When on my trip to the northern part of Japan back in 1989, I had the opportunity to visit the city of Sendai, the largest city in the northern part of Japan, with a population of over one million. The 'city' includes a lot of land that is not heavily populated, and reminds me to some extent of Columbus, Ohio, which occupies the entire Franklin County. For the purposes of comparison, I looked at other major cities in the U.S.:
Los Angeles, CA - 502.7 square miles
New York City - 468.5 sq. mi.
Indianapolis, IN - 372.0 sq. mi
Sendai, Japan - 303.4 sq. mi.
Columbus, OH - 212.6 sq. mi.
Seattle, WA - 142.5 sq. mi.
Las Vegas, NV - 135.9 sq. mi.
When going into Sendai by train or car, you can see a lot of landscape before you realize you are inside the city limits. You may be familiar with the city of Sendai, as it received a lot of damage from the earthquake and resulting tsunami of 2011. You may have seen some of the videos showing the tsunami; many of them were taken in the area around Sendai.
Anyway, I had no hotel reservations when I arrived in Sendai; I called someone I knew from my college days to ask if he had any suggestions; I ended up staying overnight at his home. When I knew this guy, he was a high school English teacher; that night, I found out that he was actually a member of Sendai's Board of Education, and had an office in 'downtown' Sendai. He invited me to visit his office, and I, thinking that it would be some time to get off my sore feet, agreed to go with him.
Shortly after I arrived at the office of the Sendai Board of Education, one of the Japanese there asked me what I was doing in the northern part of Japan. I explained to him that I had read "Oku no Hosomichi", the seminal work by Matsuo Basho, and was hoping to see the same sights that Basho had seen.
"Oh, you must have read that in English!" the man said.
"No-o-o-o.... I read it in Japanese," I replied.
"Oh, it must have been the modern-day Japanese translation," he said.
I knew by that statement that the man I was speaking with had to be a teacher of the Japanese language and literature. Many Japanese teachers act as if their native tongue is impossible for gaijin (foreigners) to understand on a rudimentary level, so if you can master the language and do things that Japanese people do in their everyday lives, you are relegated to 'hen na gaijin' ("odd foreigner") level. "Odd foreigners" have these interests in Japanese culture that equal or surpass the Japanese themselves. If you own Japanese swords, enjoy sumo wrestling, sing a karaoke song in Japanese, enter a Buddhist monastery, or partake in any form of Japanese culture, or speak perfectly fluent Japanese, you are "hen na gaijin".
"No, I used the college-prep guides," I explained. (The college prep guides have the original classical Japanese text, followed by a modern-day Japanese translation, and then a section describing the grammar and 'dead' vocabulary of the classical Japanese.)
"Oh-h-h-h? So you understand classical Japanese? You understand haiku too?"
I did not like the condescending attitude of this Board of Education member. While I knew my understanding of classical Japanese wasn't perfect, it was good enough. After all, I had read "Oku no Hosomichi" and believed I enjoyed Basho's poetry enough to want to make my own trip to northern Japan. Wasn't that enough?
Without answering his questions, I decided to turn the tables on him. After I confirmed that he was, indeed, a teacher of Japanese language and literature, I said, "Many Japanese teachers don't know classical Japanese, nor do they understand haiku."
"That is true."
"What about you? Do you know classical Japanese and understand haiku?"
The teachers sitting around us were all listening intently to our conversation, and maybe some of them were surprised by my brazen challenge. Maybe they sensed something else was going on. All ears and eyes were glued to this 'hen na gaijin' in their midst.
"Of course I do!" the Japanese teacher replied.
"We-e-e-l-l-l," I said, and paused for dramatic effect. "If I gave you a haiku, would you be able to identify who wrote it?"
"Sure, I can!" the teacher replied.
"OK," I said, and paused again, as if I was thinking about which poem to give. Actually, I already had my choice: 時雨ふる 旅のはじめや 国分寺 (Shigure furu / tabi no hajime ya / Kokubunji)
"That's a Buson work!" the teacher said excitedly. (Yosa Buson was another famous haiku poet of the late 18th century.)
"Chotto matte! (Waitaminnit!)" a fellow Board of Education member said. "I think that was by Issa!" (Kobayashi Issa is another famous haiku poet of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.)
The two teachers argued for a few minutes over who was correct, and I sat and listened without interrupting. Finally, a third member asked me to settle the argument. "Who did write it?" she asked.
"I did, in the spring of this year!" I said, and raucous laughter ensued, as the crowd of teachers realized they had been duped by the oddest of foreigners they had ever seen.
NOTE: Astute readers of my blog will realize this haiku first appeared two posts ago. It was the first haiku I ever made, and my haiku teacher's comment that it was "just like Basho!" made me so proud that I memorized the haiku so I could 'whip it out' at any time. Practice made this one absolutely perfect!
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