I had been in Tokyo almost three
days before a call finally came through; which, to my surprise, was from a
local number. "Rob-san!" said the heavily-accented voice on the other
end, "why didn't you say you were coming to Japan? Very bad manners, very
bad. Where are you staying? Come stay at my flat. It will be tight, but I will
make space! You'll see!"
We met an hour later in the lobby
of the hotel where I'd been staying--"hiding out" to hear my only
friend in Japan tell it. His name was Shinji Ureno, a CS major back at San
Diego State where we met in our final year of school. I'd studied accounting at
the time, and come across Shinji-san through a mutual friend who'd been trying
to get both of us to exercise more by starting a running club. The running thing
didn't lasted long, but our friendship had, even as he moved back to Japan, and
I to New York City; and while we hadn't talked much in the intervening years,
it had been enough to keep the tenuous bond of friendship between us intact.
"You never answered my
question," Shinji said, sitting across from me in one of the plush, maroon
chairs in the lobby. He wore a faded t-shirt and jeans, dressing like the
teenager he hadn't been in almost a decade. "Why didn't you say you were
coming to Japan?"
I shrugged. "Wasn't sure if
I'd end up here or Hong Kong," I said, and left it at that. Shinji pressed
me further, but I wasn't in the mood to say more. Leaving New York had been
something of an impulsive action, which meant my reasons for doing so weren't
exactly clear to me, let alone to anyone else. But I had the money and the time
in abundance, so off I went, and thankfully I had had few reasons to regret the
trip--not yet at least--except perhaps having spent almost all of it in my
hotel room. It sounded like a terrible waste when put that way, but that wasn't
my experience at the time.
We stopped by Shinji's flat some
time later, where after removing my shoes and donning some indoor slippers, met
his flat-mate: a lanky, bespectacled fellow who called himself Haruo-san.
"He studied English for six years in school, but don't expect much from
him," Shinji had told me on the train-ride across town. "Even so, he
is very sensitive, and very good with computers."
I had shrugged at that. It was
becoming a theme on this trip. "Sounds very Japanese to me."
"Ah, so desu, Mr. Rob!"
"Nice to meet you,
Robu-san," Haruo said with a toothy smile and a bow. His arms were skinny
as chicken bones, and skin as pale as milk.
"And you," I said,
offering a hand. The man--he looked more like a boy than a man, but
whatever--withdrew slightly, then laughed to cover his embarrassment.
Eventually I got a dead-fish handshake from him. His fingers were thin and
delicate as a pre-teen girl's, and his voice about as loud as a scampering
mouse. "Thank you for come, prease excuse mess," he said, indicating
a spotless apartment. He was an efficient and polite fellow, I decided
that day, without an angry bone in his body.
It turned out he was also highly
regular--in his daily routine, that is. Every morning he would rise at five
o'clock, perform a series of exercises and stretches, prepare a breakfast of
rice, fish, vegetables, and tea, then leave for work at six-thirty on the nose,
and return by five-thirty in the evening. Dinner was usually much like
breakfast, except when it was Shinji's turn to cook. After dinner came a bit of
light reading, tidying-up, and lights-out at nine. The result of all this
moving about was that I hardly saw or spoke with Haruo until the weekend, three
days later.
By then I had already developed
my own routine: waking up at the sound of Haruo's five o'clock exercises;
falling back asleep until ten; lounging around the flat all day, watching
television or sleeping; sharing dinner with Shinji and Haruo, listening to
their talk and not understanding a word of it; and after helping with the
dishes, going out to some local drinking establishment until I was good and
drunk and in need of rescuing by Shinji. When I thought about it, however, my
routine in Shinji and Haruo's flat wasn't much different from the one I'd kept
at the hotel in downtown Tokyo, or for that matter at my place in New York, at
least over the last few months. How
had it started? I wondered,
but could not bear to think of it without an ample helping of liquid courage. I
scratched at the beard I had started growing in New York, and let myself fall
into oblivion again.
Periodically, Shinji would press
me for answers. "Why do you drink so much, Rob-san?" he would ask,
though not in such a direct manner as that. "What is the matter, Rob-san?
You seem unhappy. You need sunshine, my friend, and fresh air. This flat is too
stuffy in the summer to stay here all day. Why not go down to the park, or at
least take a walk each day?" In the end I agreed to the walking, doing the
flat's grocery shopping while the two of them spent their days at work. This
made Shinji and Haruo--who I started called "Sharuji" when referring
to them together--happy, but when they handed me neat stacks of yen-notes I
politely refused, showing them a wallet full of such notes I had acquired at
the bank. "But you are our guest," Shinji had said, insisting that I
take the money, but I simply replied in kind. "Yes, I am your guest, but I
insist on paying for your hospitality." You would not believe it if I told
you the lengths my hosts went to giving me money for those grocery trips, so I
won't. Suffice it to say, they were creative.
I thought a new plot for giving
me money was afoot when Saturday morning came, and the flat-mates Sharuiji
approached me in the kitchen. "Ohaiyogozaimasu, Rob-san," Shinji said, wishing me
a good morning.
"Ohaiyo, Shinji-san," I said, sipping
at a cup of tea to sooth the pounding from my latest hangover. "And to
you, Haruo-san, Ohaiyo,"
I added with a nod to Haruo.
They both smiled. "Arigato
gozaimasu," Haruo said, thanking me and bowing. "Your Japanese is
very excellent, Robu-san."
At this I chuckled somewhat and
finished my tea. "As you say," I said, and brushed the hair from my
eyes. I was quickly learning to take such compliments for what they were;
polite, but ultimately empty of substance. My spine tingled uncomfortably at
the thought.
The sun shone through the tiniest
of windows in the wall. "Looks like a sunny day," I said, speaking
slowly, and making an effort to say all the syllables clearly for Haruo's
sake.
"Yes, quite sunny,"
Shinji said, glancing at Haruo before edging forward, laughing nervously.
"And not too hot today; just like San Diego, in a way," he said.
That's unlikely. "Well," I said,
"then you best not waste it staying inside. What are your plans for the
day?"
Through his smile, I could sense
that Haruo had become extremely uncomfortable, rocking back and forth on his
heels and staring at the floor. Shinji opened his mouth as though to say
something, then stopped as Haruo let loose a tumble of unintelligible Japanese
to his flat-mate. I suffered them a brief exchange before Shinji turned back to
me, and avoiding my eyes said, "Ah, yes, well Mr. Rob, I have been
talking with Haruo-san, and he wishes me to speak to you on his behalf, since
his English is not so good. You see, he believes you have a bad spirit inside
that is making you sick--a spirit that grows bold on sake and bad
thoughts." At this point, Haruo interjected and spoke at length in
whispers to Shinji. The latter nodded several times, saying, "Hai, hai,"
to the air, speaking briefly and listening much.
He then turned back to me and
continued. "Haruo-san says that he is very sorry for noticing that you
never look into mirrors, or still water, or windows where you might see your
reflection. It is strange, you know? I had never noticed, but it is probably
true if Haruo-san says it is--he sees more than most people, and does not lie.
He is worried--beg your pardon, but I am worried too--that you mean to hurt
yourself. That...hmm, I am not sure of the translation--that you left America
so you could get away from something that is impossible to escape. Do you
understand? Like your shadow…you can’t escape your own shadow, no matter how
hard you try. It is like that, I think.”
I felt myself growing tense as
Shinji spoke; pulse racing, palms sweating—all that fight-or-flight business
that humans feel when under threat. Under threat—but what was the threat here?
I looked around the narrow confines of the kitchen; at the electric
single-burner stove, the rice-maker and electric tea-kettle on the counter; at
the frying pans hanging neatly on the wall, so polished I could see the room
reflected in its surface—
The sense of threat rose to a
fury, a rising tide that seemed to swallow me from the inside out. “Robu-san!”
Haruo cried as I leapt back from the stove, clattering into the wall and
slumping to the floor. Just as fast I had sprung to my feet, running for the
door in a pair of indoor slippers; running for the street, running, running,
running...
I ran to the bus-stop, scaring
the daylights out of everyone aboard. They pulled back from me as though I had
the plague, or three heads, or smelled of something foul. Some of them
whispered to one another, almost hissing and doing everything to convey their
anger at me short of yelling. No doubt you could feel the tension ease as I
hopped off a few stops down the line, repeating the exercise on two more
busses.
Some hours later, with tattered
slippers and sweat-stained cheeks, the Sharuji flat-mates found me wandering in
the shadow of Tokyo Tower; an orange-and-white replica of the Eiffel Tower
whose frame had been partially constructed of disabled American tanks from the
Korean War. A large facility called “FootTown” stood at the base of the tower,
which among other things included a museum, amusement park, and food-court.
Being late summer, the place was crowded as hell, but we managed to find an
open table at a McDonalds, where I finally cracked.
“I’d been working in New York
almost five years,” I said, while Shinji and Haruo listened and looked on. The
background hum of the food-court seemed to fade away as I descended into my own
thoughts. “I worked as an accountant for a Big-Four accounting house, a
dream-job, if ever there was one for someone with my background; great salary,
huge bonuses, and plenty of time off outside of tax season. Had an apartment in
Manhattan with a view of the Statue of Liberty, and a smokin’ hot girlfriend
who worked on Wall Street. I was living the dream….” I stopped then, trying to
recollect that moment in the bathroom, when everything had changed.
“I was shaving one morning, maybe
ten days ago, when looking in the mirror I saw someone else staring back at
me.” At that moment, Haruo whispered a question to Shinji, who provided a quick
explanation that seemed to satisfy him. “It was my reflection, sure” I
continued, “but there was something unusual about the person in the
mirror…something foreign, hostile—dissatisfying. And the longer I stared at
him—and he back at me—the more I loathed him. He was a fake—a flatterer in an
empty shell. I realized then that if I was living the dream, it was someone
else’s. It was the dream of that despicable, greedy, spend-thrift figure in the
mirror, whose eyes seemed to cackle at my sudden realization and horror.”
I waited while Shinji translated
the gist of my story to Haruo, who went wide-eyed for a moment before nodding
and looking back toward me. “What did you do?” Shinji asked? “Ten days ago—that
was not long before you came to Tokyo.”
“No, not long at all,” I replied,
letting out a long breath before continuing, like I was ventilating something
noxious from my lungs. “The razor actually stuck in the wall behind the mirror
when I threw it; for a moment anyway, before falling to the floor, as though it
was held by some invisible hand. Shards of glass were everywhere. There was
this one nasty, long piece I picked up in my hand, and let the edge touch the
delicate skin on my wrist. It was cold and sharp, and would have served the
purpose I had in mind then. Instead I booked a direct flight to Tokyo, withdrew
two-thousand in cash from the bank, and took a cab to the airport. I haven’t
dared look in a mirror since, fearing what I would see. I thought that maybe
getting away—FAR away from everything I knew—would somehow change me, so that
when I did see my reflection again perhaps the person looking back at me
wouldn’t seem so damned fake—that they would be someone I could be proud of; or
something like that.”
I said the last sentence with a
sigh, as though satisfied somehow. The Sharuji
consulted with one another until they seemed to reach an agreement, and
then Shinji spoke. “Hauro-san believes you had the right idea, to leave your
home and go somewhere else to understand your problem better. But you can’t see
the mountain when you are standing on its side, or the plain when you are
standing at its middle. No, your mind is needing contrast to work properly. Hai, to see the mountain you must go to
the plain, and to see the plain you must go to the mountain. That is just how
it works, you understand?”
I nodded, but said nothing else
in reply. Haruo began to say something to Shinji in Japanese, then stopped and
turned to me and said, “Tonight, we go to mountain.”
It seemed like we spent the
remainder of the day shopping. First we went to a shoe-store to get myself a
pair of proper outdoor shoes. Then we all got fitted for hiking boots, which
the Sharuji supplemented with hats, wind-breakers, gloves, warm socks,
mosquito-repellant, and two large backpacks. They took these back to their
flat, and filled them with all manner of rice-balls, bento-boxes, and two large
thermoses of steaming green-tea. After checking and rechecking all the
supplies, they hurried me out to the bus stop where I had caused such a scene
earlier, and boarded the next one that arrived.
The ride was less eventful than
my first of the day, though as the only foreigner aboard I still attracted my
share of attention. We rode to the center of the city, where we picked up
another bus. “Where are we going?” I asked them, not for the first time that
day. “You will see,” Shinji told me, and left it at that.
We stopped at a small sushi-shop
for dinner and tea, a quaint place with polished lacquer floors and lights
fashioned in the manner of traditional paper lanterns. Toward the end of it,
Haruo fell into conversation with the establishment’s owner, a balding, red-faced
man named Ishikawa-san who seemed quite taken by us and all our gear. More than
once I heard the term “Fuji-san” bantered about, followed by approving nods and
animated speech. Our meal ended up being on the house, with Ishikawa-san and
the entire staff bowing to the three of us as we left. A female waitress
stepped forward then, and holding it above her head as she bowed, offered each
of us a small box containing an exquisitely-arranged assortment of sushi and
rice. I did my best to thank her, and had my Japanese complimented again. It
might have been an empty sort of praise, but it felt good all the same.
By the time we emerged from the
restaurant, it had begun to grow dark. “We will need to hurry,” Shinji said to
me, leading the way to the nearest bus station at a trot.
“Where are we hurrying to?” I
asked. By now I had deduced some kind of hiking trip, but where would we go
hiking in the middle of the night? It was 8:21pm.
“You will see,” Shinji said, and
left it.
“Do you know, Haruo-san?” I asked
Shinji’s other half, but he just smiled and adjusted the straps on his pack.
The mountain loomed over us even
in the growing darkness of night. And even in the darkness I recognized one of
the world’s most recognizable mountains. “Fuji-san” rose before us like a dark
pyramid against a star-filled sky. The atmosphere on the bus grew hushed and
electric as we pulled into the station, 2,300-meters above sea-level at the
base of the peak. The air felt chillier up here, while headwind blew across our
face as we stepped from the bus and assembled nearby. “This is station five,”
Shinji told me, pulling headlamps from his pack and handing one to each of us.
“It’s 1,400-meters to the summit. If we are lucky, we will reach it just before
dawn.”
My heart fell at that, but Haruo
seemed cheerful. “Come, Robu-san,” he told me, and strode off toward a booth to
purchase us all official Mt. Fuji walking-sticks.
Now I must admit I was not the
fittest fellow at that point in my life. Long hours in the office, followed by
long hours of leisure, drinking, and doing a lot of nothing meant that I had
grown even flabbier than that day in college I was told to join a running club.
I couldn’t tell you the last time I’d gone walked or running more than a mile
or two, or done anything remotely like “working out.” Add the altitude
(2,300-meters is almost 1.5 miles), and you’ll understand if I was sucking wind
before our little hike had even started.
Still, I couldn’t very well back
down at that point, so donning my headlamp and taking the proffered
walking-stick, I fell in behind Messrs. Shinji and Haruo and made tracks. Our
route was called “Yoshida,” which Shinji told me had the lowest average grade
of the four main trails that climbed the mountain. “Only 21.6%, Mr. Rob!” he
explained as we rested for a moment, sipping some tea and eating a bit of
Ishikawa-san’s sushi. You can well imagine my dismay, but for all that instead
I laughed, using my stick to climb to my feet and said, “Only 21.6%. Well shit,
that’s no sweat!” I felt light-headed from the altitude, and very nearly fell
over. Yet somehow my false bravado translated into real strength, and for the
next hour the climb went better than I’d dared hope.
Naturally my spirits waned as we
passed midnight, when the temperatures dropped and the wind rose. Soon we were
above the tree-line, clambering along a trail of rocks and dust that looked
more like surface of the moon than the slope of Japan’s tallest mountain. My
lungs burned as the air grew thinner, and my flabby muscles ached at the hours
of exertion. Our party stopped several times so I could revive myself with tea
and a few minutes’ rest. “The moon is beautiful,” Haruo pointed out on one
occasion, pointing with his finger as the wind whipped through his long, black
hair. It hung as a crescent low in the sky, just above the slope to the east.
How strange it felt to view the moon from a place that looked like a photograph
from the Apollo missions.
“Is this some kind of Zen
experience?” I asked while sucking air on my haunches between swigs of tea.
“The only Zen you find on
mountains is the Zen you bring with you,” Shinji said, then laughed. “Sounds
like something we’d say smoking tree San Diego.” I could have gone for some
tree at that moment, but all we had were rocks and ash and dust; and of course
the peak looming overhead. To see the
plain, you must go to the mountain. To see the mountain, you must go to the
plain.
We reached the summit just after
four o’clock in the morning, meandering around the crater so that we might have
a good view of the east. Several hundred others mingled in the same area,
talking and huddling together to keep warm. The temperature up there couldn’t
have been much over 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the winds were strong as gales.
“This way,” Shinji said, leading past a series of buildings and down a rocky
trail that ended at small white torii,
a kind of gate that marks the entrance of Shinto shrines.
The lights of Tokyo and the Kanto
Plain glowed and stretched out below us, the harbor arcing away to the south,
and Tokyo Tower awash in the light of two-dozen spotlights; like the old Saturn
V rockets that once took men to the moon. “This is incredible,” I said, smiling
like a child for the first time in who knows when. Haruo bobbed his head, then
said something to Shinji in Japanese. “Almost time,” Shinji said, checking his
watch.
Some clouds floated in from the
south, yet they were gone as eastern horizon lightened ever so slightly. Behind
us the sky remained black as jet, shading to a deep cobalt blue. To our front,
the light blossomed slowly, unfolding like the petals of a rose, glowing first as
red, then orange, gold and then yellow. And as the edge of sun crept above the
margin of the world and cast the rays of a new day upon our faces, a cheer went
up across the whole summit of the mountain, and all weariness in that moment
left me.
Now, there’s an old Japanese
story in which the sun-goddess Amaterasu becomes so upset that she hides
herself in a cave one day, and covers all the land in darkness. The other gods
try everything to lure her out, but nothing works until a certain kami, or spirit, of merriment fixes a
mirror to a nearby tree, and causes such a raucous as to compel the sun-goddess
to have a look. At this point one of her rays—the ray of dawn—contacts the
mirror, and so taken is she by the image of herself that Amaterasu doesn’t
notice the god Ameno-Tajikarawo pulling her from the cave, and
thus returning light to the world.
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