I think this page now has all the "updates" I sent home from Japan during my visit. They have not been edited or checked for duplication or possible omissions. I will gradually edit them into a more continuous narrative, possibly as the basis for a book, but in the meantime perhaps you will enjoy my stories. If you want to see photos of some of these adventures, please go to: japanphotos2000.htm

Hi Folks! Greetings from Tokyo! [sent September 14, 2000]

Things went great from the get-go. I woke up early and refreshed. I even had time to sit back and read the paper! My three housemates all came with me as my entourage (no personage of significance travels without an entourage!) and we got to the airport in plenty of time. I was wearing my blue suit jacket in hopes of getting noticed for upgrades and things started happening right away. I joined the line and was promptly steered to another check-in with no line-up. The guy didn't even comment on, let alone charge me for, any of my excess luggage (you're allowed two pieces up to 70 pounds each, and I had three pieces totalling 180 lbs). They also gave me an exit seat which had no seat in front and an empty seat beside me, so I had tons of room (did a guardian angel at Canadian tell someone to look out for me??). They were not able to assign me a seat for the flight from Vancouver to Tokyo, though, as that was a Japan Airlines flight and since the merger Canadian is no longer a partner with JAL. The plane was delayed before take-off, so my connection in Vancouver was very tight. Nevertheless I stopped to buy some Canadian salmon and maple cookies and candies as gifts (one does not arrive in Japan without gifts), and got to the counter just a couple of minutes before boarding. They upgraded me to business class! Not only that, but I was in the front row where there was about five feet of leg room! I even had a window seat, which I usually shun in the hope of being able to overflow into the aisle (not necessary this time). I was able to take advantage of the clear skies to examine the topography around Narita airport on the way down. Needless to say, this was my most comfortable trip to Japan ever!

The big question remained: how was I going to get this massive amount of baggage to my hotel? In perusing the in-flight magazine I discovered that JAL has its own baggage delivery service, which even gives a 20% discount to their passengers. The 1600 yen per bag charge (a total of C$70 for all three) turned out to be the only cost I incurred to ship all my 180 lbs of baggage all the way from Calgary to Tokyo! This good news far outweighed the 90 minute wait in a hot, crowded room to go through immigration.

(and for CPL members: YES, I had been treating to know that everything would go smoothly during this trip!)

To top it all off, when I arrived at my hotel, there was already a beautiful card waiting for me from my thoughtful friend Shari.

My first full day in Tokyo was Monday, September 12. My contact at the Japan Foundation turned out to be a very pleasant young woman. We went through a few formalities and she gave me a cheque. She then accompanied me downstairs to the Post Office (which is also a bank in the Japanese system) so I could cash the cheque and get a huge wad of cash (almost a million yen, or about C$14,000, by far the most cash I have ever had at one time). The rest of the day went just as smoothly, despite heavy rain (a couple of inches per hour at one point). I got myself registered at the Minato ward municipal office as a 'Resident Alien' (hold the Star Wars jokes, please), opened a bank account to unload the cash, shopped for supplies like extra hangers and then managed to unpack everything. Not bad for the first day! And my suitcase even fit with about half a millimetre to spare in the one otherwise unusable bit of space in my 16 foot by 7 foot room!

Tuesday and Wednesday I spent making the rounds of the bookstores most likely to have materials on my research topic. I also found some stuff on Seicho-no-Ie in English and located their world headquarters, where I picked up some literature in Japanese. Apparently they have 850,000 members in Japan and 1.4 million abroad! (Seicho no Ie is a Japanese New Thought movement founded by a guy who wrote a book with Fenwick Holmes after he was introduced by another of Dr. Holmes's brothers--the one who was stationed in Japan for a while. Hey, 5000 in five doesn't sound so far out now, does it?!!)

I also signed up for Internet access with a place that has English language tech support. Thursday, after visiting one of the libraries where I will be working (the parliamentary library), I spent the rest of the day unsuccessfuly communicating with tech support about getting my connection going. I guess my deep-seated computerphobia was catching up on me. Something to work on in my treatments, I guess. In the morning I had treated for peace during the hook-up process, and that worked--I stayed remarkably calm compared to past sessions of cursing and banging around during previous moments of computer frustration. Anyway, I will call the University of Calgary information technology people tonight and see what they can do.

Tomorrow is a national holiday (I've forgotten which one), so the libraries will be closed. What a great excuse to go see the sumo tournament! I'll leave the Internet till Monday if I haven't resolved things this evening and spend some time visiting a friend's bar and maybe meditating at a Shinto shrine near my hotel.

I only have a few Internet addresses with me at this Internet cafe, so some of you may get this a few days later than others when I re-send it to those whose addresses are in my notebook's address book.

I love and miss you all.

Big hugs!

Namaste,

Teri

Hi Folks! [sent September 30, 2000]

My move went well. The night before I went to a cheap luggae place I know and they had a great sale, 590 yen (about C$8.50) each for three gym bags which I thought I might need. (I have accumulated a lot of research material and books since I got here and didn't have time to pack too carefully.) I went home and packed everything in two hours. It was a bit scary to see how much stuff I had, though I only used two of the new bags. I woke up in the middle of the night literally pulsating with nervous energy and couldn't sleep. I did some meditation and a treatment and got myself calmed down and went back to sleep.

The first part of the trip was pretty strenuous. I had done it many times with huge amounts of luggage and had been unable to get that image of struggle out of my mind, so how could it have been otherwise? But once I was on terra incognita the treatment worked and everything rolled along nicely. Once I got to my destination station, Tama Plaza, the taxi driver was not only helpful, but actually able to get my huge amount of luggage in the trunk! The second trip went even more smoothly. Only one small glitch--the train stopped one station short of where I wanted to go, so I had to do a very fast switch with a huge hockey bag of miscellaneous stuff.

Between trips I had lunch in the subway station building near where I used to live. Once again the Universe was working on my projects in ways I could never have foreseen. I wanted to eat mabodofu (a tofu and rice dish) but it wasn't on the lunch menu of the place I had seen it (Japanese restaurants inevitably have plastic models of each dish on display outside). I hesitated but decided to go in anyway. Was I glad I did! The place was quite full, so they seated me at a table with what turned out to be a very handsome and charming English-speaking Japanese gentleman whose work is closely related to my research! What a great contact! He counsels Japanese managers who are being forced out by their companies in order to cut costs. They have usually worked for the same company since graduation in a rotation of generalist jobs, so they have no special transferable skills and no idea how to make themselves useful to any other employer. He was fascinating and volunteered to talk to me again anytime. I'll definitely be looking him up again.

My new place is even better than I thought. Besides being cheaper, my room is about 50% larger than the old one (five metres by three instead of by two) and has a much larger closet, and I find it much more pleasant to live where there are other people around. I am pretty sure this place was a dokushinryo, or company dormitory for single young male employees. It probably went on the market in a distress sale by some near-bankrupt company. It was obviously purposely built to house about 75-80 people, all of the male sex. There is only one shower room and all the washrooms have urinals (not to be used in the wings where there are mostly women). The single shower room situation has led to a rather ingenuous solution to sharing. There is a sign on the door with 'male' on one side and 'female' on the other. If your sex's sign is showing, you can go right in, but if not, you wait until it is empty, then go in and change the sign. The flaw in this is that sometimes (like yesterday) a new guy goes in just as the first is finishing, so you have to wait for two showers (or theoretically even more). Still, most of the time I'm in no great hurry and this morning I got smart and brought a book just in case.

Speaking of reading, on moving day just before meeting Mr. Charming I went to the Headquarters of Seicho-no-Ie (the Japanese New Thought group that is very similar to the church I go to in Calgary). I picked up three of their books and a copy of their English-language magazine, Truth of Life. I have corresponded with someone from their HQ and on October 8 I will be going to the only English-language event they have in Tokyo, a meeting of the 'Shiyu-kai', which is the club for readers of the English magazine. Most are Japanese and apparently they get together to read and discuss the magazine's contents as a way of practicing their English. Once I have attended a couple of the meetings and read the books I bought so I have a better understanding of what it's all about, I may go and do one of their weekend seminars in Japanese. I have just finished the three Troward books I brought along, so the timing for some new reading material was perfect.

I have gradually furnished my room by renting a chair from the owner and buying a couple of cheap plastic drawer-type storage units (toal cost about C$50 for everything). (The room came with a desk, but no chair, and a futon, but no other furniture). I also got a mobile phone. My new number is (090) 9204-4342. I will basically only use it for emergencies. I make and receive very few calls, so I got the cheapest pre-paid option, which has a relatively low overall cost, but astronomical per-minute rates (50 yen, or about 70 cents Canadian, for every 30 seconds of local calls, whether the call is inbound or outbound).

Yesterday I had one of those sequences of events that show how the Universe gives back to us (with interest) what we give out into it (in other words, what comes around, goes around). It's a two-part story.

Part One: On the way to the station, which is a tree-lined pedestrian walkway, I saw a woman with a little boy beside her and a baby in a stroller. There was a lot of screaming going on, and at first I figured it was the baby, but when I got closer I realized it was the boy, whose mom was trying to wrap the baby's face cloth around the little boy's knee, unsuccessfully since it was way too short. When I was a couple of steps past them I figured out that he must have skinned his knee, so I searched in my purse and pulled out a bandage. I went back and sure enough, his knee was bleeding slightly from a dime-sized scrape. I gave her the bandage, accepted her profound thanks and a lot of bowing and moved on. The boy went quiet immediately, whether from the comfort of the bandage or the shock of seeing this giant red-headed Japanese-speaking foreigner bend down over him, I don't know.

Now for Part Two: Anyway, I was on my way to see sumo jungyo, an exhibition match for charity where the wrestlers also clown around with kids, etc. I got there early and joined the line for ticketss. A group of foreign students, including one from Edmonton, came along and were wandering around aimlessly. I got them into the right line and when my turn came I bought a ticket for 2500 yen (about C$35). None of the students spoke much Japanese, so I talked to the ticket guy for them, explained there were nine of us including me, and to make a long story short, he ended up giving us three Japanese-style boxes that were much closer to the dohyo (ring) than the one I had bought at first. He only charged us 1,000 yen a person, even though the boxes are intended to seat four on cushions, Japanese-style. So we got twelve 6,500 yen seats for 9,000 yen, meaning we had lots of room (by Japanese standards) to stretch out in (notice a theme of space in my trip??). And to top it all off, the students insisted on paying for my ticket, so I got in for free! Not a bad return on a three-cent bandage, eh!

The show itself was long, but quite amusing. There were demonstration bouts, demonstrations of training techniques and sumno ceremonies, and a round of four wrestlers 'wrestling' with kids. My favorite was six scrawny grade two boys hurling themselves at Musashimaru, a 500 pound yokozuna (top-ranked wrestler) from Hawaii (I have it on tape). There were sumo wrestlers singing both modern pop and traditional sumo ballads called jinku, and even a modern dance competition between teams of wrestlers from different stables (a whole lotta shaking going on--and I mean a LOT of shaking!). Besides the wrestlers they also had performances of shamisen music, which I quite enjoyed. The shamisen is a sort of three-stringed Japanese banjo you play with a huge pick that looks a lot like a windshield ice scraper--fortunately it sounds better than this description would have you believe).

When I was standing in line I also attracted an admirer, a toothless, wizened old Japanese guy who was very friendly, but almost unintelligible due to his dentistry-induced mumbling. He re-appeared at numerous times during the day, but just enough to be amusing, not annoying.

Today I came into Tokyo to pick up my Alien Registration Card. Monday I have to go register my change of address in the new municipality where I live. Between now and then I will probably lay low and get some work done.

For now, this hotmail account is probably the best one to use. My new landlord, Mr. Yokota, says he is going to have e-mail access set up in the residence this evening, but I don't know what kind, so it may be a few days before anyone hears from me again, or it might be tomorrow!

Love and blessings to all.

Teri

Hi Folks- [sent October 13, 2000]

Friday Oct 6 I got my first CPL tape at my new address. Right then and there I knew what my Saturday night entertainment was going to be (yes, I am a wild woman!).

Saturday the 7th I started to get replies to my personal ad. A Cypriot, an American and later a Japanese. We'll see how things pan out.

Sunday was, as a wise man in our congregation is wont to say, "exceedingly magnificent"! I did some data entry in the morning, then went in to meet the Seicho-no-Ie people (from the group like my church) at the monthly meeting of the club for readers of their English-language magazine, "Truth of Life". What an experience! There were 15 people there and I was made most welcome. There was an English-speaking minister, a young black guy, a middle-aged white guy whom I recognized instantly (more on that later) and the rest were Japanese. My e-mail contact recognized me and introduced herself as a former Canadian Embassy staffer! I actually think I recognize her from earlier visits to the Embassy.

In typical Japanese fashion, the person who had been in the group the longest was titular leader, with a nameplate indicating "Honorary President", but the minister actually ran things. He started off with a prayer in Japanese and English, and I actually recognized the Japanese part as one I had memorized from their guide to Shinsokan, which is their version of meditation. Then we all simultaneously read 23 pages from "Nectarian Shower of Holy Doctrines" (English version). Fifteen people reading simultaneously at high speed when they have language skills ranging from native fluency to rudimentary turns into a bit of a jumble, but 23 pages wasn't quite as demanding as it might seem since the pages are only about 3" by 5" (it's a little pocket prayer book that contains the revelations Dr. Taniguchi, the founder, reportedly received from God over a short period back around 1931).

Anyway, after that we did self-intros, including how people came to Seicho-no-Ie (SNI). People were very interested in how I found out about their group through Rev. Toni and I was interested to see how many had been SNI since before they were born (SNI recommends expectant mothers read the prayer book to their unborn children to start them off right). One of the older Japanese guys had actually attended a Religious Science seminar of some kind in LA and knew about Dr. Holmes, spiritual mind treatment, etc.! Then we read through one of the articles with each person taking a paragraph. When we were done, we discussed it a bit and a couple of times I was asked what we (Religious Scientists) thought about this or that. Well, acting as an international spokesperson for a faith I came to less than a year ago was being a bit presumptuous, I suppose, but never being one to let something like that stop me I offered my ideas as best I have come to understand the two extremely similar paths.

The second article we went through briefly at the end was actually a piece written by Stuart, the middle-aged white guy I referred to earlier. He married into an SNI family in Japan and the piece described how SNI had influenced his life. Afterwards there was social time and some snacks. I had a chance to ask my contact, Toshiko, some questions about SNI, like who the statue above their main hall represented (it is the image in which God appeared during the aforementioned 1931 vision the founder Dr. Taniguchi experienced) and whether they had weekly services (no, not the custom in Japan, but they do in the States as it seems expected there). Stuart, the author of the autobiographical piece, joined us and extended and invitation to join him in a weekend SNI seminar in Chiba, an eastern suburb of Tokyo. I decided to do so since it was shorter than the other seminars I had heard about at their main training facility and we could help each other through any language problems (his Japanese is about the same level as mine--good, but not good enough to keep from getting totally overwhelmed at times). I also met the minister who will be running the seminar, who seemed delighted to have not one, but now TWO exotic foreign guests. The seminars are ridiculously cheap: 4,000 yen a day (about C$57) including accommmodation and three meals!

As if that weren't enough, Toshiko invited me to a SNI charity concert on the 28th, so I'll get to see the inside of their main hall, and asked if I would like to come along with her on a very special trip. Her husband died after only ten months of marriage and his annual memorial service will be held December 1 at the main spiritual headquarters of SNI, a temple in Uji City near Kyoto. I felt very privileged to be included. It should also work out well as I can combine that with a business trip I need to make to Kansai and a visit to some friends in Takasago near Kobe (Kyoto and Kobe are close enough to be considered part of the same Kansai megalopolis along with Osaka--it's hard to know where one ends and the other begins).

After we left, Stuart took me to a nearby Shinto shrine dedicated to Admiral Togo, who defeated Russia's fleet in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 (this was a monumental event in the sense that it was the first time in the colonial period that a non-white nation had defeated a European power. It especially shocked the colonial powers as Russia had the world's largest armed forces at the time).

When we parted I wandered over to nearby Harajuku, to the spot I wrote about a while back where all the outrageously dressed teens hang out on Sunday afternoon to see and be seen. Just as I was about to leave, my friend Miuru came wandering along! She had visited my home in Calgary with her boss when they went to Canada for a vacation last October, but a couple of weeks ago when I went to the bar where they work, her boss was there but it was Miuru's day off. So the Universe worked to bring us together after all. I had no idea she ever went there. She was fairly sedately dressed in comparison with the crowd, though: Gothic style, all black including a black lace shawl, but with mauve-streaked reddish-blonde hair (not the look I was accustomed to seeing her in!)

Miuru introduced me to a couple of her friends, we posed for pictures, then I was off for yet another major event!

A friend of mine named Saya plays keyboards in a band in her spare time, and she was playing in a "live spot" in Koenji in western Tokyo. I got there early, did some e-mail in a cheap internet cafe nearby (again, just what I was looking for dropped in my lap) and then went back about 45 minutes before she was to go on. A couple of band members whom I met last year saw me on the street and guided me in. I met Saya, listened to the band which preceded them (pretty good), and then watched in amazement as her band, Baru Bora (named after a Japanese cartoon character) set up. I had no idea it was such a big band! Fifteen people in all crowded onto a tiny stage in front of about 50 patrons in a basement bar about the size of an average Canadian rec room.

The music was, if I had to label it, more or less jazz. They did a couple of songs I didn't recognize, then did their own versions of Georgia on my Mind, Knockin' on Heaven's Door and the Doobie Bros. song "without love, where would you be now". What made the renditions particularly special was the male lead vocalist/trumpet player. Think a combination of a major personality disorder and a series of bad acid flashbacks and you get some idea of his style (visually, a wiry little guy in camo with a Jamaican-style knit cap and black plastic sunglasses in the dark). It was more endearing than it sounds, though, and it was a great joy to see a bunch of Japanese just really let loose and do their thing.

Well, as you can imagine, that made for a pretty full day!

In case you are wondering why I wrote a lot about this social stuff and very little about my research, it's because I'm doing data entry right now. I could write reams about the great accounting data I am working with (consolidated financial figures in Japan! Finally!) but I think sumo wrestlers, Gothic teens, little-known religous groups and obscure jazz bands make for more interesting copy!

Monday the 9th was a national holiday, Taiiku-no-Hi (Physical Education Day). In case you have been keeping track, yes, they have a lot more national holidays in Japan than in North America (between 50% and 100% more depending on the jurisdiction in NA). In the evening I had an appointment to get my hair coloured. This was the first time I was going to have this done in Japan. I had no idea what the experience would be like, but I needed to have it done (hate those grey roots and temples). My friend in the band had recommended a friend of hers whom I met last year in the bar that bears the band's name, so off I went to Harajuku to meet my new Tokyo hairdresser.

The 'salon' was a very tiny place on a back street in Tokyo's funkiest youth-oriented area, Harajuku. I had brought all the supplies with me from the salon I use in Canada, including dye, shampoo, conditioner, etc. It took forever and cost about twice what it costs in Canada (8000 yen, or C$114), but it looked great! My hair has never been so shiny and tangle-free. I was very happy, in other words.

During this three-hour job, we made small talk in Japanese almost continuously. I think I did pretty well except for one spot where it later became obvious that I had misheard the word 'biyooin' (beauty salon) as 'byooin' (hospital). She may have wondered when she asked about Canadian beauty salons and I told her they were all government run and due to budget cutbacks it took three hours or more to see a doctor in one, but she never let on. Made me wonder what other things I had missed!

Mid-week I went to Haneda Airport for the first time in order to meet one of my housemates who was returning to Japan temporarily due to an illness in the family. Haneda airport is Tokyo's domestic airport, though there are a few international flights (mostly to Taiwan, which, as an international diplomatic outcast, was "punished" by not being transferred to Narita International Airport, where all the other international flights go, when Narita was built way, way way out in the boondocks). Anyway, I arrived early and had time for a good look around. Apparently it has been given a thorough facelift. I had heard it was dingy and small, but it actually seemed great, at least from a visitor's (as opposed to a passenger's) perspective.

Once my friend had left, one of her friends, a salesman with a liquor distributor (they handle beer from Pacific Western Brewery in Prince George, BC, among other things) invited me and another of her friends to spend the day with him. He chauffeured us around in his brand-new BMW 528, taking us to Kamakura to see Hokokuji and Hachiman Jingu. The former is a Buddhist temple that is famous for its bamboo grove. There's a tea house there where we drank Japanese macha (a special kind of green tea), ate little Japanese candies and contemplated the peaceful scene with a carefully cared-for garden and the sound of gently falling water (as well as all the bamboo, of course). The latter is a temple to the Shinto God of War and was built to honour those who died when the Mongols' attempt to invade Japan 700 years ago was thwarted by a storm (the origin of the term "kamikaze", or "Divine Wind").

Incidentally, for those of you tryig to figure out the difference, Buddhist temple names in Japan usually end in -ji or -tera/-dera (all the same character, just pronounced diffferently), while Shinto shrine names usually end in "jinja" or "jingu" (the "jin" means god or gods). However, it's not quite that simple as Shinto shrines often accommodate small Buddhist temples within their precincts and Buddhist temples often accommodate small Shinto shrines. I seem to recall having read a historical reason for this, but nowadays it may facilitate one-stop shopping for religious services, as Shinto ceremonies are traditionally performed for various birth and coming-of-age ceremonies, while Buddhist priests typically look after funerals.

We ended the day with a tasty meal at a restaurant on the seashore in Fujisawa. Then he drove me all the way home, while I marvelled at his on-board navigation system (a little TV that shows where you are and a map of the surrounding area, and can also find the shortest route to a destination, etc.). This system can also double as a TV, but the video signal goes off as soon as the car starts to move to reduce accidents (you think cellular phones are distracting--how about a home-run in the bottom of the ninth when the Hiroshima Carp are attempting a comeback win over the Chunichi Dragons!).

Throughout the say my Japanese again got a real workout. We talked about everything from Canada's various liquor regulations (try making sense of THAT topic to anyone even in English!) to changes in Japanese managerial practices. I am very fortunate to be getting all this practice as I have signed up for another Japanese language test to be held on November 26, so the more practice, the better.

That brings us up to date, but I have quite a weekend planned. On Saturday afternoon I'm going to Kamakura to meet my friend and former housemate Aya, her family and their many cats. On Sunday afternoon I'll be having my first date in Tokyo! I put a personal ad in an English-language paper and had five replies. Two were from Japanese, one from a Turkish Cypriot, one from a Brit of East Indian origin and one from my Sunday date, Allen, a 35-year old, 6'2" black American sailor (I know what they say about sailors, but if he has a girl in every port the others must be very lonely--he has been stationed in Japan for 16 years!). We're going to go to the Ueno zoo, one of the few attractions in Tokyo neither of us has been to. They have pandas, but apart from that I don't know much about it. I'm still e-mailing the other guys to see whether we will meet--one Japanese is already out as he is married (but was at least decent enough to admit it).

Next week I have also signed up for a noon-hour Japanese cooking class run by the municipal government, and then on the weekend of the 21st -22nd I'll be in Chiba for a spiritual training seminar run by Seicho-no-Ie (the Japanese religious group that is a lot like my home church).

So there you go--romance, religion, history and food--how can you help but stay on the edge of your seats!

Love and Peace to you all!

Teri

Hi Folks- [sent October 24, 2000]

Well, I felt the earth move today. No, my date with the American sailor didn't go THAT well--we had a small earthquake at 8:17AM, followed by a minor aftershock at 8:46AM. Nothing major--just enough to shake loose items on shelves and make the building sway a bit. If you are just about anywhere in Japan for a month or more you are likely to have such an experience.

Back to Mr. Navy and our date at the Ueno zoo. He was very handsome and rather nice, but just too quiet for me, I think, and his tastes (WWF and horror movies) are exactly everything I dislike. I seem to overwhelm low-energy guys (imagine that!). Anyway, I got to see pandas, a tiny baby gorilla and several baby macaques (Japanese 'snow monkeys', the most northerly non-human members of the ape family). And it is all helpful experience. I didn't date for 14 years, so these experiences all help me to define exactly what it is I am after. Once I have THAT set in my mind, together with faith, it has to appear. And I have a date with a French sommelier (wine expert in a restaurant) who seems very romantic (we correspond in French), so there's hope yet!

While at Ueno station on the way home I also got yet another lesson in the never-ending evolution of Japanese sanitary facilities. Traditional Japanese toilets are flush with the ground and you squat over them. Often there is a small basin in the top of the tank where you can rinse your hands with the water as the tank refills after flushing. Squatting is more hygenic (there is no seat to touch) and supposedly better physiologically, assuming you have the necessary sense of balance. Western-style facilities are becoming more common, though, and many now have sound effects (self-conscious Japanese women otherwise sometimes keep flushing in order to cover the sound of the tinkling). The most modern also have built-in spray and dry units so no paper is required and can even take your blood pressure and check your output for signs of diabetes. But even after adapting to all these changes the latest one caught me by surprise. The top of the stall was covered in chicken wire so I couldn't stand up!! Apparently they have had a major outbreak of male perverts attempting, through the use of mirrors, hidden cameras and cups with long wire handles, to observe women 'in the act' and even gather samples! The chicken wire, which I had elsewhere seen over the tops of stall doors, was an attempt to prevent such mischief.Those arrested for such highjinks have included a number of executives and high officials, including some from the justice system itself.

It's all a good example of what Dr. Holmes wrote about repression (SOM p. 628): "Let one go for years with some unexpressed longing, and he will have created such a desire that it will have become irresistible in its inclination towards expression. People often become seething caldrons within because of inhibited action."

In pre-Meiji Japan, before it opened to the West, Japan had relatively open views towards sexuality in all its expressions. Court life was fairly decadent, peasants had the earthy approach that comes from living with the cycle of nature and animal husbandry, and merchants used their wealth for hedonistic expression in "pleasure quarters". Unfortunately Japan opened to the West at the height of Victorianism and imported all the "guilt and shame" baggage that was so prevalent in that era. It is still paying the price for not moving on.

You might recall from last time that I got a big package of this sweet-potato-based candy from a friend of my friend Yoshiko (i.e. from the tea-totalling liquor salesman with the BMW). This was way too much for me to consume within the prescribed shelf-life, so I went down to the dining hall and tried to give some away. Most foreigners who live here have an aversion to Japanese food, especially the sweets, so I found few takers. Then I extended the tray to the lady who is the resident manager, expecting her, as a Japanese, at least to take a piece. Well, darned if she didn't say (in Japanese) "for me--why thank you!" and take the whole tray! This was a great example of the serendipitous benefits of cross-cultural miscommunication, as she and especially her husband love that candy, which is not generally available outside a few special stores. Ever since she has been as sweet as can be to me!

I also discovered that the sound I thought was a frog outside the dorm was actually a kind of Japanese dove! OK, so Miss Audobon Society I'm not--it sure sounded like a frog to me! (the first clue it was not was when I heard it coming from up in a tree!)

On Saturday the 14th I went to Kamakura to visit my friend Aya and her family. Kamakura, which is about an hour and a half from Tokyo, was the capital of Japan when the bakufu ("tent government"=rule by shoguns, who were in principle military leaders) was established back in the late 13th century and has a lot of history, including its most famous "resident", a "Daibutsu", or great statue of Buddha (I think it's something like 37 feet high).

Our first destination, a Shiseido factory showroom, turned out to be closed (Shiseido is Japan's largest cosmetic company). Undaunted, we went to see the nearby statue of Kannon, who is often interpreted as the Buddhist goddess of mercy (this is not an exact translation, just the way it's usually explained if the explainer doesn't want to get into way more Buddhist theology than I am capable of). It is about 80 feet high even though it is only a half-length depiction (from the waist up). Then we went to my favorite incense store where I not only stocked up on my favorite incense, but bought several cute incense holders. From there we went to Aya's house. On the weekends her family converts the living/dining room into a small antique shop, and I caught the tail end of the day's commercial activities. I had met her parents before, but got to meet her grandmother and some of the cats they keep, including a bad-tempered 16 year-old one that sits on the kotatsu like a throne (a kotatsu is a blanket-covered low table with a heating element undeneath that keeps you warm when you sit at it even if the room is cold--and central heating is almost unknown in Japan. The temperature now dips routinely to 10 or 12 at night so the individual room heaters in the dorm have been switched on and we have been issued blankets).

At Aya's I also got to ask some questions about the butsudan (altar for the veneration of ancestors), which is a fixture in most Japanese homes. Small offerings of food are left at it and prayers are said there ideally twice a day. Another mystery was also resolved when I was taken to Yuigahama, the beach after which my favorite incense is named. The day ended at an Italian restaurant where I ate way too much (will I ever learn??).

During the week I went into Tokyo a couple of times and experienced the full crush of rush hour. Being wedged in like a sardine spurred me to a spiritual insight, though: at times like that it's easier to feel one with all mankind--or at least the large chunk of it that calls Greater Tokyo home!

One day my business took me to northeast Tokyo and I dropped in to Sensoji, another temple to Kannon. It is Tokyo's main tourist temple. Among other things, people gather around a large incense burner and waft the smoke towards different parts of the body, the idea being that it has curative powers and will fix whatever ails that part.

A brief walk from there through an area filled with "love hotels" took me to Kappabashi. (Love hotels offer a 4,000 yen=C$55 'kyukei', or 'break', during the day, the purpose of which is exactly what you're thinking) Kappabashi is the mecca for Japanese restauranteurs. Wholesalers offer everything from plastic sushi for your menu display case to uniforms, take-out plastic trays and steam-breathing dragons (useful for tacky Chinese restaurants). I bought a low-rimmed wooden rice bucket for making sushi. You have to mix sweetened rice vinegar with the rice, and a wooden receptacle is considered the ideal for this.

I met with Toshiko, my contact at Seicho-no-Ie, and got the details of the weekend spiritual seminar in Chiba. I am told that Chiba, just east of Tokyo, enjoys a reputation as Tokyo's most boring suburb, against stiff competition, but still I was very much looking forward to it.

I also went to a brief cooking class where we were shown how to prepare several Japanese dishes using seasonal ingredients. The main instructor was a very lively woman who was clearly inspired by the TV show "Iron Chef" (Ryori no tetsujin), which some of you may have seen--it is broadcast across the US and Canada. She also had a small army of assistants to cut and chop once she had shown us the technique. There were about 30 people in attendance, all women except for one brave young guy who turned out to be from my residence. All but one of the other women were Asian housewives, Chinese/Korean women either married to Japanese guys or here with their foreign husbands while they (the husbands) studied or worked. The organizers took a lot of pictures which are supposed to be on the web soon at www2.ocn.ne.jp/~aoba. If you check it out, I'll be the only tall redhead looming over the crowd! (photos not there yet)

On the topic of Japanese food, I have developed a strong affection for a couple of fruits which are common in Japan but less often seen in Canada: kaki (persimmons) and nashi (Asian pears--pear-like in taste but yellowish-brown and shaped like an apple). Try them if you see them in the supermarket.

Now, to the main event: the Seicho-no-Ie spiritual seminar in Chiba October 20-22! I had very little idea what to expect, but was prepared to just sit back and let things unfold. I had read enough SNI materials to know that everything would be broadly in line with my beliefs as a Religious Scientist, so I was relaxed about that, just a little nervous that I might inadvertently do something offensive, as ritual plays a much bigger part in SNI than in Religious Science.

I arrived on Friday about 11:45AM after a three-hour commute from Yokohama. I became an instant celebrity the moment I arrived, especially when people realized I could speak and write Japanese. It was a bit overwhelming. One other foreigner, an American guy who married into an SNI family here in Japan, also participated. We were the first foreigners to particpate in a seminar in Chiba--and probably not many have anywhere in Japan, though SNI does hold seminars around the world for foreign followers.

I was issued sheets and a bunch of meal tickets and taken upstairs to the main room where I would spend most of the next three days. It was a 90-mat tatami room (tatami are straw mats used for flooring in traditional Japanese rooms. Each is about 6 feet by three feet, and the size of a room is usually given in mats.) At the front was a large stage. In the centre of back wall of the stage was a large piece of calligraphy with the characters for "jisso" (True Image world, i.e. the perfect world created by God, as opposed to the phenomenal world we perceive with our senses, which is distorted by impure thinking like anger, etc.).

The calligraphy was in a frame with sliding wooden doors so it could be covered at night. In front of the framed calligraphy on stage was a table with a couple of ceremonial stands on which papers were piled. A bunch of books were also piled on the table. In front of the table was a half-sized tatami mat for someone to kneel on when performing ceremonies. On each side of the table were boxes with the characters for "treasure box". They were also adorned with ropes in the Shinto style. Above the box on the right was the flag of Japan (a red circle on a white background), and above the box on the left was a box with the flag of SNI. It is very similar to the Japanese flag: a white background with what looks like an orange toothed gear in the centre, and set into the "gear" is a cut-out that looks like the swastika that is the symbol of Buddhist temples (not the Nazi one--the Nazis flipped it backwards) and within that swastika a green cross. I think this was intended to represent the unity of Christianity (the cross), Buddhism (the swastika) and Shinto (the orange colour of the "gear"). There was also a "wand" with long folded strips of paper hanging from it just like the ones used in Shinto shrines.

Above the stage was a horizontal banner announcing the 39th seminar in Chiba. At the left was a vertical banner about venerating ancestors and at the right was one about God and the President and VP of SNI.

In general, the whole set-up of the stage reminded me of a Shinto shrine's altar. I later discovered that the papers on the ceremonial stands were tickets to upcoming events and the boxes (which were filled with books) held the names of people involved in SNI activities. These things were all there to be blessed and then held in a purified holy place.(Shinto is the indigenous pantheistic religion of Japan and co-exists with Buddhism, most people loosely belonging to both).

SNI is very big on the idea of gratitude, since according to the Bible one must be reconciled with everything and everyone before one can truly unify with God, and being truly reconciled means being grateful that things and people are the way they are, not just tolerating that fact. The most obvious manifestation of this emphasis on gratitude is that everyone does a slight bow with the hands together in a prayer-like position in front of the chest and says"arigato gozaimasu" (=thank you, literally 'I am grateful') everytime they see someone, every time someone does something, everytime they are going to start or stop saying something, and during the chore time, when one cleans the toilets, vacuums the hall or whatever. It sounds a little bizarre at first, but I found it hard to stop doing it after three days!

In general our activities divided into four types of things: lectures, ceremonies, miscellaneous practices and daily life maintenance.

The lectures were the least memorable part, mostly because I was not able to understand several of the speakers very well. The person I understood the best was Mr. Izumi, who was the department head for renseikai (the term for these seminars). He was a great speaker by any standard. Japan has traditionally not valued public speaking skills very highly, so good speakers like him really stand out. He also tended to talk about the topics I had studied in SNI's English and Japanese-language materials, so that helped, too. Chairs were provided for the two of us foreigners and for some very old people who found sitting in the traditional position on the floor difficult, and at times I was even brought a zabuton (cushion) or two to provide some padding on the otherwise unpadded chairs. Most people sat on the floor. The audience varied widely, with an average of about 40-50 and a maximum at any one time of about 100. Many people who were unable to spend three days there came just for a day or a part of a day. About 35 of us stayed the whole time and the total participation was 267. Usually over 90% of those present, apart from the SNI employees, were women, but on Sunday perhaps 20% were men.

Many of the lectures included reading bits of various books published by SNI, and during these moments people stood unobtrusively at the sides holding the book in use in case anybody wanted to buy a copy.

The ceremonies were perhaps the most fascinating part, though also the most physically demanding (sitting still for up to three hours, much of it in formal prayer posture). All the ceremonial stuff was done on stage by men dressed in white shirts and light blue skirts like those worn by Shinto priests. The exception was the leading of prayers and chants/recitations. This was done by both men and women wearing normal clothes (a suit or dress).

On Friday we did the ancestor memorial service. This was preceded by a lecture on the ceremony and by small group discussions about gratitude to ancestors. Veneration of ancestors is such a big part of traditional religion and culture in Japan that it is almost unimaginable to practice religion there without this in some form--I am told even Christian churches incorporatee it in one way or another.

For the ceremony itself each person writes the names of his or her ancestors on special cards about the size of a bookmark. These are gathered and during the ceremony are passed among people who are chanting SNI's Holy Sutras and prayers. You might recall I had expressed surprise when I went to the reader's meeting a few weeks ago and we read 23 pages of the main Holy Sutra in English. Well, that was nothing. We did the whole Holy Sutra, Nectarian Shower of Holy Doctrines, all 93 ages of it, several times during the various ceremonies. It was read very fast, much faster than I could follow, especially when the lights were lowered. The fact I was tring to read the little pronunciation guides that are in roughly 4-point type didn't help either. So my first experience with dokuju (recitation) during the Ancestor Memorial Service was a bit overwhelming. However, I soon realized something beautiful about it. The recitation, when done in Japanese by people who know both the language and the practice, has a beautiful rhythm that I had not sensed when we had done it in English. I have often felt most connected to God during music, and hence this music-like quality of the recitation gave me a similar feeling even when I didn't exactly understand the meaning.

The whole idea of veneration of ancestors seems somewhat odd to a Westerner at first, but on deeper reflection I did find value in it. Even modern psychology tells us a lot of our emotional problems, which can later even become medical problems, result from poor relationships with our parents and other family members. Truly healing these conflicts, whose effects often persist long after the other party has passed on, can only be beneficial. My own relationship with my parents, including my late mother, has improved a lot in recent months, and this whole process further moved things along.

Saturday we did one major ceremony and one shorter one which was repeated several times on Sunday.

The major ceremony was the Mind Purification Ceremony. Everyone is given a piece of paper on which they write things they want to change, actions they want to apologize for, or other things that are troubling their minds. The paper is then folded in four. The lights are lowered, incense is burned, prayers are said and then as the Holy Sutra is recited people file up to the front of the room where they set the paper alight and stick it in a cage to burn, symbolizing the release of these negative thoughts. Then they go up to the altar at the front, bow, and put a pinch of some powdery substance in a little burner. CPL members will recognize the strong similarity to our own Burning Bowl Ceremony.

The shorter ceremony was the Manifesting the True Image Ceremony. This one was the one I was best able to participate in, as it basically consists of repeating the words "Jisso enman kanzen" over and over, which even someone with no Japanese at all can quickly learn to do. The words mean something like "The True Image World is Perfect Harmony". Again, there is a rhythm that develops during this that is quite beautiful, especially when one is oneself able to contribute to the creation of that rhythm.

Sunday we did the Mutual Prayer for Healing ceremony. Everyone was given a form and if you had anything you wanted help with (a medical, family or financial problem, for example) you wrote a prayer request on the form. About a quarter of the people submitted forms. I submitted one saying I wanted to meet a suitable life partner. I hadn't understood what was going to happen next, though, so I was quite surprised! I thought these would be taken off somewhere and someone would say a prayer for me. However, all those who had submitted forms were brought up on stage (actually a very old lady and I were seated on chairs right in front of the stage; the others sat Japanese-style on cushions on the stage itself ). Then a blackboard on which people had been writing was turned around and wheeled up. On it were written our names and the nature of each of our problems! So much for confidentiality! Anyway, we did a Shinsokan meditation (see below) with the special addition of parts related to each of our problems. It was very moving for me in two quite different ways. First, the fact that complete strangers in another country would pray to help me touched me deeply (even as I write it brings tears to my eyes). The other thing was that seeing people do affirmative prayer in a style so completely different from what I was used to really brought home how universal the teaching is. (for non-CPL members: in affirmative prayer we do not ask for things from God or bargain with It; instead we visualize the things we wish for as already existing, in the belief that our thoughts will create our experiences in the phenomenal world. SNI and other New Thought groups do much the same thing)

Throughout the weekend we also did Shinsokan each day. Shinsokan ('meditation to see God') is SNI's unique form of meditation/prayer. At the beginning and end there are specific invocations and prayers to recite. In the middle is the meditative part. It has a fairly rigid set of physical guidelines as well regarding posture, hand position, etc. In partcular the hands are to be held with finger tips at the level of the middle of the forehead. This is surprisingly tiring after only a few minutes. Personally, even with the accommodation of sitting on a chair instead of the special SNI sitting position on the floor I found the physical demands distracting. I need to spend some time practicing the different parts before I can put it all together. From an English-speaking minister who attended part of the seminar and the American, who had attended some SNI seminars in America, I learned that SNI uses different styles for its ceremonies in different countries (e.g. robes or business suits for those performing ceremonial duties). The shinsokan requirements are pretty standard, though, apart from translation into the local language.

(For those CPL members who were fascinated by the kiai (=shout) at the end of the invocation in the Shinsokan, it seems that the one for women is *substantially* more subdued!)

The third aspect of the weekend was a variety of miscellaneous activies like a little exercise each morning (my sore derriere on day three suggests more of this would be useful!), singing SNI holy songs and, strange as it may seem, "laughing practice". After some introductory cheerleading, for five minutes or so we would all stand in a big circle and laugh our heads off. Even if you found this difficult at first, the sight of 50 usually very reserved Japanese people ranging in age well into their 80s laughing uproariously had to get you in the mood! At one point one of the volunteers also helped us along by wandering about the room wearing gag glasses with funny eyes painted on them. We also sang one song that reminded me of the one we learned at the RS youth camp this summer. It is short and the words are accompanied by hand gestures. I was trotted up to the front to accompany the lady leading the singing in doing these gestures, to the great amusement of all concerned.

Finally, we had to deal with daily life issues like eating and sleeping. Meals were prepared in a tiny kitchen on the ground floor. They were tasty but simple and quite light Japanese fare. The schedule ran from 4:40AM to about 10PM (11PM for those like me who bathed at the end of the day instead of rushing through supper to get there and back). We slept on futons (Japanese bedding intended for use on the floor) in the same big second-floor tatami room where all the events were held. A drape was drawn across to separate the men from the women. The building has no shower facilities, so we went off to a nearby sento (public bath) to wash up Japanese style (i.e. you scrub up sitting on a low stool in a big common room and then after rinsing thoroughly you soak in clear, extremely hot water--about 42-43 degrees Celsius).

The missionary centre had clearly outgrown its facilities, as one could see from our daily life there, as well as a glimpse into the offices, which resembled astronauts' quarters in terms of space. A major funding drive is underway, and no doubt before long they will have more comfortable facilities, as do some other centres. However, I think the experience of the spartan facilities added a level of learning. The way we slept was very similar to a homeless shelter in North America, yet we were all grateful to sleep anywhere by the end of the day. And though the food was not the heavy, luxurious fare Western events often supply, we were so busy that when we got hungry we were very grateful for a simple bowl of rice and vegetables, too. The cost was minimal (6,000 yen for three days and two nights including accommodation and all meals), which I think is also a good strategy. One feels grateful for this and so perhaps more inclined to support some of the other fund-raising activities (building fund drive, purchase of books, purchase of copies of the various magazines for distribution to prospective new members, etc.). The more I reflect on my experiences, the more different levels I come to appreciate. And rather impressively, the timing of our activities was kept with military precision. I wish SNI would come run some of the academic conferences I have attended!

At the end of the seminar on Sunday we all gathered in a big circle and held hands while singing a song and then lined up to shake hands and thank each other the way athletes sometimes do at the end of a big game. When I went downstairs to leave, to my surprise the staff and volunteers had lined up by the door to clap for each person on their way out!

All in all it was an overwhelming experience in a multitude of ways. By the end I was exhausted and when I got home I had a big meal and fell asleep for ten and a half hours! Perhaps the most impressive thing was the warmth and love I felt there. I was a bit nervous the first day, calm the second day and really into it by the third day. People seemed very touched that someone would spend the time to come to their event and learn, and I in turn was very touched by their efforts to help me, a very square peg, fit into the proverbial round hole.

My experiences may soon also appear in print here! Once they found out I could write Japanese, they asked me to write a brief article about my impressions, which I did. If it suits their needs it may be published in their Chiba newsletter. My first publication in Japanese!

Sorry for the length of this, but I wanted to get it all down, if only for my own memories. And I have lots more stuff coming up, so stay tuned! Besides dinner with my SNI contact, my date with the French sommelier on Thursday (his e-mails are *so* romantic!), and an SNI charity concert on Saturday, I have friends from the Centre arriving for a visit soon and I received tickets to a big SNI rally here in Yokohama on Nov 12. I will get to do absentee balloting for the Canadian election that has been called for Nov 27, and then December 2-5 I will go to another SNI seminar in Uji near Kyoto and see some friends near Kobe after that. The fun never ends!

Love and peace to you all!

Teri

Hi Folks- [sent November 4, 2000]

I met Marcel, the French sommelier, for coffee Thursday morning>(Oct 26). He was very handsome, but when he could get a word in edgewise over my chatter he used it to tell me in some detail about his "hereditary" gout (doubly painful to hear for me since in Religious Science we don't believe in the idea of "hereditary" disease). We'll see...but I haven't booked a chapel yet!

> The rest of that day was extremely busy. Most of it was spent

>visiting the Japan Foundation and Tokyo Stock Exchange libraries

>to fill a few holes in my data (independent variables are now

>done, unless I think of new ones to add). For lunch I bought

>(mumbling here regarding exact number) pastries at a French patisserie

>near the Japan Foundation and sat out in the courtyard. The place

>is infested with pigeons (i.e. rats with wings), and at first

>I was intent on not feeding them. However, I had not counted

>on their persistence and fearlessness. They came and packed at

>the cumbs as I sat on the steps, and one even perched on my purse

>beside me. I tried to scare them away, but I guess they had learned

>that people are not cruel enough to actually hit them, so even

>when I was waving my hand within a millimetre or two of their

>beaks they just refused to budge. A couple of times their wings

>even brushed up against my legs. When a big crumb dropped and

>a couple of them started fighting over it, within seconds hordes

>of the things descended from everywhere in the courtyard. Just

>then the maintenance guy came by to collect the garbage and we

>shared a laugh over my predicament. Some situations need no words...

> My change from lunch also brought me my first 2,000 yen bill

>(about C$28). Believe it or not, the introduction of a 2,000

>yen note was supposed to be a measure to stimulate the economy!

>Besides commemorating the new millennium (and pedants can wonder

>why not a 2001 yen note) the idea was that it would cause vending

>machine operators to spend large sums to adapt their machines

>to take the new notes, retail merchants to buy new cash registers,

>etc., thereby stimulating the economy. This has a superficial

>plausibility since vending machines are vastly more common here

>than in North America and are used to peddle everything from

>soft drinks and ice cream to beer, flowers for forgetful husbands,

>undies for bashful women afraid to tell a clerk their size and

>porno mags for those too ashamed of their tastes to buy them

>in person. However, anyone who thinks about it more than a second

>would realize the expenditures would be completely wasteful,

>and one might as well go out and build a bonfire with the money.

>Moreover, rather than spend a fortune converting their machines,

>the operators chose the much simpler expedient of putting stickers

>on them saying they don't accept 2,000 yen notes (most also don't

>accept the 500 yen coin now as some no-goodniks discovered a

>500 won coin from Korea, worth about 1/10 as much, was the same

>size and weight and began importing them in large quantities).

>The 2,000 yen note idea is typical of the level of economic thinking

>in Japanese official circles, which have spent trillions of dollars

>on similarly wasteful public works (bridges and tunnels to nowhere

>and such), and goes a long way to explaining why Japan has been

>mired in painful recession for the better part of ten years.

> That day I also dropped in to the Canadian Embassy to get papers

>for absentee voting in the November 27 federal election. While

>reading them in the lobby I ran into Brad Klak, the Alberta government's

>representative in Japan, and his assistant Masako Tanaka. Small

>world! Later, on the way home, I stopped off in Shibuya, where

>the largest record stores in town are. Until then I had not had

>much success in trying to find something quite rare in Japan:

>Japanese music! Oh, you can buy so-called J-pop everywhere, but

>traditional music is not actually very widely sold. Finally in

>a foreign store, Tower Records, I found a small selection and

>bought a couple of shamisen CDs (shamisen is that three-stringed

>banjo-like instrument I mentioned a few reports back). Like most

>Japanese music, they cost a fortune (almost C$40 for a single

>CD), as the music business is one of the remaining several where

>cartels and price-fixing are specifically authorized by the government

>and discounting is illegal.

> My last stop for the day was a sento, or public bath. I had

>been in one during the Chiba SNI seminar, but had little time

>to enjoy it. This time I chose one that was recommended in a

>guide book and allowed myself the luxury of soaking Japanese

>style for an hour or so. As I mentioned last time, in a Japanese

>bath you sit at a stool and wash and rinse first, then climb

>into one of several large communal tubs of hot water to soak.

>The Tokyo city government started to subsidize these baths years

>ago when many people lacked bathing facilities in their homes.

>Nowadays almost everyone has at least a micro-shower in their

>apartments, but they are still subsidized and cost only 400 yen

>(C$5.75). To attract clientele many have become quite luxurious,

>offering several variations on the bath, saunas, etc. The one

>I visited had a bubbly bath, a jet bath, a scented bath with

>medicinal herbs, an outdoor bath in a quiet little garden, and

>an electric bath (a mild current passes through the water which

>is supposed to stimulate you, but just makes my muscles cramp).

>I paid the extra 350 yen (=C$5) for the sauna, and struck up

>quite a conversation with a local lady who goes there three times

>a week. Besides the relaxation, I find sento a good place to

>meet people to chat with, as there is invariably someone, and

>sometimes several someones, who wants to take advantage of an

>opportunity to talk to a real live foreigner who can speak Japanese.

> Saturday evening I went into Tokyo to attend a charity concert

>put on by Seicho-no-Ie (SNI) to raise money for orphans around

>the world, including those at the orphanage SNI itself runs in

>Tokyo, some of whom I met at the event. It was held in the main

>hall of the SNI HQ building. Including a U-shaped balcony along

>the back and side walls it appeared to seat about 600 people,

>and was about 80% full. The stage had light-coloured vertical

>wood panelling with a framed calligraphy of the characters "jisso"

>(True Image World). In front of it was a wooden box like the

>one in Chiba, and off to the left were a grand piano, an upright

>piano and two large kettle drums. This room is where they have

>testimonials and lectures on Sundays (but not what we would call

>a service).

> The choir came out first, ten men and 18 women. They began with

>some of SNI's hymns to the accompaniment of the grand piano.

>Later they had just the men and then just the women sing, and

>the music turned to German classical stuff (some actually sung

>in German). They had soloists and some violinists, and then after

>the intermission they brought out a whole orchestra, and later

>the orchestra and choir performed Mozart together. The performances

>were very good, at least to my untrained ear, and the two hours

>rushed by in no time. On the way out I ran into Rev. Abe, the

>English-speaking minister who helped me in Chiba, and his wife.

>Some of the people from Chiba were also there and came up to

>say hi. (I have since learned that the segment of my last report

>that dealt with the Chiba Renseikai, which I gave to my SNI contact,

>has been posted to their Intranet for internal study.)

> Living in this residence has been my first exposure to foreigners

>who have lived here a long time. Now I understand why so many

>Japanese marvel at anyone who can eat with chopsticks, likes

>raw fish and speaks Japanese. With the exception of the descendants

>of Korean and Chinese slave labourers brought here before and

>during WWII, most of the long-term foreign residents in Japan,

>even those who have been here ten or twenty years, never eat

>Japanese food of any kind if they can avoid it, can't use chopsticks,

>are completely ignorant of Japanese customs, have nothing good

>to say about the place, and don't speak any Japanese beyond "thank

>you" and "good morning" (and the latter hardly counts, since

>it is "Ohayo", pronounced like the US state where Cleveland is).

>You might wonder why they stay, and the answer seems pretty simple:

>Japan is one of the few places in the world where one can make

>a decent living just by being a foreigner. The sole fact you

>are non-Japanese and speak a foreign language (preferably but

>not exclusively English) is enough to get you a job here that

>can earn a modest but comfortable living from part-time work.

>Most teach English first to get sponsorship for a work visa,

>but many eventually get some other kind of work that involves

>English language skills: proofreading company documents, waiting

>tables in an English pub, or whatever. I can't understand how

>people can be so immune to their environment, but many seem to

>manage to hardly notice that they are in a different country.

>I sometimes don't know whether to laugh or cry when I realize

>someone I know is completely oblivious to the signs and spoken

>announcements that have been warning them every day not to do

>what they are doing due to a major risk of injury!

> The Japanese government makes it extremely difficult, indeed

>almost impossible, for foreigners to become permanent residents

>of Japan, never mind citizens, even if you marry a Japanese and

>have kids born in Japan, something which seems on the face of

>it to be blatantly unfair, and probably is. But one can see how

>those bureaucrats came to the conclusion that foreigners would

>never fit in here...

> On Wednesday, November 1 I went with a woman from the residence

>to see an ukiyoe museum. Ukiyoe are Japanese woodblock prints.

>The Japanese had the most advanced system of print-making in

>the world back in the late 1700s and 1800s, and their print-makers

>had a major influence on Western art once Japan opened up to

>the West. In particular, the Impressionists drew from Japanese

>work. Anyway, ukiyoe are my favorite art and those of you who

>have been to my home have seen dozens of reporoductions of them

>on my walls.

> Myrna, my companion for the expedition, is a US Air Force wife

>and decided to come to Japan to escape her husband's posting

>to Oklahoma and to get some experience teaching English as a

>second language as a possible career portable enough to cope

>with the frequent moves in her husband's job. She is more of

>a sculpture enthusiast, but jumped at the chance to go along

>with me when I mentioned I wanted to go to this museum I had

>seen a poster for in another ukiyoe museum.

> Our destination turned out to be a surprisingly modest two-room

>affair on the fifth floor of a high-rise office tower. The two

>rooms put together were about the size of a large Canadian living

>room. The rotating exhibits this month were of a relatively little-known

>artist whose work spanned the 1840s to 1880s (the "Golden Age"

>of ukiyoe was the 1790s). I filled Myrna in on what I knew about

>ukiyoe and her practiced eye pointed out a number of things about

>them that I had never noticed (like the use of texture in certain

>apparently "white" parts of the picture). Myrna was also not

>entirely unacquainted with the art form as she has been collecting

>a series of books with erotic ukiyoe in them. Ukiyoe got their

>start as a means of illustrating porno books--what other type

>of publication has a greater incentive to work on improved forms

>of "graphic" illustration, if you know what I mean? The series

>she is collecting is noteworthy for the massive size of the phalluses

>depicted (if they were anywhere near anatomically correct it

>is no wonder Japanese men of that era were typically bent over

>by the time they got old!).

> Moving right along...our mutual sharing of knowledge got an

>unexpected bonus when the director of the museum, an elderly

>Japanese man with a bit of English and a pronounced stoop (hmmmm...)

>came out to welcome us and answer a few questions. The museum

>showcased his personal collection accumulated over 30 years.

>So although the museum was very small, this turned out to be

>a blessing as one would probably not get this personal touch

>in a larger institution.

> Apart from these expeditions, I have been trying to meet an

>Indian businessman who answered my ad (poor guy--my cell phone

>battery has died twice during our conversations) and practising

>the posture used during Seicho-no-Ie's Shinsokan meditation.

>I use the posture during my morning and evening treatments as

>well as an afternoon meditation. With three 5-10 minute periods

>a day in that position, I am starting to be able to tolerate

>it better each time. My goal is to work up to a half hour straight.

>I have also learned about the first four-fifths of the words

>for Shinsokan in Japanese. By the time I go to Uji (December

>2-5), I want to have both the words and the posture down pat

>and have enough familiarity with the Holy Sutra in Japanese that

>I can keep up when it is recited (I have received a version in

>Roman letters, which should help a lot).

> It is now definitely fall here, and the leaves on the trees

>are starting to change. Daily highs are 15-20 degrees and lows

>10-12, but it feels colder due to the dampness. Stores did have

>some decorations for Hallowe'en, like pumpkins and such, but

>it is not the big deal here that it is in Canada. There are costume

>parties for adults at some bars, and that's about it. However,

>with Hallowe'en out of the way, the stores have now started displaying

>Christmas stuff (and playing recordings of Jingle Bells in computer-generated

>English non-stop). Christmas is completely devoid of any religious

>overtones here (most people have no idea of its original significance),

>but has become an accepted part of the Japanese calendar. The

>Japanese traditionally give gifts twice a year, in June and in

>mid-December, and New Year's has always been a big deal, so Christmas

>just fits in between rather nicely as an excuse to party. I have

>read a (possibly apocryphal) story that back in the 1950s the

>Japanese department store executive who first started to popularize

>the idea of Christmas, for obvious commercial reasons, got his

>research a bit muddled and included in his first display a figure

>of Santa crucified on the cross! I don't expect to see anything

>quite that surprising, but am nevertheless looking forward to

>seeing how the Japanese "do" the holiday.

> Next time I report I should have details of my upcoming visit

>to a Kirin Beer brewery Nov. 9 and the big Seicho-no-Ie gathering

>in Yokohama Nov. 12 (20,000 people, from what I hear!!). The

>day after that my friends Alexis and Bob arrive from Calgary.

>I may also go into Tokyo for some night-life tonight if I feel

>up to it, and/or attend a coffee/mixer tomorrow at the International

>Lounge here in my ward (set up by the municipal government to

>facilitate the adaptation of foreign residents to Japanese life).

>

> Looking further ahead, on the 18th I will be meeting the

>family of the sister of the person I will later travel to Kobe

>to meet. I just discovered that that family is Christian, so

>they should be interesting to talk to (Christians make up about

>one-half of one percent of the population in Japan, less than

>the percentage 350 years ago!) Before the month is out I should

>also have voted in the upcoming November 27 Canadian election,

>assuming Elections Canada gets my voting kit here in time. November

>26 I write a Japanese language test. And in early December I

>will travel to Uji near Kyoto, to the main SNI spiritual training

>Center, for another renseikai with my SNI contact, whose late

>husband's memorial service will be held there during our visit.

>Right after that I will go down to Kobe (not far from Uji) to

>visit friends.

> For now, as Porky says, "Th-that's all folks!".

> Love and Peace to you all.

> Namaste.

>

Hi Folks- [sent November 13, 2000]

November 6

Saturday night (Nov 4) I went to a bar run by a friend in Tokyo. I had intended to go earlier but she was away for quite a while due to some major surgery. Her bar is a typical Japanese one in most respects: located on the second floor in a warren of tiny backstreets so only the cognoscenti can find it, it seats only a few people (maybe 10) and charges a horrendous cover charge by Canadian standards (3500 yen, about C$50).

After being greeted I was rather surprised to see an ashtray on the counter. Not that an ashtray is a surprise: the Japanese smoke everywhere, cigarettes being one of the few things that are actually cheaper here than in Canada (about 250 yen, or C$3.50 a pack). The anti-smoking movement is still in a very apologetic infancy here (the message on cigarette packs is "since there may be worries about your health, let's not smoke too much. And smoke courteously please.")

No, what was surprising was not the ashtray's presence, but its contents: not the usual collection of butts, matchsticks and well-chewed gum, but a handful of spent 9mm and .45 calibre shells from semi-automatic pistols. This is not exactly a common sight in Tokyo, since Japan has very strict gun laws (basically if you live out in the countryside they *might* let you have a shotgun if you jump through enough hoops, but rifles of even the most obsolete type are very rare and handguns completely forbidden; even a live cartridge possessed without a permit can net you jail time).

To my relief it turned out that these were not the remnants of a prior altercation between patrons, but souvenirs of a recent trip to Hawaii by one of the regulars, who happened to be seated at the bar. The lure of forbidden fruit being what it is, one of the big attractions for Japanese travelling to the USA, or anywhere else where weaponry is readily available (like Chinese army ranges), is the chance to bang off a few rounds and bring home a souvenir target. Rambo's was tacked up on the inside of one of the shutters, as he proudly showed me (incidentally, in Japanese, "rambo" means "violent"--coincidence??).

Tuesday my friend Myrna and I went to the Ota Memorial Ukiyoe Museum. This month the exhibit, which changes monthly, showed the influence of Chinese print-makers on Japanese ukiyoe (wood block prints). Afterwards we stopped off for some noodles on the way to the sento (public bath). It was Myrna's first visit to one, so I showed her around. Like many foreigners she found the water temperature too high for her liking, but like a trooper did a quick dip in all the various baths. It was much busier than any other time I had been there and TWO foreigners attracted even more attention than I do by myself. Myrna speaks no Japanese but nevertheless endeared herself to fellow bathers with dramatic charades to convey her meaning.

Wednesday evening I went in to meet this Indian businessman who had answered my classified ad (his name, believe it or not, was "Lulu"). We had gone through a long process to finally get together, as he works long and unpredictable hours and twice my cell phone batteries died when he called. Before meeting him I did a number of small tasks in Tokyo. I also came upon a real treasure: a special issue magazine listing all-you-can-eat places in Tokyo! As if to remind me not to go too overboard, though, I also caught part of a fashion show for leather clothing as I passed through the Tokyo International Forum, a huge ulta-modern facility in central Tokyo for exhibitions and conferences.

Anyway, I call my evening encounter with Lulu a meeting rather than a date as I discovered that,contrary to what he had originally said, he was in fact married, and I DON'T date married guys. We ended up just sitting on benches in the courtyard of an office building near the station closest to his apartment and chatting for about half an hour. I think he lost his nerve when he realized how much he missed his family and that's why he finally fessed up. There was no doubt about what his original intentions were--he had made a point of reminding me that India was the home of the Kama Sutra. Just as well. He was another nice but very meek guy (I had been impressed that he read fairly intellectual books, including Ayn Rand and a bunch of novels by Nobel prize winners, but that stimulation seemed to have done nothing to build his personality).

The evening wasn't a complete write-off, though, as I came across a display of products from Okinawa in the station while I was waiting for Lulu (the regions of Japan often set up such displays to promote their local specialties; I also saw one recently where the same was being done with Canadian products). At the seminar I went to in Chiba a while back, one of the ladies had slipped me a small bunch of candies in a Kleenex. Two of them were of a type I had never had before that was actually quite good. They are called "kuroame", or "black sweets", and are made with a black sugar called "kokuto" from Okinawa. I had found more of the kuroame candies in a local drug store, but at this Okinawan display they actually had the real thing: raw "kokuto". The Japanese tend to favour subtle flavours, so most sweet things like pastries are only slightly sweet, much less so than in North America. This had always left my sweet tooth wanting, but this kokuto was just the thing. It is basically raw, unrefined sugar that has been roasted. It turns nearly black and has a fudge-like consistency with a strong taste somewhere between brown sugar and molasses. Heaven! They also had some candies which were made of kokuto mixed with honey. They have the same texture but less of the molasses after-taste. Double heaven! I bought three bags of the honey ones! So even Lulu's revelation didn't leave a sour taste in my mouth that evening!

(Incidentally, I used to think I couldn't live in Japan permanently because of the crowding and lack of really sweet sweets, and later I added the fact there was no church of my type here. The more spacious life I have led in Yokohama and my discovery of kokuto and Seicho-no-Ie have now removed those barriers to my thinking!)

Thursday I headed into Yokohama to visit the Kirin Beer factory with my friend Aya, who used to rent a room in my house in Calgary while she was working on her social work degree at U of C. While I was waiting for her I saw a Buddhist monk begging for alms (they are required to get their food or money for food this way). This is a fairly common sight in high-traffic locations in Japan. Business must be good, as I have yet to see a thin mendicant monk.

After Aya and I had lunch we went out to Namamugi to see the brewery (Namamugi means "raw grain"). Kirin is traditionally Japan's largest beer maker, though its supremacy is now under threat. The factory we visited is the ninth-largest in size of Kirin's eleven breweries in Japan, but is the one that produces the most beer. It was set up very slickly for tours, with a concourse running through the whole place with wide observation windows. They have a tour every day at 2:45PM for miscellaneous visitors, as well as many bus tours. That day Aya and I were the only two stragglers, so we got a very personalized tour (i.e. the guide spoke slowly so I could understand). Part way through we got to taste the beer at three different stages. I actually liked the middle, unfinished stage better than the final product (the initial stage is downright awful). Apparently most women prefer the middle stage, according to the guide, but most men like the final product better. It made me wonder why they don't figure out a way to sell the middle stage product if they want more female drinkers!

Along the way we were also shown where the name Kirin comes from. Apparently, one of the ways they used to judge the quality of beer in Europe long, long ago was to have guys in lederhosen sit on a bench that had been liberally wetted with beer. After a certain time they stood up, and if the bench stuck to their trousers enough to lift the bench, it was granted a certain grade, depending on the type of skin used in their lederhosen. The highest grade was given to beer that would lift a bench when the guys wore pants of giraffe skin leather. Giraffe in Japanese in "kirin", so the name was actually to indicate its high quality, which was necessary when beer was first popularized during the Meiji period (1868-1910). At that time a bottle cost the equivalent in today's terms of 4,000 yen, or almost C$60, so people had to think it was good stuff to fork out that much! The price today is a more modest 120-250 yen a can (C$2-$4). The logo with that weird-looking horse comes from the fact that Kirin means not only giraffe, but also a mythical beast with the legs of a horse and the body of a dragon. It was this mythical creature that was chosen for the label.

The Yokohama factory produces not just beer, but also "happoshu", a beer-like beverage made with a lower malt content. Brews with less than a certain malt content attract a substantially lower tax rate. A few years ago some bright marketing type here realized that would allow the stuff to be sold much cheaper than regular beer. One after another the beer companies have all introduced such beverages, which have been selling like hot cakes, eating (or drinking?) considerably into traditional beer sales. I love this story as it so perfectly illustrates the fallacy of the idea one still hears all too frequently from would-be Japan experts that "the Japanese don't care about price". I bought a happoshu T-shirt to wear to class next time I talk about this issue in my "Doing Business with Japan" class.

After the tour we were shown to a tasting room where we could exchange two coupons we had been given for the drinks of our choice. I used one to try this happoshu, despite my aversion to beer (and indeed all alcoholic drinks), and one for an orange drink Kirin also makes (Kirin makes soft drinks to take advantage of the fact they are already selling to the same wholesalers who distribute both beer and soft drinks). I don't know what it is in beer that gives it the taste I don't like, but whatever it is, that taste is not as strong in happoshu, so if I had to choose one or the other, I'd actually prefer happoshu (incidentally, it is actually a little stronger than standard Japanese beer: 5.5% vs 5%).

When I got back there was a letter from the Chiba branch of Seicho-no-Ie. I had a little bit of trepidation when I picked it up, as I could feel it was thick, and was a bit startled to pull a four-page letter out of the envelope. Four pages of of Japanese handwriting can be a bit daunting, but fortunately it was written by one of the guys there whose penmanship is not too hard to read (some handwriting I can't read at all--the characters can look totally different when handwritten compared to the typed versions). Anyway, my fear almost dissolved to tears when I realized the reason the letter was so thick was that after briefly thanking me for some pictures I had sent them, he had hand-written out a copy of a special affirmative prayer that Seicho-no-Ie has for people who are looking to get married! (this was the prayer request I had made at the seminar; Seicho-no-Ie has special affirmative prayers for just about every purpose). I was very touched by his thoughtfulness.

Saturday morning I happened to see a magazine with movie listings and resolved on a whim to go into Shibuya and see a movie that night. "Shaft", a remake of the 1970s movie, was just opening, and that was my choice of mindless entertainment for the night. I had mixed feelings about choosing it. I used to be a big fan of action flicks, but hadn't been to one in a long time, partially due to being too busy to go to the movies at all, and partially because I have been trying to practice better mental hygiene (i.e. not putting negative stuff into my mind, since we believe that our thoughts create our experiences, so we don't want to be full of thoughts of anger, fear, revenge, etc. that will outpicture as negative experiences).

The movie was fair for that type of picture and I did feel quite different watching it from my action pic experiences of old. I used to get caught up in the emotion and really want to see the "bad guy get what's coming to him". That type of negative emotion just wasn't there this time, but still, I'm not sure about whether this isn't perhaps a genre I should just abstain from altogether. In any case I am not likely to attend a lot of movies while I'm here in Japan: a regular ticket costs 1800 yen (C$26), and a reserved seat will set you back 3,000 yen (C$44).

After the movie I wanted to check out the book department at Tower Records nearby, as I had heard good things about it. My route there took me through Hachiko Square, which is named after a dog who waited faithfully for his master at the station every day for seven years after the master's death (the Japanese are suckers for stories of maudlin sentimentality like this, especially ones that involve loyalty). There is a bronze statue of Hachiko in the square, and many people meet there as it is a clearly defined landmark with numerous signs to direct even the dumbest foreigner or country bumpkin to the spot. I made a loop to take a look at the statue and just then a middle-aged guy put his little bichon frise puppy in betwen the statue's legs and it started to bark (the puppy, that is). It was so cute! You could just see all the women around melting at the sight and their guys' eyes lighting up as they saw their gals in this vulnerable state.

On my way out of the square a 30-ish Japanese guy approached me and said he wanted to speak English for practice. This is a fairly common occurrence in Japan, so I played along to be helpful, but it became obvious he had more on his mind. The conversation dragged on more than a polite limit for detaining a stranger, and as he got more animated he started to touch me more and more, which is very much outside the realm of polite Japanese behaviour (people here just don't touch one another, period). I was already uncomfortable enough with this when he suddenly suggested going to a nearby izakaya (Japanese-style pub or tavern), and I politely but firmly withdrew (despite his really cute puppy dog eyes).

It turned out he was not the only would-be Romeo on the prowl that night, though. In the magazine section of Tower Records' book floor I saw this 30-ish black guy with what seemed to be an African accent trying to chat up a 20-ish Japanese woman in broken Japanese. I eventually browsed through the whole floor and then as I was getting on the escalator I realized that guess-who was beside me. Yes, George, the book floor romancer. He started in on me on the way down, but I wasn't biting.

I am sure neither of these guys was all that particular given their 'sales technique', but still it somehow made me feel good to get some attention, even if it was unwanted.

Sunday I got up early to attend the big "Daikoshukai" (Grand Seminar) being held by Seicho-no-Ie in Yokohama. I started to get some sense of the magnitude of the event when I saw volunteers in the train station several blocks from the arena directing people to the seminar site. I had that feeling of people congregating that you get as you approach a major sporting event: everything and everybody just seems to be pouring in one direction.

There was quite a hubbub when I got to the Yokohama Arena where the koshukai was to be held. There were quite a few signs in Portuguese for the large community of repatriated Brazilians of Japanese origin (many Japanese emigrated to Brazil, Peru and Argentina right after the war; many moved back to Japan in the late 1980s with the encouragement of the Japanese government, which was trying to cope with a labour shortage at the time and thought these Brazilians would assimilate better than other foreigners due to their Japanese blood). Inside they even had simultaneous translation in Portugese and Chinese (there is also a large community of ethnic Chinese in Japan who are descended from wartime slave labourers and some pre-war traders). However, I seemed to be the only "real foreigner", as the Japanese tend to associate the term with "white person". This granted me the usual instant celebrity status, as it became apparent when I went in with my contact, Rev. Abe and his wife. The people at the reception desks gave me an embarrassingly long round of spontaneous applause just for showing up!

Rev. Abe and his wife had been in early and had staked out good seats about twelve rows back from the stage. This was extremely close, as the arena was HUGE!. Eventually the whole thing filled up completely except for the top part of the balcony, and even there there was a smattering of occupied seats. At the end when they announced the attendance it turned out 21,403 people had showed up!!! This was an increase of about 700 from the previous year, and more than double the total of five years earlier. I was absolutely staggered by the size of the crowd, which was probably larger than the Sunday congregation of every New Thought church in Canada put together.

Compared to the Renseikai I attended in Chiba, this event was in a much more familiar lecture format. The first speaker from the local missionary centre told some jokes, gave a brief history of Seicho-no-Ie and reported the experiences of some people who had written to him about how Seicho-no-Ie had changed their lives (giving up the bottle, etc.). Then three people came out to give testimonials in person. The first was a woman who had had family problems. The second was a junior high school girl who wanted to be a pianist. She talked about how she had really thought of Japan's strong points as really just being wealthy and having a functional society, but that her involvement in SNI made her aware of other blessings like the Emperor, the flag and national anthem (both highly contentious political issues in Japan, where nationalism is often equated in the popular mind with rightists and militarists). Her naive nationalism was both disturbing (I have a lot of reservations about nationalism of any sort anywhere) and touching, as it was good to see a Japanese who felt good about her country and was proud of it. The third guy talked about his stepmother (problems with step-parents seems to be a recurrent theme).

The climax of the morning's activities was a lecture by Rev. Masanobu Taniguchi, the grandson of the founder of SNI and its current vice-president. His father, the current president, now 81, was a soldier in WWII who became involved in SNI when he was invalided out of the army early in the war. He married the only daughter of the founder and was adopted into the Taniguchi family, taking their family name. This followed the traditional Japanese practice, particularly common among merchants, of adopting a capable person into a family to carry on the "ie", or "house", if a there was no male heir or if there was one or more but none was considered to have the requisite qualities. The grandson will in due course follow in his father's footsteps and head the organization, so it was quite an honour to hear him speak.

Rev. Taniguchi's morning speech was intrcductory in nature, discussing the basic ideas of SNI, such as that there is nothing outside of God and that all religions are just different pathways to the one God. He illustrated the latter point by showing how SNI's Nagasaki Main Temple was built in the Shinto style, its Uji spiritual training centre was built in the Buddhist style due to its proximity to the famous temples of Nara and Kyoto, and its new Toronto church was built in the style of the Christian churches which are most accepted locally (actually it looked like a stunning contemporary design in natural wood that could easily be a showcase for the Canadian forestry industry).

We had picked up box lunches as we came in, and during the lunch break a couple of the people I had met in Chiba came up to re-introduce themselves. One was actually sitting right in front of us! I went out to the lobby to join the enormous line for the ladies' room, and the wandered around the lobby. I was feeling a bit distant as I scanned for a drinking fountain when suddenly I got jolted back to reality. A tiny little old lady suddenly grabbed my hands and kept saying "subarashii" (wonderful). Whether she meant that the event was wonderful, that SNI was wonderful, that it was wonderful that I, a red-headed foreigner, was there, or what, I don't know. Then she said she was seventy-five and didn't need to dye her jet-black hair, stroked me several times on the arms and shoulders, and disappeared into the crowd as suddenly as she had appeared, leaving me dazed and amused.

I went back into the main hall and took note of the stage layout. Across the top was a banner saying "SNI Daikoshukai" with Rev. Taniguchi's name and title on the left end. There was a large multi-panel TV screen in the centre on which the speaker was shown (he would have been almost invisible at the far reaches of the arena). On the left was the SNI flag and on the right was the Japanese national flag. In the center was a table/podium with a blackboard behind it. On the left was a huge flower arrangement and on the right was a table for speakers to wait at. The edge of the stage was also lined with flowers. There were signs prohibiting photography, so I was not able to get a photo.

Things got underway again with an all-woman choir. Then Rev. Taniguchi spoke again, this time on the ethics of artificial insemination, cloning and other new reproductive technologies. He seems to be very much focused on the leading edge social issues that people are talking about these days, as I have also read articles by him on topics like the environment. After his speech there were two more testimonials, a Shinsokan meditation led by Rev. Taniguchi himself and closing comments by a lady from the local missionary centre.

When things were over I was expecting a quiet retreat to have tea with my companions, Rev. Abe and his wife. Suddenly, however, his wife grabbed my hand and dragged me into a crowd. It took a couple of minutes for me to realize what was going on. As Rev. Taniguchi made his way off the stage, he came down into the crowd to shake hands, and she had pulled me into position to be part of the action. The crush made a subway crowd seem tame by comparison, and it turned out I was just where he was going to turn, and a good three feet from the narrow pathway that had been cleared for him. Undaunted, however, I reached out with my huge wingspan over the heads of the crowd and shook hands with him briefly as he passed. He seemed a bit ill-at-ease with this kind of adulation.

Once he had passed, I became the most celebrity-like person in the vicinity and was immediately asked where I came from and then had a dozen or more people want to shake my hand (whether it was because I was an exotic-looking foreigner or because my hand had shaken Rev. Taniguchi's hand, I don't know). Finally the crowd dissipated and I joined Rev. Abe and his wife and three young women for tea in the atrium of a nearby hotel. To my great surprise, Rev. Abe said he hoped that one day I would be a lecturer at a SNI seminar abroad, as they wanted to have as many native speakers as possible to make foreign SNI members feel comfortable. I have had delusions of grandeur about helping to establish stronger connections between SNI and RS, but sometimes opportunities still take one by surprise when they actually show up.

Rev. Abe also invited me to a party at his house on December 23, so my social calendar is filling up.

Later today (Monday) I will be meeting two of my friends from the Centre for Positive Living (my church), Alexis a professional photographer and the person who first directed me to the Centre, and her husband Bob Gardiner. My next report will chronicle our exploits together in Tokyo and environs.

To be continued....(use your imagination to fill in suitably cheesy organ music here)

Love and Peace to you all.

Teri

Hi Folks- [sent November 23, 2000] Hi Folks!

Right after sending my last report I headed out to Narita Airport to greet my friends Alexis and Bob, who were arriving from Calgary. Alexis is a professional photographer who took some glamour portraits of me that boosted my confidence at a pivotal time in my life and she later introduced me to the Centre for Positive Living, my church.

I had no lack of reading material on the way out to the airport. I recently started reading the Bible (King James Version), beginning with the New Testament, and there's plenty there to keep one going for quite a few trips. I have it in electronic book format, so it is quite convenient to carry with me and read on the trains. I had started to read it a couple of times as a kid or teenager, but never got further than a chapter or two into Genesis. I'm actually glad I didn't get further when I was younger, because having studied metaphysics a bit it now makes a lot more sense to me than it would have then.

Vying for my attention part of the way, however, was an average sized cockroach who scuttled back and forth across the subway car floor. None of the Japanese made any move to do anything about this, least of all the woman beside me who was so soundly asleep that she did not notice when it crawled part-way up her leg before returning to flatter terrain. I am generally a live-and-let-live kind of person, but I draw the line at roaches and so eventually it met an early demise when it came within foot reach of me. Even the cleanest place in Japan fights a never-ending battle against roaches due to the warm climate (Combat, the American roach killer manufacturer, even sponsors an annual contest to find the biggest roach in Japan). One seldom actually sees roaches, but traps are a common sight.

I got to Narita early and so I had about two hours to observe people greeting new arrivals at the airport. Japanese culture traditionally frowns on overt displays of emotion, and I thought this was a great opportunity to see just how far this restraint goes. Well, in short the answer is --pretty far. In two hours I did not see one case of someone greeting another with kisses or hugs, with the exception of a European gay couple who seemed to speak some Scandinavian language and kissed each other on the cheeks. The most emotion I saw any Japanese display was a father who greeted his 8-10 year old son who had been travelling alone. He toussled the kid's hair and then took him by the hand. Couples who were meeting each other generally didn't even touch, but just smiled at each other and paired off.

When Bob and Alexis arrived we headed downstairs to take the train into town (Narita is way, way out in the boondocks, so a cab costs about C$300, vs. C$14 for the train). On the way I helped build their confidence in my abilities as a local guide by getting off one station too early, but they kept following me anyway.

Tuesday we headed to Nihombashi just north of central Tokyo to the flagship store of Mitsukoshi, one of Japan's poshest department stores. Mitsukoshi was the core of what became the Mitsui group, one of Japan's famous industrial groups. It was originally a dry goods store founded in 1673 and distinguished itself by what were then major retailing innovations like a fixed location (right where the current store is) and fixed, marked prices. Prior to that merchants had taken their wares around to the homes of nobles and haggled over prices.

Our purpose, however, was not shopping, but observing the opening of the store at 10AM. With great flourishes and numerous announcements to build suspense, several uniformed female clerks and well-tailored store executives wait until the stroke of ten and then throw open the doors, bowing and welcoming customers with copious thank you's and "irrashaimase's" (irrasshaimase is the all-purpose greeting used by store and restaurant personnel and means a combination of 'welcome', 'step right up', 'don't be shy', 'how may I help you?' and 'thank you for coming'). Inside we paused to admire a huge statue of Magokuro, the Shinto Goddess of Sincerity (symbolizing the Mitsukoshi attitude towards their customers) and to listen to welcoming music being played on a huge Wurlitzer organ that was custom-made and installed in the current Mitsukoshi building when it was completed in 1935. Then we went downstairs to take a look at the Western and Japanese delicacies on display in the food floor. The temptation proved too much and we succumbed to a snack of French pastries. Most Japanese baked goods have the appearance but not the texture or taste of good European cakes and pastries, but these were very good.

From Nihombashi we walked down Ginza Street to the area most people think of when they hear the term Ginza, the intersection marked by another Mitsukoshi store and Wako Pearls (Ginza is actually the name of a fairly large district and derives its name from mints which used to be located there, 'gin' meaning silver in Japanese). Along the way we made detours to have lunch in a tiny noodle shop and to see the public part of the Imperial Palace grounds. Japan's Imperial Family is much more low-profile than the British Royals, and all you can see is the bridge and gate leading to the inner grounds of the palace. The bridge, known as Nijubashi ("twenty-bridge"), is a famous picture-taking site and Alexis did some networking with a young woman photographer whose job was to sit there all day and take pictures of groups in front of the bridge.

From the serenity of the Imperial Palace Grounds we headed for the hustle-and-bustle of Akihabara, the discount electronics district. Understated is not a word that comes easily to mind here, as the area is basically one gigantic electronics supermarket with everything from multi-storey chain discounters with 50-foot high neon signs and sound systems that blare out company jingles non-stop to one-square meter cubbyholes buried in a warren of similar outlets offering components like transistors, plugs and other do-hickeys well beyond my level of technical expertise to describe. We ended up in an electronics superstore where Bob spent his time drooling over the latest laptops and presentation projectors (he is a professional speaker, among other things).

My guests were showing visible signs of wear by this time, but the best was yet to come. Toshiko, one of my main contacts at Seicho-no-Ie, the Japanese New Thought group, lives in Ryogoku, near the sumo stadium, and we had arranged to meet her to have chankonabe at a local restaurant. The fourth member of our party was Americo, a Japanese Brazilian who had returned to Japan about four years ago with his father. He worked in Seicho-no-Ie's Latin American section at HQ.

Chankonabe is a stew which is the staple of the traditional diet of sumo wrestlers. Due to my interest in sumo I had wanted to try it for some time. There are several different varieties depending on the broth and type of meat used. We had two different kinds, one with a miso-based broth and one with a soy sauce-based broth. The miso one had more fish and fish balls, and the soy one had more chicken and beef. Besides the protein, each also contained potatoes, Chinese cabbage, bean sprouts, mushrooms and konnyaku (cubes of a jelly-like stuff that is high in fibre, has no calories and is made from the root of a sweet-potato-like plant).

Our table had two gas burners in the centre, each with a pot full of broth. The waitresses brought baskets and plates of ingredients which we boiled ourselves on the burners. There are quite a few Japanese dishes which use this "cook-on-the-table" technique, and they tend to be especially popular in the colder seasons. After we had eaten all the solids out of the stews, the waitresses skimmed the broths and added rice and raw eggs, then simmered them for a bit. Just when we were bursting, we had another delicious course to eat! Easy to see how the sumo wrestlers pack it on...(incidentally, there were no wrestlers there a tournament was in progress down in Fukuoka on Kyushu, the most southerly of Japan's four main islands).

The stews were both delicious and we had a great time. Americo was the first Japanese-Brazilian (or Brazilian-Japanese) that I had ever met. He also turned out to be a talented artist, who promised to do a pastel for Alexis and Bob (more on that later) and a firm believer in reincarnation who told us all about our past lives (I tend not to believe in reincarnation, preferring to think we go somewhere else when we're done here, but for the record Americo told me I was once one of the European traders in Nagasaki back in Japan's feudal period of closure to the outside world (1638-1853) and later was reborn as a Japanese child but died young).

When I got home I was pleased to find my absentee ballot package for the November 27 Canadian federal election had arrived. I wasn't able to vote right away, though, as I had to first get access to the Internet (not simple for me here). The problem was that you have to write in the full first and last names of the candidate of your choice on the ballot, but the package does not include the names of the candidates in your riding. To get that information you have to check the Elections Canada web site. The site also does not include all the names that will be on the final ballot, but only those that have been officially registered by the time you have to make your choice (i.e in time for the ballot to reach Ottawa by election day--unlike the US system we are now reading so much about). This was a problem for me as I always register a protest vote against the existing major parties by voting for whichever is the nuttiest party in my riding, and they are usually the last ones to get organized and get themselves on the ballot. I had to make do with voting for a party which has a moderately nutty platform but is actually taken seriously by a fairly large number of people, which dilutes the message I wish to send, since it is not obvious that I voted for them because I think they're nuts.

Wednesday we headed for Kamakura. It is now a small satellite town of Tokyo, but it was the capital of the shogunal (i.e. military) government of Japan for several hundred years. Our first stop was the city's most famous landmark, the daibutsu, or great statue of Buddha, a 37-foot high bronze figure that was cast in 1252 AD and has sat in the open since 1498 AD, when a tsunami (tidal wave) washed away the structure that once housed it. On the way Bob slipped and hurt his knee. He kept up the pace pretty well, though. I'm not sure whether the occasional flinches I noticed were pain from his injury or a the result of a fleeting thought of what would happen to stragglers in a group led by the Marquess Teri de Sade's "March-or-Die" travel company (it turned out that in the early part of the trip I set a rather more intimidating pace than my companions prefer).

While we were at the Daibutsu a couple of old ladies asked Alexis if she would pose with them for a picture, which she did. I was glad to see someone else shouldering some of the burden of celebrity that comes with being a foreigner here! I was also cheered to read that the statue weighed some 274,000 pounds, which made my own recent trip to the scales less discouraging.

After duly contemplating the Daibutsu we had lunch in a little mom-and-pop eatery nearby. The place seated maybe seven or eight people at most and we were at the counter where we could observe Mom and Pop making our lunch mere inches away. They appeared to be in their sixties and just a charming pair who had obviously grown into each other to the point it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Food was good, too.

Next stop was Hase Dera. The keynote attraction here is supposed to be a large statue of Kannon with an unusual history. In 721 AD down near Kyoto two Kannon statues were carved from the trunk of the same tree. One was used immediately and the other was "cast into the sea with prayers that it would reach land to which it had a karmic connection and save sentient beings". Fifteen years later it reached land and was eventually transferred to the present location. The statue combines characteristics of both Kannon and Jizo, both of whom are boddhisatvas, i.e. ones who could have attained nirvana or Buddhahhood but chose to stay behind to help others achieve salvation.

Of much more interest to me than the statue, however, is the fact that the association with Jizo mentioned above has led to the temple being a favorite for commemorating the souls of mizuko. Mizuko literally means "water children", but is the term used to refer to babies or fetuses who died from stillbirth, miscarriage, abortion or some other infant misfortune. There are rows and rows of little statues of Jizo, who is traditionally thought of as a guardian of children. Many of the statues are dressed in cute little hats, bibs, etc. and have toys like pinwheels or treats like sweets left for them. I have been to this place many times and never cease to be moved by these little statues and the stories that must lie behind each one (just writing about it makes me cry).

There are other halls housing other statues, but the most interesting is one that houses sutras comprising the entire Buddhist cannon (i.e. complete holy works). It is mounted on a vertical axle with handles so you can walk around it and turn the repository around. One revolution of the repository is considered by the Jodo (Pure Land) sect that runs the temple to be equivalent in merit to reading the whole collection contained in it. Mahayana Buddhism, the branch most prevalent in Japan and the one to which the Jodo/Pure Land sect belongs, is distinguished from the older South Asian Theravada branch in that Mahayana maintains that salvation can be attained by anyone, not just the few who can devote their lives to being monks. The "turn-the-wheel-instead-of-reading" idea is typical of the ways Mahayana seeks to make salvation accessible to the common person. Tibetan Buddhism forms the third branch of the Buddhist family tree, but the proper name for that type escapes me right now.

It was getting late by the time we left Hase Dera, but nevertheless we took the tiny little Enoden train back to Kamakura Station (the Enoden line is a veritable antique and often used in period pieces about Japan; it creaks along within inches of the houses along the route). From Kamakura Station we set out on foot for Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, a shrine to the Shinto God of War and Military Stuff (my translation). Our route took us along a little street lined with small shops where we stopped for sweet potato and green tea soft ice cream cones. While we were savouring these delicacies a young woman in a kimono came by with her little son, who was also in a kimono. They were obviously returning from the shrine, since this was the week of Shichigosan, or the coming of age ceremonies for boys aged three and five and girls aged three and seven (hence the name Shichigosan, which means 'seven-five-three'). The little boy was cute as a button and he and his mom posed for Alexis. We eventually did get to the shrine, but it was dark by that time and the steps looked pretty daunting so we went home.

Bob had business meetings the next day, so Alexis and I set off on our own for Nikko, about two hours north of Tokyo. Along the way I introduced Alexis to my favorite Japanese fruits, kaki and nashi (persimmons and Asian pears) and we had a long talk about being judgemental. This ended in considerable agreement: while we couldn't agree on which one of us was less judgemental, we did conclude firmly that the rest of the world was more judgemental than us ;-)

Nikko is most famous for Toshogu, a shrine dedicated to Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), the man who pacified and unified Japan around 1600 AD after over a hundred years of civil war. It was built by his grandson Tokugawa Iemitsu and was completed in 1636 (these things take time).

Toshogu was naturally our first stop. In contrast to most Japanese temples and shrines, which are usually austerely elegant, Toshogu is extravagantly, lavishly overwrought with fancy carvings and/or gold leaf covering almost every square inch. The crowds of tour groups were also pretty thick, though we stayed till it had thinned out. The leaves were quite colourful as well, which added to the visual sensory overload.

One of the most famous carvings at Nikko is one of the three "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil" monkeys on a stable occupied by the "only sacred horse donated by a foreign (NZ) government that is currently serving in a Shinto shrine in Japan today". Another very neat feature is the ceiling in a little Buddhist temple on the premises (while basically a Shinto shrine, Toshogu combines both Shinto and Buddhist elements). The ceiling is covered by a huge black and white painting of a dragon about 40 feet long. If you clap two pieces of wood together right under his mouth (but nowhere else), you get an echo that makes it sound like he is roaring Not surprisingly, it is informally known as the "roaring dragon hall", though the formal name is Yakushido.

Just outside Toshogu we stopped for a steaming bowl of noodles to warm up. The stand had been in operation for 300 years! I also had amazake, which literally means "sweet sake", but is actually a sweet, non-alcoholic, warming winter drink made from the by-products of sake brewing. It looks like watered down milk with bits of rice floating in it, but tastes good.

A few yards past the stand we came upon a Buddhist temple that was active rather than a tourist attraction. It invited everyone in, so we stopped to check it out. There was a large altar in the middle with statues of various deities and boddhisatvas arrayed to the right and left. I filled out a prayer stick on behalf of Alexis (it had to be done in Japanese) and we watched part of the prayer ceremony. The monk had a very elaborate ritual of hand gestures, bell ringing and other motions to accompany his chanting.

Our final stop was another temple, the famous Rinnoji (Tendai sect). It houses three very large Buddhas, and also has a garden and museum. The garden was spectacular with the fall colours, though the light was fast fading. We warmed up in the museum and then headed home, eating bento (boxed lunches) on the train for dinner.

(Incidentally, the train added yet another unique experience to my never-ending adventures with Japanese bathrooms. It had a motorized machine that rotates a disposable clear plastic sleeve around the toilet seat so that each user gets a sanitary spot to sit. This is probably to cope with the fact that many Japanese women find the idea of putting their derriere on a seat touched by someone else's derriere to be so distasteful that they either avoid Western-style facilities altogether or try to hover without touching down, with the result that the floors of the Western-style stalls are often the filthiest in any given washroom.)

Friday was girls' day out again, as Bob was occupied with his business affairs. Alexis and I went to Kappabashi, the wholesale restaurant supply area, to do some power shopping. Alexis bought happi coats, an apron, a pile of chopsticks and holders, and who knows what else. I bought two signs. One is a straightforward "Open-closed" sign in Japanese for my office door. The other is a real treasure (Alexis bought one, too). It says (in Japanese): "We strictly refuse entry to boryokudan (Japanese mafiosi) and drunks". We also mugged for pictures with some of the restaurant statuary, like life-sized fat chefs, dragons for Chinese restaurants and other oddities. Oh, and just to make sure no one remains entranced by the mystique of Japanese esthetic sensibility, I took photos of the myriad of tacky Christmas decorations being purveyed, including a motorized Santa in a cowboy hat doing the twist and Scooby Doo in a Santa outfit.

Proving that Japan is nothing if not a land of contrasts, our next stop was actually an exhibition of masterpieces of Japanese art in Ueno. Matsuzakaya, a major Japanese department store chain, has an art exhibition space on one of its upper floors, as most major stores do here. I had selected this exhibit because it had masterpieces of my favorite type of art, Japanese wood block prints known as ukiyoe. Most of this collection once belonged to Frank Lloyd Wright, but was purchased by a professor at University of Wisconsin when Wright ran into financial difficulties after having to make restitution to many collectors for having unknowing sold them restored prints as originals. I bought a video that shows the technique used to make the prints as well as a book of erotic work done by my favorite artist (I knew he did some erotic stuff, as almost all the artists did, but I had never seen any of it).

Alexis was somewhat the worse for wear by this time, but I had a carrot to dangle in front of her to keep her going: after picking up Bob at their hotel we headed for a sento (public bath) to soak in its numerous variations on the hot tub idea. We had noodles on the way in a little shop whose tiny interior belied the huge display of lights out front, and then soaked the day's aches and pains away at the bathhouse. There was a woman in the bath who spoke pretty good English, so Alexis also got to meet someone local in circumstances where there are 'no secrets'. The very hot water (42-43 degrees Celsius) drove Alexis out early. When I came out she had taken root in the coin-operated massage chair, but we eventually coaxed her out for the walk back to the station.

Saturday I left Alexis and Bob to their own devices and went to see a rather unusual family. Glenda, former student of mine, two years ago introduced me to the Suitas, a family that she taught English to down near Kobe and whom I will be visiting December 6-7. Mrs. Suita's sister and her family, the Ishiis, live in the Tokyo periphery, and it was to see them that I headed out even further into the endless suburbs of Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.

What's unusual about the Ishiis? Well, where do you want me to start! First, their jobs. Mr. Ishii is a gerontologist at a private university. His research is about the effects of stress on ageing (pretty hot stuff in Japan, which has plenty of both). He works with nematodes, one millimetre-long transparent worms, cloning them, manipulating their genes, and lots of other stuff I scarcely understand. He showed me the two tiny laboratories in which he has done world-famous research that was recently published in Nature magazine (I actually remembered reading about his research, though at that time I had no idea I would eventually meet him). His wife is one of the top people in Amway Japan. They lived in New Jersey a decade ago and love the United States, so in the same way that my house in Calgary is full of Japanese stuff, theirs is full of American stuff, and was built and furnished in an entirely American style. They are also among the one-half of one percent of Japanese who is Christian. Sitting in their American-style house eating beef stew and gazing at pictures of America, Amway paraphernalia and plaques with Biblical quotations like 'As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord (Joshua 24:15), one could easily forget one was in Japan. Mrs. Ishii also studied singing and wanted to be an opera singer at one time, so I spent a good part of the time watching videos of her doing concerts and singing hymns at churches and recital halls in the US and Japan.

The dinner was quite good. Besides the stew we had a mushroom gratin and a salad. The odd part was that it was all served with heaps and heaps of several different kinds of bread. The Japanese equate bread in Western cuisine with rice in Japanese cuisine, so they think it should play an equal role, though of course in the West many meals actually include no bread at all. At the end of the evening, having found out that I loved kokuto, the Okinawan black sugar candy, they presented me with a gift box of assorted kokuto candies they had been given while on a recent business trip to Okinawa! Apparently Dr. Ishii has been to Okinawa a number of times because people there live even longer on average than other Japanese, who are already the most long-lived people in the world. I am hoping this is due to kokuto consumption, though the fact Dr. Ishii does not eat these candies may cast some doubt on this theory.

Sunday Bob and Alexis had asked me to let them recover, so we just met for dinner. On the way I stopped off at SNI HQ to buy a copy of the Holy Sutra for Alexis, who had expressed an interest in getting one. I also wanted to get a second copy of it in Japanese for myself, one that had it written on a folded continuous sheet of paper rather than pages. When you are doing seikyo dokuju (recitation of Holy Scripture) the continuous sheet version is better because the next page pops up automatically rather than you having to fiddle with it. To my surprise, Americo, our Brazilian friend from chankonabe night, came up and tapped me on the shoulder! He was there coordinating for an event attended by a bunch of Brazilians and asked if I would deliver the pastels he had done for Alexis and Bob. I quickly agreed, since I would be seeing them in a couple of hours.

The pastels were beautiful abstracts, sort of "cosmic" designs, but little did I realize what I was getting into. The drawings were quite large and I ended up so nervous about guiding them through the Sunday afternoon holiday crowds that I eventually showed up on Alexis and Bob's doorstep an hour early in order to be sure I delivered them unscathed. We watched the tail end of the final day of the sumo tournament (Akebono, a 6'8", 520 pound Samoan from Hawaii, won with a 14-1 record) and then went out for dinner.

We wanted somewhere close and ended up at a Japanese-style Chinese place in the subway station building. I had a seasoned tofu-on-rice dish called mabodofu, Alexis had chahan, the Japanese take on Chinese fried rice, and Bob, the most adventurous, had kamiyaki, which literally means "stuff cooked in paper". Once again, a burner was placed on the table, and a wire basket was lined with thick rice paper to form a pot into which the stew ingredients (vegetables and beef) were dumped for cooking. The broth was very nicely seasoned with a peanut-ginger flavour.

Bob and Alexis left on Monday, and so I got back to work in earnest. My immediate task was to start getting some of the books and other research materials I had finished with shipped back to Canada. For my first effort I carefully wrapped up a four kilo package of books and lugged it off to the post office. The maximum was five kilos for book rate, and I wanted to be sure I was safely within the limit.

When I arrived the clerk told me the limit for book rate to Canada was TWO kilos. I showed her the brochure they had given me which seemed to indicate that this lower limit only applied if the printed matter was stuff other than books (like magazines, for example). She and the other counter clerk both read it and agreed that that was what it said, then headed off to see her boss to resolve the apparent conflict between the brochure and her hefty manual. She returned to tell me that all three of us had read the brochure wrong and actually the limit was two kilos even if everything was books.

Well, doing numerous affirmations for peace and harmony along the way I headed home to break up the package, then returned and got my first two shipments underway.

Tuesday I returned with 14 kg more of books. I duly showed her each bundle for verification that it was books, did a preliminary weigh-in of each one and then wrapped six more parcels. The seventh one I knew was a problems as it was a thick Japanese-English dictionary that weighed over 2 kg by itself. I weighed it in front of her and we agreed I would send it by ordinary sea mail. Back to my wrapping and taping for ten minutes or so (about six feet from the clerk), then back to the counter. Oh my, she says, you can't do it like that. You have to use this sea mail form to address it. Recognizing that the Japanese penal code still allows for capital punishment, I gratefully accepted the form and went back to work. Finally, after several yards of tapes and scores more affirmations all my stuff was on its way.

Speaking of affirmations, I finally got around to translating the marriage prayer SNI sent me a couple of weeks ago. Here it is:

"In the Mind of God there is only one being. I know that my soulmate exists. In the consciousness at the depths of my spirit I know where my partner is. Wherever my soulmate is, Love acts like a magnet, and we are drawn together until we are joined in Peace and Happiness. God, I thank you for creating my soulmate and for guiding me to a happy marriage." (This is an example of an affirmative prayer, i.e. one that does not ask God for anything, but rather develops the belief that the desired situation already exists.)

Well, I may have to add a wedding to this schedule if my soulmate shows up in the next week, but in any case I already have the following planned:

Nov. 23-eat Thanksgiving Dinner with Myrna and her former students at a US military hotel (Myrna is about to return to the USA)

Nov. 25-attend a speech at the Yokohama Women's Centre by Tsutamori Tatsuru, the first transsexual to teach at a Japanese university

Nov. 26-write the Japanese Test of Communications (an oral comprehension proficiency test)

Nov. 29-go to a hot spring with Setsu, a young Japanese woman who lives in this residence

Dec. 1-attend a reception put on by the foundation that is funding my work here

December 3-5-attend an SNI spiritual seminar in Uji near Kyoto

December 6-7-visit the Suitas and go to a fishing village, a waterfalls and a hot spring.

As usual, a full slate. Stay tuned!

Love and Peace to you all.

Teri

Hi Folks- [sent December 2, 2001]

Thursday, November 23 was American Thanksgiving, and in honour

of the

occasion my friend and fellow museum visitor Myrna had made

reservations for

a group of us at the New Sanno Hotel, which is a US Navy hotel and

hence

open only to those in the service and their families and guests.

Besides

Myrna and me, there was another American woman, Michelle, and her son

Nick,

who live in the residence with us, several of Myrna's former students

(she

recently quit her teaching job in anticipation of an early return to

the

USA), and a husky Chinese American guy from California named David. On

our

way into the hotel we were accompanied by another dorm resident,

Nicolaus,

who by coincidence is a French chef at the New Sanno's restaurant.

I was quite interested in this spot as it was my first

opportunity to

glimpse into the closed little world of the US military base system

here in

Japan. It turned out to be a nearly perfect replica of every anonymous

Holiday Inn in North America. The only clue that we were not in the USA

was

that almost every American serviceman, black or white, had a Japanese

wife.

Probably non-Japanese wives accounted for about 10% of the women there.

The dinner was traditional Thanksgiving fare, including turkey,

stuffing,

yams, pumpkin and apple pies, etc., and was noteworthy for the complete

absence of anything Japanese. The only concession to the Japanese

present

was that there were a couple of fish dishes, though both were very

non-Japanese (baked salmon in pesto sauce and grilled swordfish in

cream

sauce). We ate until we were all ready to burst, and then listened in

amusement as David, who works for Lucent and is perhaps 28 or 29,

explained

how to deal with women to Nick, who is about 13 (he may never recover).

After dinner Myrna and I went upstairs to the Navy Exchange,

which is kind

of a mini-department store. All US facilities in japan were under

"Threatcon

Alpha", the highest stage of anti-terrorist alert, so security was much

tighter than normal. Everyone was supposed to have their ID checked as

they

entered the Exchange to be sure they were US military-related, but

there was

no one at the door when I got there so I just went in. A little later

someone went around and threw out several Japanese women because they

didn't

have the right ID, but no one questioned me, which says something about

the

US military's idea of what a "real American" looks like.

Anyway, I couldn't buy anything there and there wasn't really

anything

interesting anyway, but my little visit did have the excitement of

"forbidden fruit".

Friday the 24th I had another culinary adventure. I had to go

into central

Yokohama and so I decided to detour into Chinatown and check out a

place I

had tried unsuccessfully to find a month or so agao. Armed with a map

downloaded from the Internet (a major undertaking for me given the

limitations on Internet access I live with here), I set out for a place

that

bills itself as the world's first conveyor-belt dim sum restaurant

(kaiten

yamucha no resutoran). It's on the second floor in the south part of

Chinatown near the so-called "West Gate". The idea is basically like a

conveyor-belt sushi place, except somehow they have steam coming out

from

under the conveyor belt. Some of the items also have their own little

electric steamers on the conveyor belt. You pick off the items you want

and

at the end they total up your tab based on the number and colour of

your

plates and steam baskets (each colour corresponds to a certain price).

Things got off to a somewhat inauspicious start when I went to

use the

ladies' room. The stall was the smallest I have ever been in--so small,

in

fact, that I was unable to sit down properly, as my knees hit the door

before my derriere hit the seat. Even the smallest things can be an

adventure here.

Dim sum (literally "tea drinking") is a type of cuisine that in Canada

is

generally eaten for lunch or brunch and consists of a variety of small

steamed, fried or deep-fried items which are usually brought around to

your

table on carts to view and select. In this case the conveyor belt takes

the

place of the carts. The items consisted of various gyoza (dumplings

that

have stuff sealed inside), shumai (dumplings that are open on the top

and

bottom so you can see what's in them), man (steamed buns with various

fillings) and miscellaneous small dishes ranging from spring rolls to

small

portions of lemon chicken or seasoned tofu. Although it is not a normal

dim

sum dish, the lemon chicken was the best I have ever tasted. In fact,

it was

all pretty good, certainly the best dim sum I have had here in Japan

and

vying with the best I have had anywhere (and I've had it in Hong Kong

as

well as Canada). The bill adds up pretty fast, though. My tab came to

about

C$50, making it by far the highest bill for any lunch I have had here

and

second among all the meals I have eaten (after the sumo special

chankonabe

described in my last report). If I go again it will probably be in the

evening, as they will soon start and "all-you-can-eat" for 2,000 yen

(C$29).

It may seem odd to Canadians used to our patronizing liqour laws, but

they

will also have all-you-can-drink in two hours (including beer, sake,

etc)

for 1,000 yen (C$14). All-you-can-drink deals are actually quite common

here, probably more common than all-you-can-eat.

As I waddled out of Chinatown I passed Yokohama City Hall, where

the

Red Cross was looking for blood donors. I had always assumed, based on

something I read long ago, that they wouldn't accept contributions from

foreigners, but today, prompted by the fact the sign said they were in

particular need of A-type blood, which is my type, I doubled back and

enquired. The rules have changed and so I started the process of being

registered and approved as a donor. The most bizarre part of this was

having

the guy go through a long list of diseases to confirm I didn't have any

of

them. Rather than take my assurance that I didn't have any diseases, he

went

through the whole list, despite the fact that I was lucky if I actually

knew

what one in ten of them was, Japanese medical terminology not being one

of

my linguistic strong points. He resolved this problem by giving me

graphic

descriptions of each disease, including pointing out the body parts

that

would be affected and doing charades to indicates the impact it would

have.

Worth the price of admission in itself.

Having passed this preliminary screening process and filled

out a

form, I was ushered into the bus where the donations were collected.

Inside

sat a nurse and a guy who must be the oldest practicing physician in

Japan.

His teeth were black as coal and he seemed almost comatose until I told

him

I was from Calgary. He then told me with some delight that he had been

to

Fort MacMurray to see the Northern Lights (the aurora borealis--orora

for

short in Japanese-- has allowed Yellowknife/Fort MacMurray to join the

handful of spots in Canada that Japanese tourists consider it worth

going

to, the others being Vancouver/Victoria, Banff/Jasper, Niagara Falls

and

PEI, home of Anne of Green Gables, who is spectacularly popular among

young

women here).

When the nurse beside Doc had finished prompting him on how to

fill out his

parts of the form, she took a small blood sample. They said my iron

level

was marginal (Doc added--"because she's a woman, eh?"), so I could only

give

200ml instead of 400ml. Anyway, I laid down on a couch where a young

nurse

took the sample, as they all ooo-ed and ah-ed over the fact I had

filled out

my address in kanji (Chinese characters) and was able to read the

forms.

When we were finished the nurse bandaged me up as if I had had my arm

chewed

off by a pack of wild dogs. Two days later I was still pulling bits of

adhesive off my skin.

On my way out I had to collect some more forms, including a

donor card, and

then I got my "loot". As a inducement to donate you receive not only a

free

can of juice, but a package of two band-aids, a toothbrush, and a

package of

some weird things you stick on your forehead to refresh you if you feel

tired while driving or working (the Japanese are chronically

sleep-deprived

almost to a person, so this is sure to be a hit product). In two weeks

they

will also send me an analysis of my blood, including cholesterol levels

and

such.

After completing some additional business I got home around

5:30PM to find

a letter from the Yokohama Women's Centre, the place where the lecture

I

wanted to attend the next day was to be held. It had a form in it

indicating

that I had to pay by that day, so I set out for a local convenience

store,

where one can pay most bills in Japan.

Most bills, that is--but not this one. Inside, I later

discovered to my

chagrin, it indicated one could only pay at a post office or financial

institution. Well, financial institutions here are all locked up at the

stroke of three and post-offices at 4:30, so I figured I was out of

luck

(none of them are open on the weekend, not even credit unions). I

walked

back home on the verge of crying from disappointment while trying to

reassure myself that I would be OK if I could just do a convincing

"so-sorry-I'm-a-dumb-foreigner-please-have-pity-on-me-despite-all-the-trouble-I'm-causing-you"

act. I think I took it more seriously than the circumstances warranted

as I

try very hard to follow all the rules here and it hurts my pride when I

can't (gotta work on that pride thing).

When I got back home I explained my predicament to Mr. Yokota,

the owner of

the residence, and he figured I would be OK if I just showed up anyway.

He

called the Women's Centre for me, found someone working late, and

confirmed

this, to my great relief. So all I had to do was my

"thank-you-Mr.-Big-Strong-Man-for-saving-this-poor-damsel-in-distress"

act.

Late Saturday morning, full of hope and a couple of pieces of

fruit, I set

out to attend the lecture. As it turned out, there was no problem about

having not paid in advance. The capacity of the room, a medium-sized

auditorium with a stage on the third floor of the Women's Centre, was

listed

as 100, and about 50 actually attended, including four men and one

crossdresser. The women were of all ages from 20s to pensioners.

Our speaker arrived just on time. Prof. Tatsuru Tsutamori, who

was billed

as the first transgendered university instructor in Japan, is slim and

170

cm tall (about 5'8"), but looked taller since she was wearing about 4"

heels. In appearance she was completely feminine, with long brownish

hair

(quite fashionable in Japan these days) and a denim jacket over a short

red

velveteen dress, but she used a normal male voice to give her lecture.

I had thought she was going to give a personal talk about her

life

and how people had reacted to her at the university where she worked,

but

the actual topic was quite different. It turns out she is what we would

call

a sessional lecturer at two mid-ranked Tokyo-area universities (a

sessional

is someone who is not part of the regular staff), and she got her

positions

several years after she "came out" and had achieved some celebrity as a

high

profile writer on gender topics. She spoke about why we should go about

creating a society that is beyond gender, but it seemed she really

meant

having a third gender for people who didn't fit into either of the two

commonly recognized ones. Unfortunately there were times when I didn't

hear

very well, as the sound system was inoperative and, like most Japanese

public speakers, who fear seeming overly aggressive, she doesn't

project her

voice all that strongly. (I have used feminine pronouns in the above

since

Prof. Tsutamori looks female, but I'm not sure that that's what s/he

wants,

since she uses her male voice and talks a lot about androgeny, and did

not

mention whether she had had surgery; unfortunately neither the

introduction

nor the speech gave me a clue as to what she preferred, since the

Japanese

tend to go to great lengths to avoid using pronouns to refer to people,

considering it less polite than using their names and/or titles. From a

purely legalistic standpoint she would always be a he in any case, as

the

Japanese are not allowed to change the sex designation on their birth

records under any circumstances).

After the speech she autographed copies of one of her books.

I

introduced myself briefly and headed off to my reward for sitting still

for

two and a half hours without a break (very hard for me), a visit to a

different sento than the one I usually go to, one that was on the way

home

from the Women's Centre (verdict: not as good as my usual haunt). On my

way

home around nine I passed a group of eight young men and women from my

residence heading out for a night on the town.

Though they always ask if I want to go with them, I wanted to

be

sure to get a good night's sleep, as Sunday the 26th I was scheduled to

write the Japanese Test of Communications. This is a new test that

focuses

on oral comprehension, as opposed to the much more established Japanese

Language Proficiency Test, which covers both oral and reading

comprehension.

Clearly the testing organization is hoping to carve out some market

share

among those who speak Japanese but do not read it. The vast majority of

students of Japanese speak it better than they read it due to the

complicated writing system, which includes about two thousand kanji, or

Chinese characters (mostly used to symbolize the meaning of a word);

two

46-character phonetic syllabaries, hiragana (used for grammatical

endings

and words with no assigned kanji) and katakana (used for foreign,

onomatopoeic and scientific words); and the 26-letter Roman alphabet

(thrown

in for exotic flavour).

The test was held at Gakushuin, a university near Mejiro Station in

north-west Tokyo. The long and winding route to the test site took me

past

numerous playing fields, where, incongruously, many dirt-covered

Japanese

guys in huge pads were playing American football or posing for pictures

after finishing (this is similar in oddity to finding a group of

corn-fed

mid-Westerners playing cricket in Kansas).

The test site doors opened promptly at 1:30PM. Our "host", a

balding little American guy who had had his smile muscles surgically

removed, checked our admission tickets against our ID and we were then

seated by assistant proctors. My boldness in being one of the first to

go in

paid off with a seat at the front just a couple of feet from a speaker

(a

bad thing at rock concerts, perhaps, but a very good thing at tests of

oral

comprehension). I seemed to be the oldest of the 33 people taking the

test,

which had eight sections totalling 180 questions. We were given a one

minute

break between sections, and five-minute break half-way through (the

ladies'

room looked like a relay race as we all hurried to give everybody a

chance

during this infinitessimal break). In that sense it was very Japanese,

as

the country seems imbued with the idea of "gambaru", a Japanese verb

which

implies that no matter what one should just hang tough and persevere,

as

suffering 'builds character' (a handy excuse for those who don't want

to be

bothered making things comfortable and/or easy for others)..

I won't find out my results for four to six weeks, but I think I

did

OK, not that the result matters for any particular purpose. Some of it

was

just over my head, but most of the ones I ended up guessing I think I

could

have got if I had been more familiar with the test format. At the test

site

we were given advertising flyers for newly introduced study packs

including

past tests. If I ever do write that test again I will get myself one

and

brush up a bit on my test-taking technique first.

Tuesday I reached a milestone in my work. I finally finished

data

entry for one of the papers and can now start doing my analysis for

that one

while finishing the data entry for the other paper.

Wednesday morning I was supposed to leave for an onsen (hot

spring),

but my travelling companion, Setsuko Ishizaki from Room A207 in this

same

residence, slept in, so it was around noon when we got going. Our

destination was Hakone Yumoto, a famous hot spring resort a couple of

hours

from Tokyo. The hot spring was originally discovered by a famous monk

in the

eighth century. Apparently a lot of hot springs were discovered by

monks,

hermits and such who were out in the wilds engaging in ascetic

practices,

which seems rather ironic given the sybaritic luxury of what many of

the hot

springs have turned into.

We got to the hot spring around 2PM. The whole town is full of

hotels built around hot springs and was once a major honeymoon

destination,

kind of like Niagara Falls used to be in North America. Now, however,

foreign honeymoons to Hawaii and other warm places are more popular,

and

many couples even choose to get married abroad to avoid the massive

expense

of a traditional Japanese wedding (a wedding kimono and Western-style

wedding dress, both traditionally required, together with a huge

banquet at

a classy hotel can easily come to C$100,000 or more).

The place we were going, Tenzan (literally 'heaven mountain'),

had

no hotel, just a hot spring. It was nestled in a little valley

surrounded by

the brilliant fall colours. A temple-type bell rings periodically, its

mellow tones seeming to prepare one for the relaxation that awaits

within.

Although Tenzan is a fairly high-volume place, they have done their

best to

retain the traditional Japanese atmosphere. The building is done in

traditional Japanese style both outside and in. Long corridors of dark

polished wood lead into the baths. After scrubbing and rinsing

thoroughly,

one is ready to enter one of the several different baths. All are

rotemburo,

i.e. outdoor baths, so you get the contrast between the crisp fall air

and

the hot water. The pools range in temperature from hot by Canadian

standards

(40 degrees or so) to very hot (43-45 degrees Celsius). The hottest is

the

'cave' bath, which goes into a little grotto about ten feet into the

hillside. The clientele includes a lot more young Japanese women than

the

sento (public baths) I have been to recently, and the only thought

which

disturbed my peace at all as I soaked was "hmm, I need to go on a

diet".

Many of them are so tiny that I think my thigh is as big as their

waist.

After you are finished soaking or roasting in the sauna and

have

got dried and dressed, there are several tatami rooms upstairs where

you can

just loll about and relax, drink a can of beer from the vending

machines,

take a nap or whatever (tatami are the thick, 3'X6' straw mats

traditionally

used as flooring in Japanese rooms; the size of a room is actually

measured

by how many 'mats' it is). The facility also includes restaurants and

souvenir stands. Admission for all this is 900 yen, or about C$13.

Setsuko, although Japanese, couldn't take the heat for long, so

she

retired to the tea shop while I finished up. I seem to have a greater

tolerance for heat than anyone else I have gone to a sento (public

bath) or

onsen (hot spring) with, so one of these times I'll have to go back to

Tenzan in the morning and stay all day by myself (they are open

9AM-11PM

year round).

We walked back to the station, since we had missed the last

bus

back (it leaves at the ridiculous hour of 3:45PM). The return trip was

a

little tricky as the winding road down the hill is not quite wide

enough for

two cars and yet has a steady stream of vehicles in both directions as

well

as occasional foolhardy pedestrians such as us. At the station we

bought our

tickets and a couple of bento (boxed lunches) and got on a much nicer

reserved seat train (the "Romance Car") for the return trip.

Talking to Setsuko and a couple of others in the residence has

given

me a better idea of why some Japanese choose to live in a "gaijin

house"

(foreigners' residence). I had assumed that this was probably because

the

Japanese rental market has been crippled by antiquated laws passed in

WWII

to protect the families of Japanese servicemen. These laws make it

almost

impossible to evict a tenant, even when a lease is up, with the result

that

few landlords build anything other than very tiny units for singles and

students, whose mobility builds in a near-certain termination date to

the

arrangement, or ultra-luxury units for expatriate businesspeople and

their

families, who also tend to be very mobile (such units for foreigners

range

from US$5,000 to US$20,000 a month for comfortable but unexceptional

units

by Canadian standards).

The shortage of rental accommodation means that landlords can

easily

request and get deposits (shikikin) of two to four months' rent and

non-refundable 'key-money' (reikin, literally 'thank you money') of two

to

three months' rent (they can and usually do also refuse to rent to

foreigners). The result is that to move into a typical one-person

apartment

that rents for, say, 80,000 yen a month (C$1150) you may need to have

as

much as C$10,000 to C$15,000 to give the landlord up front. I had had

assumed that this huge sum meant that some young Japanese might live in

a

residence if they hadn't saved up enough money to move out on their own

yet

(traditionally this was not a problem, since women lived at home till

they

got married and men lived in company dormitories, but this pattern is

breaking down).

Setsuko added a few other factors. In her case, she has worked

abroad and wants to go again, so she doesn't want to buy all the

furniture

and appliances she would need to be on her own here. There are also

several

guys who have just been divorced and hence don't have the money or

appliances needed to set up on their own. And a few people just want to

be

with foreigners, though I can't understand why, as there is almost no

mixing

between the Japanese and foreign residents, largely due to the language

barrier (Setsuko and I switched back and forth between Japanese and

English.

Her English is quite good, though I was baffled a couple of times. She

is a

nurse, and had repeatedly mentioned that she had taken a 'nothing'

program,

which had led me to wonder why she was so down on her educational

background. She had probably said this a dozen or more times before I

twigged that she meant a 'nursing' program; the Japanese, like the

British,

don't pronounce the terminal "r" in a syllable when speaking English

and she

has a slight lisp. Together these peculiarities resulted in 'nursing'

becoming 'nahthing'.)

In case you are thinking I am getting soft here soaking in

luxury

and such, I should clarify that I have recently started spending a half

an

hour each morning going up and down the two flights of concrete stairs

on a

hill around the corner from the residence, taking the stairs two at a

time

on the way up, to the great amusement of our neighbours. One old guy

with a

long cigarette holder watched me for several minutes at the top of the

staircase and then asked me why I kept going up and down. My answer of

"exercise" seemed to leave him only slightly less puzzled than before.

And

Thursday morning a lady I have often seen as early as 7AM out gardening

in

her already-perfect garden went by with her garbage and asked if I

wasn't

cold, despite the buckets of unlady-like sweat dripping off my brow.

She

must not have believed my answer that I was actually quite hot, since

she

came back a few minutes later and tried to lend me a spare pair of her

gardening gloves! At the bottom of the hill there is a restaurant, a

milk

store (yes, JUST milk) and a dry cleaners, and the proprietors seem to

find

a minute or two observing a giant, red-headed sweaty, huffing, puffing

foreigner to be a worthwhile addition to their morning routine. I

figure my

entertainment value is just my little contribution to the

neighbourhood. We

each do what we can.

Don't report me to the immigration authorities, but I may in

fact

now be considered a professional entertainer. The same old guy with the

cigarette holder who came and asked what I was doing a few days ago

came

again Friday morning and after a deep bow gave me some 'throat' candies

(actually just hard candies with no apparent medicinal content), so I

have

now accepted remuneration for my efforts. I thanked him with a hearty

"arigato gozaimasu" and popped one into my mouth before continuing my

routine. After a few minutes I had been unable to identify the flavour

of

the candies so I pulled out one of the wrappers to take a look. To my

surprise, they were daikon (giant radish) and honey flavour! Actually

fairly

pleasant, but not likely to catch on big outside Japan, I suspect.

Thursday night Myrna, who is leaving the residence on the 5th

and

Japan on the 11th, went out for pizza with me. Eating Western food here

can

be as much of an adventure as Japanese food. First there is the pzzling

over

the menu. When English or other foreign words are written in Japanese

characters they often sound so different from the original as to be

hard to

figure out. For example, I had to repeat one menu item several times to

myself before I realized one of the pizzas was called the Sophia Loren

(I'm

not sure she actually liked squid, scallops, egg and Japanese mushrooms

on

her pizza, but maybe so...). Then there is the challenge of convincing

the

waitress that yes, we really do want two pizzas of the size that is

billed

as each feeding 3-5. Finally, when the food does arrive, it often has

little

surprises that one only finds out about through experience. In this

case, it

was a liberal sprinking of corn kernels over both pizzas, though the

list of

toppings had nowhere mentioned this bonus. Nevertheless, the meal was

good

and Myrna did actually have some leftovers for the following morning's

breakfast. (Corn is widely used as a garnish in Japan and is likely to

show

up on anything from a salad to a bowl of Japanese noodles to pasta or

pizza.

Corn potage is also a very popular drink, sold piping hot from most

vending

machines. I think it has something to do with the fact that corn is

slightly

but not extremely sweet, and hence perfect for Japanese tastes; most

Japanese main courses tend to have a slight sweetness to them, though

most

Japanese desserts are not very sweet).

Friday I spent doing errands in Tokyo. I did drop into one

interesting shop along the way, Roboconkan in Akihabara, the

electronics

district. As its name suggests, the place specializes in robots of all

kinds, from inexpensive little toy ones to state-of-the-art components

for

those competing in robot-building contests (one famous one in Japan is

called robot sumo, in which contestants vie to force out or flip over

the

opponent's creation.)

The reason I had to go into Tokyo that day was that the Japan

Foundation, which is funding my research, was holding its annual

"Fellows'

Meeting" that evening at the Capital Tokyu Hotel. This is a very posh

place,

so I arrived with my appetite well-whetted. After a brief speech by the

president of the Foundation, they turned us loose on the buffet. There

were

two stations serving varieties of sushi, one serving tempura, and one

serving Japanese noodles, as well as a two buffet tables of "Western

style"

food (apart from roast beef, all the dishes were seafood--shrimp,

squid,

scallops or fish--but prepared in Western-style sauces).

It was all top-quality stuff, but one has to understand the

economics of Japanese banqueting to appreciate why people practically

lunge

at buffets in Japan. Most places have a time limit on their

all-you-can-eat

or all-you-can-drink deals, and when it is "free" to the guests, the

host

pays for a certain period of food availability. In the case of our

"meeting", this period was clearly two hours, as about ten minutes

before

this they were making announcements encouraging us with un-Japanese

haste to

clear the room. Anyway, I was quite proud of myself, as I emerged full

but

without a stomach-ache from over-indulgence. Instead I had the world's

worst

case of hiccoughs that lasted all the way home (over an hour). As I

rounded

the corner of the shopping centre near my home, one particularly nasty

one

actually echoed out over the empty courtyard below. Some of you on the

outskirts of Calgary may have heard it.

You probably won't hear from me or get replies to any e-mails for

about

a week. Tomorrow I leave for Uji, near Kyoto. I am taking the bullet

train

down there with my Seicho-no-Ie friend Toshiko to attend another

seminar

December 3-5. Then I will spend the 6th and 7th with friends near Kobe

before returning to Yokohama on the 8th. Sunday the 10th I will attend

a

reader's meeting at SNI HQ, and the 14th I'll be visiting the Shiseido

cosmetics factory for a tour of the facility. The adventure never ends!

I love and miss you all.

Peace and love to you all.

Teri

Hi Folks-

Sunday, December 3 I got up at 5:30AM to meet my travelling companion, Toshiko, on the train to go to the Seicho-no-Ie spiritual centre in Uji, which is near Kyoto. She had boarded earlier in Tokyo, and I got on at Shin-Yokohama (="new" Yokohama, to distinguish the "bullet train" station on the outskirts from the regular commuter station downtown). The train was the ultra-fast Nozomi. It was the first time I had taken it. The Nozomi shaves about 20-30 minutes off the trip to Kyoto compared to the usual Hikari (=light) bullet trains, reducing the time required to about two hours and ten minutes.

In Kyoto we switched to a local train to get to Uji, which is best known as the home of Byodoin, a temple featured on the ten-yen coin. When we arrived at Uji station we ducked into the ladies room only to find a guy relieving himself at great length at the urinal (ladies rooms in Japan often have a urinal for the use of small boys accompanying their mothers). He must have mistaken the small "child" symbol beside the figure of a woman on the sign to mean that the washroom was dual purpose, as there are many older public washrooms in Japan that are shared, requiring female users to pass the backs of men standing at the urinals. Still, his presence caused considerable consternation among a number of users, but mostly amusement in Toshiko and me (I think Toshiko was also somewhat embarrassed that I saw this, as Japanese people often are when foreigners see something that might be considered rude in their countries).

[the next several pages are about the spiritual seminar in Uji, so if you aren't into that kind of thing, you can skip ahead to the *****, which I have used to mark the beginning of my description of my visit with my friends near Kobe]

We took a cab to the centre, and I was astounded at the scale of the place. I had expected something a bit bigger than the Chiba centre I went to before, but with a shrine attached. Well, I underestimated by a factor of ten. The place was huge, with 15-20 guest rooms, each sleeping ten or more, along with numerous classrooms, halls etc., not to mention the separate special-purpose buildings.HeHe

Uji Bekkaku Honzan (the offical name) seems to have more than one seminar going on at once. When we signed in we were assigned to a senior citizen's seminar (choju renseikai) because it best fit our schedule. I haven't had my dye job touched up in a while, but still I was a bit surprised at this assignment. However, it turned out to have a number of unanticipated blessings, as you will see later.

The seminar didn't start until 6PM, so after a quick lunch of rice and vegetables with sides of beans and pickles and soup with mochi (cakes of mashed rice) Toshiko showed me around. The main floor has a large lobby with a book shop. The lobby features several pieces of calligraphy with sayings expressing the Seicho-no-Ie philosopy and a decorative wall with pictures of the founder, Dr. Masaharu Taniguchi and his wife. In between their photos is a statue of the "Lord of Seicho-no-Ie", which is how Dr. Taniguchi reportedly visualized God back in the early 1930s when he received the revelations that became the founding of the SNI teaching. Beyond the lobby are a series of guest rooms for women. The basement houses the dining hall and bathing and dining facilities, while at one end of the second floor there is a large lecture hall (daikodo, or 'large lecture hall') with tatami mat flooring and at the other end a large Western-style classroom (tamokuteki hooru='multi-purpose hall') at the other, with guest rooms for men in between (about half as many as for women). Our lectures were given in the classroom, but we did use the tatami lecture hall a couple of times.

Next to the main building and attached to it by a covered walkway is the daireiden, or 'large worship hall', which has various offices underneath. Next to this building, at the end where the stage is, is Hozo Jinja, a shrine. The back of the stage has a large glass window so that you can see the shrine when looking towards the stage. The doors of the shrine are located in line with the window so that if they were open you would be able to see right into the shrine. This hall is enormous, and I would estimate must seat well over a thousand. It was probably the largest tatami room I have ever seen. We started each day there with prayers and meditation, and also held several ceremonies there.

Apart from this main complex there are a couple of smaller shrines on the grounds and a monument to honour the souls of ryuzanji, which is another word for mizuko, or a child/fetus that is miscarried, stillborn or aborted. SNI has a very strong anti-abortion position, as I learned during one of the lectures which was somewhat uncomfortably graphic. Traditionally Japanese women who had abortions prayed for the soul of the unborn fetus, but since this tradition is breaking down SNI does mass ceremonies to pray for these souls. In front of the monument are cases for offerings, which seemed to be mostly tetra pak soft drinks, each with the straw inserted and ready to drink.

The largest of the outbuildings is a huge meditation hall called the Nyu-Ryugu-Yusaiden, or Yusaiden for short. The Nyu-Ryugu ("entering dragon palace") part of the name is an allusion to an old Japanese story about a fisherman who saves a sea turtle, who thanks him by taking it on its back to an underwater paradise. The guy stays there for a what he thinks is a few days, but when he returns to his home village everyone is dead or very old. He opens a box that he was given in paradise and he, too, turns very old. Somehow there seemed to me to be a parallel to the fall from grace in the Garden of Eden, but I don't know the Japanese story that well and am far from a Biblical scholar (I did, however, finish the New Testament and the first two books of the Old before deciding to take a break and start reading another of Dr. Taniguchi's books in preparation for Uji).

At the downstairs entrance to Yusaiden I filled out a prayer request form (marriage, what else?) so that prayers would be said for a month on my behalf and then Toshiko and I went upstairs into this huge hall to meditate. It was almost empty, but I would say it, too, must seat over a thousand on tatami mats. Toshiko and I did Shinsokan ('meditation to visualize God', SNI's form of meditation) and then went back for a very early dinner (rice, octopus, and a kind of soup that looked like amazake--a rice drink with bits of rice floating in it) and took a bath before our program started.

The opening was in the huge prayer hall, where we sang the national anthem (well, I sang the first four syllables, which is all I know) and did some prayers before retiring to the classroom for two lectures.

The seminar was attended by about 50 people, including ten men. Most were seniors ranging from their fifties to their nineties, with a smattering of younger people who were attending with a parent. The classroom had a blackboard and podium, the usual calligraphy with the characters 'jisso' (True Image), and a vertical banner along each side. The one on the left said 'If you do it with the unlimited power of a child of God, you can accomplish it' and the one on the right said 'If you change yourself, the world will change'. The podium had SNI's international symbol, a white dove with an olive branch in its mouth on a blue globe, with Seicho-no-Ie in Roman letters and 'International Peace by Faith Movement' in English.

We began with a song and 'laughing practice', and then had our first speaker, a very polished young guy, perhaps 30 or less, who spoke with incredible speed. He might well have been an auctioneer! I very seldom understood anything he said apart from simple directions, either on this occasion or any time later when he addressed us. The second speaker was a very dramatic middle-aged guy whose name, I later discovered, was Rev. Yasumiba (which literally means 'resting place'). Later in the program we had Mr. Kuzumoto, a folksy older man who seems to be the one in charge of the whole facility, and a woman speaker who was the easiest for me to understand, my comprehension level on any given topic being largely a function of the speed of the speaker's delivery. During the lectures I discovered the first blessing of being with an older group: if I ever drifted off, I would be in good company, as there were usually several people at any given time who were nodding off.

When our second lecture was over we went back to our rooms and got ready for bed. Lights out was nominally at ten, but the loudspeakers continued until about 10:15PM with words of encouragement and gratitude and a final prayer. Although our tatami sleeping room was probably intended to sleep about ten, we only had seven the first night and six the second, so there was lots of room.

I awoke about 4:30AM and immediately got up to wash my face before 4:40AM reveillee, as I had learned at Chiba that I need just a little more than the allotted half hour to get myself ready, put away my bedding, etc. At 5:10AM we gathered in the big prayer/worship hall to start the day with thank yous to the Emperor, the various members of the Taniguchi family, our ancestors, etc. and laughing practice. We also did prayers, a Shinsokan and then seikyo dokuju, or 'recitation of holy scriptures', in this case the 93 pages of the Nectarian Shower of Holy Doctrines. Stuart Baker, the American guy who attended the Chiba seminar with me, had kindly provided me with a version of this key scripture showing the pronunciation in Roman letters, so I was much better able to keep up when doing this high-speed reading, even though my brain was a little fuzzy that morning.

After finishing we volunteered to do various chores. Except me, that is--my brain was so fuzzy things were almost all assigned before I realized what we was going on. As a result I ended up in the residual group of a dozen or so, whose task was to sweep the floor of this huge hall. It was then that I discovered the second blessing of being with the older group: if I was confused, I was usually in good company. The idea of the coordinator was to have one person start sweeping a three foot wide tatami mat strip right across the room. The next person would follow behind so that what the first had swept into the second strip, the second person could sweep into the third. This staggered sweeping would continue until the first person reached the end of his/her strip, then the first person would leapfrog over and start a new strip right after the last person's strip, and everyone else would then follow along. Well, let's just say this took a bit more synchronization than any of us were ready for at first. Once we got going, though, it all went well.

Besides lectures and more laughing practice, that day had five highlights.

The first was a small group discussion where people could ask for advice. My group of about 25 including six men was led by Mr. Kuzumoto. Three people sought advice with family problems ranging from a husband's depression to various family problems. Just when I was starting to get a bit sleepy I was asked a question and had to snap back to reality. Toshiko and I explained a bit about how I had come to be there, and Mr. Kuzumoto talked about the few other foreigners he had had attend (apart from the Japanese Brazilians, of whom there are always lots). Previous non-Brazilian foreigners had included a guy from London who spoke no Japanese but just wanted to absorb the atmosphere, a Taiwanese couple, and some groups of local SNI leaders from Germany who had arrived for training. Afterwards this one lady, who seemed totally entranced by me, took my picture several times against the backdrop of the river and the beautiful fall foliage.

The second highlight was inoriai shinsokan, or 'mutual prayer and meditation', in which the audience prays for people who have requested help. This was done a bit differently than in Chiba. The prayer requesters sat on the floor at the front and each gave thanks for the solution of their problem (most were health-related, but one man and one woman were seeking marriage partners--hmmm--a solution seemed obvious...). The prayer seemed different than the one in Chiba, too, as in Chiba it included the name of each prayer recipient and their issue. One lady fell from her chair during the prayer, but she seemed to be OK in a few minutes.

Next I met Toshiko's parents, who had come in from Fukui, a couple of hours away, to attend the memorial service for Toshiko's husband, who passed away unexpectedly after they were only married less than a year. Her father is an architect.

The fourth highlight was the memorial service itself. I felt very honoured that Toshiko invited me to attend. The memorial service was held in the big prayer hall with the window that gave out onto the shrine next door. From the top of either side of that big window hung a bunch of streamers, wth an orange one on top. Above each set of streamers was a small tree branch. At the left was a Shinto-style paper wand, and at the right was a table with offerings of fruit and flowers. In front of the window was a low table with flowers on either end and a small raised platform in the centre. In front of the stage was a coin box of the type found in shrines and temples in Japan (people throw a coin in before praying).

The service began with a man taking the paper wand and shaking it at either side of the stage and then at the audience (we keep our eyes closed when this is done towards the audience). This is a purification ritual borrowed from Shinto. Then one of the men took his place at the central table and over 400 names were read. We again recited from the Holy Sutra (this was my best effort at seikyo dokuju, as the leader of the ceremony went just a tad slower, which made a big difference). While the Sutra was being read we filed up one by one to the front, where there were two small incense burners on a long narrow table. Each of us bowed, clasped our hands in prayer, put a pinch of some granular stuff in the burner, bowed again and left. When everythng was over a woman dressed like a Shinto temple girl served us each a sip of sake from a tiny shallow plate and we were given a package of holy rice and holy seaweed. I realized upon closer observation that what I had always thought was a long skirt worn by Shinto shrine personnel is actually a pair of very full, ankle-length culottes called a hakama (for you guys, culottes are things that look like a skirt but are actually shorts--or in this case long pants)

This ceremony is performed almost every day to deal with the huge volume of requests, many by people who cannot attend in person (there were about 50 people in attendance at this service).

On our way out we went to the counter and bought mikuji. In Japanese shrines people often shake a box with numbered sticks and then draw one out and give it to a shrine girl. She looks up the number and gives a corresponding message (mikuji) that is much like a 'fortune cookie'. However, this being SNI, all the messages are bright ones expressing aspects of the SNI philosophy. For example, mine said, 'God gives you all the necessary power [i.e. to do whatever you are doing]'. It is printed on a kind of decorative cardboard that I will hang on my wall when I get home. (Right now I am using an upside-down ice cube tray to stand it on my refrigerator--Japanese landlords are very strict about hanging stuff on the walls.)

The day's fifth highlight (quite a day!) was the Joshingyo, or 'Mind Purification Ceremony', intended to purge one's mind of negative, destructive thoughts. As described in my notes on Chiba, one writes all one's negative thoughts about oneself (e.g. I'm too fat, I'm clumsy, I'm prone to anger, I hate my mother-in-law or whatever) on a special piece of very thin, very flammable paper. We gathered in the big prayer hall and formed a semi-circle around a metal box filled with sand with a candle at each corner, then sang a hymn and said a prayer. Once again we recited the Sutra, rather faster this time, so I had trouble keeping up even with my Roman letter version. During the recitation we filed up to the box, lit the paper and dropped it into the box, symbolically releasing these negative ideas (as I have written previously this is similar to the Centre's Burning Bowl Ceremony). This much was similar to Chiba. From there things diverged a bit. We listened to a recording of a woman singing what seemed like hymns, and then began to shout our gratitude to our ancestors, father and mother, louder and louder, for what seemed like at least ten minutes (Father, thank you! Mother, thank you! Ancestors, thank you!). At first this seemed a bit strange, but then I actually got swept up in the emotion of it to the point that my eyes welled up. By the end, though, my throat was starting to hurt. When we were done shouting we read a passage from a book I didn't have (I wished I did, though, as this reading was done slowly enough I think I could have kept up) and ended with a prayer and a hymn.

Day three also had several highlights. The day's opening ceremonies included lining up and massaging the neck and shoulders of the person ahead of you. I was last in line and massaged Toshiko's mother. Then we turned around and she was to massage me. Clearly the only way that was going to work was for me to get down on my knees, which I did to the great amusement of all concerned. (I got asked about my height even more often than usual during this seminar, as the older generation is much shorter than younger Japanese, with men having perhaps averaged five feet (150cm) in their prime. Most older people also grew up on farms, so many have backs stooped from years of rice cultivation, making my 190cm (6'3") seem to tower over them all the more. The upside of this was blessing number three from being with the seniors: many of them gave me hard candies as a gesture of friendship.)

Later I got a chance to talk to one of the SNI 'trainees'. These are people, most commonly but not exclusively young men, who have had various problems and come to Uji to get a fresh start with SNI's help. They perform a wide variety of tasks to help run the centre, such as setting up and putting away chairs, etc. Sato-san was painfully shy, but I discovered he was a rock and blues music fan, with a special fondness for Eric Clapton. The trainee program seemed to me to be a wonderful idea.

I've mentioned a number of times that laughing practice is a staple at SNI seminars. Well, this morning we moved up a notch and had a 'Laughing Contest' (warai taikai)! Everyone gathered in a great big circle and we were each assigned numbers. Then we laughed for EIGHT MINUTES STRAIGHT while four judges circled around observing and taking notes. They chose about a dozen 'winners' (including me!) and after giving a demonstration of our laughing prowess we received our prizes, two books, one on the history of the Uji centre and the other testimony of people who were helped there. Both had calligraphy by Mr. Kuzumoto inside. Mine said "tokutosho" (special achievement award) in both and had the character "ai" (=love) in one and the characters "kansha" (=gratitude) in the other. Incidentally, if you don't think it's hard to laugh non-stop for eight minutes, try it some time (preferably somewhere private so you don't get locked up!)

Another blessing of being in with the seniors was that our programme included some fun stuff. For example, we gathered in the large tatami lecture hall and sang old songs that the seniors would have known from their youth, including several sentimental ones about autumn in one's home town. Several volunteers also performed briefly. I had volunteered to sing (!!!), and began by introducing myself briefly (well, not so briefly, but everyone was wondering what this red-headed giantess was doing there). I also gave a simplified Japanese translation of the song before launching into an a capella rendition of 'How could anyone ever tell you', a song everyone from the Centre will recognize. Making my international performing debut with a group of Japanese seniors had the added benefit that no one knew what the song was supposed to sound like, so I got a good round of applause. Besides the singers, one lady put on a paper mask and a hula skirt and did a dance to a tropical-sounding beat, a number which she later reprised with a number of extra performers, including yours truly.

Just before dinner we did another fun thing, we made mochi (cakes of glutinous rice). I had eaten these a number of times, but had a rather mistaken impression about how they were made. I had thought the rice was ground into a powder and then cooked, but in fact cooked rice is dropped, still steaming, into a stone mortar called an "usu" and them whacked with huge wooden mallets ("kine") until it merges into one thick, extremely sticky mass. Once it reaches this state it is formed by hand into small rounded cakes and served with various toppings like tsubu-an (crushed sweet red beans), a sweet soybean powder, or grated daikon (giant radish), or added to soups (especially at New Years).

Mashing the rice is hot, sweaty work, and out of respect for the seniors' years it was done by trainees, with two young guys alternately swinging mallets and one stocky, short-haired young woman turning the rice in the stone vessel with her hands in between their strokes, the three all singing a traditional song to make the work more rhythmic. The seniors then shaped the mochi into cakes, which formed part of supper.

Clearly this very traditional activity resonated strongly with the seniors: their eyes lit up like little kids at Christmas as they eagerly waited for each batch of gooey mochi to be rolled out onto the table for shaping into cakes (each perhaps 4-5cm in diameter).

Well, you might have guessed by now that I wasn't going to sit and wait for the rice to roll out on the table. I asked if I could swing the mallet for a while and took a turn mashing the stuff, to the great delight of all concerned.

After dinner we had the ancestor memorial service. As described in a previous missive, we had earlier in the day written the names of our ancestors' families on cards about the size of a bookmark, going back as far as we wanted. Any parents, spouses or siblings who have passed from this world also get a card. I went back to my great grandparents, which is as far as I know, but one lady came up with a furoshiki (wrapping cloth) with 268 cards! She must have had a large family and gone back several generations. I had six cards, including one for my late mother, but I later realized I should have had seven (I forgot my stepmother's family--I'll try to remember next time).

During the ceremony itself the names on the cards were read aloud by 13 volunteers and three people from the Uji centre while we recited the Holy Sutra. Afterwards the cards were taken to be enshrined in Hozo Jinja Shrine.

I didn't realize quite what this was all about at the time, but from subsequent conversations and reading, it seems like the idea of this ceremony is roughly as follows. SNI believes that after the death of our physical body we pass into the spiritual world. After resting there for a while we may or may not be reborn. Our time in the spiritual world will be easier the more enlightened we are, and reading the Holy Sutra to our ancestors assists in raising their enlightenment even if they never had the chance to find out about SNI during their physical lifetime. When they have achieved a higher level of enlightenment, they, in return, are more able to intervene on our behalf in the spiritual world.

This whole issue of SNI's ideas about the afterlife is one I would like to look into further, as I am still not sure I understand completely. Religious Science doesn't say much about what happens after the death of our physical body, except to maintain that our spirit does live on. Dr. Holmes, our founder, said he tended not to believe in reincarnation into this world, but he never imposed his views on others and so some people in the movement do believe in reincarnation and some don't. I used to be an absolute non-believer in reincarnation, but now I would say rather that I haven't yet heard a convincing argument in support of it that I can accept--and that may only be because I didn't understand all of SNI's explanation in Japanese.

Right after the ceremony Toshiko and I left, she to return to Tokyo and I to visit my friends the Suitas in Takasago, near Kobe, a couple of hours away by commuter train. We travelled together as far as Kyoto station, then parted. The trip gave me some time to think about my overall feelings about the seminar.

One thing that struck me was how much more relaxed I was this time, having had some experience at a renseikai and having found it very positive. The facility is also much bigger and more anonymous than Chiba. In Uji one could withdraw and no one would notice, at least not right away. Chiba's smaller size meant that intimacy was almost forced on one from the moment one entered the door. No getting "lost in the crowd' there! That meant it took a little bit longer to 'bond' with people in Uji, but still it happened pretty quickly. As I noted earlier, many of the seminar participants came up, asked where I was from and how tall I was, and gave me candies, and a couple even asked for my autograph (not to mention the lady who took a zillion pictures of me). The speakers were also surprisingly accessible. The female speaker came and spoke to Toshiko and me during lunch, and we had quite a long conversation with Rev. Yasumiba over dinner (mostly about abortion). I had not anticipated these opportunities and was not as prepared as I would have liked to have been in terms of having questions ready to ask them. Although I learned more about Seicho-no-Ie during the seminar, I think it raised my curiosity even more. I definitely want to keep studying this fascinating branch of the New Thought movement.

The other striking influence on me, I would say, is that visiting Uji raised further my ideas of what is possible. When you see what a movement like this has built up, it's hard not to have one's ideas about limitations expanded if not shattered altogether.

*****[end of Uji spiritual stuff and beginning of Kobe leg of trip]

My friend Hitomi Suita was waiting for me when I reached Kakogawa station west of Kobe, and took me to the van where her husband Takeshi was waiting. I had come to know the Suitas two years ago when they were taking English lessons from a former student of mine. I saw them again last summer when I stayed with my former student, Glenda, and her husband, Keith. Glenda and Keith have since returned to Canada via an extended and adventurous trip, so this was my first time meeting the Suitas 'solo'. Takeshi works in the water department of Takasago City, and Hitomi gives piano lessons to about 25 pupils aged 4-15. I didn't see much of their two children during my stay, as both were busy studying for entrance exams. Their daughter, Minato, who is in the equivalent of grade 11, wants to go to Kyoto University and become a lawyer, which is quite an ambition since the Japanese Bar Association keeps the pass rate on the bar exam down to 3% in order to keep fees high. As a result, only about 750 lawyers a year are admitted to the bar in all of Japan, with a population of 125 million. In the province of Ontario alone, about 1,200 are admitted each year to serve a population of 8 million. Their son is in grade eight and was also prepping for exams.

I was exhausted, so when we reached their home I got ready for bed and turned in right away. I was up early the next morning and went downstairs for breakfast (toast, prepared Japanese-style, i.e. in thick slabs). The morning news had an item that caught my attention: apparently wild boars (inoshishi in Japanese) have invaded certain parts of Kobe to eat garbage! They had footage of them right in residential areas and on a shopping street near a train station. They can be foul-tempered and very large, so the message was to steer clear. Wild, garbage-eating pigs--not the kind of social problem one usually associates with urban Japan!

Our first stop was a traditional fishing village (gyoson) called Murotsu. The docks had the usual picturesque collage of old and new boats, nets and traps, wizened old sailors, seabirds like cranes and stray cats scrounging for morsels. There were also cages everywhere to dry shitabirame (sole), a local specialty. It is sweetened with mirin, a ubiquitous Japanese liquid sweetener) and sprinkled with sesame seeds and then put in the sun until it dries into a jerky-like form. It is warmed in a toaster oven and cut into strips with scissors as an appetizer at mealtime.

What I had not realized, however, was that Murotsu also had a long and distinguished history. During the period when Japan was closed to the West (roughly 1640-1853), the shogun (military leader of Japan) required the daimyo (feudal lords) to spend alternate years in Edo (now Tokyo) and their fiefs, with their families always kept in Edo as hostages to ensure their loyalty. The processions of daimyo back and forth led to thriving trade at various stopping points along the way (it took up to a month for some of the daimyo back then). Murotsu was on the route to and from the south, and has a couple of the old road houses still preserved as museums. The Dutch traders who were allowed to stay in Nagasaki at the very far south of Japan during this period of isolation also passed through on their way to Edo for their annual audience with the shogun, as did missions from Korea (12 groups of 400-500 persons each between 1600 and 1800). The Dutch got the Western trade monopoly back then by convincing the shoguns that unlike the Spanish and Portuguese missionaries who preceded them, they were only interested in trading and making money, not in doing anything to upset the stability of Japanese society by introducing foreign ideas like Christianity).

Hitomi saw an old lady working in a cage for drying sole and asked where we could buy some. At first the lady started to explain, then she took us down the street to a neighbour's house who packaged and sold the stuff retail and wholesale. The neighbour wasn't home, so the old lady just opened the door and took us in--no locks in use here! She couldn't find the finished product, though, so she told us to come back in a while. We meandered around for a bit and finally an old man came by and took us back to the house, where Hitomi stocked up on ten packages--at 200 yen (C$3) each they were less than half the supermarket price.

From Murotsu we drove to Sakkoshi, a little place on the ocean where they farm oysters. We bought a couple of kilos of fresh ones still in the shells that were packed for travel in a styrofoam box and then we set out for Tatsu no Koen to see the changing leaves. They were past their prime, but still quite nice.

As we drove around, it was obvious that almost the only children in the area were those painted on the "look-out-for-children" signs. In Murotsu almost everyone was over 60, and the same applied to those we saw working in the fields. Japan's population is ageing rapidly, and fastest out in the countryside, so if you want to see Japan's future, head for the country. Hitomi explained that they even had a term she learned in school, 'san-chan-nogyo', or '3-chan agriculture'. 'Chan' is an endearing form of the all-purpose 'san'the Japanese use for Miss/Mrs./Ms./Mr., and the reference was to agriculture being conducted by ojichan (grandpa), obachan (grandma) and okachan (mommy) while otochan (daddy) went off to work in the city.

On our way back we stopped in at Kokoen, a formal Japanese garden built at the foot of the hill on which Himeji Castle stands. It was getting late and we just had time for a quick walk around to admire the koi (coloured carp) in the ponds and the tail end of the fall colours. On the way out I learned from a big chart on the wall that the flower for my birthday (June 23) is miyako wasure--a fact which would have been more meaningful if I had any idea of what that flower's name was in English.

As we drove through the outskirts of town, I was rather surprised to see a sign on a Daihatsu car dealership advertising a model called the 'Neykiddo' (=naked in Japanese English). Takeshi explained that the model's main feature was a stripped down design that showed rivets and such on the outside, somewhat like the deliberate ugliness of the old Volkswagen 'thing'. Still, I couldn't help wondering what an advertising maven would do to be assigned the campaign for a model with a name like that back in Canada!

When we reached home, Hitomi prepared a delicious meal of the fresh oysters (zapped briefly in the microwave to keep them moist and juicy), teriyaki chicken, and toasted strips of the dried sole, together with rice, of course.

The next morning's breakfast was a little different than most Canadians are used to. Hitomi chopped up the leftover chicken, lightly stir-fried some cabbage with curry powder, and then made sandwiches in a sandwich press using the chicken and curried cabbage. In Japan they don't really draw the sharp distinction we do that breakfast foods are different than what is eaten at other meals (and usually much sweeter). As we ate we talked about my house, relative heating costs, etc. Their house is set back in from the street, as if two houses were built on one lot and theirs was at the back. It is accessed by a relatively long driveway. The house is two stories, perhaps 1000-1200 square feet, with a strip of lawn about four feet wide at the back and six seet wide aong one side. The ground floor has the kitchen, living room (dominated by the grand piano Hitomi uses for her lessons), dining room, bathing and washing room, and one of the house's two toilets (toilets and bathing/washing facilities are always separate in Japanese homes). The living room also has a kind of altar (gohoden) for veneration of ancestors that looked mostly Shinto in style (the Suitas belong to a Kobe-based group known as Reihokai, but don't seem to be very active in it). Upstairs there are three bedrooms, a small storage room, a second toilet and a small open area by the stairs that is used for the family computer. As a guest I slept in Hitomi and Takeshi's room and they split up and slept with their daughter and son.

We got going around 10AM and set out for Tentaki, literally "Heaven Falls". Along the way Hitomi challenged me to word games using a book of pun-based riddles she had bought for the Christmas party she was having for her piano lesson pupils. The book was Grade 3-4 level, and I got about 1/4 of them without hints, and another half with some pretty strong hints. With the remainder the best I could do was a blank stare (no snide comments about Japanese third-graders being smarter than Canadian university profs, please). I did surprise Hitomi, though, by coming back with one of my own that stumped her. She had told me she was very busy with her pupils right after school, but her mornings were quite relaxed once she got her kids off to school. I replied in English that that was the time when she had a camel. She was quite puzzled until I pointed out that in Japanese 'camel' is 'rakuda', which sounds the same as 'raku da' (it's a pleasure, it's enjoyable, etc.).

When we arrived at the base of the trail to Tentaki we ignored the 'beware of bears' sign (it had a cartoon bear so cute it made you WANT to see one) and bravely hiked up a very steep path for 30-40 minutes to get to the main attraction, a spectacular 98 meter falls from the peak of the mountain/slash hill (so it looks like it is literally "falling from heaven", as the name implies). There is a little Shinto shrine there and after signing the guest book we ate bento (boxed lunches) that we had picked up en route. All garbage has to be packed out, and I picked up a bit more on the way down.

After that sweaty endeavour, our next stop was a welcome respite, Kurokawa Onsen (Black River Hot Spring). The road was very narrow and winding and took us to a tiny hot spring nestled in the shadows of a huge hydroelectric dam (Even though I was facing it to photograph a small shrine, I almost missed this massive structure until Takeshi pointed it out).

The hot spring had a small indoor pool on each side, but was mostly a rotemburo, i.e. outside bath. After washing up we slipped into the outside tub. At first there was a little old lady there, from whom we learned that the place had been built by the local Chamber of Commerce, so locals got a break (200 yen instead of the 600 yen tourists pay). After she left we had the place to ourselves. The bath was set into a little garden with a wall about seven feet high around it. In the city privacy from nearby buildings often requires that the walls around a rotemburo be so high that you feel like you're at the bottom of a well, but this place had a nice open feeling to it. Rather surprisingly, there were also five umbrellas hanging on the fence--so bathers don't get wet if it rains, we wondered?

After a hearty, reinvigorating soak we set off for home. Hitomi prepared a quick meal for the kids and we adults went to a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant run by the daughter of a friend of the Suitas, Setsuko, whom I had met the previous two years. Setsuko's daughter and her husband had a child a few months ago, and the place had a very homey atmosphere, with the husband cooking, the wife waiting tables, the husband's mother hoovering around and the baby girl being passed around charming everyone out of their skins. The baby's name was "Iroha", the first three characters in the traditional arrangement of the Japanese syllabary (alphabet), which is kind of the equivalent of naming a Canadian child "ABC". The husband also had an unusual hairdo, with most of his head shaved except for a one bit on top which was pulled back into a triple bun, something he apparently picked up from a black American exchange student the Suitas had hosted the previous year. So the homeyness was mixed with a certain delightful funkiness as well.

The food was delightful, too, as I discovered that several dishes I was not that fond of could be quite tasty when well prepared. We began with takoyaki, which are normally round little balls of dough with bits of octopus (tako) inside. They were followed closely by okonomiyaki, which is variously translated as a Japanese pizza, Japanese pancake or Japanese omlette. The usual version is a thin layer of egg wrapped around huge pile of fried cabbage and smeared with Worcester-type sauce and perhaps some bonito shavings, mayonnaise and/or grated pickled ginger. Both dishes are the quintessential festival food bought at stalls in Japan, and usually cooked with all the finesse of a steamed carnival hot dog or a microwaved 7-11 burger. Here, however, the takoyaki were delightfully delicate little ovals of a very eggy batter with tender bits of octopus, waiting to be dipped into a flavourful bowl of broth, and the okonomiyaki were light and filled with a variety of different mixtures including a mild curry, fried noodles, and chives. We also had zosui, a traditional New Year's soup with a mild broth, rice, eggs and some vegetables like peas and chopped carrots (the version made with mochi rice cakes is called zoni). The prices were also dirt cheap--we stuffed ourselves for about C$20 each.

But wait--there's more. As we began eating, Setsuko dropped by with her shamisen (three-stringed Japanese banjo) and gave us an impromptu performance, followed by a traditional song. Kanako, another friend, also showed up, so we had a grand old time. All in all, a very special moment, with great food, great friends and an atmosphere most tourists would die to experience but probably never will.

When we left the restaurant we all went back to the Suitas where we continued to talk over dessert--choux-creme, or cream-filled puff pastries. Kanako and I both sensed a very small earthquake, but some of the others who were more involved in wat they were doing didn't even break stride. Setsuko, who seems to dabble in vintage clothing, suddenly made the surprise announcement that the next morning she was going to give me a haori, a kind of traditional Japanese jacket worn over a kimono. We finally broke things up just before midnight.

The next morning I got ready for my departure early, which was a good thing. Setsuko arrived as promised and gave me a beautiful dark pink silk haori lined with colourful material that looks like it was once an orange kimono. We chatted more about house stuff and then Hitomi urged me to come quickly. The neighbour, who is a skilled player of the koto (Japanese harp), had agreed to do a short performance. The three of us (Hitomi, Setsuko and I) all hustled over and crowded into the neighbour's daughter's room to listen. The koto is about six feet long and lays on the floor horizontally. It has thirteen strings with large movable frets for tuning and is plucked with little picks that attach to the fingers. I have loved the delicacy of koto music from the first time I heard it twenty years ago, so this was a special treat.

I also finally got up the courage to try the washlet, which is a special device attcahed to the toilet seat that warms the seat and shoots a stream of warm water at you to clean you off. After you get over the initial shock of the feeling, it is actually quite pleasant and effective. More sophisticated versions will also check your blood pressure, analyze your output, blow you dry, etc.

Finally it was time to go. Hitomi drove me to the station and I literally walked right onto a train to head into Kobe proper. After one transfer I eventually ended up at Shin-Kobe station around noon. This gave me three hours until my Hikari bullet train departed, so I had time to have lunch and shop in a delightful mall nearby, the third floor of which is devoted to traditional Japanese goods. Once on the train I read and napped my way back to Shin-Yokohama, eventually arriving at my residence late on Friday evening.

Saturday and Sunday morning were spent getting settled back in, doing laundry, getting my work going again, etc. Sunday afternoon, I was back at Seicho-no-Ie HQ in Shibuya for the monthly meeting of the readers of the English language SNI magazine, 'Truth of Life'. This one was attended by five men and four women, all Japanese except me. We began by reading the Holy Sutra, starting halfway through (p. 36). Then we took turns reading the 32-page magazine out loud from cover to cover, which took most of the meeting's scheduled 90 minutes. Then snacks and drinks appeared and we had a brief informal conversation, which again largely centred around me, my impressions of the month's articles, my experiences in various SNI activities, etc. As a foreigner one often becomes the centre of attention at events in Japan, and one has to be careful not to let it go to one's head--any foreigner would get the same treatment by virtue of the sheer exoticness of having one around.

Monday morning, as I was out doing my exercises on the steps, the old guy who gave me the radish candies came by. He asked me if I liked them and I replied yes, but I had been surprised to see that they were made from daikon (giant radish). Well, it's a good thing I wasn't lying about liking them as darned if he didn't pull out a couple more hard candies, this time daikon (giant radish) and ginger flavour! Clearly there must be a bigger market for these things here than I had thought. A daikon is about three inches in diameter uniformly from top to bottom and about 12-18 inches long, and as he walked away I couldn't help wondering if he was trying to give me a subliminal message...

On a more seriously romantic note, there is a great guy here named Buster with whom I have shared a number of really wonderful conversations. We are always laughing and joking together. He is black, 35, about six feet tall and extremely fit, with a shaved head and a big smile. He's from Chicago and attends a Baptist church here. Anyway, he came and gave me a big hug (our first) when he saw I was back from my trip. I was regaling him with tales of my adventures when Mrs. Tanaka, the manager, asked me to do some urgent translation about garbage with one of the tenants who doesn't speak Japanese. The interruption turned out to be a blessing as Buster was short on time when I was done translating so I seized the opportunity to suggest we get together when he had more time. He agreed, and we met for coffee the next day at 10:30AM so I could finish the story of my trip and show him pictures of previous adventures. This was the first time I have asked a guy for a date! And I have been wanting to ask HIM for quite some time. Fortunately I have a built-in excuse to chat again when I get my photos back from this trip.

Well, this is one of the longest segments so far, but I don't usually have the whole week to devote to fun. Now it is back to the grind as I want to finish a paper by New Year's. The fun isn't over yet, though, as I will be going for a tour of the Shiseido cosmetic factory tomorrow with my former house-mate Aya, and attending a party at a SNI friend's house before Christmas. And of course I'll have lots to say about Christmas and New Years a la japonaise.

Peace and love to you all this holiday season!

Teri

Hi Folks!

Right after sending my last note I went exploring near the train sttion I commute from. I had always headed in one direction, towards my residence, and wondered what was on the other side. Among other things I discovered a curry rice shop with a rather intereting display in the window.

Curry rice is an extremely popular dish in Japan that bears little resemblance to its Indian origins. The "curry" is usually mild to the point of blandness, and is served half-poured over a bed of rice. A variety of other things can be added for a little extra, such as a breaded, deep-fried pork cutlet (tonkatsu), various types of croquettes, etc. At some of the better places you can ask for it spicier: ni-bai (twice as spicy), go-bai (five times as spicy), etc. Go-bai is the minimum for any real sense of even zestiness, let alone spiciness.

What made the window display noteworthy was its huge size: a foot-wide ring of rice with a lake of curry in the centre. I stopped to read the sign above it and was amused to discover that it was a challenge: anyone who could eat the whole thing in an hour without leaving the table could have it for free. Those who failed were charged 1,470 yen, or C$21. The total size was 1.3 kg (almost three pounds) of rice and 700 grams (1.5 pounds) of curry. I passed on the opportunity for a free dinner, but what made this discovery all the more memorable to me was that not an hour before I had been speaking to a woman in the residence about a place in Texas I had read about where they have a similar challenge with a 72 ounce (2 kg) steak. Some ideas just transcend culture, I guess, like the idea of a free lunch.

The next day I went to nearby Ofuna to meet with my friend and former housemate Aya to visit a Shiseido factory (ofuna literally means 'big ship', though it's rather far from the ocean). The name Shiseido is virtually synonymous with cosmetics in Japan, as the company holds about a 25% market share, and its closest competitor, Kao, is really better known for soap. I think the Bay carries a small selection of Shiseido products in Canada.

After a leisurely lunch we went to the factory and were ushered into a large lecture hall, and shortly thereafter about ten other women arrived. Most seemed to be part of a single group of women in their twenties, but there was one woman who looked to be about 50 (of course, maybe she was a long-time Shiseido user and was actually 80!). A middle-aged lady in a crisp uniform came out and went through what we would be doing, then showed us a video, much of which I, unfortunately, slept through (post-lunch crash). Then she had us put on very chic (not!) paper hats, a requirement to maintain cleanliness standards in the facotry.

The tour of the plant, which employs 1,000, half of them part-time, included lines where the stuff was mixed and others where it was packaged. Overall I got two main impressions, one which they clearly wanted to convey and the other which was unintentional.

The thing they stressed constantly was their environmental efforts. The factory is ISO 9000 and 14000 certified, and clearly makes major efforts to reduce waste and recycle. Even ordinary office waste gets sorted into seven different recycling bins (in my faculty in Calgary Ph.D.-educated academics don't seem to deal well with even two or three-bin systems for paper, so this seems quite an accomplishment to me). I was a little surprised that they made no mention at all of animal testing of new cosmetic products, which is such a big issue in North America and Europe.

What I personally was struck by, however, was how much menial manual labour was involved in the process. Most of the employees, who seemed to almost all be women, were doing repetitive assembly line jobs I would have thought would have been automated. For example, there were several women whose job was to shake little plastic bottles out of the big plastic bags they were delivered in and place them on a conveyor belt so they could be filled by a machine. At the other end of that process, another group stuck the bottles into little plastic bags, sealed them and put stickers on them. In another spot women were folding boxes to put toiletries in. Upon reflection I figured that this must be due to the very wide range of products the factory produces, which may mean individual product volumes may not be sufficient to justify dedicating a machine to the job, at least as long as there is a ready supply of (relatively) cheap part-time female labour available.

On a more positive note, the few forepersons in the shops, who were marked by different coloured hair nets, were mostly women, which was probably inevitable since the entire pool of labour they would be drawn from was female.

At the end of the tour, after receiving gifts of lip colour, skin treatments and a five-yen coin that had been washed in a nearby shrine where such washing is said to ensure the money will multiply, we were ushered into a showroom where they had displays about the plant's history and the sources of its raw materials. No one paid any attention to these, however, instead rushing to the testing stations where they had supplies of various lip colours, foundations, nail polishes and other products whose only obvious purpose seemed to be to separate women from large sums of money--and I do mean large sums. Until recently the cosmetics industry was one where the government officially sanctioned price-fixing cartels, with the result that Japanese cosmetics are among the most expensive in the world. For example, a lipstick can easily cost 6,000 yen (C$86) for a standard band (guys, that's about 6-10 times the price of a standard brand in Canada).

At the beginning of that factory tour I realized that my camera was broken, which prevented me from getting a picture in those lovely protective hats they had us wear. That meant the next day I would head into Tokyo in the afternoon to drop it off at the Olympus repair depot, and do whatever other errands I had accumulated that needed doing in Tokyo. My route took me along Tokyo's newest subway line, the O-Edo line.

This line is quaintly named to recall the feudal days of the shoguns, when Tokyo was known as Edo (O-Edo='greater Edo'). It has been a long time coming as it used a new technology that turned out to have a lot of problems. Instead of digging down from the top, the idea was to bore along like a worm far below the surface.

Whatever the technical problems, the new line makes a lot of trips much more convenient, as most of it is a big circle around the outer perimeter of central Tokyo (the other lines mostly criss-cross the centre). Compared to the other lines it is very modern looking, but the cars seem much smaller, particularly in terms of width. I wonder how claustrophobic it must be during rush hour...

Speaking of trains, a major news item here recently was the first trial introduction of an idea that has bounced around Tokyo for a long time. One of the commuter lines has initiated women-only cars at rush hours in order to combat the problem of chikan (=gropers) who seem more numerous at this time of year when party-season liquor loosens inhibitions. If the cars are well-accepted they may be introduced on a permanent basis. A welcome development for some harried women, I suppose, but if such things are necessary I can't help but think it is not an altogether encouraging sign about the health of a society...

Speaking of harried women and the health of society, I am still shaking as I write this. I just had a very scary Sunday afternoon.

Things started off peacefully enough. Saturday night I picked up a big stack of New Years cards I had ordered and I was working quietly on them in my room after lunch on Sunday. Then I thought it would be nice to listen to the news while I worked, so I went down and started filling them out down there around 1:20PM. Around 2:10PM I heard a couple of loud noises, then a woman's scream. At first I thought it was just a shreik of laughter, but then I heard another big series of bangs and I got up to see what was going on. I looked out the TV room door and across the lobby. The door to the outside, which was straight ahead, was open. Through it I could see two people fighting in the street (I mean physically fighting--rolling on the ground and pounding kind of fighting). I ran outside and separated them. It turned out to be a man and a woman. He was a 40-ish white guy about six feet tall with a powerful build and a long salt-and-pepper pony tail, and she was a 30-ish very slight Japanese woman with dyed hair. With her left hand she had a grip on his yellow shirt, which was ripped half-way down his chest and she wouldn't let go. There was a small spot of blood on the shirt where her fist was. Whenever I let go of her right hand she would start hitting him. He was visibly angry, but controlling it with a clenched jaw look--it seemed like he knew he had to play it cool in public now that their problem was no longer just between the two of them. He claimed this was all due to PMS-induced hysteria on her part (hint to all guys: never use this 'explanation' with a woman--it goes over like a lead balloon). She was crying and kept telling me to let her go so she could pound on him, saying she needed to have revenge (all this was in English). I wasn't about to let them go at it, as I had no doubt that he would end up pounding on her if she started in on him. His own violence was very close to the surface, as I had to pull his hand off her at one point. From their conversation it came out that they had a long history of this behaviour, a fact I subsequently confirmed with other residents (they were kicked out of another dormitory for much the same thing).

I kept hoping that they would calm down or someone would come by, but no one was around. We must have stood there locked in that position in a stand-off in the street for about 30 minutes. She kept accusing me of siding with him because I was also a foreigner and I wouldn't let her start pounding on him. Her explanation of the situation was that she had touched him to get his attention and he had grabbed her and thrown her face down on the floor (probably the big bang I heard). Then he had tried to run away and she had grabbed him and not let go--the result of their troubled exit down the staircase and out the door being probably being the cause of the rest of the series of loud noises I heard. She had a small scratch on her left temple and I think her story was probably basically true, at least as far it went (what her initial 'touch' was being the only questionable point).

Despite her pleading with me I refused to leave, and eventually we got cold enough (she was barefoot) that we moved indoors, still locked together. Still, no one came by except a couple of Japanese who did their best to look the other way. Eventually things got violent again as she tried to kick him in the groin, and so I called for help to a few people who were sheepishly looking around the corner. Finally the manager, Ms. Tanaka, returned from an outing. She spoke to them, but not understanding the gravity of the situation she tried to tell me I had best keep out of things as they were considered to be just between two people in Japan. Still, I refused to leave until things calmed down. I explained to that if I left and she started beating on him, either he would end up beating on her (as he had already shown himself prone to doing) or he would have a case for assault with the police, neither of which was likely to be a positive outcome for her. She was having none of it and insisted I let her have her revenge, adding that she had been forced to have an abortion and had connections with the police so she could get away with whatever she wanted to do. Eventually they got some space between them as she lost her grip on his shirt and with Ms. Tanaka there and several other people as a hopefully restraining influence on their behaviour I ran back to my room to get my cell phone and call Mr. Yokota, the owner. He said he couldn't come right away but would try to come soon (that turned out to mean a couple of hours). I also tried to call my friend Aya, who works with battered women, for her advice, but she was actually volunteering at the shelter at that time and wouldn't be home until 6PM.

I went back to see what was going on and two uniformed policemen arrived. I explained to one cop in Japanese what had happened, but Mrs. Tanaka and the woman spoke to them in Japanese and the cops seemed desperate to get away from the situation as soon as possible--one said more or less, "oh, it's just a man-woman thing, so we'll be on our way". Chris, however, wanted to go with them--he doesn't speak any Japanese, but I think he recognized that the only thing anyone could verify was her violence against him, so if he could keep it that way he would get off scot-free.

I went back to my room and sat down to try to do some more cards, but just burst out crying. I think it was a combination of pent-up emotion from the incident along with feelings about the woman accusing me of siding with him because we were both foreigners and Mrs. Tanaka chiding me (gently but clearly) for getting involved at all. I felt I had to talk to someone and so I went to Buster's room, as I had seen him come in. Along the way Antonella, an Italian woman, saw me crying and tried to calm me down. Buster listened out in the sink area as I literally cried on his shoulder, and eventually we ended up in the TV room with Antonella. After a few minutes Setsuko, the nurse friend I went to the hot spring with, came in along with another Asian woman and they all got me calmed down, saying I did the right thing. They were aware of a long history of problems between these two, and also one incident where Chris smashed a window because he was mad that the door was locked when he returned home very late. We could hear lots more banging and screaming upstairs, including Mrs. Tanaka's voice, as Chris tried to move out and the fight between them continued.

Finally we saw Chris leave with a bunch of bags and Mrs. Tanaka came in, visibly shaken. Having had some personal experience with the confrontation she was now much more understanding of my intervention, and it was our turn to comfort her (she is about 4'10", a rather thin and sickly woman in her sixties, and I thought she was going to collapse from the stress). During all this the cops came back a couple of times--I think they were escorting Chris, perhaps. Eventually Mr. Yokota arrived and I explained what had happened to him.

So, there it is--the most dramatic moments of my trip, and ones I hope never to have repeated--here or anywhere else. I am still shaking and nervous as I write this. I am keeping my door locked in case one of them comes back for me, and I was rather jumpy when Mr. Yokota knocked on my door to get my story. I wanted to get this down while it was still fresh in my memory in case I end up being called as a witness, but now I have to do some meditation and treatment to get calmed down. Who would have thought I could get into so much trouble writing Christmas cards and watching TV? Seriously, though, you never realize how much such a situation can shake you until you experience one.

Epilogue: After the Shinsokan, treatment and a big bowl of spaghetti I felt a little better. I went for a walk and did the only two things a woman can do when she is still stressed and has run out of tears: talk to a girlfriend (Aya, on my cell phone) and eat ice cream (a double gelato cone and a convenience-store drumstick--they don't sell Haagen-Daazs by the gallon around here). On the way home I did affirmations and softly sang several songs from the Centre as I let the rain fall gently on me without an umbrella. Did I do the "right" thing? I may never know in terms of what "right" means to most people, i.e. in terms of the consequences of my actions. But I do feel that since there was no hesitation in doing what I did that it was instinct, and that my instincts are basically good.

This morning (Monday), as I came back in from my morning exercise, I ran into her on the front steps as she was going out. We both paused and she said thank you for yesterday. This is a standard way of greeting someone in Japanese; no real thanks are necessarily implied, just recognition that something happened between the two people yesterday. She then added that what I thought was help was not help to her. I could see that the scratch on her left temple, which yesterday was partially obscured by her dishevelled hair, was rather larger than I had thought, she had bandages on a finger (probably the one that caused the blood stain in his shirt), and she said she was going to the hospital to see if she had any broken bones (apparently he had broken some of her bones before). Although she was calm on the surface, her anger was still clearly burning strong. As we parted awkwardly I could not help but feel that she is in severe need of counselling help, but that's a conclusion she will have to come to herself. For now all I can do is treat to know that they are both loving, peaceful children of God and let It work out a resolution.

Well, there you go. Rather disturbing, but I had to get this off my chest. My next report should be more upbeat. Over the next week I will be having dinner with the American SNI guy I mentioned last time (he wants to hear about Uji), attending a party at Rev. Abe's home, and spending Christmas with Aya and her family (still to be confirmed). Barring unforeseen interruptions, I should also have an initial summary of the results of my paper on women in management in Japan.

Have a wonderful festive season, whether you are celebrating Christmas, Channukah, Solstice, New Years or whatever.

Hi Folks-

Tuesday, Dec 19 I had to go into Tokyo. Along the way I was near Sensoji (aka Asakusa Kannon temple) in NE Tokyo and so I dropped in for a few minutes to see the hagoita ichi (battledore market). Long ago it was traditional for Japanese women to play a version of badminton around New Years, and the paddles (battledore is the technical term in English) became progressively larger and more ornate until eventually they were purely decorative. The standard decoration was a very elaborately dressed woman in a kimono portrayed in semi-3-D on the back, with a simple painting on the front (the side one would theoretically hit the shuttlecock with). That design was supplemented first with other traditional designs like kabuki actors and most recently by figures of the year's most popular personalities, such as pop music performers, actresses and, this year, the coach of the baseball team that won the Japanese World Series (the Yomiuri Giants, I believe. Yomiuri is a newspaper company--most teams have a corporate sponsor). The prices were rather steep: anywhere from 10,000 to 30,000 yen (C$140-420), with even a miniature one perhaps six inches in length costing 5,000 yen (C$70). I did find a real cheapie for 1,000 yen, just to be able to show what it is I'm talking about.

Speaking of steep prices, the finale to my day in Tokyo was to be dinner with Stuart Baker, the American guy who went to the Seicho-no-Ie renseikai (spiritual seminar) with me in Chiba. He wanted to talk to me about my impressions of Uji, which he hopes to go to one day as well. He had told me to meet him at Alaska, a rather fancy restaurant on the south edge of Hibiya Park in central Tokyo.

I was prepared for a rather pricey meal, as he had indicated the price range was about 5,000 yen (C$70), which is about what I would normally spend on four or five meals. We had a great conversation, but the meal was the most overpriced I have ever had. My share of the bill for a set course steak dinner, the cheapest thing on the menu, combined with Perrier and a shared appetizer, came to 8,400 yen (C$120) The food was inferior in both quality and quantity to anything at the Sizzler, but we did get waiters in tuxedos, a pianist, and a view of the park that would have been nice if it weren't dark. It was the kind of place that gives Tokyo a reputation for being so astronomically expensive. I think Stuart is used to eating in such places on expense account, as he is the president of the local subsidiary of an American PR firm. Fortunately I was at least mentally prepared for this, as I had seen the menu while waiting for him to arrive (the waiter gave me a menu without prices, the first time I have ever had that happen anywhere--says something about the class of places I usually eat in, I guess. Harvey's menu is posted right up there where you can see it!). Anyway, I stopped off on the way home for a nikuman (meat bun) and a drumstick ice cream at a convenience store, as I was still hungry.

My next trip into Tokyo was the 21^st, to get my hair done (i.e. coloured). On the way I noticed a big display of children's colouring. There was a contest to draw a scene with a Christmas tree. Many of the drawings would have fit in well in a similar contest in Calgary, but some had famous Japanese cartoon characters that would have caused a few heads to scratch back home. I was drifting into a daydream about helping a child do one of these drawings (no doubt induced by frustrated mothering instincts) when I was struck by a seemingly minor detail about all the pictures: each and every one had the kid's name, age, home address and phone number. In Canada this would all have no doubt been suppressed due to fears of pedophiles targetting the kids, but Japan is still relatively innocent in such matters. I hope they are able to stay that way.

Speaking of social problems, I have heard that the couple who caused the big uproar here on Sunday are already back together (fortunately not here, though she is still living here). I have obtained a brochure about help available for battered women and will be leaving it for her anonymously as soon as I confirm which room she is in.

Most of the books I have read here related to my research are too dry and specialized to be of interest to others. But for business-minded types, Michael Porter's book "Can Japan Compete?", which I just finished, has a basically sound analysis of Japan's economic and managerial problems, though it oversimplifies some basic facts about Japanese management and culture (for example, the vaunted lifetime employment system never covered even the majority of men in the labour force, and of course excluded women almost totally)

As for "fun" reading, I recently finished the "The Simple Guide to Shinto: The Religion of Japan" and "Shinto: The Kami Way", from which I learned some of the terminology (the paper purifcation wand used in some SNI ceremonies is a haraigushi, for example, and the animals guarding the gates of a shrine, usually called lion dogs in English, are koma-inu). I also learned that Kokugakuin University, which is just a few blocks from this station, is one of Japan's two Shinto universities. At a deeper level, I can now see where the SNI emphasis on gratitude comes from: it is one of the three aspects of behaviour essential to successful communication with the kami (deities): sincerity, cheerfulness and gratitude. Shinto's deities, or kami, are like the Greek gods in some ways: quite anthropomorphic, with emotions, limitations, and even the ability to die. But the whole topic of the nature of the kami is quite complex, and according to the Shinto scholars who wrote these two books, not even very well articulated within the world of Shinto, which lacks any accepted canon of holy works such as the Bible, the Koran or the various Buddhist sutras.

Saturday, December 23 I embarked on a two-hour train ride from the far south-west side of the Tokyo megalopolis, where I live, to the far north-east side, where Rev. Abe of SNI and his wife Terumi live. Quite some time ago they had invited me to a party. Later I discovered it would actually be a shiyukai (readers' meeting) of some sort. So I basically had no idea of what it would be like except that it would likely include both spiritual and social aspects. (In Japan SNI has no regular weekly services of the kind we would recognize. Instead there are shiyukai of groups of readers of the various magazines for men, women, youngsters, etc. held with varying frequency at the homes of local residents.)

It took two trips in a small car to get everyone from Minami Kashiwa ("south oak") station to the Abes' home. Eleven of us crowded around a large low table (like a coffee table) in a small living room about 10' by 12'. One corner of the room had a butsudan, or Buddhist altar for venerating one's ancestors. This was a dark wooden cabinet which contains ancestral tablets and stands for incense, offerings of fruit, etc. Next to the obligatory calligraphy with the characters "jisso" (=True Image World), up high in the opposite corner from the butsudan on a triangular shelf was a Shinto kamidana (literally "shelf for the kami (gods)"). This was an unpainted wooden miniature replica of a shrine building with sprigs of the sacred sakaki tree on either side. Inside was what appeared to be an o-fuda, or good luck tablet obtained from a shrine (probably a SNI one in this case). Both were well-kept in view of SNI's emphasis on veneration of ancestors. (Rev. Abe let me take pictures, so you can see what I mean at the slide show.) One often hears the term "ancestor worship" with respect to Japan, but "worship" is probably not be the right word to use, at least with respect to SNI; it is more a matter of expressing respect, reverence and gratitude to those without whom one's physical presence in this world would not have been possible. Since SNI holds that our spirit is eternal and lives on after we cast off our physical bodies, the spirits of our ancestors are seen as still present and living, so one is not just "talking to a pile of ashes".

Anyway, the demographics of the room were the exact opposite of Uji, where I had been in with a bunch of seniors. Our eleven consisted of Rev. Abe and his wife (perhaps in their mid-thirties), a man about 35 who was preparing to become an SNI minister, I think, a young guy in about Grade Eight, two women of high school age, two women in their early twenties, two young women in Grade seven or eight, and me. This time I was the oldest in the room! Once again, however, the age difference turned out to be a blessing. Given the youth of the crowd and my presence, Rev. Abe had chosen an article from the youth edition of the SNI magazine, which meant it was a lot easier for me to understand.

Rev. Abe's wife started things off around 7:40PM with a prayer. She began with the invocation familiar to those who have visited SNI's English web site (though of course in a much higher pitch), said a short affirmative prayer, almost all of which I understood this time, and ended with the Sekai Heiwa no Inori (Prayer for World Peace) and the closing chant (one line repeated twice; it means something like "The peace of our Great Parent God's Life spreads and brings peace to the whole universe" and is repeated at the end of every SNI prayer and Shinsokan meditation).

After that we took turns reading bits of the featured article out loud. I had scanned the first bit and knew I could read it, so I volunteered to go first. At the end of each person's reading everyone would say 'arigato gozaimasu' (thank you) and clap. I got an especially warm round of applause as the first foreigner most of them had ever heard read Japanese including kanji (the Chinese characters that make the whole thing so fiendishly cumbersome in the first place). One woman later commented that she was very moved to hear me read the article, I guess because she knew that it took a lot of work studying both Japanese and SNI to get to the point of being able to do it. I only made one mistake, and that was rather hilarious (I confused the character for "head" with that for "face" and so I said "if you think you are ugly" instead of "if you think you are stupid").

Once we were finished reading we went around and each commented on some part of the text. This time I was last, which was good, as it gave me time to think and get myself prepared to talk. Although Rev. Abe had asked people to speak slowly and clearly to help me understand, I had fallen behind about half way through the article and never caught up. I was pretty sure I knew where the article was headed, as it was about the most effective way to pray, and I know what SNI's views are on that (pretty much the same as Religious Science: use affirmative prayer and then don't go back and let your wandering negative thoughts cancel out that mental work). Still, I played it safe and talked about the role of prayer in my life, and in particular how it had helped me reconcile with someone. Reconciliation is a big thing in SNI and figures prominently in the first part of the Holy Sutra Nectarian Shower of Holy Doctrines, the main SNI sutra, so I knew this would strike a chord.

Once I got through that and (almost literally) wiped the sweat from my brow, Rev. Abe made some comments on the text, including a reference to Craig Kielberger, the Canadian teen who started a movement against child labour when he was 12 (incidentally, the December issue of Science of Mind also had an interview with Craig). Rev. Abe emphasized the need to always be planting positive thoughts in our minds through praising others and ourselves and then led us in an exercise to get us on track in this habit. He passed around postcards someone had brought back from London, England and then asked us to write our names on the one we had chosen. Then we passed them to the person on the left so that he/she could write words of praise to us on them. He told me to do it in English to help the students practice. After a minute or two we then passed the cards to the left again, then again, and so on until everyone had written words of praise on everyone else's card. Then we got them back to read. This exercise is similar in concept to the "stroke books" that were used at the Religious Science youth camp this past summer (these were notebooks which were kept in a central location so that anyone could write nice things about anyone else they met at camp, and which were then given to all the participants at the end of the camp). I think we also did a verbal exercise something like this as the workshop part of one of our teen services at the Centre

Just as we were finishing, Terumi came out with plates of mild curry rice with vegetables and tofu, later followed by several trays of sweet snacks (the maple cream cookies and maple sugar I had brought from Canada were a great hit--that hurried stop in Vancouver airport you read about in the very first of these reports paid off!). We ate and chatted for an hour or so. Several people commented on how they were poor at English, until I pointed out that probably the reason most Japanese have problems in this area is that they all constantly say they are poor at it. This was exactly the point of the article we had just read, and suddenly the lesson sank in. It turned out that two of the women could speak English quite well once they actually tried (one had lived in the USA for three years around age five).

Anyway, suddenly it was time for everyone to head out to catch the last trains that would get them home (this was quite early since we were way, way out in the 'burbs). I made the second-last set of trains that would get me home before things shut down, leaving Minami Kashiwa at 10:45PM and arriving back at my residence around 12:40AM.

Christams eve I went out for a bite to eat. The stores seemed remarkably normal to someone used to the last-minute Christmas rush back in Canada. But then, for most people here Christmas just another work day. Well, almost. It seems to be common to have a rather more sumptuous than normal meal. Turkey is almost unknown here: people seem to have heard of it but seldom if ever eaten it. Still, there seems to be some vague notion that the holiday is somehow associated with poultry, so KFC was doing a booming business, with customers lined up out the door. Even MOS Burger, a Japanese burger chain, had got in on the act by introducing a special fried chicken menu item for "X-MOS" (I guess even the Japanese can't resist the opportunity to pun on a name like that). Cake shops were also busy, as there is also a general sense that the occasion demands cake, though I have not seen even one that vaguely resembles a Christmas cake. Most seemed to be the attractively decorated but bland concoctions of white sponge cake and whipped cream that cause the Japanese to marvel when they travel to North America and taste what a cake can actually be. In several small stores I saw the clerks taking down Christmas trees, presumably to be replaced with Japanese New Year's decorations (more on that later). Later I used the last of my international calling card on a twenty-minute talk with my sister Kathy. It was only 7AM on the 24^th in Orillia, Ontario, but the lines are often jammed on Christmas Day and somehow I just needed to talk to her then.

Christmas Day turned out clear and bright, though we later had a short spell of strange, light misty rain that fell despite their not being a cloud in the sky. Again, everything was open. I had decided I wanted to mark the occasion by doing something unusual (surprise, surprise!). Specifically, I planned to visit a golf driving range near here. However, when I got there I realized that, distracted by the big red writing that said they were open all weekends and holidays, I had missed the little black writing at the bottom that said they were closed on Mondays. So my adventures on the range will have to wait for another day. It will be the first time I have held a golf club since my debut in a post-graduation tournament at Beaver Downs in Beaverton, Ontario in 1976--oh, I graduated at the age of seven, by the way!!!

What I ended up doing was having an early meal of Filet-o-Fish at MacDonalds (one of several menu items that are half-price on weekdays and hence a great deal by Japanese standards) and then heading off to Tokyo to pick up my birthday present to myself. This was a hanko, or stamp with my name in kanji, the Chinese characters used to write Japanese. It was a bit of a luxury, at 10,000 yen (C$140), but I wanted one that had both my family and given names on it, which meant moving into a fairly large, custom-made stamp that could accommodate four characters. I now have three hanko: a small, cheap, ready-made round one with my last name on it, a medium-sized (15mm) custom-made round one with my first name on it, and this new, large (21mm) square one with both. These stamps are used in place of signatures in Japan, and most people have several for different purposes. The ones that are reserved for really serious documents like mortgages and such are actually registered with the government and often kept under lock and key for the rare occasions when they are required.

Before leaving I also picked up a little gift for Buster. His last name is Winters, so I looked at the ready-made hanko to see whether there were any with the character "fuyu" in them (fuyu=winter in Japanese). There was only one such name, "Fuyugi" (=winter tree), so I bought it for 96 yen (C$1.50). A leatherette slip case and a small ink pad brought the total to 520 yen (C$7.50). As I had been leaving the residence I had seen him and when I mentioned where I was going he had indicated he wanted to see my new hanko, as he not only didn't have one, he had never seen one. I am not much of a gift buyer when faced with a list and a deadline, but sometimes I just know when someone will be tickled with something, so I was quite excited about giving it to him. I got even more excited along the way to my next stop, an onsen (hot spring) that was on the way home, as I figured out a really cool combination of characters for him to use for his full name. I was practically giddy at the thought of giving him the little gift and a new name!

But first I had to soak to console myself for my failed attempt at golf. The place I went to was a different one than my usual pick, since that one is closed on Mondays, as is my #2 choice. This one was very large and slick, actually more conveniently located than my regular place, but quite expensive (about C$20--they have a no-frills bath in the basement to meet the municipal public service requirements at C$6). In such sybaritic luxury it seemed rather incongruous to see signs on every locker, as well as at the front door, announcing "We strictly refuse entry to tattoed people and mafiosi". (Members of the yakuza, or Japanese mafia, typically identify themselves with full-back or even full-body tattoes with traditional Japanese designs. Other indicators are missing links from the baby and ring fingers--chopped off as a sign of loyalty to one's boss--crew cuts or punch perms, large American cars and a general swaggering manner.) Anyway, the signs seemed to be effective, as there didn't seem to be any mafiosi in the ladies change room at least. I had a good long soak and then headed for home.

As I came in I noticed Buster in the TV room. I got even more excited and practically ran upstairs to wrap the little gift and write out the characters I had chosen for him along with an explanation (he speaks basically no Japanese and has no structural understanding of the language, either, and I wanted him to understand why these characters were chosen).

Wednesday, December 27 I went out to Kamakura to meet my friend Aya Choya (her last name means "butterfly valley") and her mother for a little Bonenkai ("forget-the-year party"). We went out to a restaurant on the beach, passing a number of surfers in wetsuits. I've always thought of surfing as very hazardous, but with three-foot waves I'm guessing the worst danger that day wasthe risk of a bad cold. To my delight, we were also able to faintly see Mount Fuji off in the distance. Despite numerous trips to japan, I had never actually seen it before. It's not that far from Tokyo, but days when it is clear enough to be seen are few and far between. (I might have caught a glimpse of it a few years ago on a train, but I'm not sure it whether it was Mount Fuji or some other peak--Japan is mostly mountainous). Anyway, it was much bigger than I had imagined, a perfect faint blue cone with snow frosting on the upper third or so.

The restaurant we were headed to itself held another surprise. It was completely Hawaiian in style inside and out, and even the servers wore Hawaiian outfits. The menu, however, was distinctly non-Polynesian: Japanese-style (i.e. mild) curry rice! We had appetizers of ribs, salad and garlic French fries, then the curry rice arrived. Mine was accompanied by a deep-fried rare steak, while my companions shared a seafood concoction. We lingered a while as I showed various pictures of me in Japan. Mrs. Choya surprised me by revealing that one of her ancestors (I think it was her grandmother) was once involved in Seicho-no-Ie, the Japanese group I have become acquainted with here.

After lunch we walked off some of the calories on the way back to the station. Along the way we passed an old-fashioned yaki-imo cart smoking away. Yaki-imo means roasted sweet potato, and is a tradional winter treat. The flesh is yellow, not orange like a yam, and the skin is reddish. Traditionally during winter men would pull around carts with a charcoal roaster on the back shouting "yaaaaaaakiiimooo, yakimo", and people would come out and buy them much the same way kids are attracted to the bells and/or music of Good Humour carts during the North American summer. Nowadays it is much more likely to be a truck with a recorded voice, so finding this relic was a real delight. It was unattended, so I had time to pose for a picture before the owner returned and Mrs. Choya bought me one. (Quite tasty warmed up in the microwave.)

The other very noticeable thing along the way was the preparations for New Years (O-shogatsu, literally, "honourable first month"). Two things stood out in particular. One was the large number of ads for shrines and temples that are major destinations for hatsumode, the "first-shrine/temple visit of the year". Even though very few Japanese are religious to any great extent, a visit to a shrine (Shinto) or temple (Buddhist) during the first few days of the year is almost obligatory. Some of the biggest attract three or four million people over this short period. (Technically the ads were put up by the various train companies to explain how to get to these sites). The other sign of the upcoming big event was the stands that were starting to appear to sell traditional O-shogatsu decorations. These include kadomatsu (three bamboo sticks of different lengths and some pine boughs bound together with straw rope supplemented with various sundry decorations and put by the front door of a house or business) and various other decorations involving pine boughs and straw ropes. Some of the houses had already put these up.

I should perhaps add a third sign that O-shogatsu is coming: the subways are not nearly as full as usual. This is the biggest single holiday period for many Japanese, and some people have already started a week or more of holidays. Contrary to popular belief, on average Japanese take only slightly fewer days of holiday in a year than North Americans, but they take them most of them in the form of national holidays when everybody travels at the same time. This is quite insane from the standpoint of travel infrastructure, which, though excellent in most of Japan, still groans under the strain at these peak periods (the others being Golden Week in early May and O-Bon, the festival of the dead, in late summer). However, there is enormous peer pressure in most Japanese workplaces not to "desert" one's colleagues by zipping off whenever you feel like it, so most people only use about half the personal choice holidays they are theoretically entitled to, and are stuck travelling during national holidays when everyone else is trying to do the same thing (as I mentioned in a report shortly after I arrived, Japan has about twice as many national holidays as the USA or Canada--19 compared to 10-12).

Friday, December 29 I ended up going into Yokohama for lunch at the Sizzler with a bunch of people from the residence, including Buster ;-). After stuffing ourselves at the salad bar we waddled off to a nearby JR station as they wanted me to help them buy tickets to a New Year's Eve Party on a ship moored permanently in Yokohama harbour (none of them spoke Japanese and they weren't even sure of the ship's name, so they needed a Japanese speaker). I ended up buying a ticket, too, so that may be where I usher in the New Year. I say "may be" because I have since found out the Yokohama subway is not running late that night, unlike the Tokyo subway, so I still have to figure out how to get home. New Year's Day I am going to go to a shrine or temple for Hatsumode, probably Kawasaki Daishi, which is one of the top five, and a place I have not been to before.

In closing, I guess I should explain the postcards some of you are probably getting right now. (If you didn't get one it means nothing other than that I didn't have your address with me here in Japan--come to the party on Jan 19^th and I'll give you one of my spares!)

The picture was taken by Myrna in front of the Tama Plaza branch of KFC, which is right in front of the station and a fifteen minute walk from here. The vertical writing on the far right says "we send you a joyful New Year". The smaller writing just to the left of the picture says, "we pray that the New Year will be a wonderful one for you". The rest of the writing is my name and address in Japanese. The three little egg-shaped faces in the top left are daruma. Daruma is the Japanese name of a Buddhist monk who meditated in a cave for eight years until his legs fell off, hence the egg-like, legless shape. Contrary to the impression you might get from the story, however, the daruma is a happy character and is associated with good luck. At temples Japanese often buy small plastic or paper mache daruma, which are sold with just the whites of the eyes. The buyer paints in the black of the right eye after saying a prayer for the success of a new project or goal, and then paints in the other eye when the prayer/wish/dream/objective comes true or is fulfilled. For example, when election results are announced, the winning politician is always shown painting in the second eye of a giant daruma.

Japanese traditionally send New Year's cards (Nengasho) rather than Christmas cards. They can be ordered either with a photo or just a standard design (cheaper), or hand-made using a variety of stamps and stencils sold in department stores for this purpose. If you stamp them with the characters "Nenga", then the post office will hold them and deliver all the ones for Japanese addresses on New Year's Day itself. This custom seems to be in much better health than the Canadian tradition of Christmas cards, which seems to have faded considerably in recent years. I have seen women dropping bundles of hundreds of them into the post boxes. One reason the tradition is holding up better here may be that the cards traditionally carry only the pre-printed greeting, without a personal note. As a result, you just address them and drop them in the mail--no need to figure out something interesting to say to Aunt Agnes. Needless to say, there have been ads for months looking for part-time help to deliver all this extra mail!

Well, speaking of messages, I will probably have just one more report to send before I arrive home, a scant two weeks from today! (I have already started packing, a term which gives little hint of the magnitude of this logistical exercise.) Do let me know if you can make the party on the 19^th. I have fifteen positives so far. And in the meantime, have a safe and memorable New Year's celebration to kick off a wonderful New Year for yourselves!

Love and peace to you all.

Teri

Hi Folks!

Happy New Year! I'll be home in just a few days now, but here's what I've been up to as my trip draws to a close. I'll start off with how I ended up being mistaken for a prostitute in a sleazy nightlife area, then go on to explain how I single-handedly dispelled sin in Japan and stopped all highway buses to Northern Japan (though not, I must admit, on the same day).

You might remember my friend Saya, whose band I went to hear perform back in October. She was too busy to talk then, and her shift starts too late for me to meet her at the bars where she moonlights part-time, so we had had a hard time getting together. But Saturday, December 30 she was starting at 8PM, so I went in to Tokyo to meet her.

The bar where she was working was on the eastern edge of Kabukicho, a very raucous, garish, more-than-somewhat seedy entertainment district just north of the east exit of Shinjuku station, one of Tokyo's main west-side transportation termini. Most of Kabukicho is multi-storey, loud and brightly lit, full of pachinko parlours (=the Japanese vertical version of pinball), bars, karaoke halls, all-night eateries, "hostess bars", and tons of places where men can go for a "massage" or to be "washed", if you get my drift (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). It is actually quite safe to go there. Like most entertainment districts in Japan, it is thick with yakuza (Japanese mafia), who ensure there is no street crime in exchange for the police not poking their noses into some of the more, ummm, "private" activities that go on there. (Apparently they were helpful in resolving a string of shootings that erupted there a couple of years ago as upstart Chinese gangs that were trying to move in settled scores with one another--just the kind of thing the yakuza don't want going on on their turf.) The eastern edge of Kabukicho is a bit different, though, containing a quiet warren of small bars down little alleys no more than six or eight feet across, bounded on the extreme east by a koban (satellite police station) and a Shinto shrine. This little area was my destination.

I had only a vague map, so it took a little wandering, but eventually I stumbled into the place, which was called "Genshishimbo". This means "Atomic Heart Mother", which apparently was the name of a famous Pink Floyd album. At first glance it appeared to be only about ten by twelve, with just seven stools at the bar. Later I discovered they do have a second floor, which can squeeze in another twelve or so, but it was not in use that night, except by a mysterious pair of young Japanese guys, one of whom who occasionally came down to buy a drink before disappearing again.

Despite the bar's name, the music was mostly Motown, supplemented by vaguely similar stylings by Japanese and other artists. There is actually a sign that says more or less, "please don't request that we play the Pink Floyd album our bar is named after as our patrons are sick of it".

I quickly struck up a conversation with a young guy on my right, who worked for a small city planning company. When he left, a young woman who was with two guys started talking to me, so I was feeling pretty much a part of things. Then a very drunk 50-ish guy staggered in and sat in the only empty seat, right next to me. The other customers cleared out fairly soon therefter, eventually leaving just me, my friend Saya and the drunk. I did my best to ignore him, which is not easy in a room that small. Eventually he offered me 10,000 yen (C$140) to go drinking with him! I was wearing my blue double-breasted suit jacket and a loose, ankle-length black skirt, so I don't think I looked particularly like a prostitute, but to Saya's great embarrasment he actually tried again after I refused the first time.

Fortunately even a drunk eventually gets a hint and he left, thereby allowing Saya and I to talk for a bit. Three other guys eventually wandered in, followed soon thereafter by a very lively young woman who laughed and slapped her knee after everything she said. (The turnover in the bar was much faster than most such places since the cover charge is unbelievably low by Japanese standards: just 600 yen, or about C$8.50). This genki (lively) young woman sat next to me and we soon launched into a very animated coversation. Unfortunately I only understood about half of it, as she spoke extremely quickly and used lots of contractions (sort of the Japanese equivalent of saying "whatchagonnadotuhnite?" as one word instead of "what are you going to do tonight?").

Fortunately, however, some things transcend language. Saya had picked up a couple of little plastic dinosaurs from MacDonalds, which was doing tie-in promotion for the movie Dinosaur, now showing in Japanese theatres. She wound them up and put them on the bar. One walked a very jaunty and distinctly un-dinosaur-like trot, but the other just seemed to bow up and down. Saya, the woman and I were all quickly making jokes about what it was saying as it was doing so ('welcome', 'sorry', 'thank you for coming', etc.--all the standard things that Japanese say on different occasions when they bow). Then I commented that the low point in its "bow" was about the height of a shot glass and soon we had the dinosaur drinking scotch! (a new theory of what led to their extinction....?)

Unlike most of my trips to bars, I was actually having a pretty good time and was reluctant to leave, but had to go around 11:30PM in order to catch the train back to Yokohama before things shut down.

New Year's Eve, though, the trains out of Tokyo run late, with the last one leaving at 1:15PM and the first one New Year's day starting at 4AM for those who party all night. This enabled me to return to my original plan for New Year's Eve, which was to go to a Buddhist temple to hear the 'joya no kane', or New Year's Eve bells. Temples ring their bells 108 times to usher in the New Year. This is supposed to dispel the 108 delusions Japanese Buddhists believe people are subject to (though the correspondence is not exact, delusion to Buddhists is kind of like sin to Christians--something one doesn't want too much of around). When I heard this I couldn't help thinking I could never be a good Buddhist. I couldn't handle all the lists: 33 manifestations of the Kannon Boddhisatva, 108 delusions, four jewels, 16 hells, eightfold righteous path, etc., etc.. I have a hard enough time remembering ten commandments! (These are not a part of Religious Science anyway, but one of the leftovers from my childhood. Still, most of them are pretty hard to argue with as a code to live by no matter what one's faith.

The first few days of the New Year (roughly January 1-4), basically everything in Japan except transportation and a few major chain stores is closed, so there is very little one can do work-wise except go with the flow and participate in the seasonal festivities. This suited me fine, as the opportunity to do so was one of the things I looked forward when I arrived here. (Even bank machines are turned off January 1-3, so the holiday requires a little financial planning!!)

I did a little searching on my map and found a temple that looked like it should be fairly large near a station on the train line from Tokyo that runs late. It's called Komyoji (=Temple of Enlightenment) near the Futako-Shinchi (='two child new land') station on the Denentoshi line (the line that goes through my station). My plan was to check it out about 10PM, and if it didn't look promising to go further up the line towards Tokyo till I got to a big enough temple that they had something going on.

Before leaving I did a Shinsokan (SNI meditation) and ended with the SNI "Sekai Heiwa no Inori" (Prayer for World Peace) as part of the World Peace Vigil held all around the world at 12 noon GMT on December 31. Unfortunately this works out to 5AM Calgary time, as I discovered to my chagrin when I participated last year for the first time, but it is a much more civilized 9PM here in Japan!

eiwa no Inor

When I arrived at Komyoji around 10PM there was nothing going on, but it looked very promising, as there was a huge temple bell with temporary lighting set up around it and preparation for a big bonfire. There was also a lot of signage describing the temple's significance. (It belongs to the Otani faction of the Shinshu sect of Buddhism. Shinshu was founded by Saint Shinran and broke off from Pure Land Buddhism during the Kamakura period, i.e. 700-800 years ago.) I decided to stick with my hunch that this was a good place to be and went back to Futako-Shinchi station to read until closer to the appointed hour. I bought a Diet Pepsi and read my electronic Bible under a street light by the bicycle parking lot.

Around 11:30PM I went back to the the temple and things were starting to perk up. The bonfire was lit and there was the start of a line by the bell, which suggested to me that I might even get to ring it! I warmed myself briefly by the fire and then joined the line, even though I wasn't exactly sure what it was for.

Inside the temple itself a priest and around a dozen others ranging from children to seniors were chanting. This continued until about 11:50PM, when the priest, a sixty-ish man wearing a black robe with a yellow coverlet with crests on it, came out, climbed up the steps and rang the bell the first time. A man came by and gave us sticks with our numbers on them. The dozen parishioners who had been inside chanting got to go first, then we went in order. I was number 21.

I guess a word about Japanese temple bells is in order. We are not talking some little cowbell here. There was a stone-and-concrete platform about 15 feet square and four feet high on which the bell's protective structure was built. This consisted of a typical Oriental- style black tile roof supported by thick, rough timbers (roughly 12X12s) and was open on all four sides. The bronze bell itself was about five feet high, three feet wide, and about 1.5 inches thick. The striker was a log five or six inches in diameter and five feet long, suspended horizontally outside the bell by two ropes. The rope closer to the bell hung all the way to the ground and was used as a handle to swing the striker. The standard procedure seemed to be to make two slight swings with the striker to get up momentum and then to hit the bell with the third swing. However, people seemed free to try their own variations, some soft and some hard (I don't know what delusion #21 is, but MY ring should have pretty much dispelled it for this year and maybe part of 2002!) Many children were brought by their parents, who helped them with the ringing. Some were toddlers so young it was all they could do to hang onto the rope while Daddy and Mommy held them and swung the striker for them. A guy was assigned to keep the strker from hitting the bell a second time on the rebound, but he wasn't paying that close attention and intervened a little too late a few times.

Meanwhile the bonfire was going strong. Japanese traditionally buy a variety of good luck charms at shrines and temples on New Year's Day, such as hamaya (decorative arrows to drive away devils). By the next New Year's these items are thought to have absorbed as much bad luck as they can (thereby drawing it away from the owner) or given off as much good luck as they can, so they are brought to a temple or shrine and burned before buying new ones. This bonfire was mostly scrap wood, but from time to time arrows in particular were thrown onto it.

The atmosphere was much more like a quiet community party than a solemn religious occasion. The priest and his wife were greeting a variety of latecomers, and a couple of the women began serving amazake, the sweet winter rice drink I described in an earlier report. Around 12:15AM we could hear, but not see, fireworks off in the distance (probably in the harbour). I was the only foreigner there the whole time.

Around 12:30AM I decided to head back to the station. On the way out a twenty-something Japanese guy started a conversation by asking me if I was interested in what was going on. He had a shaved head, which made me think he was perhaps a novice (i.e. young priest/monk in training), so I veered the conversation towards my interest in Japanese customs rather than in Japanese Buddhism. It just didn't seem the time to get into the specifics of his sect.

As I headed back to the station I noticed a lot of people going the other way were carrying little styrofoam plates of identical takeout food. I soon realized that this was from Futako Jinja (=Two-Child Shrine), a Shinto shrine located just up the street. As it turned out, my route took me right past the entrance, so I dropped in.

The entrance was a long, narrow street which was packed with a huge line of people waiting to say a prayer at the shrine. Normally people entering a Shinto shrine pause at a temizuya (literally "hand water stand") to wash their hands and rinse out their mouths as a rite of purification, but given the size of the crowd and their probably fairly tenuous association with Shinto, this practice was dispensed with on this occasion.

I bypassed the line and went up to where the action was. Again, a bonfire was burning, this time with more paraphernalia, since it was not just old arrows, but also a lot of the straw ropes that figure prominently in Japanese Shinto ornaments, especially those for New Year's. They were also handing out amazake and the food I had seen (a couple of varieties of steamed, jelly-like starchy stuff without an easy North American equivalent). I sampled some and joined in the party for a few minutes. The atmosphere was quite a bit more boisterous than at the temple, as a lot of the guys seemed to have been drinking something rather stronger than amazake, which is completely alcohol-free. This one group of three in particular were so amused at having a foreigner there that they insisted I take their picture doing a group hug (something Japanese only do when they are very drunk; normally they are strongly averse to touching one another, even family members).

Of course, liquor seems to be a universal part of New Year's no matter where one goes, and on returning to the station I could see the inevitable results: a string of rice-filled vomit that ran the entire length of three flights of stairs (surely some kind of record, if the Guinness people are keeping track), and a large number of people passed out on the train in positions sure to leave them with a severe crook in their neck the next morning (if they notice through their hangovers).

Once I got back to my station I had a 10-15 minute walk back to the residence along a deserted pedestrian walkway. En route I could hear yet another unusual group of celebrants, bosozoku (motorcycle gangs) razzing the living daylights out of their engines as they cruised along a street somewhere not too far off in the distance. These gangs are a lot more innocent than their North American counterparts. For the most part the members are quite young and their activities are confined to revving their engines like this to show off and annoy people, street racing, and occasional minor juvenile delinquency. In a way it was the perfect ending to an evening that had already turned out way better than expected. While the noise was hardly pleasing to the ear, it was a sign of that odd mix of tradition and modernity, of serenity and cacophony, that makes Japan so special in my heart.

When I got home I was fairly bursting to tell someone about what a wonderful time I had had, but the only person still up was Ed (same one as Christmas). He was going through a severe case of the DTs in the TV room as he sobered up from Christmas, so my conversation with him was rather brief (I had never seen anyone going through this before, but it's rather scary).

By the time I got to bed it was after two, but I arose at 8AM, as I wanted to get an early start on hatsumode, the Japanese tradition of visiting a temple or shrine in the first few days of the New Year, ostensibly to offer a prayer. I had chosen Kawasaki Daishi as my destination based on the recommendation of my friend and former house-mate Aya. The route was a little complicated, but it didn't take that long.

The train station is 900 metres from the temple. You might wonder why I am able to be so precise. Well, the street leading to the temple has several banners marking how far one has left to go, with the first one right outside the station exit.

There was another way I could have probably estimated the distance pretty accurately, though. The huge flow of people going to worship at the temple of a faith most have very little attachment to proved an irresistible lure to some Christian missionary group. They had people carrying signs with Biblical quotations in Japanese ("there is no salvation outside Jesus Christ"; "the wages of sin is death"; "the second coming of Jesus is near"; etc.) and each one had a small PA system that blared out similar messages. These people were posted every 100 metres or so, thereby offering another means of judging distance. They were politely ignored by the passers-by, who were about as interested in the Bible as a typical crowd on the way to the Vatican would be in the message of a Buddhist proselytizer (if there is such a thing).

The missionaries' PA systems also had to compete with canned announcements about crowd control procedures and the voices of dozens of hawkers and food-stand owners who lined the route, all of which contributed to a raucous, carnival-like atmosphere.

I reached the actual temple gates around 11:30AM. There was a crowd that filled about two-thirds of the courtyard inside waiting to enter the temple. In the middle of the courtyard was an incense burner, where people waved their hands to waft the smoke towards various parts of their bodies in the belief that it has curative properties (probably not many actually believe this, but a lot of people seemed to enjoy the tradition; the head was a particularly popular target for the smoke, with lots of laughter in response to wisecracks about how it might improve their brain power).

Although the crowd was huge, it was very well organized. Up on the left at the front of the courtyard, right by the temple entrance, was a big stand on which a police officer or security guy stood. He had several helpers down on the ground. Three of them had "stop/go" signs that were turned periodically to control the inflow of people into the temple. When it looked like there was space, a guy would blow a whistle, the signs would be turned to go and another wave of people would flow up the steps and inside.

It took only about 20-25 minutes for me to get inside the temple, which, ironically, was the only place where things got a bit unruly (elbows and such). People did the usual tossing of a coin into a big box at the front and then some briefly put their hands together. I did a brief treatment to know that the couple I had seen imitating the WWF out in the street a couple of weeks back were loving, peaceful children of God (they were on my mind since he has moved back in and came and thanked me in the hallway the previous night). For the most part there seemed to be little effort to do much more than get close enough to throw a coin into the box. In that sense one might more accurately compare this custom to a visit to a wishing well rather than a solemn pilgrimage.

With the formalities over, everyone headed to the sides of the temple grounds, which were full of stands selling amulets, arrows, daruma (see below), and, of course, food. The most popular food item seemed to be jagabata, which is basically a potato that has been steamed in a wooden box to have the consistency of a baked potato, topped with salt and a large slab of butter (actually margarine, I think). I figured, when in Kawasaki, do as the Kawasakians (Kawasaki-ites?) do, and ordered myself one, followed by and ayu no shioyaki (salt-roasted trout) and a gyukarubi kushi (Korean-style barbecued beef shish kebab).

Suitably fortified, I headed home, pausing briefly to give thanks for having arrived when I did: there was now (1:30PM) a line three blocks long and at least ten people wide waiting to get into the temple grounds. Along the way back to the station I picked up a hamaya (an arrow the Japanese buy at New Year's to chase away devils) and a couple of other souvenirs, including three darumas. These are egg-shaped dolls that always return upright wen tipped over, and are named after a famous Buddhist monk. They are sold with just white spots for eyes. The purchaser paints in one black eye when starting a project and the other when it is successfully completed as a sort of good-luck ritual.

While passing through Kawasaki station on the way back to Yokohama I observed the biggest manifestation yet of another New Year's tradition: fukubukoro, or "grab bags" (literally "lucky bags"). It seemed like every store in the underground mall at the station was having a sidewalk sale of these bags, which I also saw later back at Tama Plaza where I live.

More interesting to me, however, was the entertainment on offer in the mall's main square. I had just missed a performance on the way to the temple, but my timing was good on the way back. They had five guys playing traditional Japanese music on the drums and flute while another guy dressed as one of the seven gods of good luck handed out candies (of course, I got some candies and captured this music on video, as well as the lion dance that followed the candy guy).

When I got home I ran into the person who had organized the group that went to the boat party that I had almost gone to on New Year's Eve. It seems like I made a good choice in going to the temple and shrine instead, as they seemed rather disappointed in the party.

Another New Year's tradition I should mention is that the Japanese traditionally do a very thorough housecleaning and pay all their debts before January 1 so they can start the New Year off with a clean slate. Of course, people don't pay off mortages nowadays, and many can't even pay off their credit cards, but the idea that one should start afresh each year is so deeply engrained that every year there are a few murder-suicides of families who are unable to get clear of their debts around this time.

January 2 I decided to check out the Shinto version of hatsumode by going to Meiji Jingu, one of Japan's most famous shrines. It is located in a huge, treed precincts in the southwest of Tokyo, and was erected to honour the spirit of the Meiji Emperor, who was the one who reigned throughout Japan's opening to the West and modernization from 1868-1912 after over 200 years of seclusion from the outside world.

Because it has its own huge grounds, the shrine is better able to control what goes on in its immediate vicinity. Thus, there were no hawkers or missionaries on the way into the shrine. They were stuck at the train station just outside the entrance, which was marked with a massive torii, the gate with two cross-beams that traditionally marks the entrance to a shrine, and often key points along the route to it as well. This control resulted in a much more peaceful atmosphere than at Kawasaki Daishi, which is located in the midst of a city. The only sign of commerce was the huge rack of paper lanterns along one side of the pathway, each with the name of a company or group who had contributed money to the shrine. (Coca Cola Japan figured prominently, which may explain why they had most of the vending machines permitted on the shrine's outer grounds). There were also signs along the way warning people of certain ages that this was unlucky or even very unlucky year for them. According to Japanese tradition, for example, the ages of 33 for women and 42 for men are supposed to be very unlucky, so people of those ages are urged to do more praying and lucky amulet-buying than normal.

Inside the shrine's courtyard there were lots of people, but I was quite early (10:30AM), so there was basically no wait to get close enough to throw a coin and say a prayer (the usual box had been dispensed with, and sheets simply laid out on the ground behind barriers to catch the offerings). If you were a serious Shintoist, you could submit a written prayer request with 10,000 yen or more (C$140) and be admitted to the inner shrine where, among other things, you got to strike the huge drum (eight feet high and ten feet long). Off to both sides at the front of the courtyard where the inner shrine began were sake bottles and dummy sake drums to publicize the donations made by sake brewers, who are traditionally strong supporters of shrines all over Japan (sake plays a rather larger role in Shinto than does sacramental wine in the Judeo-Christian tradition). On the left there were also other offerings, such as rice cakes and fruit.

All the actual buying and selling was kept off to the sides, so that you did not encounter it until you were done your prayer and had exited the main courtyard (though again, most people didn't seem to be too concerned about doing a whole lot of praying anyway). Rather shrewdly, the first stalls one came to were those that sold shrine merchandise (good luck amulets and such); once they were done with you the food stalls could then have a crack at whatever was left in your wallet.

I bought a kaiunmato, or "good luck target". The idea of this is that good luck has to have something to hit for it to strike you. I don't believe in the efficacy of such devices, but they are quite colourful and make good conversation pieces. I also bought a couple of other souvenirs like a bell shaped like a snake (2001 is a year of the snake by the Chinese twelve-year zodiac) and an ema. Ema literally means "horse picture", and is the term the Japanese use for a wooden prayer boards about 4" X 6" that are sold in both shrines and temples. Originally they literally had pictures of horses on their backs, but nowadays they are more likely to have the different animals of that twelve-year Chinese zodiac. People write their prayers on them and then hang them up on racks placed there for this purpose. I used a line from the affirmative prayer about marriage that SNI had given me, hung up my board, and headed off to get something to eat.

Along the way I passed many bushes and trees whose lower branches were covered with little paper bows. These were omikuji, or "fortunes". People shake a box full of sticks, draw one out, and then receive a fortune corresponding to the number on the stick they have drawn. After reading them the purchasers usually ignore the signs pleading with them to take their omikuji home and treat it respectfully as advice from the gods, and instead tie it to a tree branch or one of the racks of wires placed there by a shrine administration that has recognized the fultility of its admonitions.

The area off the main path that was assigned to the food stands was aptly named the kuishinbo ichi, or "glutton's market" (Shinto seems to have a good sense of humour, as many things get such irreverent names). I sampled several New Year's specialties, including suiton shiru (chicken soup with seaweed, gooey dumplings and konnyaku, a jelly-like calorie-free stuff made from a root extract that shows up in many forms in Japanese cookery), shiruko (soup made from sweet red beans, with a piece of fried mochi floating in it, mochi being mashed glutinous rice), and sake manju (steamed buns filled with sweet red bean paste and alledgedly flavoured with sake). I also picked up a bottle of omiki (literally "honourable sake for the gods"), which someone will get to drink at the welcome home party on the 19^th (I just want the bottle).

On the way out of the shrine I stopped at a temporary blood donation clinic set up to take advantage of the traffic flow and made my second donation in Japan. At first I thought the doctor who examined me just didn't think I understood Japanese, as he just pointed and grunted to direct me where he wanted me. However, I soon realized he did the same with the Japanese. I guess the Red Cross can't be too particular about who they get to work for them on a New Year's holiday! The nurse was very nice, and tried out a handful of phrases of broken English she had obviously learned at nursing school a long time ago. The best part, though, was that on the way out I got to play this slot machine-type game. I won the top level of prize, and had my pick of several colours of furry snakes that could be adjusted into a variety of positions. I put mine around my neck and headed off to my next destination.

Meiji Jingu shrine is located right next to the funkiest area in Tokyo, and probably in all of Japan, Harajuku, and in particular Takeshita Dori (literally "street under the bamboo"). I wandered down this street to pick up some T-shirts. I ended up buying four, each with a large kanji (i.e. a Chinese character used in Japanese) on the front. The characters I chose were tamashii (spirit), ai (love), yume (dream) and mai (dance), but they have them for all tastes, including the characters for 'samurai', 'drunk', 'dragon' and 'fighting spirit'.

On the way back to the station I passed by a street vendor selling used kimonos and yukatas (cotton summer kimonos) for 1000 yen (C$14). This was so ridiculously cheap I stopped to look, figuring that at that price I would buy one just for the cloth (the T-shirts were 1300 yen a piece, or C$19). Darned if he didn't have a couple of extra-long ones that fit me! I chose one dark blue one with a floral design on it which is much closer to women's fashions in yukata nowadays than the one I received as a gift 18 years ago, when yukatas were generally white and more or less unisex. While going through the racks I had an interesting conversation with a Jewish law student from New York City who was visiting Tokyo with a Japanese accountant friend. He was a really nice guy, the kind who cheers you up just by a brief chance meeting like that.

With all the kids out of school, I have seen a lot more of them on playgrounds than normal. One of the striking things one notices among the boys is the prevalence of very realistic toy handguns, most of which shoot plastic BBs using compressed air (these would probably not pierce the skin even at close range, but as my mother used to say, "you could put your eye out with that thing!"). Japan has very strict gun control laws, but the sale of exact, non-firing replicas of firearms is completely uncontrolled. There is quite an industry here catering to the whims of frustrated would-be gun owners by turning out exact replicas of all kinds of modern and historic weaponry, up to and including belt-fed machine guns. (The manufacture and import, but not possession, of realistic replicas was recently banned in Canada).

After the New Year's festivities I settled down and finished the first draft of my paper on Sunday, January 7 while defrosting my fridge (the little freezer compartment had disappeared under the onslaught of a minor Ice Age). Around noon, just before I got into the final stretch of the paper, I went for a brief walk to pick up some groceries. As I was walking up the steps of the residence, I remember thinking, "Hmmm, I'm going to leave in a few days and I won't have seen Japan in the snow. Pity." Then I went in and thought nothing more of it.

Until around 6PM, that is, when someone came into the TV room, where I was labelling slides, and announced that it was snowing! Sure enough, light snow was drifting down. At first it melted when it hit the ground, but by 7PM it started to accumulate. Around 8PM three of the young women who live here said they were going for a walk in the snow, and asked if I wanted to join them. I hesitated for a minute, but thought, what the heck? Soon Marion, a sharp, cheery Chinese-American from Rhode Island, Emily, a sweet and slightly ditzy Chinese-Canadian from Vancouver, Ritsuko (a.k.a. "Ritz"), a quiet, studious Japanese, and I, an eccentric red-headed Canadian giantess, were off for a madcap stroll in the snow.

We ended up searching all the nearby "conbini" (=convenience stores) for a TV Guide and picking up cinnamon rolls at Mr. Donut before heading back. As we crossed the last pedestrian bridge before home, Emily decided we should make a snow man. Again I hesitated at first, thinking of the warmth that was only a few hundred yards away, but the snow was great for packing and soon I was rolling a ball that was growing at an alarmingly fast pace. A few others came by on their way home and next thing you know there were about seven or eight of us out in the snow. My ball was by far the largest, around a metre in diameter, and by the time we were within sight of the residence I could hardly move it. The snow was very wet, so it probably weighed at least a couple of hundred pounds. Towards the end, in the strain to move it I ripped the bottom out of my jeans, but fortunately it was dark enough no one noticed.

By the time we got back to Channel House we had the makings of a six-footer! Mike, a New Zealander, and I lifted the other two balls into place on top of mine while Emily ran in and "borrowed" an umbrella and a pair of sandals to outfit our new creation with. We posed for pictures and had a brief snowball fight before retiring to change our clothes and eat cinnamon buns and chocolate-and-marshmallow pop-tarts washed down hot cocoa (in case you were wondering, no, this is not traditional Japanese fare). And of course we congratulated ourselves on finishing what may have been the biggest yukidaruma (snowman) in Japan that night!

It was still snowing when I got up the next morning, but had stopped by the time I left for Tokyo. In the city they had no snow on the ground, just a bit on the odd parked car. Unfortunately I had forgotten that it was another national holiday, "Coming-of-Age Day". The downside of this was that the library I wanted to go to was closed, but I was at least able to hit a few bookstores I need to go to in order to check some references through the popular Japanese pastime of "tachi-yomi", or reading books in the bookstore while standing there and then not buying them. The upside of the holiday was that there were a number of young women dressed in colourful kimonos, so I got to see how they are properly accessorized in winter. Apparently a short, furry stole (wrap) about 8-10 inches wide and long enough to come to the waist on either side is de rigeur: every woman in a kimono was wearing one, most of them white, but a few in light reddish-beige (like faux red fox). It was also fun to see them try to negotiate their way through the slush while keeping clean the split-toed white socks they were wearing with their thong-type flat sandals.

As I returned from the Kinokuniya bookstore in Shinjuku, I passed the JR highway bus station, where I learned that all the highway buses to the north were cancelled: apparently "my" snow was a lot more intense north of the city! Be careful what you wish for; it might come true!

That evening several people from the residence had arranged to go out with me to an all-you-can-eat place near the station for a "going-away party" for me. I was quite touched by this, as it is definitely not the norm in a place where the population is as transient as it is here. The hostess remembered me, as I have apparently got quite a reputation as a fan of the pasta on the buffet and the cinnamon rolls in the take-out bakery.

Tuesday I did get into the library I needed to visit. My plan now is to finish revising my paper today and e-mail it off tomorrow morning, then pack so that a delivery company can pick up my bags tomorrow (Thursday). Thursday evening I am having dinner with Aya at the conveyor-belt dim sum place in Yokohama Chinatown. Friday is a day to wrap up loose ends and Saturday morning I'll be on my way to Narita airport! In less than a hundred hours I'll be seeing a lot of you at church!

In the meantime, thank you for sharing my trip here. I have had a lot of comments from people about these 'little' reports, and if they brought you a little pleasure or got you interested in Japan, then I am very glad.

Love and peace to you all.

Ja, mata ne! (=see you soon!)

Teri

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