Untangling My Chopsticks (3 page)

This emphasis on spirituality dates back to when Kyoto served as the imperial capital from 794 to 1868. Buddhism, imported from China, became an alternative to Shinto, Japan's indigenous religion based on deities ruling over all things natural, such as mountains, rivers, rocks, and animals, with the sun goddess Amaterasu being the most powerful. (To honor and preserve the goodwill of these deities, the Japanese still hold festivals
throughout the year at various shrines, often accompanied by offerings of sake and special foods.)

Numerous arts also flourished in Kyoto, such as
ikebana
(formal flower arranging), Kabuki theater, and
chanoyu,
the Japanese term for the formal tea ceremony. Chanoyu literally means “tea's hot water” and became one of the most influential art forms in the history of Japan. It affected architecture, painting, calligraphy, and food. Kyoto was where it all started.

“One could almost say Kyoto is steeped in tea,” said the librarian, with a soft giggle.

The tea ceremony began to take on a spiritual dimension under several tea masters, including Sen no Rikyu, universally heralded as the most important tea master who ever lived. Having studied Zen for decades at various temples, Rikyu considered the tea ceremony a spiritual and artistic communion with nature that should embody harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility, the essence of Zen Buddhism. Rikyu saw making tea in a ritually prescribed manner as a form of meditation through which one could explore and polish oneself. In fact, it became one of the ways to reach enlightenment.

“Which meant,” I said, “the teahouse became a kind of temple.”

“Exactly,” said the woman, smiling, clearly pleased I had made such a connection.

But Rikyu's idea of a temple was much more humble than the ornate pavilions of the imperial court. He wanted the tea-house to blend in with nature and become more of a backdrop for the tea ceremony, so he helped influence its redesign. Over time, the teahouse became a simple hut set in a garden with mud and plaster walls, a thatched roof, a bamboo lattice ceiling, tatami floors, and small paper-covered windows. It became a refuge in the
city meant to echo a mountain retreat, where
samurai
from warring clans, lowly merchants, and even the emperor could come together on equal footing and focus on nothing more than the sensory pleasures of the tea ceremony, such as the gentle bubbling of the tea water on the brazier, the seasonal flower arrangement in the alcove, and the smell of the particular incense chosen to represent the time of year.

By the time the woman had finished talking, I was hooked. I would study tea kaiseki in Kyoto to learn about Japanese history, art, architecture, food, and Zen. I would teach English to pay my living expenses. And I would test my heart by living halfway around the world from the man with whom I contemplated spending my life. I headed back to the agency feeling for the first time in many months a palpable sense of hope.

3.

y first few weeks in Kyoto were a bit of a blur as I tried to find work, a school where I could study tea kaiseki, and a place to live. Thanks to the amorous connections of my old grammar school pal, Lauren, I had a place to stay when I first arrived. Her former boyfriend, Bob, had offered to put me up. “Call me when you get to Kyoto,” he had said when I rang him from the States. “You can crash with me until you get your feet on the ground.”

Bob's rented house was what Kyoto locals call “bedrooms of eels” because they have narrow façades that face the street and long bodies that stretch far back, concealing interconnecting rooms and an interior garden. According to Confucian principles, the farther back into the house you progress, the more intimate the space becomes and therefore your relationship with the owner.

Like most old homes, Bob's had dark slatted wood doors on the bottom level that rattled when cars drove by. There was an outhouse off the interior garden and tatami on the floors. The size of a traditional Japanese room is measured by the number of tatami it contains, since each straw mat is considered large enough to accommodate one person lying down. I slept upstairs in a three-tatami storage room that I reached by climbing up a rickety wooden ladder.

Shortly after my arrival, there were two things that struck me about Kyoto. One was that the city was far more modern than I had expected. Kyoto is the fifth largest city in Japan, with a population approaching 1.46 million. Once a massive lake bed, it sits nestled in a valley bowl surrounded by mountains to the north, east, and west of the city. Rising raggedly from the ground, these cedar-filled peaks originally formed an important fortification when Emperor Kammu declared Kyoto Japan's capital in 794. The mountains also give the city its own microclimate. In the colder months, freezing moist air whistles down from the north, saturating the city with a frosty wet chill. In the summer, the scorching heat lies trapped in the city bowl, filling every chink with a stagnant humidity that can buckle the folds of a delicate paper fan.

From the top of Mount Daimonji on a clear day, Kyoto looks like a miniature metropolis made of gray and white Legos. Emperor Kammu wanted to create an imperial capital as powerful and magnificent as the Tang dynasty's (618–907) Chinese city of Ch'ang-an (now Xian), so he laid out Kyoto in the same logical grid-like pattern. The Kyoto Tower and its observation deck, considered one of the city's greatest eyesores when constructed in 1964, shoots up through the skyline like a white church spire topped with a big red doughnut. The glittering Kamo River, a
shallow rocky-bottomed expanse filled with fishermen in waders, tufts of olive-yellow marsh grass, and spindly-legged white cranes, flows north to south through the center of the city, thus creating a natural division between the eastern and western sections. Originally used for fabric dyeing and
sake
(rice wine) production, as well as transporting goods and people, the Kamo River now serves more as a place for recreation, with throngs of joggers, walkers, and bicyclists moving up and down the sandy dirt paths lining the stone reinforcements along the embankments.

Not surprisingly, many of Kyoto's traditional industries, such as fabric dyeing and woodcrafts, have given way to commercial enterprises. The result is that most Kyoto natives would now rather pay one dollar for a cheap comb made of plastic than ten dollars for one hand carved from sandalwood. Timeworn tea-houses sit squeezed between storefronts flashing neon signs. Sacred shrines lie tucked away in bustling shopping arcades. Real estate costs a fortune. And Kyoto's wooden shops and homes are gradually disappearing because exorbitant inheritance taxes make it cheaper to tear down a traditional wooden dwelling and replace it with a modern one complete with central heating, air conditioning, and hot and cold running water.

Yet, despite the encroachment of technology and innovation, the other thing that I realized about Kyoto was that it was far more beautiful than I had imagined. The age-old restaurants, exquisite inns, imperial villas, and almost two thousand temples and shrines imbue the city with a spirit of elegance and grace. Traditional Japanese architecture uses organic materials in muted and recessive tones, which blend into their natural surroundings, almost as if growing there. You see the grain of the wood, the texture of stone, and the warmth of sunlight pouring through ivory
paper screens. Fences are fabricated from bamboo. Roofs are often thatched with Japanese silver grass. Woven reed blinds hang from shop windows to provide coolness and shade.

The culture's reverence for nature accentuates Kyoto's innate beauty. Designs on fabric, pottery, lacquer, and folding screens depict swirling water, budding branches, and birds in flight. Delicate woodcuts and scrolls celebrate the moonlight, rain, and snow. Elegant restaurant dishes arrive with edible garnishes of seasonal flora.

The sense of serenity that permeates Kyoto also enhances its visual appeal. Kyoto was originally called Heian-kyo, or Capital of Peace and Tranquility. It is a well-deserved name that reinforces itself at the most unexpected moments: a late afternoon walk up a quiet winding back street with the auburn light of dusk slanting across the pavement; a chance turn into an empty temple courtyard where the only sign of life is a fistful of incense burning in an urn; or the sight of an older gentleman practicing dance steps alone in a small park.

As I got to know my new home, every day held something novel to pique my senses. Sometimes it was pleasurable, other times painful, like the evening I learned about the electric bath at the
sento
(public bath). After washing myself, I climbed into a tiny tub to soak. Suddenly, I was zapped with several ferocious currents meant to “stimulate tired muscles.” I screamed and leapt out of the tub, sloshing water all over the place, then hurried home and climbed into my futon, still shaking.

Another afternoon I experienced the poetic beauty of Japan's maple leaves in the western district of Arashiyama, about an hour's bus ride from downtown Kyoto. At first glance, Arashiyama offered little more than miles of restaurants, ice cream stores, and cheap souvenir shops north and south of the
Togetsu-kyo (Reach-moon Bridge). Vendors stood on the sidewalks luring passersby like me into their stores with tasty samples of pickled vegetables, sweet bean pastries, and special tea “made only in Kyoto” from herbs and salted dried cherry blossoms.

But like so many things in Japan, behind the façade lay another view. So it was only after I had hiked into the woods far from the bridge that I found a fluttering world of persimmon, ocher, scarlet, and cabernet secreted away in a mossy garden of curving stone paths. When it began to rain, the colors deepened and the leaves, shaped like baby's hands, spiraled down onto the plush green carpet and sleek dark rocks. I stood there motionless, attending to this quiet transition from life to death, feeling the same aching sense of awe—like a great hand pressing against my throat and urging me to cry—that I encountered as a child every time I went to church with my grandmother. It was a powerful wordless beauty that swept me up toward something magnificent and greater than myself.

Everyday transactions became a fascinating study in courtesy and care, like the way the waitress at Le Petit Chou café arranged my coffee set—cup, saucer, spoon, cream holder, and napkin—on the table, as if creating a small mosaic. Or the way uniformed gas attendants pulled down the pumps dangling from the eaves of garages to dispense the gas, then lined up in rows to bow to the customers as they drove off.

There was such uniformity of behavior, like the way everyone knew to stay on the left side of the train station escalator, so others could run up the right side to catch their train. Or the way no one ate in public, which is considered rude.

There was also an ingenious approach to limited space through the use of folding and unfolding. Gardens unfolded themselves as you walked along. Fans folded open and then collapsed
back into their compact shape. Meals unfolded through multiple courses. Even people folded themselves inward to create private worlds in public, staying silent on buses, covering their book jackets with plain paper, and closing their eyes on the subway.

I also noticed a fixation on wrapping, which the Japanese have elevated to an art form almost like origami. The careful way the Japanese seal items, whether fruit, slippers, sushi, or tea sweets, reflects their respect for the contents inside and their desire to shield private items from the public eye. Everyday purchases, such as books and plastic pouches of rice crackers, are covered with bright paper before being placed in a protective bag. Talismans at temples and shrines are tucked into small brocade drawstring sacks. And tea bowls are swathed in silk before being nestled in padded wooden boxes.

But this solicitousness toward wrapping is not just a matter of concealing and protecting. The way packages are enveloped conveys important information about the contents inside. This is essential because the Japanese rarely open gifts in public, yet a proper “thank you” is expected. As a result, stores mark their wrapping paper with regional designs and logos, while clerks use special knots, ties, and seals to offer further insight to the receiver, so he or she can thank the gift giver accordingly, using polite language and a low bow for a nice gift, or extremely polite language and a very deep bow for an extravagant one.