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2. Futuristic Shibuya and Shinjuku.
3. Museums and the subway.
4. The Temples of Asakusa.
5. Ueno.
6. Zazen retreat in Shizuoka.
7. More temples in Kamakura.
8. The splendor of Nikko.
9. Ninjas in Edo Mura.
10. Climbing Takao-san and my last days.
The following articles go into more details. Access them here or wait until you reach the appropriate place in the diary:
Japanese lifestyle.
Japanese paper and its uses.
Similarities in language between Lebanon and Japan.
A street in kkub.
My first contact with Japanese people was at the airport of Kuala Lumpur. I had a 4-hour transit before my next flight, and I spent it wandering around the 8 spokes of the terminal and their many shops. There was a chocolate shop with Japanese employees who seemed amazed at my hair; they not only asked me if it was natural, they started playing with it like children with a new toy. I sat on the plane next to a young nurse with a hesitant English. We barely spoke, but she nevertheless waited for me when we went through customs. I'm still kicking myself for not taking her coordinates to keep in touch.
Anne was waiting for me at Narita Airport as she had the previous year in Melbourne. Together we took three consecutive trains to reach Ôkubô, a suburb of Tokyo where we would be staying for a week. As we walked down the narrow streets to the apartment, I met my first chikan (drunk), lurching precariously with a look of "Where am I?" on his face. I was still laughing when we reached the place and left our shoes at the door to respect to the most tenacious of Japanese customs.
I had made contact with Tokyo!
I was exhausted but stayed up until Tatsu returned. Tatsu is Anne's close friend and it is him we were staying with. Our meeting was one of the most embarrassing moments of my life, as Anne loves to remind me. I was so sleepy I completely forgot where I was, and when he arrived I did the Lebanese thing: shook his hand while kissing him on both cheeks. Only then did I remember this just isn't done in Japan! Fortunately for me, Tatsu had lived in Turkey and after the first moment of astonishment he remembered the odd ways of the Middle-East!
Tacchan and Macchan
As we were eventually going to move to Tatsu's family house in the village of Takao, we took most of our things there that day. I still wince when I think of Tatsu moving his Macintosh by strapping it on a caddy and pulling it through the streets.
Everything I saw was a discovery to me. I was amazed to see people, young and old, wear the yukata (summer kimono) when I thought it wasn't used anymore; it seems that on the contrary, it is very popular during the heats of summer as it is cooler than Western clothes. Even the uncomfortable-looking wooden sandals are still worn, and almost everybody carries a fan around. The trains are the coolest part of Tokyo, as they have air conditioned while homes do not!
Here is a condensed overview of the Japanese lifestyle, as written for a magazine upon my return.
Above and right: Traditional clothing in the midst of Tokyo modernism.
Right: The ginkân
By that time I had already filled my sketchbook with Kanji characters that I saw often. At the time I still didn't understand them well, but I fell in love with them so much that I would spend the following year studying their system and writing a thesis on them. Anne had nudged Tatsu into giving me a Kanji for my name (Mana), and after a moment's reflexion he said: "Ma could be "devil", and na the ending for "woman"." So it was that I ended up with this personal Kanji. Whenever I affix to it the Kanji for ju to have my full name, the meaning changes to "Ten devil women". Hum.
