Tokyo Stories edited by Lawrence Rogers

Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll translated from the Japanese and edited by Lawrence Rogers contains 18 short stories by both famous authors (Mishima Yukio, Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Kawabata Yasunari, Nagai Kaifu, Natsume Soseki) and less famous--at least to me. Two writers, Ikeda Michiko and Inabe Mayumi, are translated into English for the first time. Rogers is a professor of Japanese at the University of Hawaii a Hilo, and he provides useful introductions to the book as a whole and to each story, a glossary, and suggestions for further reading.

The stories are all set in the twentieth century, and are organized by Tokyo districts. So for example the first six stories are all set in central Tokyo, the next eight in the shitamachi, the "low city," the more raffish district of bars and theaters.

I think there are two problems in translating from the Japanese--and I'm writing here as one who is translating contemporary Japanese fiction for his own entertainment. First, English acts as a veil or fine screen between the reader and the original. I sense that literary Japanese carries nuances and implications that are either impossible to express in English or that lose all their effect when we do find an English equivalent. I suspect it is a rare translator who is so fluent in both languages that he or she can inhabit the consciousness of the Japanese writer and has the skill to find the identical spirit in English. Which leads to the second problem.

I suspect that, as a translator, I run the original through my consciousness so that what comes out sounds very similar to everything I write. I'm not skillful enough to convey each Japanese writer's unique style. I think that Rogers is skillful enough, which makes this collection exceptionally rich and varied. The stories are all different, different lengths, different situations, different different times, but all set in Tokyo. They include, as the jacket says, "a story of an all-too-brief affair in a burned-out Tokyo, an unsettling tale of high politics and possible blackmail, and reminiscences of childhood. The narrators and protagonists are diverse, among them an Asakusa streetwalker, a lonely apartment seeker who simply wants to keep her cat, and a self-obsessed young man casting off his devoted lover."

As an introduction to (or picture of) Japanese culture from the inside, the Tokyo Stories are fascinating and enlightening.

Japanese Vending Machines

First-time visitors to Japan are usually struck by the ubiquitousness and variety of vending machines. They seem to be everywhere. In an urban area, it feels as if you are never more than a few yards from one. My admittedly limited impression is that the vast majority of machines are vending drinks: hot and cold coffee; soft drinks (Coke, Fanta, Calpis); energy drinks; water, and beer. But I have also seen machines vending bags of rice, batteries, ice cream, candy and snacks.

Innovative Japanese vending machine manufacturers have introduced machines that respond to your cell phone. No cash to buy an icy brew for the ride home? Just swipe your mobile, make your choice, and the machine adds the charge to your phone bill.

Because competition is so great (although not price competition; prices seem standard across categories and markets), marketers advertise on their machines. A few years ago, I took this picture of Tommy Lee Jones who was promoting Boss brand canned coffee. The line of coffees—including espresso, coffee mocha, and black—are all vended hot. The line of blue buttons at the top of the picture are for cold drinks. One machine, two temperatures.

A final note: While I have sampled probably a bare fraction of the goods available from Japanese vending machines, I have never had a bad experience. I think the coffee is great, and I even like the soft drink Pocari Sweat.

Will Miss/Won't Miss

One of my favorite blogs is "1000 Things About Japan...that I will miss and won't miss when I eventually leave." It is written by Sheri Custer, a dedicated blogger (she also maintains a Japanese snack blog that I do not follow). Sheri is a 46-year-old American woman who has lived in Japan with her American husband for more than 20 years. They live in a small apartment in Tokyo, both teach English (her husband goes to an office; she teaches private students in the apartment), have no children. That they are a childless American couple who have lived and worked in Japan for so long makes them fairly unusual. They are planning to return to the US in the foreseeable future, and when they made that decision, Sheri, who had been blogging about Japan in general, decided to identify the things she will and will not miss when she leaves.

By its nature, the blog is an eclectic collection of relatively short observations. The subjects range from the significant to the trivial, and Sheri is usually able to include a picture as an illustration. To suggest her range, here are some recent things she will miss: Japanese women who cover themselves entirely to protect their white skin; a kind of Japanese citrus/vinegar condiment; empty Japanese rooms; Japanese "soft cream'; national self-restraint; the "bottle-keep" system; and WYSIWYG restaurants.

She won't miss handwritten Japanese; a lack of charitable spirit; toilet paper paranoia; being a leaning post on trains; "it's Japanese" when it's not; earthquake sickness; or Japanese keyboards.

Sheri points out that her observations and opinions are entirely her own; she is making no grand pronouncements on Japan, the Japanese people, Japanese culture. But I find that what she says is almost always interesting and provides a unique account of items and aspects of Japanese life that for natives are too ordinary to mention and for tourists too small to see.

Messengers of the Gods

The imperial capital of Japan has moved at least three times, from Nara to Kyoto to Tokyo. (The political capital, the seat of government, has moved several times more; for a while in the 13th century, Kamakura was the political capital.)

Nara was the imperial capital from 710 to 784. When, upon the death of the emperor, the capital was moved to Kyoto, Nara's imperial palace was simply abandoned and allowed to deteriorate over the centuries. Archeologists, however, identified the buildings' remains and several have now been reconstructed.

Nara has been a center of Buddhism almost from the time monks first arrived with the tenets from China via Korea. While the elements, fire, war, and simple neglect have taken their toll on Nara's historic temples and shrines, there are at least a dozen worth visiting, including the Kasuga Shrine, and the Todai-ji (housing the largest bronze Buddha in Japan), Kōfuku-ji (founded originally in 669), Yakushi-ji (founded in 680), and more.

At one time, the small Sika deer from the area were considered sacred due to a visit from one of the four gods of the Kasuga Shinto shrine. He was said to have been invited and appeared on Mt. Mikasa riding a white deer. From that point, the deer were considered divine messengers of the gods and sacred by both Kasuga and Kofuku-ji. Today, the deer wander freely through the city's grounds and you can buy deer treats from vending machines to feed them. And, as my friend found in the picture above, the deer know it. Today they are more like beggars than messengers.

Take Me Out to the Ball Game

While I am not a baseball fan, I've been to two minor league games in two different cities this summer. I like minor league games because the tickets are reasonable, the stadiums are small, and the fans (most of them) are just out for the game because so little is riding on whether a team wins or loses.

Until recently, I'd never been to a baseball game in Japan. But I went with a friend to watch the Yokohama Bay Stars beat the Yakult Swallows. Some observations: Fans were given an inexpensive plastic Bay Stars rain poncho on the way in.

The stadium was less than half filled. Officials turned off the Jumbotron/scoreboard during plays so you had to watch the game rather than the big screen.

Young women and a few young men in Day-Glo green shorts and jackets and hats came through the stands selling Coca Cola, beer, and a salty fish-based snack.

Cheerleaders in white boots, short skirts, and bare midriffs led the cheers with gold sparkly pompoms, and there were a number of mascots--a Bay Star, a baseball, and more.

Games for the kids before the game--pitch to the Bay Star catcher, run the bases. The TV camera would pan around the stadium between innings stopping on a group for three seconds. At the end of the game, the pictures were posted at the exit, a free memory of the night.

The fans, despite all the beer, were well-behaved. They usually shouted in unison, beat, a drum, and knocked noisemakers together in rhythm. Bay Star fans were silent when the Yakult Swallows cheered and, presumably, they were quiet when we cheered (I couldn't tell from the noise).

Baseball is so popular in Japan that, I've been told, some Japanese believe it was invented there. Robert Whiting has written a wonderful book, You Gotta Have Wa, that investigates the Japanese game called "baseball," but which isn't exactly the same as what we play here. As Whiting points out, players commit to an 11-month training/playing season; they practice fielding until they drop from exhaustion. Fans chant highly organized and rhythmic chants all game long, regardless of the score. As one reviewer points out, this is much more than a baseball book; culture, and cultural diffusion, and the differences between Americans and Japanese. If you like baseball, you should go to a game. And if you're interested in Japan, you should read Whiting's book.

Will Miss/Won't Miss Things About Japan

One of the blogs I've been following faithfully is 1000 Things About Japan. The author is an American woman who has lived in Japan for about 18 years. She lives in Tokyo and teaches English in her apartment. A year or so ago she announced in an earlier blog that she and her American husband had decided to return to the States and that she would begin a daily blog of things she will miss/won't miss about life in Japan after she's left.

As a recent example of something she will miss: "About a three-minute walk from my apartment, there's a dingy little restaurant which uses buckets of red hot coals to cook its food. In the evening, when they are in full service mode, these buckets are sitting outside full of glowing coals and the air is filled with the heavenly scent of grilled food which is made with them. The smell is distinctive and extremely enticing. I'll miss the lovely scent of this old-fashioned cooking style and having a chance to encounter it often."

And something she won't miss: "Because of the long, humid summer and generous amounts of rain in Tokyo, I always have problems with spices and salt caking into lumps. While I keep most of my spices in the refrigerator, I simply do not have the space to keep everything in it and the result is having to whack the counter with the jars to try and break up the inevitable bricks that form. What makes it worse is the fact that spices are pretty expensive in Japan so wasting them can mean losing an investment. I won't miss my spices and salt forming bricks and blobs and becoming unusable because of the weather"

She accompanies each brief post with a picture, and I find her observations about everyday, ordinary life in Japan fascinating. And I'm fascinated that she seems to notice everything. I will miss her blog when she returns to the States...although at that point, perhaps she'll begin writing about the things she notices in everyday, ordinary life in America.

Nara Celebrates Its 1300th Anniversary

Until around 600 CE, Japan did not have a set capital. We don't know for sure because the Japanese had no written language until they were exposed to Chinese by Buddhist monks who had come across the Sea of Japan from southern Korea. Among the monks' ideas was that of a capital city and Nara was one of the first.

This year, Nara is celebrating its 1,300th anniversary. It has reconstructed the eighth-century palace that was leveled when, upon the death of the emperor, the capital was moved to Kyoto in 784 CE. The government has also built a life-size replica of a ship that carried Japanese envoys to and from Tang China.

So this is a good year to visit Nara. You can check out the New York Times story. This is, after all, the city with the largest wooden building in the world that houses a bronze buddha that is larger than the one in Kamakura, the Daibutsu in the Todaiji.

Introduction to the book and the author

Getting Oriented is a novel set in Japan. The action follows a group of ten American tourists as they visit Kyoto, Nara, Hakone, Nikko, and Tokyo. Their guide is Philip Fletcher, recently down-sized and whose wife had been killed in an accident a year and a half before the novel opens. Phil speaks Japanese and is offered the tour-guide job by an old college buddy.

I wrote the novel because I am fascinated by Japan, Japanese culture, American responses to the culture, and because I was interested in the way a group of strangers react to each other and to a foreign culture. I plan to use this blog to talk about Japan, Japanese, and writing.