I recently picked up Foot-loose in Tokyo, not because I thought it would be useful (due to when it was written) but because I thought it would be fun to see what things were like along the Yamanote Line in the 1970s. The funny thing is many of the things the author, Jean Pearce, thought would quickly disappear are still here and many that were thought to be permanent fixtures are long gone.

The book is very interesting to read even though the contents are so dated. Perhaps the fact they are so dated makes it an even more enjoyable read. I read the whole book on the train (the Chuo Line, not the Yamanote Line) one day. The contents changed the way I think about many of the Yamanote Line stops.

The entry for Takadanobaba shows surprisingly few differences from the book’s era until today. Big Box, Omokage-bashi, Mizu Inari Jinja, Waseda University, Kansenen–all are the same today, decades later. One entry caught my eye, dealing with an ancient tree on a street I walk down nearly every day. I had no memory of seeing this ancient tree so I figured, as did the author, that the tree’s location had turned into a parking lot or apartment building in the ensuing years.

“You may see the tired remains of what was once a majestic old shiinoki (sweet acorn) tree which in other days was encircled by a Shinto rope to commemorate its venerable age, said to be more than 500 years…

Years ago there was a five-story pagoda here. It was destroyed during the wartime bombings; only the trees remain. The property is presently a parking lot, but once it belonged to a daimyo family.” (p. 114)

So I looked for the majestic old shiinoki and, in so doing, discovered that what was always there I had never before seen. Sure enough, it still fills the corner of a parking lot and probably goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of people who pass. There is no sign (as there frequently is in Japan) commemorating its age or history. The Shinto rope (shimenawa) is back up and around its trunk however. A sake offering rests at its base.

Posted on June 18th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: book review, guidebooks, nishi-waseda, shimenawa, takadanobaba. Comments: None

The weather on the day I took this picture was most fabulous. Spring finally felt like spring. The shrine across the pond (三宝寺池) in Shakujii Koen is to Benten, the water god. I was doing Walk #2 in Water Walks in the Suburbs of Tokyo, a wonderful book that you should not be without if you are going to be in Tokyo for more than a couple of weeks.

Posted on May 17th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: book review, guidebooks, shakujii, water walks in the suburbs of tokyo. Comments: 1

I loved this book. I could picture each scene so clearly; it was more like a movie than a book. I frequently read Norwegian Wood while on the train in Tokyo and happened to be at the exact location Murakami was describing on more than one occasion. I read the part in which the narrator (Watanabe) visit’s Midori’s father in the hospital on my way back from Ochanomizu. I walked past the same hospital he describes from the late 1960s just 10 minutes before. On another day I read about him meeting Midori at Iidabashi at the same moment the train I was on stopped at Iidabashi.

Norwegian Wood has some similarities to Murakami’s other works, but the super strange and supernatural elements are missing. I rather like the super strange in his works, but I also like the omission of the supernatural.

The college scenes at Waseda University always brought a smile to my face as well. Things haven’t changed much, except the students don’t shut down the campus for five months like they did in 1969. Actually, much of this book is timeless. Murakami wrote it in the 1980s, although the setting is the late 1960s. He wouldn’t have to change much to make it fit in fine in 2010 though. Tokyo has changed much in the past forty years, but at the same time, on another level, it hasn’t changed at all.

Here are some quotes I copied while reading. I’ll have a few more in entries over the next month or so.

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene I hardly paid it any attention. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that 18 years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn’t give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself… Scenery was the last thing on my mind.” pp. 2-3

“I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.” p. 4

“I can’t leave anything out. I’ve been doing the same thing every day for ten years, and once I start I do the whole routine unconsciously. If I left something out, I wouldn’t be able to do any of it.” p. 20

“‘What possible use is stuff like that for everyday life?’

‘None at all,’ I said. ‘It may not serve any concrete purpose, but it does give you some kind of training to help you grasp things in general more systematically.’” p. 232

Posted on March 26th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: book quotes, book review, haruki murakami. Comments: None

I checked out ふしぎな図書館 (The Strange Library) from my local library without even opening it. Murakami’s name on the spine was good enough for me. I brought it with me on my first attempt to go to China, and ended up reading the whole thing on the train on the way to and from the airport.

The book hasn’t been translated into English so I don’t feel bad divulging portions of the plot since few of you will likely be reading it. A boy goes into a library, is sent down to the basement to ask an old librarian for help, is tricked by the librarian, and ends up spending a great deal of time locked up in a cell of sorts deep beneath the library.

Some of Murakami’s common themes show up here, even though this book is somewhat different than normal for him. Like his other works, the symbolism makes the reader think. Beyond those aspects, I found Fushigi Na Toshokan rather entertaining just because the setting is so much like the library at Waseda University. Perhaps that is where Murakami got the idea (as he was a student at Waseda many years ago).

At the Waseda University library you enter on the second floor. When you go down a floor you are forced to remove all of your belongings and put them in a locker (which wouldn’t be so strange were it not for the fact that you don’t have to do that on other floors where there are plenty of books one could possibly steal as well). You then show your ID to obtain a pass to go into the basement. The basement includes a huge collection of books. Below the basement is yet another basement with another huge collection of books. This basement below the basement is where I normally go as some of the books are in English. The ordering is rather bizarre for the non-Japanese books. They aren’t grouped by language, so on a single shelf you will find a book in English next to a book written in Russian next to a book written in Spanish, etc. Nor do they use anything like the Dewey Decimal System, although they are numbered. For instance, I found Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World on a shelf and proceeded to explore the books around it, hoping there would be other guidebooks or books about Japan. Instead, there were marketing textbooks and other books with the word “market” in the title.

Anyway, under the second basement of the Waseda University library is yet another basement. This third basement is roped off. I suppose this third, unreachable basement could have been fodder for Murakami’s imagination, resulting in this book.

One other strange thing about the Waseda University library is that many books must be “ordered” online while you are in the library. The ordered books mysteriously appear at the first floor desk 10 minutes later. I always want to look on the shelves around the ordered book I know I want to see what else may be of interest. This is especially true of works in English since there are so few English titles available at other libraries. I’d like to browse the shelves where these books came from, but that isn’t allowed. This is similar to what happens in ふしぎな図書館 as the boy can’t look for his own books. Instead, the librarian retrieves them for him.

I like how Murakami shows how quickly us humans can turn the craziest of situations into “normal” in a short period of time. It doesn’t take long for the boy in the story to get settled in to a life of bondage on the one hand and having a cook who is half boy and half sheep on the other. The initial shock wears off quickly, and it doesn’t seem so strange that someone can be part boy and part sheep. I ponder this, by the way, as I sit in a Japanese restaurant next to Waseda University on a cushion on a tatami floor, slurping soba, while Frank Sinatra plays in the background. Someone who has never been to Japan before would find this scene extremely odd, perhaps even Twilight Zoneish. I now find it “normal.”

ふしぎな図書館 by 村上春樹 is actually a picture book (絵本) of sorts as every few pages is a picture. I’m not sure who ふしぎな図書館 is aimed at, as it is pretty creepy to be a little kids’ book, but there are furigana next to many kanji, even some that aren’t that difficult. Murakami is fairly easy to read in Japanese to begin with. This book, with the pictures and furigana, is an excellent choice if you are looking to improve your Japanese and can read a few hundred kanji.

Posted on March 8th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: book review, haruki murakami, Japanese Language Study Methods, waseda university. Comments: None

As previously mentioned February and early March in Tokyo is the Japanese Plum Blossom season. We decided to try our first recommendation from A Flower Lover’s Guide to Tokyo by Sumiko Enbutsu, a book I’ll review in more detail in a future entry. So far, I have to say, I like this book.

We went on Walk #37, Keio Mogusa-en Garden. We arrived soon after opening on a sunny, warm, February morning. The train station was decked out in fake plum blossoms to advertise the ume matsuri (梅祭り) that happens from early February until mid-March. During this time period, Mogusaen is open every day, which is good since we were there on the day it is normally closed. The crowds weren’t bad, but things looked to be getting more crowded by the time we left.

Pretty much everyone had a camera. Mine was the smallest and lightest by far. Giant, crazy-expensive cameras are the norm at places like this in Japan. Retired couples (some in their 80s) seemed to be competing to see who could take the better picture with their enormous lenses and tripods both aimed at the same flower.

The ume tree above (寿昌梅) was planted in the early part of the 18th Century by a Buddhist nun called Jushoin (寿昌院). Little, bonsai (盆栽) ume trees surround the bamboo fence around it. Very cute.

Below you can see the thatched roof of the Shorenan (松連庵) farmhouse from the hill behind it. Things actually looked much better in person. It was such a bright day that the sun washed out my photos from this angle. I should have taken then with a quicker shutter speed. Even so, the sky wasn’t blue from this vantage point, even though it wasn’t cloudy. At a different time of day, with the sun not bleaching everything, this same photo may be spectacular.

This last picture may seem like your standard, point-your-camera-straight-up tree photo, but it isn’t. These trees were growing out of the mountain side horizontally.

I’ll have more from Keio Mogusaen, and our subsequent hike (on the same day) and adventures around the City of Hino (日野市), in a future entry.

Posted on March 6th, 2010 under Japan. Tags: book review, flower lovers guide to tokyo, guidebooks, hiking, thatch roof, ume. Comments: 1