Sulfur and salt burned all its soil

Piza with tuna and corn. Not bad eh? It was one of the best pizas I've had in Japan. Nothing close to Partenope's, of course, but I was almost willing to call it "pizza." Or maybe I was just trying to be nice, given the situation.

So here's the story.

On the way back from Miyagi-ken we stopped in a city called Koriyama. The evening before Pastor Heo had asked me "Are you ok stopping over at Koriyama for a couple of hours?" "Yes..." "You know about Koriyama, don't you?" "No..." "In Koriyama the level of radiations is 3 to 5 times higher than the safety threshold" and then he went on telling me numbers of becquerels and God knows what else, but all I could hear was the blood rushing through my veins and my heart drumming. Finally I reemerged: "I have to stop and visit another pastor who has to move his church to another location because of the radiation level in town. He feels alone and I wanted to give him some support. Is it ok if we stop there for a couple of hours?" I did not have the heart to say no to such an awful situation. How many radiations could I absorb in two, three hours? Much less than the people of Koriyama who have no other place to go. In the previous days I had already been rained on; we had drunk tap water most of the time; we had used it to make miso soup and cook, so what difference would a couple of hours make? "We all die once in a lifetime, so just do it" said the little voice inside.

During the trip I heard the word "kosher" in the middle of a long conversation in Korean and I knew exactly what they were talking about.

After a two-hour ride we arrived at Koriyama.

Koriyama looks exactly like every other small Japanese city: really high and low buildings, a mixture of new and old, of real and imitation wood, of single-family houses and small housing complexes; fake Edo Era business stores next to sleek modern ones. The other pastor, Pastor Pak, who would take us for lunch, was waiting for us in the lobby of the fanciest hotel in town, and from there we went to a very cool Italian (sic!) restaurant and bakery where we had to wait online. It took half an hour before we could be seated somewhere, as the place was packed. The whole menu was a feast of shrimp and other treif delicacies, but there was also the piza with tuna and corn. And all you can eat radioactive panini fresh out of the oven and really tasty.

My two companions kept chatting in Korean, and Pastor Heo often translated their conversations. Pastor Pak also every now and then would switch to English for my sake and so during that meal sadly I got myself an education about Koriyama.

There is one part of the city where radiations are really not too high and one where radiations are really high: This latter part of town was where we had to be, of course, and that’s where Pastor Pak's church is. He is looking to relocate it, but not too far away, because he wants to keep his flock.

From the conversation at our table it emerged that everyone in town knows, it is not a secret, but people don't have another option. Young children in town have become increasingly sick, suffering from bleeding, breathing difficulties, lack of energy and other kinds of illnesses that some doctors connect with the high radiation-levels. Other doctors don’t. And everyone is left to their own devise, abandoned by the central government. What could Tokyo do, anyway? Where could they put all 350.000 people? With cash taken from which prefecture’s empty coffers? The enemy is invisible, so in a way it doesn’t exist. Why worry then?

Those who could, left, especially if they had family in another prefecture. According to Pastor Pak 10% of the population has moved. In some cases the working spouse is here, while the other spouse with the children are gone. The foreigners, mostly English teachers, have packed and left unless they had other personal reasons to stay in town.

From the window I saw young, little girls in their school uniforms trot along. They are a common sight in Tokyo too, on their way to and from school in the big city, alone despite their young age. When I see them I usually think of my nephew and niece, who live in a much smaller city but will never enjoy this kind of freedom and I feel envious of them. There, however, all I could feel was pity, sadness and a sense of relief that my nephew and niece are not in Japan. Because God only knows what will be of these 5, 6 y.o. girls with their cute hats and braids, who now wear also a mask as if the flimsy cloth could protect them and their young lungs. On top of the mask many parents have apparently decided to have their children wear always long sleeves and a hat. But what about the water they drink? The food they eat? The soil they walk on? By the way, City Hall has given school principals instructions to scrap the soil in their school yards, 3 to 5 cm to remove the radioactive particles. Now in those very courtyards mounds of soil await the day when they will be buried 3 feet under. Parents of the school pupils did the scraping, of course. The truth unfortunately is that no matter how much they scrap, more radioactive material gets there constantly, and what is already there will not disappear just because they shuffled them around in the court-yard. Unfortunately this plan of removing dirt and burying it under more dirt it’s only a way to feel they are doing something, all they can, to protect their children.

The stories told at our table were in complete dissonance with what was happening around us: customers apparently enjoying relaxed conversations and good, old, Italian-style treif; waiters and waitresses serving one dish after another and pampering the clients, in the usual Japanese way: “More water? Let me change this for you. Another panino?” What else is there to do when you kind of know what life has in store for you and you don’t like the cards fate has dealt you?

What I wouldn’t do for a piza…

The earth saw and trembled

30 hours after the strongest earthquake in Japan’s history we are still shaking. The massive earthquake was followed by tsunami and by an alert from a nuclear plant damaged by the quake. And now we are waiting: for that elusive radioactive cloud and for a stronger earthquake that could hit Tokyo’s area. Fun!

We realized that this was not one of the usual muscle-twitches that regularly shake Japan when, on top of everything trembling really violently, the seismic alarm of the building went off. At that point we knew we had to go out. I rushed towards the exit door, hoped my ID was in my wallet, checked my pocket for the cell-phone while the floor was shaking underneath our feet and the walls looked as if moving towards us. At first I felt real fear, the kind of fear that grabs you at the stomach, hits you like a punch, and takes your strength away. But as I put my left shoe on it dawned on me I had nowhere to run, no way to get close to my parents for a comforting word, so fear was not going to help me in those circumstances, it would just harm me. Coming down the steps of the building, watching things sway all around me I thought I was in a movie, or someone else’s life.

Next to the JCJ there is a parking lot, that’s where I headed. The cars were bouncing, the JCJ was coming towards me and back, like a giant slow yoyo; the fire-escape of the school across the street was rattling loudly, louder than the alarm of cars that the quake set off; in the middle of the empty street three passers-by stood paralyzed, I hadn’t noticed them earlier when I ran to the parking lot. A strange thought crossed my mind: “Wow, I bet it was like this for Korach!” I said the blessing over earthquakes “shekocho male olam” and immediately I second-guessed myself “Or was it shekocho ugvurato male olam?” Does it really matter?

In the parking lot there were only a Japanese construction worker and me. The man might have been on a cigarette break, and was listening to the radio. He turned to me and said something I didn’t understand, but he repeated it patiently as many times as I asked him to until I got it: “Magnitude seven.”

Finally it was over. We went back inside and started looking for news online. Our office manager tried to get in touch with her children who were at home alone, and our security guard with his wife and daughter, but no one answered. We watched the first images streaming on our screen, telling each other that it was over, yes, there would be aftershocks, but hopefully not new earthquakes. Half an hour later another big quake set the alarm off again. All out again.

The second earthquake was shorter and weaker, and this time we went all together to the parking lot, so it felt a little like a company picnic. As soon as we returned back in the office the images of the violent waves sweeping everything they found along their path were more terrifying than the quake's. In the past 30 hours I have seen those videos dozens of times, because during this Shabbat that arrived despite the earthquake and the tsunami the TV was on as we were waiting for that alert notice that luckily so far hasn't come.

At Kabbalat Shabbat there were only three of us for services, but we sang much of the prayers anyway. As for myself I was looking for comfort in the words and the melodies, but I had a hard time with the images evoked by two verses of the Psalms included in the liturgy. The earth shaking in God's presence and the roaring waters shattered the fragile calm I was struggling to achieve.

We had nothing ready for dinner because our cooks left soon after the second quake, not that anyone was really in the mood to eat. All we could find was challot, pineapple and strawberries. Our security guard, thought we should at least eat in the lounge overlooking the city, which by itself added to our meal a more festive atmosphere. All we could talk about around the table was the quake, the aftershocks, and the radioactive threat. Same menu and same conversation today at lunch...

Our dinner was interrupted twice by a piercing buzz lasting a few seconds: the quake alerts coming from our cell-phones. That buzz has become the soundtrack of this Shabbat and I'm afraid it will keep us company for a while. Last night every time it rang I had to open my eyes to figure out where the quake was and then, finally, having found the area of the epicenter, try to fall asleep again.

Earlier this afternoon a little walk in the neighborhood brought back to my mind memories of Jerusalem. Yes, of Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon, when some stores are already closed, other still open; the streets are almost empty with only a few cars and very few people rushing for the last errands, and in the air there is this feeling of waiting for something that is about to come.

Written on Sat March 12.

A man came upon him...

It all began when I wanted to see the Ukiyo-e Museum in Matsumoto, one of the richest collections of Japanese blocks prints. Getting there was relatively easy. “Just a 40 minutes bus ride from here,” I was told at the local tourist information office. What the pretty lady failed to mention was that at the end of those 40 minutes I would be out in the fields. Yes, because the JUM is a very large building surrounded by fields and rice pads. Ah, she also forgot to mention that there were no buses to come back after 2 pm and that the closest train station was several km away from the museum, past a national road, three graves, several rice-pads, and that in no possible way an unprepared gaijin could have found it.
I copied the map the cashier of the museum had showed me, and started the adventure. Like in most homemade maps proportions were not respected, and like in most Japanese maps the North was not marked. I make it past the national road, and I’m all genki and optimistic. Past the second grave I’m thinking that maybe I should come back and ask for help. At the third grave I know I’m lost, because what I thought were streets on the “map” were not other than thin demarcation paths separating rice-pads and there were many more than what the map showed. In most homemade maps out here not every street or alley is recorded, so when you count the blocks there is always something off. This map was not different… The country road I had followed ended a few meters past the third grave, and there wasn’t anyone in sight. And as I was laughing and laughing on the verge of crying, thinking I had to walk all the way back or try to reach one of the houses I could see in the distance, the there she was, a young woman walking in my direction.
My euphoria was immediately killed by the thought that if she was like all girls I know from Sicily or the US not only she would have not answered my request of help, but she would have also steered away from me, male, unknown, foreigner, virtually dangerous. And as she was walking next to me, I thought “it’s now or never” and I dared: “I’m lost can you show me the way to the train station?” And she responded, with spontaneity: “Follow me on the paths between the rice-pads.” Now “path between the rice-pads” in Japanese is aze and in that very moment I considered myself so happy I had stumbled into that word in the dictionary a couple of days earlier, so blessed. I was not alone, and I had not been alone either. Because stumbling into the word aze in the dictionary earlier that week, had not been a random thing. Reading it, remembering its meaning and seeing the kanji so vividly in my mind’s eye in that surreal circumstance, was all part of a larger plan.
My mind went through all the possible reasons why a Sicilian girl would have rejected my request to help in an identical circumstance, and stopped swirling only in front of the question: what kind of people are these still capable of such innocent act as trusting a stranger to follow them in an area when no one is around?
I followed my guide between the rice-pads, trotting in her footsteps, breathing in the fresh air of those fields.

They have eyes, but don't see

This is one more entry about my recent trip to Kyoto. If you’re tired of reading about it, you can stop now.

Most people who know me say I’m a nice guy. Let me prove them wrong.

On Sun Oct 10 I went to Kiyomizu-dera, interesting place from an architectonical point of view and a great window into Japanese folk religion. The place was packed to the gills with tourists and pilgrims, (as per pic 2 above) so after getting caught in a bottleneck I decided not to proceed and return the following morning (indeed the following day at 6 am very few people were there - as per pic 1 - and the beauty of the area was overwhelming ).

Another neighboring sacred space, not recorded in my map nor in my guide book, had caught my eye. In front of the gate stood two pillars with kanji I couldn’t read so I inquired about the place with a small group of Japanese who looked like tourists and were standing in front of them. I could see they had no clue of what the place was, but still they answered that it was a garden. It was not a garden, even though there were trees and grass and a pond and koi and lanterns. Rather it was the Nishi Otani, a temple with a cemetery and a mausoleum containing the remains of Shinran, the founder of one of the major sects of Japanese Buddhism.

Now at the Otani there was not one word in English, not one sign explaining what the place was. I had found out where we were only by chance. Hearing sutras chanted in the hondo, the main hall, I approached the building and found a little sign that explained how to open the lock in one of the sliding paper doors. So I joined what must have been a memorial service, at the end of which I picked up an explanation sheet (typed but not with a PC).

But it was not Shinran’s mausoleum and the story of the accidental discovery of his remains that made this little side trip interesting and amusing. As I am standing in the courtyard in front of the hondo reading the explanatory sheet I hear a known accent, a familiar intonation: ah, mameloshn, Italian. And there they were, four landsmen of mine! As always in these circumstances I never identify myself as Italian and if asked I say I’m either Israeli or Greek. Rapid check of what I was wearing: all items had been bought in the US, no chance that my clothes would give me away.

What were the four landsmen of mine doing at the Otani? They had mistaken it for Kiyomizu-dera, and they were now reading their guide book looking for the different components of Kiyomizu-dera in the precinct of the Otani. For those of you who haven’t been at Kiyomizu-dera nor the Otani Mausoleum, imagine mistaking an apple for a pineapple. Imagine looking at the apple while reading the description of the pineapple and trying to match that description with what you have in front of you.

One of them approached the booth of the security guard to purchase the tickets but was told that there were no tickets to pay. His joy for saving the group 1200 Yen (15$) could not be contained. In the quiet of the temple he had to shout it to his friends , just a few meters away, that there was no ticket for this one. I checked again what I was wearing.

All Buddhist temples have more or less a similar structure, the same elements located approximately in the same way. But Kiyomizu-dera and the Otani are so different from each other, that I don’t know how they could possibly not realize they were in the wrong place. In the Otani there are enough smaller buildings that could pass for something from the other temple, but how could they not see that the wooden structure for which Kiyomizu-dera is famous was nowhere to be found?! Walking behind or next to them, while pretending to read my guide book, I would shake my head and think that if they were really so dumb, they did not deserve to see the real Kiyomizu.

At the end of the tour, coming down a tiny street that runs next to the wall of the temple, one of them exclaimed in Roman dialect: “Aò che culo! Nun ce stava nessuno. That was lucky! No one else was here!”

I could have told them that Kiyomizu-dera was further up the hill, couldn’t I? But it was too much fun.

I know, I’ll burn in hell for this one.

Then Noach built an altar to the Lord.

The day had started with a glorious morning, crowned by the Dai-Butsu’s triumphant splendor. It did not matter if now thick clouds were riding the skies, as the sun had shined uninterruptedly on my first day of vacation. Shortly past 3:30 pm a light drizzle reminded me I had to leave Nara and be back to Kyoto before Shabbat. In a couple of hours it would have been Shabbat Noach, of course it was supposed to rain.

It had been another early day as I wanted to get the most out of it. Arriving at Nara I had rented a bike and had biked my way around the usual tourist attractions. At the Dai-Butsu I had one of those experiences that make living in Japan unique.

Among the deers and the equally annoying loud Chinese tourists, a swarm of sweet third graders from Kyoto approached me. Tiny, cute, wearing yellow hats and off-white shirts, each holding a pencil and a notebook. They introduced themselves with sounds that sounded familiar but I could not really make out. They had to repeat the introductory sentence more than once before I could understand it: “Good morning. We are studying English in school. May we ask you some questions?” I accepted. “Where do you come from?” “I come from Italy.” One of them asked the others in Japanese: And how can he speak English? A few second of perplexity on my interviewer’s side and then the questions started again: “Where do you live?” “I live in Tokyo.” My interviewer lowered her notebook and looked at me: is the gaijin making fun of me? I repeated my answer: “Yes, I live in Tokyo. Where do you live?” They were not interested in taking questions from me. “Do you like Japan?” “Yes, I like Japan very much.” It seemed to me that my interviewer did not understand the ‘very much’ part, so I repeated my answer in Japanese. They wrote it down, but then they looked at one another, with eyes wide open: how on earth does the gaijin speak Japanese?!?! Their teacher encouraged them to continue the interview. “Do you like sushi?” “I like sushi. I eat sushi every day.” They did not understand the second part of my response, which I again said in Japanese. They giggled: no one eats sushi every day, only gaijin do. “What is your name?” That was the final question. At that point they gave me a little present: a bag with three origami bookmarks and asked if we could take a picture together. Each one of them took a picture of the group and me using old-fashioned disposable cameras. Also in this there was something sweet and innocent: they were not using some newfangled, electronic camera, but just a simple, green disposable Fuji, cost 700 Yen at any of the stalls along the way. That’s all 3^rd graders need. I bet they don’t own cell-phones either. From the way they were holding their cameras I am sure no pictures came out. We kept crossing paths during the tour of the Dai-Butsu and every time they waved at me, smiling, giggling, covering their little mouths while whispering something to each other.

When I arrived at Kyoto station heavy rain was coming down, really as if the cataracts of heaven had open over Japan. On my way to the bus that would take me to the monastery where I was lodging I stopped at a Buddhist temple to take a few pictures of the pouring rain. One of which is at the beginning of this post (I would like to know how to move it down here)

It rained until 5 pm on Shabbat, which meant I couldn’t even go out for a stroll, but I had to stay in my ark, the monk-cell. What I originally thought would be a wasted day turned out to be the most relaxing day of my life. No worries, no commitments, no rush. Just a small Chumash Koren, a book by Daisetz Suzuki and a text about Japanese architecture. In front of my cell there was a small, quiet, green patio, with a roof under which I could sit and read. From time to time the echo of chants from any of the halls of the temple would reach my ears, making me once again wonder with gratitude at where life has taken me.

At motsa’e Shabbat after it had stopped raining, as I was biking in a quiet Kyoto enveloped in a cloud of incense, I couldn’t help but smile thinking about the smell of the sacrifice Noach offered after the flood.

And the earth was one language…

When words travel during their journey sometimes their meaning changes, and their original sound has no connection with the new thing they now describe. One of these is the word 'pizza.' In my trips around Japan most times piza (with Japanese spelling) seems to be the safest option so that’s what I end up eating. But that’s what it just is: piza, not pizza.
First there were the two piza in Shikoku, the mothers of all bad piza. After them there were: the piza made of nuked frozen dough, subsequently pressed with a machine and sprinkled with ketchup; the hexagonal-ish piza; the tube piza; the onion piza (with onion and garlic in the dough); the dry piza that had a very large flat rim and only a spoonful of topping at the center.
Thursday evening, after a day that started at 5 am, at around 6 pm I found myself in Kyoto hungry and sleepy, and with not much energy nor desire to go around looking for food. The area where I was staying, not a touristy one and a 20 minutes train ride to downtown, offered four food options only. Guess which plastic food display caught my eye in one of the windows… Piza!!!
Not any piza, a “mountain potato piza.”
As I did not have my camera with me, your eyes won’t feast on the mountain potato piza but, hopefully, its description will be enough to make your mouths water.
Instead of dough there were two thick slices of sandwich bread, roasted on the bottom but watery in the core, covered by a generous layer of grated raw mountain potato, and all topped by a thick coating of melted, golden, slightly crunchy, tasteless cheese.
I ate it, of course.

Caught in the middle

It is almost nine months since I moved to Tokyo, and 6 since I wrote anything on this blog. Even though some people say that I never leave the house (which is not true, by the way) I love it here. I will not get into the trite reasons we gaijin give to tell why we love Japan. You can find those on the net on your own, if you're interested. I subscribe to them all, but I want to add my own.

As a Jew here I feel as safe as I've never felt before. It is the first time in the last 20 kippah-wearing years that I do not feel the need to turn around to watch my back. People have no idea of what my head-covering means. The fact that I'm a foreigner explains my unusual eating habits and the strange colorful stuff I put over my head. And this makes all the other inconveniences we encounter daily totally worth facing.

There is virtually no anti-Semitism in Japan. It’s great to meet people who don’t have any baggage in dealing with you, for whom you are just another Westerner, not different from the other ones who crowd Tokyo. The only unpleasant incidents have happened not with Japanese people, but with other gaijin. They have been mostly Middle Eastern men who live in the same neighborhood as we do, and hang out at the same Italian coffee shop I go, and also a few Westerners, who have given me dirty looks and hissed nasty stuff. But not only.

A few weeks ago, an early Friday afternoon, as I was heading home from Roppongi I crossed path with three Middle-Eastern men, one of whom kept staring at me with angry eyes, even after they had walked past me. A few hundred meters after this encounter I decided to go inside a supermarket that carries really overpriced imported products. There a someone approached me, addressing me in Hebrew. He greeted me with a Shabbat shalom and asked if I needed anything. He made sure he lifted his baseball cap to show his kippah underneath it, to make sure I knew we could trust him. I thanked him in Hebrew saying that no, I didn’t need anything and that I live in the neighborhood. He asked where, and I said “In the JCC. I’m the new rabbi” to which he spun over his heels and left, without a word. But this was not a case of anti-Semitism rather stupidity.

It was great to feel loved that much with the same half an hour!

More about local displays of Ahavat Israel in the next post.