Shosenkyo gorge (5-23-10)

The consecutive holidays in May, so called “Golden Week,” lasted from the 2nd (Sunday) to the 5th (Wednesday) in my case this year. My mother’s birthday sneaked on the 5th.

What present did she expect from me? The answer would customarily be some cod roe, but for this year I settled on a different idea. We planned a trip to my father’s hometown, Yamanashi prefecture, to go on together. I had two major purposes: making prayers to the graves of my father and grandparents, and leisure.

My mother had a feud with my grandmother when she was alive, which was formed through a gap between their social statuses. Their mutual hostility developed steeply after my father passed away more than twenty-five years ago, when I was 8.

Although I myself asked my grandmother for my staying overnight almost every consecutive holidays--and I did so as her schedule allowed my stay--after her husband passed away, this uneasy relationship prohibited my mother from going to Yamanashi until my grandmother was hit by a brain stroke which led her to being hospitalized and eventually drawing her last breath in 2007, when she was over ninety.

My mother suggested this trip with me, which would be the first time for her in quite a while after having talks with other relatives at funeral gatherings held on the death of my grandmother. (The talked-on issue was about inheritance.) Although praying for my father and his parents was in the first place, I also hoped that a sense of union would work as an integrated present for my mother’s birthday and Mother’s Day on the 9th.

We met up together in the morning on the 4th at the Ikebukuro rail station in central Tokyo. I respected the 4th for my filial piety and scheduled a visit to the graveyard for the next day.

To get to Kofu, the capital city of Yamanashi, while limited express trains from the Shinjuku station are an enabler for a 90-minute boarding, connecting local trains is still in a range of comfort adding about 40 minutes. (The latter way requires 1,950 yen while the former does 2,210 yen.) Either way gives passengers shifting views from the seas of buildings into idyllic villages which are enclosed by tree-covered mountains. In particular at night, as soon as the train gets out of the long Sasago tunnel, what comes next is a fantastic view of artificial lights sprinkled colorfully over a distance!

My grandparents’ two-storied detached house was located in a town of Ichinomiya, one of those which sat vineyards and peach farms. A range of verdant mountains and the bluish Alps oversaw the lives of the local people from afar. My grandmother and grandfather used to teach Japanese and history respectively at Hikawa high school. (He became the principal once.) An a-few-minute walk from their house, there was a mansion of honke, the main family. Such a clan sharing the same surname was rather frequently seen just within a borough.

As I look back to the days when both of my grandparents were alive, the local community kept high standards of discipline and etiquette. The atmosphere around my grandparents’ house must have been redolent of a sense of pride or pedigree.

In my childhood, there were some things I hated on every visit to Yamanashi. Having worked in education, my grandmother frequently gave me questions about kanji/Chinese characters written on fliers. She would never approve of me reading comics. Separate from school-associated inculcation, it was really irritating to memorize the names of train stations in the right order. She bristled at seeing me eating mandarin oranges with peeling just the thickest skin off, and had me cower, while she herself never neglected to do the thinnest skins right on the wedges. (Which way would do more harm to the stomach?) And she ran a meticulous calculation after I washed my hair with hot water out of the bathtub!

Meanwhile, the personality of my grandfather was seemingly milder, as he was partly passive-aggressive, and leniency was probably one of all the charms of his, for which many of his students bothered to make a distant visit on their days off, some of which overlapped my vacations.

Across a tablecloth-covered short rectangular wooden table on tatami, he was sharing conversation with a guest, a total stranger to me. My grandmother was busy catering, moving back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. Where was I, meanwhile? In many cases I opted to play a hand-held video game before the début of Nintendo or in my older time read something for kids upstairs.

Still, my grandparents didn’t allow me to speak and disturb the sounds of the TV news during dinner, a family in which my father grew up.

However spiteful my grandmother was perceived, it was unimaginable for me to completely leave her alone after my father and grandfather were gone. (The latter probably did so about 12 years ago when he was 73 or some age quite near.)

Through the loss of her husband, interestingly, there was a visible change in her attitude to me. Every time I met her, she expressed gratitude for my coming, something which had never been seen before as far as I remember. Despite hateful kanji questions--this time around, mainly from the names of people--and less frequent nagging, she cooked vegetables which she with a distinctive stoop had grown on her own, using a corner of the yet defunct vineyard behind the house. Along with eggplants, sticks of okura and so on, there were cherry tomatoes. She ate only their skins, eliminating seeds. At a meal or more, a somewhat funny scene was when she was not conscious of her denture off the palate. Still, it just took her seconds to begin criticizing after finding me reveling in reading a video-game magazine, an item which helped feel nostalgic.

We took a bus ride to Kofu when her mobility was better. Still, in the process of getting to the closest bus stop, I walked further ahead of my grandmother because she didn’t want her acquaintances or the members of the main house to identify us together on the way. Meanwhile, we had another custom of sharing lunch on the day of my returning to Tokyo at a branch of the Fujiya restaurant chain near the Yamanashishi station. Yet as her age accrued, she began preferring delivering sushi and getting some vegetable-based sides to taking a taxi to the restaurant. This revised custom with cooking lasted until my latest visits.

Now, I, with my mother, yet in Kofu, felt like coffee in the Yamako department store near the Kofu station, since I and my grandmother had relished a cup at a cafe many times. I suggested some walking to my mother, but when my memories were nevertheless not completely clear about the location of the cafe, my mother could hardly suppress irritation. Her face was being lined. In response, I was irritated, shouting in my mind something like, “Don’t make a face at me, please!” In the absence of a good relationship with my grandmother, unfortunately, she had nothing to do with the coffee place.

She actually wanted me to go to Shosenkyo gorge together. There was convenient bus access from a terminal in the rotary before the Kofu station: To get to Shosenkyo Taki Ue, a bus stop at the highest altitude, required only 50 minutes and 870 yen. (To get off midway meant each smaller figure.) Walking up a slope would have likely promised impressive views, but we got off the bus at Shosenkyo Taki Ue for the sake of convenience.

As this was my second Shosenkyo visit after the first one which was also with my mother on a different main purpose, we forewent having time in the museum of shadowgraph near the bus stop.

A long ascending street took tourists to a ropeway terminal. There was a street vendor selling skewered iwana fish cooked with immediate fire, but we passed the chance up this time.

The street was lined with restaurants and souvenir shops, as many as all of which sold bunches of Amethyst and other kinds of jewelry. Although a dog was sitting in a storefront, I hesitated to approach the dog because my right index finger had recently been bitten by a puppy. Regardless of the shadowgraph museum for us, a separate museum named CRYSTAL SOUND which displayed jewelry would serve us our first visit. On the second floor of the building, what would impress me a lot was a selection which was immaculately glittering in the darkness behind the glass wall: each jewel symbolized a birth month. After we left the jewelry museum, a magnificent landscape seen from the peak bore testimony to an article of the Yomiuri Shimbun, which was put up inside the cabin of the upper ropeway terminal: the second best sightseeing spot in Japan. After all, we ate mitsumame, a Japanese sweet, at a sweets-featuring restaurant and later iwana on our way to a health center, a kind of recreational center with spas, where we were going to stay overnight.

Isawa-onsen was the second stop from the Kofu train station. A walk to the health center from the Isawa-onsen station probably took 20 minutes or so, though my mother used the center’s shuttle bus. I and my mother were accustomed to staying in each TV room, which was separated by gender and filled with sets of a TV and a reclining bed, and which helped us reduce accommodation charges to some over 3,000 yen per night. As this pay even included a de facto pass for taking spas, using the Internet and reading comics, the cheerful, homey atmosphere which suffused the building gave a lot of challenge to hotels. Take just spas, for example. A variety of them, like one laced with tea leaves, carrots or something else, a milky one, or one with slight electricity, were in good harmony. Wish there were no barring to tattoo-worn customers!

Yet in the morning as I was indulging myself with spas after breakfast, the second time during the stay, I would hardly get in time for the check-out. As soon as I checked my cell-phone in the spacious locker room, it was found that my mother had called me. Then, an announcement went around, communicating that my mother was looking for me. This embarrassing moment was soon followed by quibbling. I only wished: Please don’t release your frustration as freely as you want!

The graveyard was closely off a street, between my grandparents’ house and the closest bus stop. We took a taxi at the health center. My mother acted out of turn again: In getting out of the taxi, she preset the time and said to the chauffeur, “We will come back in 15 minutes, so please wait here.” My following thought was like, Hey, only 15 minutes? Is praying for them not the main reason for this trip? I had opposed the 15-minute limit, but sadly her recalcitrance found no effective backfire from me.

Although I retained some memories of where the gravestones of my father and grandparents were, ferreting those out of other analogous ones couldn’t be easiest. During the search, I was sensing as if the sun was intensifying the heat. This is! Yet I first found a pile of stones with one inscribed with my grandmother’s name and briefly made a silent prayer to her spirit. Followingly, after running inspections from grave to grave again, I found my grandfather’s and conducted the same way. Where is my father’s? All of a sudden, an unexpected answer to my quest flew from my mother: “The time is up! We’ve got to go!”

It was obvious that she didn’t pray for any of them and I could not help asking questions in mind: What were you doing while I was searching for the right gravestones?; Who was your husband? As I was confidently unable to change her such nature, I had to grovel, shouting quietly, “I want to go back to Tokyo ASAP!” And we shut the door of the taxi to head for the Yamanashishi station on our way home.

Afterwards, I don’t mind saying that the moment I came back home I felt as if I was a released prisoner, although I hadn’t committed a crime.

My condominium is located minutes’ walk from Tobunerima rail station. This station is right next to the Kamiitabashi station which is the closest to my mother’s apartment.

I know well how bad my mother’s temper is. Her untidiness is incurable, to boot. Though, I also understand how much she has solely devoted herself to me even awkwardly: In order to make a living and prepare my school fees, she kept redeeming a given quota every month at a major health insurance company for more than ten years. I chose and bought the condominium at the location and started a refreshed life about three and a half years ago. I conventionally tend to be allergic to my mother’s behavior, but I don’t regret my choice.

As I have heard from someone whom I don’t remember exactly that both my mother and father eloped together in Yokosuka, Kanagawa prefecture, from Tokyo where my father’s university was located when my grandparents were unwilling to approve of their romance alluding to a gap in social status, as the paternal side might have looked to earn a little higher public recognition. My father must have spotted long-sought freedom deep within my mother’s personality and character. (Meanwhile, strangely, my grandmother might have found it easier to praise my maternal grandfather and Junichiro Koizumi, the former prime minister of Japan, after her husband passed away.)

The hospital to which my father was dispatched by an ambulance after he suffered a brain stroke is located between the Tobunerima station and the Kamiitabashi station. When I and my mother are asleep at each home at night, so may my father at the hospital. Then, we, in these three separate locations, might look a kanji character “川 (sounding kawa)” which means a river, like when we used to sleep together in the same living room. My grandmother may be looking at our area from the sky, while tossing a denture inside her mouth.

After all, I would say, that was not that bad a trip for me.