Masuda: Where Tourist Fear to Tread

The Many Happenings in Masuda


Masuda, as it turns out is not exactly set up for tourism. It's not that there's nothing to see here, or that the people are unhelpful. Okay, it's not that the people are unhelpful, but there isn't a great deal to see just here. It is, however, an excellent jumping off point, and a great way to get a feel for "the real Japan" as far as it may exist. As for the tourist industry in Masuda, it appears I am the tourist industry here in Masuda.

I don't want to give it a bad wrap though, as I have had a great time here with Camille and Denise. Much of what is great about Masuda is that it is a great place to rest. It's a town where very few people speak English, and most people stare at and fret over the appearance of the "dangerous" geijin, the outsider. Yet, it's sleepy atmosphere, with rice paddies dotting the landscape in between apartment complexes, the malodorous smell of burning garbage in the evening, and the abundance of tiny bent over old ladies, gives you a sense of what life in Japan might be like in the many places where Westerners tend not to visit.

Sleepy though Masuda is, I have not been left longing for things to do, mostly thanks to Camille and Denise. Sure we ate much ice cream, and purikura, but there was more, much more. We spent time going out for dinner on several occasions to meet teachers that Denise works with. Ms. Miura invited us to come to her place for dinner, where her kids managed to wear us out, and she fed us so much I thought we would explode. Her husband BBQed a quantity of beef that, while not perhaps remarkable where I'm from, was astounding here in Japan, and then brought out sushi, and then when we thought we could not eat any more, Ms. Miura made us noodles, then served us dessert, and entreated us to drink her beer and brandy.

It's little wonder I've gained 3 kilos here in Japan. Who gains weight in Japan for God's sake?

Later in the week we joined Denise's Japanese teacher and her husband for dinner, where we had sushi, which was mostly good, but I did not enjoy the squid, which when raw is almost unassailably pliant. After chewing for some time, and getting tired of having it in my mouth, I contemplated spitting it out. Realizing this was not an available option, I decided perhaps I could bite down, then use one chopstick to rip the piece off from the hole I made in it with my teeth. This proved, thankfully, to be an inoffensive winning strategy.

At the end of the meal, I learned the appropriate way to drink Japanese matcha tea, in which your bowl has a face. With each time you pick up your bowl and set it down, your face must meet its face, but with two quarter turns you must turn its face away from yours before you sip it. Later, Camille and I played Go with Mr. Tamura. It's an interesting strategy game that is fairly quick and has simple rules, but complicated strategies; in essence, Go is a little bit like Othello, only fun.

Perhaps the most interesting thing I did with Camille and Denise in Masuda, was to spend the day at school with them. Japanese school is a fascinating place where the "badly behaved" jr. high kids were on par with moderately well behaved high school students back home. They were very friendly, and made no fuss about having to sweep the floor and wash the windows as part of their lunchtime duties.

We spent the day doing various English lessons, and at lunch I overexerted myself playing basketball (this, I might add is where I am in my element - when I am a giant, playing people with half the stride length of mine, I am almost on par with them). After lunch, I pretended in one class that I was Australian. I put on the thickest Northern Queensland accent I could muster. They just looked at me wide-eyed and dumbfounded; they had no idea what I had just said. That's okay, I speak English, and it's hard for me :) It was good fun, and an experience that I am grateful for. The did have trouble with the hand shake, either by way of the floppy hand, or no eye contact. I wanted to say: Look into my eyes, I'm up here, look into my eyes. But they wouldn't have seen the humour in it as I would.

What amazes me is their ability to junken to determine victories. Junken, is what we call Rock. Paper, Scissors, and they are extraordinarily adept at this game. They can have a 12 way junken (which I didn't even know was possible, and sort out the winner within the same minute that they've started. It's a lot more complicated game with the Japanese, who require an extra step for the victory to be completed. If you win, you must point your finger either up, down, left, or right and the loser must turn his head in one of those directions. If the person's head moves in the same direction as the finger, they're chopped. If not the cycle begins over again.

One may not think that there is any strategy in this game, but some would disagree. There was this hilarious (although I think it was supposed to be serious) article in the International Herald Tribune, which is essentially the New York Times abroad. It was talking about the U.S. National Rock, Paper, Scissors competition held in Vegas this year. What's more hilarious is that it was covered by the likes of ESPN. Bwahahaha. The article's hilarious.

If you think I'm joking, you can check out the World Rock, Paper, Scissors Society's website, which includes a link to an RPS strategy guide. I had to laugh when Camille and I were trying to decide if the people making and buying such a thing were just cashing in on a novelty because people will buy it just because. I said do you think the people making it are? To which he replied, "well, I would hope so, or that's just sad." I couldn't have said it better myself.

That night, I watched (On TV) a Sumo wrestler named Chiyotaikai, who I think looks like a flabby John Goodman (I know you'd never think of that description would you?, win against the Yokozuna, Asashoryu. John Goodman did well because it clears room for our houshold favourite Hakuho to maybe get promoted to Yokozuna, a rare and prestigious honour. It's exciting stuff. With that behid us, and a nap to boot, we headed to Caligraphy class, which was good fun. As Denise and Camille had said, she was very kind and plied me with compliments on my nascent skills as a caligrapher. Being plieant to such flattery, I accepted it. It's extremely difficult and it will take a lot of practice for me to become good at it. I enjoyed it enough, that I might try it again back home.

Tsuwano: How to Get Lost In The Woods

Tsuwano is known for a few. One is its Onsen, another is its castle ruins, yet another is its Taikodani-Inari-jinja shrine. We mostly went in search of the former two, but the latter was nice too. Camille wanted to see the Santa Maria church, which is the site of the slaughter of many Christians who refused to recant their beliefs after annoying the hell (literally) out of the Japanese; these people can only be pushed so far, you see. So we did. But our adventure really begins on the return from the Castle ruins.

The ruins of Tsuwano-jo give an idea of what a spectacular position this castle was in, and how it must have looked from the valley below. We gawked at the view for a while and then began our descent towards the Onsen, a traditional Japanese bath. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up on a path that tapered off into oblivion, and we couldn't be bothered (or I couldn't, Camille's sense was still prevailing over his sense of stupidity which I have called adventure ever since reading Don Quixote). Well after several aborted attempts to take various routes down, we managed to make our way to the bottom of the hill by following the sound of a backhoe (we didn't know it was a backhoe at the time mind you) back to civilization.

You should have seen the look on the faces of the construction workers. It was probably as likely for them to have seen two yetis walking out of the woods as two white Canadians, smiling and waving. Camille explained as best he could what had happened and they laughed and pointed us to the Onsen.

The Onsen itself was cool. In a Japanese bath, you walk in butt-naked, except for a large facecloth, which may or may not be used to cover up your Danger Zone. You walk in and sit down on a little stool in front of a mirror. You are separated from others only by about a 12 inch divider on either side of you. From there you are expected to shower, and are equipped with soap and shampoo. I took my time and shaved, washed, scrubbed my poor, sad feet, and then carried on into one of the several hot mineral pools.

We were surprised to see that a woman kept walking into the men's side to sample the water (or perhaps that was a convenient excuse), but it's mostly filled with old men, so unless she has a thing for some sweet geriatric lovin', hers was probably a legitimate one. The big no-no is getting soap in the pool.

It's interested to me to note what immature prudes North Americans tend to be. First of all, this could never fly as a general "hey come hang out for the afternoon for $5.00" delio. For one because we're usually ashamed to be naked unless drunk, and two because those of us that aren't would have a hard time acting mature about the surrounding nakedity (yes, I just made that up). I find with myself, I vacillate between total bashfulness about being naked in a public place, and "I couldn't give a damn and can't be bothered covering myself." Strange brew we are.

On the way back to the station we went to see how Tsuwano's fine artisan papermakers perform their trade, which was quite amazing, and sampled some sake from a local sake brewery. I thought I liked sake, but in retrospect relized I only ever drank it when I was already drunk. In the light of this information I recognize that Sake really is a drink made of ignant rice. Blech!

Hagi: Ride Cory, Ride

The old samurai quarter, that Hagi is known for (that and its pottery - one of the top two in Japan) was our goal for this particular day trip. Needing to be back in Masuda for dinner, and lacking a blessing from the god of train scheduling, we began this day very early indeed. But this was not necessarily a bad thing seeing as the day was really quite a hot one, and the walking we were planning to do would mean that we'd be under the sun's watchful gaze all day.

We walked along the beach, harassed some sand crabs to see if they were what had created the mysterious holes all over the beach, then climbed up to what had been the location watch tower, no overgrown with trees. Things, though already enjoyable, became a little more fun for us when we decided to rent some rickety old bikes and busted a move toward the Daishoin Temple, which Denise had promised would not disappoint. It did not.

As soon as we arrived we stumbled upon a good sized snake which we followed along at a safe distance for some time before making our way through what was, in essence, a samurai family's personal graveyard. Denise was right, this was one of the most original, and beautiful shrines I've seen. What's more, it was virtually devoid of people. It was only Camille and I and two other Japanese people.

Upon exiting, we began to ride our bikes back. The thought occurred to us that we could just ride to the station and ditch the bikes there, but then we considered the ramifications that would have on future geijin who stumbled into this neck of the woods looking for a bike to rent. So we meandered through the town looking at this and that and even managed to find what was called "one of the finest bronze statues in the world" which was an assessment so out of line with my own that I could not be bothered taking my camera out of my pocket. Though in retrospect, it might have been worth the photo just for the humour in it all. In fairness, it may have been one of the finest bronze statues in that part of Hagi, which to whomever wrote the plaque may have been their world. So who am I to judge.

Returning the bikes we headed for home. But on our way to the train station we came across the path of a young boy who saw us, the gaijin, and ran to a nearby house (which may or may not have been his own) and knocked quite impatiently on the door, looked at us, up at the window, banged more hastily at the door again, and dodged behind the woman who answered the door. He peered at us from behind the safety of this woman's legs, but it was clear our presence was not one eagerly invited by the little fellow. She just smiled and I'm sure told him not to be so silly. Not all westerners are "Americajin." The Japanese believe that Americans are murderous, violent, and fearsome people as a whole, and their first-hand experiences that tell them this isn't exactly true does not seem to sway their opinion - and yet they still love all things American. It's a schizophrenic sort of relationship.

Masuda-shi


The last couple of days were fairly lazy and met with various going away functions for Camille, which were fun to attend. I leave you with some random thoughts.

1. Japanese bathrooms are of interest to me. Male public bathrooms, I have noticed, tend to be VERY public, belly high windows, barriers to the outside missing, that sort of thing. But I do appreciate a certain amount of conserving they do. Their toilet's water tanks have a faucet on top, so the tank fills up with the water you use to wash your hands with - dual purpose and a great idea.

2. Camille is such a mom. He had to be convinced that it would be okay for me to walk a few blocks on my own to buy some milk for the meal that he was cooking. Japan is very safe, the shop was very close, and I have been traveling in far off places for kind of a long time now. Very funny.

3. The mask wearing Asian that we so often laugh about, is not so laughable as my ignorance would have thought. Many wear the mask for pollution, but the majority of wearers dawn the mask because THEY have a cold that they do not wish to share with others. It is expected that you look out for others here in this regard. As Camille pointed out, the Japanese don't have a word equivalent to "Bless You." Instead, he jests, they exclaim, That guy should be wearing a mask!

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