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.

The day is short and the work is much

It has been a long time since I wrote an entry for this blog. It doesn't mean that life has stopped and there hasn't been anything to tell, actually the contrary is quite true.
Things have been very busy: High Holy Days, work, daily life. Too much to get all done in one day. There wasn't even time to get one's hair cut. Well, let's say that I would have been able to find the time, but I wouldn't have been happy to spend Y7500 ($83) on something so ephemeral as a hair cut at the nearby barbershop. So I had to wait to have a little more time so that I could go to the Y1000 ($13, more at my speed) which is further away and at the end it was worth the 20 minutes walk.
This barbershop is on the second floor of a building, tucked away behind an anonymous Y1000 sign. Hadn't someone told me I would have just assumed that the barber-pole outside the building was just an eccentric decoration (which would not be so uncommon in Japan after all).

So, I got upstairs and there was a line. The barber, a burly woman, said something with a very harsh tone of voice and without using any of the polite language forms, and with her chin pointed to a stack of numbered CDs. I interpreted it as "Get your number and sit down!"
When my turn came she took my Y1000 and then seated me down and asked something. I assumed she wanted to know what kind of hair-cut I wanted so I responded with the sentence I had prepared in advance: "Please do not cut it too short" and I was sure that it would be enough. But no, the lady, like every good Japanese person I've had my interactions with so far, had to say something back which I didn't understand. My subsequent statement "I don't understand Japanese" was completely disregarded, if anything it generated more questions. After a couple of Wakarimasen, I don't understand, I decided to adopt a different strategy: I would answer alternatively hai and iie, yes and no, without having any idea about the questions.
I got a decent hair-cut. Really nothing special, I've done better myself with my faithful hair-clipper, but the whole experience was really amusing.
At the end she pulled out a vacuum cleaner with a long flexible extension. While I was still thinking, "Why doesn't she take this bib off before vacuuming the floor?!" she was vacuuming my face and neck.

Turn back, Shulammite! Turn back that we may see you!

If you click here you'll be able to listen to a sample of the music that accompanies the performance while you read this posting.

Tokushima City hosts the Awa Odori Kaikan, a theater where the Awa Odori is performed all year long, with several daily performances. Following the suggestion of the gai-jin at the Tokushima Tourist Information Bureau I decided to attend one.

The audience was quite large and included people of all ages: parents with children, teen-agers, retirees, housewives, middle-aged sarariiman. They were unobtrusively looking at me, the only non Japanese, I was staring at them, surprised by the heterogeneous mixture of individuals in the room. The presence of children and teenagers was particularly interesting: Awa Odori is the pride of Shikoku and these completely westernized youngsters had come there to watch the show and at the end to dance with the members of the company.

Oh, yes, because the English flier I found on the desk in my hotel room did not lie when it said "Let's enjoy to watch and to dance Awa-Odori," and at the end of the show the audience was invited to join in with the dance company. After some ten minutes of intense dance (during which the participating audience took themselves very seriously) a winner was selected. The winner, a local retiree (if I understood him correctly), had rivaled the members of the company in energy and dexterity. The leader of the dance company interviewed him with extreme composure, as if were talking with the Emperor himself, and every now and then he would make sounds (soo des ka? aaaa!) showing that he was taking interest in the gentleman's story, as did the rest of the audience. At the end the winner received a red and white flower chain, some sort of diploma and a standing ovation.

If you read the brochure of the Tokushima Tourist Information Bureau "Three major scholarly hypothesis" exist about the origin of Tokushima Awa Odori:
1. It originates from the dances of the Bon Festival, held in July of the lunar calendar...
2. It derived from Furyu Dance, the dance performances said to be at the origin of the Noh theater...
3. It celebrated the local feudal lord when the Tokushima Castle was completed in 1587...
Whichever one the right hypothesis, the Awa Odori is full of sensual energy, like most dances.

The show lasted almost one hour. First came in the band that positioned itself in a corner and started playing, then the dance begun. The dance itself was very simple and repetitive - women and men advancing in line and then moving in circles and other repetitive geometrical patterns - and it played off the unbalance between the two groups of dancers and the way they presented themselves on the scene, between raw energy and controlled elegance. Let's start from the costumes: the female dancers were completely covered, wore tight, modest dresses, that didn't allow much movement; the male dancers wore loose coats, not fully closed that showed their underwear. The women held their hands up above their heads; the men waved them all around their bodies, marking the space. The women's bearing was very stately, they advanced in small steps, with their arms gently floating in the air; the men strode with their knees bent, and their movements were somewhat sensual, provocative. The men's hand gestures were wide and seemingly out of control, and every so often the fans they were holding would suddenly open and move down just at crotch' height. Each woman's space was clearly defined by their dresses; each man instead was out to expand his own space, get a prey. Like Satyrs they were jumping around the female dancers who kept moving at the same pace, and didn't loose their aplomb despite the frenzy of the male dancers.

All this while the taiko (heavy drums), the high pitched flutes and the shamisen, kept playing the same mesmerizing tune for the entire duration of the show, with almost no variation. As the sound waves moved through the air in the space and reverberated in my wooden bench, different parts of my body perceived different instruments at different times. At some point I felt I was in a trance, probably helped by the repetitive movements of the dancers, the dimmed lights, and the stroboscopic lights on the back screen. This experience itself was worth all the bad pizza.

A brief aside. The following day when I arrived to Tokyo, too late to grab any of the set lunches but still early enough to find lunch somewhere, while scanning the square around the train station, a sign caught my eye: パレルモ (Palermo).

And guess what I had for lunch...

A time to break down, and a time to build up

There is a sense of impermanence here in Japan, a feeling shared by many of its citizens.
Things change, move, die, are reborn.
Old trees can be uprooted without much guilt, buildings are torn down every 30 years or so, stuff is thrown away periodically.
There is even a whole Shinto shrine that has been dismantled every 20 years and rebuilt exactly in the same way in the same place for the last 1600 years.
And also the Jews of Japan have torn down the old building of their community center and rebuilt a new one, modern, linear, essential, peaceful, full of light. The third one since the community was established.
We have a mikveh, several classrooms, a great library, lounges, and most of all we have a beautiful synagogue, made of American wood, Italian marble, Jerusalem stone, all perfectly blended together to create this space designed by Mr. Fumihiko Maki, a famous Japanese architect.
I haven't been able to decide if Mr. Maki's design for our shul represents a tent, Abraham's and Sarah's tent, that welcomed everyone inside, or if it's like branches of a tree, a עץ חיים, that wraps every individual without discrimination.
Whichever one it is I'm the lucky one who has inaugurated it last week.