by Ben Stevens
It’s also shaping up to be a warm autumn day, and flies are already starting to gather…
For this emergency, Unki-san and I utilize a twenty-foot long pole made from flexible plastic, which has a sort of ‘corkscrew’-like attachment at the end of it. We also connect up the hose.
Pushing the end of the pole deep into the waste, we move it back and forth in a vain attempt to try and shift the blockage.
Of course, it’s now that a group of around fifteen Japanese tourists appear. Their guide is wearing a garish orange jacket (for ease of recognition), and a blue-and-white cap with ‘Nagasaki’ written in kanji or Chinese characters on the front of it.
He speaks into a microphone that is connected to small, battery-powered speaker he has hanging from a cord around his neck. He is giving his group a brief history of Daionji – when it was founded, what branch of Buddhism it belongs to, and so on – as he leads them over to the tomb of Matsudaira Yasuhide, which is located close to the steep slope at the edge of the car-park.
This tomb is a popular attraction for both foreign as well as Japanese visitors. Keeping the several bushes and two big trees that grow around the tomb neat and tidy is my responsibility. So I made an effort to learn a little about Matsudaira-san’s life.
(Due to the story I’m about to tell, he is still greatly respected among Japanese people. So the ‘san’ is always attached to his name.)
Born in 1769, he became the 81st magistrate of Nagasaki in 1807 – a position for which he received the handsome stipend of 2000 koku of rice. One koku of rice – equivalent in volume to approximately 279 liters – was theoretically enough to feed one person for a year. So, in rice at least, Matsudaira-san was a very wealthy man.
On August 15, 1808, the British warship Phaeton illegally entered Nagasaki harbor, and proceeded to take two Dutch traders hostage. (England and the Netherlands were at that time embroiled in the Napoleonic Wars.) To secure the trader’s release, the British sailors demanded food and water – two things of which they were desperately short. They also threatened to use their cannons to destroy Japanese and Chinese ships also in the harbor, if their demands were not met.
At that time, the Saga Clan was responsible for ‘policing’ Nagasaki and its surrounding waters. They requested backup in the form of samurai and some ships, but this took too long to arrive and so – the crew of the Phaeton becoming increasingly more irritable as they waited – Matsudaira-san decided that there was no choice but to agree to the sailors’ demands.
The supplies having been loaded and the hostages released, the Phaeton sailed out of Nagasaki harbor on August 17.
As the decision to ‘give in’ to the British sailors’ demands had been made by Matsudaira-san, he also accepted full responsibility for everything that had taken place. This included the kidnap of the two Dutch traders, who were supposed to be under the protection of the shogunate; and also the fact that an insufficient number of troops belonging to the Saga Clan had been stationed in Nagasaki – hence the need to request reinforcements.
Matsudaira left a long and detailed letter outlining how he felt solely responsible for what came to be known as ‘the Phaeton Incident’ – and then took his own life by committing seppuku.
(The traditional samurai act of cutting open one’s own belly with a short sword, better known in the West as hara-kiri.)
Ironically, it is for this suicidal act that his name continues to live on today – and almost be revered. For he is a throwback to another age, when many Japanese were obliged to atone for any ‘mistakes’ and save face by practicing one of the most painful – and potentially protracted – ways there is of taking your own life.
Samurai who committed seppuku – after defeat on the battlefield, for example, or for failure (real or perceived) to follow the orders of a superior – often had someone waiting with their katana or long sword already drawn.
As the samurai knelt and cut open their own belly, in an act considered to release their ‘spirit’ or soul in the most dramatic way possible, the person standing above them would bring down their sword and cut off their head, instantly ending their agony.
I do not know if Matsudaira-san had such a person standing above him when, having finished writing his letter, he knelt and plunged a knife into his belly.
I hope he did – for while I will never understand the readiness to throw one’s life away for what basically amounts to hard-learned experience, he was undoubtedly a brave man.
But in any case, if he did not have someone waiting to cut off his head, then it would have taken him several long and very painful hours to die.
Matsudaira-san took his own life the same evening the Phaeton left Nagasaki harbor. Just a few hours later, the requested backup – eight thousand troops’ worth – arrived in Nagasaki.
As they stand just outside the gated entrance to Matsudaira-san’s tomb, the guide attempts to tell his group the above story.
But the attention of these visitors to the temple is being somewhat distracted by a) the stench emanating from the open manholes, and b) the ever-increasing amount of flies that are buzzing around.
Gamely, the guide keeps smiling and talking… But the female members of his group are now covering their mouths and noses with their fashionable scarves made of silk or thin cloth, and are starting to mutter protests.
It’s time to give up and call in the experts, surely. Please give up and call in the experts – i.e. a professional drain company.
But still Unki-san insists that he and I take it in turns to push the rod back and forth into one of the clogged drains, in what is clearly (at least to my mind) an exercise in utter futility.
Then – horror! I swear that the other, full drains start ‘spitting’ their waste up into the air. Like several miniature volcanoes, they bubble and chuck up their contents, so that it spatters back onto the surface of the car-park.
Someone must have just flushed one of the toilets in the temple, I realize.
This sight is finally too much for the guide and his group, and so they flee for the safety of ‘Kotaiji’ – the tranquil Zen temple that’s next-door to this one.
At last, almost grudgingly, Unki-san admits that this problem is too great for just the two of us. We gingerly put the heavy metal covers back on the manholes, hose off the patches of waste lying on the ground, and Unki-san goes to call in a professional company.
They arrive a short while later, fully kitted-out in protective clothing and masks. They lift only one manhole cover, put an extremely high-tech, hose-looking type-thing down it (I’m always grateful for my powers of description), and clear the blockage in about two minutes.
We break for lunch at noon – although, strangely enough, I don’t feel much like eating.
Can’t think why…
Then Unki-san asks me to sweep up the leaves that are around the large pond that’s full of koi (carp), and on the rocky area just behind it.
Usually, it’s a job I enjoy. It’s very tranquil by the pond, although in summer it’s possible to be eaten alive by the thousands of mosquitoes.
But today I sweep while feeling increasingly unwell. I have a bad feeling in my belly. I break out in a cold sweat, and my whole body starts shaking.
I can’t continue working like this; something’s not right here. I go and find Unki-san, and tell him that I’ve got to go sick for the rest of the day.
In the private ‘living quarters’ of the temple, I take a hot bath in the vain hope that it might make me feel a little better.
But my feet, as I look down at them in the water, seem ridiculously far away – it’s almost as though I’m observing them through the wrong end of a telescope…
Suddenly petrified that I’m going to pass out in the water and drown – although to drown in this cramped bath, in which I have to sit with my legs drawn up to my chest, would be something of an achievement – I get out and go up to the room I share with my wife.
Thankfully, this room has its own toilet. Be
cause, quite frankly, all hell now breaks loose.
I shan’t go into detail.
Suffice to say that it is seriously nasty, and lasts for several hours.
My wife eventually comes upstairs to find me lying in a moaning, sweating pile by the toilet bowl.
Exercising true love, she manages to get me into bed (or rather, on top of a towel-covered futon), and places a bucket beside me.
I’ve sort of gone a bit delirious – later, she tells me that, for some strange reason, I kept earnestly inquiring: ‘What color’s the pig? What color is the pig…?’
The sickness has passed by the next morning, although I’ve been left with zero strength or energy. I can barely stand. A doctor is called out, and he states that I should go into hospital and be put on an intravenous drip for a few hours.
My wife drives me to the hospital. I’m put on a bed in a small ward with a few other patients, who are also all on a drip. I tell my wife that she should go, but she says she’ll stay and read a few magazines until such time as I’m ‘discharged’.
Then – you have got to be kidding me – the door to this ward opens, and in walks the male doctor who has previously given me two injections in my backside.
He talks earnestly for a few minutes to a middle-aged woman, who’s lying on a bed on the opposite side of the ward to me.
Then, leaving his patient, the grey-haired doctor notices me.
(What’s he even doing here, anyway? I thought he was a ‘bone doctor’ – then again, I’m at the ‘general hospital’, so maybe he refers his more complicated cases here…)
He pauses very briefly at the foot of my bed. He nods ‘hello’. I reply in kind. Then, mumbling something I don’t catch, he again proceeds on his way.
My wife looks confused.
‘How do you know that doctor?’ she asks.
Briefly, I explain that he’s the physician who’s treated me twice this year for ‘infected pus’ in my legs.
‘Ah,’ nods my wife, ‘that explains it…’
‘Explains what?’ I demand.
My wife is silent for a few moments. Evidently, she’s considering how best to put whatever it was the doctor said into English…
Then, she informs me: ‘He said, “You don’t have much luck, do you?” just before he walked off.’
I’m back home by the early afternoon, and return to work the following day. A couple more days have to pass, however, before I start to feel anything like my old self.
I’ve learnt a salient lesson here: never fool around with drains, wherever you are in the world…
Just get in the professionals.
The Karate Kid
I usually work at the temple Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. On my ‘days off’, I also teach a few people English privately, in a small room at the temple that’s situated just below the judo and kendo dojo.
My students are all adults; housewives and middle-aged men. One of the male students – ‘Mr.’ Yoshida (as it is an English lesson, we do not use san) – is a capable speaker, although his actual pronunciation is sometimes a little hard to fathom.
Recently, I began the hour-long lesson by asking him what his hobbies are.
‘I keep battery-car in my bad-house,’ he proudly replied, grinning broadly and nodding his head.
‘I’m sorry?’ I returned, giving my best ‘Sorry-didn’t-quite-catch-that?’ smile.
‘I keep battery-car in my bad-house,’ he repeated.
‘Um…’
‘Battery-car! Battery-car! In my bad-house!’ he spluttered, now appearing just a little agitated.
He also flapped his hands several times, up by his elbows.
I was beginning to wonder if I’d be able to make it to the door of the room, so to make my escape from this madman, when I suddenly grasped the significance of the flapping hands.
‘Bird-house – you have a bird-house?’ I questioned Mr. Yoshida.
‘Yes,’ he replied, at once appearing calmer. ‘Where I keep my battery-car.’
A few seconds’ further thought, and I got this, too.
‘Budgerigar,’ I emphasized. ‘Where you keep your budgerigar.’
‘Hai – so, so,’ nodded Mr. Yoshida, momentarily lapsing into Japanese. (‘Yes – that’s right.’)
‘Battery-car is the very nice bird,’ he then informed me. ‘You like?’
‘My favorite,’ I declared obsequiously, desiring only to keep the lesson moving.
It’s not long after the ‘Battery-car Incident’ that I get an email from an English language school operating in Nagasaki.
We’ll call it ‘Kids English’. It’s a likely enough name. There are many such schools and groups in Nagasaki, employing English-speaking gaijin with a visa for part-time teaching work.
Kids English want to know if I’m available for work on a Wednesday morning.
I reply that I am.
They then say that a teaching assistant is needed at a nursery – the children at which are aged between three and six – some twenty minutes’ tram ride from the temple.
It’s a good rate of pay for a few hours’ work, and so I agree and am asked to go to this nursery the following Wednesday, at nine a.m. There I’ll meet the gaijin-teacher I’m to be replacing, and the Japanese teacher who I’ll be assisting…
The gaijin teacher, Pam, is shortly returning to New Zealand after five years spent living and teaching in Japan.
She tells me that working for Kids English isn’t bad – they always pay on time, at least – but that I’m ‘not to take any shit from head office’. I thank her for the slightly ominous advice.
The Japanese teacher is a woman in her early twenties called Naoko-sensei. I am now Ben-sensei. We go into a large hall with a wooden floor. Naoko-sensei has a portable CD player, while Pam-sensei carries a bag of large, brightly illustrated cards.
‘I’ll give you these at the end of today,’ she informs me. ‘You just hold them up while you’re dancing to the songs –‘
‘Err, sorry, one moment,’ I interrupt. ‘I thought I just heard you say “While you’re dancing to the songs…”’
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she replies, looking slightly confused. ‘So while you’re dancing and singing, hold up the cards and…’
‘Sorry, just a moment again,’ I say, quickly. ‘First I’m told I’m going to be dancing, now I’m also going to be singing? I have to say – I thought I was here to teach English, not audition for a role in Cabaret.’
‘This is teaching in a nursery,’ she states, a little irritably. ‘Haven’t you done this sort of thing before?’
‘Actually, no,’ I reply. ‘I thought I’d be reading a few simple books, telling stories, playing games with the kids, stuff like that. To be honest, if it’s all about singing and dancing, then I’m not sure if…’
‘Here comes the first class!’ Naoko-sensei calls brightly.
She appears not to have caught any of the conversation between Pam-sensei and I. Or, as is more likely, has just ignored it. Pretending not to have noticed something (particularly the numerous gaijin faux pas, such as using one’s fingernail to pick one’s teeth, or blowing one’s nose in public) has become almost something of a Japanese art-form.
Naoko-sensei claps her hands and says ‘Hello everyone!’ as a reserved-looking, middle-aged nursery teacher brings in a class numbering around twenty four-year-olds.
I copy the Japanese teacher and the assistant teacher I am allegedly to replace, and smile and wave at the children. Despite having two young daughters of my own (one still in fact a baby), I’m starting to suspect that I’m not really cut out for this line of work…
And then Naoko-sensei starts the CD player, and it gets even worse.
‘How’s the weather? It’s sunny! It’s sunny! It’s sunny to-day!’ sings a loud and horribly cheerful male voice, over a tinny, keyboard-and-drum backing track.
It is indeed sunny, and so Pam-sensei holds up one of her brightly colored cards, which has a pic
ture of the sun grinning and wearing sunglasses.
The fact that the sun is shining also apparently means that Naoko- and Pam-sensei have to start performing a synchronized, complicated-looking dance.
‘Just try to follow on,’ Naoko-sensei informs me, looking over her shoulder…
It’s pointless to go on in detail. Suffice to say that the following two hours are among the most embarrassing of my life. Red with shame and sweating, I attempt to dance, even ‘jump like a kangaroo’ and pretend to be a growing sunflower on occasion.
(I at least try to show willing.)
‘I can do the alphabet rock! Oh boy! Oh boy! Oh boy!’
Oh dear Lord…
Just to help matters, the pink (yes – pink) slippers I’ve been given to wear inside the nursery – shoes, of course, have to be left on the shelves in the nursery entrance genkan – are much too small for my feet, and so keep shooting off across the polished wooden floor of the hall.
Along with my antics, this also serves to greatly amuse the children.
(Four classes of children, with each class occupying 25 minutes – five minutes for changeover – are brought in over the two hours.)
Finally, mercifully, it is the end of the last class. As before, the three teachers ‘mingle’ among the children, saying ‘Good job!’ and exchanging ‘pretend’ high fives.
A girl of about five is suddenly stood in front of me.
In Japanese, she asks, ‘Sensei, are you American?’
‘No, English,’ I reply, also in Japanese.
‘Ben-sensei!’ says Naoko-sensei sharply, shooting me a slightly incredulous look. ‘Please use only English in the classroom!’
‘Sumimasen,’ I say humbly.
Then, quickly, ‘I mean – sorry.’
The girl stood directly in front of me says brightly, and this time in English: ‘I do… karate!’
‘Wow!’ I return, by now beginning to ‘get’ the ridiculously overenthusiastic character that a gaijin teacher of small children must possess.
Maybe I can do this, after all…
