“Ima Bōken!” Now, adventure! Those words echo everlastingly in my mind every time I think about where I’ve been, what I’ve seen, and the adventures lurking in my next visit to the place I call my second home.
It’s a phrase I use with my Japanese “family”, hotel desk clerks, the people I meet – even roaming television news reporters – every chance I get.
It was late October. We were in Zao, a small onsen (hot spring) resort town set in the foothills of Mt. Zao, a 1,759-metre-high dormant volcano, and the famous blue-green-aquamarine colour-shifting waters of its Crater Lake, less than two hours by bus or car from Sendai, the capital of Miyagi prefecture and hometown of my best friend in Japan.
Under sunny 20-degree skies on the way there, we stopped at a chrysanthemum show in Sibata Town, where I hated to leave after an hour; then a local farmer’s field where the group picked all the daikon they could carry in one bag for ¥1000 (roughly $10); a rose garden to die for on the outskirts of Zao; and Japan’s renowned kokeshi doll museum, where I made one, painted it, and packaged it for the trip home.
We’d finished a lavish dinner, soaked in the hot waters of the sex-separated onsens, played our way through the hotel’s games arcade, listened to a jazz band performing in the lobby and returned to one of our rooms to enjoy a few drinks and conversation.
But I wasn’t ready to retire when the rest of them were, so I returned to the men’s onsen for a late-night warm and wet meditation. The bath was empty, and after a long and peaceful soak in the lava-rock-edged pool with its bamboo fencing, I headed back to the dressing room.
My yukata (robe), towel, and hotel-provided surippa (slippers) had disappeared from the woven willow basket in their cubby. There wasn’t another towel in the entire room, not even on or under the massage table. I had only the key to my room on a hotel wristband. It was midnight.
Nine metres down the hallway from the dressing-room doorway, the entrance to the hotel’s nightclub threatened exposure of embarrassing proportions if I dashed for the elevators, nine metres beyond. In front of the elevators I was exposed to the front desk.
A shrug of the shoulders, several quick steps, and I was past the club’s doorway – thank God for no doorman. A few leaps later, I pressed the elevator button. Dang! It dinged!
Alert, as they always are in Japan, the front desk’s night clerk snapped a look my way. Her eyes almost popped out of her head. The elevator’s door opened. Two couples, elegantly dressed for the club, each took a step back.
“Gomen nasai,” I said, and bowed. “Watashi yukata, nusuma reta,” or, as closely as I could, “I’m sorry, my robe was stolen.”
One of the ladies pressed the “Open Door” button. The others took a step out and I quickly took their place. Before I could push the button for my floor, the lady keeping the door open looked me straight in the eye and quickly said something over her shoulder. Emphatically.
Quick nods and a hurried ‘hai’ from her companions, and without unlocking her eyes from mine said, “Join us when you are dressed. We are sorry.”
She released the button, stepped out to join the others, and they all bowed as the elevator door mercifully closed.
Twenty minutes later, I walked into the bar. She was watching for me, as the group talked and tapped their fingers on the table in time to the karaoke performer’s rendition of the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction.”
Her hand moved horizontally across the table and her friends stopped what they were doing and turned to me. I bowed. They stood and bowed. One waved me over.
Heads turned to this gaijin (foreigner, to put it politely). Walking past their tables to join my hosts and newfound friends required only a slight bow or nod to those whose eyes met mine. But there’s more to it than that.
At my new friends’ table, introductions were made, thanks were given, and we started the alternating rounds (never on me, they insisted) of sake, wine and Nikka whiskey – one of my favourite scotches, created in 1934 by Masataka Taketsuru and his Scottish wife, Rita. The company’s original “factory,” as they call it, is in Otaru, about 50 minutes by local express train, west of Sapporo, and has a great tasting room. But I digress, in the name of scotch.
Conversations about backgrounds, careers, cultural differences, my favourite things about Japan and where I’d visited, and their own travels (none to Canada) soon turned to suggestions one of us should perform a little karaoke. They all looked at me.
My hands went up. “Kekkodesu. Kudasai. No, thanks. Please.”
I didn’t miss Naoko, sitting beside me, turning to the table behind us. “Rokatari,” she said, “Canada.” While I laughed in my mind, I still got that sinking-belly feeling.
The people at our table politely held out their hands, palms up, as they nodded towards what served as a stage – a raised platform about the size of a door. Then they stood.
What to do? Bow? Yeah, that too.
I held out my hands, palms up, and within seconds felt them take the tablet computer with which I was helped to scroll down the list of songs from which I might pick my embarrassment. We stopped at W.
I’d had enough sake and scotch to make me think this was simply a retreat to a part of my past I love dearly, and I knew the song: Deep Purple’s “Woman From Tokyo.”
Call me a ham. Whatever. Half a minute later, with my audience nodding to the punchy five-note bass intro, I surprised myself. I knew the words were on the big-screen television in front of me, but I didn’t care. I knew them. Been there, done that.
“Fly into the rising sun,
Faces, smiling everyone
Yeah, she is a whole new tradition
I feel it in my heart
My woman from Tokyo….”
It was like I’d never left the stage. Almost. I’m getting older. But history doesn’t rest.
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