Not Exactly Disneyland...

Well, it took me twenty-five years, six trains, a funicular and a bus, but I finally got to visit Koyasan.

Back in the day, when I came to Japan as an exchange student, I was asked to give a talk to my class about Australia, my family life and so on, and do a general Q&A. One of the questions was which place I most wanted to visit in Japan. When I replied "Koyasan", the class burst into laughter.

Apparently, exchange students are not supposed to hanker after places steeped in history, religion and natural beauty. My class recommended Disneyland. I haven't been there yet, though. 

I stayed overnight at a temple in Koyasan last week, enjoying communal bathing and traditional temple food in the evening.

 

In the morning, I rose early to chant with the monks before heading off to trek around the town and surrounding hills, which are filled with breathtaking sites/sights.

It was peaceful and calming and absolutely unforgettable and I hope it won't be 25 years before I get to go again. On the train on the way down I had an epiphany about my verse novel, which will now include Koyasan in some interesting ways. Perhaps I can use that as an excuse to head back.

I am off to Hokkaido on Monday, coming back via Basho's old stamping ground of Matsushima and will be offline until Saturday. I will no doubt have more raving to do on my return.

PostScript

Okay, that was a little mean. So here's a rough English translation:

What set Yutaka Sawada, a doctor's son, on the path to circus life was his excitement and fascination at seeing the Yokoda Troupe perform in Asakusa. Abandoning the path towards becoming a doctor, he left home in pursuit of the Yokoda Troupe and found himself on a boat, crossing the ocean to perform in Russia.

It was 1902 and he was sixteen years old.

Hence my glee. It's spookily close to the backstory I was imagining for my Mr Moriyama, whose name may yet change, though probably not to Sawada.

In other news, it has occurred to me that the first new term I learnt upon arriving in Japan as a high school student 25 years ago was hōkō onchi (literally meaning "someone with no sense of direction"), closely followed by doji ("a person prone to foolish blunders"). This time around, it was kanen gomi ("burnable rubbish"), followed quickly by tenkōfujun ("fickle, unseasonable weather").

Make of that what you will.

Domo Arigato, Mr Sawada

While I forge ahead on the verse novel, I've also been doing research for the adult novel I'm in the early stages of developing. One of my tasks has been to nut out details of the background for my main Japanese character, a circus performer touring Australia during WWII. It's fiction, so I have a lot of license, but it's historical, so I want to get the details as 'right' as possible so the story rings true.

So I've got this circus performer - an acrobat - and I've been asking myself what kind of background such a person would come from in 1940s Japan? I had this idea that my character would be from an educated family, someone who's expected to go on to higher education and a 'respectable' profession but is so drawn by the lure of the circus that he turns his back on all that. I've been reading and reading and talking to people and following tiny snippets of information down neverending rabbit holes and the clear consensus seemed to be that this was not realistic, that those who ended up in the performing life were either born into it, sold into it, or stumbled into it out of poverty and necessity, that a well-bred son in this era would not-could not do such a thing.

So I had a quandary. Do I stick with what I think will make a really compelling backstory for my character but is completely historically wrong? Or do I re-think everything?

I hate quandaries. And I hate it when my best-laid fictional plans are rent asunder by pesky reality (about which, see also Ducks, Diet).

So in an attempt to avoid facing a decision I didn't want to make, I kept reading.

And I found this:

Isn't that incredible? I know you're as excited as I am. Just try to contain it. I'll be over here in the corner, writing backstory.

Motoyama Daze

Well, it's been almost three weeks since I arrived and I am feeling well and truly settled into a happy balance of writing, reading, tramping about and random other stuff. My neighbourhood of Motoyama has turned out to be very congenial indeed - urban and convenient but with regular pockets of green and stillness in the form of local shrines and other 'time out' spaces, something I find very necessary living in such close quarters with others. I find myself enjoying the more communal sense of space in Japan, the constant awareness that there is only a thin layer between your own space and that of many, many others, but as it is at such odds with what I'm generally used to I do need regular respite from it as well, and to actively seek out open space around me.

Writing-wise, I'm making good headway on my two projects. My adult novel, The Last Wild Thing, is still in the research and development stage at this point but I figure I have one last major burst of reading to do and can then start to make some real inroads into the writing. My YA project, a verse novel, is steaming ahead in a very satisfactory way and getting my teeth stuck into some poems in a wider narrative context is giving me a lot of pleasure.

Language-wise, I've been relieved to find that my Japanese, although very rusty, is still basically okay. I went through an interesting phase about a week into my stay where I found myself caught between languages - beginning to lose my easy facility with English but not yet really able to draw on too much Japanese. For a few days there, I just had to shrug and smile. Happily, that can also work (of course, it is also how I found myself a key player in a cheerleading team when I went to high school here, but that is perhaps a story for another time. Thankfully, I am now past the age where people are likely to thrust pom-poms and pleated skirts at me!). Yesterday, I spent the afternoon at a poetry symposium at Nagoya University and was pleasantly surprised to find I was able to keep up quite well with the (often quite academic) content of the discussion.

  Of course, shrines and parks and universities are not the only places I've been visiting. I've also been checking out some bookstores. At some point, I hope to find Japanese translations of some of my favourite poetry collections, as well as some local work (though poetry here seems to be as scarce a beast in bookstores as it is in Australia), but in the meantime, I've been haunting the children's section. Where's Wally?, anyone?

The Duck Has Landed!

It's official! Duck for a Day launched yesterday, 1 May. Since I'm in Japan, which makes it difficult to serve hors d'oeuvres and sign books in Australia, it launched not so much with a quack as with a whimper, but nonetheless it should be waddling its way to libraries and bookstores near you very shortly.

As it happens, there are two ducks in my life at the moment. There's the aforementioned Duck, quacky visage brought to you by the wonderful Leila Rudge ------------------------>

 

<------------------------------- and there's also this little guy, brought to you by my wonderful crocheting mother. He hitched a ride in my backpack in the hopes of seeing the world and has been my faithful companion over the last couple of weeks. He has a habit of sneaking into my photos and you can see him below in a variety of poses. I have no doubt you'll be seeing more of him over the next couple of months as he travels the length and breadth of Japan with me in search of stories, ponds, and duck-friendly chocolate.