Fireflies and other beautiful things

And here the follow-up to ”The Kawaii complex and other nuisances” (it's better to read that one first, in case you haven't yet)

So at the end of that week of being very, very annoyed, I happened to run out of food on Saturday evening. I should have taken a short trip to the supermarket, drive home, make food and get back to studying Japanese, and writing my research and planning some other works and, and, and. Instead I thought 'Fuck it all' and decided to take a slow evening walk through the ricefields to the convenient store. That probably was the best idea I had had all week.

It was just cool enough to be comfortable,

still far from the terrible heat that was to follow the next week. The sun sinking toward the mountains in the distance, which receided toward the sky in forms in always lighter shades of gray. And the rice in its checkerboard fields had, at that time, in that light, the perfect color. The lushest of greens that looked so good that for a moment I actually wished I was some kind of grass eating animal – a horse maybe, a cow even – just to be able to take a mouthful and taste what must have been absolutely delicious. And amidst that green, in perfect, white elegance, the herons. At least five of them in that one field, raising heads on delicate, long necks, watching me pass before bowing down again for their meal of frogs. In that moment there was no other place I wanted to be. On the way back from the store the sun was touching the mountains and the water in the fields was reflecting the orange glow in a perfect, postcard kitchy setting. I took photos of which I perfectly well knew they would never be able to catch even a glimps of that moment, and still took them. Because I had the time and because right then, I realized that all those annoying things from before were also part of this, that all of it in it's entirety, good and bad, is my experience of Japan.

It may sound a bit overdrawn if I tell it like this here now, but that moment really felt quite important. It's not as if suddenly from there on everything was being happyhappy, but it's definitely easier to spend time here if I don't feel like screaming everytime somebody says the word 'kawaii'. And if I'm honest I have to admit that it has found its way into my own vocabulary, too. Some things just really are very... uhm... kawaii (dammit!).

Kittens, of course. And elephant-shaped paper clips (found one in the history class room). Or old teachers who sing along with the radio or play guitar in lunchbreak.

Speaking of teachers, the teacher-student relationship is something I like a lot here.

At first I thought that in super-polite Japan (I've been taught better by now), adressing teachers only with honorifics and polite speech, the contact to them would be somewhat distant. The opposite is the case. While I call my teachers by surname in Finland I don't think I have a relationship as close as I have with my urushi teachers here, and that after having been at this school for only three months. Of course, my Finnish teachers are, well, their usual, hard to approach finnish self. Also, as exchange student things are always a bit different. Still, especially in the higher grades the teacher-student relationship here seems to be really nice. One reason might be because the workbenches of the teachers are in the same rooms as those of the students.

Let me explain the layout: there are three classrooms for urushi. The one is an open, general room and the one I complained about before because of it being crowded. It is used mostly by the 2^nd grade but sometimes also for other courses. It has only normal tables and no individual work places and the 2^nd graders have to arrange themselves and their stuff there until they will switch to one of the other two rooms next year, taking places of those who graduate. The other two rooms are Urushi2 and 3, which are rooms with proper individual work places for each student. In Urushi2 there's Takahashi-sensei's work place, also his school Mac, which he allows students to use, and a book shelf filled with his books and manga (Japanese comics) also free to read. There's a fridge with freezer, a coffee machine in which there seems to be almost always coffee and a hot water machine (which are very common in Japan, land of cup noodles and (green) tea).

 Urushi 1, the 'annoying room'

 Urushi 2: the work spaces and on the other side...

... the 'community space' featuring Takahashi-sensei

Urushi3 is where my work place is. Here are also Hayashi-sensei's and Ogawa-sensei's worktables, lots of their books, free to read, and another hot water machine. There's 3^rd and 4^th grade students in both rooms, and at least in Urushi3 there are also master course students. In both rooms is one bigger table which people use if a certain work is too big for the normal table or if their own table is too cluttered. Ogawa-sensei's for example, but then he's one teacher who's on the move around the school much and also spends more time in his own teacher's room, which is another, different room.

Urushi 3 

I sit on that gray chair that is pushed back from the table

Around the bigger table the teachers usually eat their lunch and in most cases some students join them. Also, when school lessons end at 6 o'clock in the evening, our teachers usually don't vanish as soon as they can, but stay behind, too, doing their own work, and also being available for questions if a student needs their advice. That is a really, really nice thing. Another thing I find really cool is that students and teachers sometimes make food together. Or well, students and Takahashi-sensei, he apparently loves to cook and is around to do most of it. The first time it happened was out in the park for Hanami and I thought it was a once-a-year thing. Then it happened again when it was Hayashi-sensei's birthday. And since then it has happend two more times, first having to do with some kind of urushi-connected people's meeting - which I somehow found myself slipped into one evening - and the other was eating the left-over curry from that meeting. Generally it's like this: if you smell food somewhere in the evening around half past 6, chances are good Takahashi-sensei cooked and you get something if you just go to that one other room that seems to be also his, somehow, where he and students cook.

Making food together and eating together really does a lot for human relationships. But while those seem to be indivudual happenings there are also things that are actively tradition in the school, to help new students get acquainted. Those are called 'New Face Parties' and we of course had them at the start. They usually begin at school and then move to some restaurant (traditional Japanese style: individual room for a group, seperated by paper walls/sliding doors, tatami mats and pillows before low tables). I had those from Urushi and from Yosakoi and they were really nice, but then it's the individual, spontaneous activities that are for the best experiences.

One of the most amazing until now was last week Tuesday. Soon after school ended I was asked by Kan-chan, 4^th grader from my room, if I had ever seen hotaru. 'Hotaru' means firefly and I said yes, I had seen barely a handful of them near the temple one night after I had been there to do calligraphy (The temple at which there was the Buddhistic wedding. The temple to whose monk and his family I have gotten contact again after things calmed down a little. The temple I really hope I might still be able to live at for some time). Also at one midsummer night in Finland three or four years ago we saw one single lonely one. Then she asked if I wanted to see them and I wasn't quite sure what exactly she meant and said that, yes, but where? In Himi, she said were supposed to be lots of them and somebody would go there. Then somehow the talk ended and I went to do some work and maybe 1 ½ hours later she came again, like 'We go to see the fireflies now, will you come?' I did. And god thanks I did.

It turns out Ogawa-sensei, who lives in Himi, a small seaside town about a 15 minute drive from Takaoka, had told Takahashi-sensei about a spot where there were suppposed to be lots of fireflies. So Takahasi-sensei and some other students, 3^rd, 4^th and master course grade, went there in Takahashi-sensei's and one students car and I was once again lucky enough to get tagged along. And just how lucky I turned out to be...

We went off at around 20:00, at which time it is completely dark here in Japan, which is on a far lower latitude than either Germany or Finland. We drove to Himi and searched around a bit and then parked at the roadside by a small channel separating us from the ricefields on the left. And there they were already, fireflies lining the channel in small, neon-greenish dots. And as we went on there were just more and more of them. We reached a spot where there was something like a small bridge over the channel, connecting the road to the ricefields and there we stood, looking into the channel.

It was filled, filled with moving, dancing light, duplicated by the channel's dark water. Their mass was brighter than the stars above us. Unbelievably beautiful.

A few metres further and on the left there were tall trees and the slope of a small mountain rising behind them and also there, up in the tree tops little lights were moving, slowly pulsating.

Other people were passing by, families with kids, maybe even a school or pre-school class. Kids waving pocket lamps. They went. We sat by the channel. Watched the lights move, caught some in our hands, let them fly again.

At some point we drove back. And I had forgotten about that damn heat that had started to rule the days, had forgotten about my urushi allergy and the rash that had started to get much worse again through that heat. Officially it was rain season, but not a cloud to be seen. 30 degrees and higher each day and my rash spreading to my legs and feet and once again back to my face, too. One eye was again badly swollen one morning.

Right now, as I am writing this, it has been raining two days and now that the sky is clouded, the temperatures are a little more comfortable again. My allergy is going back really nicely; it went in a matter of two days and is now limited to my hands. There it's quite strong but at least it's only the hands.

In the end, I think it was worth the trade. Because the things is, as soon as tsuyu, the rain season, starts, the fireflies disappear. Sleepless, hot nights, itchy days, unbelievably irritating if the rash is also around the eyes.

But in exchange I got a sky full of stars dancing on earth, a sky full of stars to touch with my hands.