My Year of Dirt and Water

by Tracy Franz

  “How can a foreigner ever hope to fit in?”

  “It’s impossible. That difference will always be noticed. But at least they are foreigners, so it is expected.” She brings up a recent argument among the teachers: Should Japanese teachers correct the manner of student speech if it is impolite—if it is not culturally appropriate in the classroom context? Or is it taking away the students’ personal choices? “We don’t want to take away their autonomy in expression, but the behavior or way of speaking is inappropriate for Japanese people.”

  “It’s an interesting question. I’ve met many foreigners who speak Japanese so much better than I do, but for some reason appear to have no sense of what cultural significance their words and actions have on others.”

  “Or maybe they do know, but they choose to behave that way anyway.”

  “So I guess we’re back to the original challenge—but with a new twist!”

  “Yes, we’re all outsiders. None of us fit in.”

  Monday, June 28

  At Tatsuda Center after zazen, Stephen and I look on as Richard, ever the dashing academic, climbs astride his motorcycle and zooms away into the night.

  “I get the feeling that Richard is frustrated with us,” says Stephen as he unlocks the truck door for me. “Maybe he wants us to talk about Buddhism more, to make our meetings more intellectually stimulating.”

  “Yes, I can see that. He’s a smart guy. Super smart. And I don’t mind if he has something to offer up—that would be great. But honestly I don’t know what to say about Zen or Buddhism or any of it. And what could I say about my own experience, even? It might just become therapy. I have an ugly mind.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lately I keep circling around some fragment of memory or other. I think, with Koun gone, it’s gotten worse lately. There’s that fear of change, I guess. Or a fear of the past. Maybe it’s just too much alone time.”

  “Good memories or bad?”

  “Some bad, some good.”

  “Try more of the good.”

  “Easier said than done. And also—I’d be doing it wrong, right? I’m pretty sure that I’m not supposed to be focusing on anything.”

  “You could give up zazen for a while.”

  “Sure, but it doesn’t only happen in zazen. My mind is always ugly.”

  Tuesday, June 29

  “Tracy-sensei, do you know hanakotoba?” Naoko asks me this as I circle around the classroom in a long, flowing skirt.

  “‘Flower words’? What does it mean?”

  “It’s uh . . . ,” she consults her dictionary briefly, “‘the language of flowers.’ I don’t know well, but my mother knows. She always tell me I should be careful when choose flower for person—it must express good meaning.”

  “We have something like that in our culture—red roses for love, white lilies for funerals, daisies for innocence—but I don’t know much about that either. It seems that flowers are very important in Japanese culture.”

  “Yes, our other foreigner teacher said flowers are only for women, but flowers are for men and women in Japan.”

  “Oh, yes,” Yukari pipes in beside her. “Flowers are powerful for man. Samurai power!”

  Naoko whispers to her seatmates, then asks, “Tracy-sensei, why do you have red rose tattoo?”

  “What?!” shouts Yukari. “You have tattoo? Only yakuza have tattoo!”

  “Well, now you know my secret, Yukari.” I smile knowingly. “Do you all want to see the mark of the yakuza?” The girls lean forward, eyes wide, as I lift the bottom edge of my skirt to reveal a clichéd metaphor of love and pain, the bright red rose thick with thorns, that I have worn since I turned eighteen.

  Wednesday, June 30

  During tea with the pottery ladies, Yuko-san, who is clumsy and beautiful and always laughing, reveals that she is pregnant with her first child. As the women congratulate her and rub their hands over the slight rise of her belly, I envy her. I often wonder if I will be a mother someday, if Koun and I will take that leap.

  Afterward, as we enter the studio, one of the ladies asks, “What are you all making tonight?” and this is met by a mantra of indecision:

  “I don’t know—what are you making?”

  “I can’t decide.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe another vase.”

  “Maybe a teapot.”

  “Maybe . . . ”

  “Sensei, what should we make?”

  “I don’t know—make bowls and cups with Tracy-san again. That’s good practice.”

  After the initial kneading is finished, the five of us begin to draw clay up from our wheels, up into tall gray and brown phalluses, and then fold the tips over and down again with the force of our bodies. Down and up, down and up, down and up. I always expect a dirty joke about this ritual, from these women who make me laugh so unexpectedly. But then someone says the obvious, and it is taken and given only as a statement of fact:

  “Chin-chin mitai.” (It looks like a penis.)

  “So ne.” (So it does.)

  And then powerful as gods, each of us trades one sex for another as smooth, open vessels form beneath our fingers.

  JULY

  Homecoming

  Thursday, July 1

  All day, I think about a thing that Koun wrote in one of his letters, puzzling over it, because it makes sense and also because I don’t completely understand it: In every moment, he writes, I keep coming back to a sense of wonder about how closely linked this formal practice is to a sense of place.

  This singular thought inspires me to linger in each of my frequently inhabited spaces, noticing how the placement and functionality of objects and architecture determine the flow of movement, like boulders jutting from a river. In the bedroom, the fragile tatami encouraging a light and shoeless step as I dress for the day. In my office, the wall of windows and vast view of green and blue pulling my gaze, and then my body, up again and again, away from work at my desk. In a classroom, the inexplicably permanent wood lectern around which I am constantly maneuvering in order to deliver my lessons.

  And in entering or exiting all of these spaces, a heavy sliding door requiring one to pause. open. enter. turn. pause. close. turn.

  Friday, July 2

  I have a visitor to my office during an afternoon break—Kiyoe (aka the Totoro character “Nekobus”—affectionately called this by her classmates due to her overly broad grin and perfect row of shiny white teeth). She recently returned from her year-long homestay with the College of Saint Mary in the States. Something in her manner is different and recognizable all at once. “I didn’t understand what you said about eye contact and smiles,” she tells me, “until I went to the U.S. Now I understand completely. Everybody smiles and looks you in the eyes—even strangers.”

  I relate to her my story of being stalked through the side streets of Kumamoto. I was headed home on the tram and I happened to be sitting across from a man about my age. When I looked in his direction, our eyes briefly locked. “I just smiled once before turning away—that’s what we’re likely to do in America. Maybe especially in small-town America.” But when I got off the tram, he followed me everywhere I went. I couldn’t shake him, and I certainly didn’t want to lead him to my home. At one point I started yelling at him in English to go away. After a little while, he did. Later, a somewhat older man did the same thing, him going on and on about my breasts looking like some kind of fruit. By that time, I knew exactly what to do. When I started walking toward the nearest police box, he veered off.

  “After that, I got better about not making prolonged eye contact and smiling so much at people here. But I still do it sometimes. It’s a habit, you know.” I tell her, “You be careful—even more boys will be following you around now.” I imagine all the CSM girls locking eyes and flashing brilliant smiles at unsuspecting boys—dangerous, or a dangerous skill.

  What I don’t tell her is that I once walked down Shimotori Arcade during the crowded d
aylight hours, casually looking into the eyes of those who passed by to see what would happen. Everyone looked away quickly on that day—except the old women. Obaachan (old lady) power. They stared me into the ground and I always looked away first. Why does this remind me of Sensei?

  Sunday, July 4

  We’re in the dojo—Tsuda-san, Mimaki-san, and I—and all of us are sweating rivulets, though we’ve barely begun to stretch. “Motivation goes down in heat,” says Tsuda-san. “Let’s do our best!” Our practice quickly evolves into a fever dream of pushing our bodies through thick air while Tsuda-san barks orders at us. There is something said about breathing—apparently I’m not doing it right—and then, I think, a long riff on my inability to move in anything but a straight line when I attack and receive punches and kicks. All of the advice sounds somewhat like the buzzing of an insect in the ear when one just wants, desperately, to lie down and sleep it all away. By the end of practice, I’m pretty sure I’m missing time.

  Though the shower afterward is delicious, it is only a brief reprieve. Clean clothes on, and already damp through to the skin. This season of mushiatsui may most literally mean “hot and humid,” but a better translation would be “a hell realm; a constant state of discomfort.”

  Monday, July 5

  It’s the last week of school before the mid-year summer break, and I’m playing Pictionary with my students for fun—though it’s an abbreviated and improvised version in which I filter out English words that are likely beyond their understanding. This game often fascinates me because fluent native speakers of English such as myself are rarely assets on an all-Japanese team. The girls create sketches that I would not necessarily associate with the given word—but the images work well enough for their Japanese teammates.

  Today, the one additional quirk is that the good-natured and sweetly naive Risa keeps shouting “Over easy!” as the possible answer or perhaps as words of encouragement to her teammates. (I guess it is a phrase recalled from one of her other English classes; I’m not at all convinced that she has any idea what it means.)

  One of the girls draws a card, hands it to me, and I point to a word that looks doable: “pie.”

  She immediately draws a circle, which surprises me. I would have sketched a slice on a plate.

  “Over easy!” shouts Risa.

  “Circle!” shouts another student.

  I begin to offer advice: “Maybe you should give more detail, or draw another . . .”

  “Pie!” shout three team members simultaneously.

  Meanwhile, Risa peeks at one of the spent cards on the table. “Ano, Sensei—what is . . . ‘stupid’?”

  “Baka,” I explain. Her eyes grow wide and confused, and her neighbor starts to laugh. “Sensei, she thinks you called her ‘baka’—hahahahaha!”

  “Oh, no no no—that’s not what I meant. ‘Stupid’ is ‘baka.’” Risa remains a deer in the headlights. I’m getting nowhere on this one.

  “Ah, Sensei, Japanese okay?” I nod and they huddle around Risa, explaining and laughing, and I think how much the five of them are often like borderless slices of pie in a dish, and how this image, when set against my single slice on a lonely plate, is also a rather useful representation of Eastern versus Western cultural habits.

  Tuesday, July 6

  This afternoon I stand beneath the ginkgo trees on campus, waiting to meet up with Akihara-sensei. He has volunteered for the task of delivering me to a couple of local high schools, where I’m to give sample lessons as a kind of advertisement, and he will present about our university programs.

  My partner last year, a shodo professor from the Art department, had seemed both terrified and resentful of my presence as we drove around together. Hopefully, Akihara-sensei, a teacher from the Japanese department whom I have not yet met, will be less so. He promptly pulls up in his immaculate white sedan and steps out of the car to greet me—a true gentleman. He has, I note, a kind face and a shock of neatly combed white hair. “Furanzu-sensei, it is nice to meet you,” he says. “I heard you are a big fan of pottery. I want to show you a very famous shop today.” This is indeed encouraging!

  On the way to our first school, we turn down a side street and pull over next to what looks to be a quaint showroom attached to a large old house. As we enter, my first thought is that the matte wood-lined walls are the perfect backdrop to the rough folk pottery inside. And then it hits me: I am not standing among the usual bowls and cups and vases. Instead there are thousands of statues of various sizes—mostly fertility monkeys with huge, erect phalluses protruding, as well as a few sets of the slightly less pornographic (but still perky) “three wise monkeys” covering eyes, ears, and mouth. An old woman follows us as we move from display to display, commenting on the efficacy of her talismans. My escort chuckles but doesn’t say much—maybe he’s waiting for something. As we turn to leave, a huge penis/monkey statue (more penis than monkey, that is) provides the opportunity for comment. “You know what this is?” he says, slapping a hand on the top, as if on a buddy’s shoulder.

  “Hai—yoku wakarimasu.” (Yes, I know very well.)—probably a truly hilarious response. Both he and the old woman laugh wickedly.

  After I teach my sample classes at the schools, we drive toward home and Akihara-sensei begins to tell me all about what’s wrong with youth and education today in Japan—but the rhetoric flies by too fast for me to follow. He sighs, “I wish you could understand me better—I really want to tell you all this stuff. I want to know your opinion as a foreigner. . . . By the way, do you like onsen? Do you use shampoo? Conditioner?” These seem very personal and unusual questions, but then he adds, “Is it okay if we’re a little late getting back? Maybe thirty minutes at the onsen? It is a very good one.”

  I’m thinking now that he might play another sexual joke of some sort on me and deliver us to one of those rare Kyushu onsen that allow both men and women to bathe together. “You must remember to go outside—try the outside baths because they are the best.” Right—a clue. Perhaps the outside baths are shared, then?

  We arrive at the onsen, and I stare desperately at all the signage as we enter, trying to locate some scrap of information. But, as always, there is so much that I cannot understand. Akihara-sensei procures towels and tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner at the front desk. He offers the lot to me in a neat pile, and so I tentatively enter the “Women’s” area. It is early, and I am the only patron this afternoon. I quickly undress, shower, and enter a bath, which is indeed wonderfully soothing. As far as I can tell, behind the steamed windows there is nobody in the outside bath—and though I’m worried that a man will show up out there, I think I had better give it a try in case Akihara-sensei asks me some specific question about it afterward. With the too-tiny bathing towel clutched to my front (which shameful bit is most important to cover?), I step outside and nearly tumble into a gorgeous little bath nook surrounded by natural rocks and foliage. I enter the water, but I can’t relax. My eyes remain fixed on the unmarked door opposite the one from which I just entered, semi-expecting a naked man to come strolling through at any minute. Having dutifully experienced the outside bath, I exit quickly and return to the “safe” zone.

  Just before we leave the onsen, Akihara-sensei asks me to pose for a photograph in front of the building. “Very nice,” he says. “I hope you could enjoy Japanese culture today.”

  “It was . . . a very interesting experience,” I assure him.

  I am duly delivered to my townhouse, and I immediately change clothes and rush off to pottery with my bag of too-wet recycled clay. I am late, but also just in time to produce one big watery, wavy bowl. Wiping my hands, I notice that the onsen-saturated skin of my fingertips is still deeply wrinkled. “Too much water in the clay again,” chides Sensei.

  “Or maybe too much water in my skin?” I offer, showing her my fingertips.

  She nods, and instead of insisting that I toss my work in the recycle bucket as usual, she helps me cut the bowl off the hump and sets it
gently down on the board to dry.

  “Oh—it’s pretty,” says Yoko-san, leaning back from her spinning wheel, “like lotus petals opening.”

  Thursday, July 8

  In my mailbox at work, there is a clean white envelope in which Akihara-sensei has tucked some pictures of our journey together—me standing in front of the high school where I delivered the sample English lesson, squinting into the sun; me standing in front of the pornographic pottery hut; and me in front of the onsen sign with disheveled, damp hair and a relieved smile—as well as three stunning photos of white cranes lifting off from a lake’s surface.

  At the end of the work day, I walk down the stairs and along the hall to the English Speaking Society lounge for a chat with my students. “Ojamashimasu,” I announce as I enter, noting the vibration and weight of the sliding door as it moves with my touch. Inside, several ESS members are sitting on zabuton, huddled around bento at a low table, and intently discussing the contents of the little lunch boxes.

  “What is this—mama bento?” I ask, knowing that many of them still receive elaborately packed meals from their mothers each morning.

  “No, Sanae brought it from the store for us—we couldn’t eat our lunch today because we had to take a test. Try?” Yukari reaches for the jar of spare restaurant chopsticks and pulls out one set from a popular sushi chain, and I accept her offer, settling in next to her on one of the cushions.

  “Oh! Do you know? Can you read this?” Sanae points to the kana text on the chopsticks wrapper.

  “Ah . . . ‘ichi-go ichi-e.’ What does it mean?”

  “Hiroe-sensei taught us. ‘Each meeting is unique and never to be repeated.’ It is very famous words in Japan. It comes from sado—tea ceremony. That is very special times and place.”