Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

A Strolling Garden

The first type of traditional Japanese garden we visited was a Viewing Garden (posted on 5/14/06). A few days later, we visited the other type—a Strolling Garden, at a Buddhist Temple. The entrance to this temple featured the usual Torii Gate.

The temple contained a shrine, which we briefly viewed.




But the shrine was not the attraction. We spent nearly a half day looking at the garden, and could have spent even more time there.

As you might expect, a Strolling Garden also can function as a Viewing Garden.




This window and the garden beyond were created as part of a single design, so that the esthetic pleasure of the view would be optimized. But strolling gardens include paths, so people can get out into them and explore.




Gravel paths and stone stairs lead through maples and azaleas. Occasional benches facilitate stopping along the way, to rest or to spend time in viewing and contemplation.




Covered walkways permit visiting even on rainy days. The construction of this one is a masterful expression of the Japanese temple builders' art.




Nothing seems more natural than a Japanese garden. Yet nothing could be more contrived. Here a gardener is sweeping up those pesky azalea blossoms.




She wears an old-fashioned but practical bonnet with traditional top and not-so-traditional jeans. She holds her handmade whisk broom with her Yokohama Rubber Company, Ltd. gloves. Drat! Those flowers sure are messy!

This fence design is hundreds of years old. In modern Japan, with its high wages, to make them must be very expensive.




But it's oh so worth it.

Paths permit a close-up inspection of objects that can only be seen from a distance in a Viewing Garden.




This incredible place has so much more to show. For additional pictures and notes, check out this flickr photoset.

Nippon Sayonara

I'm writing this in Atlanta, where we're taking a breather after 22 hours of travel from our Kyoto hotel. Tomorrow we'll continue on to San Miguel via Houston. Arriving at the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport Country Inn and Suites (South), we bid farewell to overstaffed lobbies, smiling bowers, young men in suits leaping to open doors and hand us umbrellas. We'll miss the heated toilet seats, the key cards you just wave at the door.

Our room in Atlanta smells like disinfectant. The lone employee at the front desk was kind enough to switch us from the first non-smoking room he gave us, which had been previously occupied by a prolific smoker. We are ruefully aware that in the morning, instead of a breakfast buffet featuring smoked salmon, baby salad greens, custom-made omelets and croissants, we'll be getting cello-pak danish and bad coffee in styrofoam cups. 

This was our first international arrival at Atlanta, and if it is the will of Allah, his name be praised, it will be our last. Something in the airport design makes it impossible to simply clear passport control, collect luggage and go through customs. I mean, you can do all that easily enough, but then you have to get from the international arrival terminal to the main terminal, and because of the airport topology, the shuttle and the other five terminals are all in a secure zone. This means you have to go through security twice. First, you have to give up your already-cleared checked baggage (but NOT your hand baggage) where it is x-rayed yet another time.

"Sir! SIR! Bring your bags over here. SIR! You'll have to claim your bags AGAIN when you get to Terminal 'T.' SIR!! NO!!! Take your carry-ons WITH you!!!!"

So you have to stand at a baggage carousel twice at the end of your international flight. Then you get in a line full of guys just off the KLM 747 wearing Tyrollean hats so you can take your hand baggage and your personal self through yet another security checkpoint.

Going through security is bad enough for most people, but for me, it's one step short of a cavity search because of my defibrillator. I'll set off the walk-through sensor every time, and when I tell them it's because of my defibrillator, they freak out and lecture me because the scanner's magnetic field briefly shuts down the implant. I mean, come on! Every time I see the doc, he waves a little magnet over it to shut it down while he checks this and that. It always starts back up. It's some liability thing, I guess.

Because of the magnet sensitivity, they can't wand me, either. Instead, they have to frisk me. To call what they do to me "frisking" fails to capture the intensity of the experience. It's more like shiatsu. They squeeze everything. They make me sit down and take off my shoes and they squeeze the bottoms of my feet. I asked the last guy if he'd do it for a while longer.

[In the God-fearing US of A, they always go looking for a male security officer/massage therapist to do the hand job. Frankly, this always feels a little gay to me. In Japan, it's often done by women. On our return flight, after I partially disrobed in front of about 2,000 travelers, a sloe-eyed Suzie Wong type came up to me and asked, semi-breathlessly, "May I touch you?"

"Oh Yes," I murmured.

Then she gave me a most thorough going-over, including a palm-up squeeze in the crotch that left me dazed with wild fantasies.]

In Atlanta, they do it other. In Atlanta, harpies screamed at me to get into the right line. When I reached the screener, I told a security officer that I needed hand screening. He glowered at me. "You're in the wrong line, Bud. Go around to this other line over here."

I walked around the end of the table where everyone was putting their pocket stuff in gray plastic boxes for the x-ray machine. A uniformed woman asked, "Where do you think YOU are going?"

I said, "I'm going over to the other line, where that man (indicating the glowering officer) told me to go."

She said, "Well, then you have to go out the door of the security area and go through the line again. This (indicating the passage I'd tried to take) doesn't look like an entrance, does it? Go around the outside!"

Hmm. Taxpayer as errant schoolchild. Nice.

I told her I would go around as she requested—if she would treat me like one of the good citizens who paid her salary and ask me politely. So she did and I did. Sometimes you just have to be assertive.

Skirting the harpies and pushing through the Tyrolleans, I made it over to an area fenced off for hand checks. Ahead of me was a severely developmentally disabled person in a wheelchair. (The caregivers' term of art for such people is "feebs.") (Oops.) Anyway, this semi-sentient being who, unlike me was devoid of bionics, could be wanded; or so I thought, except that he or she (we'll never know) could not get out of the wheelchair, being so completely disabled. The wheelchair, which was made of steel, caused a continuous alarm to sound in the wand whenever it came near.

Doesn't this happen, like, all the time? The agent with the wand scratched her head for awhile, before giving up. This one's too much for me, boss.

So the feeb got a hand job instead, while I waited, amused at the concept of terrorists smuggling weapons into the airport food court using a vegetative-state person as a mule. I particularly liked it where the guard removed the person's baseball cap and carefully felt the full circumference of the band, looking for small sharp objects.

Kind of makes you ask, which one was the smart one, don't it?

After the wheelchair and inspector left, I waited patiently for awhile, wondering if Jean was aware that I had taken my laptop out of my carry-on, and if she had recovered it after x-raying. Nobody seemed to realize I was there, so finally I called over to another uniformed woman to let her know I was waiting to be touched. She firmly told me to sit down and wait, and someone would get to me when they became available. So I obediently sat and waited and waited and finally, 300 pounds of black man came over, put on rubber gloves, and asked me to spread my arms and legs.

This was one of those defining moments in life, when everything seems to freeze. Something bad was about to happen, and I was powerless to stop it. I knew at that moment that I was Bubba's. To do with as he would.

Ok. It wasn't all that bad. Bubba was professional and sort of friendly but not too friendly if you know what I mean, and I got through it all and rejoined Jean and my laptop. We left the airport, me grumbling all the way to the hotel.

Jean tipped the shuttle driver three bucks for horsing our overweight bags onto and off the van. Good thing, 'cause she left her coat behind. A few hours later, she reported her loss to the lone employee at the front desk, fully aware that her coat was gone forever. The desk clerk called the shuttle driver, who reported that he had her coat, and hustled right on over with it. Another five bucks. And proof, once again, that there are good, honest, helpful people, even in the U. S.

However, I note with regret that in Japan, the shuttle driver would have been offended had we offered a tip. Sigh. 

Being in the vicinity of the airport without a car, our dining options were limited. Jean found a take-out menu for what city dwellers call "Chinese." "How about Chinese tonight? You want some Chinese? Or Domino's?" She ordered egg rolls, Kung Pao Chicken and Hunan Smoked Pork.

I've had some fairly execrable Chinese before, and the stuff delivered tonight ranked right up there with the worst. The egg rolls were thick tubes of soggy, greasy dough with a few lonely vegetables inside. The two entrees began life as the same dish: Stir-fried onions, a couple of dried hot red peppers, green peppers, mushrooms, canned water chestnuts and canned bamboo shoots, all submerged in a pint of gummy, salty brown sauce. For kung pao chicken, they added chicken chunks and peanuts. For Hunan smoked pork, they added Amurcan unsmoked pork and black beans. We also got two cartons of steamed rice on which they had thoughtfully dumped soy sauce so we wouldn't have to. They included two plastic forks as well. Oh—and the mustard for the egg rolls consisted of little plastic packets of Heinz's. There you have it. 30 hours ago, we ate an exquisite shabu-shabu dinner. Tonight we ate swill.

It would be nice to take the best from each culture, leaving all the crap behind, thus making one really great country. There's an expression in Japan: A man wants an American house, a French mistress and a Japanese wife. Just so. 

New rules:

1) Don't ever go through ATL
2) Don't stay in airport hotels
3) Don't eat ethnic food in Georgia (except maybe chitterlings)

Children

Children receive lots of love, care and guidance—maybe even a little reverence. We arrived in Japan on May 6, one day after Children's Day (Kodomo-no-i). Originally referred to as "Boy's Day," for political correctness it was renamed Children’s Day. It is a national holiday.

Well, it may have been renamed, but it's still all about boys. Families fly carp-shaped streamers (koinobori) on tall bamboo poles outside the house: one for each son. (The carp is a symbol of strength in Japan.) Boys decorate a warrior doll with armor. Rice cakes (kashiwamochi) filled with sweet red beans and wrapped in oak leaves are served. Somewhere along the way, I'm sure we were served these. They'll never replace Dove Dark Chocolate Squares.

Some days later, in Kyoto, we happened upon another festival for children. I never found out the purpose of the celebrations, but it seemed to be tied somehow to Shintoism, as groups of children and their parents carried portable shrines to a temple where everyone gathered, beating drums and having a good time.




The portable shrines appeared to be heavy, so only the adults carried them. But drum-beating was open to all.




The boy with the drumstick's head band has fallen down. He's ignoring it. Flaunting tradition.

Everyone was wearing Happi Coats (pronounced "hoppy"), even very small participants. His coat works well with the bunnies on his shirt and the Pooh figures on his pants.





Some kids dressed up in dragon suits. This one roared at me and bit me on the hand, but I wasn't really scared. Pretty much not scared, anyway. Big teeth, though.




This dragon had a wardrobe malfunction. The shoes don't help much, either.





Here, Jean posed with a bunch of girls. Cute, aren't they? Jean has no idea why she's holding her fingers like that.




For more kid pictures, check out this flickr photoset.

Aio Festival

Spring weather in Kyoto is frequently rainy, and when it rains, one of Kyoto's famous events, the Aoi Festival, is frequently not held. For this reason, the festival was not listed on our itinerary, even though we were going to be in Kyoto on May 15, when it normally is held. We would not have been disappointed if we had not been able to see it, because we would not even have known about it. Clever guys, our tour leaders.

It came as a total surprise, and I must say, it was over the top. We saw hundreds of old costumes and antique objects.




The festival began during the reign of the Kinmei Emperor some 1400 years ago, during a ceremony to improve the grain harvest. Having been successful, the ceremony since has been continued to this day, becoming ever more elaborate over the centuries.




For most people, the most visible part of the festival is a parade through Kyoto, composed of people dressed in ancient costumes. Andy and Steve had arranged for a block of front-row seats along the parade route—ideal for photography.




For more images of the parade and of people in ancient clothing, check out this flickr photoset.

 

A Master Calligrapher

Calligraphy has as much to do with the appearance of words on a page as on their meaning. In Japan, this is even more so. At the home of Shotei Ibata, a Living National Treasure, we saw how a master creates calligraphic works of art.

We began our visit by hearing a short explanation of how Chinese characters developed. Here we see how the character for "mountain" (shan), evolved from an individual pictogram that resembled actual mountains. (To see the evolutionary sequence, read the chart right to left).




(The character at the far left is a cursive form that is used primarily in calligraphy. The commonly-used modern character is second from left.)

(The old guy standing below the chart, drinking his stimulating cup of tea and therefore in a rare conscious state, apparently is amused by the illustration.)

I have always thought of calligraphy as a minor art involving careful and painstaking pen- or brushwork. For Shotei-sensei, the act of drawing a character involves concentration of his mind and spirit, and a convulsive movement of his whole body. Pausing before a blank sheet of paper, holding an ink-saturated brush in his hand, he would at first seem to go inside of himself, gathering his life force. I could almost sense an electric charge building between his eyes and the paper.

Suddenly, he would issue a grunt—HUNH!—like that made by a karate master before splitting a board with his fingertips. He would bring the brush down smartly, and with his whole body swaying, he would paint a character in a matter of seconds.




That's it. Done. No retracing. No correcting errant lines. One swift, convulsive movement, and the blank paper now contains a character, a work of art, complete and perfect.

In contrast with the seconds it took to create the character, he spent several minutes signing the work and carefully applying his chop.

Shotei-sensei uses large brushes, an innovation that he introduced. Here he is using a very large brush to execute the character for "cloud."




Japanese calligraphy brushes differ from western ones in that the hair is very long. Even the making of brushes is an art form practiced by masters. Among Shotei-sensei's brushes is the world's largest calligraphy brush, made from the tails of many horses.




Most of us know how difficult it is to draw a perfect circle freehand. Shotei-sensei is very good at it.



Also of interest to me was his musician daughter—a professional chembalist. The living room contained an electronic keyboard, a grand piano, a harpsichord and a zither. In front of the latter was a music stand bearing a copy of "Espaces de Priere No. 3 pour Cithare" by Jaques Berthier. I would have loved to have listened to her play that than watch her, the dutiful daughter, hold a bowl of ink for her old man.

(In the first photo you can see the zither on the left and the harpsicord behind it.)

Lunch With a Shakuhachi Player

Our itinerary said we'd be having lunch at Heihachijaya, a 300-year-old inn overlooking the Takano River, and that while there, we would be treated to a "private musical performance."

You don't find wooded places with large gardens like this in Tokyo. Although much of Kyoto is just as urbanized as the rest of Japan, with the usual ugly jumble of clashing architectural styles and blighted utilitarian postwar concrete structures, it nonetheless contains many hidden corners like this—delightful little islands of beauty and tranquility.

Here, a portly member of the tour group poses at the inn's entry gate. It probably is the only remaining original wooden structure in the inn complex, given that in Japan, wood eventually yields to fire and water. If the damp climate doesn't rot it, frequent fires consume it.




We were greeted by two bowing women, who, it turns out, were to be our waitresses. They were nearly identical: Both of an age, same height, similar hairstyles, identical black kimono with red shoulder decorations, white under-kimono, beige obi (wide fabric sashes), white tabi (socks with toes) and wooden geta (clogs). Before you unwittingly accuse the Japanese of all being the same, note that these ladies have expressed their individuality in their choices of aprons.

It's so very nice to be bowed into a place.




The interior of the restaurant was simple, sleek and modern-looking—at least to my untutored eye. We were seated at long, low, red lacquer tables. The photograph reveals that none of us Westerners were capable of sitting on our heels, as would be proper at a traditional Japanese meal. Anticipating this, the management provided cushions with back supports, which we gratefully used. Note that the large plates on the table have a flat edge, which allows more of its contents to be nearer one's mouth—desirable when one eats with chopsticks. Keeps the sea cucumber out of your lap.

Shoji screens had been opened giving onto a view of—that's right; A viewing garden. No traditional inn would be complete without one.




Our waitresses knelt on the floor to serve us, without grunting and groaning, and without using their hands which were always carrying trays, anyway. I was impressed whenever one of them would rise, gracefully, smoothly and apparently effortlessly.




Even in restaurants with western-style furniture, I noticed that waiters and waitresses kneeled to take our orders.

Before lunch was served, a musician introduced us to the shakuhachi, a type of flute. A bamboo instrument configured for the Japaese five-note scale, it is capable of producing an amazing range of tones. Our musician played traditional and modern music that was evocative and haunting. He also played a Christmas song—Walking in the Winter Wonderland or some such—which I found to be offensive and condescending. However, it was interesting to see how could produce the non-natural pitches; in fact he was able to play an entire chromatic scale, even though the flute was bored with finger holes for the five-note scale. At one point, he demonstrated a continuous glissando through two octaves!

I can't find enough words to express how captivated I was by his performance.




We were told that at one time, Samurai were forced to give up their weapons. Some of them took up the shakuhachi and made their livings wandering from village to village, playing for handouts, which, I imagine, were readily forthcoming, given who was doing the asking. We were also told that they could use their flutes as weapons, not having any conventional ones. Having personally handled a large shakuhachi, I can attest to the weight and lethality of these... er... flutes. 

A Bamboo Basket Maker

We took a train to Sakai, near Osaka, to visit the home of one of the more famous families of Japanese craftsmen, the Tanabe Chikuunsai family. They make baskets of bamboo; one-of-a-kind museum pieces. They've been making them for four generations. The few baskets shown here were all made by members of this family and give some idea of the evolution of this art.

We learned about how this art came to Japan from China centuries ago, how the early basket makers copied the Chinese style, and how Japanese basket-making evolved into a uniquely Japanese art form over time.











The last basket pictured, beside the old guy dozing on the floor, was made by a member of the fourth generation of the family. In the picture below, we see third and fourth generation artists. The first and second are no longer living.




Their baskets are exquisite, and exquisitely expensive. Two of our traveling companions are avid collectors, and bought baskets at the gallery. You need to have a deep appreciation of these objects to pay the kind prices they paid.

Tanabe Chikuunsai baskets will be on display at The Ruth and Sherman Lee Institute for Japanese Art in Hanford, CA from June through December, 2006. We plan to drive over there during our five week visit to Santa Barbara in September.

 

An Indigo Dyer

For at least a millennium, the Japanese have been dying fibers with indigo. I see lovely deep blue fabrics everywhere in Japan, indicating that at one time, indigo was Japan's most important dye. Today, virtually all cloth is colored with synthetic dyes, but a few indigo farmers and dyers receive recognition from the Japanese Government for preserving the old craft and for their skills in so doing. At least one dyer has been certified as having the proper skills to restore antique fabrics. He dyes fabrics for the Katsura Imperial Villa. We visited his dye works near Kyoto. 

Indigo is made from the leaves of plants. A large quantity of leaves—a barn full—is gathered in the summer. The leaves are composted (!) which permits the blue dye to develop and concentrate. None of the blue color is evident in the finished compost, which, to my untutored eye, looks just like the stuff I used to dig into my vegetable beds.

Here, the master dyer hold a sample of dried leaves. On the ground next to him we see some of the indigo compost.




To create the dye, the indigo compost is placed in vats sunk into the dirt floor. Water is added and the mixture is allowed to ferment. During the winter, the temperature falls too low to allow fermentation. In that season, slow wood fires are burned in the space just visible between the four vats in the photo.




Indigo dye becomes activated under highly alkaline conditions. So fibers to be dyed are first soaked in a solution of wood ashes. Part of the wood ash comes from the fires used to keep the vats warm.

Here, alkaline liquid has been drawn off from the wooden vat in the background into the blue plastic tub. (You can just make out the wood ashes floating on top of the wooden vat.) The dyer has just soaked a skein of silk thread in the lye solution and is wringing the liquid out.




The alkaline skeins are allowed to dry, after which, they are ready to be dyed.




Several skeins Are looped over a wooden pole, and lowed into a vat of fermented indigo solution.




Here are the same skeins after resting in the indigo vat for a few minutes and then being removed and wrung out.




Different shades of blue are obtained by repeated immersions in the dye vats.




Paper (washi) and woven fabrics are also dyed in this manner.

The workers usually wear gloves to protect their hands from the corrosive solutions.

A Viewing Garden

Ten days into our journey, and finally we get to visit a Japanese garden.

Gardens are where I most like to be. When we lived on our 40-acre ranch in Glen Ellen, I created more than an acre of landscaping. I built stone walls and dug terraces. I cleared a half-acre of forest to plant a vegetable garden. For more than ten years, I composted and enriched the yellow clay soil until it became crumbly black loam. I planted an orchard and two hundred feet of assorted berry plants. Scores of cactus in pots littered one of our decks. Every week I went into the mixed oak and fir forest that surrounded our house and cleared underbrush and thinned trees. I built roads and forded streams. I mowed our meadows and killed poison oak.

In contrast, our city home in San Miguel de Allende contains maybe twelve square feet of open soil. Nearly the entire surface of our 2,500 square foot lot is covered with rooms or stone courtyards. In compensation, I have filled hundreds of pots with tropical plants, flowers and cactus. My flat roof is a forest. A bedroom patio is overrun with Plumeria and Jasmine. Bougainvillea climbs our walls and palms rattle their fronds in the breeze. A spiky-trunked Ceiba tree tries to grow out of its pot. A massive Pachypodium looks like something from Mars, although it only came from Madagascar.

I love gardens.

This, the first garden we will visit in Kyoto, is private. We were very fortunate to be invited; it is not otherwise open to the public. It is named The Moon Garden.

It is of the type called a Viewing Garden; one that is intended to be appreciated while sitting quietly. (The other major type of Japanese Garden is the Strolling Garden, about which more later.) Viewing Gardens are designed so that the doorways and windows of the house frame the garden, with view lines and focal points positioned so as to compose a pleasing and restful scene.




We began our viewing of the Moon Garden by sitting silently on tatami mats and looking through windows. This garden presents a highly sculpted foreground against that rarest of assets in urban Japan, a woodland vista. The designer made use here, of borrowed scenery to serve as a setting for this space. The blooming trees in the background do not belong to the garden, yet are part of it.

Moving onto an outside deck sheltered from the rain underneath curved eaves, we came into more intimate contact with the garden.




Water, rocks and plants come together to create a balanced, harmonious environment, drawing the eye from one place to the next, always with something new to contemplate. A large rock blocks the view; an arm of the water snakes around and behind it, giving the impression of a much larger space than actually exists. You want to know: What's back there? What's hidden? This garden has secrets, and since you can't walk in it, they'll remain secrets, always intriguing.




There is nothing natural about this garden. The stones have been brought here and sited just so. The pond is artificial. The plants have been placed and pruned and forced into shapes that do not exist in nature. Yet, no place could look more natural. It depicts an idealization of nature; nature as we would like to have it. It's a benign space, free of burrs and spines and stinging insects. It's the woodland of fairy tales.




As in a fairy tale, the Moon Garden is inhabited by an old crone. This rock, we were told, is one of the most famous in Japan.




Rising from the deck and walking its length, other features appear. Nearly all gardens have a fountain with water running through a bamboo pipe into basin, but always looking like an accident of nature. No spouting dolphins or pudgy cherubs inhabit Japanese fountains. This one has a dipper, set there as if for use by a thirsty traveler. Do strangers sometimes pass this way? Who? From where do they come and where do they go?

Kyoto Arrival

Kyoto is jammed with tourists. Most are Japanese, visiting a city which encapsulates old Japan. We got off the Bullet Train too early to check into our hotel, so we rode by taxi to a Buddhist temple perched on a hillside. The street leading to it was crowded with throngs of tourists, schoolchildren in uniforms, and pilgrims striding along in hiking shoes, pounding their walking sticks on the pavement. Souvenir shops lined the road. One offered a gummy charcoal-black confection. I didn't sample it. Looked like wheat gluten to me. 

The temple was the real thing, but it looked like something out of a Japanese Disneyland. I didn't learn anything about it; I just enjoyed the view.




Somewhere along the way, we encountered a large group of small stone effigies wearing little aprons.




What were they? Andy or Steve may have given us an explanation, but exhausted from our travels, I couldn't recall anything they might have told us.




We also visited Sanjusagendo Temple, a repository of 12th-Century Buddhist statuary. The temple contains 1001 statues of Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy. We were asked not to photograph it, but the link will take you to images of this spectacular display.