From Miami to Hamamatsu

May 31, 1999

Dear Good Friends:

It's my last day in Japan. All in all, it's been a successful and very

interesting visit. I don't know if I was ever totally and completely

enamored with the place. Still, I'm awestruck by it, and I still

consider it to be one of the funniest places I've ever been. The

ironies presented to me by this country can set me into both a tailspin

as well as a fit of laughter.

I look at my gaijin friends--those who I stayed with, Jim and Heidi

and their two children Marli and Emmili--and my old Hamamatsu

English-teaching counterpart Elizabeth--the goodwill ambassador to

global forest reduction in the name of elegant wood floors. Somehow,

after twelve years in this country, they seem quite sane, unlike most

of the foreigners who seem to stay here. Jim and Heidi often speak of

their lovely Japanese neighbors, teachers, and friends. These are the

people that keep them and their family happy here in Nagoya.

The Gordons are showered with gifts and acknowledgments. The children

are flooded with compliments of their cuteness, just enough that the

kids notice the absence of their Miss Universe treatment when they

travel to white-people countries. Still, one gift yields another in

this country, and Heidi smiles upon acceptance of each gift and then

groans as she realizes that she has now been caught in a spiraling gift

game. Each gift must be more expensive and demand more time and energy

that the one preceeding it. I'm surprised she hasn't developed a piano

factory on her balcony simply so she could give handmade pianos away as

thank you notes. Still, when one travels to other countries, such gift

warring is a fond memory for which there is no replacement, only

longing memories.

The Gordon girls are sweet and love their parents dearly. They also

love their teachers, and defend them endlessly. Marli, the 8-year-old

has a teacher named Miss Kagami. Ironically, kagami means mirror in

Japanese. I think that's really funny, so I have been trying to change

the name from time to time. I ask Marli, "So, how's Miss Kushami (Miss

Sneezy)?" This makes Marli very angry. Heidi laughs, so Marli smacks

her. Somehow, amdist all this mayhem, I rather enjoy watching the

8-year-old smacking the mother, though I haven't told Heidi this just

yet.

Elizabeth has been working for Maruhon for ten years now or so. She's

quite the computer whiz, and she is involved in all business meetings

and all share holding dealings. Last year she spent time in Vanuatu and

Fiji, I think. This summer it will probably be Cameroun and Zimbabwe.

Still, since most of the meetings in Hamamatsu are in Japanese, she

often takes a book to read and then agrees to anything so that she can

be a part of the Japanese solidarity and unamimity. She refuses to

speak Japanese, though this time I was struck by how much she

understands and actually uses. She says she doesn't conjugate a thing.

This is probably true. She doesn't like anything that has anything to

do with sexism, and she won't tolerate it. She'll go to an afterwork

party, but she refuses to drink alcohol. Perhaps to many, she isn't

playing the game. Perhaps to many, she is being herself. Perhaps to

many she is being somewhat compromising, somewhat difficult. To her

boss, she comes up with the same result but by different paths. Often

these paths are determined by their culture. Often they are determined

by their cleverness. Still, trees get knocked down and the company

benefits. What about the forests? I didn't ask. After knowing Elizabeth

for some ten years now, I'm just so intensively pleased that she's

sane.

Elizabeth and I committed public displays of affection at the

Kobayashi train station (on the line we affectionately refer to as the

littel red choo choo) out in the country. She greeted me as the

conductor took my $3.50 ticket. We kissed on the mouth in front both

children and a set of vending machines offering both warm and cold tea

and coffee. I'm certain both the kids and the coffee were shocked.

Elizabeth introduced me to her division and friends. I gave a spiel

about my research and respectfully asked for everyone's help. Of

course, as a sly and desperate psychology researcher, I publicly

thanked Elizabeth and her boss Ito-san for their help with the work.

That probably got me ten subjects right there.

I interviewed 10 people about their knowledge of kanji and I found the

information illuminating. I found that many people apply reading new

words to their old knowledge. I thought perhaps they would be following

one single kind of Chinese reading. What I seemed to find out, though,

from the research was that people can separate their knowledge of what

reading, Chinese or Japanese, to whatever new kanji they see and then

choose the most popular reading, regardless of origin, to the new

character. Very interesting, this!

Elizabeth picked me up from the little red choo choo on Saturday and

took me out for pork and shrimp gyoza (pot stickers). Both were

delicious. Still, I was simply happy to be out in the mountains.

Elizabeth knew exactly where to take me, too, as any good gaijin

businesswoman but friend of Japanophiles would: to a successful potter

in the mountains. We had tea with her pottery teacher's wife and then

looked at all the new items he had worked on in the gallery. Each set

was incredibly expensive, some bowls and trays going for well over

$300. Elizabeth asked me if I wanted anything, suggesting that this

particular bowl were looking at went for only 10,000 yen. I suppose I

could have easily said that I wasn't interested in buying anything, but

that was probably a lie. I suppose I could have reprimanded her for

taking to a place where I would feel some sense of obligation to spend

some money. But I've seen my father go to such places time and again,

and he always bought something. Just this summer, I took Dane, my

brother, to my friend's apartment in Boston where he showed us his

latest CD. Dane bought one, certainly out of honest interest, but also

probably a bit out of a sense of happy obligation. This was one of

those times for me, and I pulled out my wallet, but I knew that I would

be in financial straits until I could find a blasted American ATM or

change some traveler's checks, an almost complete impossibility on a

weekend. Still, I bought some stuff and enjoyed doing it. And while I

felt a bit like strangling Elizabeth for not having a Miami professor's

understanding of financing one's own two-month travel to Asia--I mean,

I am not anywhere near as rich as Elizabeth, nor will I ever be--she

took me exactly to the place I most wanted to be in my entire trip in

Japan: a house in the mountains. We had mattcha (powder tea) and

sweets. The pottery was absolutely amazing. There was a view from the

mountain house out toward a large reservoir. It was romantic, breezy,

soft, elegant, fun, and Japanese--certainly worth the frustration I'd

later have in finding an ATM.

But the Saturday ended up not being about money or pottery, not about

mountains or tourism, not about obligation or Japanese breezes, it was

about being an intregal part of Japan and the friendships I had built

here some ten years before. I guess I thought that when I left Japan,

I was somehow going to be just an enlightened observer of the country,

not really with access to full news of how the culture would change

over the seven years since leaving.

To a great extent, I was correct about this assessment. Before I

arrived 16 days ago, I didn't know that teenage girls wore loose socks

that resemble leg warmers. I didn't know that the most popular singer

in Japan right now is a 16-year-old Mariah Carey copier from Los

Angeles called Hikaru Utada. I didn't know that businessmen carried

Pokemon monsters on the antennae of their cellular telephones. I didn't

know that black was the color of the day of ultimate fashion, much like

it is in Miami Beach. I didn't know that gaijin vs Japanese television

shows done in the fashion of Jerry Springer were so popular.

In addition, I forgot some fundamental things. I forgot that the

bullet train is one of the great things on this planet. How the US can

support airline travel and forget the luster of fast train travel is

just so beyond me. The only explanation I can register is that

Americans simply do not know how unbelievably cool it is to get on a

train and in less than 2 hours be 200 miles down the road without

checking in or going up in the air or gathering luggage or going

through security checks or dealing with agents or paying attention to

boring safety messages or worrying about putting on a safety mask first

before assisting the child. Americans must simply not know. In

addition, so many Americans don't seem to understand the sheer value of

bookstores. In Hong Kong, in Korea, in Taiwan, and now in Japan, there

are book shops, both of high and lower quality, all over the place. And

people go in and read readily. They purchase a book or two, and walk

away. The book shops are always packed. If I walk through Little

Havana, there are two meager bookstores that one has to be buzzed into

with dull lighting and visibly more wall space and floor space than

book space. Furthermore, I walk into Japanese schools and watch

Japanese television, and the world is centered around the idea of

"shumi" or hobbies. I admire so much the cultures here in East Asia

with the passion and intensity they give such things. I suppose it's

not just shumi. It's everything. It is gift-giving which is indeed a

big chore to keep up with. It is the strinking purity of making

something better and then trying to make it even better, always

attempting to raise the standards. It's the fact that my friends in

Japan who have actually dropped out of high school to pursue work and

livelihood or even survival have not succombed to the threat of drugs

and alcohol, as they perceive such wrecklessness to be intrinsically

bad. If asked, they would say, "Oh, I read that it was bad, so it must

be" or "Oh, I see on TV all the time how bad drugs affect people all

over the world, so I don't do them." In many ways, people believe in

the goodness of the world and the pursuit for it here as intensely as

they do their shumi.

I think of these aspects of Japanese culture, and I realize that I

have incorporated some of them into my life, and I believe I have done

so gleefully. Still, as I see these aspects not yet infused into

American daily life, as I sit here during this trip, I feel I am

watching a new good team take its rightful place as the champion. In

college basketball terms, the US was UCLA, a team that won 10

championships in 12 years, always being one of the best in the country.

But times change, and it was difficult for the university to maintain

that standard, although it tried, sometimes successfully with a

championship in the 90s or sometimes in vain with teams that couldn't

even make the playoffs. I now see the US in such a place, but I'm not

convinced yet, certainly not in terms of how I see my students at FIU,

that the US even has in mind to reach the standards that places like

Korea, Taiwan, and Japan are trying to set. I sit here after a month of

travel and I see that America will be passed by and no one there will

even know it because, after all, the world's most prominent network is

CNN, an American one. The world, through this wonderful information

revolution, has really united, but the US, in spite of its being the

center of the Internet, could be left out, simply for culturally

dogmatic reasons.

So, there is a bunch of stuff that I had forgotten, or least I put it

on the back burner. I'm quite pleased that a lot of it is all back. And

getting a whiff of Japan for two weeks and Asia for two months is

nothing short of a donkey kick in the pants and a satisfying

realization that my life is great.

But as I said, this particular Saturday was not about being a subtle

visitor of Asia for two months or a Nipponophile PhD in Florida. This

trip on Saturday was not about my being a tourist, philanthropist,

researcher, or philosopher. It was about my life as a participant here.

Saturday reminded me that I lived a great chunk of my life here and I

am a part of it as it is a part of me, regardless of wherever I go. I

did cry when Japanese people won Olympic medals because their winning

reminded me of my home here. And Saturday asserted me that Japan would

forever be, regardless of my actual address, home in some sense.

How do I know this? Last year in March, my former boss, Kiyokawa-san,

or as we called him, K-san, at the Four Seasons Language School in

Hamamatsu passed away. He was complaining of being tired and of a

toothache. He finally went to see a dentist who said his teeth were

fine. He took the afternoon off to go home and take a nap. He never

woke up. Elizabeth was very close to him. She loved him as her best

friend. It's now a year and three months since he died, and she still

cries to sleep sometimes, thinking about him. Jim and Heidi even asked

me how she was doing with it all, and I said that she seemed OK.

After buying pottery, Elizabeth took me to K-san's cemetery, a

Buddhist shrine amidst the bamboo shaded by some overhanging hills. At

the front of the cemetery is a long shiny concrete obelisk with the

Kiyokawa name. There stands a monument to the Kiyokawa family,

including first the name of K-san's dad and then an blank space for

K-san's mother who still lives near the cemetery in tunnel and river

perimetered town of Tenryu. Then I saw K-san's name in regal kanji,

shining forth the day he died. Upon arrival, Elizabeth talked to him

directly, "Hey there, Sport! I brought you a friend." I guess I

immediately got caught up in the moment as I starting to talk to the

obelisk as if it were some sort of consultant or psychiatrist. I said

that I was a touch angry at the way he treated my friend Kazuyoshi the

last time I saw him, grilling him on who his family was and where he

worked as if he was some sort of suitor for me; I had felt that it was

a bit of a double standard since my buddy Dwight was traveling through

Japan with me at the time (four years ago) and he treated Dwight like

royalty. Still, I recall that K-san drove me to Toyohashi to get my

visa, and informed me that the raccoon dog statues standing all around

the country had huge testicles. We laughed as we went to the second

hand store to get me a new refrigerator. He learned the word "Woof!"

and used it often in the same way that US construction workers do as

they offer piropos to passing women; I regret that, indeed, but I find

it funny nonetheless. But of all the memories, I remember telling him,

in all sincerity, in January 1990 that I felt I needed to see a

proctologist. He said, "A what?" and I said "Proctologist!" He said he

didn't understand, so I ran and got a dictionary. I opened it up to the

word and showed him. He rose without changing his facial expression. He

went over to a secretary's desk, picked out a pair of scissors and

said, "OK!" Snip! "I have a doctor friend . . ." Snip! " . . . who can

help you!" Snip! "How would that suit you?" Snip! Elizabeth was there

for that conversation and said I got greener and greener with each

passing snip. Yet I also recall that he was too busy to talk to me

that last time I saw him, and I said to Dwight, "I'm ready to leave

Japan." And that was the last time I saw him, although we did talk on

the phone twice more. And now here was my friend, as well as my

employer, lying in ashes under a gold upright plate with his name

carved in kanji, again stating his job and the date of his death. I

walked in with Elizabeth, stating that I really hated the smell of

incense. The room was a tad dark, but it strikingly beautiful in only

the way the Japanese can do. The floor was tatami mat. The outlining

wall and foundation was urushi-stained wood. The urn plates were gold.

Breezy air filled the room, yet I could still hear Elizabeth breathe.

I stayed for a minute and then I said I wanted to go. Elizabeth walked

about six paces ahead of me as it was apparent that both of us were

going to cry if we even brushed against each other. As Elizabeth

reached for the front door of this grave palace, I said I wanted to go

back to K-san's room. I lit a candle and even a cane of incense. I blew

out the red fire on the incense rod and placed it in the gold bowl

before K-san's plate. I clapped and bowed. Then I took a picture. I

met Elizabeth at the front entrance who was chatting with an elderly

woman who I guess was the caretaker of the cemetery. The elderly woman

walked up to me and said, "Kiyokawa-san desu ka?" We talked for a

minute about the differences between cemeteries in the States and

Japan, but neither Elizabeth nor I were very interested, although I

suppose the plainness of the conversation prevented us from wailing.

Neither one of us claim a religion, so to be here was the moment, and

it was our life. We were there because we were supposed to be.

And with this I realize that one's life is not segmented by borders or

passport stamps. Instead, it's a list of experiences all lined up by

the time dimension, and one is influenced by the journey, not

necessarily by the label of where one originates from.

Elizabeth then showed me her hamster named Rat, and we ate mint

chocolate chip ice cream.

With the experience of understanding K-san, there is also my life with

Kazuyoshi.

To be around this best friend is a simple thrill. He's so sarcastic,

and he bosses me around like a pet. Erikku, take a shower. Erikku, do

the laundry. Erikku, make certain you lock the door or a Japanese

robber will come in. Still, there is an undercutting love to all the

words he says. He lives as simple a life as he can, primarily because

it is all he can afford. He works five or six days a week at a Yamaha

plant, pressing motor items to be used in motor boats. He likes

anything cute, especially Disney videos. He helped me do laundry, and

he made me sashimi and sukiyaki, just the way we used to do seven years

ago when we spent so much time together. He lives in a narrow

apartment. I could hardly get my luggage through the front hallway

because the width of the bag was just slightly smaller than the width

of the hallway. For the bathroom, I had to sit with my knees sticking

through the doorway since there was too little room between the commode

and the bathtub. His other room has a dining table, small fridge, bed,

stove, and combination TV, video, and CD player. This would be home for

the next two weeks. It was nostalgic, though--not cramped at all,

unless I ever decided to do something radical, like unpack. One day, I

couldn't get the door to lock, and he replied, "Baka," the word "crazy"

that he always called me and that you're never ever supposed to call

anybody in Japanese.

We talked about recent relationships and important frienships. We

talked about work and how we had gotten to our new apartments. We had

everything to talk about. He had an aquarium in the opening hallway, if

you can believe that considering the space. And there was even a

washer. The first day he had me doing laundry, although he had the

clothes pins hanging over the bed. Believe it or not, I find all this

extremely romantic and endearing, partly because I know how hard

Kazuyoshi has worked in his life to create this palace. He's 36 now,

but twenty years ago, he left home because his father was hitting him.

He joined the Japanese Self-Defense forces and never went back home or

to high school. He later worked at an izakaya or drinking establishment

where he learned to cook. He had other jobs included a stint as a

bartender before he landed a job with Yamaha where he has insurance,

steady work, and a life-long contract. When I left Japan in 1992, part

of the issue was that I was leaving for my career and he was staying

for her career. It was extremely painful for each of us in that we both

felt the other wouldn't make the appropriate sacrifice for the love of

the relationship. Still, we also agreed that I had worked too hard to

not go back to school, and he had worked too hard to give up a

life-long keepsake of a job. However, my dream for Kazuyoshi has always

been to give up his job, go back to school to get a degree in zoology,

and get himself a job a the zoo. We always went to the zoo. We went

five or six times one year. In fact, I think we went to the zoo more

often than we ate sukiyaki. He watches science and animal documentaries

more often than he watches Disney cartoons. He thinks every animal in

the university is cute, and he wants one of each, including cobras,

moths, and caterpillars. As a mild substitute, he has goldfish, a

large one of which is named after me; it's called Baka.

My first Friday in Hamamatsu, I did some research at Elizabeth's, but

I cut the day short since I wasn't feeling very well. I stayed at

Kazuyoshi's and watched a lot of TV. That evening, he came home, and we

made dinner together. As we were eating, around 8:45 pm, we were

watching The Lion King in Japanese when the doorbell rang. Kazuyoshi

went to the intercom and asked who it was. Nobody replied, so he went

to the front door. The American from Miami got into my body as I tried

to shout, "Are you out of your mind? Don't answer the door!" He went

anyway and talked to someone for a good ten minutes, though I had not a

clue to what they could've been talking about. Finally, a man in a

light blue jump suit bowed, said "Ojama shimasu" (I'm being an

obstacle), and walked in. I said hello and the man started giving

Kazuyoshi a sales pitch about a new water cleaning system that

Kazuyoshi could rent for ten years at $40 per month. Kazuyoshi was

very polite and listened carefully. The salesman ran a glass of water

from Kazuyoshi's tap and then squirted some yellow liquid into it. This

was supposed to be an acid test. Who could know? The sales pitch lasted

for a good ten minutes before the salesperson asked Kazuyoshi any

questions. I had one I wanted to ask: "How much did the Pokemon monster

pen cover in your left front pocket cost?" Instead, I asked, "Could you

leave a pamphlet for Kazuyoshi to look at so he could more easily make

any decisions?" The salesman said he didn't have any to give him. I

then asked Kazuyoshi how he could make such a quick decision. Kazuyoshi

actually said that he had been thinking about renting such a system for

some time, that this was the cheapest one so far, and that it was just

serendipitous that the salesperson dropped by. "Dropped by?" I thought,

"On a Friday night at 9:00 pm?" Kazuyoshi listened for a couple of

more minutes and then said, "Hai, ii yo! Tsukette!" I twitched with

astonishment. He gave the salesman the OK to connect it all up. Within

two minutes, it was attached. The salesman then took out a second vile

of yellow liquid, ran the tap through the newly attached filter system

and filled a glass, squirted the yellow liquid into the glass, and

waited for Kazuyoshi and I to ooh and ahh as the water turned indigo.

This meant the water was clean. The salesman then took out a contract.

I noticed that the company was located in Osaka. I asked how anyone was

going to come up from Osaka to help Kazuyoshi with any system problems

over the next ten years. The man said he would send someone over from

the Nagoya office. Kazuyoshi then asked how popular the system was. The

salesman said that everyone in America had been using it. Kazuyoshi

said, "Oh, Eric's from America. Erikku, Amerika de wa tsukau?" I said I

had never seen anything like it before in my whole life, which was

true. The salesman then took out a notebook and showed me a page that

said the the product had been endorsed by Amerika no Kokuritsu Eisei

Kyokkai or the NSF. I didn't know what the NSF was, but the translation

of the Japanese turned into the National Satellite Foundation. I said I

was quite relieved to hear that satellites all over America were using

this clean water system. The salesman understood my sarcasm and then

took the system off and filled a glass with water. He then reattached

the system and filled a second glass with system-cleaned water, giving

both glasses to Kazuyoshi. Kazuyoshi said, "Mmm!" He immediately tasted

a difference. As a result, the salesman said he needed to call his

Osaka headquarter boss so that Kazuyoshi could get the whole contract

signed. I was worried that Kazuyoshi was signing away his first born

child every month for the next 120 months. But Kazuyoshi looked at me

and said, "It's OK; don't get mad." I smiled. The salesman asked

Kazuyoshi if he ever went to Osaka. Kazuyoshi said he did from time to

time. The man then invited Kazuyoshi to go out drinking with him some

time, bowed, and then left. Kazuyoshi then went to the dresser to get

out a plastic pouch full of financial records and a chop. Fifteen

minutes later, the doorbell rang. It was the Osaka boss who just

happened to be in the same neighborhood as the salesman, bringing in a

suitcase full of paper. First, he showed the contracts that Kazuyoshi

quicked stamped with his red-ink chop. As a present, the Osaka boss

gave Kazuyoshi a guide to using the fresh clean water system. When I

looked at it, it was a user's guide at all. What is was was the actual

salesman's pitch and pamphlet that I had asked for two hours earlier. I

said with a sneer, "Why didn't your salesman give Kazuyoshi this

pamphlet two hours ago when we asked for it directly?" The man said,

"Oh, the printing is too expensive, so we only give them to buyers."

But I said, "But this isn't an annaisho (a user's guide); it's a

pamfuretto (a sales pamphlet)." Kazuyoshi turned to me, looked me

squarely in the eyes and said, "Daijoubu, Erikku. Hoshii." It's OK,

Eric. I want it.

Yesterday was Kazuyoshi's day off, too. We planned on spending it

together, but Kazuyoshi wanted to spend it with his nearby friends, as

well. He loves his buddies Kuniko and Kuma-chan, a charming unmarried

couple in their thirties that Kazuyoshi spends all his free time with.

Each Sunday, they try to go fishing. Last Sunday, they went and I

stayed in Kazuyoshi's place, working on my research and recovering from

an allergy hack I had developed. They had apparently had an elegant

time in the bay around Arai-machi, a 25-minute train ride from

Hamamatsu. There, they had caught about 80 fish of a whole assortment

of colors and varieties. So, Kazuyoshi wanted them to meet me and for

me to meet them. We agreed to get together at Kazuyoshi's apartment at

8:00 so we woke up early. Kazuyoshi prepared his fishing rod and got me

to take a shower. They were fun, these two, and off to the Ooigawa (Big

Well River) we went. I was particularly stoked in that we were going on

two of my favorite highways in the area, the ichigo-sen main route

along the Pacific and the Tomei Expressway, the main tollway to Tokyo.

On route, we would pass some of my favorite haunts from seven years ago

including the Katsuragi Golf Course where I taught hotel girls English

in various venues such as the swimming pool, the hot tub, and the 17th

green; or Takoman, my favorite daifuku place where I got peach flavored

rice balls stuffed with red bean paste. The grass was green and the

haze was elegant. We exited at Yoshida offramp. From there, I thought

we would go north along the Ooigawa to the mountains where the highway

was lined with restaurants specializing in bee pollen and inoshishi

wild boar. Instead, we headed south to the mouth of the rive on the

Pacific. We passed families playing soccer and baseball until we

reached a levee painted with pastel pictures of gulls and fish. We

climbed to the top of the levee where we looked out on the Pacific.

Kuma-chan decided this was not the place and had us turn around. We

repassed some of the baseball families and turned right at a grain

silo. From there, we turned right again at a lumber yard and even right

one more time until Kuma-chan stopped us with a glorious view of a

concrete plant and million-liter gasoline storage bins. Kuma-chan

announced that we were there and that the fishing here was supposed to

be some of the best in Japan. Obviously word had gotten around because

we were by no means the only people there. We parked our butts on

yellow painted parking stoppers next to the pier where boats could come

and fill up on grain, lumber, concrete or oil. We put our fishing poles

together as a pick up truck playing the ABC song at the highest volume

passed by, advertising delicious ramen. Kazuyoshi taught me how to cast

the line, and I must admit I liked throwing it. I kept losing track of

the bright orange ball that was to indicate whether a fish was biting

or not, so I kept reeling the line in and casting it out. Kuniko

commented that I obviously liked throwing the fishing line, and

everyone laughed. Finally, though, my line actually wavered. I couldn't

believe it. I started to reel in the line. Up from the ocean raised a

bright red fish with spines. Kazuyoshi laughed hysterically and said it

was an aka hiroshi. An aka hiroshi? Is that good. Well, it isn't, I

must say. It's spines are poisonous they same way a scorpion's tale is.

Still, it was our biological duty to throw it back. Kuniko took a

picture of me with my first ever caught fish, and then took some tongs

to hold the fish as she attempted to get the hook out. An old man came

by and said, "That fish is poisonous. Cut the line and throw it back."

So, I got to go fishing finally in my life, and I must say that it was

far more Japanese than anything I could have ever envisioned: concrete

factories surrounded by dirty water with a whole gaggle of Japanese

people with the most fashionable of fishing gear, doing this all day

long. This was my last experience in Japan.