Living with families in Japan

Yukie picked me up at Kamo train station on a chilly autumn day, my belly warmed by a bowl of ramen, my heart warmed by the thought of spending a few days in the Japanese countryside. The car kept climbing up narrow serpentines surrounded by misty mountains, until we stopped in front of a dark wooden house. Once I stepped out of the car, I was greeted by an enthusiastic jump, the way a dog would express its excitement - except that it was a goat. Yukie introduced me to her two goats, two cats, her husband Kevin teaching at a local university and their family friend Ben who was visiting. We shared rounds of green tea from the nearby Wazuka tea plantations, followed by rounds of Japanese plum liqueur, interlaced with conversations about the Japanese language and religion, climate change and poetry.

Ben said it's hard to write a poem a day. Writing is hard. Not writing is hard. Having written is amazing. So he writes. He writes poetry because he isn't sure what else to write. Poems give structure and boundaries. Haikus and sonnets. He writes about his divorce. He likes to reuse the same words with different meanings. His writing is soft and crackling and sparkling. Mochi mochi. Pika Pika. Sara sara. We talked about Japanese onomatopoeias as the conversation turned to food, sharing homemade gyoza dumplings, Yukie recommending to have udon noodles in Nara, as a perfect example of mochi mochi, this squishy and chewy and soft sensation. As the stories got more personal, she told me how she bought this 150 year old house when a burnout led her to leave a corporate job, going away from the city to countryside, opening her home to strangers. She recently started studying esoteric buddhism from a local monk, finally having time to dive deeper into understanding her own heritage. She gave me a gift of temari, a ball made of silk and kimono pieces, traditionally given to women about to get married. Each conversation felt like a gift in itself.

A soft evening fell upon us, and as I looked through the window, the goats were laying there cuddled up on the porch, half-asleep, their quiet contentment radiating towards us soft squishy humans gathered around the fireplace. Or maybe it was the other way around.

The next morning I was ready to explore the tea plantations, so after a miso-mushroom-egg-rice breakfast I caught a bus to Wazuka and started wandering around. The tea plantations welcomed me with their vibrant emerald green, having handled a rain storm that kept going for the whole night and the whole morning, clouds crawling through the valleys, threatened by the first rays of sun. I kept walking for hours, through tea plantations, bamboo groves and rice fields, bumping into an occasional shrine, otherwise not seeing anyone around. Until I did. Suddenly, in the middle of fields, I saw a tent, and a few people waving to me to come by. So I did. It turned out it was the annual art exhibition created by the local community, a couple of houses abandoned to become spaces for installations and paintings, sculptures and performances. I had to catch a train in an hour, so I thought I’d give it a quick look and be on my way, but the space drew me in, the sculpture of a dragon made by a 9 year old and a sculpture of a river made by a 79 year old. I let go of the idea of catching my train on time - what’s on time anyway - and slowed down my visit to deepen the experience, rushing ruins it all, a slow breath elevates it. So I listened to the stories, had chats, bought tea, and by the time I left those two houses two hours later, I felt in awe of this nature-culture, East-West creative integration in the middle of rice fields. I couldn’t help thinking that the best things happen without planning, without rigidity, without trying to control the situation that much. Just showing up with your mind open. This conclusion repeated itself over and over again in Japan. It still does.

I headed to Nara, hanging out with hundreds of dears in the park, hanging out with the giant bronze buddha in the temple, then catching a shinkansen to Shizuoka, seeing Mt Fuji for the very first time through a muddy station window on my way to the beach, and falling asleep with the sound of Pacific ocean waves crashing to the shore. After a few cycles of sunrises and sunsets, lunches of sashimi and dinners of katsu curry, I moved forward to lake Yamanaka, to meet the one and only Mt Fuji from up close. My key learning from this part of the journey became stillness. The stillness of the lake, the stillness of the mountain, the stillness of closing your eyes in an onsen bath, Mt Fuji on the horizon, with utter peace in my heart. There is so much to notice when you don’t do. No phone, no reading, no video. No writing. The way weeds float on the surface of lake Yamanaka. The way sunlight is reflected in glimmering water. Haiku is born out of this kind of observation. A pause before a reflection can be born, capturing a moment that you witness, rather than manufacturing a moment that was never there.

The chaos of swans
The stillness of a mountain
My fluttering heart

Paths from Mt Fuji led me to Tokyo, where I was about to spend a few days with Maya, a talented designer who built her own house, and a mother to Aki, a 7 year old boy who dreams of becoming a train conductor and watches instructional videos daily. We tried out a conveyor belt sushi - also called a sushi train, much to the delight of Aki - where you can select the proportions of ingredients - a half or double - Aki quickly gaming the system and ending up with plates of half rice double squid. It was perfect for our initial dinner of introductions, and yet it was such a different experience to my sushi lunch earlier that day, where a plate of fresh pieces - tuna and salmon, caviar and shrimp, omlette and, of course, squid - was arranged carefully in front of me by the sushi chef, on a short counter seating just a few people, the only other guest there trying to engage me in a conversation in both Japanese and glimpses of English. Where are you from? Are you a student? Ah, if not, you’re a teacher. That kept echoing in my head. If you’re done being a student, you become a teacher. He asked the chef to give me miso soup, he said it was good today. I accepted the miso soup. He kept listing all the places around Tokyo to ask where I have been and where I should go. I accepted the recommendations.

Maya’s house is a temple of motivation. Her goals of the year displayed on the wall, her mirrors lined with notes to act on your wishes now. Next morning Maya was telling me about her flamenco lessons and piano practice, talking about the urgency-importance matrix, and how often we’re good at doing what’s important and urgent, while forgetting what’s important but not urgent, getting stuck in the trap of time, the trap of manufactured urgency, rather than an organically unfolding experience. She invited me to her son’s piano recital on Sunday, where she would be playing as well, and, needless to say, I accepted the invitation.

I spent the days that followed wandering around Tokyo, visiting art galleries and traditional gardens, having soba noodles cooked in matcha and grabbing uncountable onigiris from 7/11, staring at the glimmering sea of Shibuya crossing lights as the sun went down, catching opportunities to learn as the sun came up. One morning I found myself on a tatami mat in the middle of gardens at Tokyo National Museum, in a workshop on a breathing method that got written about in the eigthteen century Japan, a method to improve physical and mental health by aligning the breath, posture and mind. My teacher Yuki (seems like a popular name!) insisted that adjusting the posture and focusing on abdominal breathing leads to natural adjustments of the mind, encouraging us to find postures of strength and to prolong our exhales, breath through our noses rather than our mouths, walk barefoot on natural surfaces. She also said that I am a naturally zen person. So, naturally, I want to believe everything else as well.

One of the more unique experiences was a classical music cafe, with vinyl records of operas, symphonies and sonatas blasting through enormous speakers, all tables facing them, all people listening. No talking allowed. No photography allowed. Tokyo prefers to stay a secret. Can’t blame him. Tokyo seems like New York City in a dream. Deeply familiar, yet inexplicably stranger. They both seem to know themselves, while simultaneously constantly changing and daring to figure themselves out.

I had less than 12 hours left in Japan and I chose to spend them in a long piano recital for local kids and adults. And I didn’t regret it. It was raining softly as we walked through East Tokyo suburbs to an old school, which had a big hall, which had a bright stage, which had a shiny black piano. And tons of restless kids running around and even more restless adults chasing them. The youngest ones were 3 year old twins, playing Jingle Bells. Older children and longer pieces followed. Disney prevailed. I was sitting there thinking how nothing really matters and it's important to just do your thing, without overthinking what it is, just starting it, working on it, becoming good at it. If you work on something long enough you’re bound to be great at it one day, feeling fulfilled. Echoes of Bhagavad Gita: do it well, let go of expectations, let go of the idea that you're the one doing it in the first place. If piano is your thing, amazing, play piano. If making sushi is your thing, amazing, make sushi. If conducting trains is your thing, amazing, go ahead, train, be it. The more time passes, the less I feel stuck in the paralysis of choice, the paralysis of what’s possible, and I just try to do things, consistently, to the best of my ability at the given time, without judging that ability too much. Action over perfectionism.

As I walked towards the train station after the final goodbyes, I bumped into the sushi master who had provided my first lunch in Tokyo. He recognised me before I recognised him, he waved, I waved. A school bus full of Japanese pre-schoolers passed. They waved, I waved. Every human interaction here felt like a blessing, a teaching, a reminder of this cosmic protection, regardless if it was from the families I stayed with or strangers I nodded hello to in passing. Every highlight of this trip involved discovering places through people, cultures through people, wisdom through people. People should be the highest rated attraction in every country. And in every life.