Japan

Allan and I flew to Japan with 18-month-old Kristen while I was pregnant with Kaitlin. We traveled with my sister Carmyn, who had a newborn baby and three more small boys. We carried luggage for spending the night in Tokyo before we flew on to Saipan the next day. When we landed, the flight attendants told us to wait for them to finish cleaning the plane. They then carried our luggage while escorting us through customs and to the shuttle for the hotel. What an amazing level of customer service! But also what a short trip to Japan! I’ve tried to make up for it since then and have found many great ways to travel to Japan while staying at home.

How many years did I support a now teen-aged Kristen and her high school friends Vicci and Emily while they made costumes for Anime Expo and then spent several days participating at the Los Angeles Convention Center? I reached out to Vicci and Emily this week and they told me that Crunchyroll (https://www.crunchyroll.com/) and Funimation (https://www.funimation.com/subscribe/) are the places to watch anime now. Also, both the original Fruits Basket that they loved and a 2019 reboot are on Hulu. For even more, search Netflix for “anime.”

While Kristen and her friends were watching anime, my book group read A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki. I don’t always like magical realism, but the touch was light and I enjoyed the story which moves back and forth between a Japanese American author living in the Pacific Northwest and the niece in Tokyo of a long dead Kamikaze pilot.

Even more meaningful for me was The Narrow Road to the Interior by the Japanese poet Matsuo Bashō. This is a major text of Japanese literature published in 1702. A combination of prose and haiku, I found it calming and beautiful as I listened to the CD from the San Bernardino County Library on January 6, 2021, while I was driving food to a family where everyone in the house had COVID. At the same time, the news had reported that something was happening in Washington DC, but nobody knew yet how it would turn out. I remember the narrator’s voice and cadence helped me focus on what I could do and not on what I couldn’t control.

More Japanese literature available online includes Japanese Fairy Tales on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4018 and a good number of articles and stories that have been translated on Words without Borders: https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/search/results/search&keywords=japan/

To learn a little about Japanese art, I turned to the Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/art-asia/art-japan. Another really fun art experience is the coloring book put out by Kansai University Open Research Center for Asian Studies: http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2021/01/COC_Portrait_hasegawasadanobu.pdf

Of the American movies set in Japan, I haven’t watched Lost in Translation yet, but it’s on Amazon Prime and it’s well rated. I did watch Silence and that was intense and thought provoking. I’m also a big fan of two well-known Japanese American actors, Pat Morita and George Takei. They are well represented online with the first four Karate Kids plus Cobra Kai on Netflix and the original Star Trek series and movies on Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime.

Both these actors spent part of their childhoods in Japanese internment camps. To understand more about that experience, I recommend Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakasuki Houston and James D. Houston. My children were assigned to read this book in elementary school and we also visited Manzanar, now a National Historic Site, in the Owens Valley east of the Sierra Nevada. A novel I read dealing with the Japanese internment is Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.

This week I went looking for more and watched Tidying Up With Marie Kondo on Netflix. (Netflix has a lot! Just search for Japan.) I also listened to Marie Kondo talk more about her method here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1-HMMX_NR8. Have I tidied yet? No. I’m too busy traveling!

Also this week, I enjoyed Worth It on Hulu and also found it on YouTube. The hosts evaluate a cheap version, a medium priced version, and an expensive version of whatever they are tasting:

· $3 Ramen Vs. $79 Ramen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtVL76gh09U

· $1 Coffee Vs. $914 Coffee: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIbbJV-grHg

· $7 Cake Vs. $208 Cake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDzl5PG51uI

My favorite thing I watched online this week was Japan: Between Earth and Sky by National Geographic on DisneyPlus. My favorite thing I did this week was to visit the Japanese community in Kearney Mesa near San Diego. On Sunday, Gladys, Laurie, Liz and I met at RakiRaki for lunch at 11, shopped at the Marukai Market and visited La Jolla in the afternoon, and made sure we showed up before 4:30 at Menya Ultra to get on the wait list so we could eat dinner at 5. At RakiRaki, we had Green-Gyoza (house made spinach dumplings filled with minced tofu and vegetables with ponzu dipping sauce), sesame tofu-don (deep-fried silken tofu marinated in five spice sesame sauce), crispy karaage chicken sliders, garlic edamame, and setagaya 27 curry. At Menya Ultra, Vonnett joined us and we had what has been called the best ramen in the country. We agreed. It was good! We thought we were done, but no! We managed to eat six mochinuts between us! What a fun day! I don’t know how I can still be thinking of food, but here are some recipes to try: https://www.justonecookbook.com/easy-pantry-recipes/

There is more! I’ve been to the Nisei week in Los Angeles and the Cherry Blossom Festival in Huntington Beach. I’d also like to visit the World Gyoza Eating Championship and the Kokoro Craft Boutique at the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, the Taste of Japan in Long Beach, the OC Japan Fair in Costa Mesa, the Bunka-Sai Japanese Cultural Festival in Torrance, and the Hanamatsuri Festivals in Anaheim and Vista. In NorCal, I’d like to visit the Nihonmachi Asian Street Fair in San Francisco, the Japanese Cultural Festival in Millbrae, and the Isleton Asian Festival.

TheCrazyTourist has 35 galleries of things to do in Japan with this one as an overview: https://www.thecrazytourist.com/15-best-places-visit-japan/. When travel to Japan is safe and practical, your local travel advisor can give great advice and support for a wonderful trip. Shout out to my favorite travel advisor, Kaitlin Darnell at Laura's Travel in Redlands. Kaitlin has quite a bit of experience planning trips to Japan, both for herself and her clients. I’ve been missing hearing about those trips and hope they resume soon. May the travel industry survive and thrive. May we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace and health to flourish in the Japan and throughout the world.

Photo Credit: David Edelstein https://unsplash.com/photos/N4DbvTUDikw