Philippines visit
It pleased me to think that I was going back to Los Baños again because I really liked the place. I also liked the Filipino people, who seemed to be very friendly and were very easy to get to know. Of course, I was dealing with the educated Filipinos in the university town who were different from the ordinary folks, but my later experience with the ordinary people also proved to be just as enjoyable.
I stayed at the international house on campus and soon became very busy with the volunteers who came for training in the rice production that I was to organize. Again, the Farm and Home Development office of the UPLB took over the training of these young people, some of whom were to go to Laos and others to Vietnam.
I had earlier met with a scientist from IRRI in the IVS office in Saigon. It was he who helped with the practical training of the volunteers at the IRRI farm, where they learned to plough the fields with carabaos pulling the instruments or plant the rice seedlings using the dapog method.
The Americans had never even seen the rice plant before, let alone a carabao and had absolutely no idea what was involved in the production of rice, but they learned and got dirty in the mud.
I met many people at IRRI, but had no idea that this institute would one day play a very crucial role in my life. My fate was drawing me closer and closer to this country in an irrevocable way, but I was not aware of it then.
After the training was over and volunteers left the country, I decided to stay on in Los Baños for a while. The cafeteria was next door to the international house, where I took my meals, so I soon came to know Nellie de Guzman and her gang. She was a very fair and pretty girl who was friendly and smiled at me from time to time.
After a few days of smiling, one day she came over and sat down with her food tray next to me and asked my name. I felt a new beginning. Soon I was introduced to Teresita, Ling Ling and many others, and we formed what the Filipinos called a bercada or gang of friends.
This new-found friendship would last a long time. We used to always eat together and go out together. Often we would sit on the steps of the Women’s dorm or the International House and strum guitars and learn to sing Tagalog songs together. The songs I liked best were Sarung Bangi and Silayan. We sang together and clapped our hands and thought tomorrow would never come. There were also a few boys in our group, and they were the nicest Filipino boys I would ever meet.
Nellie and I would be drawn to each other like a moth to a lamp. Who the lamp was, was obvious. She even named one of her newly born nephews Anilito which in Tagalog meant baby Anil, and she always waited for me everywhere when I was not waiting for her everywhere. This was not romance, or at least I did not think of it that way, but she was a very pleasant company and I think she and her barkada genuinely liked me.
Teresita and Ling Ling were also a lot of fun. Then there was Arlene who invited me to her home in Baguio up in the highlands where her younger sister took me around to show me the spots and her parents welcomed me. Back in Los Baños we continued our pleasant days, but we all knew that soon I was to leave for the United States and perhaps never see them again, which made all of us sad.
Visit to Japan
I still had one month of vacation before September when the Cal Poly classes began, so I decided to go to Japan and visit my ex IVS friend Tadeo Hayashi who lived in Tokyo. My Filipino friends were sad but so was I.This was developing into a pattern. I had left many friends in Vietnam whom I would never see again, but I had to move on, so one day I flew into Haneda.
I easily made friends everywhere and was not shy. I tried new things and new places or new food just for the fun of it. There was a daredevil streak in me that I had perhaps picked up in Vietnam.
Tokyo in August 1969 was very different from January. It was warm and sunny. Tadeo came to Haneda to pick me up, so I stayed with his family for a few days and got to know his sisters who said I should call them imotosan.
The mother Hayashi soon sent me to the bathroom to disinfect. That is the proper word after all the grime of Vietnam, but the Japanese are a very clean people, so a bath was a must.
The bathroom was tiny but so was everything in Japan. People lived in small but very functional apartments that were decorated plainly with tatami mats. In one corner of the bathroom stood a cubicle about 3 feet by 3 and about 4 feet tall, covered with a rubber flap on top. This was filled with very hot water. I was supposed to get into that cubicle and roast, so I washed my face and elbows and came out.
This of course did not fool the old lady, who dragged me back to the bathroom and indicated that I must get into the cubicle to take a proper bath. Tadeo explained that I must put a foot slowly down and get used to the heat, and then gradually get into it. It took me some time to get used to that inferno, but slowly I began to relax.
I was soon given a small cup of hot sake to gulp down when I came out weak and sweating but very clean. I choked, not realizing how strong the rice wine was, but it felt good. I was learning the merits of Japanese bath and sake first hand. The warmth spread throughout my body and I felt as if I had been given a new life. The truth was not too far from it.
My stay with the Hayashi family was full of fun. I learned a few words like konnichiwa, kombanwa, imotosan, arigato gozaimasu, chute mate kudasai etc. that I practiced a lot later on my own. They took me to many places of interest in Tokyo like the Ginza, the Ueno park and the Imperial palace. We once went to an immense swimming pool where 10000 people gathered so just imagine the size of it. There were many pools and water jets, so it was great fun.
One day they took me to see a grand spectacle in Asakusa where I saw the dazzling performance of dancers and actors on a vast stage. The settings, decorations, the glitter, lights and stereophonic sound was like nothing I had ever seen anywhere, and I was very impressed. The manager of the theater asked me if I liked the show. The word like was an understatement.
Then Tadeo took me to a festival called Bon Odori where people in yokattas danced around a platform where huge drums were giving the beat. There were paper lanterns everywhere and people wore traditional Japanese clothing that I found quite attractive.
It takes some time to get used to the crowd in Japan, though. In the subway trains, at the Ikebukuro station, on the streets and in fact everywhere one saw the elbow to elbow crowd. Once I went to see a movie, but that was a big mistake. They always sold more tickets than the number of seats, so there were always a lot of people who stood at the back and made a mad dash for a seat when anyone got up. I could not fight such a crowd.
The crowd were on the street one-day mourning the death of Ho Chi Minh, whom they admired. This frail old man had the lion’s courage to stand up to the might of the French and later the Americans but died before his homeland could be free.
In the trains, you had to inch your way toward the door a few stations ahead of time, otherwise you could never get off during the short time the train stopped. The Japanese were a friendly people and always gave you their cards that they always carried.
But the trains in Japan are fast and punctual. I took the bullet train to Kyoto one day and was amazed how fast the train really was. Outside was just a blur, but a glass of water on the window sill could not spill. I also noticed how mountainous the country was. There were a few patches of green here and there, intensely cultivated, but the rest was sheer rocks and endless tunnels through which we passed at a very high speed. Kyoto was far, but the train was not called a bullet train for nothing.
At the railway station, I asked some people if they could suggest a place to stay, but no one understood me. It was getting dark, and I was eager to find a place to stay, but the problem was the language. English was far from becoming a world language, at least in this part of the world. The Japanese people at the Kyoto station were having fun gawking and endlessly chattering, but finally a kind soul arrived and in a few broken words told me that indeed there was a place just near the station that he could recommend.
I walked to the inn and found it to be a delightful place. There were some ex Peace Corps volunteers staying there as well, so I was in good company because no one knew a town better than a Peace Corps volunteer. The rent per day for a bed space on the tatami floor was 500 yen, which was not much. I remember the Japanese girl with big glasses who knew only one word in English. ” You stay? ” To which we nodded and handed over the 500 yen for the day. It was a routine every morning.
The TV was always on whether someone watched or not and mostly not and the bath time was a mad rush because unlike in the west the Japanese baths were a communal affair where 10 or 12 naked Japanese would get in so the water was not very clean afterward so to speak hence the rush to be the first in and out. What took time to get used to was the sight of the naked Japanese in the bathtub, casually chatting. I could never get totally naked, which they just thought funny and laughed.
The Japanese food is excellent. I found that all the restaurants displayed their dishes outside in a showcase with their names and price tags, so it was easy to just point to it when the waitress came to take the order. The display was made of plastic but looked very real. My favorite dish was Unadon which was steamed eel with rice. I also tried sushi in Tokyo once.
At this time the Japan government was getting ready for the Expo in Osaka so learning English to cope with the international visitors was given a priority and many Americans staying at the inn got jobs there, but I went out every day to look at the shrines and temples. Some of the most famous shrines were in Kyoto, like the Ginkakuzi and Shinkakuzi temples.
I do not know why, but girls in most countries are friendlier than boys to foreigners, and Japan was no exception. All you had to do was to smile at them and ask them for directions. Then they will be all over you chattering in English because seldom they get the chance to practice what they learn. I mean, you have to be very old and ugly to be left alone, and I was neither very old nor very mmm. Often they followed me around for blocks, insisting that they accompany me to some place. It got to be embarrassing because I didn’t mean to distract them from whatever they were going to do before we met.
Once I went into a big store where I asked for a hand painted Japanese scroll, but I did not know the word for scroll. The manager did not understand and shook his head, although I tried my best with pantomime, toilet paper etc. but nothing worked so he called for more help that soon arrived. They all chattered incessantly but could not decipher what this foreigner wanted. I finally left when I noticed that they were calling for more people.
One night I went out with a Peace Corps volunteer for a stroll downtown and found a beer pub in a dark alley where the Japanese were gulping down beer like water. The place was full of acrid cigarette smoke. The Japanese took immediate notice and swarmed around chattering, but we just smiled because we did not understand a word. Soon tall bottles of Asahi beer appeared, and they urged us to gulp it down, although it was not my style.
As soon as we finished the first bottle, new ones arrived, and they would not let us pay for them. The Japanese were having a whale of a good time, but we were in trouble, so we left after a while to their disappointment.
Further down the lane, we watched with fascination an old Japanese metal craftsman bent over a piece of brass and engraving it. He invited us into his shop, which was also his house. Soon many women and children arrived and sat around us talking at the same time and brought in bowls of noodles and chopsticks. They urged us to eat and kept on offering more food.
I had never known such hospitality to total strangers anywhere. It was so nice. Finally, we got up to leave, saying arigato a number of times. But the old man was not finished with us yet. He gave us each a piece of engraved brass work as a parting gift, to our utter surprise.
Japanese people are full of delightful surprises, as we were learning. I met a Japanese fisherman who invited me to go night fishing with him in the sea where he used his trained cormorants to catch the fish, but I was advised by some that it was a risky adventure, so I missed my chance of a lifetime to see how a cormorant caught a fish without swallowing it. The trick I was told was in the ring around the neck of the bird. The fishermen were very smart indeed. This was a land of contrast, where there was a bullet train as well as a kimono. Men wore yokatta with a black sash. In fact, the mother of Hayashi made me a lovely yokatta.
I liked Kyoto very much because there are so many peaceful shrines. One shrine had a rock garden where one could sit the whole day in meditation looking at the white pebbles that the monks raked very artistically around big rocks. If you looked at them for some time, the rocks disappeared and looked like waves lapping against the mountains. The temples were splendid with shiny pillars and grass roofs. The stone lanterns leading up to the temples through greenery were uniquely Japanese. These people did nothing half-heartedly.
I spent many days in Kyoto not wanting to go back to the crowded Tokyo, but one day I had to leave. The bus ride to Nagoya and on to Tokyo was quite nice, but what surprised me was that the bus driver stopped in many places just to tell the waiting passengers that it was full. In India the buses never stopped to show such courtesy.
Back in Tokyo, Tadeo said that one of his uncles wanted to meet me, so one day I had a nice talk with him over delightful Japanese food. He was a very curious person and found in me a goldmine of information about India and Vietnam. I asked if he had ever heard of our national hero Bose, who had come to Japan to seek help from emperor Hirohito to fight the British.
He shook his head and said that the name did not mean anything to him until I wrote it down. Then his eyes lit up. Oh yes, he said. Everyone knew and admired Bosei for his courage. The emperor gave him a lot of support during the world war, but sadly, Bosei died in a plane crash somewhere.
I surprised the Hayashi sisters one day when I said that Hideko Takamine was known to Indian intellectuals and movie fans. They were delighted that I knew about their idols. In India, Bengalis are not as isolated as they appear to be because they are voracious readers of anything in print. Often we read about foreign countries, their art or literature or personalities. Gogol, Dostoevsky or Pushkin were widely read, albeit in translation.
Soon the wonderful vacation in Japan was over, and the time came to say goodbye to these friendly and hospitable people. I will never forget the Hayashis as long as I live.
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