nagoya

Our feet were itchin... they were restless, ready to start plodding down a road that lead out of the mountains and rice paddies. they were anxious for highways that would fracture into streets that would carry us to a bustling downtown where we could find amusement and distraction. We loaded up my car and took to the road, heading south to Nagoya.


Although this was my second trip to Japan’s fourth largest city, my recollection of the visit 10 years ago had faded and become blurry. i was eager to fill in details and redefine the place that began my fascination with this country.

Backstory:
When I was younger, my dad was the sales manager at a Toyota car dealership. The national company was offering several scholarships for summer home stays in Japan. My wanderlust had emerged from its cocoon but, at that time, had yet to take flight. I was thrilled by the possibility. I remember the pages and pages of applications. I remember pounding out revision after revision of essays on my square, chunky word processor. And I remember storming my mom’s work place clutching my semifinalist notification. She was damn near as ecstatic as I was. A couple days before I was to be interviewed for the award, my mom died. That unkind turn of events threw my whole world into an uproar. As I questioned how I would even manage to go on existing, my japan home stay interview was all but forgotten. Some adult with more mature stress handling mechanisms than me [my dad?] must have dealt with the situation. Youth For Understanding, the company doling out the awards for Toyota, had agreed to postpone the interview, but after learning the reason why I’d had to reschedule, almost reneged their offer. They were understandably concerned about my mental health and skeptical of investing in a candidate who was at-risk of failing under stressful conditions. They eventually agreed to send some specialist to my house for what turned out to be an interview/psych exam. Even at the age of 16, I was able to play ‘the game’ fairly well. As my father and I sat at our antique, wooden kitchen table across from that man, I pitched myself as a worthy recipient who, if able to survive the death of her mother, is more than adequately prepared to face any other challenge life may present. Up to that point, applying for this scholarship had been the largest endeavor I’d ever personally undertaken and I was painfully aware that it was the last one my mother would ever know about. Several weeks later I was awarded the opportunity to see this dream through to fruition. In June of 1996, I boarded a plane bound for San Francisco. After one week of crash course language and culture studies, it was on to Nagoya where I would spend 7 weeks living with an incredibly gracious family. I spoke so very little Japanese and the family’s daughters had only a decent grasp of high school English. It was quite an introduction to Japan and to the world.

Let’s return to the story already in progress:

As carrie, liz and I made our way to this transportation and economic hub, I was excited by the prospects of reminiscing and rekindling some memories in a town known as one of japan’s most entertaining destinations.

I will spare you the details of every fabulous meal and every interesting diversion that served to convince us we need to be close to a real city. Here are some of the highlights…



We found an open-air pub on our first night in town. Sadly, I can’t remember the last time I dined or drank on a proper patio. Oh wait…yes I can…it was back in Seattle. That’s damn pitiful. We met a few tables of Australians and Brits that kindly offered us suggestions and invitations which we were sure to capitalize on. [including a recommendation for tacos and burritos at a place owned by a real *gasp* mexican. that’s unheard of around these parts.]

another highlight was ‘the robot museum’ that opened last october.
there is a rotating exhibition space that was housing these two ordinary looking but talented bots.
one snaps a shot of your silhouette then spins around to sketch your outline.




another bot relies on its mechanical whizzes and whirrs in different tones to play rock and roll hits.

stolen from carrie's you tube acct.

the permanent exhibit detailed the history and future of robots, from old ‘appliances and household robots as the way of the future’ advertisements to comic books to movies [including fritz lang’s metropolis] to real bots spanning the decades. how amazing to see the evolution of human imaginations with robots as the medium. it also challenged my definition of a robot by including all sorts of machines whose characteristics stretched the traditional meaning.



then, of course, there was play time. lots of interactive, remote control, cell phone controlled, purpose driven androids to taunt and try.



me with "Paro, a seal-shaped robot that has been registered in the Guinness Book of Records as the robot most effective in healing people."



there was also a really cool computer aided design program to create your own bot. this doesn't look like a bad job at all. and yes, that's a metallic blue rocket strapped to his back.



we also stumbled upon a battle of the bands near nagoya tower...


and a bunch of battling elvis-look-alike gangs...


As we tooled around town, of course I was on the look out for sites that would jog my memory. although I had described a park to carrie and liz enroute which we later discovered, I was becoming extremely aware of how the time that had lapsed since my home stay had pushed my memories to the far recesses.
One night we’d been cruising towards the nightlife district in a taxi when I was caught off guard by this little wooden restaurant nestled between 2 modern storefronts. It seemed intimately familiar, like I’d spent time there, but I just couldn’t be sure. We stayed the course towards the restaurant as I waxed nostalgic. On the day we were departing Nagoya, as we wandered around the city’s center lamenting our imminent return to the countryside, we passed the same little wooden restaurant tucked away between glass and metal constructions. I froze, craning to see past the gates and through the garden fronting the shop. I finally crept towards the entrance and inspected through some low windows. The place appeared to be closed, no customers, only an eerie familiarity. I turned to creep away from the entrance when a woman wearing a beautiful kimono rounded the corner into the garden. We both halted abruptly as our eyes met. Over her face washed a kind softness, as the words “tiffany chan!” escaped from her lips. I was instantly moved to tears at her effortless recollection. This woman was my host-aunt, yoko san. Her husband is the older brother of the woman who had taken me into her home some 10 years prior. As the oldest son usually inherits the family business, this woman, my host-uncle and their two children lived above the restaurant with the grandparents and ran the daily operations. My host-mother often helped out with the business so I spent countless days there, playing with the children in the small upstairs apartment, wandering the streets around the restaurant or hanging out in the kitchen with the chefs who didn’t quite know what to make of this foreign girl who couldn’t speak any japanese. This kimono clad woman embraced me in a completely uncommon way; full of emotion.



She bundled liz, carrie and I inside the shop and scurried around attending to us. An older woman, whom I didn’t recognize brought out steaming green tea. She stepped back, admiring me, saying I hadn’t changed a bit, as my host-aunt shook her head in agreement, adding only my hair was different. we chatted for a bit, which is a feat we were completely unable to accomplish a decade earlier when i’d spent nearly 2 months in her company. my Japanese is light years better now, meaning i was able to tell her how important my time in japan had been, how it had impacted my future and how she and her family were in a large way responsible for this. she told me to wait while she scurried off, returning a couple minutes later with a young woman in tow. her now 14 year old daughter had been my steady playmate 10 years ago. she was a bit shocked and shy about chatting, but opened up when it was just the 2 of us standing there. she told me that she couldn’t be sure if it was actual memories or just recollections of often viewed photographs, but she has mental images of she and i playing with the grandparents birds up stairs, which we often did.
unfortunately, the nuclear family who had actually opened up their home and allowed me to interrupt their lives was in germany for the week on vacation so i wasn’t able to reunite with them. as i could barely keep the tears from leaking outta my eyes anyway, perhaps that reunion is best saved for the next visit.