santa's arm

In Japan, Santa Claus doesn't leave presents underneath the Christmas tree. Instead, he leaves them by your pillow.

At least, that's how it was when I was growing up. There was scarcely any room for a Christmas tree big enough to have many gifts huddling around in our small two-bedroom apartment, and I feel it might have been, and still is, the case with many Japanese families. After all, this country we live in is quite a small one.

My mother claims that Santa Claus had been coming since I was a little baby, but my memories of Santa begins at the age four, when I began wondering all about this mysterious old man who would deliver gifts to children. I don't really remember my parents telling me about him. My main sources of information were books, songs, and kids' shows on TV. I learned that he wore a red and white uniform along with a matching cap and carried a big sack of gifts. I learned that he came on a flying sleigh drawn by reindeer. I learned that he came into the house through the chimney. 

Wait, we don't have a chimney!

Just like most Japanese houses and apartments, there was no fireplace or chimney at our place. The realization got me anxious. I looked around our apartment and wondered if there was an alternative entrance for Santa. Windows might work, but they would be locked during cold winter nights. The same went for the door. It would be unsafe to leave it unlocked when everyone was asleep. 

For days, this kept me wondering and worried. I asked my mother, and she just told me he would find a way. On the night of Christmas Eve, I went to bed, thinking I would stay awake and catch Santa, and, of course, fell asleep before knowing.

In the morning, I woke up and found my gift by the pillow. I was delighted, but my curiosity wasn't satisfied. I asked my mother again how Santa had come in, and she grinned and said, "Well, you know what, last night someone rang the door bell around eleven o'clock..."

"It was him?" I gaped in excitement. I couldn't believe it. My mother had seen Santa Claus! It felt like the coolest thing in the world.

"What was he wearing?" I asked.

"Um...I don't remember well. It was a bit dark."

"But was he in red? Red and white like you see in books?" I pressed on, oblivious to the uncertainty in my mother's voice.

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Was he wearing a cap? Did he have a beard? Did you see the sleigh? Where were the reindeer?"

All the questions seemed to baffle her, and then, she said simply, "You know, I didn't get to see much because he just stuck out his arm from behind the door and left the gift." 

"What?"

Now it was my turn to be baffled. All along I had thought Santa would actually come to the bed of the child to carefully place the gift for him/her, but now my mother was saying he hurriedly dropped off the gift at the door and went away. It was a bit disappointing, but I also felt it was understanding because he was a super busy man after all.

"So you only saw his arm?" I asked.

"Yeah."

"Just the arm."

"That's right."

"What was his arm like? Was his sleeve red and white?"

I wanted to make sure the famous man had come in his famous red coat and white cuffs. I somehow felt it would prove authenticity of the identity of the Santa Claus my mother was talking about.

"Yeah." My mother smiled and nodded with confidence. "It was red and white."

That's how I got this vivid image of Santa's arm sticking out from behind the heavy iron door of our small apartment, and it stayed with me for a long time. Whenever my friends mentioned Santa Claus, it came back to me, and it gave me a strange feeling to think about the gap between what my friends must have been picturing as Santa and this image of the arm of a busy man I had in mind. It was the gap between a pure, happy fantasy and a reality, and thinking that I knew the reality none of my friends knew made me feel both superior and slightly melancholy at the same time.

It's been long since Santa stopped coming for me, but there's one fantasy about him that I have kept. When I have a child of my own and hear a door bell late on the night before Christmas, I will open the door--open it wide--and invite him in. We will chat a little over some herb tea and I will ask him all the questions I have had about him and his job. I won't keep him long, just until he finishes his cup of tea and has had enough rest.Then I will see the old man off at the door so he can keep working for the rest of the night, while the curious child in me smiles, finally perfectly content after a long, long wait.

so i begin traveling

So it's decided. Finally. I'm going to Taiwan.

It was August, too, when I saw my friend off at the LAX. We had spent most of the previous two years together in the same program and grown really close--so close that it was sometimes hard for us to be tender with each other. We fought and argued. We made up. We ate together and laughed and talked for hours and hours until I had to finally get in my car and drive back home in empty early-morn streets. We were pretty much an essential part of each other's life at that time, and the idea of us getting on separate paths felt simply absurd.

But we did, and neither of us cried at the airport. Well, I did as I waved and watched her walk to the security check turning around over and over, but I don't think she could see it from the distance. When we said goodbye, we didn't know what to say, so we said, "See you."

No, I absolutely did not expect that we would have to wait for two years for that. Then, yes, I did expect this would happen.

It was almost on a whim that I booked my flights. We've kept in touch through a handful phone calls, IMing, emails and Facebook messages, and there certainly was an increasing sense of anticipation for our reunion ever since I came back to Japan this January. We are closer now, we should definitely meet up! The issue, though, was the lack of initiation on both parties due to ever-changing work schedule. Or it was the reason on my part. I say I will visit her in Taiwan once this project is settled, and always something comes up and prolongs the end of the project. So I finally decided to just make time and go.

There's always been a part of me that yearns to travel and see the world; then, there's another part of me that worries saying things like What about language? and I won't be able to see everything in such a short time! I've been fortunate to have more opportunities to go on short trips and meet more travelers in the past few years, and that changed my mindset. The truth is that there are ways to communicate without language if you are only willing to try, and it is simply impossible to see everything. Sites won't go away, though, so you can just hop on the plane, into the car, and go again and again as long as there's an urge to see more. The important thing is to go there first. At least once.

One thing about traveling is that it seems easier to do so when you have a stable ground to come back to. I didn't have that for long while I was moving around in the US, looking for a job and working to get a work visa. Yes, I had a place to live, eventually a job to feed me, and friends and roommates to greet if I went away for a bit and come back, but the uncertainty in my foreign status gave me nothing but a sense of instability. Now, back in my own country and not having to worry about the legal right to be here, I feel I can finally start flying out to see more of the world (which is metaphorical, for "the world" includes many sites in Japan that I've regrettably missed so far).

So this trip to Taiwan will be great not only as the long-awaited chance for me to see my friend again but also as my very first step into the world I have yet to see. The trip is two weeks away and I am already thrilled.

The only issue for now is that most Chinese phrases I know are the ones I learned from the Chinese pop songs my friend introduced to me, so I can say "Don't leave me," "I want you to know you are the most beautiful person," and "Do you want to kiss me?" when I can't even ask to get the bill at a restaurant.

Time to study!

dealing with tragedy

Bin Laden is dead.

When I read the news on Twitter, I was struck by the empty feeling I always feel when I hear news of someone's death. Every time I get shocked, by the fact that someone who has been alive and breathing until just a second ago can be gone in the next. I was by no means sad, knowing what he has done, but when I began to see reactions from American people on the internet, I couldn't help but feel a wave of estrangement.Those were words of joy, excitement and celebration, none of which, to me, fit the occasion--whoever it was that died, it was an occasion of a death (or, in fact, four deaths, as the news later reported).

For all he did, he probably deserved to die. The world is most likely safer and better off without him. He was, after all, the leader of a bunch of terrorists.

But then, who ever deserves to die, really?

Two weeks after the earthquake on March 11, a boy gave a speech at his graduation ceremony at a junior-high in a town by the northern coast where so many people died from the tsunami. Tearful and clenching his teeth with sadness, he said;

"The disaster took away too many precious things from us. It was brutal. We are sad. It is really, really painful. But in this hardship, we should not resent. We should accept what happened and live on, supporting each other. I believe that's the mission for those of us who survived."

The situation is not the same. It wasn't other human beings that cast the tragedy upon us. It wasn't anybody's hatred. There would be no way of revenge even if we wanted it--how would we chase down, catch and kill nature? We never know if Japan wouldn't have wanted a revenge if it had been a human being attacking and causing this much devastation to our country, so it's not about Japan and America. It's about how we get over such devastation, the kind that keeps you up all night in fear and makes you bawl in helplessness and despair.

It's hard not to resent when you are in so much pain and sadness. It's hard not to hate when you lost things that were precious to you. But in all the brutality of what had happened, this fifteen-year-old guy refused to resent, and I find it extremely brave, because it's probably even harder. Resentment, anger, hatred, things like these can get you moving. It takes energy to give up on these and still try to move forward.

But that is the start, I believe, if we want to step ahead for the better.

So maybe we should stop rejoicing over another death, because after all what's behind the seemingly exhilarating joy is hatred, and such joy is in fact empty. This death doesn't cancel thousands and thousands that preceded. This death doesn't bring us back what we've lost.

The sad, but maybe comforting, fact is that there seems to be only a little we can do when something extremely sad falls upon us. We can just grieve and cry over whatever makes us cry writhing and fists gripping for as long as we need to, somehow leave that behind, and keep on.

That's the only way out, and we are all brave enough for that.

what i learned from miyazaki

We have to create to reach out, not for our own satisfaction.

dead and alive, living and dying

My late grandfather

Over the weekend, my mom and I visited Yamagata, where she grew up. The main purpose of the trip was to see her mom, my grandmother, in the hospital. From what we'd heard from my aunt, mom's sister, we thought grandma would be weak and groggy, probably not able to tell who we were, but when we got to her room, she smiled and grabbed my hand with strength that surprised me.

"Do you remember her?" my aunt asked, pointing at me. It'd been five years since I'd last seen grandma.
"Of course!" she said a bit indignantly. "But I didn't recognize her." She looked at me and gestured with her hand, "She was so little when I saw her last time!"

So she remembered me only as a little girl. She'd shrunken, and her hands were pale and bony. But her eyes had twinkle of a sane person, her words sharp and humorous.

For all we knew, my grandmother was dying. She is. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer two years ago, and the doctor told her family (she doesn't know) that she'd only have a few months. Since then, in our minds was always the question, How much longer will she last? When my mom and I planed this trip earlier this year, she asked my aunt, who told us visiting in February would be a bad idea because of the snow, "Will we still make it in time if we visit in March?"

Once when I was teaching English, my student and I started talking about adjectives about living and dying. As I explained the differences between dead and alive, and dying and living, a realization hit me, and I said, thrilled, "So when you're dying, you are actually living, too. Dead and alive don't happen at the same time, but dying and living do." 

That's what I saw in the white, small corner of the hospital room. Dying people are living, not dead. My grandma, though her body might be decaying little by little and she might've been the closest to death among the four of us, was still there, living.

She ate a dorayaki (which is a type of Japanese sweets) we brought as a souvenir slowly. My aunt and my mom were engaged in a conversation about their relatives. Grandma glanced up at me a few times and lifted her eyebrows in a smile, which made me feel as if I was the little girl she remembered. It was a fuzzy, happy feeling. Embarrassed by the assumption I'd made about her dying, I held grandma's left hand in my hands as she spoke with my mom, for she'd told us that the left side of her body was always cold. The talk went on, and my arms grew numb, but I kept my hands in the praying position feeling her hand, frail like a baby bird, gaining warmth, slowly, but surely.

en

En is a Japanese word I like. The best way to translate it would be "connection by chance." Some may say it's "by fate," and the word certainly has the sense of "being meant to," but to me, "fate" is too strong a word. En is more like paths crossing, the luck of it, and the connection that stays after you go different ways.

Moving around and going through some goodbyes, I started believing more in en. You meet someone, and the connection remains after a goodbye.

So yesterday, I had a plan to meet up with my friends from college. I was just having brunch when I thought of another friend, Jodi, whom I also met in college when she was here as an exchange student. We'd known each other since then, nearly for eight or nine years, though we'd only seen each other twice after she'd gone back to Vancouver. We'd kept in touch mainly thanks to the fact she's such a good letter writer, and now, I knew, she was living in Tokyo though she'd said she was going to visit Vancouver till mid Feb.

Just on a whim, I texted her, along with my number, asking if she was back yet and saying we should hang out if she was. She called right away and said, excited, "Oh my god, I just e-mailed you like five minutes ago!"

Turned out she'd sent me an e-mail to my PC asking for my cell phone contact info literally five minutes before I sent out the text. Some synchronicity, isn't it?

We ended up meeting up in Shinjuku, shopping and walking around the city while catching up, and having dinner and drink with the college friends in our college city. I hadn't seen Jodi in four years and the other friends in almost six years, but it felt as if nothing had changed. "You haven't changed at all!" we all told each other.

There were, of course, things different from the "old days"--different make-ups, talks of career, loves lost and found--that told me we were not the college students who would drink and fool around all night, but what we'd had was still there.

It's not even about keeping in touch. You may hardly talk, or never, even (I hardly talked with my college friends while I was gone), but the fact you met and shared some time of your lives won't go away, and when luck has it so, your paths cross again, and you pick it up where you left it off.

That's en, and, I tell you, it's a great thing to believe in.

longing for beer

Beer never was my favorite drink before moving to the States. Whenever I went out to an izakaya, I would order anything but beer. Cocktail, umeshu (plum sake), or something that's sweet.

But in the States, at bars where poor grad students would go out to, it could be complicated and pricey to get "something sweet" that was good. After getting cocktails that were too sweet and strong a few times, I gave in and just started ordering beer.

First, I was getting used to the taste.
I learned there were darker beers and lighter beers.
I learned I liked beers that are in the middle to the lighter side.
Then, finally, I started to be able to tell the subtler differences little by little.

I don't remember exactly when it was that I thought I liked beer. Maybe it was when I tried some German beer at Suppenkuche, a great German restaurant in San Francisco. Maybe it was around when I tried New Castle for the first time at a bar in Long Beach. It took me a few years, and I'm still a novice--I stumble due to lack of vocabulary when the bartender asks me what type of beer I like because I usually just rely on the color--but now I much prefer beer to "something sweet" oftentimes, especially with a meal.

And because I hadn't known the joy of drinking beer while I had lived in Japan, I didn't know, in my life in the States, I was being spoiled by the variety and the quality the country offers when it comes to beer. I thought it was normal for a bar to have different types of beer, at least three or four of them, on tap. Different colors, possibly from different countries.

Then I came back to Japan, and found that beer is Beer. Just one. No other choices. You go to an izakaya and order Beer. Of course, there are place that carry more than one type of beer, but they are usually all pretty similar, the light, Japanese-style beer. Don't take me wrong, I love Japanese beer, too. Sapporo is good. Kirin is nice. But when it comes to the variety, it's surprising how little it is compared to other drinks--they carry seven different types of umeshu (plum sake), ten sojus and twelve cocktails and sours!

I guess that explains why I used to prefer other drinks, often sweet, to beer before. Simply, most izakayas in Japan have much better a selection of those.

So I've been a little frustrated with the beer situation in Japan since I came back. The low-malt beer my parents drink didn't satisfy me. I went out and had some draft beer. It was good, but not enough. I missed being able to choose which beer I wanted. The tap handles.

Then, tonight, I found the perfect place.

The bar is called The Taproom, and it's located in Yokohama near the Kannai station. The place looks pretty little, though it sounds like it's actually not with the upstairs space with extra seats, and the wooden interior has such a cozy, warm feeling to it. And, oh, the tap handles! My heart shivered with joy when I saw there are about fifteen or so of them behind the counter. I tried a Belgian beer called Winter Wit and another beer brewed by Baird, the Japanese company in Shizuoka that owns the bar, both of which were really really good; and their American style BBQ was actually better than the BBQ I'd tried in California!

We started talking with the bartender, and when he found out my friend was from Denver, he told us he'd gone there for Great American Beer Festival last year and stopped by at several breweries. He couldn't remember their names when my friend asked, but he said, "I'll check when I go home and let you know next time. You're coming back, right?"

Without hesitation, we said, "Yes!"

So for now, I'm happy to say I've got The Taproom to fulfill my thirst for beer and the whole bar experience-random tipsy conversation, a tiny bathroom and paying at the counter (yes, even little things like that), and hopefully, I will find more places like this as I continue with my search.

learning to ski

There are some new things I experienced while I lived in San Francisco, and skiing is one of them. Well, not precisely. I had skied before, just once, about ten years ago on a high school field trip. Though we had lessons with a professional instructor, I couldn't even learn to stop. The most vivid memory I've kept from the trip is of sliding down a hill at full speed, which probably wasn't that fast but felt so to me anyway, yelling, "HELP MEEEEEEE!!" until another instructor finally stopped me before I dove into the line of his students.

Thanks to this both terrifying and embarrassing experience, I decided skiing wasn't for me. It was a torturous activity. Not fun. I'd never tried it again since then even though my mom, who's from Yamagata, a northern part of Japan with lots of snow in winter, told me how fun it could be if I practiced a bit more.

So when my friend asked me if I wanted to join him for a snowboarding trip to Lake Tahoe, I hesitated. But there was a promise I'd made to myself when I'd moved to San Francisco; to say yes to any opportunities for new experience. So yes I said. Even if I couldn't ride well, it would be nice to see some snow anyway, and it was snowboarding, not skiing, this time. There are a lot of people who enjoy snowboarding. Maybe it's actually easier than skiing.

"Snowboarding is tough," another friend told me.
She was going to Lake Tahoe with us. It was about two weeks before the trip, and I had been getting myself ready for snowboarding, rehearsing in my mind how to keep balance, trying to build muscles needed for the activity.
"Why don't you ski instead?" she suggested. "It takes a lot of practice and time to get used to snowboarding, and we're only going for a day. I don't know if you get to enjoy it. You know--," she added, "You're not really an athletic type."
That is true. Of all the adjectives out there, no one would choose athletic to describe me, unless they are being sarcastic. But, you know, you never know until you try, right?
So I declared, "I'll be fine!"

A part of me was indignant at her doubting my capability of learning snowboarding in a day (which probably was right), but another part of me was simply traumatized, almost, by the experience in high school. I'd failed once already, no need to try again.

But my friend kept insisting on me skiing. She said she was going to ski, too. And one day, about a week before the trip, she told me a story about her friend who'd gone for a snowboarding trip with her for three days and hardly enjoyed any of it because of having such a hard time learning to ride.

At that point, I was losing my confidence about learning to ride quickly. I was, after all, not athletic at all, and the muscles hadn't developed as much as I'd wanted. It scared me to think I might end up struggling in snow for the whole day.
"Snowboarding is tough," my friend said. "That's why I think I'm gonna ski this time."
"Okay." I gave in. "Maybe I should, too."

Thank God I did.

With skis on, even getting up after a fall on the flat ground was a challenge. Struggling helplessly on the snow, I realized my friend's insistence on making me avoid snowboarding was sheerly an act of thoughtfulness. I couldn't imagine doing this having both my feet tied onto a single board. If I fell on that, I would lie and move about like a dying cicada until someone came for rescue.

Finally, I managed to learn to get up. Sort of. Then it was stopping, slowing down and turning, none of which I could do very well. My athletic friends were patient, though, and with their help and guidance, I eventually learned to keep my back straight like a statue as I sped down the hill without falling.

We went up on the lift and skied (and rode) down. Up and down. Up and down.

After a few rounds, my friend asked, "Having fun?"
"Yeah!"

I was, truly. It amazed me how something that had once seemed impossible could be not only possible but so enjoyable. It wasn't my physical ability--I was as athletic (or not athletic) in high school as I am now--but the mindset. In high school, skiing was merely a mandatory part of the school trip. I hadn't chosen to do it. With this mindset and absolutely no experience, I had no faith whatsoever in my ability to learn skiing. All I thought during the lessons was, I can't do it, I can't do it, I can't do it. 

This time, though the voice was still there, barely but surely, whispering the same thing, it wasn't my main concern. I was determined to have a good time whether I could ski or not. My friends, with their you-will-do-it-or-you-won't attitude, made me move before I could start thinking, and once my brain recognized the activity as enjoyable--wow, skiing is fun!--that was that. It was fun.

As simple as that, but it took me ten years to learn it, just as skiing--keeping your feet shoulder width apart, bending your knees, moving your weight inward and outward, all those tips I'd heard but never really practiced before.


"You'll be hurting all over tomorrow," my friends told me as we drove home after a long day, tired, lazy and peaceful. "Maybe you'll have a hard time walking."

Well, I thought. That's not such a bad price for what I've learned, is it?

After all, if you can't walk, you can ski!