Tiny pink petals
fly along the pavement
as I walk to school.
Blown by the wind,
they dance and soar by the hundreds–
delighted to be alive.
I feel their joy.
In this brief, beautiful season
there is nowhere I would rather be
than here.
One year ago today I left for school with nothing in my mind except the fact that I had no meetings that day, and was finally going to be able to clean and organize my office. I did not know that it would be a day I would never forget, the date of which is permanently etched in my memory.
On the way to school on the train I texted a friend in the U.S. to say hi. When I got off at the station near the school, I stopped at my favorite coffee shop for some coffee and a sweet roll. I bought some items at a nearby convenience store and walked the twenty minutes to school.
It was a beautiful day and spring was in the air. We were between school-years, and classes were not in session. There were only eight or ten teachers at school. Most of them had come in to do their own work. Some had a meeting to attend. I went into my office and got busy.
I’d had a late breakfast that day. Around 2:45 I was thinking I was hungry, and should probably eat the lunch I had brought.
I never did. At 2:46 everything in my office began to rattle and shake. It was a tremor much stronger than any I had felt before. I dashed out of my office into the hallway. Other teachers did the same. The meeting room across from my office was open and I ran into it. I knew there were long tables that I could get under there, and I did. Unfortunately, the tables were on casters, which meant that they were not very steady. I and other teachers hung on to the table legs anyway in grim silence as we (and the tables) were tossed back-and-forth, back-and-forth–and sometimes up-and-down. I thought it would never end. I thought, “this is a much stronger tremor than I am used to.”
One of the female teachers yelled, “I’m scared! I’m scared!”
Oh, for Pete’s sake, I thought, SHUT UP! We’re ALL scared, and we don’t need you making things worse. After all, we were only being shaken and bumped–there were no bookshelves to fall on us, nor any other furniture in the room except the desks which we were under. No walls were crumbling around us, and no one was bleeding. At least not yet came a thought unbidden, which I did my best to ignore.
Three and a half minutes–the length of the initial tremor–is a long time. When the shaking finally stopped we left the building. Even then I did not realize the severity of what had happened. Perhaps it was because I had been in a room where there was nothing to tumble. Or maybe it was a combination of shock and denial that made me think, as we walked down the seven flights of stairs, that after a short while outside, I would be able to go back to my office and continue my work.
Everyone was gathering outside the building. We could hear many sirens. Everyone was talking; everyone was stunned.
We did not know then just how big it had been, nor did we know that Tokyo had got off easy, and that the quake had been even stronger elsewhere. The main building on the campus still had power, so we went there. And it was there, from TV broadcasts throughout the rest of the day, that we learned the rest. My most vivid memory is watching in horror the footage of the tsunami pouring across farmland and rice fields, destroying everything in its path.
This blog began with that day, and my first post (“earth still shaking. me too.”) is a more raw account of my feelings then. One year later, I find that I write about it less frequently than I did in those early days and weeks. There certainly is no shortage of things to write about. Japan has barely begun to recover, and the nuclear plant situation is perilous and ongoing. Only today I watched a youtube video recorded just two days ago, in which a nuclear expert stated that Reactor #4 is in such a dangerous state that all it would take is another earthquake (and not even the strongest one) to cause a secondary disaster that would render Tokyo uninhabitable.
I link to many news sources regarding these matters on Facebook, and I am overwhelmed by all the information. By the time I finish reading it and watching news videos (and posting some of the articles on my page), I find that I am at a loss as to what I can write further here, in my blog. So little of what I learn is good news that I feel worn down and tired by the time I digest it all.
So I go back and forth in a somewhat bi-polar way. For days I read everything I can find because I feel must learn it ALL and stay up-to-date. But then I cannot take any more, and begin a period in which I ignore everything about it and retreat into my hobbies and my schoolwork. It is still hard for me to find a happy medium.
Now it is the one-year anniversary. I’ve been somewhat prone to tears all this past week. I feel compelled to write something. Anniversaries of any kind are important to me. And to tell the truth, the first anniversary of any major event, whether bad or good, is important. In the case of a disaster, it’s a sad commemoration of terrible and heart-breaking things. Today is a very difficult day for so many people here. Whether they want to or not, they remember. In fact, they have never forgotten. Nor have I, although I have not suffered the loss of loved ones, home, or livelihood, as others have. Even so, not a day has passed that I have not thought of the earthquake and of all that has happened here.
There is a national acknowledgement that, although it has been one year, it’s still early days yet. Initial predictions for the length of the recovery period fell between 10 and 20 years. Now we know that it will be much longer, due to the nuclear disaster. It will be at least 4o years before they can even begin to dismantle the destroyed reactors. And the deadly radiation will linger and damage flora, fauna, and human life long after that.
So I am afraid that I have nothing all that profound to say today. And in trying to find something, what comes to mind is the last scene of the movie Driving Miss Daisy.
Daisy and Hoke are talking. Both are elderly now, and experiencing difficulties with day-to-day life. Hoke tells Daisy that he is “doing the best he can.”
“Me too,” says Daisy.
And Hoke replies, “Well–I reckon that’s about all there is to it.”
And that is so true for everyone, everywhere. Life is often not easy. In some places and times, it is excruciatingly difficult.
And right now, Japan is doing the best that it can.
Background: I visited my U.S. family in the Detroit area this past Christmas. My daughters and other relatives traveled to see me, and we had a family reunion. My husband, Ike, could not come. Following is the story of my return to Japan.
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It is January 4, 2012. My first flight is from Detroit to Chicago. All goes smoothly. We even arrive a bit early. To my relief, it is not necessary to take the train to the International terminal. My flight from Detroit arrives at a Terminal C gate; the flight to Tokyo leaves from a Terminal C gate. How wonderfully convenient!
I go to the correct gate. I notify the personnel that I am there. They issue me a more sturdy boarding pass than the one I got from the self-check-in. All is in order. I sit down to wait in the gate waiting area.
The TV in the waiting area is annoying and loud. I am hungry. I want something to eat and some coffee. A food court is just down the corridor a ways. Thanks to the early arrival and the unexpected gate proximity I have lots and lots of time.
I go to the food court. I buy a toasted bagel, a banana, and a small cappuccino. I go to the far end of the food court and sit down at a table. It’s a jazz-themed food court. They are playing Ella Fitzgerald, my very favorite singer. Ahh!…
I take out a pencil, and a notebook containing the account of my visit which I have been writing. I munch the bagel. I drink the cappuccino. I think. I daydream. I write.
When I judge that it is time to back to the gate area, I get up and gather my things. On the way back to the gate I stop in the restroom. While I am using the toilet, I hear my name on the loudspeaker. United Airlines is paging me? Hm…I wonder what’s going on? An uneasy feeling comes over me.
This cannot be good.
I leave the bathroom and enter the wide corridor. In the distance I see a United employee who is holding a big sign and running towards me. Instinctively, and with rising panic I start to run toward him.
“Are you Jayne Ikeshima?”
“Yes!”
“Hurry! Run! Maybe you can still make it!”
WTF?!
He runs flat out. I run with him, flat out. As we arrive at the gate he says breathlessly that maybe they haven’t closed the door yet.
But they have.
And that is that.
Five United employees are standing in the now-empty gate waiting area. I am panicked, confused, dismayed, and disoriented. What on earth happened??
“Where were you?” they ask.
“What time is it?” I stammer.
“It’s 10:45,” says the man who ran with me.
“But my TracFone is still on Detroit time, and it says that it’s 10:45 in DETROIT. That means that it’s only 9:45 here…isn’t it?” I say.
“The time on that phone changes automatically when you change time zones. That’s local time.”
Oh, no.
“I didn’t know that!” I wail. “I was in the food court. I thought I had plenty of time.”
“I went to the food court to see if you might be there,” says the man. “We’ve been paging you. Didn’t you hear?”
“The only paging I heard was when I was in the bathroom, just a minute ago. Oh, God, I’m so sorry. This is the stupidest thing I have EVER done in my entire life.” After a pause, I say in a trembling voice, “Does this mean that I will have to buy another ticket and lose all the money from the flight I missed?”
“Well,” says the man. “Let’s see what we can do for you.”
The employees are sympathetic and kind. “Don’t worry about it,” they say. One of the women goes to the computer and starts typing. She can get me on standby for a flight to Tokyo that leaves at noon. I thank her profusely and ask what the chances are of my getting a seat? She says she doesn’t know, but that the flight I just missed had three empty seats on it.
“But now it has four,” says my running messenger, with a twinkle in his eye.
They issue me a “stand-by” document, and tell me to go directly to the gate now. “There’s no need to run,” they say. “You have time.”
I run anyway. Or jog, at least. On the way, one of my shoelaces comes untied. I keep jogging. I’ll tie it when I get there.
I check in at the gate desk. They put me on standby and tell me to have a seat in the waiting area.
I am in despair. How could I have been so stupid and careless? I have visions of being in the airport for hours on end–maybe even days–and of having to pay huge penalty fees, and having to get on stand-by for every flight to Tokyo until there is FINALLY an empty seat on one of them.
I guess it’s time to call Ike.
I explain to him what happened. “Yatchan, I’m so sorry,” I say, near tears. “I…I don’t know what to say.”
Silence.
And then, this wonderful man that I married starts to chuckle. He laughs. And then he laughs harder.
“Well I know what to say,” he says, between peals of laughter. “You’re FUCKED!”
Ike NEVER swears. Suddenly I realize what he is quoting–the scene in Planes Trains, and Automobiles, in which a very frustrated Steve Martin tells the rent-a-car clerk that he wants “a fucking Datsun, a fucking Toyota, a fucking Mustang, a fucking Buick! Four fucking wheels and a seat!” Now I am laughing too–and also crying at the same time, with relief.
When our laughter is spent, Ike asks me, “Can you get on the plane?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “I’ll call you when I find out.”
********************
I am on the plane. Thank God, I am on the plane. Amazingly, I’ve been given a window seat on the starboard side. Everything is alright. I’ll arrive at Narita airport only an hour and a half later than I would have. I will not be in the O’Hare airport for hours and hours. I will not have to pay penalty charges.
I am relieved but still very wound up. This horrendous close call follows on the heels of two rather stress-filled days. I have not had much sleep.
The plane takes off–an absolutely beautiful take-off–in perfect, sunny weather. Suddenly I am overwhelmed with emotion and I start to cry–from relief, from happiness, from sorrow, from worry, from gratefulness, from love–from all of these mixed together.
I am crying because the scene outside my window is so beautiful. I am crying because once again I am leaving my home country, my parents, my siblings, and my daughters, to return to a place that I love very much but where I don’t belong, and must struggle to fit in and communicate. I am crying because I have just spent one of the best Christmases of my life with all the people I love most, save Ike. I am crying because I have missed him, and am finally going back to him. I am crying because I am so very worried and fearful for Japan, and for what may yet happen with the nuclear reactors–especially given the possibility of more earthquakes and tsunamis.
I am crying because somehow, I just need to cry.
And then a small miracle happens.
The plane has just risen above a layer of clouds, and we are in sunshine again. I look down. And there on the cloud layer below, I see the shadow of our plane. It looks for all the world like a flying fish leaping out of the water.
The plane rises higher, and the flying-fish shadow becomes smaller. Suddenly, surrounding the fish, there is a rainbow. A perfect circle of a rainbow, like a halo. It’s only slightly bigger than the fish itself.
The plane goes up, and up, and up. The flying fish and its rainbow-halo remain visible for a full three minutes, the colors perfectly clear. My spirits soar, just like the plane.
And in that moment I know that no matter what happens, God will always be with me–me, the tiny flying fish. He’ll be there like the rainbow–surrounding me, loving me, and giving me the strength to face whatever comes.
And I will be alright.
Our annual school festival was this past Saturday and Sunday, and as always, it was a lot of hard work, and a lot of fun. Most schools in Japan, from elementary schools on up through universities, have such a festival. For most of them, it happens sometime in the fall–often in November, since November 3rd is a national holiday–”Culture Day.” In fact, one term for the festival (there are several) is “Culture Festival.”
At my school, the English Speaking Society (ESS) and the foreign students put on a “World’s Fair.” It’s an event that involves displays of photos and information about foreign countries, a flea market, and a fashion show of national costumes. Last year my senior puppet seminar students put on a puppet show for this event, but the students I am teaching this year did not. They are new to puppeteering, and they are not ready to perform just yet. Next year, perhaps.
As I walked around the school-grounds–greeting my students, sampling the delicious food they were selling, and stopping to buy various items for sale–I found myself remembering something that happened at last year’s festival. The account is below.
*********************************************
After the puppet show is over, I go down to the cafeteria to see how the preparations for the fashion show are coming along. The English Speaking Society (of which I am the adviser) and the World’s Fair organizers have a collection of clothing from various countries of the world. They’re going to put on an international fashion show, something they have done for the past few years.
I find Thapa, the student from Nepal who is in charge. He is in the process of distributing clothing. Oddly, there don’t seem to be many students around.
“Where is everybody?” I ask him.
He tells me that today is the day of the National Japanese Proficiency Exam, and that many of the foreign students have to take it. So they could not come. “I don’t think I have enough people to model these clothes,” he says.
So I go back to my office, where my seminar students are watching the video we took of the puppet show. I ask them if they would like to help out. They’re game, so we all go down to the cafeteria. Myar is given a beautiful kurta to wear from Nepal. Lin is given a robe-like, floor-length dress that looks African.
Thapa finds a brown and white shirt, which looks a little like a Hawaiian shirt. “What country is this from?” I ask him.
He looks at the label. “Tonga,” he says.
“It’s a guy’s shirt, isn’t it?” I ask.
“That doesn’t matter,” he says. “Just put it on.”
It’s a little small, but I can get into it. Everyone is putting on the clothes over their own clothes rather than changing. It may not be all that authentic, but it saves time, since this way we won’t all have to troop off to the school bathrooms to change clothes.
There are about ten or twelve of us. We are wearing clothes from China, Vietnam, Mexico, Hungary, and other countries. Thapa gives us all a paper with greetings from the countries printed on it. He also gives us a large piece of paper which shows the flag of our particular country. He has us form a line behind the partition. Now we are ready.
“When I call your country’s name, come out, walk around the room, and finish up standing at the front, in line with the others,” Thapa says.
One by one we do so, to musical accompaniment from a CD player. There are chairs set up for the audience. Between thirty and forty people are sitting there watching–students, a few teachers, and festival attendees from the local neighborhood. Not to mention the children for whom we just performed the puppet show, and their parents. Finally we are all at the front of the room in the prescribed line.
It’s over. They’ll take a commemorative photo; everyone will applaud; and then we can take off these clothes and go about our business.
Or so we think.
“And now,” Thapa announces, “each of these models will tell you something about the country whose clothes they are wearing.”
Huh??
We all look at each other in dismay. Mild panic ensues. We try to get Thapa’s attention in order to say, “hey, we didn’t know about this part!” but he is facing the audience just in front of our line, with his back to us.
So it begins. One by one, Thapa calls us up to stand next to him and say something about the country of our clothing.
Lin, my Chinese student, is directly behind me in the line. “Mrs. Ikeshima,” she whispers, “where is Zimbabwe?”
“It’s in Africa,” I whisper back.
“Do you know anything about it?” she asks in desperation.
“Um…not that I can recall,” I say. Because right now I am frantically searching my brain for something that I can say about Tonga.
“What am I going to do?” she says.
“Uh–do you have your cellphone? Maybe you can check the Internet.”
“I don’t have it,” she says, “it’s in my handbag behind the partition.”
“Okay, how about this?” I say, “I see Ohtsuki-Sensei in the audience. He’s the school expert on Africa. Sneak out of line and ask him for a few facts about Zimbabwe.”
“I don’t have time,” she replies, “look how fast Thapa is going!”
And she is right. After two more people it will be my turn. Most students are managing to say something. One or two sheepishly admit that they don’t know anything about the country. Which is okay. They are, after all, students.
But I am a teacher!
“Next,” says Thapa, “we have Ikeshima-Sensei, who will tell us about–Tonga!”
There’s nothing for it but to walk up to Thapa and stand next to him.
“Tonga,” says Thapa, by way of introduction, “is a group of islands in the South Pacific.”
Damn. I was going to say that.
Thapa looks at me expectantly. I take a deep breath and face the audience.
“Tonga,” I say, “is an interesting country.”
Attentive faces.
“Tonga,” I continue, “has a very interesting history.”
Smiles.
“Tongan food is…really, really delicious!”
Scattered chuckles.
“The Tongan flag,” I say, holding up the flag paper, ” is red and white. The same colors as the Japanese flag!”
Laughter throughout the room…because by now it is abundantly clear that I don’t know diddly-squat about Tonga.
I’m not sure if it’s to my credit, but it seems that I am the comedy highlight of the fashion show. I’m laughing too, as I step back into line. Ah, well. I’ve always said that I love to make people laugh, and I certainly have today.
I am prevented from talking to Thapa after the show because other students need my attention. But perhaps it is not necessary to speak with him. Surely he realizes by now that he should have given us some printed information to say about the countries.
Even so, I am going to remember this experience for next year, and see to it that whoever is in charge of the fashion show does some homework.
And then, if at all possible, I think I will sit in the audience.
It’s the time of year when I start to think about writing my annual newsletter to send out in December. But somehow this year, I am reluctant. I’ve been wondering just why that is. I’ve always loved letter-writing, and sending seasonal greetings. So what’s with me this year? Why don’t I even want to begin?
I think it’s because…I don’t want to think about the earthquake. No, that’s not quite right. It’s that I don’t know what to say about the earthquake. How does one write a review of a year that was so heartbreaking?
The Japanese send New Year’s cards rather than Christmas cards. There is a custom connected with that, which, when I learned of it, made a profound impression on me. No Japanese will send out New Year’s cards at the end of a year during which there has been a death in the family. As well, it is highly improper for others to send the bereaved family a New Year’s card. To ensure that this does not happen, the family will send out very somber-looking, professionally-printed postcards in late autumn, to everyone that they would normally send a New Year’s card to. The cards state that there has been a death in the family. This serves as a message to all, that New Year cards will not be sent out–and must not be received this year out of respect for the deceased, and for the family’s grief.
That’s almost the way I feel about this year and the earthquake. In my case, it’s not so much that I don’t want to receive greetings from friends and relatives (because I always enjoy hearing from people)–but that I am reluctant to send out my own. I may not have written many earthquake-related posts in this blog in recent months–but that does not mean that I do not think about the disaster every single day since it has happened. The situation of Fukushima is the hardest thing for me to face. For weeks I have been researching it and trying to write something about it–only to give up, often in tears. I just do not know what to say.
And yet–I feel a need to send out something in the way of a seasonal greeting. But what? And why do people follow these customs anyway?
I suppose it’s partly because as we get older, the years seem to fly. All of us probably have friends and acquaintances that we no longer keep in touch with except at Christmas. And if not for Christmas cards (or newsletters, or New Year’s cards), we’d never hear from each other. When I don’t receive a seasonal greeting from someone who has always sent me one, I wonder why. And when I do get a greeting from someone, the first thing I do is to skim it quickly. I want to know that this person is alright. If there is a long newsletter enclosed, I sometimes glance at it, and then put it aside until such time as I can read it more carefully, and with concentration.
If other people are like me, then what would “no seasonal greeting from Jayne” mean to them? Would it be cause for concern?
And that is why I will probably try to send out something. Of what nature, I have not decided. My typical newsletter in recent years has been a happy, colorful collage of beautiful Japanese paper and family information. But out of respect for the 20,000 disaster victims, the many years that the recovery will take, and concern for the continuing nuclear tragedy of Fukushima, I simply don’t feel like doing that sort of newsletter this year.
New Year’s is the most important holiday in Japan. This will be the first New Year celebration since March 11. I’m sure that many people here are dreading it because they have lost loved ones, or because they lost their homes or their livelihoods, and things are so horribly different now from past years. Even for those of us who were not as directly affected, things feel different. This feeling is not something that I can ignore, or “wish away” by putting out the sort of cheerful newsletter that I always have. It’s just too soon. There seems to be a part of me now that is always sad for what has happened.
A few weeks ago I heard an American newscaster talking about the large masses of tsunami debris that have been spotted in the Pacific Ocean. What bothered me the most was the way he began his report. He said, ”Remember that big earthquake and tsunami in Japan back in March?”
Remember it? Remember it? Here in Japan we have never stopped thinking about it.
I wrote the following one year ago this month.
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It always starts the same way. We are in the car on some outing and we run into heavy traffic. It might be due to rush hour. Or, it might be due to the fact that it’s a national holiday and everyone else is out for an outing too. Or it might only be road construction.
Whatever the reason, it usually begins with Ike muttering, “This is ridiculous!” When we hear those words we can always guess what’s coming. And sure enough, to avoid the traffic jam he turns left at the first opportunity (whatever it is) and gets off the main road. After zooming around the smaller roads for a while–first left, then right, then left, then right again–he usually turns on the Gorilla.
“The Gorilla” is our family name for the ka-na-bi, which is short for “car navigation system.” It’s a little monitor with control buttons that sits up on the dashboard. When you first turn it on, it shows a somewhat stupid-looking cartoon-gorilla driving a convertible, one hand on the steering wheel, and the other hand in the “thumbs-up” position. We are so used to telling Ike to “turn on the Gorilla” that we forget how strange that sounds–until we have a foreign guest riding with us who says, “Turn on the what?!”
Gorilla tries to be helpful–he really does. The problem is that he is about twelve years old. There are a lot of roads now that simply didn’t exist when he was born. He doesn’t know this, and when he tracks our progress he will happily show our little car cutting across a field, or perhaps fording a river. He will sometimes suggest that we go way out of our way, simply because he doesn’t know that there is a shorter route now.
Gorilla is also not much concerned with tiny details. Such as the roads in the rice paddies. These “roads” are little more than glorified walking paths between the individual paddies. They are only about eight feet in width, but they are not designated as being “one-way.” Heaven help you if you are driving on one and you see a vehicle coming toward you from the opposite direction. In reality, they are not meant for regular transportation or traffic, but rather for farmers, who may need to drive on them to check their rice fields. But there is no law that says that regular cars may not drive on them. If there were, we would not get into such trouble.
The most memorable experience we have had was about four or five years ago. The girls were both home for summer vacation and we were all in the car. As usual, Ike was trying to find another route in order to avoid a traffic jam. He started down a small country road which eventually left the rice paddies and entered a brush area. The road, which at the beginning was about nine feet in width, got narrower and narrower until it was exactly the same width as our little Honda Fit. Branches from the bushes started to “skreeeeek” and scrape the sides of our car as we drove along.
And then, we came to The Bridge.
Now The Bridge was a little wooden structure that spanned an eight-foot-wide, two-foot-deep irrigation ditch. We stared at it in disbelief. It was old. It was ancient. It looked rotten to the core.
In short, we did not think it would hold our car.
And so, Ike began the longest backing-up of his life. It took him a full ten minutes (and a lot of rear-view-mirror viewing) to “skreeeeek” past all those branches and bushes, this time with them scraping the car in the opposite direction.
At the time we thought that was the worst that could happen. But Ike and Fumi discovered this past Monday that…it wasn’t!
They were on their way home, having seen a friend off at Narita Airport. Monday was a national holiday (Sports Day) and the traffic was terrible. Of course Ike got frustrated and zoomed off the main road to try to find another route. I got a call from Fumi when they were in a perilous position–on a seven-foot-wide road between stubble-field rice-paddies on one side, and a river deep enough to have boats in it on the other side. The road made a very sharp turn at one point. Both of them were terrified that they would end up in the water.
Well, they got out of that mess only to find that the road still stretched ahead, to God knows where–or maybe to nowhere at all. There was no way to turn around, and this was one time when Ike simply could not back up–not with that sharp turn back there. Not unless they wanted to end up in the river and have to be rescued by helicopters.
I believe that the road intersected another such road at some point. It was impossible to tell which way they should go. They saw a lone man, and they tried to ask him where the roads went. He replied in heavily Arabic-accented Japanese, that he didn’t know. It was a rather odd exchange. They never did figure out what he was doing out there.
So there was nothing for it but for Ike to get out of the car, leaving Fumi inside, and to jog ahead (on both roads in turn) for about 200 yards to see where they led, and how narrow they got. By now it was night-time and of course there were no streetlights where they were. And there were a few other problems as well. For one thing, Ike had to pee. For another, the car was almost out of gas. Ike took care of his pee-problem the way most guys do when they are outside and nowhere near a proper toilet. As for the gas…
Well, I think you get the general idea, so I’ll spare you the rest of it. Somehow the car did not run out of gas, and they finally managed to get out of there–only to re-join the traffic jam that they had left only an hour before.
You’d think Ike would learn, but no. He doesn’t. I only hope that when he finally does end up stuck in an irrigation ditch, or with the car in the knee-deep mud of a rice paddy, that it will be reported in “News of the Weird” and that my sister, who reads that feature faithfully, will email it to me and say, “Hey look what this idiot Japanese guy did, just to avoid a traffic jam!”
Because you can bet that the girls and I will never let him hear the end of it.
When Ike picked me up at the airport after my U.S. trip at the end of August, he had bought a new book. “Look what I’ve been reading,” he said, and handed it to me.
It had a photo of a very pretty, very young Japanese woman on the cover. I was not sure of the meaning of the words in the title. “What’s it about?” I asked him.
“It’s all about how house-cleaning can change your life,” he said. “It’s about how to organize your house and throw out stuff.” He went on to say that this young woman had written the book because so many people in Japan have too much stuff, and don’t know how to get rid of it and live more simply. “She’s got all these really great guidelines,” he said. “And she’ll even come to your house! She’ll help you and teach you how to do it.”
I love it when Ike gets interested in something new. He’s so delightfully enthusiastic about it.
“There are people in the U.S. who do that too,” I told him. “You know–teach you how to get rid of clutter.”
He hadn’t known that. This is a whole new world for him.
We have always lived in very small houses, and I’ve always been the one who keeps them shoveled out. I’m the one who throws out stuff and organizes things. Ike’s role seems to be to pay little or no attention to what I’m doing–until I ask him to go through his clothes/books/stuff and see if he can get rid of some of it. He ignores me. I ask him again a few days later. He says he doesn’t want to, and why does he need to? I point out that we don’t have enough room to keep everything. Often we have a big fight about it. Finally he goes through his stuff. I am then able to finish my big project of cleaning-and-organizing. I show him the end result–a room that is now cleared of junk, and which can be walked through again. It is ten times neater and cleaner than it was before. “Doesn’t it look great?” I say. “Uh huh,” he says–mostly because he knows that’s what he’s supposed to say.
This is our usual pattern. I have sometimes wished that this sort of cleaning did not always fall to me, but I suppose it’s my lot in life. It’s what I’m good at. And I can’t complain, because Ike does all kinds of things that many Japanese husbands do not do–cooking, washing dishes, taking out the garbage, grunge-cleaning (like bathrooms) and more.
In recent years though, I seem to have lost my enthusiasm for this “big project” type of cleaning. Okay, I admit it–I’ve gotten lazy and I don’t seem to have as much energy as I used to. I just don’t feel like coming home from school on the weekend and starting a big cleaning project. Nor do I feel like using school vacations for that sort of thing. (The Internet is more fun.) Since the girls went off to college, our house has not been nearly as clean or organized as I kept it when they were growing up.
But now Ike has got this new book.
“I am going to clean up the computer room,” he announced.
The computer room (also called “the dump room”) is the black hole of our house. Things get sucked into it and are not seen again for years. In addition to overflowing shelves, there is stuff all over the floor. It’s a small room–only 8 feet by 12 feet.
“Glad to hear it,” I said. “I’ll help you.”
The next morning I came downstairs to find that he had removed all the books from two tiers of our bookshelves, and spread them out all over the living room floor. He had started with the worst shelves–the ones that contained all of our EFL textbooks. There must have been 150 books there.
He was a man with a mission. “My cleaning book says to put the stuff on the floor and spread it out in order to go through it,” he said. “We’ll get at this right after breakfast.”
We did. We separated the books into two piles: “get rid of” and “keep.” Every now and then we stopped to tie up the “get rid of” bundles with string. Once they were tied up, we put them in our very narrow hallway. The piles grew and grew.
We hadn’t worked together at a project like this for a very long time. It was kind of fun.
“Why in the world did I ever buy this?”
“This is the stupidest textbook ever. I’m getting rid of it.”
“Wow, look at the mildew on this one!”
We moved on to other books. Self-help books (mostly mine). Books about music (his). Go books (the Japanese “I-Go” game, his). Many dictionaries, bilingual and otherwise (both of us).
Then we came to my nearly-complete collection of For Better or For Worse comic books.
“Get rid of them,” said Ike.
“I–I can’t,” I said.
I have fond memories of reading them aloud to Fumi and Naomi, and our laughing at them. I think it was the first comic I ever read to them. Calvin and Hobbs, Zits, and One Big Happy were to follow, but For Better or For Worse was the one that we started with.
Those books meant a lot to me. My daughters went to all-Japanese schools in all-Japanese neighborhoods. Our home was an oasis of American culture and English in a Japanese world. Comics in English made the girls laugh, and made them want to read English as well as speak it. It was as simple as that. In those days Ike was similar to John, I was a lot like Elly, and Fumi and Naomi were not unlike Michael and Lizzie.
“I’ll tell you what,” I said to Ike, after some thought. “I’ll keep them for now. If, at the end of this project, we still don’t have enough bookshelf space, I will consider getting rid of them.”
He started to protest, but stopped when I warned him to just not argue about this. I was quite willing to get rid of lots of other books instead.
And I did. We both did.
In the afternoon he had to do some errands so I slogged on alone, with things that only I could do.
I have always written letters–to my parents, to my sister, to Ike. I have saved every letter I ever wrote since I first came to Japan. There are thirty-seven notebooks of bound letters which span the years from 1977 to 2003. After that year I stopped printing them out. The ones since then are online, in my email account. The notebooks take up three-and-a-half feet on our bookshelves.
The cardboard binders were ancient and spotted with mildew. I went out to the nearby stationery store, bought all new ones, and began the task of re-binding the letters.
In the interest of getting the job done, I resolved to not read them as I worked. But since I had to transfer the letters by small page groups, I could not help glancing at some of them. There are treasures in those pages. Because my parents had to miss most of my daughters’ growing up, I wrote them detailed descriptions of them. Their babyhoods, their first words, their difficulties learning two languages, their antics, their mischief. Their likes and dislikes. And later, their school experiences, class field trips, illnesses, birthday parties. Their triumphs, sorrows, and accomplishments.
I put post-its on some of the pages I came across, and read them to Ike when he got home. They brought back some wonderful and funny memories. That’s the good part of a huge project such as this one.
On Day #2 we continued with the books, and then moved on to the DVD’s and reams of piano music. By the time we got through everything, I was starting to think that ordering so many bookshelves when we moved into the house might not have been such a good idea.
I dusted the shelves and put back the books we had elected to keep. Ike, meanwhile, began to tackle the mess on the floor, some of which was in baskets and some of which was not. He took it all into the living room little by little, in order to spread it out and go through it. As we worked, he told me about his new cleaning “bible.”
“According to this book, the whole key to cleaning a house is that you MUST get rid of stuff,” he told me. “Otherwise, you are only shifting things around. Guess how many large bags of junk the writer gets from a house when she helps someone clean it?”
I had no idea. But judging by the way our living room and hallway were filling up with things to get rid of, I said it must be quite a large number.
“Thirty!” he said. “At least thirty BIG bags. Usually more.”
“How long is one of her training sessions?” I asked.
“Eight hours,” was his answer. “With her help, you finish the whole house in one day. Can you imagine eight straight hours of this? We’d be dead afterward.”
“And what if I don’t want to get rid of stuff that she thinks should go?” I asked.
“That’s the hard part,” he said. “She writes that having to get rid of stuff can be a very emotional experience. You just have to admit that you will never need, or use certain things again. If you say to yourself ‘Maybe I will use this,’ or ‘Maybe I will do this with that thing,’ and then keep it, chances are that what you imagine will never happen.”
“I don’t think I’d be comfortable with her coming here,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to be railroaded into making decisions. What if, caught up in the excitement of cleaning, I was to get rid of something that I later found I missed?”
“I don’t think that would happen,” said Ike.
But I wasn’t so sure.
One thing I have learned about “big project” cleaning over the years is that it always starts to look worse before it looks better. And that’s what we faced on Day #3. Somehow, with the exception of the bookshelves, everything looked worse than when we began. We were both tired and we just wanted to give it a rest. But we knew we had to slog on. Time was running out. My vacation would end and my classes begin in only a few more days.
It was on Day #3 that we nearly came to blows. And in a public laundromat, of all places. We had gone there to dry a load of laundry. As we were folding the clothes, Ike said, “According to my book, you shouldn’t hang up all your shirts on hangers.”
“What?!” I said.
“Really,” said Ike, “because hanging them takes more room than storing them folded in drawers.”
“Now wait a minute,” I said. “If I put some of my nicer t-shirts in drawers they get all wrinkled, and then I have to iron them.”
“I’m just telling you what the book says. The trick is to fold them correctly. The writer tells you how to fold stuff.”
“But if you don’t have enough drawer space, and you have to cram the shirts in, they’ll wrinkle no matter HOW you fold them!”
“No, they won’t,” he said.
“Look,” I said, somewhat irritated, “why don’t we just buy a decent-size dresser? Do you realize that we are still using the same child-size dresser that the girls shared when they were little?!”
“Hey, I’m only telling you what the book says. You said you wanted to know, so I’m telling you. So just listen, and don’t argue!”
He was right, I realized. I had asked him to tell me what was in the book. Maybe if I shut up I might learn something. Anyhow, people were starting to stare at us, and probably wonder what we were saying, since we were speaking English. So we dropped the subject.
On Day #4 I tackled the desk.
The desk is a large table-surface built into the corner of the room. The computer takes up only a very small part of it. The rest of the space was heaped with everything you can imagine.
This is the type of tiny-junk cleaning that I hate most. Paper-clips. Pens. Pencils. Scraps of paper. Stray coins. Old memo pads. A few photos. A tape-measure. A book or two. Bills. Receipts. Little knick-knacks. Candy wrappers. A passport. A Delta SkyMiles card. And on and on. You can’t just dump it all because there are usaable objects in there. And you might accidentally throw out something important.
I carefully moved the computer aside and swept all the junk off the desk into a huge laundry basket. This was a mistake because there was so much dust in it that I started to sneeze.
I took it into the living room. It took me nearly three hours (and A LOT of Hershey’s kisses) to get through it all. The oldest thing I found was a yellowed sales receipt from December 2007, from a sushi shop in Michigan. It dated from our Christmas trip of that year to visit my family. This meant that the room had not been cleaned in four years or more–a fact that is somewhat embarrassing to record.
It was after the desk was clean that I began to feel that the end was finally in sight. Ike continued going through all the junk on the floor. I helped him when I had finished the desk. And on Day #5 I was, at last, able to clean the wood floor. This being Japan, it had never been walked on with shoes, so it was still in very good condition. It did have a sticky-dust residue on it in places, that needed some hard rubbing with dust-cloths, but all of the mess came up fairly easily.
At midnight that night we finally finished and collapsed into bed, completely exhausted. The next morning when we woke up, we were able to walk into a perfectly clean and organized room.
I wondered aloud how Ike had happened to buy the cleaning book? He told me he had learned about it from an advertisement in the train. “So is it a best-seller by now?” I asked. “Yep,” he said. “It is.”
To tell the truth, most of the information and guidelines in the book were things I had learned on my own from years of experience–and probably could have told Ike myself. But what would have been the point? Any book that makes him want to clean and organize the house–something he has never done before–gets my vote. In fact, it was wonderful to have someone else spearhead the clean-up campaign this time. We worked equally hard at it, but for the first time I felt like I was only helping, and did not have to be in control.
Ike has got big plans for the rest of the house. The computer room was by far the worst room, but there are certainly others that need attention. I’ve been thinking that the title of the book–Jinsei ga tokimeku katatsuke no mahou–which means something like “Your life will change with the magical power of house-cleaning”–may sound ridiculous and fanciful, but isn’t really far off the mark. In fact, I have felt happier every time I’ve gone into the computer room ever since we finished it.
And I am grateful to (the beautiful!) Marie Kondo for writing a book that caught Ike’s attention. For years I tackled big-project house-cleaning on my own, and eventually got burned out on it. Thanks to Kondo’s book, my energy and interest in it have been re-kindled. And finally, Ike has come to see the value of it too.
