July 25th, 2008: History and Histories

Odawara City has many homes stretched across the homeland. One minute, you’re seeing house after house, and the next, an apartment crops up before another army of rather vertical homes begins again.

As Eriko said, Japan doesn’t have much land. They try to conserve space, leaving minimal room for car parking and running bridges and transportation though already buildings packed areas. The close proximity of everything—the neighbors, other cars on the narrow roads, and living spaces in general—made me realize the reasons why the people here were so hospitable.

Everyone and everything surrounded them, and very little was wasted. No smog or film of pollution littered the air. Trash didn’t sprawl out into streets; it was hardly seen. Even inside Eriko’s home, the walls, hardwood floors, and the tatami maters were emaculate. I feared dirtying anything and made an effort to keep everything as clean as possible.

There were shoes for every occasion, probably to keep everything as clean as possible. There were indoor shoes, worn mostly in school facilities. They were made out of rubber and spandex material. For homes, there were slippers to keep the hardwood floor clean. For the bathrooms, woven slippers or straw slippers stayed inside the confines of the tiny bathrooms. Everywhere you went, it was customary to take off your shoes at the entrance before slipping on the indoor shoes.

The customs weren’t very rigid as I expected. Everyone was hospitable, always giving us something cool to drink and providing us with snacks. I was very impressed with their generosity, and I began to think of ways to be more hospitable in my own life.

The lives Eriko and her family lead was simple, as were the rest of the people I met. It seemed bland, compared to the hustle and bustle of America, but I understood why. There wasn’t much room for diversity in the culture. Even the lack of disabled person—or people with disabilities who continued to do things like everyone else—showed how little room there was to be a non-contributor to the society. You would only witness a few lame people, but even they made their way around without assistance.

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Today, we toured historical places in Odawara. We went to a couple of memorial houses, the Environmental Enterprise Center, and the Odawara Castle. At the Environmental Enterprise Center, we learned about Odawara City’s recycling affairs, which normally consisted of 9 separate categories in sorting, and how their system reduced pollution for waste disposal.

They burn the “Burnable” waste at super high temperatures before spraying the air with water to decrease CO2 pollution and gas exposure outdoors. The heat from the steam produced from adding water generates electricity for the air conditioners to run and the water run off from the AC’s go to the greenhouse located on the plant’s premises. Though the tour of the facility was unclimatic, their advancement in waste disposal blew my mind.

We went to the Matsunaga Memorial Hall and participated in a traditional tea ceremony and bento lunch. As I sat there, chewing on a piece of tempura shrimp, I gazed out into a view that overlooked the house’s yard. Just sitting there, on the tatami mats and listening to the idle chatter in Japanese, I realized I didn’t want to leave Japan. I felt like I had returned home, and finally figured out what I was missing all these years. It dampered my spirits to remind myself that the stay in Odawara was brief.

We left Matsunaga Memorial Hall, and I felt saddened by the loss of the nostalgic feelings in being there. We went to Odawara Castle, an English-speaking guide showing us through high copper gates from the Edo Period and weaving us through galleries inside the castle. We couldn’t take pictures, so I drew different items, trying to capture what was prohibited by the curators.

At the very top of the castle, we delighted in the most breath-taking view of the city I thought didn’t exist. We explored the gift shop, and I bought something for my co-worker. We left Odawara Castle with gifts, memories, and a handful of digital pictures—most of which included us holding katana.

Our last stop was the Sontoku Memorial Museum. Sontoku, a man who devoted half his life to helping poor villages secure food and battled sporadic whims under social justice, lead a rich and, largely, peaceful life. The museum, though small, displayed life-sized models of Sontoku and his life for others. At the museum, Papa-san met me and tagged along until we bade everyone goodbye as they finished looking at cicada.

We headed home, and at the house, we waited until Mama-san’s arrival. I sat on the window sill, reading with my feet on the balcony before they called me down. Together, we drove 30 minutes to a 100 yen shop named Daisko. It was a store with everything, from food to organizers to buttons to flags. I picked out 2 pairs of arm warmers, a belt, and souvenirs that were of good quality. My host parents paid for it, totaling under 2,000 yen before we went to a dessert store and bought manjyu (a type of sweet) and ice cream. They let me pick out the green tea wafer ice cream, where a cone wafer surrounded a glob of green tea ice cream. When we returned home, Eriko was waiting for us, and she asked about my day.

Mama-san served me curry with rice, seaweed soup, and cucumbers with tomatoes before I got my hands on one of the treasured green tea ice cream bars. It was good, in spite of the somewhat stale wafer, but I love green tea ice cream. Eriko had me translate a French card after dinner and we started talking about slang, dialects, and accents until we drifted to bed. I slept soundly for most of the 8 hours of sleep I had. Though the day was simple, I was far fatigued.