Japan: First Impressions
I arrived in Japan Thursday evening, after a direct flight from NYC to Tokyo, a short layover and a short flight to Osaka, where my sister Anna and her husband Kousuke picked me up from the airport. The 14-hour stretch wasn’t so bad. I managed to watch an entire season of a TV show and sleep a couple of hours on the plane. I went through immigration and customs in Tokyo. I had to claim and recheck my suitcase between flights and started to worry that the layover was a bit short, but managed to be at the gate 30 minutes before boarding with a fresh Japan sticker in my brand new passport. Here I am!
I spotted Anna and Kosuke through the exit door as I waited for my checked bag and waved before awkwardly waiting another 10 minutes for my bag to come. As I waited, I started to hear and pick up on some of the phrases I had learned and studied over the past few weeks in my Japanese lessons.
Finally, Marie and bags exited and headed with Anna and Kosuke to a Japanese café for a little dinner. I left New York on March 15th in the morning. DInner in Osaka was on March 16th in the evening. We each chose a main dish and each came with the same assortment of salads, rice, miso, etc. I decided to let Kousuke do the ordering since I had only just arrived :-)
We made our way back to Anna and Kosuke’s apartment and Anna showed me how I would transfer trains the next day when I was on my own. It was so wonderful to see how happy and settled she is here. She’s just so naturally herself and I can tell that she feels content and home. In my various travels and seasons abroad, I never quite felt that way. But it fits Anna, and I am so happy for her and for this gift of getting to see her in her element.
Kosuke made a coconut and matcha pound cake that we enjoyed for dessert with some tea when we got home and I dug into the suitcases to give them the many Easter sweets and a few other little gifts (from PA, KS and NY). We chatted a while before it felt necessary that I at least make an effort to sleep.
I did pretty well- I managed to only wake up once in the middle of the night and again just before 6am. I felt a little jetlag this morning and I feel it right now as I type, and as I searched for certain descriptive words over the course of the day, but I also had long spans of unaffected, clear brain- how nice!
Anna joined me in the living room before too long and before long, our stomachs started to growl and we had a nice little group breakfast. Anna had to leave for work at 11, so she and I left a little early to walk around the grocery store a bit and then head to the station. First impressions: so many funny and unusual foods, very affordable delicious foods and a tea aisle that makes me ready to request sanctuary in this land. Who doesn’t love noodles in a sandwich and Raisin & Butter cheese dessert? There are also LOTS of little vending machines all along the way. Not necessarily by anything in particular, but full of cold and hot beverage options, including tea :-)
Anna and I walked around the little shopping areas a bit before she set me off on my way to Kobe, where I would venture out into the wild, a lone Engle in a very foreign land, armed with a little notebook of Japanese notes and phrases, Kousuke’s cell phone and a few thousand yen. I nailed my train transfer with confidence and got off in Kobe. I knew that one of the biggest obstacles for me would be the courage to enter a restaurant alone with my very limited vocabulary, and actually get a lunch. I did not stray from my main objective and I did not wander. I found the place most familiar looking to what we had gotten the night before so that there would be less likelihood of me having no idea what was going on.
I entered the cafe, watching other people, and was shown to a table with a fantastic view of the shopping street below and following Anna’s advice, when the waitress arrived, I pointed to the first thing on the menu and declared, “Kore kudasai!” She seemed surprised and then the two of us struggled to smooth out the details following my selection: soup, rice, which of each? I ended up with food (soup and rice, too), so I was successful in that regard.
I have no idea what I ordered. I pointed to the thing that looked the most like soup on the menu and it was kind of like soup. There were bright little orange flower-looking garnishes and little greens on top of some vegetables and breaded meat in broth. Only upon closer examination did I discover that the flowers were actually tiny red shrimp! Everything tasted good, but the anxiety in my belly of being so vulnerable (alone and without much language) held tight. The waitress was so sweet. As I finished my food, I started to rehearse my speech of how to ask to where the bathroom was, though upon paying (thankfully my waitress was there to tell the cashier that I spoke English and we got the credit card business worked out), I saw the door to the bathroom and didn’t need to use my rehearsed phrase (the practice was not for naught though, as I also rehearsed a question to ask Kosuke later, but when I forgot, I reverted to “Toile wa doko desu ka?” And he laughed and pointed to the bathroom at home that I already knew well enough.
It was not until I stood up in the bathroom that I realized I might not have been fully prepared for the next step. Like most Japanese toilets, the one at the cafe had a bidet. The flush was controlled by buttons. And much like my waitress and my encounter, the buttons were able to communicate very little to me. Not wanting to accidentally get sprayed in the face by toilet water, I closed the lid and hit a button that had a light next to it. Nothing. I clicked it again in case I upset the natural order of the mechanism. Then I saw a couple of buttons that looked vaguely familiar and remembered that there were symbols for more or less flush on Anna and Kosuke’s toilet. I daringly selected the buttons that could have shown the same Kanji and pressed one. Water started to flow. Finally, a flush. All was right with the world once again.
I descended the stairs of the cafe where I was to meet Stephanie, a dear family friend who saw me and my sisters grow up when she and her husband Mark attended seminary with my parents in Virginia. As I stood down by the station, I looked up back to the cafe and saw my sweet waitress, who waved really big and smiled when she saw me. I was happy to wave back and felt so appreciative for her friendliness in my time of insecurity.
I started wandering a bit as I waited for Stephanie. And finally we found each other. We walked around Kobe for a while. Stephanie showed me the greatest hits: Japanese fashion, a kimono shop, Osaka-specific shoes, Chinatown- which is the busiest place I have yet seen in Japan, and then we found our way to Mariage Fréres, a fancy French tea café that I had seen in Paris, but never visited. We settled in, had delicious tea and cake and wonderful, meaningful conversation. Stephanie said she had taken my mom there, back in 2010. That was really special.
We got on the train together and after Stephanie got off at her stop, I continued on, nailing the transfers and finding my way back to Anna and Kosuke’s apartment. So proud :-)
Marie on the Road
