The Hitchhiker

Son #4's obento was done and packed. Son #5 had already left for the four kilometer uphill trek to school.

Along the 20 minute drive to #4's high school, I told him about the case of Henry Molaison ("patient HM") and how he was treated for epilepsy by having a 5 cm section of his hippocampus removed. This did indeed control his seizures, but it had the unpleasant consequence of destroying his ability to form new memories, and caused other problems, including the loss of memory from the preceding two years as well as some memories from his earlier life. He was unable to recognize himself in the mirror.

Then my son took over the conversation, telling me the name of that brain section in Japanese and further explaining to me its function and the theory of how new memories are formed. Where does he learn these things? Neurology in Japanese high school?

After dropping him off, I stopped at the lone traffic light along my narrow country road route. I noticed an elderly lady near the intersection. She hobbled up to my car, "Can you give me a ride?" Before I could answer, she had opened the car door and gotten in. Impressive.

This hardy woman told me she is 98 years old and lives alone. "I missed my bus. Could you take me to a bus stop on the main road?" she asked. "I need to go to the hospital." I took her to the hospital downtown. Before she got out, she stuffed 3000 yen in my purse, saying, "I would have paid that much for a taxi anyway. Take it."

Who knows what a day may bring forth?

Supermarket Man

Shopping at the convenience-store-sized supermarket in my neighborhood, a man spoke to me in English.

"Do you remember me?"

"Where did we meet?"

Man, face lit with delight: "Oh, great! Thank you for remembering me!"

I smiled and we parted ways. I didn't have the heart to tell him.

The Well

For years I have been gratefully getting well-water from a place that was a 15 minute drive from my house. That has finally come to an end.

While walking through the rice fields, I stopped by my friends, the ducks. I watched them for a while - healthy, big, loud - I even witnessed what looked like, to my ignorant eyes, duck rape. (That duck did not seem to be enjoying her time with the aggressive drake, and she made her escape as soon as she could get away, drake in raucous, squawking, wing-flapping pursuit.) 

I turned to the farmer, "You have so many ducks now! Is that enclosure safe?" I asked, nodding to the makeshift, much patched and mended net strung around the portion of his garden allocated to the ducks, and alluding to a couple years ago when he lost most of his flock to animal attacks.

"I don't know unless I count them, but I think I've lost 6 of about 60."

I noticed he had put up signs warning of traps, so I asked, "What kind of traps do you have?"

"The animal steps in and it catches their leg. But I haven't caught anything yet."

"What kind of animals?"

"Wild boars, raccoon dogs, foxes, martens, badgers, and," to my surprise, "deer."

This was shocking. Where were these animals coming from? I've been walking around this area for 17 years, and the only four-footed animal I ever saw was a marten bolting into the brush, twice, years apart. That was newsworthy.

The conversation went on. I said, "It looks like this garden work never ends." He was standing in the midst of piles of netting, overgrown weeds, farming equipment. I was beginning to get a grasp of how much of that land he took care of.

"By the way, where do you live?"

"You know that place where the water is flowing? Right by there."

Ohhhh.

As I walked away, I thought, Next time I see him, I'm going to ask him what is the story with that water always running. I had wondered about that for years but never thought much of it.

I changed my route to pass by this ever-flowing water on my way home, and there just so happened to be a man squatting beside his tiny pickup truck collecting water in plastic bottles.

"What is the source of this water?" I asked him, after exchanging pleasantries.

"I'm not from around here, but I heard that in the old days, the people in this area only had this well. Now there is city water in all the houses, so people don't use it. But this water is delicious. I use it for cooking my rice."

An elderly fellow was smiling, looking out the window of an old house nearby. He seemed to be watching the guy collecting water. (Well, maybe he was watching me.) "Is it really OK for anyone to take that water?" I asked him.

"Sure!" and he repeated basically the same story. 

All those years of driving to get water, and there was a constantly flowing well right down the hill from my house.

Oh, and the traps? Next time I saw that farmer, he told me he had caught a fox.  

Ducks in a Row

These hard-working ducks keep pests at bay in some of the rice fields near my house. During the winter last year, on one my walks by the paddies I noticed they had disappeared. By the spring they were back, much fewer in number and in a different place bordered by a steep embankment. I chatted with their owner.

"Last year you had so many ducks - now so few. Did you eat them?" (Imagining months of duck dinners.)

"Wild boars and raccoon dogs killed them. There are a lot of those in the mountains. Here, they are safe," gesturing to the rather small enclosure where 14 ducks waddled and played.

"I noticed a couple have been living down the river, did they escape?"

"Yes, and once they're gone, it's impossible to catch them."

"Don't you clip their wings?"

"No need."

(I guess he's cool with escapees.)

Their population fell from 156 at the end of rice harvest two years ago to 14 last spring, plus the two gloating escapees.

This year, I can only find one escapee. And what of the flock?

I'll let you know next week.

Lunch with Chieko

Last year, when visiting my 97-year-old friend, Chieko, at the Seniors' Home where she lives in the countryside, she wanted to go out to eat some meat. I helped her into my car, strapped on her seatbelt, then did the reverse when we arrived at the nearby kurobuta (black pig) restaurant.

We both ordered tonkatsu. Her eyes opened wide when our trays were brought, "Woah! Look at all this food! We'll never finish it all!"

Chieko saying, "Woah!"

I asked her, pointing at the small dish of simmered vegetables with tofu and meat, "Do you eat this type of thing at the seniors' home?" I thought it looked like the kind of soft food they would have.

"They serve it, but I don't eat it. I also don't eat miso soup."

"How often do they serve that?"

"Morning, noon, and evening. And I don't eat rice either."

"What do you eat?"

Apparently, not much anymore.

Her story is long and amazing - like her life. Arranged marriages being the norm before the war, she met her husband for the first time on her wedding day. Soon she was living with him in Japanese occupied Manchuria, and after "we lost the war," as the old folks say, they came back with just the clothes they were wearing to a completely flattened Kagoshima. There was no food in the city, nothing at all, and people would be stopped by guards if they brought in so much as a few sweet potatoes from the countryside, so she and her husband went south to her in-laws' farm, where she worked growing rice and vegetables.

Some time later, her husband got a job as a teacher of engineering, and feeling the married life just wasn't for her, Chieko got divorced and went back to school. She graduated five years later with a teaching degree. She worked as an elementary school teacher, eventually becoming the principal of the prestigious kindergarten that is connected with the university here - the second of its kind in the country, first established in the Meiji Era (1879, according to Japanese Wikipedia). She retired at 60, took up studying English, traveled widely. She never married again and has no children.

She has a niece who looks after her and visits her a couple times a month. The doctor who opened the seniors' home where she lives is the father (and PTA chair) of one of her former students, also a doctor. (The dad has a clinic next door and looks after her personally. He is 82 and is also widely traveled, and an artist. Many of his drawings adorn Chieko's walls.) Pretty much anyone who is anyone in this city is her former student. She is well-known and well-loved.

She was right about the lunch. What we could finish, though, was delicious. Kagoshima kurobuta pork cutlet.

Update, March 31, 2017

Tea based meal and the brownies I brought

My two teenage sons and I drove in the rain an hour south to see Chieko. As we perched on round stools in her little room, she sat on the edge of her bed and regaled us with stories. After the excitement of her 98th birthday, which included 20 people coming from around the country who had been in her kindergarten class in 1962 to a celebration of her 99th year that was also on TV, then a week later, a lunch of green tea dishes that I attended on her birthday, she was worn out. Her liver and her heart have started to fail, and she still has the infection in her lungs that she's had for several years. It is hard for her to sleep, because when she lies down, she coughs. She said, "ima kara, kurushii," from now, it will be painful.

Then she went on to complain about how her former kindergarten is run these days. Entrance to the school is no longer limited, as in the interest of fairness, students are chosen by lottery from those who have passed the entrance test and interview. That, together with the fact that teachers are not taught effective class-control, has led to trouble. She went on to tell us the history of those types of elite kindergartens, how class control was never a problem and a teacher would never raise their hand to discipline a child - they would never have to, nor would they dare - the well-behaved students, including the emperor's kids in times past, came from a higher class than themselves. (Interesting perspective, eh?)

Then she went on to compare her seniors' home to a kindergarten, and that it was not being managed properly - class control is an issue there during their activity and exercise times - the old folks just do their own thing, talking among themselves, and don't listen to their overseers. "They need to get all the people sitting in a circle, looking at the teacher. Get their attention first and eliminate distractions, then go on with the activity."

Next came politics, first Japanese and then American, "Make America Great," she said in imitation of the current President. No one there is at all interested in such things, so she yells at her TV during news shows, but she told us, since the TV never gives any reaction, she was happy to have us to talk to. She said she felt all light and happy when she was done "vomiting out all her complaints."

We were happy to oblige.