What I Talk About When I Talk with Dr. T: The Holiday Version

Most of my friends who teach conversational English in Japan work from some sort of lesson plan.  My approach tends toward extemporaneous because (a) I am lazy and (b) my students, Ishii and Dr. T, are quite advanced.  Ishii is so advanced, in fact, that she is now able to follow most of my digressions.  With Dr. T, it depends on the topic.

You might be wondering how one chooses a topic for a conversational English lesson.  This one tends to pluck topics out of thin air or off facebook, which is just another way of saying thin air when you think about it.  (And thinking about it is what I mean by 'digression'.)  I also favor 'stream-of-consciousness' and that was true long before I started reading James Joyce's epic novel.

Facebook was the source of this week's conversational gambit with Dr. T.  Just before I left the house to meet with Dr. T in his office at Yokohama City University Hospital, daughter Kate sent me a link to a New York Times article about Kenrokuen Garden in Kanazawa, one of the three highest rated gardens in Japan.  I was so intrigued that I tucked my Japan guidebook into my bag with the intention of researching the garden and Kanazawa during my train ride.  (Digression:  my hard-cover copy of Ulysses is much too bulky to lug around in my purse, elsewise I would have finished that project weeks ago.)

One can cover a lot of ground literally and figuratively during a twenty-minute train ride.  By the time I tapped on Dr. T's door, hung my coat on the fancy padded hanger, and took my first alternate sips of cold green tea and an apple-grape-mango juice, I had learned that Kenrokuen covers 25 acres and took about 150 years to complete.  "I am thinking about visiting Kanazawa," I announced.  And we were off to the races.

He told me about the Maeda clan, beginning with Maeda Toshiie, who was granted Kanazawa as a reward for service during a period of civil wars that rocked Japan 400 years ago.  A thriving castle town grew up around the castle Toshiie built and the clan ruled over Kanazawa for the next 300 years.  The Maedas were the second-most powerful family in Japan during the Tokugawa shogunate.  They controlled the largest domain in the country, amassed wealth (land and rice), and encouraged development of the arts: Kutani pottery, Yuzen silk dyeing, lacquerware, and Noh theater.

Kanazawa was the second-largest city, after Kyoto, to escape bombing during World War II so some of the old city is intact today and there is lots to see there besides the garden.  There's Seisonkaku Villa, built in 1863 by the 13th Maeda lord as a retirement home for his mother, and the Nagamachi Samurai District, a few residential streets remaining from the days when Lord Maeda had as many as 8,000 samurai retainers, each of whom had retainers of his own.  The Higashi Chaya District is one of three old entertainment quarters where 50 geisha practice their trade and one can get a peek inside the geisha world at Shima Geisha World, a quasi-museum cum tearoom.

When Dr. T mentioned Myoryuji Temple I knew I'd have to spend more than a day and half exploring Kanazawa.  Commonly referred to as Ninja-dera (Temple of the Secret Agents), this temple has hidden stairways, secret chambers, trick doors, and tunnels.  The Maedas built it for family prayers in 1643 and, to comply with Edo Period height restrictions, it looks just two stories high from the outside but inside four stories are obvious and three more stories are concealed.  This is something I simply must see even if it means phoning ahead for a reservation.   

Apparently the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum for Traditional Products and Crafts is the best place to learn about the handcrafted items for which Kanazawa is famous including bright Kutani pottery with five-color overglaze patterns, handpainted Yuzen silk, and nearly all of Japan's gold leaf.  Kanko Bussankan offers one-stop shopping for these products as well as a restaurant, but I think it would be more fun to go straight to the source.  Kaga Yuzen Dento Sangyo Kaikan, for instance, is a Yuzen cloth museum and shop where one can ask to see a 20-minute video describing (in English) the techniques of dyeing cloth and the role it played in Kanazawa history.  This is right up Artistic Explorer's alley and just wait until I tell her about the Kutani Kosengama (pottery kiln) where one can take a 15-minute tour to see the entire process of producing handmade Kutani ware, including the kilns and the painting.

That's probably as much sightseeing as one can possibly cram into a three-day weekend, but if there's time left over this one would vote for skipping watching Sakuda's artisans pound gold until it's as thin as paper in favor of visiting Shamisen no Fukushima, the only remaining shop making the three-stringed shamisen instruments geisha strum to entertain their customers, where one can have a half-hour lesson in English and cup of tea for about $4 and/or go upstairs to see how the instruments are made.  Apparently the sound box is covered with cat and dog skin.  Cat skin is more expensive.  This is yet another example of digression).

Dr. T says I will like the food in Kanazawa.  The local specialties are seafood, freshwater fish, duck, and mountain vegetables.  "What are mountain vegetables?"  Mushrooms.  This reminds me of something I've recently read about radioactive Chernobyl mushrooms - Where did I read that?  Not in Ulysses, for darn sure.  Something British.  Dry wit.  Ah, Alexander McCall Smith's Corduroy Mansions.  Of course.  - and suddenly we have veered away from Kanazawa into literature.

In the next hour we covered the following topics, not necessarily in this order and some more thoroughly than others, delivered in the style of James Joyce which I hope to eschew within the next 36 hours upon completion of what some have called the best book of the Twentieth Century:  Tolstoy, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Dostoevsky, Bakunin, Trotsky, Karl Marx vice Jonathan Swift, Gulliver's Travels, back to Karl Marx and satire, my theory on The Communist Manifesto as satire and the subsequent irony known as Communism, his theory that the seeds of communism sprang up in several different places more or less simultaneously and therefore could not be entirely blamed on a general misinterpretation of Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, a fictional account of Charles Dickens' wife my Japanese book club will read this spring, what the Japanese book club ladies had to say about Shinju, an excruciatingly detailed biography of University of Michigan graduate and author Laura Joh Rowlands which was fresh in my mind since I had shared it with the book club ladies the previous week preforatory to our Shinju discussion, John Steinbeck, Yukio Mishima at length (why Dr. T thinks I ought to read The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, why I disliked The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea,  my abandonment of The Sea of Fertility tetralogy after not being able to comprehend more than a tenth of Spring Snow [vol. 1], his admission that he read the entire tetralogy at the age of 20 but did not comprehend any more than I, a foreigner, at age circa 54, and Mishima's dramatic suicide by seppuku after he and several followers barricaded themselves in Ichigaya, the 'Pentagon of Japan', and soldiers jeered his impassioned call for a military coup d'etat), the specific details of ritual suicide (we indulge in major grimacing at this point), speaking of knives why I enjoyed - I can't remember her first name but know she employs a masculine spelling to gain wider readership - Kirino's Out so much more than other modern Japanese mysteries like Yoshida's Villain - at this point he darts over to his desk to research Kirino while I continue to ramble - although, come to think of it, so far I'm enjoying a Japanese mystery I started reading the other night, Now You're One of Us, by someone whose name I can't recall, I think Asa but that doesn't strike me as a Japanese sort of name, Kirino's first name turns out to be Natsue and she used a different pen name for the thirty or so popular romance novels she wrote before venturing into the mystery genre, Kirino was born in 1951 as was Dr. T, he prints out her biography and a list of published works for me and I spot two words in English - Out and In - which leads me to suspect Kirino wrote a sequel to Out so I hope there's a English translator hard at work on my and my sister's behalf, then he mentions the Tony Awards show he saw on television the other night, a 14- or maybe 16-year old boy from Canada who received two awards, I share my dismay at not being able to find a Billy Elliott DVD at the Navy Exchange, monthly e-mails I receive from Broadway.com, Bon Jovi's performance on the aforementioned awards program, the difference between the Tony awards and the Grammy awards now that I realize we are talking about two different things, our preferences for watching movies - in a theater or at home - and how they have changed over the years, purchasing DVDs vice renting them, amusing anecdote about the time the Blockbuster clerk told me to stop apologizing for my tardy return of rental movies as the store staff fondly referred to Krentz family late fees as their 'Christmas bonus,' the cost of movie rentals in Japan (about $2.50 for two days), how NetFlix works, a painstakingly detailed plot synopsis of Inception compliments of back-to-back viewings pre- and post-Matt's arrival in Japan, the actor Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai, speaking of Matt here's a ten-pound bag of Japanese snacks for the college student, our mutual distaste for scandals, Johnny Depp, John Cusack, Edward Norton, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, speaking of our mutual distaste for scandals I am going to have to put my Helena Bonham-Carter/Kenneth Branagh antipathy on the back burner for two or so hours in order to see The King's Speech which is getting really great reviews and is about Queen Elizabeth's father who it turns out was a stutterer - blank expression, my impromptu take on stuttering, immediate look of comprehension, mental note to partner with him the next time someone suggests a game of Charades - and confronted his speech impediment when - speaking once again of our mutual distaste for scandals - his brother abdicated the throne to wed the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, Shakespeare in Love, Edward and Wallis in France, Edward and Wallis erroneously placed in Russia which I let slide in order to talk about Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush which makes him think of another actor with a British accent, Gladiator, perhaps Robin Hood, he means Russell Crowe and I am compelled to confide that as much as I enjoyed Crowe's performance in Gladiator I absolutely could not see Robin Hood because by then Russell had joined the ranks of the spurned along with Helena and Kenneth (we overcome our mutual distaste for scandals long enough for me to bring him up to date), which, of course, took us to Meg Ryan, Dennis Quaid, alcoholism, Randy Quaid, botched plastic surgery, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith, Alfred Hitchcock movies, a year-by-year review of Clint Eastwood's acting and directing career, my college roommate's experience as an extra in Gran Torino, Al Pacino, Marlon Brando, obesity, Robert DeNiro, my sketchy memory of a Rolling Stone interview with with same wherein same showed no trace of a personality or mental activity, telephone call reminding Dr. T that he must move some of his staff to another hospital, review and mutual admiration of a colorful grid Dr. T has created to make sense of this puzzle, our mutual concern that staff members who have taken up residence near the hospital where they are currently employed will be upset when he tells them of the commute they will be facing with in the new year, "Happy New Year!" I chirp which makes us both giggle guiltily although there is no reason in the world I should feel the tiniest shred of guilt about the dislocation of the Yokohama medical establishment except I do due to Crippling Empathy Syndrome, the minimal progress he is making on readying his house for the new year, a suggestion that he hire someone to clean for him in light of his wife's invalid status, a quick draining of the fruit juice and green tea, a polite acceptance of payment that I hope to hide from Matt-the-Yen-squanderer, and a fond farewell until next week.

What will we talk about next week?  Certainly not a two-hour plot synopsis of Ulysses since my understanding of the 'plot' Joyce offers in the first 702 pages can be summed up in less than two minutes.  Lucky Dr. T.  Lucky you.