Goodwife’s family, he knew nothing of her cousins from the female side of
the family. The priest had to hurry to
get to an appointment in Yokohama, so we parted and started on our second
quest.
The story was that one of the Goodwife’s
cousins from one of her aunts was in charge of the family business in a small
store in Shibuya. We had to try to find
that store, and maybe a cousin in the deal.
Back to the Shibuya crossing. The Goodwife thought her grandfather had set up one of her uncles in some kind of business near this location. We eliminated about
three of the wheel spokes, as they went the wrong way from the train
station. Her instinct told us to choose
this one spoke of the wheel.
This time, it only took three interviews with
men on the street. We first asked an
older policeman, again, acting as a guard for a construction site. He said he really didn’t live there, was
working there temporarily and couldn’t be much help.
We kept going up the street where we saw
delivery trucks making their daily rounds.
I said we should ask one of the drivers because he would likely know the businesses
around there. So the Goodwife approached
and interrupted his delivery operations.
He said he had only been in this territory for three years and didn’t
know much of the history, but he sent us to a vegetable market where he said
the owner-manager had been operating for over thirty years.
That had to be our man. I didn’t witness the actual conversation
between the Goodwife and the vegetable man because the vegetable market was
swarming with people. I elected to stand
outside under an awning in the rain and watch the people go by rather than get
in the way of serious shoppers.
All we knew was that the old one-story
small storefront had been torn down by the Goodwife’s cousin and replaced by a
four or five story business building on the same spot. From the description, the vegetable man sent
us back down toward the Shibuya wheel hub a block or two.
We found it. It was called “Mon”, meaning gate. The sign
outside said it was established in 1949.
It had to be the place.
The building had not one bar and a coffee
house as we had heard, but three bars.
They didn’t open till 5:30, 6:00 or 6:30. We didn’t understand the various opening
times until we finally figured out that it was three separate bars.
So we got back on the train and visited another
town the Good wife frequented in her youth. “This isn’t the place I knew” was a frequent
phrase I heard.
At the time we were there, it got dark
around 5:30. We were tired. We returned to Mon about four. As we stood across the street looking and
taking a picture or two, a young lass showed up and unlocked the grate spread
across the front. The Goodwife hustled
across the street and accosted the young lady.
She said she was a fairly new employee and
didn’t really know the owner all that well.
She didn’t have his phone number.
She whipped out her cell phone and called her parents, whom she said had
the number. Before she could get the
number from them, another employee came along.
They held a conference and he did have the
phone number. Various attempts to call
in the next fifteen minutes were fruitless.
The employees agreed that the cousin usually didn’t show up until very
late—or very early, sometimes about 4 a.m.
We weren’t up to that. It was Friday and we had to leave Japan at 5
p.m. Saturday. The best we could do was
leave our contact information, which consisted mostly of the hotel name and
room, since our antique cell phones didn’t work there. We also included email addresses, but we
never heard anything from Cousin.
So, our final quest was partially
successful, and partially unsuccessful.
We returned to our hotel and searched out a place for supper. We tried to find a bar where I enjoyed some
of the best meals during our trip.
Instead, we went to a chain, a seafood place.
The next day as we whiled away the time
before we left for the airport and after we had to check out of our hotel, we
found a whole row of bars and small eating-places beneath the train
station. Darn!
All in all, we had a great time in
Japan. We met a great lot of people,
some which I have mentioned, many which I have not. One gentleman that comes to mind was the
night man at a parking “lot” in Takayama.
We walked past him twice as we went to and fro searching out our supper
one night. He didn’t seem to be too
friendly until we said “Goodnight” to him as we headed back to our lodging.
He smiled and we asked him about the
parking “lot”. It was really a fourteen-story
storage room. The car drove in to his
lair. The occupants evacuated. He closed a cage, all by remote control. Wheel blocks arose. Then the car arose. Fourteen floors would
hold three or four cars each. The cars were
elevated, lowered, moved to one side or the other all by conveyors controlled
from his booth.
He demonstrated. He brought a car down from the fourth floor
to show us how it worked. He told us he
was retired, but he did this job to occupy his time and to get a little extra
income. While we were talking, a car
drove into his cage, and he demonstrated his art again while we watched. He said most of the customers were tourists,
that very few locals were willing to pay the price to have their cars stored in
his garage.
We had many such experiences, too many to
recount all of them. I will close the
book on Japan with a note or two. Some of the things we didn’t see:
Homeless people. We only saw one who might qualify in all our
journey.
Towels or hand dryers in the
restrooms. Most people carry a handkerchief
for that purpose.
Some things we did see:
Moist hand towels
brought to us whenever we sat down in a restaurant or eatery.
Trains that run on time. Fast trains, over one hundred miles an hour.
Salad for breakfast. It grows on you.
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