JAPAN

JAPAN

This then is the last entry with the heading of “Japan.” I almost don’t know how to keep a blog anymore without that introduction. I’m sure I will have to reinvent it once I get back to Madison: I can’t go back to old habits that readily. I’m of the belief that blogs evolve as writers pick up new ideas and approaches.

I leave Fukuoka at a beastly early hour tomorrow (my Saturday, your Friday) morning. I’m not quite heading home yet though. I have a stop over along the way, but not in Japan. Most certainly an attempt at blogging will follow, but it wont be before Sunday U.S. time, since it’ll take me THAT long to get somewhere and have something to blog about that wont be flight-related. Any flight-related blogging I reject as inherently not of general interest. And I have many many hours of flying ahead of me.

In the meantime, let me post a few notes on this day:

IF YOU COULD START FROM SCRATCH, HOW WOULD YOU BUILD A LAW SCHOOL?

Imagine an entire country pondering this as it embarks on this project of constructing new law schools to accommodate some 6000 students in a brand new graduate program in law. That is, indeed, Japan.

So how would a brand new state-of-the-art law school look? Today, I spent a morning visiting and lecturing at one, at Fukuoka University.

As in Doshisha Law School in Kyoto, the smell of fresh paint and new furniture is omnipresent. I think it is an invigorating smell. But it is also a reminder that this is an experiment, the results of which are in question. Exciting as it is to be in the first semester of the first year of a law program, in brand new facilities no less, there is also that frightening reality that you are the first to be in a completely unknown job market.

But that’s a couple of years away. Today one can admire the spiffy new library,



…the computer-wired (for the professor) class room,



…and the students, who successfully got into this first class, hoping now to succeed as the first cadre of graduates to compete for law jobs.




FUKUOKA IS A SHOPPING MALL IN DISGUISE

Perhaps I am exaggerating, but this afternoon I am for once searching for stores and so shopping is very much on my mind.

You can’t be away for almost a month and come back empty-handed. People would regard you as completely self-focused. I wish people would regard me as simply not a great shopper. I would PAY them twice over what I would have otherwise spent on them – I dread the shopping event that much.

I dread it because I am so bad at it. Everything looks great until I get back and unpack the suitcase and think – now why did I buy THAT? (I was already thinking this when I was PACKING my suitcase a couple of hours ago, so I know I’m off to a rocky start.) It seems so right in the store. Or maybe I just want to be done and so I MAKE it appear perfect, in the way that one paints happy events as even happier in one’s memory, or convinces oneself that it really IS okay that it’s raining during a mountain hike (hey, it WAS okay, truly).

Of course, no one asks me to go through this grueling shopping nightmare. Quite the contrary, I am told “don’t get me anything” a lot, but to me that only means one of two things: 1. my past history of purchases has been so bad that people truly would prefer not to have to fake enthusiasm anymore, or 2. it means that I don’t HAVE to get anything in general, but if I want to make an exception for them, just to show my true love and devotion, then okay, a small little something will do.

Yes, a small little something that isn’t trashy or expensive or ridiculously unsuitable to the recipient. Very easy.

But hey, on the bright side, I did work my way energetically through some crowded stores. I had a lot of luck, for instance, in this funky one:



…which may be of concern to those thinking that they are the chosen few to receive a little token gift. Yes, indeed, there do appear to be Barbies on a shelf behind the giggly clerks who spoke not a word of English. I SAID it was a funky store.

No more hints. If you haven’t been a recipient of a gift in the past, you wont get one now. I’m not looking to expand my torture circle. If you have gotten some post-travel memorabilia, chances are good that I haven’t dropped you yet. But someday I may and it wont be because I don’t care. I just don’t care for shopping.


MY LAST DINNER, SO BRACE YOURSELVES

The colleague (YA) whose guest I was on campus today invited me to join him and his friends for my last dinner in Japan. YA had introduced me last year to the “man’s world” Japan and I have long been grateful for that in an odd sort of way. He had taken me to the private clubs where professional men hang out after work, and he had shown me how an evening works for them as they are humored and pampered by the wonderfully friendly hostesses at these places. To this day, I can never hear the Elvis song “Falling in love with you” without thinking of that evening, because YA demonstrated how he would sing it in one of his favorite private bars and the super nice hostesses would sway to the music and it would be extraordinarily charming – for him.

YA is an exceptionally good law prof and colleague. He has translated for me and arranged meetings for me and I have been in his classes and he has always attended to my scholarship in a serious and not perfunctory way and I have been grateful for that. In addition, he is genuinely a good host. He will not invite me to dinner because he HAS to, he will do so out of a real concern that I should not eat alone while in Fukuoka. And so, when he realized this was my last night here, he insisted that I come along with him even though he already had dinner plans. I agreed, and was somewhat surprised to see that his two other guests were women associated with the bars I’d visited last year (one was an owner, the other was a hostess on the side – a pharmacist in her day life).

It was a sweet evening in an odd sort of way. But of course, the set up was a bit bizarre and I could not comment without sounding ridiculously nosey. And so I kept to the don’t ask, don’t tell strategy. In fact, all three of them seemed to be having a comfortably good time conducting a conversation that included tons of laughter.

One thing that I can’t help but like about YA is that he doesn’t scrimp when he takes people out to dinner: he goes full force into wonderful Japanese restaurants and he orders the most interesting dishes. Today was no exception and I am going to torture a blogger whose site I read just today (here) by posting lots of photos of foods and commenting on how I COULD HARDLY FINISH IT ALL AND WISH I HAD A DOG TO GIVE LEFTOVERS TO, except that this would have been difficult as we were in one of those Japanese tea rooms where there wasn’t much to the “underneath the table” bit.

For those not interested in food, scroll down. Feeling uplifted by friendly email voices from back home, I took a last brief walk along the side streets of this teeming with life city. The everyday has finally made its way into the blog: the beautiful, the ridiculous, the modern, the odd, the sublime. You can decide which label is appropriate to which scene. To me, what remain most vivid, most tugging at the heart are the encounters with people, the ones I asked for help, for direction, or the ones who sprung to assist without my even asking. That sticks with me, even more than images of the gardens and of the food. But let's not underestimate the natural beauty of this isolated country. And those gardens. Don't let me not mention again the peace encountered in those tiny manicured spaces.

THE FOOD AND THE COMPANY (TONIGHT):













A WALK ALONG ONE BACK STREET OF FUKUOKA

This is a back street??



...On a TV screen in a shop:



... she was watching a fountain show, coordinated with jazz music:



...this was the fountain show:



...so many interesting Tshirt logos. So many.



...And even more clubs for the men:







Do all pedestrian signs look like this, or is this a Fukuoka image?



...and if you can't find the machines, you can try your hand at macing:



...art and nature thus combined...