Missing Japan

"Even in Kyoto --
hearing the cuckoo's cry --
I long for Kyoto."
Matsuo Basho

I taught tanka today. Not the little yellow toy trucks of childhood, but the Japanese poetic form. I found some really good examples, and I had quite a bit of stuff bring for "show and tell." As always, some of them found it interesting, some of them found it boring, and some of them wanted to sleep. All in all, it wasn't a bad day.

Looking at the pictures made me want to be back there, especially the pictures of Todai-ji in Nara. One of the books I'd taken for them to see was a keepsake book from the temple. I can remember the very first time I stepped inside over the high wooden threshold. The weather was so horribly hot, but inside that beautiful, austere wooden sanctuary, it was so cool. The incense from the big censer outside and the murmuring of the tourists blended, and I could have sat there on the ancient stone stairs forever.

I remember the feel of the wood of the support pillars under my hands. Each one was a giant tree trunk worn shiny smooth by more than 400 years worth of trailing fingertips. In that one gesture, I was linked to the past. I remember watching the children crawling through the hole bored through one of the columns. It was supposed to be exactly the same size as the Daibutsu's nostril. Making it all the way through was supposed to insure good luck, good health, and for women, fertility. I remember watching this tiny, slender, frail-looking woman going through it. Her husband pulled her by her hands, and she, as tiny as she was, just barely fit. They were laughing a little, but that couple has always sort of haunted me. There was something in the way they looked at each other and in the gentle way he helped to steady her as she stood back up. I hope she got the blessing she sought.

I hold on to those memories of Japan, especially the times in Nara, like a box of jewels. I open the lid whenever I feel sad or tired, and I sort through them. I let them run through my fingers and catch the light. Sometimes, I can almost smell the clean scent of new tatami and hear the warning signal for the trains or the crosswalk.

Would I go back now? If all things were equal, I don't know. Part of me would get on the plane tonight if offered the chance, but part of me is tied here. It's a choice I don't know how to make, and the reasons I came home in the first place still hold true. For now, I content myself with a cup of Shizuoka green from a Tokoname-yaki teapot and drift back to the cool shadows of Todai-ji.