I scrambled into some clothes and stuck my head into the bathroom where Mariko was just stepping out of the shower, a towel wrapped around her head. “There’s someone from the television show here. I’m going to meet her in the lobby. Want to come?”
“Sure. Just give me a minute to get on my clothes and fix my hair.”
Mariko was true to her word, and it only was a few minutes before we were going down in the elevator. In the lobby bar of the Imperial, Junko was sitting at a table sipping a drink. She saw us and she got a quizzical look on her face.
“This is my girlfriend, Mariko Kosaka,” I told Junko as we sat down. “She flew in this evening from Los Angeles to surprise me. If it’s possible, she’d like to get tickets to go to Kyoto with me tomorrow.”
Junko looked a bit flustered, but she assured me that there would be no problem getting an extra train ticket in the morning.
“You said you had more information about the swords,” I reminded her.
“Oh yes.” She took some papers out of her purse and handed them to me. They were two faxes. One looked like a page from an auction catalog. It showed a Japanese samurai sword, with the markings on the blade just barely visible. The other page looked like a museum brochure of some kind, but the writing was in Dutch or German. There was a small picture of a samurai sword on this page, along with a drawing of an old sailing ship of some sort. The sword was the bare blade, without the handle.
“The auction catalog is the New York blade. It’s not a very good picture, but you can just make out the design on the blade. The other fax is from the Dutch Shipping Museum in Rotterdam. The sword picture on that one is pretty poor quality, but it was the best they were able to come up with. I thought these might help you,” Junko said.
I looked at the two faxes closely, but the images were too muddled to really tell me anything. Still, it was better than nothing and I thanked Junko profusely for her efforts. The three of us sat in the bar for about half an hour discussing the arrangements in Kyoto. Mariko, who is a recovering alcoholic, sipped an orange juice and I did the same. I didn’t like meeting in the bar because it was unfair to Mariko, but I didn’t want Junko up in my room with the bed mussed up the way it was. Despite being a child of the swinging sixties, I’m modest.
When we were done with our discussion, Junko said goodbye and Mariko and I went to the elevator to return to my room. When the doors of the elevator closed, Mariko said, “It’s just as well that I came to Japan.”
“Why?”
“I think Junko might be a little interested in you.”
14
The blue-and-white bullet train slid into the station like a slinking beast. Junko, Mariko, and I were standing on the platform. Mariko and I had baggage in hand. When the train stopped, the doors slid open and we walked into the car.
The interior of the train was off-white and gray with polished aluminum strips framing the windows. The bench seats had a bright blue upholstery, and over the seats was a luggage rack of polished tubular aluminum. Mariko and I found a seat and slung our luggage on the overhead racks.
“How long will the train stop?” I asked.
“Only a few minutes,” Junko said. “I’d better say good-bye now. Have fun in Kyoto, and remember that a car and guide will meet you when you arrive. The dinner with Mr. Sonoda is all arranged. I’ll see you in two days for the program.” Junko shook my hand, then said to Mariko, “It was nice meeting you.” Then she left us to return to the platform.
“She’s interested in you, all right,” Mariko said. “I’ve got frostbite from that send-off.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. I feigned indifference, but secretly I hoped Mariko was right. I was very happy with Mariko and had no intention of being unfaithful to her, but let’s face it, nothing is as great for the ego as someone finding you desirable.
In under five minutes the train started moving. The doors closed and the car shuddered slightly as the train left the station. I marveled at how smooth and quiet the train was. Much smoother and quieter than any train in the U.S. I’ve ever been on.
“How fast do you think we’ll be going?” Mariko asked.
“We’re on the Nozomi train, which is supposed to be the super express. The guidebooks say we’ll do a hundred eighty or ninety kilometers per hour. If it’s a clear day we should be able to see Mount Fuji on the trip.”
Mariko was dressed in black slacks, a dark green turtleneck sweater, and a green jacket. The slim line of the slacks fitted her trim body and made her look much taller than she really was. I had jeans, a shirt, and a ski parka on.
“How long will it take us?”
“A little more than two hours.”
As we passed through Tokyo, I could see the density of the buildings gradually thinning until houses started having small yards in the back. These houses had little vegetable gardens and weren’t as tightly packed as the buildings in the city, but they were still crowded by American standards. As we reached the outskirts of Tokyo, we could see Mount Fuji in the distant haze, looking like a painted white cone on pale gray silk. In the old days Mount Fuji could be seen from Tokyo almost every day, but smog and smoke now make Fuji a rare sight from the city.
Soon the houses gave way to farmland. The farms were densely cultivated plots in a patchwork quilt. All the plots of land were small and most were flooded with water. Rice paddies. I could see a cluster of houses that formed a small village tucked into the folds of a foothill. On the hill, near a grove of trees, were Buddhist and Shinto headstones that marked a cemetery. The farmland looked very picturesque, and except for the occasional TV antenna or pickup truck, I imagine you could find hundred-year-old woodblock prints that depicted a landscape similar to the one out the window.
When we arrived in Kyoto there was a limo with an English-speaking driver waiting to take us to our hotel. I could get used to this television lifestyle.
That afternoon the driver took us to the Kyoto Gosho, the old Imperial Palace from the days when Kyoto used to be the capital of Japan. Afterwards we were taken to a craft center where we looked at pottery and woodblock prints. I love Japanese woodblock prints, but the high prices kept us from buying, except for a rather nice vase that Mariko said was for Mrs. Kawashiri.
The next day we were taken to a bewildering succession of temples and shrines. Kyoto has over sixteen hundred temples, and our driver seemed determined to show us all of them. He was an affable man in his late thirties. Despite his smile, the rest of his face had a strained look, as if we were always behind some unstated timetable. When he drove he hunched over the wheel like Mickey Rooney in the camp autoracing movie, The Big Wheel, but, despite his intense posture, he didn’t speed. Of the numerous temples we were shown, only Kinkaku-ji, the Golden Pavilion, was memorable, and most of the others sort of blurred into my memory until we got to Ryoanji.
The garden at Ryoanji is a rectangular expanse of white sand fenced on two sides by an austere plaster wall. A verandah made of natural wood borders the other two sides of the garden. The wood of the verandah has been polished to a hard, gleaming brown by uncounted stocking feet gliding across its surface.
In the center of the sand stand fifteen rocks protruding upward. The rocks were set so you couldn’t see all of them no matter what your viewing angle was. Small bits of moss clung to the base of most of the rocks. The sand between the rocks was carefully raked to form wavelike patterns that sinuously wound their way around the rocks and throughout the expanse of the garden.
“Ryoanji was first made in the fifteenth century.” Mariko was reading from a brochure we got when we entered. “It’s famous because of its connection with Zen Buddhism.”