My First Passport Stamp: Travels to and from Japan

I've heard it said that life can be characterized by the number of times and ways in which we leave and return home. I suppose I did both over break, as I celebrated the end of what Time Magazine deemed "The Decade From Hell" (Ben Bernanke, Man of the Year, seriously?!!) across the Pacific Ocean (from Los Angeles) for the first time to Japan to see my friends Neal (from the American Studies Program, now over there in the United States' Navy) and Makoto (Japanese-American with whom I played high school basketball, now over there finishing up school).

I am the last sibling in my family to travel abroad, embarrassingly; three of the four have studied and lived abroad for a time. My only previous experience outside of the U.S. borders was crossing the bridge from Detroit over to Windsor, Canada, when I was twenty, returning a friend of ours home after high school graduation at Culver. We got accused by the border patrol of coming over just to party, checked the casinos (I was the only one old enough to enter), had lunch, and headed back south. I don't think the trip really counts.

Admittedly, it was not too long ago--as late as high school--that I boasted about how I never planned to leave the U.S. There was plenty to see and learn about here, I figured. Plus, as soon as one crossed over into another country, he was sure to be swarmed with snakes, scorpions, dirty water, war and violence, a lack of electricity, and languages that aren't English. 'No thank you,' I reasoned, at least half serious (enough to cause a major dent into at least one relationship with a former girlfriend set on traveling). I guess you could say I was a success story of ethnocentric American textbooks.

I was serious enough about teaching English in South Korea immediately after college to order a passport, but stayed in the States for a girl. Things didn't work out, but I never made it to South Korea.

So my plan this time was to fly to L.A., spend about a day there, then brave the eleven-hour flight to Tokyo. Our Christmas break started after school on Wednesday, December 16. That evening, I enjoyed a happy hour with some other relieved teachers, met with a book club, soaked in the Villas' hot tub, and was about to start watching watching Woody Allen's most recent film, Whatever Works, with some friends. Then I got a phone call--which I did not pick up--from my friend Robin, who was set to pick me up and get me to the airport in L.A. She left a message, trying to tie up loose ends. "See you tomorrow!" she finished.

'Tomorrow?' I thought. 'Wait, I'm flying out Friday.' It was pushing 11 p.m. by then, I was half an hour away from home, had a few drinks in me, and knew my flight was slotted to take off at 5:30 a.m. 'At least I hope it was Friday...'

So I called my friend to correct her, who in turn--as you probably already predicted--actually corrected me. "Your flight is tomorrow," she told me. I had emailed her the flight details, and, after checking to verify, she indeed knew my own flight details better than I did. People don't exactly accuse me of being a master of details; in fact, my friend Neal, in Japan, felt the need to remind me several times not to forget my passport. So I watched the movie anyway, booked it home, packed up one bag, took a one-hour nap, and headed to the airport (thanks also to my roommate, Keyairra, for driving me at such a ridiculous hour!), making it in time for my flight.

***

While in Japan, I had a mostly splendid time mixing stereotypical Japanese cultural/touristy activities like singing karaoke, visiting a Buddhist temple and Shinto shrine (couldn't help but recall Jesus kicking marketers out of the Temple in Matthew 21:12-13), checking out Mount Fuji (from a distance), seeing the Tokyo Dome (and picking up a few undersized souvenirs there), eating sushi and drinking saki, and risking my life at the Tsukiji Fish Market (think several football fields wide and long, full of lots of huge dead fish, sharp knives, and green and yellow carts driving recklessly in every direction at six in the morning) with catch-up-bonding-blatantly-American activities like watching season four of The Office, following the health care bill on television as it passed through the Senate (three cheers for more Statism!), playing video games, eating Krispy Kreme donuts, throwing a football around like little boys, and touring Neal's ship.

Fast forward about a week: It was Christmas day in Japan, Christmas Eve in the States. Neal met me at the Narita Airport on the way but then we headed southwest to the coast and location of his naval base in Sasebo. He was sending me the seven or eight hours back by myself, which promised to be interesting. The plan was to catch a slow train at 3:08 p.m. for a couple hours, then switch on to a bullet train for about five or six more hours then to maneuver my way through the Tokyo subway system to meet my friend Makoto at 11:30 p.m. in Shinjuku, where he works. Then, I would sleep on a mattress at his apartment, catch a couple more trains to the airport the following day (Yes, I have had enough of trains and planes!).

Leaving at 3:08 would have given myself about an hour extra to take things slow and make up for any mistakes I made. Most signs were in both Japanese and English, which was helpful, but way fewer Japanese people than I expected actually spoke English. Naturally, Neal and I got consumed with important things like one more game of Madden 2009 on his PS3, and I promptly missed the 3:08 train, which meant I would be taking the 4:08 train and had left my leeway time before I'd actually begun. Oops! After Neal and I said goodbye, the person who was taking my tickets noticed my ticket was actually for the next day (which was the original, BAD plan). Noticing that he and I could not communicate, he kindly issued me tickets for the correct day, no additional charge.

The first train switch, onto the bullet train, went fine, and I even had time to grab a snack. On the five or six hours that I was on the bullet train, I alternated between reading Joseph Ellis's prize-winning, plagiarism-accused, 1998 biography, American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, and sleeping, comforted by fact that my stop was the train's last stop; I felt confident I wouldn't miss it.

And I didn't miss it. But then I had to switch to the subway system, which I--with the help of English signs--did correctly, but then, on the last swich of the day (to a different line)--due to taking my time and trying to get it right--I missed the last train of the night that was heading to my location, three stops away (damn that missed 3:08!). It was already 11:30 p.m. by then and I had no working phone, so I did what any brilliant tourist would do, exited the subway system and started wandering aimlessly--black, carry-on-sized bag on my shoulder--through the biggest city in the world, looking for Wendy's (all 71 of which apparently closed, in Japan, at the end of 2009), which is where I was to meet Makoto. I tried unsuccessfully to communicate with a cab driver several times, and finally gave up, resorting then to walkers, most of which spoke no more English than I Japanese. (Insert both sides speaking native tongues SLOOOOWER as if that would increase comprehension.)

I did get some points in various directions by simply saying "Wendy's Hamburgers," so I set off, dispite the slightly mixed reviews as to where the joint actually was. After a couple miles of walking, several unsuccessful conversational attempts, a few turn arounds, and the extreme grace of God, I somehow found the Wendy's, albeit an hour and a half late (it was now 1 a.m); my friend had left about ten minutes earlier. By this time I figured my options were to try finding and paying for a hotel or to get a hold of someone else's phone to call Neal, who could subsequently communicate with Makoto. A Japanese local had been sort of watching my confused desperation, and so he attempted to talk to me. I pointed at my phone, said, quote, "no work in Japan," while also pulling out Neal's number and saying, " need to call friend." He got it. So he dialed the number, I called Neal, told him to call Makoto and tell him to get his ass back to Wendy's, and the rest is history. My older brother Shane and my middle sister Angela have some horror stories about traveling in Europe a few years ago, so I figure I am now fully initiated into Schumerth adulthood. My friend Makoto came running up at 1:30 a.m. and then walked me back to his apartment. The next day I had plenty of time and clear directions to get through the subway system and the Narita Airport Express, which put me on my flight with plenty of time to spare (passport and all).

Though the thirty-six hours spent with friends back back in L.A. was refreshing, I have spent way too much time on this break switching time zones and trying to sleep on trains and planes, which I guess is why I am now writing at 3:30 a.m. School starts in two days, and I am not ready.

Happy New Decade, everyone!

Jayber Crow and the Riverside Faux Intellectuals

"You have been given questions to which you cannot be given answers. You will have to live them out--perhaps a little at a time."
~Dr. Ardmire, character in Jayber Crow


Last summer, a teacher friend of mine suggested we start up a book club. But nothing really got going at the time. A couple months later, though, two other teacher friends and I found ourselves in the habit of enjoying a beer while arguing philosophy and politics in his Communist-like apartment (falling apart, old hardwood floors, open rooms, minimal furniture, bathroom door doesn't really shut, etc.) in Riverside. So out of that group birthed a book club, and we invited my other friend and two more teachers to join. From four options, we chose Jayber Crow, which is considered Wendell Berry's best novel. I had not yet read it.

Berry begins the book with the following "notice":

"Persons attempting to find a 'text' in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a 'subtext' in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, interpret, explicate, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise "understand" it will be exiled to a desert island in the company only of other explainers."

While I appreciate Berry's humor, our group was guilty as charged. It devolved into what my roommate and I have estimated about 20% therapy, 30% book analysis, and 50% worldview clash arguments. Only three of the six read all 363 pages after life took its course. It frustrated me how cheaply Berry's ideas are dismissed by those who cannot come to grips with responsibility or right and wrong, but I also know that all the arguments in the world will not convince some people.

I heard Professor (Dr.) Jason Peters of Augustana College refer to Berry first as an essayist, second as a poet, and third as a writer of fiction. While that may be true, that is not to say that Berry's essayist fiction does not work (Albert Camus, George Orwell, and others have done a pretty decent job of it). The book was written introspectively in first person by Jayber, a barber in Port William after returning from his prodigal journeys into and out of seminary, college, and "the big city." The story is one that dances back and forth between the real ache of human (Jayber suffers through a life of desiring and loving a woman he cannot have) experience and the hopes that sustain us.

In a world that so cleverly and deceptively cheapens, distorts, and distracts from meaning, beauty, and truth, Berry once again rebutted with Jayber Crow, doing a masterful job of weaving in so many of the themes that have mattered to him during his life and forty years of publishing books to a wide audience.

Rather than clumsily trying to synthesize it all, I will just give you a glimpse of Berry's own words.

On War:
"Anyhow, what I couldn't bring together or reconcile in my mind was the thought of Port William and the thought of war. Port William, I thought, had not caused the war. Port William makes quarrels, and now and again a fight; it does not make a war. It takes power, leadership, graeat talen, perhaps genius, and much money to make a war. In war, as maybe even in politics, Port Wiliiam has to suffer what it didn't make. I have pondered for years and I still can't connect Port Wiliams and war except by death and suffering. No more can I think of Port William and the United States in the same thought. A nation is an idea, and Port William is not. Maybe there is no live connection between a little place and a big idea. I think there is not.

"Did I think that the great organiations of the world could love their enemies? I did not. I didn't think great organzations could love anything. Did I think anybody would live longer by loving his enemies? Did I think those who were going to die could stay alive by loving their emeemies? I did not.

"Was this a good war? I knew it could not be good. Was it avoidable? I don't know."

On Love:
"It surely is far better to be disliked by somebody you don't love than by somebody you do. Even so, I mind. Even so, failing to love somebody is a failure."

On responsibility and the centralized, corporate model:
"For him himself, I sort of felt sorry. But he was not there as himself. He was the man across the desk, the one I had so dreaded to meet again. But this time, I thought, it was not a desk but a whole building full of sub-assistant-secretaries. He did not speak for himself but for a man behind a desk who spoke for a man behind another desk, who also did not speak for himself."

On Work:
"One of my jobs, after I reached the responsible age of twelve, was to be the barber's assistant. I swept the floor and shined the mirror and kept things in order. And then, because I longed for knowledge, Barber Clark showed me how to care for the equipment. He taught me how to clean and oil the clippers, and how to hone and strop a razor. By little stages, as I got older and taller, he taught me to cut hair and even to give a shave, letteing me practice on him, good and brave man that he was. I got so I was good at it and liked to do it."

On Community:
"I have got to the age now where I can see how short a time we have to be here. And when I think about it, it can seem strange beyond telling that this particular bunch of us should be here on this little patch of ground in this little patch of time, and I can think of the other times and places I might have lived, the other kinds of man I might have been. But there is something else. There are moments when the heart is generous, and then it knows that for better or worse our lives are woven together here, one with another and with the place and all the living things."


I hope that was enough of a glimpse for you to go out and read the book.