Basic Black

Reducing the plastic in my life

Today's shopping at Nagasaki-ya was under 1000 yen worth of groceries. In the basket, you can see spinach, carrots, a piece of salmnon, some lemon chuhais, a whole daikon radish, and a bag of udon noodles.

You'll see, too, the pink "No bag, please" card. If I bring my own bag, place this pink "No bag, please" card in my basket and carry my point card, the cashier gives me a stamp for each bag I refuse. After 20 no-bag points, I get a 100 yen discount.

The effort required to bring my own bag (usually my bookbag or whatever bag I brought to work with me, or a furoshiki or repurposed bag I have recieved from shopping) is negligible, yields me a small monetary reward, and makes household waste a little lighter. This year, 2007, I have endeavoured to reduce my plastic bag pile to nil, and very nearly succeeded. The only contributions were from guests. I keep all reusable plastic packaging (plastic sleeves from advertising and the like) in a bag above the fridge, and put it to work when I need to protect valuable papers.

I've been following Envirowoman's plastic free blog, a chronicle of one Vancouver woman's endeavour to eliminate plastic products and packaging from her life for one year.

Kudos to Envirowoman. Trying to follow in her footsteps in Japan is extremely difficult for this expat Canadian living in Japan. Japan has a great record for recycling appliances and paper, but I wonder where the plastic goes to, and what happens to it post-consumer use. Well, the Japan Times recently documented the incineration of plastic waste, and begins to explore the idea of burning the unburnables in Tokyo. It makes me nervous about throwing away that plastic sushi tray. Where's it really going?

So I'm throwing my efforts at consuming less plastic because I fear it is impossible to eliminate it from my diet. Virtually everything I buy, from rice crackers to fruit to noodles, is packaged in plastic. If I were to buy in bulk or one item at a time, I might be able to reduce plastic packaging, but it is impractical and expensive for the single Japanese resident. One orange is more expensive when you cost it out, and buying in bulk presents storage problems that are unique to the Japanese domestic environment.

So, for now, I'll work on getting my plastic consumption down in 2008, but barriers to eliminating it appear to insurmountable right now.

I'll still look for advice and information at Japan for Sustainability and see what information I can glean.

Meanwhile, I had a wonderful and healthful dinner of , making the most of a piece of salmon, chopped carrots and daikon radish, flavoured with miso paste, and accompanied by a side dish of Korean kimchi. If I eat whole foods, I eat better right away.

The remainder of the day's shopping haul will go into a container and turned into Japanese-style tsukemono pickles. Made with love, no extra plastic required.

Buddha who?

I'm reading an essay I found on Japanese Journal of Relgious Studies archive page. Now and again, I take a crack at making sense of Japan's Buddhist heritage. It's telling when scholars studying Buddhism in Japan premise their work on looking for "signs of life" in the tradition. It's grim, as Gerald Cooke notes in his 1974 treatment "Traditional Buddhist Sects and Modernization in Japan", that Buddhist sects were dead.  He talks about how Japanese Buddhist temples are essentially funeral parlours serving no other meaningful purpose for the people. Wow.

My neighbour lady in Uwajima was attending Jodo Shinshu temple with her husband in preparation for the next life. Old people look at it as a necessity, young people see it as an artifact here in Japan. Why'd it happen? Blame the Meiji Restoration in the 1800s when the government instituted Shinto as the state religion and took power from the temples. The powers codified Shinto, told people to stop paying respects at their Buddhist altars, abolished some holidays and conflated some others with secular and Shinto ones, and required people to do the Shinto thing as a religious and national gesture of respect. It didn't last long, and Buddha bounced back, but not to his original splendour.

Why do you, western reader, know about Buddhism? You can pretty much credit one man, D.T. Suzuki, for the spread of Buddhist, especially Zen, ideas to the western world. Last year, the documentary D. T. Suzuki - a Zen Life was screened in Tokyo to a receptive audience. He described himself as primarily scholar, but surfed the line between egghead and practitioner, never taking vows to become a priest.

What to do? Get this, two Buddhist priests at a Tokyo club are reciting sutras once a month to get people interested. Well, that's one way to do it.

It's so weird. Only in Japan can monks and priests get married and eat meat. I'm going to check the university library for Neither Monks nor Laymen, a more recent book about the state of Buddhism.

火曜日綾瀬駅

綾瀬駅に降りた時に知らない女性が袖を引った。ホ－ムがとても込んでいたから、忘れ物かなと思った。彼女は「Do you speak English?！」と聞いた。この狭いところは立ち話が危ないと思って、ちょと怪しい感覚があった。

「Why?」と聞いて、彼女が「I want to get an English friend」と答えた。

やっぱり英語に習いたい人だ！ こ言う人は外国人がいるといきなり「Teach me!」と聞く。

外国人は「English vampire」と呼ばれる。 I'm sad that I can't simply be annonymous when I want to, and that I'm a perceived more as a conduit for language and less than a human being. 私は人間ですよ！英語を話せるろローボットじゃない！

She was brave, I suppose, for asking me, but the timing was so bad - on a busy train platform with a crowd of people.

喫茶店に会う人に聞いたほうがいいでしょう。

Teachers Part One

I've had a chance to connect with so many senseis in my world. Last week, I wrote a response journal entry regarding two readings from the course I'm taking, Issues and Practices in Teaching EFL Writing, and my professor Dr. CC, responded to my writing with a number of critical and insightful comments. You can read my journal here.

This week, I had a brief talk with F sensei at work. It seems I piqued her interest when I mentioned to another staff member that one of my projects involves preparing junior high school students for the TOEIC Bridge test, a little brother to the more advanced TOEIC test. These siblings are bullies in my estimation. I don't believe they are appropriate for testing children and teens, as I suspect the students do not have the background knowledge to handle the types of questions that appear on the test, namely, about business or work topics, or the kinds of language in the grammar section. These exercises present sentences full of noun clauses that are hard for the students to decipher. F sensei confirms that no, students for the most part do not know the kanji for the words that appear in categories such as marketing and business. Preparation materials that present Japanese-English vocabulary matching exercises are a bust. Like F sensei and her colleagues, I concentrate on teaching the soft parts of the test - basic grammar, the vocabulary associated with places, daily life and active verbs.

She also tells me that recent graduates from elementary schools do not receive instruction in the grammar of Japanese. As a result, students confront Japanese grammar terms  - 名詞 meishi - noun, 形容詞　keiyoshi - adjective, 過去分詞 kakobunshi - past tense - for the first time in their junior high English classroom. In efffect, Japanese teachers of English must teach the students to examine grammar and lexis and describe the forms of another language before they have fully understood how to examine their mother tongue. Many students receive grammar at cram school either through the examination of Japanese or learning English, but not all students have this advantage. The Japanese English teacher starts at the beginning, essentially teaching two subjects, grammar and a foreign language. I remember grammar lessons in grade five and six in elementary school, which prepared me well for French language. I wonder if this is still done in British Columbia...

Moonlight and Rain - Meigetsuin

Once again, we were rained out Wednesday. This time, I was caught in the Kamakura valley with the outbound trains late and the rain drizzling down.

Another opportunity to wander the temples, this time, Meigetsu-in, now a Rinzai branch temple built on the site of a 12th century hermitage built by Yamanouchi Tsuneyoshi to lay to rest his father killed in the Battle of Heiji. Later Meigetsu-in was gobbled up by 

Dharma Wheel

Get up at six, chant the sun salutation while doing my morning preparations, out the door at half past six, on the twenty to seven train with either a kanji textbook, or a Buddhist text, or my mobile phone in my hand, studying or reading all the way standing to Shimbashi Station, then sleep on the Yokosuka Line as far as Totsuka, wake, stretch, check my schedule.

Teach classes all morning, prep the afternoon, greet people in the hallway, talk to our students and play games after school, race for the train, hop on the train at 25 minutes to five, sleep, read, whatever on the way home, arrive at quarter after six, walk five minutes to the apartment, change my clothes, trade school bag for training gear bag, ride my bike to dojo, train for about an hour and 45 minutes with sensei, friends and visitors, get dinner after, home by half past ten, prepare clothes, bento, and school bag, sleep six or seven hours, and do it all again the next day.

Same, same, same.

Sometimes, I find myself fighting the routine. Let me out! And when those moments happen, I take time to breathe, reflect, gather the moments to me to figure out what I did right, what I could do better.

Right view, right intention. Right speech, right action, right livelihood. Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Come back to the present.

Trying to round up the first class of the day, get them in their seats, do a proper greeting at the start of the lesson, keeping them focused, takes every effort of mindfulness and concentration. I can't get angry at them. They have the attention spans of gnats and barely comprehend my instructions. So, I repeat everything a million times, and get them working together in groups so that they can help each other out. At the end of that first class, I'm tired, but they succeed in the lesson objective.

Playing Uno with next group, they pile cards on me, round after round, and every card I draw just made my hand bigger. And then I got a streak of useful cards. The looks of determination, the whoops of Gotcha! Ha! as we battle down to the last cards gets them all laughing and smiling. There isn't a lot of language in the game, but the cards require them to practice the language of prepositions and turn-taking. We all shake hands at the end of the game. We have made a wonderful, meaningful, direct connection while they practiced the language point.

In the evening, over dinner, a visitor to our dojo confesses he is on two pilgrimmages here in Japan, one martial, the other spiritual. We have an amazing, intense discussion about nature, our various practices, experiences dealing with attatchment, desire, anger and frustration. It's a joy to have a little community, if only one other person, to help support each other in our Ways.

Returning home to my apartment late, I plod past the flower bed. Etsuko, the landlady, hasn't been around much, but the evidence of her labours earlier this spring is spectacular. Acid green hostas, golden lilies, decadent camelia perfume, heavy hydrangea heads touching the earth. I've contributed an ivy and a aloe, too. All sights and scents a shock to bring me back to the moment.

This weekend, we'll break routine with the training event all day Saturday. This evening is The Phoenix's birthday, Midsummer, and the Rainy Season has finally come to Tokyo. The rain is refreshing, but it's sticky and hot, too.

Tomorrow in the dojo is going to be hot, sticky and fun. Yay!

The Heart

Zen Dynamics provides a side by side romanized version of the Japanese language Heart Sutra, a sutra which I've posted on my blog before. Go see Nadja Van Ghelue's website about calligraphy to see a transliteration with the characters here and guidance on how to copy the sutra yourself.

Here's the whole thing in Chinese characters, romanized transcription of the reading as the Japanese see it, and English -

　摩訶般波羅蜜多心経
ma-ka-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta-shin-gyou
The Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra

観自在菩薩行深般波羅蜜多時
kan-ji-zai-bo-satsu-gyou-jin-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta-ji
Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva while practicing deep Prajna Paramita

照見五薀皆空度一切苦厄
shou-ken-go-on-kai-kuu-do-is-sai-ku-yaku
Perceived all five skandhas were empty and was saved from suffering and distress

舍利子色不異空
sha-ri-shi-shiki-fu-i-kuu
Shariputra, form is no different from emptiness

空不異色
kuu-fu-i-shiki
Emptiness is no different from form

色即是空
shiki-soku-ze-kuu
That which is form is emptiness

空即是色
kuu-soku-ze-shiki
That which is emptiness is form

受想行識 亦復如是
juu-sou-gyou-shiki-yaku-bu-nyo-ze
Feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness, the same is true of these

舍利子是諸法空相
sha-ri-shi-ze-sho-hou-kuu-sou
Shariputra, all dharmas are marked with emptiness

不生不滅
fu-shou-fu-metsu
(They) do not appear or disappear

不垢不浄
fu-ku-fu-jou
are not tainted or pure

不増不減
fu-zou-fu-gen
do not increase or decrease

是故空中無色
ze-ko-kuu-chuu-mu-shiki
Therefore in emptiness no form,

無受想行識
mu-juu-sou-gyou-shiki
no feelings, perceptions, impulses, consciousness

無眼耳鼻舌身意
mu-gen-ni-bi-zes-shin-i
no eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind

無色声香味触法
mu-shiki-shou-kou-mi-soku-hou
no color, sound, smell, taste, touch, object of mind

無限界乃至無意識界
mu-gen-kai-nai-shi-mu-i-shiki-kai
no realm of eyes and so forth until no realm of mind consciousness

無無明亦無無明尽
mu-mu-myou-yaku-mu-mu-myou-jin
no ignorance and also no extinction of ignorance

乃至無老死亦無老死尽
nai-shi-mu-rou-shi-yaku-mu-rou-shi-jin
and so forth until no old age and death and no extinction of old age and death

無苦集滅道
mu-ku-shuu-metsu-dou
no suffering, origination, stopping, path

無智亦無得
mu-chi-yaku-mu-toku
no cognition also no attainment

以無所得故
i-mu-sho-tok-ko
with nothing to attain

菩提薩埵依般若波羅蜜多故
bo-dai-sat-ta-e-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta-ko
the Bodhisattva depends upon Prajna Paramita

心無罣礙
shin-mu-ke-ge
and (his) mind is no hindrance

無罣礙故無有恐怖
mu-ke-ge-ko-mu-u-ku-fu
without any hindrance no fear exists

遠離一切顛倒無想
on-ri-is-sai-ten-dou-mu-sou
far apart from every inverted view

究竟涅槃
ku-kyou-ne-han
(he) dwells in Nirvana

三世諸仏
san-ze-shou-butsu
All Buddhas in the Three Worlds

依般若波羅蜜多故
e-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta-ko
depend on Prajna Paramita

得阿耨多羅三藐三菩提
toku-a-noku-ta-ra-san-myaku-san-bo-dai
and attain complete unsurpassed enlightenment

故知般若波羅蜜多
ko-chi-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta
Therefore know the Prajna Paramita

是大神呪
ze-dai-jin-shu
is the great transcendent mantra

是大明呪
ze-dai-myou-shu
is the great bright mantra

是無上呪
ze-mu-jou-shu
is the utmost mantra

是無等等呪
ze-mu-tou-dou-shu
is the supreme mantra

能除一切苦真実不嘘
nou-jo-is-sai-ku-shin-jitsu-fu-ko
which is able to relieve all suffering and is true, not false

故説般若波羅蜜多呪
ko-setsu-han-nya-ha-ra-mi-ta-shu
so proclaim the Prajna Paramita mantra

即説呪曰
soku-setsu-shu-watsu
proclaim the mantra that says

揭諦揭諦波羅揭諦
gya-te-gya-te-ha-ra-gya-te
gone,gone, gone beyond

波羅僧揭諦菩提薩婆訶
ha-ra-sou-gya-te-bo-ji-so-wa-ka
gone all the way beyond, Bodhi Svaha!

般波心経
han-nya-shin-gyou
heart sutra

Life, Death and Life

Sometimes I feel like I'm one of those eccentric Japanese poets holed up in a bamboo hut, watching, waiting to lift my brush, observing, not merely a passive watcher, but an active observer of the world outside my hut. Lots of things happeing around me, flowing past me. Me, Untouched? Nope, I cry and laugh as the emotions wash over me.

This week, so much death was followed by near-death and inevitable birth. My dear friends lost one of their beautiful students in an accident; a poet-fool friend had an aneurism and bounced back; and the wife of my dojo mate welcomed a new daughter into the world.

I haven't been able to talk about these things, as the emotions have flowed through me, not just past me. Grief at losing a bright spark of a young man who I had intended to dote on this summer; relief to hear that the only thing Pedestro lost was his pompadour (they shaved his head for surgery) and joy to hear that J's daughter made her appearance safely.

Sun follows the rain.

The tsuyu season is on us in Japan, which means non-stop and heavy rain, temperatures in the high 20s (that's the 60's in American), damp closets, and clammy train passengers. The relief in the rainy season is hydrangea. Kamakura City is filled with them at this time of year, and the great puffs of blooms are as big as your face, ranging in colour from pristine white to violet to deep blue, and the colours change as the rain continues to pour.

Yesterday, PTA meetings bumped classes, which gave the students opportunity to do music recitals. The second year senior high girls performed some very challenging music, and amongst the performers were some true savants. They treated parents and their classmates to Liszt, Chopin and Shubert piano solos.
Most of the girls in the music program go on to major in music in university and become orchestra members. The recital wrapped up before the end of the school day, so I left early and headed for home.

To beat the rain, I wore sandals with a heel, a long knit skirt (a gift from my arbiter of good taste), and a sleeveless cotton shirt, carried my backpack on my front, and leaned over it with my sunny yellow umbrella for cover. It's a 15 minute walk from my apartment to Kashiwa gym, where the dojo is, if you know the Secret Route.

A lot of living in 10 days

Last week we had beautiful weather - rain at night brought clear blue skies in the daytime, cool breezes relieved the hot sun, and wisteria and mock orange made their appearances in gardens.

In Golden Week, I think I lived another lifetime. Again.

The last Friday of April, I ranged all over Tokyo. First, I checked in at the office near Gotanda Station, put in a good morning of geeking (research projects and translation), and then a Training Mission with Agent S, my boss, to introduce our program to a prestigious girls school in a posh Tokyo neighbourhood, then down to Kamakura to the welcome party for new teachers and our new trustee board member.

One of our new teachers had me scripted into a pantomime in which we sent up the principal, the vice, and the school in general. The craziness of the pantomime, me made up as the principal, and an off key parody of the school song broke the ice, and I got talking to the principal and Mr. S, our new trustee. Mr. S. is a former ambassador to the US who surprised us again and again over the course of the evening (and too many courses of dinner), with his flawless English, karaoke classics and good feeling towards the new teachers. When the evening broke up, I sat between K sensei from South Philly, and R sensei, a Japanese language teacher. Their talk, back and forth in English and Japanese, helped while away the better part of the 1 hour and 40 minute ride home. I got in after 10:30.

On Saturday morning, The Seven Samurai made a pilgrimmage to Kamakura. It was a bit damp and they were perhaps a little jetlagged, but they persevered. We saw the big shrine, Tsurugaoka Hachimangu, and the little museum of ceremonial robes and armour and documents we couldn't read, and then went in search of Nichiren temples.

We took a few wrong turns, visited some temples, names now forgotten, but we did make it to Myogonzan Hongakuji, . The temple is associated with Nichiren, the vocal priest who drew flak for criticizing other Buddhist sects, which landed him three years on Sado Island, Japan's version of Alcatraz. On his release in 1271, he lived for some weeks in the Ebisudo, a hall which once stood on the grounds. He and his lotus sutra doctrine still weren't too popular, so he left for Yamanashi Prefecture where he created the hermitage Kuonji, the headquarters of Nichiren Buddhism.

The present building in Kamakura was built by priest Ichijo Nisshutsu in 1436. The temple was often called "Niccho-sama" after Priest Niccho, a sufferer of an eye disease, who accredited prayers, the lotus sutra and the temple itself for his cure. Many people came here to pray for relieff from eye trouble. I'll be sure to say my prayers when next I go there.

The Ebisudo which stands in the northwest corner has a statue which looks like Nichiren. Ebisu is one of the Seven Gods of Good Fortune. We saw banners all over Kamakura, at the shrine and other places, so I guess the Seven Gods of Good Fortune are pretty significant here. Seven Samurai, Seven Ninjas, Seven Gods. Good number, that seven.

In the afternoon we trained and then made the two hour trip back to Kashiwa, the Seven Samurai quite exhausted, I think, retiring early for yet another round of training Sunday morning.

Monday and Tuesday I had to work, and then I had five days to play interpreter for the Seven, less some who went home earlier.

Now, as a resident of Japan, I have to make a balance in my life between work, training and play. Most weeks, I train four times a week, and when work is busy I might only train twice. Visitors dedicate every day to training, sometimes doing two sessions a day. Just for the experience, I thought I'd put in the same schedule as the Seven and see how I fared. It was exhausting! I trained seven sessions, and interpreted for three more sessions. Even if I'm not on the mat and just interpreting, it's a linguistic and intellectual workout, trying to process what I'm seeing and hearing and turn it into intelligible English. All told, in 10 days, I attended 10 trainings. Do I remember much? Taking notes becomes crucial. As it is, I have logged every session since I started in April 2003, but I realized that, without the notes from the last 10 days, what I experienced would be mostly lost.

So to all you visitors, otsukaresama desu - you worked hard. And I have a deep respect for those people who routiinely interpret Soke's and the other Shihan's words regularly. It's a huge demand on your energy and could possibly take away from your own training. There's only so much information, taijutsu, language and insight, that you can process at one time.