“This room has central heating?”
“Yes. She said she had it added to this wing and the main entry wing. See, all the comforts of home. It just looks old-fashioned. What more could you want? You’re the king surrounded by two queens.”
I looked around, “Well, I could ask for a bedroom, and for that matter a bed.”
“Sakurai-san’s son will show up with the luggage any minute and we can eat dinner. We’ll have the dinner brought to our room, ryokan style. After that, someone will come and lay out the futons for you. Futons are sort of a padded mat. They roll right out on top of the tatamis. I think you’ll find them comfortable. I’ll be relaxing in a Western-style bed.”
Ryokan living was a combination of camping out and being treated like Japanese royalty. We sat on cushions on the tatami floor as our dinner was served to us in the room by Mrs. Sakurai and one of her daughters. They didn’t go through all the folderol of the Kori-Mizu in Kyoto, but the atmosphere was warm, the food was delicious, and we had a good time. After dinner there was a lull in the conversation because I think we all realized we had a long evening to kill until we could start scouting treasure locations with the coming of the next day.
25
Junko announced, “I’m going to take a shower and then I’m going to bed.”
“Are you sure? Mariko and I are going to play some hanafuda after our bath. You’re welcome to join us. We’re going to play for loose change, and I’m always willing to have another source of money in the game.”
“Can you get hanafuda?”
“Mrs. Sakurai will bring us some hanafuda. I managed to ask during dinner,” Mariko said.
Hanafuda are Japanese playing cards. The name means flower cards. They’re printed on tiny pasteboards, about two and a half inches by one inch. They have suites with things like the moon, plum blossoms, bush clover, pine trees, or maple leaves. Some of the card designs are quite beautiful, with things like deer in a maple forest, birds flying across a full moon, or irises in the rain.
“No, I really am very tired and I want to go to sleep. We should get an early start tomorrow,” Junko said.
“Okay. If you’re going to use a Western-style shower, then Mariko and I will use the Japanese o-furo. We’ll see you in the morning for breakfast. Good night.”
“Good night,” Junko said.
When Junko left, Mariko and I went into the Japanese-style bathroom. The Japanese o-furo tub was a big wooden affair set along one side of the room. The tub was already full and there seemed to be a constant stream of hot water flowing through it from an opening set in the tub’s side. Two benches faced each other in the tub, so it was designed for cozy couples.
I know about o-furos, but I had never actually been in one. I have some non-Japanese friends whose daughter married a Japanese national. When they went to Japan to visit their in-laws, they were offered use of Japanese-style bath first, which is the place of honor. When they were finished, they pulled the plug, draining all the water, which is a social faux pas because it takes so long to heat up the enormous tubs. This mistake was never mentioned by their in-laws, of course.
This difference in bath customs can cause problems in the other direction, too. When my friends had their Japanese in-laws visit them, the Japanese parents of their son-in-law were offered the use of an upstairs bathroom in my friend’s two-story house. This bathroom is tiled, just like most Japanese bathrooms. Unlike most Japanese bathrooms, however, it doesn’t have a drain in the middle of the floor, a detail the Japanese in-laws didn’t notice. My friends were sitting in their living room when they noticed their stairs had turned into an indoor waterfall. Rushing upstairs, they found water flowing from under the bathroom door. Their Japanese in-laws had used the handheld shower mas-sager to clean themselves off before getting into the tub, Japanese style, and the water had caused a flood.
There must have been foreign tourists staying at the ryokan before, because I noticed with amusement that the drain plug on the bath had a little brass padlock on it, making it impossible for a guest to drain the bath. Because the bathwater is not drained between users, it’s tremendously bad etiquette to enter a Japanese tub dirty. I sat on a small plastic stool next to Mariko and soaped myself up and rinsed myself off using a small bucket and wash cloth. The water from this cleansing went into a drain set in the bathroom floor. The erotic possibilities of soaping up Mariko entered my head, and I helped her get clean with verve. Any visions of hot tub orgies I may have had, however, diminished as soon as I started to get into the o-furo.
The water in a hot tub is pleasantly warm, but the water in an o-furo is scalding. It took me a good five minutes to lower myself into it, inching down into the steaming water by slow degrees. Mariko was able to plunge into the water in just a few seconds.
“I feel like the featured dish in a Louisiana crab boil,” I complained.
“Yeah, but after you get used to it, you’ll find the hot water tremendously relaxing. I could see falling asleep in here.”
“If you did you’d be in the burn ward of the local hospital.”
“It’s not that bad.”
“That’s a matter of opinion. There seems to be a constant stream of scalding water coming into this tub.”
“You’re supposed to like it. It’s cultural.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, culturally I’m American, not Japanese.”
As soon as I said that I realized that I meant more than just my preferences in bath water. From the moment I came to Japan, when the customs agent spoke Japanese to me, I was trying to sort out what it meant to return to the land of my ancestors. I felt strangely comfortable in Japan. Sights, sounds, customs, and the faces of the people had a resonance with me that reminded me I come from Japanese stock. But this was an ease that came from preserved memories, not from actually fitting in. Foundations of culture transcend race, and I realized that my culture is American.
No matter how much interest I might have in Japan, no matter how much I learned about it from books and documentaries and even visits, I would never be Japanese. That might seem obvious, but like Buzz Sugimoto, who was dumbfounded when I pointed out that his symbols of rebellion over Japan becoming too Westernized were actually Western, I achieved resolution from a statement which should have been clearly apparent. No matter how uncomfortable I may sometimes feel in America as a minority, I will never fit in better elsewhere, even in Japan where I’m part of the racial majority.
When Mariko and I got back to the main room, the hanafuda cards were waiting for us. We played a game called koi-koi, which is a simple matching game. You pick up cards on the table by matching them to cards of the same suite in your hand. You try to get the highest-scoring cards, and simple design changes on the cards, like a colored ribbon as part of the design, indicate the value of cards. It’s mostly luck, or at least that’s what I told myself as Mariko wiped me out in short order. If I had won, then I would have opined that koi-koi is a game of skill, of course.
“Can I ask you something, Ken?” Mariko said as she leaned forward and scooped up the winnings from her latest hand. Her yukata was left open, revealing an expanse of skin and one breast. I don’t know if this was through negligence or if it was a ploy to distract me from the game. If the latter, it was working.
“Ask me what?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You mean playing cards? With the winning streak you’re on, I’m asking that myself.”