JAPAN

FUKUOKA

It’s where I am right now, at the southwestern tip of Japan. However, that sentence implies a greater degree of alertness than I currently feel. So scratch “am right now” and replace with “checked into a hotel today.”

This day (I’m writing this on my Wednesday night/Thursday morning, you guessed it, 3:30 am) never really had a beginning. In my last hours in Kyoto, I was ready to load my post at 3 am (24 hours ago) and found that Blogger was no longer permitting me to do so. No images, no post, no nothing. I spent the next 3 hours trying to appeal to the inner soul of Blogger techies and to the outer souls of colleagues, friends, anyone who had any connections to bloglife. But there was nothing I could do. It seemed that this blog would be discontinued until until – who knows when. Perhaps forever? I mean, it just died. Deleting pictures, scrambling posts, deleting computer files, nothing revived it. Blogger clearly hated me, for no good reason.

On top of it, I was now completely sleep-deprived. I’ll not recount the travel moments where I drifted in and out of doze-dom. It was one big nightmare of speeding trains and voices talking and lecture notes formulating some text or other – oh, it was unsettling.



But once in Fukuoka, up in my hotel room, I find that Blogger is apologizing. It’s not me, it’s them. I wish I had known that in the middle of my last night in Kyoto.

WORK

From the minute I step off the train in Fukuoka I am on work mode. I am rushed to do classes and meetings, etc. I can only say that I am in that state of tiredness where it no longer matters. The irony is that my work is going surprisingly well, down to the last late seminar minute. And because what was originally spread to two days got compacted into this one long afternoon and evening, most of tomorrow has opened up to be free of meetings. Intensity can be sustained when relief is in sight.

[Class participation of Japanese law students, undergrads this time: 75% female, 25% male again. I asked my colleague why he thought I was consistently getting more activity from the women. He said bluntly: “People think that in Japan, because men were in dominant positions, they were the stronger sex. It is not true. In Japan, women are stronger. And this shows itself in the classroom as well. They are more serious, less timid, and they almost always lead class discussions.” Though one has to take generalizations of this sort with some degree of lightness, still, I have to say that looking at the faces of the women students here, I am often struck by the feverish intensity with which they listen and take notes. I sometimes imagine that they are literally at the edge of their seats. “Engaged” is an understatement.]

FUKUOKA AT NIGHT

If Kyoto is a village (see post below), Fukuoka is a cosmopolitan hub. In a country known for its ethnic homogeneity, Fukuoka stands out as having a rather large non-Japanese population. It is an oceanic gateway into Japan, with Korea just a stone’s throw across the water.

It is also a commercial mecca. There are more shopping opportunities here per square block than even in Tokyo. At night, the neons blaze and the people stay out. It’s one of those cities that never seems to close.

It is late by the time I am done working – just like a true Japanese! And I do as the locals do after a long day in the office – I go to the food stalls along the river bank in search of good home cooking. It’s mostly me and the so-called ‘salary men’ out there.

The stalls (called Yatai) aren’t like the ones in Madison’s library mall. They are self-contained eating places. They fold out to a tiny 6 inch counter, and they have snug stool-like chairs, cramming some maybe 8 bodies shoulder to shoulder around the eating hut. Behind the counter two people typically grill, slice and otherwise cook foods.



How do you decide which Yatai has the better food? Certainly as an outsider I can only give myself over to the tastes of others. I pick a crowded one (pictured above) that has good smells coming from it. Mom is the main cook, grown son works the grill and pours the beer.







Both seem happy to have an American choose their place. Fukuoka doesn’t see many faces from the States since it is too far from most of the tourist cities of Japan. (Besides, how can you tell your neighbors with a straight face that you are going to Fukuoka. BTW, it’s pronounced F’koo’oh’kah.)

I eat a grilled river fish and Mom’s vegetable tempura. I can’t believe how crisp and flavorful the veggies are. It is a terrific dinner. And the anticipation of sleep, immanent sleep, is almost too much pleasure for one body to take.

Of course, that was then. Now it’s 4 am and I am again blogging.