All I know is that I finally got to see Fuji. After seven weeks of being in Japan, and at least driving or taking a train past it 10 times, looking out the window, impolitely disturbing the driver and passengers all of whom reacted to me like an inconvenience they should pity. I would point and gesture out of the many wide-view windows and ask, “Simimasen, Fuji-san doko des-ka?”
Show me this mountain that you all are so spiritually connected to, show me this mountain that can be seen on a clear day from as far away as Tokyo, show me this mountain that you all revere that lies at the heart of being Japanese.
The frustration of looking in every direction, out of all the windows, as we sped past exit after exit, or station after station, each with Fuji in the name. She would never reveal herself through the low clouds that blanket Japan during the monsoon.
I was staying in Matsumoto, a city in the foothills of the Japanese Alps. “It’s so provincial" my grant officer would say to me every time I met her in Tokyo. I suppose I agreed, as I would put myself on a bus or a train out of there every time I had a chance to. But it was beautiful, and I loved it - not just Tokyo, which for the most part was just another example of many people negotiating a big city – but all of it, every single bit of Japan, at least, that’s what I would tell anyone who asked me.
“What is it like for you?”
I would answer with phrases that could be expected from anyone going through this experience; “interesting”, “eye opening” , “a new perspective” never really satisfying them with any specifics. “I saw a shrine today”, “I went for an Onsen”, “the students taught me to cook ramen.”
“But how does it feel?”
When pressed, I would answer, “I’m just taking it all in, and I guess I’ll know after it’s over”.
Yet, when it was, and I returned, conversations didn’t fare much better. They would start and... peter out… moving on to more present things, of being back, what things needed doing, concerns of life and returning home. There was no storytelling over drinks, no transporting anyone vicariously to the place I had just been. Everything I articulated about what I had seen or done seemed so… hollow.
For the most part, those who asked, got a disappointing sense that I hadn’t really been affected by my trip to this entirely different new world and new people. Not once could I answer questions about Japan with any excitement, or with feeling that suggested I might been touched somewhere, somehow. I mean, how could it not? How could anyone be so untouched?
I still wonder about it. Did I even go? If it wasn’t for some souvenir, a pair of chopsticks, nice shoes, a small piece of technology, the photographs, which all insist that I had actually been there, I’d say no.
What happened to the experiencing of seven weeks? Of directing a play with 30 Japanese students, where working with each one was, at least in my rational mind, a unique and meaningful interaction in and of itself. Of exploring and engaging with this incredible culture in so many different ways, walking somewhere new each day, of seeing, tasting , smelling, touching, feeling? The memories of experiencing continue to elude.
Except one, which I still find hard to share with people, the only visceral memory I have of Japan, the only experience which I know and feel was real for me, that actually tells me that my entire being was, if only for a moment, actually there. Even now, each time I think of it, I am as overwhelmed as I was the first time it happened.
Flying out of Narita, heading south along the eastern coastline of Japan, I looked out of my window, and there she was, her single flat peak clearly visible above a sea of clouds.
you wanted to see me,
all this time,
now as you leave,
look, here I am,
this is what you leave behind.
