Emotional Storms Continue

Visited a close friend today for the first time since the panic began. We met, she and I, in the elevator in the Kodan, public housing, building we both lived in at the time. We were surprised to get off on the same floor and let each other know where are apartments were. The next day was a post card in our door mail slot advertising her art exposition. My wife and I decided to go, she (A-san) was elated and we have been friends with the family for over 20 years now. Shortly afterwards, my wife went to the US for three months on a secondment for her company. When I returned late at night while she was gone there would be a bento for me tied to the door knob prepared by A-san.

We, my wife and I, meet two of her sons before they married and attended the weddings of both. The other son was already married but we met both of their children while they were still babes. All attended our house warming party when we moved in to our new home where a major musician, a friend of A-san who had become our friend as well, performed and my mother in law sang. She had been taking classes (art) from A-san for some time after we met and she and A-san became friends before A-san realized she was my wife’s mother.

We have traveled various places far afield from the Kanto Plain (where Tokyo is found) staying at friends’ of her’s homes who acted as tour guides around their areas. We have attended many concerts and art expositions in Tokyo together. The Kid’s first sleep over was at A-san’s when her grand kids were visiting.

In time, we met her brothers. One talked very little and hated being fussed over. The other, overly talkative as if to make up for his brother’s silence. Perhaps the silent one was making up for his chatty brother. The talkative one ran his own restaurant in the shitamachi part of Tokyo and the food was excellent. Whenever I stopped by, he would call his sister and give me the phone and she would thank me for stopping by his restaurant. He had to close due to a health condition that he recovered from. He now helps out and a former employee’s restaurant.

The quiet brother often invited his sister and my wife and I out to his favorite restaurants; A Fugu (puffer fish) restaurant and a couple Chinese joints the main ones. He never allowed us to pay. He never married and treated us as his grown kids. When my parents last visited Japan, A-san invited all of us over and her brother was there too. He and my dad got along very well enjoying Japanese whiskey together.

For Hanami he invited and treated his nephews, their families A-san, his sister and us along. He reserved his favorite yakitori place that was one of those places that unless you had been forced somehow to enter and learn the reality of, you’d never set foot in it. A rundown, some what dilapidated, dingy kind of place that are far more common in Japan that the slick stylish restaurants seen in movies that was run by an elderly married couple who put to shame both the service and quality of food served in places most tourists would go to. The husband told us that despite the menu on the wall written on yellowed paper, he could make anything we could ask for. Whatever we asked for, whether on the menu or not, he produced and it was excellent. Our host for these yearly events, A-san’s silent brother, would caution throughout the evening to save room for Unagi, eel. This is not cheap but he ordered one served on a bed of rice and served in a lacquer box for each of us. Excellent. The wife would drive us to the train station after we settled the bill.

We did not get the invitation for 2019 and felt close enough to inquire why. He retired and could not pay for this any more. “Oh, didn’t be silly! We can easily cover yours in addition to our own.” He accepted our invitation but it was too late to reserve the whole place for after we had Hanami for that year, so we planned to do so next year, 2020. The usual place had already set down in anticipation to lockdown as did many. He retired at 70 in part because he suffered heat stroke the year before and we, A-san, my wife and I thought it best not to meet yet due to whatever was circulating out there. I was not ever concerned about it for myself and family, but he was much older and had known health issues. But the lockdowns and fear mongering continued for another 4 years.

During this time, we lost touch with most everyone besides family and relations with some members of these strained past breaking points. The relationship between myself and my wife and kids being as you already know, there wasn’t even much thought of reestablishing contact with most. What’s the point? “Oh! How wonderful to see you after five years. We’re getting divorced, how have things been with you”? Just didn’t seem like fun to me. True, my wife did not change to being my preexwife until more recently but the fracture was already apparent. In fact, as it turned out, the day before my wife told me I had to leave her house, she got an email from A-san informing us that her brother had passed away. His funeral was a month prior to this notification.

Today we learned that he had stayed in his apartment alone for the 5 years of the panic leaving for the most part, only for shopping. He did cancel his newspaper subscription so that he would have a reason to get up and go for a walk every morning, to pick one up at a newsstand. That is what led to the discovery that he was no longer with us, he missed his walk two days in a row and did not answer his door bell. He died alone, in his apartment and was there for 2 days before discovered.

Sometime during that past year or so, I had the thought of going to the yakitori joint he treated us at. Not sure why, but I had the idea. Learned today that the old man running it died during the panic and he and the place are also no more.

He, the silent brother and I shared a common interest in ukiyoe, Japanese woodblock prints. In 2008 he went to exposition in Tokyo of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts Ukiyoe collection. There, he bought and later gave me a modern woodblock copy of a famous Edo era print. It currently hangs in our foyer, the first thing one sees when they enter the house. He left behind many books. When his three nephews went through them and came across the catalogue of the exposition he bought. All three thought I should have it and I brought it home from A-san’s today. On page 124 is the print he gave me. I am looking through the book as I drink beer he bought but left before he could drink it himself. A-san brought all the unopened alchohol from his apartment to hers and had us take some beer and three small bottles of nihonshu (sake) with us.

The print on the left of the photo is the one he gave me. I hung here for a number of years before we moved it to the foyer. Our Foo cat, departed two years ago at 18 or 19 years of age, is at the right of the photo looking out the sliding glass door. The wine bottle is in a lacquer stand that was a gift from A-san.

I started what I thought would be at least a 3 part series on what the panic took from us quite some time ago here on substack. I have not finished part three as it was too painful. Not being able to meet with these friends and especially to host our long time host was one of the hard parts to write about. Now that he is gone, it is even more so.