I’ve been thinking about Asia and all she’s given me.
Yes, she. I’ve read plenty about how personification of place is a bit of a no-no in travel writing, but do you know what? I don’t necessarily agree. I think it depends on what kind of writing you are talking about, your relationship to the place and also the window you use to view the world. My window teaches me that all people and things are related and and have effect on each other, relationship. To think that we can be a traveller, and therefore exist on the outside of the things, people and places we experience seems a bit, well, absurd. Everything you do changes you. Are you the same person who graduated from secondary school? Or left your parent’s house to live on your own? Very likely not, but that is not just because of the passage of time. It is because of the things, people and places, ie. the actors, that you have come into contact with. Things, people and places all push change and growth, even the bad interactions.
My parents raised me from a baby to young adulthood. I went to university to begin my transition to adulthood, and that’s when Asia really became a big player in my life. Actually, it didn’t even start that late. When I was quite young, my parents went on a trip to Hong Kong and Bangkok. When they came back they brought me Chinese preserved plums in little papers that I knew I would taste again at their origin. When my Mother said, “You’d really like Thailand“, I knew she was right. How, I’m not sure, but between that experience and my childhood obsession with all things Japanese, I knew Asia was calling me.
I enjoyed my time as an undergraduate and even though I was living in the moment and had no idea who I was yet or even much about what was happening in the world, I always had an eye on Asia. I knew she played a role in my future. That knowledge gave me confidence in some respects. When I saw other early 20 somethings obsessing over boyfriends, I never wanted to get deeply involved in case I got pulled in to a relationship which would lead me to question my call to Asia. I did have boyfriends, but never serious until I met one particular person who insisted that he also wanted to travel. I thought, well…OK, we’ll see how it goes. At the same time I was thinking:
{but I have this Asia thing I have to do so, I’m not expecting this to last}
We are still travelling together and now dragging our son along for the ride.
When I first got to Asia I felt like I’d come home. For someone who doesn’t have a home town, that means a lot. I remember falling asleep in my tiny Hong Kong guesthouse with the TV on. I couldn’t turn it off because it was the familiarity of the Cantonese speaking that was lulling me to sleep. Asia was letting me know that I’d arrived where I was meant to. That I had some connection or reason for landing on this continent. Had I been here in another life? Why was it so familiar?
Over the years I have travelled in many parts of Asia. She constantly calls me back to the point that I feel homesick for her rather than the way in which homesickness usually works. She has taught me tolerance and and how to save face, not only for myself but for others (which also comes back to you, by the way). She’s given me experience with building houses and other people’s immense acts of kindness, like when I got on a bus to the wrong airport when I was headed to a job interview. I missed both the flight and the interview time, but one person phoned both the airline and the interviewer for me, changing my flight and explaining my mistake. The bus driver then let me stay on the bus after we’d arrived and took me to the other airport. I wish we could remember to treat our foreign visitors as well as I was treated by strangers.
Asia has also shown me how very easy life is for some and not for others, how dysfunctional the relationship between the two is, and how important it is to find a role in this dichotomy. She’s shown me how our material things really are that and not “essentials”.
On buses in her highest mountains, she has taught me the value of life and how fear can be confronted either with worry, faith in a higher power or fatalism and that whichever one you subscribe to makes it difficult to understand those who subscribe to the other. Also in those mountains, she’s taught me the importance of water and a hat to keep the sun off when I nearly fainted, young and silly, when tramping without enough preparation.
She’s taught me about personal safety with men hiding in toilets, earthquakes, sticky fingered backpackers, centipedes and snakes. So many snakes!
And she’s fed me. Oh how she’s fed me! She’s shown me how to fill my belly with simple bread and cheese, not to mention how good that cheese tastes when it is so difficult to find. She’s taught me to associate the scent of durian with happiness. She’s gently built up my chilli tolerance so that I could experience all the other wonderful flavours involved in local dishes. In Japan, she showed me how to also enjoy the opposite, no chilli, subtle flavours. And she was with me when after a couple of decades of vegetarianism I began to eat seafood. Thanks goodness, because if there is one thing that is done well in much of Asia, it is seafood.
Perhaps most of all, she has taught me to be a mother. I had no experience with teaching people under the age of 16 until, somehow, I ended up working in a bilingual kindergarten. My students, usually adults, were now all under the age of two. As it turns out, my son came home from Thailand at that very age. How many mothers are lucky enough to get a little hands on experience before their children arrive? It was a gift. It was a gift that helped me with the best thing that Asia has given me, my son.
So, for me, Asia is the being who has opened her arms to me, wrapped them round tightly but let me know when I needed to learn something until finally helping me to wrap my own arms around another little being. I came of age in Asia.
Could I have learnt these things elsewhere? Of course. But in my case, Asia was my teacher, my mentor, my Shantiwallah.
In my three and a half years in Japan I spent some time in Tokyo and Osaka, but the majority of it was spent in a small rural community very much like some of the ones affected by the recent earthquakes and tsunami. Farming communities which, like farming communities around the world, are struggling to survive against cheap imported food and a young generation who no longer wants to be stuck out in the inaka (countryside). Communities of people who do not represent what the neon, high-tech, modern image of Japan portrays to the world. People who live in beautiful old farm houses that have been in families for generations but have heavy tiled roofs which are prone to collapse during seismic activity.
As I watched the videos streaming of the tsunami engulfing the patchwork countryside of Japan I thought of all the people I used to cycle past on my way to work. I thought about how people who were too shy to speak to me would leave bundles of vegetables, still covered in soil, on my doorstep. And I thought about the day I went for a cycle ride, but ended up stopping to watch an old rice machine plant up a tiny (by New Zealand standards, at least) field. I vowed to stop complaining about the shocking price of rice in Japan after that.
I feel fortunate that the only person I knew personally who lived in that area was OK. But I have friends who are in pain over lost friends and relatives. I hate this. I have friends in Tokyo who are enduring blackouts and can’t drink tap water (not even boiled) or even buy bottled water because all the shops have been stripped of just about everything. I worry about radiation and aftershocks as they do. It changes how you watch the news when you have a connection. I am learning to scan the sensationalism to find answers about what’s really happening.
As with Christchurch, what is needed is money. It’s important that that money is not allocated to one place and one type of aid so that it does not become tied up with bureaucracy. Within a few months there have been life-altering earthquakes in half a dozen places. Some of these places get media attention and some, sadly, do not. If you can give to the Red Cross in your own country or another large organisation that you trust and which does not allocate its collections *, please do.
*After the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Sri Lanka it became apparent that funds collected specifically ‘for housing’ or ‘for food’, for example, became problematic. If one allocation had leftover funds, those funds could not be used in other areas where they were needed because they had been labelled for just the one, specific use. Money was wasted. There are rumours that oversized houses were built along the coast in Sri Lanka, because leftover money raised for housing could not be used for other situations.
I wish I could describe better how I am feeling, but I’m not sure I even know how I am feeling. Maybe it’s that my feet are not on the ground. My lungs feel so stretched and overfilled with air from hyperventilating for nearly a week that I just feel like my entire body is made of lace that is floating and not able to get a hold on the ground. I woke up in the tightest little ball today that hurt all over when I tried to straighten out and stand up out of bed. At 12:24 we had been woken from a deep sleep by rumbling and concrete knocking. It was only our neighbour coming in down the driveway past our bedroom window. But from a deep sleep to that point of sitting up we had to calm each other down so that we could eventually go back to sleep, worried about heart attacks from the racing within our chests. Normal life experience does not make you react like this.
My husband and I were also deep asleep when at 2am on Boxing Day in December 2010 we were woken by the earth rumbling beneath us in our tent in Christchurch. It was a big aftershock and one that did further damage to the buildings in Christchurch. We drove into the city in search of breakfast and were diverted when we saw bricks and mortar lying in the road in front of us. The epicentre had been right under us while we sat in the car watching shop window glass move like water, hoping for it to stop. Shaken and upset, we were happy to be leaving on our pre-booked flight the next day. So lucky we could fly to our home in Auckland.
In 2007, my husband and I were in our first floor (US second floor) flat in Niigataken, Japan when the rumbling began. We’d felt many in Japan, but they usually stop within seconds. This one did not stop. In fact, the entire flat began to twist out of shape, creak and dump things off the shelves. We crouched down in the genkan (small entryway where you take off your shoes) and grabbed our “earthquake bags” that we kept there with water, snacks, a torch and a few other items. We were making plans about at what point we would run outside. Japan is so built up that they tell you it is far safer inside than outside and never to run outside. All of this was running through my head, as we rode out the waves. A bigger one came and we really thought this was it. The flat was like a fairground ride. Our minds were having a hard time making sense of what our eyes were seeing as the straight lines of the rooms twisted bizarrely*. Unlike all the smaller tremours we’d felt in Tokyo, Osaka, and Los Angeles, these were the ones that began our real fears. These were the ones that helped us to understand our mortality and we’ve never been the same since.
Long after we’d left Japan and returned to the relative safety of Auckland we’d still jump and look at each other in fear whenever a big truck would rumble past or waves would show up in a glass of water on the table because someone had accidentally kicked it. Slowly we began to calm down and only occasionally would we have these episodes. But, the experience in the tent in Christchurch brought it all back. We felt terrible for the people of Christchurch who have been living with this since September 2010. By the time we visited in December people were still shaken but perhaps beginning to accept that the worst may possibly be over. People were focussed on getting their properties repaired. The people seemed optimistic, even, and perhaps a little stronger after each small aftershock** that life was still good and things were going to get better and better. People seem to be resiliant in this way.
But then, of course, the worst had happened and the world is looking on helplessly and with heavy hearts.
I wanted to tell my earthquake stories, not because any of this is about me because it’s absolutely not, nor to trivialise anything that has happened to Cantabrians, but to let others know what it is like to have experienced any of this and the lasting effects. The main event is horrifying and terrible and uncomprehensible. But for survivors, the psychological damage will last a long time. After a life-threatening event, I think the survival instinct in you says that you have had your close call, and now you can go on and live your life to the full. That is the only way your mind can begin to move on. In this instance, it did not work that way and it will be very hard for Cantabrians to move on.
People will need to tell their stories and they deserve to be heard as each time the story is told, even though there is no sense to be made of it, the act of going through the events can remind the person that they are now just telling the story and no longer living it. People need love, patience and understanding. I don’t think there is a logical end point at which people should be expected to be ‘over it’. And people need financial support to rebuild their homes and lives. If you can, please give something to one of the organisations listed at the end of this post.
*We were very lucky. Most of the damage was a few kilometres further north where many of my students and their families lived. Not all of them were lucky.
**There have been over 5,500 since September 2010.
I don’t even eat lollies except for chocolate, but something about the design of Japanese sweets sucks me in every time. Then I open the packet, eat one, and pass the rest to my husband. Kawaii desu yo!
What follows is a story of seredipity. Two things I really miss from Japan are mioga and shiso. Actually there are more things, but for simplicity let’s just stick with these for now. And…actually, I think I need to give up on finding mioga so…OK, here’s the story.
I’ve been looking for shiso since we got back and really don’t understand why we don’t have it here since it would easily grow in our climate. I even went on an internet hunt for suppliers of rare seeds to see if I could grow my own. Happily, I did find a supplier, but before I could place an order I realised that I’m not doing very well at keeping the herbs I’ve got happy. Rather than buy more expensive seeds and probably not get round to propogating them in my current busy state, I sort of gave up for the time being.
I did, however put in a lovely courgette plant that a friend gave me only to find that the slugs enjoyed the entire plant before it could produce anything. Hurumph! I also planted some radishes, which I figured were low maintenance. Even though the slugs chomped holes in the leaves, most of the radishes were OK save the fact that we had a bit too much to-ing and fro-ing of spring weather and so they kind of bolted and got all woody. Whatever! I was determined and planted another row. Bear in mind that all of this is in an expansive plot of about 40cm by 80cm.
This time I dumped some coffee grounds on the soil which not only kept the slugs at bay (unless they were just too full to eat anymore, that is!), but cleared the way for a couple of random herb-y looking plants to pop up.
I stupidly pulled the first one up thinking it was a weed but then realised that the leaves looked a bit like a mint or lemonbalm. So I just let the other two be and didn’t get back to check on the “garden” for a week or two. But when I did I thought the shape of the leaves looked a bit familiar. Could it be? No way…could it? I pinched one of the leaves and it smelled most definitely of shiso!
How can it be that the very thing I wanted manifested itself in my own garden despite being a rarity in these parts? I’m convinced that we often try so hard, that we don’t just let the magic happen.
I’m trying hard to take this attitude to my teaching. I’ve just finished my first week of 5 and I’m completely and utterly knackered! Am I trying too hard? Am I forgetting to be in the moment? I’m going to excuse myself because the first week in any job is always about organising and settling in. But now that I’m planned up for most of the coming week, I’m going to try to take a step back and just enjoy being with the students and see what happens.
I’m also thinking that there’s a lesson here for my writing. For the past few months I’ve been intensively researching the who, what, why, where and how of writing for a living. At first, I thought of this teaching gig as one of distraction from what I’m trying to do albeit a necessary one in a monetary sense. But now I’m thinking that I’m supposed to be doing this so I can distance myself from all the research, remember another facet of my identity, and just meet people. There are living, breathing people out there! There are people who hold valuable information and connections out there! People who pop up like surprise shiso plants!
There are also ideas and inspiration out there. Things I can write about. Places, people, things, Japanese herbs! Why is it so easy to feel you are in a creative space when, really you are in a rut? All the amazing books I’ve been reading and all the cool people I’ve been talking to on the internet, and even rented DVDs are inspirational. But sometimes you need to change your vantage point for just a second in order to see things more clearly and to let the surprises pop up.
I’m waiting for the Shinkansen. Waiting for the starched suited man to salute the driver. Waiting for the engine hum to dull. Waiting for the white glove to point at alignment. Waiting for the rush of cold from the opening door. Waiting to walk through the cloud of smoke and into the non-smoking cabin. Waiting to settle and tuck in to an ekibento. Waiting to be whisked off to somewhere exciting.
…always shoot in RAW. Dammit! I was contacted through Flickr by someone who wanted to buy one of my photos. It took me ages to work out how much to charge for it and then draw up a contract. The buyer was a group of art students who were contracted to do the art in a cruise ship owned by Norwegian Cruise Lines. So, she told me that my photo would be enlarged and hung in a tryptich with one from another photographer, and one from a photo library. The bad part is coming…look away now if you are squeamish.
I finally located the external hard drive that had the photo in question and found that it was a Jpeg. WTF!? It was a photo I’d taken quite early on and I had no idea about these things then…in fact I don’t know enough now, but I’m learning quickly. So, to make a long story longer, there was no way a Jpeg could be enlarged to the size they needed so I lost the sale. Bugger.
I’m trying to be Zen about it all. I really did learn something here. It’s pretty impractical to take photos in RAW all the time since I haven’t got the capacity to save all of that stuff, but the next time I’m travelling, or at least “in the zone” as far as taking photos, I’ll be sure to switch over. You never know what could happen.
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