The years I spent in Japan walk along side me every day at the ready to prompt memories. I spent 7 years spanning a decade with about a 50/50 mix of small town life and urban dwelling. I learned to adult in Japan--well as much as an ex-pat can learn that skill. Ex-pats are perennially young at heart with an exuberance for adventure. A trip to the post office is never mundane when you don't speak the language well and you have a very specific objective in mind. I have brought that love of adventure back with me fully intact.
So it was on one of the first (of many) cold rainy Saturdays in the Southland, that I made plans with Elaine, my sister at heart, to tour Frank Lloyd Wright designed Hollyhock House in Hollywood and lunch in Little Tokyo.
Elaine and her son, Ian, picked me up bright--well, actually dreary--and early. I was packing my new camera itching to take it out on its first adventure. Not being the navigator, I was not even remotely aware of where Hollyhock House is. When we passed under the Hollywood sign, I belted out Are we going to Hollywood? Now, add a strong South Eastern Oklahoma accent. It isn't often
that my dialect surfaces but when it does people pick up on it right away. The unexpected-ness of it caused a mimicked repeating throughout the day. Our mood was set. This was most certainly going to be a zany, rainy day of adventure.
While waiting around for the tour to start. Ian noticed this pretty little bird huddled on the fence. He was accommodating and let me take his portrait. Later, I discovered that he is a Says Phoebe and was somewhat out of his element. Normally he is found north of the Hollywood Hills. My birding friend told us that we were very fortunate to see the Says Phoebe where we did. He is all puffed up to keep himself warm on the chilly day.
Hollyhock House was my first experience touring a Frank Lloyd Wright designed home, I wasn't sure what to expect. The house has an interesting history in that it was never actually lived in, making it a pristine example of Wright's design. Most noticeable was the Compression and Release design feature. The entrance hallway has a 7 foot ceiling--I'm 5'5" and felt somewhat claustrophobic, Ian at nearly 6-feet felt down right uncomfortable. The hallway released into high ceiling and dropped floor of the living room providing a sense of awe and wonder with the release. Although the house design is Mayan revival, there are clear Japanese influences as Wright was concurrently working on the Japanese Imperial Hotel. From the modified obi table accents
After our tour we heading to Little Tokyo for lunch. Initially we planned to eat at Kura the revolving sushi restaurant, but since we failed to download the ap, our estimated wait was 2 hours. We weren't sure our stomachs were in for the two hour wait. Our first stop was to add caffeine and
warmth at Dulce. I had the Dulce Latte and Elaine the Chai Latte. We admired the confections in the display case. As tempting as trying the bacon donut was, we decided to forego the experience. Stomachs rumbling, we continued to wander around until we came to a restaurant that was able to seat us immediately. A hot meal and conversation warmed our souls. An accidentally double entendre added mirth.
After lunch we visited visited Bunkado which sells more traditional rather ​​than kawaii merchandise. While Elaine was figuring out how to pay for her merchandise in cash while the clerks were sorting out why their card machine wasn't working, I wandered outside. In the display case, they were promoting these crazy knitted animal caps for a ridiculously low price. I grabbed Ian to help me quickly choose hats for us and to distract his mom while I paid for them. With my package under my arm, silliness and warm ears awaited us. I whipped them out and distributed them as entered the alley to visit Koyasan Buddhist Temple. With our hats on--with Ian and me as two monkeys and Elaine the goat-bear (it's ears were too long to just be a bear) , I dubbed us the Doubutsu-Zoku--the Animal Gang with Elaine as our leader.
Laughter set aside for the visit, we admired the statues in their new clothes for the new year. The vividness of the red popped with the contrast of the overcast day. We wandered over to the fortunes. The crispness of the fortunes (Omikuji) tied up transported me back to Japan. It was New Year's 1999--the Year of the Tiger, my last in Japan--that I drew an inauspicious fortune--made worse by gender, a dangerous age and the fact that I am a Fire Horse--
the most inauspicious sign a woman could possibly have. After celebrating New Year's Western style at the clubs in Hiroshima, I collected a group of friends to take a late ferry over to the sacred island Miyajima to celebrate Japanese style by hiking the mountain on the island to witness the first dawn of the new year at its peak. Timing the hike was important, leaving for the 2 1/2 hour hike too early meant freezing atop a cold mountain--a lesson learned from the previous year's hike. My group and I took our time enjoying the festivities of the new year on the island. We grabbed food, drank a box of sake, and got our fortunes. I put in my yen for my fortune and handed it over to my friend to read for me. Her face told me that it wasn't a normal fortune, so I asked her what was wrong. She confirmed with my other Japanese friends and they all huddled together trying to figure out how to break to me that I was now in dire straights and must proceed with care with nullifying the fortune.
The next day, I showed the fortune to my employer and her mother--Okaasan. Yes, the confirmed it was bad, not just bad but tremendously bad--I must be careful. Over the next 6 months, Okaasan, students, and Japanese friends worked hard to set my fortune back into the positive. During Setsubun--the festival for chasing bad fortune out and inviting good fortune in, that February, Okaasan made me eat a foot long maki role facing a particular direction and eat one dried soybean for each year of my life. Later, after researching which shrine would be the most powerful in reversing my bad fortune, my students drove me 2 hours to the next prefecture to tie it up and replace it with a better fortune. This fortune setting was serious business. I had no idea until the experience that one could get a bad fortune and if one did what the process was in negating it. I felt so fortune to have so many people concerned about my well-being and learned so much about Japanese culture, that I almost considered it good fortune to have received such a bad one.
As I returned to the present, I noted at how fortunate I have been across the years to have collected so many good friends that are willing to go on adventures with me-to hike up mountains on freezing cold New Years, to work hard to make sure that my fortune is rising rather than waning, to wear silly hats around Little Tokyo and a few weeks later during an entire birthday dinner and so much more. I clearly have an abundance of fortune.
