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The journey of 2,136 kanji begins with 一。

I’ve memorised chapters 1 to 3 of Remembering the Kanji which is really just going over old ground but you have to start somewhere. Less than 2,100 to go! The system is each kanji is presented with a key word and an unusual. You don’t learn the reading or compounds at all. It’s an exercise simply in learning to recognise or read the kanji in terms of its key word meaning. The rest comes later. The system has its detractors but as I understand it is well regarded, generally speaking, and there are plenty of positive reviews to be found. It’s only early days, again, but let’s see how far I make it. Hey, WAGMI.

Kanji journey

Ok, please don’t roll your eyes but I’ve decided that I want to go back in time and start my Japanese learning journey again, just as if I was sitting at a desk in that Takadanobaba language school all those years ago. So with that in mind I refound the old Kanji Clinic column that used to appear, and baffle me, in the Japan Times when I was a newcomer to Tokyo. My map for this journey will be Remembering the Kanji, a book I bought so many, many years ago, tried to master a couple of times, and then put right back down again. Well, I’m inspired to give it another go in the never say die attitude. And I do it as an expression of love for my old town and all the people that made me so welcome and were so kind to me. I just want to remember those times, as I Remember the Kanji.

The park with the windmill and other happy musings

At the end of m street there is a park with a lake and a windmill. On my day of arrival, that intensely hot July day, I walked from the station to my apartment and noticed that windmill straight away. “What’s it doing there?” I wondered. It was a kooky thing to see in a park in Tokyo, with a digital clock display capturing that whimsical Japanese sense of cuteness with functionality. It looked a bit aged, like something from the eighties or early nineties. “Why put up a windmill?” I wondered again as I trudged along the footpath with my suitcase. It was standing in a lovely park though. Green and full of cherry blossom trees, with old men fishing at the lake. At the far end there’s a rising embankment that conceals the golf course behind it. I’d come to climb that embankment and walk along the footpath to Akabane, two stations away. There was a river too, Sumidagawa, and I used to look and think to myself “so much for Tokyo being a concrete jungle.” I was in a wide open, green space with a broad view of the sky and surrounds. How lucky I was. I loved it. 

I remember the day I moved out of Legend 101. Mitsuki’s dad had one of his truck drivers drive over and pick up all my stuff, not that there was much, and then drive to Todoroki. It was a blue truck, pretty battered, I think with a small crane on the back for picking up rolls of stainless steel. He was a cheerful old bloke, and with Mitsuki we chatted in broken Japanese and English. As I left the apartment I took lots of snaps of every room on my keitai but that disappeared long ago. I never did print those photos from it sadly. I remember taking them, thinking I’ll keep these, but I don’t have them or the phone anymore. I wonder what happened to that phone. I do wish I had more photos of good old Legend 101, my first of two abodes in Tokyo. 

I took a course of beginner Japanese lessons in Takadanobaba. It was a free course for beginners as it was a teacher training college and the teachers were about to graduate and start teaching Japanese for real, so this was the final practice for them. They were so kind, and some pretty nervous. One instructor held his fists to his ears and squeezed really hard to emphasise listening, then flicked his hands open and a paid of big, foam fake ears popped out which was pretty funny. There was another guy I think names Suzuki san who was one of the nervous ones. He motioned to a name badge that they were wearing on their shirts, and underlined it with his finger as he pronounced “Suzuki desu, Su-zu-ki desu,” but the only problem was he wasn’t wearing his name badge. I laughed at that as well but looking back I guess it was just part of his shtick to break the ice. It was cute though. Another time, Suzuki san was getting me to pronounce ringo which is apple, and you kind of roll the R as a soft sound, and to Suzuki san’s ear I obviously wasn’t getting it and he really stuck on it and made me repeat it so many times until I started freaking out a bit wondering whether he was ok! I told that story to Mitsuki and Rita a while ago and they laughed their heads off. It was pretty tense! I just looked up the school and it seems to still be in operation and using the same flyer from all those years ago I reckon!

Here when I want to be there

I had a 40 minute Line video call with Atsu in Kanazawa last night which was good for the soul but heavy on the heart this morning. Naturally, distance gives us rose coloured glasses and no place is perfect, but I cast my mind back to my recent trip as I watch the goings on from afar via Line and I just wish above all that I was back there, living a life different to the one I have chosen for myself and have attempted to forge. I say this with a sense of the utmost selfishness - it was me that drove the charge back to Melbourne all those years ago. It was my wife who gave up life with her family and home town of Tokyo. It was me that created a picture that we’d be better off here rather than there. The reasons that were so clear to me back then I can’t really recall now, but the reality is that I was wrong. 

But I don’t want this blog to be a place of sad musings. I want it to be a celebration. So let me cast off the heavy heart and come back to my cheerful memories and pleasure at good conversation and funny interactions, like last night. It was so good to get a window into EJC again, even though I was actually there not that long ago. Yes, it is like looking through a sliding door but if I zoom out Japan for me will always be open. Never closed, and whatever happens, it will always be my most special place.

I wander the midnight streets of Kanazawa.

Atsu contemplating the library of whiskey.

Nostalgia is a beautiful thing

When I was in Tokyo recently I got a kick, as I always do, out of silly things like going to the local supermarket and seeking out old products that I remember marvelling at or even using back in the day. Below are two very special items that my non-existent readership may recognise from a couple of posts on this very blog from 2005. 

I’m sorry but when I encountered these two little beauties I felt like I had been reunited with two old friends I hadn’t seen in 18 years. Am I insane? I don’t think so, it’s just that I get such a kick out of anything that connects me to this place Japan and reminds me that I was here, living and breathing and treading my path. A different me to now but still me, and I’m so glad that the back then me of me made the effort to explore life and seek adventures. I guess I haven’t changed. The same things that drove me and fascinated me back then are still in me today which is probably why I love exploring and trying new things as soon as I’m back, and why I get so much enjoyment out of the small, everyday, household bits-and-pieces like “Shall We?” short bread and “Creap” creamy powder…I love them, me old mates!

https://tokyorush.blogspot.com/2005/07/yes-we-shall-damn-it.html

https://tokyorush.blogspot.com/2005/05/milk-cream-or-creap.html

Wow, it’s great to be back.

Nothing lasts forever but it is true that some things cannot die. I know where to put this blog out of those two scenarios. What can I say other than here we go again, resurrecting this old relic, posting and thinking and dreaming of Nippon. 

The good news is I’m back a couple of weeks from our first trip back to the land of the rising sun in 3.5 years and it was beyond magnificent! If you want to know, or even need to wonder, why it took us 3.5 years to get back just google “Covid.” 

But don’t bother. Why’s don’t matter. We got back and plugged straight back in. Reconnected massively. It all felt good and fresh and happy. I even had lunch with Old Mate Gav down Uki Funado way. It’s late, I’m posting on the spur of the moment but it feels good. I started this thing in Uki years ago, and here I am back again. Can’t keep an old Blog down. 

Me in an Oden shop in Kanazawa.

Gav out front of a Legend 101 all these years later. Love ya Gav. Missed you Kid Kane. Cheers to history.

My love of bathing in Japan

My first encounter with a Japanese bath was in my very own shared apartment in Legend 101, Ukima Funado. I posted on it back in the day here for those who would like a flash back. I took to that bath like a fish to water. It was the depth that did it for me and the control panel on the wall which allowed one to dial up the heat or give the water level a top up at the touch of a button (I know, taps do that too, but we didn't have control panels for baths where I can from - taps we did have). I'd sit in that bath full of hot, hot water and listen to the radio while drinking beers, thinking about the world and life in Japan. I especially loved that the bathing tradition called for washing thoroughly and then entering the bath in a state of absolute cleanliness for one purpose and one purpose only; to relax. Beautifully done.

As time went on I learned about onsen and visited a couple with a Japanese friend and some of his friends. Stripping off to the bone never really bothered me as it may some people. I simply felt that it was right not to be square and self conscious. Actually the one thing that I was self conscious about, rather than being in the nude, was my tattoos. I never got any grief for them though, luckily. Since then I've been to a good number of onsen of various types with various types, including wife and family, indoor and outdoor. The word for outdoor (or rather open air) bath has such a lovely ring to it; rotenburo.

The next stage of bathing I discovered was sento, communal baths dotted around the suburbs which date way back to when the family home didn't have a bathroom. Sentos are magnificent throw-backs to an almost by-gone era although every time I've been to a sento I've seen plenty of dads bringing their young sons along, no doubt continuing a tradition that started generations ago with their father or grandfather. I enjoyed observing the passing down of such a lovely custom from father to son and I imagine on the other side of the wall the same from mother to daughter. I know some of my own daughter's happiest memories of being back in Tokyo are of visiting an onsen (not sento) with her mum and grandmother. The thrill of it was obvious to me; she felt part of a tribe, deeply connected to an older generation, time and place and particularly Japanese. She'll cherish those memories.

When staying at the family home I'd often get on the train of an evening and head a couple of stations down the line to the one sento I found closest to my house, Tsubameyu. It was old school, not one of those new, highly polished and soulless Super Sentos, but one from back in the day. It had the brown vinyl massage chair, wicker furniture and an old, worn rug in the reception area where you could sit and watch TV with a bottle of fruits milk or a beer and just take in the atmos. It's moments like that when I couldn't help but think, "This is the Japan for me." I went back a couple of visits ago and Tsubameyu was closed for good. Like so many rare and beautiful pleasures in Japan the proprietors simply grew too old to continue and had to retire with no-one to replace them. I still miss it. The loss of that sento was to me the canary in the coal mine. Its closure, so sudden to my mind, imparted an awareness that time is indeed fleeting and it is not only wonderful, old sentos that are vulnerable to the all-too-soon passing of it, but people that we love as well.   

Ukimafunado - Legend 101

My top google searches when I really miss the old days include Ukimafunado and Shinjuku, the first being where I used to live and the later being where I used to work. I google images and reminisce about my old life back there and how unreal it all felt at the time. There was something so natural about being over in Japan teaching English and something at the same time so alien and supernatural about it all. I remember the small details like the green public phone next to the local 7 Eleven which I would use to call home on when I didn't have a mobile, the local supermarket where I would buy my nightly eats and beer, the park with the windmill at the end of my street. The fact that I was there, living in a dreamland, not really sure what to make of it all, or how to really embrace it and make the most of it. I guess there were plenty of days when I felt overwhelmed. That's all natural and normal. I feel the same now but in reverse. Having been back in Melbourne for eight years but at every moment knowing that this is not the place I long to be in I realize that sometimes the best times in your life do pass by without you even realizing. But can you do it all again, years later? I still wonder.