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My Japan
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My name is Brian, I'm an Australian, I've lived in Japan for almost nine years now, and by the time I'm twice my current age, I'll most certainly be dead. In the time I've lived here, many Japanese have asked why I came. I came to Japan to teach yoga, and to do voluntary work for an international peace project. Like thousands of other foreigners to make a living, I taught English.
My life here started over a cup of tea with a friend one bright, spring morning in Sydney. She was a clairvoyant, and as we munched muffins, she suddenly told me I would be going to Japan. Soon. I had no particular interest in Japan, knew little about it, except that the Japanese had been our enemies in the second world war, made good cars, and television sets, and didn't blow their noses in public. She also told me that I would love it, and that Japan would be very kind to me. I laughed at her.
A few weeks later it was her turn to laugh, when I was asked to come. I had been in Japan for only two weeks before I realized that the clairvoyant had been right. It was at dusk. Mid-winter dusk, a fat bloodied sun had just fallen off the edge, as I cycled through Tokyo's Inokashira park. The sky was swiftly turning royal blue, a half moon becoming brighter with each deepening moment, as January's cold blanket tucked itself around the skeletal trees and slatted benches rimming the lake. Suddenly I was brought to a scrunching halt. There was a man playing a flute, seated on one of the benches facing the lake, playing a flute. Lotus legged, two feet of bamboo tube sloping down in front of him, resting on his crossed ankles. Flute down, eyes up, breathing out a haunting melody. To the moon. Sitting on a bench in an empty park, in the middle of winter, wailing at the moon. wearing a beanie and jogging shoes, playing a sound of such sadness. It brought tears to my eyes. Not so much the melody, though it was filled with melancholy. It was the picture, the act itself. To sit in the open and express such open lament. To the moon.
The park was not totally empty, a few shadows puffed through the trees, with no more than a passing glance at the figure floating its melody up into the darkness. As I watched him in frozen silence, I remembered what my friend had predicted, and I knew it would be a long time before I could let go of such a land, or it of me.
As she had said, Japan has been very kind to me. I moved out of Tokyo three years ago into two hectares of field and forest, and a fifty-year-old farmhouse we call Ninja-no-tani, Hidden Valley. From the picture windows, all I can see is green; rice green, cedar green, bamboo green, ume green, chestnut grove green. It's this part of Japan, its people, and my often comic efforts to make a life for myself here that I want to write about in these pages.I hope you will enjoy My Japan.
Serialized fiction by Brian Young
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