2. Walking with ghosts.

Through the ol’ neighborhood.

After my 5-6 km walk between stations after my one class on Wednesday, I detrained at the express station in my town. Two options are available if I desire to go “home”. One is to change to the local line that will take me past the house and then walk back towards the express station to reach my destination. The trains being crowded this time of the day and I perfectly dressed for the weather, I opted for the second and walked from the express station. The walk from this station is about a mile and is a little more than double the distance from the local line station on the other side of the house.

This is a route that I have walked alone, with my fiancé turned wife, both just the two of us and with her parents, and with the kids and as a family. My then fiancé and I would often walk from this more distant station to her parents’ condo that was along the street we would eventually buy a home on despite it being much closer to the local line station. There used to be many small businesses and shops along this ancient kaido. I recently counted the ones that are no more and came up with over a dozen that are no more. As I walked back Wednesday, the memories flooded back as they always do, but not in the same way.

Close to the station is the local brew pub. Though it opened shortly before the panic hit, we still created a lot of fond memories there. Before it closed in 2018, the department store in town had a section for locally produced consumables and I would occasionally buy beer from this brewer. I was glad to see that they opened a brew pub after losing this distribution site. We used to walk down town for various kids events or just to get out of the house. After this place opened, the trip home always included a stop here for a drink of excellent local brew for the wife and I and homemade potato salad for the kids, they love potato salad. Who doesn’t? Then we would walk past the site of a family owned restaurant that my wife and I enjoyed but went out of business close to two decades ago and has been replaced by a succession of Chinese restaurants, none of which have been all that good. Laughing and joking, we walked past a convenience store that sat atop a monstrously large concrete foundation near the crest of the hill a train line runs along the top of. I think that there once was a large building there that was torn down and the tiny by comparison convenience store built in its place. Long since torn down along with the crazy concrete mass it rested upon, a large condominium has taken its place. Across the street was an ugly, run down looking apartment building with a furniture store occupying the first floor. We shopped here for furniture for our newly purchased home but did not buy anything there. It too has been replaced in the last couple of years by a brand new condominium. That part of the city looks much nicer than before.

Across the tracks is the maternity clinic where our kids entered this world. The convoluted emotions that afflict me as I pass it now cannot be expressed in any language. The ghosts are particularly strong here. Two lots down the hill is the parking lot for the maternity clinic. There used to be a Sento, public bath here. When we first moved in to our home, we once bathed here.

Near the bottom of the reverse side of the hill is the now closed Yamasaki Pan store I rarely stopped in. The first time however is a memory as strong as they come. I was nearing home from the 20 kilometer walk from downtown Tokyo after the big March 11, 2011 earthquake. Not worried for my own safety, I was concerned about the house and our two cats but more so for my wife. There was a large column of smoke arising from the general direction of where she worked. We could not contact each other with our cell phones and our text messages were not getting through. I finally got a message from her telling me she was safe. Greatly relieved at first but less so each time the same message appeared in my mail box. The signals all messed up, many messages never reached their destinations and many others kept being received repeatedly. Finally, after passing a flattened video game arcade near the express station, I finally made contact with her over the phone. Her building being newly built did not suffer the damage that the building I was in did and they were all going to stay there the night. Now freezing as I had dressed for the train, which is usually too hot for me and not for the near freezing temps outside, it snowed earlier that day, just flurries, but still cold. While walking, I was plenty warm but stopping to talk with my wife, I quickly got cold and began to shiver. Relieved but now cold, I stopped in the Yamasaki convenience store for the first time, for a 6 pack of beer. Talking with the 80 something shop keeper, she told me that the quake was by far the largest she had ever experienced.

Turning the corner, on the same side of the street is the sporting goods, vintage clothing store that provides the kids their school’s athletic wear. The owner is a member of the matsuri group though he never attends the meetings. Across the street is the home of the chief musician of the matsuri music troupe the wife and kids belong to as drummers. A short distance down is the small community center where the matsuri group holds its meetings and the music troupe practices. On the other side of the building is the path leading up to the small shrine atop its tiny hill. It is here I hid to observe the oldest child as they returned from school the first time they were able to do so alone. I was worried but did not want them to think that they were be followed by daddy. Across the street is the location of the Hokkaido bar we would also stop by on the way home from down town. First we would stop for a local brew or two and potato salad then at the Hokkaido bar for a light dinner of food and beer from Hokkaido. The barkeep also joined the matsuri group and we knew him quite well. He saw me hiding from my kid but did not betray me to them as they greeted each other on the latter’s way home from school. Sadly, this bar did not survive the lockdowns lite.

It was replaced by another bar that all in the family have been to several time but never together. The wife took the kids there one night I was working and I went several times after our monthly matsuri group meetings. They also went there for the party after the matsuri last October. Many of the members not residing in the Chokai, they were not allowed in the chokais’s community center. Boy, did this cause a row! Who’d a thunk it?

It too has recently gone out of business. The building is now empty. Next to is a home that was once a bicycle shop, the other side is now an empty lot. It once hosted a paint shop that was derelict for so long it collapsed, fouling the air of the whole neighborhood until the Hokkaido shop’s master paid someone to clean it all up.

A few doors down are the Oshare (stylish) house and that of the dog people. I plan a vignette on these in a book that I am writing on the suggestion of several of my substack readers. The dog people were thus nicknamed for almost every time we walked past this home, the occupants were just going out or returning from walking their two massive dogs. We would bet amongst ourselves on whether or not the dog people would be out when we passed.

Opposite the dog people’s home was the dry cleaning shop operated by the elderly matsuri group member who wanted to teach the festival dance to my kids. He is now over 90 with an infirm wife and has retired from both the group and his business.

Passing under the bridge that goes over the tracks, we are now in the home stretch. Just after the bridge is a new house that is now recently empty, its once nice and immaculately well kept garden now overgrown with neglect. A couple of doors down is the now long empty shed sized structure that was once a dry cleaners pick up and drop-off site. A little further is a shed in the sizable garden of an old but well maintained home. For years there were figurines of a duck and I forget what else on top visible to those who walked close enough. The duck is still there but now rests upon its side, its bottom visible to me but no one else in the family due to my height being greater than theirs. We used to joke that it flew away. Across the street is the empty house I featured in an earlier post.

Just before the intersection closest to the house, the one that recently got a stop light, is what was once a nondescript farm house behind a brick wall. The granddaughter had it restored and opened it as an art gallery and coffee house that hosts parties, weddings and numerous events for kids and adults. Just as the panic was being ramped up, they hosted an exposition for a watercolor artist. His featured works were of buildings along the Kaido (Ancient highway) that our home is along side of. These include the shrine we are members of the festival (matsuri) group for, various other shrines and temples and several old homes including the farm house hosting the event. I bought several of these and they grace the walls of our home. I have art works depicting famous sites I have visited but have never had the opportunity to have any of places close to home and heart.

The ones I bought include two homes that have been demolished during the panic. One was in the opposite direction of our home from the express station and housed a coffee house in one half. The shop keepers of the coffee house changed several times but we would always stop by here when we walked either to or from the department store. The last coffee shop was an Indonesian coffee shop house that had a sweet drink the kids loved. The old building along the street was just the front of a complex of houses and out buildings that were once a farmstead. These were hosts of various markets and children’s activities over the early years of our children’s lives. Lots of memories here.

I bought two watercolor renderings of the shop, one is on the wall opposite me now and in my mind I see my family seated outside enjoying our drinks. The contractors are finishing up on the condo that stole its site.

The coffee shop was in the right half of the building.

The other is of an immaculately maintained classic home that the kids and I walked past every morning as I took them to nursery, preschool and kindergarten. The family tore it down recently and replaced it with a smaller modern home. Glad to have the watercolor of this and the photos I took of it. There used to be a half dozen or so homes of classic architecture along our street within a couple of blocks from our home. Only two remain. Wish I captured images of the others before they were no more.

The house that is no more.

Another painting is of a spot further in the direction opposite the house. It is of the city’s main shrine. It is here our kids were brought for various age related ceremonies including 7, 5, 3 day. The photos I have of them running across the bridge with the shrine in the background are among my favorites. They capture the happiness of that day.

The city’s main shrine.

A couple of other watercolors are of a temple further past our home that we sometimes visited for new years, usually on the New Year’s Day or a day or two after. Took my parents there when they last visited.

Two watercolors of the temple we after visit for new years. The one I took my parents to.

Yet another is a couple of local train stops further past the house. It is of an Edo era building that was a boarding house for travelers along the Kaido on their way to or from Edo. I wanted this but the oldest kid remembered the building from a trip to the area a few years before, so I bought it for them. That will remain here, the others I will take back to the states with me.

The ancient way over station. Gift to the oldest child.

The path to the neighborhood shrine.

Even when buying these on the eve of the panic, Feb. 2020, I had a melancholic feeling that they would eventually hang on the walls of wherever I lived alone to serve as memories of happier times. The storm clouds forming on the horizon were easy to discern and they filled me with foreboding. I did not fear the disease, whatever it would turn out to be, but had a premonition that our response to it would be far more destructive. I guess those ghosts of the future were warning me.

Turning right at the newly stop lighted interchange as we tread home from the express station or left if coming from the house will take you to the park closest to our home. I have photos from the kids’ first times there and with my parents playing with them when they came for their last visit 9 years ago. The kids learned to ride their bikes in this park.

Before the panic, each summer the Oban festival was held in this park. We would learn of it either by seeing the preparations for it as we drove past the park for shopping or whatever reason or, most likely, by the sound of the drum. Upon hearing the drum, whatever we were doing was dropped and we would head on over. As the kids got a bit older, they would change into jimbei first. The wife and I would enjoy popcorn and draft beer as the kids had snow cones and ran around with their friends. Lots of fond memories created here too. Covid killed this once yearly festival. It is not known if they will ever hold it again. They haven’t since summer 2019.

A few doors down from the traffic light is the house in which I have lived for 20 years this summer. I have lived within its confines longer than I have lived in any house. The next longest is my parent’s current home. We moved in between my 1st and 2nd grades, so that’s what, when I was 6 years old. I left when I was 18 for the navy, that’s 12 years in that home. Across the street, every time I leave home I see the two orange kittens that once lived under the neighbors house escaping from me as I tried to rescue them. One of these two along with two of his sisters and mother I would eventually successfully rescue, but one of the orange kittens I could not catch in time. It fell ill and cried terribly when its mother and siblings left to hunt. My wife and I tried to a capture it but it kept running into our neighbor’s yard and we could not. I am haunted by visions from memory of its playing in the neighbor’s and our yard, even in our house! And it’s crying. And by its body found just a yard or so from its brother whom I did rescue and after a lot of care on my part, is now the oldest kid’s cat.

At the end of the approach to the house is the stone lantern I bought for professional gardeners to install. It is lit with a solar sensor, coming on automatically at sundown. The yard where I prepared many Christmas turkeys as the ovens in most Japanese abodes are far too small to roast a full bird is full of memories of these preparations and BBQ parties.

With my wife’s blessing, I brought over from the States a lot of art work I picked up in my travels. Nothing like Christies would auction off. Apart from the two limited edition signed artist prints that I had professionally framed, most are prints of places I have visited, nautical prints or from news magazines from the civil war era. I have a collection of prints from Commodore Perry’s official report to Congress, a few of which are framed and on the wall. One a birthday gift from my preexwife. Have a lot of ukiyoe too, most predating meeting my wife by several years.

And the ochoko collection. Nihonshu, “saki/sake” to we from the States, is a drink that when I first had it in Yokosuka did not impress me. However, after living for a year in Niigata, I learned that if one enjoys adult beverages, there is a nihonshu that will suit their tastes. I began to collect ochoko and guinomi, sake cups. One of our first dates was to a Japanese craftsman’s exposition at a department store and my future wife, soon to be exwife, strongly encouraged me to buy a Bizenyaki ochoko. She would throughout our time together find nice pieces for my consideration. When in the navy, I sought local crafts or art as momentous. However, I have a standing rule, that had to be useable. Thus my collection of pottery and lacquer ware. Each item serves as a link to the memories of the trip I was on and those I was with when I bought it or the students, classes or friends that gave them to me. Just yesterday, she was complaining of the room the sake cups take up in the sideboard.