Why Shoveling Snow Saddens Me So

I just shoveled the snow off of five spaces in the parking lot of the apartment/condo complex where I live. Not that I needed a spot to park, but who knows?  Maybe I will, but even if I don't, a fellow resident might need a place to park tonight when they get home from work, I cleared some spots for them.  I don't know why the management can't do it; it's their job, but regardless, it's been done now, and I got in my workout for the day...

Having said that... while shoveling the snow, I couldn't help but think of my father.... He was always trying to come up with a way to make shoveling snow by hand easier.  Until I left home for college, I lived with my parents in a house on a hill that had a fairly long driveway.   For many years, whenever a major snowstorm passed through, we had to clear out the driveway by hand shovel. No one enjoyed that at all, including my dad. He attached a 'handle' to a scoop that belonged on the front of a truck and we sometimes used that (sometimes in tandem) to scoop the snow off the driveway. Normally we worked 'in shifts', but my dad always worked the longest and the hardest to make sure we had a clear path....

And it was the snow that did him in.  Or, rather, the snow shoveling.   My dad had a long history of hypertension-- he had had a heart attack back in 1966.  At least I think it was 1966, because the last memorable Christmas we had was in 1965, when Dad was still in his prime. My dad's heart attack took away our sole source of income; with 7 mouths to feed (my oldest brother and only sister had graduated high school and left home by then) money was really tight, and I remember the horrible conditions-- milk made from that horrible-tasting Carnation instant powder, blocks of cheese from the government, hand-me downs that were ugly and outdated, not to mention being ostracized from the community...

Flash forward to 1989, when a huge snowstorm passed through Minnesota. I wasn't at home at the time-- in fact, I was on the other side of the globe, in Japan.  Dad had been out shoveling snow most of the morning.  My mother was working two jobs-- as an elementary school teacher's aide during the day, and at a nursing home during the night, so she was not home.. One of my brothers was living with my parents at the time, and he wasn't feeling well.  My dad came in from shoveling snow, and said something to my brother... maybe it was that he was tired, or not feeling well.  It's been so long, and I don't remember the details, but Dad went to lie down.  After a while, my brother asked if he wanted something to eat, and my dad said he wasn't hungry.  My brother left him alone, and while Dad was asleep, he suffered a massive coronary and passed away...

I got the call just as I was about to leave home in Japan for a speech contest.  I was supposed to give a speech in Japanese, and I was supposed to win (my sponsor had that much confidence in my skills.)  I called him to let him know I was heading out to the community hall, and when I set the phone back in the cradle, it rang.  Curious, I picked it up.  It was my brother.  That was even more curious, because my brother never called me before.  When he told me Dad had passed away, I thought he was joking. But when I realized he was telling the truth, the shock hit me like a ton of bricks.  What was I to do??

I called my sponsor back and explained what happened.  They told me I should come to the event, but not participate. He understood.  I said I was alright, and went to the speech contest, and I bombed.  I couldn't speak while memories of my dad ran through my head.  I fought back tears as I rambled and forgot my thread.  I told the audience to never take one parents for granted.  I was in a daze.  At the party held after the event, I sat numbly in a corner.

Many years have passed since my father passed away...  And I realize in many ways I am just like him.  Of my brothers, I probably look the most like him.  All the hair on my chest-- just like him.  All the wrinkles-- just like him.  All the good looks-- well, they, too, are from my father.  The saddest of it all, though, is that I never really appreciated him while he was alive.  It wasn't until after he passed away that I realized just how much he meant to me, just how grateful I should be for what he gave me. It wasn't until I grew up a little more that I could finally see what fatherly love truly means...

One last thing-- six months before Dad passed away, I had a break from teaching in Japan.  I returned to the U.S. for the first time in three years.  On the day I was scheduled to fly back to Japan, my dad stopped me on the porch, gave me a hug, and with tears in his eyes, told me he loved me.  I was very surprised, as this was totally unlike my father.  I told him I loved him back, but the truth of the matter is, I think I was in too much shock from his actions to really express how I felt.  Given another chance, I would hug him back like I meant it, hold him against me and tell him I loved him more than words can say... For being the hardest-working man I ever knew, for overcoming life's obstacles again and again, for always trying to be better, for trying to provide more, for every laugh at my god-awful jokes, for working with Mom to raise us right-- for all these things and more-- I would give him my heartfelt thanks.

So, with each shovel of snow, I am reminded of my father, and my loss.... and this is why shoveling snow saddens me so...    

Haiku Hankerings - The Cry of Cicadas (Part 1)

静けさや　岩に染み入る　せみの声
Oh, what quietness!    Penetrating through the rocks    The cicada's cry

The above poem is a famous example of a haiku written by Matsuo Basho.  I first encountered it when I was quite young, and for many years, it puzzled me.  I had heard cicada cry before and knew they could be quite loud, but not to the level where they could 'penetrate through the rocks' I had seen as a child... And anyway, how could there be such stillness?!? The real answers did not come until I actually spent several years in Japan.

The first part of the answer came to me during my first  trip to Japan in the summer of 1985. I had just graduated from college the winter before, and sold my original comic book collection to pay for a trip to Japan.  That summer, I visited Hiroshima for a week.  My acquaintance there was a high school teacher who let me stay in his guest room.  He had a son in college who was home for summer vacation and a daughter in high school. I sometimes practiced English with them, but for the most part we spoke Japanese. 

Hiroshima, if you're not familiar with the city, is on the coast on Honshu (the largest island of the four major islands of Japan) and surrounded by mountains on three sides. My host and his family lived in 'the suburbs' around Hiroshima, which basically meant he lived on the side of a mountain and not in the super-congested downtown area. The Japanese make use of almost every inch of land they can, so the house sat on a man-made concrete-reinforced platform to keep it level. (I am not sure, but there may have been some earthquake-resistant engineering built into the platform as well.)

Near my host's home there was a public tennis court; the daughter suggested we play a game of tennis to pass the time.  (She was a member of the tennis club at her school.)  She and her brother accompanied me to the tennis court, and on our way there we had to pass through a graveyard. I noticed during our walk through the land of the dead that it was fairly littered with statues, somewhat like the graveyards I had seen in the U.S., but on a grander scale.  Quite of few of them were fairly new, too. "Victim of radiation poisoning," one slab said. Another nearby also mentioned the A-bomb explosion that obliterated most of the city back in 1945.  I was sure quite a few of the people buried here were A-bomb-related deaths, whether from the explosion itself or from the radiation they had absorbed over the course of many years. 

When I tried to ask my companions questions about the statues I saw, they both shrugged their shoulders and pointed to the trees a short distance away.  I found out later that it wasn't that they did not understand my Japanese-- they said they just couldn't hear me. Shortly after we entered the holy grounds, the sounds of the cicadas crying increased in volume, and continued to grow in intensity until nothing could be heard but their sound.  When I tried to shout over the noise, it was useless-- I couldn't even hear myself.  After more gesticulation, we left the graveyard for the tennis court, which was much quieter.  It was there that I was able to ask my questions and get answers. At that time, I found the answer to part of the puzzle about Basho's haiku-- yes, these cicada in Japan could cry loud enough to penetrate the stones.

Haiku Hankerings - The Oddest Foreigner

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! 

 

Will the Classics Wither Away?

In my previous post, I had mentioned how some people believed that Matsuo Basho, the famous haiku poet, may have been a ninja spy when he made his trip to the northern part of Japan in 1689.  This is because the area where Basho was born and raised was the home for a variety of ninja and the journey as described by Basho in Oku no Hosomichi is impossible for the average human with the methods of transportation available at the time, but as I stated last time, I think those people are forgetting that Basho is a poet and an artist, and as such took a few liberties with the truth. 

Basho himself clearly states the reason for his trip to the northern part of Japan, away from ever-busy, densely populated Edo (modern-day Tokyo): he was impressed with the works of Saigyo (1118-1190), a Buddhist hermit and poet who lived during the a time of major political and social upheaval in Japan, and Basho wanted to see if he could find the same majestic scenery that Saigyo had described in his much longer poems centuries before him. 

In the 19th section of Basho's Narrow Road to the Deep North, he describes his feelings about his journey in the footsteps of Saigyo when he finds a monument that had been inscribed with Chinese characters on it from almost a thousand years earlier:   

According to the date given at the end of the inscription, this monument was erected during the reign of Emperor Shomu (724-49), and had stood here ever since, winning the increasing admiration of poets through the years. In this ever changing world where mountains crumble, rivers change their courses, roads are deserted, rocks are buried, and old trees yield to young shoots, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a thousand years to be the living memory of the ancients. I felt as if I were in the presence of the ancients themselves, and, forgetting all the troubles I had suffered on the road, rejoiced in the utter happiness of this joyful moment, not without tears in my eyes.

                The above is taken from this website: http://terebess.hu/english/haiku/basho2.html

In other words, Basho wept with joy in finding some physical evidence that connected him with the 'poets through the years'.  That is the beauty of art in its myriad forms; whether it is a famous painting, a statue, a movie, a book, a song, a poem, or anything else, when we encounter the works left behind by ancient masters, and feel that connection that crosses the centuries, we too may feel that 'utter happiness' in knowing that we are not alone, and we come away feeling that our troubles were totally worth it. This is especially true if we understand the Buddhist sense of impermanence, when things are expected to change and even vanish from existence, and in time, from our collective memory. 

I can sometimes understand why students hesitate to get caught up in the Classics of literature. I never really understood Shakespeare as a child, and hated being forced to read "Romeo and Juliet" in junior high school-- the language was uncool and the social settings were not anything like I knew.  "Hamlet" was a little more passable, but at the age I read it, my classmates were still giggling about the word 'codpiece'.  "The Three Musketeers" was too florid and I settled for the comic book adaptation and the movies instead.  "Great Expectations" was easier to read, but the only real great expectation I had was to finish the book, which was mandated reading. I have always loved to read (I chose to read "Shogun" by James Clavell in high school before the mini-series came out on TV, and my classmates thought I was nuts) but the Classics were hard to appreciate at such a young age. 

When I was teaching in Japan, I found that the youth there had little appreciation for Classical Japanese literature.  Tosa Nikki (The Tosa Diary, written in the 10th century), Hojoki (An Account of My Hut, written in 1212), and Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North, in the late 17th century) are all stories in Classical Japanese that I have read, mostly on my own after graduating from college. I had to use college-prep books that had an explanation of the old grammar along with a modern-day translation to enable me to understand the content, but in the end, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the books. I have even memorized the opening lines of Hojoki, and have used them to impress the Japanese on my knowledge of their literature.

The Japanese students I taught, however, hated Classical Japanese with a passion, which I believe stems from the fact that these ancient texts are used by colleges and universities in Japan to weed out applicants for study in their entrance exams, and due to the difficulty of the test questions, the focus in teaching Classical Japanese is not the content of the Classics, but the esoteric grammatical rules used by the writers of yore.  The students at that age should not be forced to remember how to parse the grammar of some 'dead' language that is practical only for one short period in their lives (i.e., when taking a college entrance exam) but that is where the focus of the college entrance exams lies.  I believe the content of the Classics is far more important-- that is why the works have been admired for centuries after the death of the writer.  It doesn't matter, though, as even the students who may never qualify for a higher education because they didn't have the stamina to memorize obscure grammar rules have to drudge through the rote learning of beautiful text that suddenly withers and turns into something horribly dreary.  

Haiku Hankerings -- The Start of My Brief Poetic Journey

When I made my first haiku, it was on a trip with my haiku teacher and some of his poet friends to Iga-Ueno, a town in Mie Prefecture, where Matsuo Basho, the founder of haiku poetry, was born and raised. (A prefecture, for those of you not used to the term, is like a state in the U.S., or a province in Canada.) It was quite fitting to make my first haiku there; interestingly enough, Iga-Ueno is also known for another feature-- it's the birthplace of the ninja, and there is even a ninja museum there.  Because of this fact, some people believe that Matsuo Basho made his trip to the northern part of Japan in 1689 as a ninja spy. (This is probably because the timeline of his trip, as reported in the reports he made about it, would be difficult to do for normal humans; I guess none of these people ever heard of artistic license, but I digress.)

We were deep in the countryside when we came upon a temple by the name of Kokubun-ji in Japanese. ("Ji" represents 'temple', so it could be translated as 'Kokubun Temple'.)  The temple name seems to be fairly common, as there is another, much more famous Kokubun Temple that played a part in the founding of the country of Japan, but it's located in a different prefecture. This smaller Kokubun Temple was just a rural temple, and I didn't even see a priest there as we walked around on that dreary February day when the weather was skittish. Small rain showers (called "shigure" in Japanese) could be seen in the distance and a few sprinkles fell on us, too, but not enough to call off the trip.

As we wandered around the temple grounds, my poet companions were busy trying to come up with the perfect haiku. Meanwhile, my haiku teacher was telling me about the basics-- the 5-7-5 syllabic structure, the use of a word to denote the season, and so on, which I already knew from my elementary school education.  I was still skeptical about trying my hand at writing haiku, but I listened to him. One thing I found about poetry in Japan is that their poetic sense can be vastly different than American sense.  A full moon, for example, occurs in any month, but in Japanese poetry the moon somehow represents winter. I also knew that the Japanese were far less direct than Americans about expressing their opinions and feelings in public. In my college courses on Japanese literature, for example, I was told that Japanese typically didn't directly talk about crying-- they used euphemisms like "my sleeves are wet from the dew", or "the gentle rain falls" to express sadness. Anyway, even while I had my reservations about my skills as a poet, I still kept an open mind and tried to take in as much as I could about the words and phrases I heard my teacher mention so I might be able to use them in the future if I ever decided to write haiku.

In the interior of the temple grounds, there was a 'small mountain'-- I guess you could call it a hill because it wasn't that high, but it was steep, and formed from volcanic upheaval like the rest of the Japanese archipelago.  There was a small waterfall rolling down one side of it, which I found very neat, but assumed that it might have been a man-made system, as there was not enough rainfall to account for the stream. Going up the side of the 'mountain' was a very wide set of stairs, and each step on the stairs was covered with hundreds of small Buddhist statues, and most of them were decorated with some small red cloth. There had to be at least a thousand of them in all, and for such a small country temple, it seemed strikingly odd.  I asked my teacher about them, and he explained that each of the statues was of Jizo, the Buddhist protector of children. Jizo escorts the souls of children to Paradise, so each of these statues represented the death of a child, whether it was an infant, stillborn, or aborted. The local women would make small jackets or caps to put on the statues so they wouldn't get 'cold'. That alone was enough to make me feel sad, but there was one more thing in the temple grounds that broke my heart...

Small mountain of Jizo statues (not the ones at Kokubun Temple)

In the center of the grounds, there was a larger (life-size?) statue of Jizo standing on a wooden platform. The statue held a baby in one hand.  Dangling from the wooden framework on which the statue stood, just below the statue's feet hung a large Mickey Mouse doll.  When I realized that the doll meant that the child was dead, tears welled up in my eyes.  All of the preparation of the parents, all of the expectation and all of the joy of bringing new life into the world had come crashing down around the family with the death of the child. I will never know how the child died, but I imagined some young woman was crying in inconsolable despair for their lost loved one, whose journey through life ended so abruptly, so early. The overwhelming sadness was too much to bear, and yet... and yet, out of that, came the words that brought together all of the college coursework, all of what I had heard from my teacher, and from out of the blue, I had my first-ever haiku: 

時雨（しぐれ）ふる　　   旅（たび）のはじめや     　国分寺（こくぶんじ）
Early spring drizzle       At the start of the journey     Kokobun Temple

You see, sadness is not expressed directly in Japanese; the early spring drizzle expresses the sadness I felt.  The start of the journey represents the journey of life; and when life has just begun, or was just about to begin, but ended so early for these children remembered at Kokubun Temple through the offerings to Jizo, it is truly sad...and even to this day, the sight of all those statuettes and that doll is fresh in my memory, as a collective impression of the parents who lost their hopes and dreams in Japan...

I checked my Japanese syllables feverishly... 5... 7... 5!  Perfect!  When my haiku teacher asked me on the train back home if I had been able to create any haiku, I gave him the above poem, and he broke into a grin.  "Just like Master Basho!" he said, and I felt really, really proud of myself, and I was on my way to writing more.   

 

My Most Embarrassing Moment

When I taught English Composition in Japan, I had a very funny, very embarrassing experience which I will try to share with you.  First of all, in Japan in the 1980's, male teachers where I taught were expected to wear at least a white shirt with tie, if not a full suit.  So I dressed up every day when I went to work.  Secondly, the classrooms in Japan are LARGE.  In many Japanese high schools, there are typically 45-50 students per classroom, so there is a platform at the front of the classroom on which the teacher stands so the students in back can see (so they can stick their comic books or personal notes or spitball shooters away before the teacher gets too close.)  The platform is not that high, maybe only 5-6 inches, but high enough for this story.

At the time this embarrassing event occurred, I was teaching my students about prepositions, and was trying to explain the difference between ‘in’ and ‘into’.  I came up with the brilliant idea of showing them the difference.  So I stood by the door, and said “I am IN the classroom.”  Then I walked out, and walked back in, and as I came in, I said “I am walking INTO the classroom.”  Some seemed to get it, some did not.  Using the “shampoo method” of teaching, (“lather, rinse, repeat”) I did the same thing several times.  One of my brighter students asked me if the verb “walk” was the only verb that used “INTO”, and I said, “No, you can jump into the room" (so I went into the hallway and jumped into the room,) and then I added, "And you can run into the room... “   And this is when the trouble began.

I went into the hallway with the intention of running into the classroom.  And I did.  Until my foot caught on the edge of the platform.  Then I proceeded to do a full-body smash onto the floor.  The whole building shook, I think.  People in nearby classrooms probably thought it was an earthquake or a chemical explosion.  The vibrations were so severe, that the chalkboard eraser sitting on the shelf just below the chalkboard bounced up and off the shelf... and landed right on my head.  And not just the top of my head, but on my face.  The left side of my face, to be exact.  When I stood up, there was not a student in their seat.  They were all rolling on the floor, clutching their sides in raucous laughter.  They were pointing at me and laughing.  When I checked my appearance in the mirror by the chalkboard, I saw a crimson-red face half-covered with white and yellow chalk.  I, too, pointed at my reflection and started laughing hysterically. The students who had been able to compose themselves were once again on the floor, laughing hysterically with me. The room was nothing but laughter for about 10 minutes.  When it calmed down, I said, “Well, you can FALL into the room, too!”  And again the laughter started... 

While the situation was embarrassing, and funny as hell, it also led to something special—respect.  After that day, the students of that class treated me with more respect than I had ever received before.  They knew I was serious about my joy of teaching—but they knew I could also laugh at myself.  They knew that I had a lust for life, a yen for Zen (I had a shaved head, and talked about my Buddhist practice from time to time, and had a mind as sharp as a tack, and a heart of gold.  Compared to the horror stories they heard from their fellow students who studied under my Australian counterpart, I was a patient and kind teacher, who genuinely cared about them.  At the end of the school year, the students came up to me, and asked me to take a picture with them.  They framed it and gave me a copy, which I have to this day.  That was also the year I was voted “Teacher of the Year” .  Good, good memories all around.

Haiku Hankerings Part II

During the summer of 1989, I used my summer vacation (I was teaching at a private girls' school at the time) to see just what it must have been like for Matuso Basho, the founder of the haiku form of poetry, on his travels to the northern part of Japan, who used his journey in 1689 as the basis for "The Narrow Road to the Deep North".  My trek just happened to coincide with the 300th anniversary of Basho's journey, or so the posters in the train stations claimed.  I was unaware of that fact when I set out, but it really didn’t matter. My intention was to make the same journey (as much as I could, anyway) that Basho and Sora, his travel companion and fellow poet, did.  I did not make any hotel reservations in advance, for example, and relied on finding a place to lay my head when I got to wherever I was.  I also decided I would try to walk as much of the trip as possible, starting with a short trip to Kurobane, a city northwest of Tokyo.  (I figured I would get out of Tokyo by train, as it was far too crowded and noisy to offer much in terms of quiet meditative moods.)  So, I hopped off the Shinkansen (“bullet train”) at the station closest to Kurobane and started walking. (The trek to Kurobane would take about an hour on foot.)

On the way there, a couple of public buses stopped and the drivers asked if I wanted a ride.  I declined both times. I eventually stopped for a breather at a roadside rest. It was a small place, more of a convenience store for those driving by.  I was about to pick up my bags and set out when the woman proprietor came out and waved me down. “Please sit,” she said, and quickly brought out some freshly cut watermelon. She hastily explained that her son, who was due back from college "at any moment" would be very happy to see me. So I waited, and sure enough, a few minutes later, a young Japanese man pulled up to the stand in his car.  I got involved with singing Beatles songs while he played the guitar.  I know beer was involved. I am still amazed to this day that some Japanese won't speak a lick of English in conversation, but can recite every lyric of their favorite songs without hesitation. They asked me what I was doing in that part of Japan, and had a hard time believing that I was going to try to walk all the way to Kurobane, much less northern Japan.  The mother mentioned a temple in the area that was 'worth visiting'.  She said her son could take me to the temple in his car. No, I wanted to walk, I replied.  The son agreed to accompany me to the temple.  (See photo below.)

I asked the family about a place to stay.  They called the local pension, which is a word the Japanese borrowed from the English and applied to something totally different. It’s basically an inn, and that is where I ended up for the night. I arrived later than normal, just as they were about to empty the bath water, but I was able to convince them to let me use it first.  (Many people can use the same bath water in Japan; one must thoroughly wash and rinse oneself BEFORE climbing into the tub so as to not dirty the water.  It’s OK to use the hot bath water during this process, but the cleaning is done OUTSIDE the tub, and great care is taken so that the soapy suds do not get into the tub.)  I gingerly took off my socks and quickly examined the blisters that had formed on my first day of travel.  The fact that I had already developed fairly large blisters did not bode well for the rest of my trip. On a good note, to my surprise, there was a small stone in the inn's garden inscribed with one of Matsuo Basho's poems.

The next morning I “cheated”, and took a bus back to the city of Utsunomiya, a major stop on the "Shinkansen", and then from there I took the train to the town of Nikko.  Nikko is a very famous resort community famous for several things, one of which is its proximity to the Toshogu Shrine, which was built by the Tokugawa dynasty. The shrine is most famous for its intricate carvings of various wildlife, including three monkeys who “hear no evil, see no evil, and speak no evil.”  I could have easily spent a few hours at this shrine and its environs, as I’m sure the Emperors of the past have done, as this resort was originally built for the royal family.  

Some distance from the Toshogu Shrine is the Kegon waterfalls that originate as the water spills from the lip of Lake Chuzenji, which formed in the basin created by the mountains near Nikko, to the gorge below. It’s not that often that one can view the falls: many times the weather is dismal and the clouds droop too low and block the view.  At other times, the spray from the falls obscures one’s vision.  Sometimes, during periods of drought, there is not enough water flowing from the lip of Lake Chuzenji to create the falls.  The falls are over 3.5 hours away from Nikko Station on foot, so I had a lofty goal set for me.

Sticking with my plan to walk the trail of Basho, I set out from Nikko station, went to the Toshogu Shrine, and confirmed that the monkeys were still there. My feet were already protesting about the pain, but I pressed on.  After thoroughly examining the nooks and crannies of the shrine, I trudged on toward the i-ro-ha-zaka, the “alphabet slope” that led up to Lake Chuzenji and the entry to the Kegon Falls.  The slope is given that name because there is a hairpin curve for every one of the letters of the Japanese phonetic alphabet.  The Japanese version of our “ABC” song waxes much more poetic, but I still can’t sing if it you wanted me to.  Anyway, I trudged on... and on... and further on while people in cars and buses stared at the sweaty foreigner walking funnily on the sides of his feet, probably wondering what I was doing.  I was even offered a ride by someone who told me I can’t walk to the falls, but adamant in my desire to walk like Basho walked, I turned them down.  I would prove to them and my feet that I could do what I set out to do!

When I got to the base of the curvaceous mountain slope, I came upon a gigantic sign that listed prohibitions of various kinds, mainly this one:  “Due to the dangerous nature of the  hairpin curves ahead, ABSOLUTELY NO PEDESTRIANS ARE ALLOWED beyond this point!” Muttering a few choice words, I begrudgingly bought a bus ticket to the mountaintop and climbed on the bus. In mere minutes, we were on our way, and as we went through the curves, I looked out the window.  I could not see the ground underneath us—just the fir-covered ravine stretching down, down, and down.  After a few more curves, I had to look away because it was getting a little nauseating.  Instead, I kept my eyes out for the little monkeys that appeared from time to time next to the signs warning passengers not to feed them.  Judging by the items left on the ground at the monkeys’ feet, I would have to guess the signs weren’t very effective.

On the way to the top, the bus driver announced that the falls would not be visible due to the cloud coverage. At the top, I alit from the bus and began wandering around.  With wincing steps, I followed the path leading down to the trail that went to the falls. I followed it, paid my fee to get in, walked down the narrow steps as others came up, grumbling about not being able to see anything.  I took the elevator down and emerged into the mist-filled chambers, and when I walked outside, the clouds parted and revealed the Kegon Falls in all its glory, as the recent rains had been sufficient to make them quite magnificent.

 And that is when I created the following haiku:

                                                        長旅の  　疲れ忘れる   滝の音    
                         The journey is long / But the fatigue forgotten / Rumbling waterfalls


As a side note, after seeing the Kegon Falls, I sat on the shores of Lake Chuzenji for a while to consider my options about the rest of my trip.  I knew it was no longer possible to walk to every stop, especially since my feet were aching terribly, so I decided to take public transportation to the strategic spots, and then walk when I could. I took a bus back to Nikko Station, then the train to Utsunomiya, where I found a hotel for the night.  I checked in and headed straight for the bath tub. I pulled off my shoes to find my white socks had turned red because my feet were bleeding. As I soaked my feet in the tub (and drained the water and cleaned the tub after), I reviewed and revised my plans, but had no idea of the various thrills and challenges waiting for me in northern Japan.