Ephemerality: visitors, flowers and the first weeks of spring

Greetings from Akune.



I hope everyone who celebrated had a wonderful Pesach this past week. The wait is finally over. Yes. You can at last make your peanut butter and jelly on matzah sandwiches. I would like to first of all give a huge thanks to my sister and brother in Jerusalem for the amazing effort they afforded to making this the best Pesach I have ever had in Japan. Only seven short days after a call to the Chabad organization in Tokyo, a box full of matzah and a bottle of kosher wine had been sent to my doorstep in Akune. In the three years I have spent Pesach in Japan, including one year in Kyoto, this year was the first in which I was able to, with the help and kind invitation of a fellow Jewish friend, have a real seder in Japan.

Thanks Chloe, Yehudah and Chabad in Tokyo



As six of my friends and I sat around a low table on tatami mats, reclining comfortably, we group read an abridged version of the Haggadah and even had a chance to share and discuss a few supplementary readings; I closed my eyes and I was seated at all the seder tables I had attended in years past. The only thing that was missing was Grama at the head of the table, her matzah ball soup and the harmonies of my mother and her sisters, the one and only Mackoff girls.

The Seder plate



I read a little bit into Pesach this year, more so than I have in other years. I found out that Pesach is, in fact, treated as a kind of New Year, yes, like Rosh Hashana. The reasons for this are many. For the sake of conciseness and not revealing the lack of depth in my understanding of this profound holiday I will state two of these reasons: Pesach is considered a New Year in that we start counting the months (again) from the day we were taken out of Egypt, a truly new beginning; and also because the season of Pesach is one filled with new life, whether it be a new harvest or vibrantly blooming flowers. This latter explanation is one I think those living in Japan could comprehend very well. As I have described before, spring is truly what brings new life into our world, and sometimes from all over the world.

There are few world travelers I know better in Akune than Captain Matsunaga. At the age of nineteen, just out of high school, he set off to the Dominican Republic (DR) to visit his eldest brother and get a taste of a world beyond Japan. Having come back from a similar trip last year, I was able to hear from the source about the extended Matsunaga family in the DR. I was hardly expecting to have a first-hand experience with a thread of that story, but then came spring.

I got a call from the Captain at an insignificant hour in the afternoon; maybe I am saying it was so because I was at the office. Either way, the Captain was in the company of guests from afar and as a result in high spirits. Before I knew it I was online researching the closest and cheapest hotel rooms in Akune for our guests (our?), apparently they were from or had some connection with the DR.

I was sitting in the parking lot of Rocks Inn when the Captain pulled up in his car accompanied by two young exchanged students from Tokyo on their spring break. Gian, from the Dominican Republic-who I would later learn was the friend and employee of a landscaping company run by one of the Captain’s brother’s sons-and Vinny, from Brazil had a traveler’s air about them. They also had the same look on their faces as I do when I came home from an outing with the Captain; it’s the look of exhilaration, disbelief, joy and exhaustion. Over the next few days, which included dining at yakitori, stopping at a handful of bars, a bon fire and taking a dip in my favorite onsen (hot spring) I became instant friends with Gian and VInny. No sooner, however, did they shoulder their packs and head north to Tokyo.

The first 竹の子, take-no-ko, bamboo shoots of the seasons, pulled from the Captain’s neighbors’ yard, by the neighbors of course. Gian and Vinny watched in awe.



Posing after a bath at 湯川内温泉, Yugawauchi Onsen, my absolute favourite spot



The emerald green bath



At the 焚き火バー, Takibi (bonfire) Bar at the Captain’s



There are a few places that stand out in memories of watching sakura (cherry blossoms) bloom. Having learned to ride my bike at the old Roosevelt High School, the University of Washington’s Red Square and the near by Quad, I grew up with superb sakura. This came dangerously close to being over shadowed during my experience at the University of British Columbia, whose sakura are as countless as they are breathtaking. Then I moved to Kyoto. My world of understanding what a beautiful flower could possibly be began to crumbled. What Kyoto and the handful of places I have visited during spring in Japan have that Seattle and Vancouver do not is a clear sense of unfamiliarity, a kind of next-level rarity.

Sakura right outside my apartment door



Sakura lining the 365 step staircase up to Banshogaoka Park in Akune



A few weekends ago, when the sakura in the north of Kagoshima were in full bloom, Zak and I went to his stomping ground, Nagashima’s Hana (flower) Festival. Upon our arrival to Taiyo-no-Sato Park, we were greeted with a piping hot potato. This was very Nagashima, according to Zak. I figured it as a kind of door prize. The flowers were fantastic and lived up to our annual expectations. Walking under the light pink blossoms and chomping on my door prize was the closest I got to Hanami (flower viewing, which entails a tarp, enough friends to fill that tarp seated and enough booze and finger food to last a long afternoon) this year.

Flower Festival opening performance



There is a well-known saying about Hanami that I would like to share:

花より団子, hana yori dango



The grammatical nature of this proverb proves finding its English equivalent a challenge for any caliber of translator. That is, until they have experienced it they do not realize what Hanami is all about. The saying is a comparative sentence, where the two objects are flowers (the first character) and dango (the last two characters, which is a kind of glutinous rice cake filled with sweet red bean paste). Using mathematical symbols, the saying could be viewed simply as the following: flowers < dango. In other words, it is an unmasking of a collective opinion that most Hanami goers share: we’re here for the food (and booze and friends) rather than the flowers.



Until next time.

Strawberries are in season