And if the household is too little for the lamb...

After the tatami incident we were shown to a dining hall that had the feel of a spacious open courtyard: along its perimeter, in smaller rooms facing the central area, groups of revelers sat cross-legged at low dining tables loaded with dishes; in the center of the hall there was a big pond where fish of all kinds swam freely; a busy sushi bar at which customers sat and dined, enclosed the pond; sous-chefs with nets in their hands were trying to catch the fish in the pond, while the sushi chefs were slicing and rolling. The customers, all men, wore white shirts and black or gray pants, the uniform of the salary men, and the only color in the room (and the only women) were the waitresses.

“The sushi is really fresh here!” the senior among my companions finally broke the ice. “They catch the fish you choose from the pond.” The tatami incident was now a thing of the past, clean slate. Earlier, on our way to the restaurant they had asked me “Do you like Japanese-style fish?” Imagining myself devouring my way through mounds of sushi and sashimi, I had answered “Yes” without hesitations. One of them then had remarked that the sashimi in the restaurant where we were heading is excellent and now, seeing the fish writhe in the nets, I was wondering what the flavor of fish just pulled out of the water would be.

My hosts had reserved a private dining room on the third floor. There another mama-san was waiting for us in front of the elevator and walking in front of us with tiny quick steps, constrained in her pink flowery kimono, she took us to the shoji of our private dining room. A young and pretty attendant, waiting for us on her knees slid the shoji open as we approached, moved quickly but gracefully and then, again on her knees in a vestibule, opened for us the fusuma of our dining room. In the vestibule there was a wooden step that doubled as shelf where the attendants would place the trays during the elaborated choreography these poor girls had to perform every time they had to come in and out of the room, a procedure I thought one could see only in movies depicting the luxurious life of the days of yore.

They had me enter the room first, then my three hosts followed in hierarchical order. Our six-tatami room had an extremely simple décor: a piece of calligraphy hung from one of the walls, a low sideboard that contained a small fridge, and four zaisu around a low dining table that hid a hollow space underneath it where we could let our legs hang rather than sit cross-legged. As we sat down the junior of my hosts, who was with us in his capacity of interpreter, asked me in English if I can do seiza. With the clear intention of showing off I answered in Japanese that I can hold seiza for up to 40 minutes, which is the truth. Now that it felt like I was back in their good books I was not going to volunteer the information that at the end of those 40 minutes my legs are of no use…

One of my hosts pulled out the sheet with the Japanese-English list of forbidden and permitted fish posted on the JCJ website and asked me if I liked hirame, halibut. When I answered “yes”, he said he was happy we were 4 because 4 is the perfect number for eating a whole halibut of the size they have here. He added that every time he is here he is very careful to order halibut only when there are 4 people, because 4 is the perfect number for ordering halibut of the size they have here without wasting any of it. 3 people cannot finish it, but 4 is just right. They ordered several vegetarian appetizers and several treyf delicacies, two boat-shaped trays loaded with sashimi: one with some untouchable foods and one with kosher fish (mainly salmon because our office manager makes sure people who take me out for meals know I’m addicted to salmon), and finally this mysterious dish for which we were the perfect number: ikizukuri. We had to have it since we were 4 because 4 is the perfect number for eating a whole halibut of the size they have here.

Again that question: “Do you like Japanese style fish?” Looking at him at loss for words I thought “Haven’t you just ordered a boat of sashimi all for me?” and then the sudden realization that maybe - or certainly - “Japanese-style fish” must have meant something different than sushi or sashimi.

Hesitatingly I gave a Jewish-style answer: “Do you mean sushi or sashimi?”

“Have you ever eaten ikizukuri?”

“How do you write it?”

Our junior wrote the Chinese characters of the mysterious word ikizukuri on the table with his finger for me to read.

“Preparing… alive…?!”

“Yes! The fish is still alive when they slice it. And sometimes it still moves on the plate.”

“I’m sorry... but… I cannot eat it,” I said gagging at the image evoked by that description.

“You do not like hirame?”

“I cannot eat it for religious reasons. I’m sorry. But you please go ahead and enjoy it.”

“But hirame is in the list of your website…”

“But I’m not allowed to eat it while it is alive.”

“But it is in the list of your website…”

“But it’s alive!”

My other two hosts understood the English exchange and out of politeness and respect for their guest called immediately the waitress and asked her to have the chef make the hirame as regular sashimi, because “the foreigner” wouldn’t eat it otherwise. I begged them to have the ikizukuri anyway, I didn’t want to spoil their long awaited treat. Instead they ordered for themselves octopus ikizukuri, and for all of us the hirame was made into old fashioned, boring sashimi.

The 4 of us finished indeed the halibut, the strangest dish I’ve ever had: chewy, tasteless, a little sour, and with this unshakable awareness that it was alive a few minutes before. I steered my eyes away from the moving tentacles of the octopuses ikizukuri in the other dish at the center of the table, and tried to ignore the almost imperceptible squishing sound made by the octopuses’ tentacles and the thought that my fish a few minutes before were happily swimming in the pond downstairs.

It took many cups of sake to force down those slices of halibut, but oddly enough the amount of sake I drank had no effect on my lucidity. Waiting for that instant when the alcohol would take away the shoes on the tatami mat and the squirming fish I was wondering if there are studies that show that the mind and its processes have the power to hinder the effect of intoxicating substances: what could otherwise explain the fact that I, usually a cheap date, was still lucid and alert, despite the almost three sake bottles I had gulped.

My hosts spent part of the evening discussing how ikizukuri is not something for foreigners, how it is something that only the Japanese can appreciate. They wondered at the fact that ikizukuri is outlawed in some countries of the world, and at the special nature of the Japanese who alone can appreciate the exquisite, decadent pleasure of this dish. The inebriated conversation touched also upon other modern myths the Japanese sometimes tell themselves about themselves: a brain that functions differently, a body that functions differently, a unique language (well, this is true…), a unique culture. Serious scholarship has proved that these stories, that have a tinge of racism, are nonsense. I, however, had no desire to disturb the harmony any further so, I kept chewing my quarter of halibut politely listening and emitting sounds of approval and surprise.

At some point the young attendant brought in the bones of the same halibut that had been covered in flour and deep-fried.

“Japanese style chips!” chirped one of my hosts, gaily dividing the carcass into smaller manageable pieces. “Rabbi, have the head. It’s the juiciest part!”

Luckily I had a fresh bottle of warm sake next to me.

Let me get closer and see this great sight…

What happens when you put three Japanese managers and a clumsy Sicilian guy in one very elegant restaurant in Kyushu? 
This is their story.

My hosts were determined to impress me. With traditional Japanese hospitality they had printed out the page of our website that lists the food a Jew can and cannot eat, and had made a reservation at a traditional Japanese restaurant. A path made of large stones, like the ones found in Japanese gardens, led from the sidewalk to the building, a clear sign of opulence. The name of the restaurant was engraved on a black, rugged mountain rock, standing at the beginning of the path. At the other end of the path, behind a bamboo fence, was the restaurant. The concrete building had all the decorative elements that are supposed to elicit the nostalgic image of a traditional Japanese house: a roof made of black tiles with decorated ends; white plaster walls and wooden posts, lintels, and rafters; reticulated shutters; bamboo mats hanging loosely in front of the ground floor windows, and on the second floor shields at the windows to give privacy and let the people inside the house spy on the samurai outside from a higher level without risking their heads (if this story is true); rain-chains pointing to a stone barrel partially covered in moss. It couldn’t get more Japanese than that.  And I loved it.

In the stone vestibule a woman wearing the clothes of the peasants of the days of yore greeted us and stood in attention, while another woman, in white tabi socks and wearing an elegant light blue kimono and flowery obi, came to welcome us from the inside walking on the tatami floor. Tatami are the traditional flooring of Japanese homes, made of weaved grass panels and one is supposed to walk on them with socks or barefoot, a habit probably born out of hygienic and economic factors (tatami, for being so delicate to maintain and expensive to make, were reserved only to the wealthy). In time a mixture of customs and superstitions as accrued and regulate the way they are laid out in a room and the way one cares for them, but no matter how westernized one is, the rule everyone observes is that no slippers nor – God forbid - outside shoes touch the tatami. Ever. Walking inside a house with shoes is already a major faux-pas, but trampling with shoes on the tatami mat is tantamount to an act of extreme violence that only the police are permitted to do under special circumstances. It is almost a desecration of the holiness of the other person’s home. Accidentally, the idea that a tatami room is special is so deeply rooted in the Japanese psyche that last June, the group of volunteer I joined to work in one of the towns hit by the tsunami was instructed to remove our boots every time we entered the tatami room in the house we working one day, even though the tatami was really ruined.

Since I am in Japan, I have become more careful about my socks: I always make sure they match and at the slightest sign of wear and tear I throw them away, as you never know when you’ll have to take your shoes off. However, despite this added care, every time I’ve found myself in this situation the first thought has always been an anxious scan of my lower extremities; and the second has gone through the steps that make a smooth, seamless "shoes on-shoes off-up on the raised level of the living quarters" sequence. Anyway, I always try to go last because my anxious gaijin self wants me to observe once again what people do in order to imitate the locals. 
Fate had it different that evening.

The senior among my hosts bowed showing me the way with his right hand that I enter first. In return, perspiring and with twirling bowels, I bowed back showing him the way that he enter first. He did not recede, so I had to go first. “You’ve done this literally hundreds of times in the past three years. You know how to do it without crashing the sliding paper door or leaning against anyone else (which they do, by the way). Just relax and do it.” Deep breath. First shoe: off. Deep breath. Second shoe: off. Then I hear one of them telling the other: “He has really learned our customs, hasn’t he?” At which point I stooped, picked up my shoes and before the woman wearing the clothes of the peasants of the days of yore could reach them, as politely as possible, I lifted them and put them on the tatami mat. It was then that my blood froze, waiting for all the Kami of Japan to smite me through the hands of my hosts.

After one second or one hour of the heaviest and stillest silence in my life all I could say or think was “Sumimasen, I’m sorry” while trying to evaluate what kind of bowing the present circumstances would require: 90 degrees, 130 degrees, or down on my knees sticking out my neck to a sword. They were really gracious. Well, I mean the hostess was. Using a very polite word that means “It is ok” she lifted my shoes and handed them to the woman wearing the clothes of the peasants of the days of yore, while my three companions kept apologizing to her for the foreigner who clearly had not yet learned the proper Japanese customs. The hostess smiling silently just motioned for us to enter.

And when I thought the evening couldn’t get any worse…

In the year of King Uzziah’s death

Preface I was asked by a few readers (yes, there is someone other than you out there looking at this blog) what was this post about and why the title. Why the title: Open a Tanakh and figure it out on your own, it is a very famous passage. What is the content: two weeks ago a Buddhist priest walked in during Shabbat morning services. After my initial delight at the thought of interesting interfaith interactions, I realized he was a nut case (or close to one). This post is mostly a verbatim of his words only (except for the two parts in italics) you can imagine my responses from his reactions. My only comfort while this surreal conversation was taking place was the fact that I could understand all he was telling me, which could mean one of two things: 1) finally all those hours poured over Japanese textbooks are paying off, or 2) yes, me too...

“I am a Buddhist priest from Niigata Prefecture. I specialize in Tibetan puja, Hindu puja, esoteric Buddhist invocations, Jewish puja and Islamic puja. Who is the rabbi of this church?

“I know that Jews have these objects and I would like to see them. Would you please show them to me?

“But I know that you Jews have these objects! You have made them for the Temple in Jerusalem. I want to see this one, and this one, and this one for burning the incense. I want to talk with the person in charge! I know Jewish priests wear these clothes. I have studied it!

“I read that Jews burn incense on this small altar covered in gold: do you have it too?

“Why can’t you show them to me? I just want to see how they are made. I will not touch them. I know that anyone who touches them dies.

“I know these objects are secret, but can you show them to me?

“I have come from Niigata Prefecture. Can I talk with the older rabbi of this church? Where is the older rabbi of this church? I have come to speak with him.

“It is not true that there is no older rabbi. I want to talk with someone older. And with a long beard like this! When is he coming?

“Look, look at this picture. I took this picture in the backyard of my temple. You see this? This is a ray of light coming down from the sky. From the God of the Jews. This is like the story of the prophet Elijah, when a ray of light came down from the sky and burned his sacrifice. A ray of light from the God of the Jews has come down to the courtyard of my temple! Look! Look how strong it is! It was very bright when we saw it! I want to build an altar in my courtyard like the one the prophet Elijah built, when the ray of light came down from the sky and burned his sacrifice. This ray of light means that the God of the Jews has accepted my temple, doesn’t it?

“What are the words you say when you make sacrifices? Can you write them for me in katakana?

“How do you invoke the God of the Jews to make him come down? Write it for me in katakana!

“Can you count in ancient Hebrew?

“No!! No!! No!! I know that the numbers in ancient Hebrew are hi, hu, mi, yo. This is what the gods sung to Amaterasu! The ones you say are not ancient Hebrew! You don’t know ancient Hebrew! Who knows ancient Hebrew here? I want to talk with someone older!”

“People are waiting for me downstairs. I have to go.”

“I went to the Israeli Embassy on Thursday. I wanted to talk with the Ambassador, but they did not let me in. They said that without appointment I cannot meet the Ambassador. But I have a very important thing I can disclose only to the Israeli Ambassador. Is he coming here? Do you know the Israeli Ambassador? He needs to know!

“Six times an UFO flew above my home and my temple. Six times! Then the seventh time a female-UFO came out of the ship and took me for a walk in the woods. She was taller than me and she was wearing white clothes and had this on her chest, made of gold with twelve precious stones. She gave me this map of where they are from. This galaxy is where they live.

“She said she was one of the angels of Bible of the Jews and the God of the Jews has sent her to inform me about what shall happen beginning in June. She told me that only the Bible of the Jews has the truth and asked me to come and tell you. She showed to me passages from other religions’ holy books telling me they are all lies.

“I am not allowed to tell what shall happen in June, I can only tell the Israeli Ambassador. The Jews have to be ready to be saved.

“I cannot tell you what shall happen. Many people shall die. The Jews have to be ready because the God of the Jews wants to save them. In June the destruction of humankind shall begin. Many people shall die, and then the God of the Jews will send space-ships to save the Jews. The Jews have to be ready to leave. All the Jews have to gather in Israel and after all the Jews leave the God of the Jews will destroy the earth. I know other things but I can tell them only to the Israeli Ambassador. Please, I need to talk with him.

“The God of the Jews has promised that he will destroy the earth as soon as all the Jews are on the ships. No one will be left on earth this time.”

“People are waiting for me downstairs to say another prayer and then we have lunch. I cannot believe in what you said. Maybe it’s better if you leave now.”

And he was embalmed and placed in a coffin in Egypt.

NB The names and the gender of the characters in this posting have been changed. Might have been changed. Or not.

It all started with a phone call: “Rabbi, I am Uso, Makoto’s son. Can you do my father’s funeral?” I had never met Makoto even though the stories I had heard had created some sort of connection between us. Months before this phone call someone had told me that Makoto had made aliyah and now was back in Japan but had resigned after my arrival because he didn’t like who I am; that Makoto was in Japan but had resigned after my arrival because he couldn’t afford the dues; that Makoto was seriously ill; that Makoto’s health had improved and now he was out of the hospital; that Makoto wanted me to visit him at the hospital; that Makoto’s family, namely older brothers and mother, would not allow me at the hospital; that Makoto did not want to see me because he didn’t like who I am; that Makoto was in a hospice; that Makoto was dead, and this, being so final, had to be the one truth of the story.

Despite the bits and pieces that people knew or imagined about Makoto, whom everyone had seen for a number of years at services, none really knew him. Only one person knew his last name; for most he wasn’t but one of the many Japanese who would like to convert or who attend services at the JCJ out of curiosity, in the hope of getting a glimpse of the ancient esoteric knowledge we Jews allegedly own.

That phone call I received from Uso surprised me, mainly because I had heard Makoto had died already two months earlier. After a graceless attempt to express my condolences in a slowed down English, I asked the question I had to ask: “Where is the body?” to which “In our living room” was the answer. The sudden nausea attack caused by the image of a coffin sitting in a crammed Japanese living room, maybe even very casually being used as a coffee table, prevented me from saying anything else. Uso must have noticed the awkwardness of that moment as he added: “No! No! We have cremated him. It’s only the ashes.” This gave me some relief from my nausea and at the same time it posed the question of what to do with the remains, because according to halakhah someone who has been cremated cannot receive a proper funeral. Anyway we agreed that we would meet the following day to talk about the next steps, and this would give me time to look in the books and in myself in order to find a procedural answer.

Uso and I met in a coffee-shop and for the next couple of hours I learned a lot about Makoto’s past and family life, which cannot be shared here. The stories I heard and the love in Uso’s voice made me regret that I had never met Makoto during his lifetime even though I could not get rid of the feeling that Makoto was hovering around us, not only because of the picture Uso had brought.

Now our immediate problem was what I had been dreading since my arrival in Japan: where will we bury the Japanese gerim when it will happen? By Japanese laws and regulations they are not allowed to be buried in the Jewish section of the Foreign General Cemetery in Yokohama because, well, they are not foreigners. Still we thought that we would try and call the Cemetery and pretend we didn’t know, just in case. Uso called the Cemetery office, explained the situation in polite Japanese, with all the proper humble forms. Despite his extremely formal language and his literal bows to the Cemetery employee the answer was no, a polite but firm no. So Uso took upon himself to search for a non-denominational cemetery, which was the closest we could get to honor Makoto’s request. And finally last week, twelve days after our initial meeting we buried Makoto.

For the record Makoto had requested no cremation and a Jewish burial, but the elders of the family had opposed his request and thwarted Uso’s attempts to get in touch with the Jewish community. Acting against his will, they had the body cremated and were planning to get him buried in the cemetery kept by the religious institution with which they are affiliated. At that point Uso found the courage to oppose the family hierarchy and managed to stall until he was able to take full control of the situation and call me. I felt Makoto had been wronged enough and so I decided he should receive a proper (well, as close as possible to proper) Jewish burial.

When we arrived at the cemetery a man, the MC, was standing at the entrance waiting for us and as we parked the cars a plain wooden box seemed to have materialized in his hands, and so the funeral started. We followed him along the paths of the cemetery, a garden with an infelicitous mixture of Japanese and Western landscaping elements: patches of grass, water-fountains with cheesy puffed putti, a crimson arched bridge, stone lanterns and an artificial brook with a waterfall. The MC stopped underneath a portable gazebo shielding the grave - a small niche dug in the ground and lined with granite - and a few chairs for the mourners to sit. The headstone was similar to the other ones in the cemetery except for the fact that it bore Makoto’s name in Japanese and in Hebrew, the date of his birth according to the Japanese calendar, the date of his death according to the Jewish calendar, and also the traditional Hebrew inscription תנצב"ה.

The MC opened the wooden box, took out a plain, charcoal glazed urn and remained standing next to the niche, the urn in his hands. As I was about to start chanting the prayers Uso stopped with a request from grandma: “Can grandma keep a bone?” I shook my head violently as if to wake my brain up, because what I had just heard did not make any sense. Again the same question: “Can grandma keep a bone?” I had heard correctly indeed. One of the first things any foreigner reads upon her arrival to Japan is that the Japanese after a cremation collect the bones with chopsticks and place them in the urn, which somewhat justified grandma’s relaxed attitude. I had also read that some great Japanese figures had more than one burial site thanks to this system of burying bones in places away from the main grave, and knowing this fact made me think immediately that grandma still wanted to organize for Makoto a non-Jewish burial. So I had to give a brief impromptu lesson in halakhah in slowed down, simplified English which Uso translated. Grandma however had every intention to get her way, and asked again the same request with querulous voice, but this time Uso did not translate it and I took that omission as the sign to start chanting the funeral service.

At the point of the funeral when it would have been time to lower the casket into the grave, I approached the MC wishing to get the urn with Makoto’s remains and put it inside the grave myself: after all in Judaism burying someone is the highest act of love one can possible perform. Seeing I was clearly reaching out to the urn the MC, who had stood quietly and composed next to the niche, with a roar stopped me and turned his upper body sideways, and then stepped back. He almost touched me in order to prevent me from reaching the urn! I told him that I wanted to put it inside the grave, so he moved closer to me and then, while we are studying each other like in one of those cheap samurai movies always shown on TV, with one hand he lifted the lid and revealed the urn’s content. Most powerful than any unsheathed sword! Involuntarily I turned my head in disgust at the sight of those bones haphazardly placed in the urn. When I looked back he had won, the urn was in the niche already. I asked if I could, at least help him put the stone on top of the grave but the answer was, of course, another no.

Before we left the gravesite to go back to a sitting room in the office building, where we were offered green tea and Japanese confectionery the MC started talking with Uso and it was clear that he was whispering about me. My eyes kept going from Uso to the MC to Uso, until Uso reported the MC’s concern that I might have skipped some prayers. Of course my first thought was, “Oh my gosh, what did I forget!?” and quickly I went in my mind through the steps that make a standard Jewish funeral. But then I remembered that this was the first Jewish funeral the MC had seen, what could he possibly know? So, practicing a grammatical form I had just studied in class, I asked directly the MC what did he mean. His answer: “When the Japanese bonzes perform the funeral rites it takes much longer.” Foreign bonzes instead…

If the light of a thousand suns blazed forth together (Bhag. 11:12)

There is a time of the year when the spirits of the dead come back to Japan in order to visit their living relatives, the Buddhist festival called O-Bon. It’s a time for Japan to reconnect with its roots: offices and plants close, most people travel back to their hometowns to visit with relatives, tend to the ancestral graves and offer food and drinks at gravesite or on the family altars at home. Together with these more intimate commemorations, in many places communal celebrations are held, involving traditional dances and music performances. Yesterday (August 17th, 2011), the last day of O-Bon, I was in Hiroshima and found my way to the Peace Memorial Park, which stands on the ground where the bomb was dropped.

When you approach the Park what welcomes you is a big fieldstone that bears engraved on it two kanji, 慰霊 (irei, appeasing the spirits of the dead), a plain memorial that any other time would have gone unnoticed. What caught my eye were several water and tea bottles lined up in front of it: some half-empty, some with their cap still on, some uncapped. Others visitors had placed them there next to a few memorial wooden sticks and they were clearly a colorful and spontaneous offer to the dead. Along with many other visitors I was following a map, courtesy of Hiroshima Tourist Bureau, dotted with numbers marking different spots. The Peace Memorial Park was too big and too many other numbers were marked on my map for me to dwell on this simple memorial for long. Just enough to decode the characters, take a few pictures, move on to the next number. I was moving from one point to the next, like in a puzzle of “connect the dots,” but I could not see the picture because the pain was too big to be grasped by a single heart.

At every spot in the Park you read numbers so large your mind cannot relate to them. I silently said El male in front of the Cenotaph that contains the list of names of the almost 240.000 victims of the bomb, but their sheer number did not make their pain real; the thousands of colorful origami cranes in the Children’s Peace Monument had me wonder about the effectiveness of a vain hope; the turtle of the memorial to the 35.000 victims of Korean origin, evoked images of celestial turtles and hexagrams, nothing more. But it all hit home in the Peace Memorial Museum. There you cannot hide any more behind figures with too many zeroes.

After a physics lesson on how an atomic bomb works you’re taken by hand along a route where you have to confront the suffering and the horrors that the A-bomb caused in individual lives. A corridor reproducing what the color of the sky was, what the streets looked like after the bomb dropped, and then a gory diorama with mannequins in tattered clothes, faces blackened by the ashes of the fire, and their flesh, melting or peeling off, hanging from their limbs. But these are still fake. 
Items with name, age, personal stories of the former owners make it all real. What was this girl carrying in her lunch box that morning? Did this girl ever finish sewing a Western style shirt, as per her class notes? How painful must have been for this woman to have the pattern of her kimono branded forever in her flesh by the heat? Where did this mother find water for her thirsty, dying son? Where did all the other survivors find water to quell their perched bodies? What it feels when your face melts in the heat? What does a 3 year old understand when his tricycle is suddenly burning under him? 6000-7000 degrees C, again I can’t fathom past 45C… I pushed myself to walk through the entire exhibit, all of it, without skipping, rushing or quitting; I forced my eyes to stare at the pictures, only witnesses to suffering men and women; I wished those I love will never have to experience an agony such as this. Through a veil of tears I read the brief accounts about those people, about deaths and their connection with the objects now on display, carefully reading also the names of each individual, hoping this simple gesture could serve as some sort of memorial service for them.

In the hot air outside the building thoughts about what I had just absorbed started mixing with thoughts about Israel and my friends there who live with the ticking threat of an Iranian atomic bomb. I couldn’t hold back the tears anymore.

Later on, before leaving the park I bought two bottles of tea. One for the big memorial fieldstone.

The valley of shadow of death

We were done earlier than planned and I was over the moon. There we were in Takamatsu, close to Temple 84 of the Shikoku 88 Temples Pilgrimage Route: I didn’t care for lunch, didn’t care for rest. All I wanted to do was to see the 8^th century temple and the Heian period Kannon statue. When the map on my iPhone told me that I could reach the temple by cable car, my mouth started watering at the thought of the next temple, Temple 85, built on a neighboring mountain. And yes, the second mountain too had a cable car. How convenient! I could have seen both places in a few hours!

At 1:30 pm the train dropped me at Yashima, a small island now joined to Shikoku. The street leading up to the station of the cable car was up-hill and deserted: a lonely and empty restaurant, a couple of out-of-business Japanese inns, several run down establishments with windows broken or closed by plywood, a few new single family houses, and the ubiquitous vending machines. From a distance the building of the cable car station looked dilapidated, but I still had great hopes in the cable car. “Business mustn’t be good, so they don’t invest in the outside look… Yes, it looks quiet, but I’m sure it’s just because I missed the previous ride. It must have just left… Who in his right mind would attempt this excursion at this time of the day… Well, it’s rural Japan, they don’t care about fancy. That’s why it looks abandoned, but it works, it works… It’s not the season for tourists or pilgrim to climb the mountain…” I reached the padlocked station, and shook the door a couple of times. It is interesting how we choose to believe the little lies we tell ourselves: “They must be out for lunch!” I had to stop kidding myself because no spider could have weaved so big a cobweb during the employees' lunch hour.

With my hopes shattered I started walking back down towards the train station, and then I had this great idea: I should knock on some door and ask how to reach the mountain top. This is not something that I would normally do, not here not in Italy not anywhere else. To my defense I should say that it must have been the sun hitting me over the head that made me do it, or maybe I couldn’t think straight because I hadn’t had lunch, or maybe the fact that I am a henna gaijin, a strange stranger, anyway, so I had nothing to lose. Whatever the motivating factor, I did it. I looked around, and picked a house, walked in the patio, slid the door open and called inside.

A tiny old lady, responding to my “Shitsurei shimasu, excuse me” opened the door. She was bent in two like many old Japanese ladies who have spent their best years huddled over rice pads. And there was the second big disappointment of the day: she did not show any signs of surprise seeing me, as if Japanese speaking foreigners are the norm in this part of the Country. I told her that I wanted to reach Yashimaji (Temple 84) and I was wondering if there was another way to go, as the cable car wasn’t working. “I will show o-gaijin-san (the honorable foreigner, i.e. me) a way to go” she slipped in her outside shoes, left the door open and started walking towards the cable car station. I followed her wobbly walk thinking that I had performed a feat of great luck: I had managed to find the only senile person in the whole neighborhood, someone who hadn’t noticed that the station had been abandoned and was taking me back there. As we walked my mind told me a couple of Japanese folk tales where naïve travelers had been devoured by blood-thirsty monsters disguised as tiny old ladies. Luckily none of those accidents has ever occurred in broad day light.

Instead of going straight to the station we turned left and went to the back of the building where the rusty cable car had been resting for several years now. The lady showed me the mountain and said that I could climb on the emergency steps that ran parallel to the cable car tracks. “Some people go this way. (“Do I want to be some people?”) It is difficult because it gets really steep but o-gaijin-san is strong and can do it, ne (can’t you)? (“I don’t want to find out half way through whether I can or not.”) Be careful. It’s a little dangerous because the wooden steps (“Oh, there’s wooden steps too! Great!”) can be xyzxyz.” “Sorry, I don’t understand.” “The wood can be xyzxyz, ne (can’t it).” “I don’t understand. The wood can be what?” “The wood can be xyzxyz. But, o-gaijin-san, don’t walk on the wood, walk on the tracks ne (won’t you).” (“So I’ll never find out what xyzxyz means?!”) “How long do I have to go?” I asked. “Three hundred, four hundred meters,” said she (in reality according to the map is a little more than 700 m, but she didn’t know and I am not sure this would have stopped me). “How long is the tunnel? Do I have to go inside?” “Hehe! It’s short, o-gaijin-san (“And you’ll be inside to devour o-gaijin-san!”). Don’t go on the right side of the tunnel, when you get out of the tunnel there is jkljkl. Climb it and…” There I stopped listening. “Should I ask what jkljkl is or just go for the surprise factor? Is it worth it? And what if she really devours me inside the tunnel?”  A couple of bows, a recommendation to be careful, and, sweet touch: “I am home until 4 pm, if you need something. 同行二人, Kobo Daishi be with you.”

A few steps in the march I felt a cobweb all over my face. I sputtered as best as I could, and kept going. New sputtering several meters later, and then again.  And as I sputtered and cleaned the third cobweb off my face, there he was, on my white shirt: an orange spider, as big as an elephant (well, that’s what it felt anyway). I am sure my shriek deafened it. Did you know that one of the possible usages of iPhones is spider-removal? Then and there I understood why pilgrims wear a henro hat. The henro hat, a conical, wide hat made of straw, one of the accoutrements of pilgrims (henro), doubles as a shade, as umbrella, and probably as cobwebs catcher. After the third cobweb I could have turned back and call it a day but, stubborn me, I didn’t.

I couldn’t risk any more close encounters of this kind, so I had to proceed really slowly and alertly. From that moment the path revealed itself for what it was: an insidious labyrinth of cobwebs, and since I did not want to destroy them intentionally I found myself making all sort of somersaults: zigzagging, putting my feet on the rails, stopping to look where they ended and circumventing them. A couple of those cobwebs obstructed the way from one side to the other and I had no choice than breaking them in order to move forward, not with my hands, of course, not even with my iPhone (there’s a limit to what an iPhone can do) but with a little dried branch I had picked from the ground. Then and there I understood why henro carry a walking stick.

My tiny old lady was right, the climb was steep, and it became steeper. At the time I started climbing 20 minutes had gone by since my arrival to Yashima, and it was a scorching hot afternoon. No shade, no place to sit down and relax a little. I am not squeamish (some people might disagree), but two things I cannot stand: the sight of bloody bodily organs, and insects. Those steps were full of the latter. Why didn’t my tiny old lady tell me about the crawling little creeping creatures? This would have stopped me. Or not. To make things worse I realized my sandals, which would have been the perfect footwear for the cable car, were not suitable for that environment swarming with hostile beasts, but what the heck, too late. Since sitting down on those steps was not an option, lest some undesired guests decided to get a lift on my pants, I had to push through. Why didn’t you turn around and go back, you ask. I wish I had an answer. I was climbing, turning back every now and to see my progress, not as fast as I would have wished it, and to look at the city vibrating in the afternoon light that seemed to melt everything around me.

What really freaked me out was the moment I reached out for the water bottle supposedly in my backpack, but in reality　I had put it down somewhere in the tiny old lady’s property. For the first time in my life I felt lost. It was 2:29 pm, I was past the middle point of the route, exhausted, limbs aching and shaking, shirt drenched in sweat, dry mouth, nothing to drink, the sun is hitting, and no phone signal to call and inform someone of my whereabouts. I had the absolute certainty I would not be able to reach the mountain top, and I did not feel the strength to go back. Panic. I knew none was around but I still cried for help. Silence. I shouted out to God. Silence. Then a verse from a famous Psalm: “גם כי אלך בגיא צלמות לא אירא רע כי אתה עמדי שבטך ומשענתך המה ינהגוני, Even though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death I fear no evil, because you are with me. Your rod and your walking stick will lead me.” A walking stick was all I needed that moment. I repeated the verse a few times, and I suddenly I got my second wind and felt I could make it. So I pushed, past those wooden steps, inside the tunnel and finally climbing over the jkljkl, 5 pieces of bent metal embedded in a concrete wall, functioning as emergency ladder.

The tunnel was cool and pleasant. No oni or obake (ogres or monsters) in sight, no wild animals, no spiders: the perfect place to catch my breath before the end of the excursion.

The temple, like every other 8^th century temple in Japan, had been reconstructed and restored several times, the last of which 60 years ago. Its front, however, was graced by beautiful vermillion beams, and polychromous wooden lions and dragon heads, where birds had nested. The Kannon statue carved by Kobo Daishi himself (or so the story goes) was, oddly enough, on display in a small museum adjacent to the temple. And it was so beautiful that after a couple of bottles of water, out of joy and gratitude, I decided to go down the same way instead of catching the bus. Ah, yeah, because there is a shuttle bus that connects the clearing behind Temple 84, where the ubiquitous vending machines stand, to the Yashima Station near the house of the tiny old lady.

In the path between the vineyards

The dawn of my first night in my hometown was only a couple of hours away. I was standing on the balcony,  facing the mountain on the North-Eastern border of the village, and gazing at the unperturbed sky. As I searched for words for a spell to stop the drunken and high motorbikes racing all around, one word echoed in my  mind.

"Meteorites."

It came to the foreground, took the full scene, obstructed my thoughts.

Here I was, trying and push it aside, climb over it, move past it in my effort to resume phrasing the curse, when another word stood next to it. A Greek  word, very similar in sound to the previous one: methorios and  then I knew what was it all about.

Methorios :  “that stands on the border between two areas.” Without belonging to either one.