PARIS & BEYOND

IF YOU LOVE IT SO MUCH, WHY DID YOU LEAVE IT TODAY?

Because innocent obsessions can be indulged and my love for the spring garden knows no bounds.

I have always thought that Giverny (Monet’s garden, about an hour away by train from Paris) was overwhelming in its outrageous beauty. But I’d never seen it in spring. Now is my chance. And it follows well on the heels of Japan since, as I wrote earlier, Monet himself was fascinated by Japanese gardens and had them in mind in his design of the lily pond, the ‘second’ half of the Giverny garden.

I leave Paris very early, even before the cafés have poured their first café crème. (I am staying close to the Sorbonne and so the cafés have names with literary pretensions.)



It’s a bit of a hike from the train station in Vernon to the gardens in Giverny (most people take the bus), but I am up for it. The day is brilliant with sunshine and I pass old houses on the river Seine and blooming chestnuts.





But my hiking plans are foiled half-way through by the generosity of an older couple who take pity on me and pull over to offer a ride. I can’t resist such niceness. They take the time to drive me around and show a better route for my return walk later in the day. I sit in the back seat amidst clutter that includes a stack of baguettes. The smell is terrific! The older man tells me I have a good accent. I say that maybe it’s because I am French. He responds – absolutely impossible! Okay, okay, I wasn’t really serious. I can be fluent in one sentence and completely lost in another.

I am at the gates when the gardens open but it is still crowded. Tour groups are the wrost: they move slowly and block paths.

The garden is indeed splendid, really splendid, but I have come too late for the early spring flowers and too early for the later spring ones. I had thought that I would like this version of the garden better than the mid-summer brilliant spill of nasturtium, lavender and climbing roses, but I’m not sure I do. This garden (unlike mine!) seems to improve with each month. Still, it never disappoints. It remains in my mind the champion of all gardens.







And of course, there’s the part with the pond and the Japanese bridge, so favored by Monet in his paintings, even when he was already losing his sight.







Only after I finish walking through the gardens do I search out a place for the morning café and croissant. All good things have to have their right moment.



I have time before the noon train to Paris and so I walk along dirt roads up the hills behind Giverny. Wild poppies and buttercups are everywhere. I feel like I’m inside a Monet painting. The old village houses contribute to this.





Just outside Giverny I find a small house where a woman is displaying some of her own paintings. Her daughters come in and out, sometimes resting on her lap, other times talking to friends outside. I am tempted beyond temptation by one small painting. It is NOT expensive, really! I’m supporting local artists after all. And I’ll frame it when I get back to Madison. You are not allowed to say you don’t really like it!





Outside the little ‘gallery’ I run into my old village pal who gave me a ride this morning. He is out on his bicycle now and pauses to ask about my morning. We talk and then I tell him that I am on my way to find the secret path into town. He asks when my train is and expresses surprise when I say 50 minutes. “Better really hurry” he warns and pedals off.

Indeed, he is right. The path goes on forever. FOR FUTURE REFERENCE IT TAKES MORE THAN AN HOUR OF SPRINT WALKING TO GET FROM THE GRADENS TO THE STATION.

As I alternate between a jog and a sprint (with the painting, it’s really hard to jog), I begin to think that I cut it too close once again.

But no! At an intersection with the road there stands my village pal! He had gone back to his home, gotten his car and came back to find me and give me a lift to the station.

I AM SO TIRED OF PEOPLE SAYING THAT THE FRENCH ARE RUDE AND UNFRIENDLY!

I learn that he is a retired elementary school teacher. He tells me that a life of teaching in the village has been supremely agreeable. The parents tend to their children, classes are small, and when the weather is good, he’d take the kids for long walks in the woods. What could be easier? He has lived just outside Giverny all his life. His children and grandchildren live here as well. And is there a big family dinner each Sunday, I wonder? But of course! Ah, hence all those fresh baguettes in the car. I tell him it’s like straight out of a movie: time standing still in the village of Giverny.

In Paris, everyone, EVERYONE is flooding to the parks. The little children ride merry-go-rounds and sail boats, an older man feeds the birds. So much good spirit, all because of the gorgeous Sunday weather.







I pass my favorite bookstore. It’s ‘favorite’ status is entirely attributable to the fact that it is on a restaurant path and it stays open late into the night. I often buy a book or two with the resolve to get through it back home, to keep up the language. But I never do get to it and so this time I show great restraint and buy nothing. Even though I was tempted by this title:



It translates to “why don’t the French and Americans understand each other anymore.” It begins with an 1849 quote from Victor Hugo: “Un jour viendra ou l’on verra ces deux groupes immenses, les Etats-Unis d’Amerique et les Etats-Unis d’Europe, se tendre la main par-dessus les mers…” (which, correct me if I’m wrong, seems to mean: ‘A day will come when one will see two immense groups, the United States of America and the United States of Europe, extending a hand over the oceans’; okay, so he was a half visionary). There is a chapter on “la Francophobie Americaine” and “Antiamericanisme” as the author attempts to locate the hostilities each feels toward the other in a historical context. Yes, of course, it’s understandable. But I see the author speculating about a Bush reelection and I know that the vision of a stronger Europe building better relations with the US is suddenly very much in doubt.

I have to pause now. Excessively long posts are disconcerting –even to the writer. Besides, There are still blocks to be walked, cafés to be visited. I’ll end with a sight picture again. On a day like today, the Louvre is competiting with the parks to attract visitors.

PARIS

In retracing my steps from Japan, I am like a movie on rewind: Siberia, the Baltic states, France.

I’m recovering my lost day as well: no longer 14 hours ahead of Madison, just 7.

Ah, Paris… (a 2 night stop-over on my way home). Why do I love it so? There is a less apparent reason: Paris has always been my bridge between home in Warsaw and home in the States. Travel from Warsaw requires a connection in western Europe and since my first crossing of the ocean at age 7, my awed gaze has remained transfixed on Paris. I remember my amazement back then at eating a green ice cream (pistachio) on Place des Invalides. I honestly still recall that sweet taste that hit me 44 years ago. [Today I have a preference for the red flavors; for instance, this one is made from the essence of rose:]



The hotels that I stay in are always the teeny places on the left bank. It is a leap from the big, splashy Japanese hotels. Here, we’re talking about 3 to 4 rooms per floor, a little worn at the seams, but so homey and so charming in an uneven contours and peeling wallpaper sort of way.

My flights were all on time and so I was in downtown Paris by evening. I have been up and traveling for 24 hours, but I cannot sit still. Paris sings!



To me, the very first thing to notice is that French men will always, always help me with my suitcase. I take the subway from the airport to downtown and most station have long flights of steps to maneuver. I have NEVER had to carry my suitcase up. A young man will inevitably come to the rescue. That is a given.

And how is it to be here from Japan? A couple of perhaps obvious points:

People are so much more physical here. Every friend and lover and grandchild is kissing, walking arm in arm, holding hands, massaging the back of another.



People also smoke more:



And write postcards (does anyone elsewhere still write postcards?):



The food is so DIFFERENT that I am actually having adjustment problems. I go to one of my trilogy of repeat restaurant places. They’re homey and full of French people, the waiters are flirtatious and fun, and the food is always very simple and reliable. Here was, for instance, my dessert:



But I am not used to the butter nor the wine! I ask if it’s true what I’d read in the NYTimes – that the French are now doing ‘doggie bags’ with unfinished restaurant wine. Complete puzzlement. Thanks, NYT.


Tonight I walk and walk and I let myself fall in love with the city all over again. I am not abandoning Japan, I am just putting it aside for the moment, just because this is Paris.

Just a few evening shots:

The banks of the Seine, looking like Bascom Mall on a warm day:



How can I not love this bridge at sunset? For one thing, it holds the initial of my name…



Like me, people don’t sleep here. They talk and eat:



Just one ‘sight’ so that you indeed know it’s Paris:

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...

JAPAN

SEEKING GUIDANCE

Fukuoka is a nice enough city, but I had done a thorough exploration when I was last here. Now I want to use my still valid golden Japan Rail pass and head out. And so I have the following conversation with my colleague:

NC: Any recommendations?
HU: Go to Nagasaki!

NC: Nagasaki… The atomic bomb pretty much leveled it, didn’t it? [a momentary break in the cloud cover, a pilot seizes the opportunity and seconds later 75,000 are killed. Many, many more die later. A missed target. A mistake of war. The bomb was, after all, not intended for the peaceful community it destroyed.]
Have you ever been there?
HU: No, but I have always wanted to go!

[That clinched it. It reminded me of all the ‘places I’ve been meaning to go to’ back home. Some of them are probably gems. Some of them.]
NC: Yes, well, maybe. And where is it that you do go when you want a break?
HU: I go to the hot springs. Ah! You would not want to do that.

Oh yes I would. I inquire at the hotel and find out that a mere two and a half hours on the comfy JR line will put me in Yufu-in, home to this island’s hot springs.

Concerned about weather issues, I ask the hotel person what one does if it rains (rain is the forecast for Thursday). He tells me “oh, it’s best that way! You will enjoy it!” And finally, I have to force myself to ask this: does one need a swim suit? His response: “ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! No.”

By 7 a.m. Thursday, my blogging is done for the night/day and I am on my way, riding the subway with the salary-men to the train station, snatching a coffee and croissant (the aroma of baking croissants is everywhere; stacks of them can be found at all major train stations), boarding a little red train for the hills and hot springs.



SPRING FORWARD IN SPIRIT AND FLESH

It is indeed raining when I arrive at Yufu-in, but I know it will let up. That’s how it works here: drizzle, pour, abate, over and over.

I find the recommended to me older inn that has a reputation for having good hot springs for bathing (‘Musoen’). Now what? Oh, the embarrassing questions that one must ask. ‘Where do I go’ is the easy one. How about ‘what do I do then?’ Unfortunately no one speaks English and so I enter into the realm of trial and error. I shall not go into the error parts. Use your imagination.

Finally, though, I am there, with the women, squatting in a large pond of steaming water, with a view of the valley below.



There is an extended, beamed roof for those who want to stay away from the ‘elements.’ There are also rocks throughout and some take advantage of those, sitting like seals at the oceanfront, waiting for the inspiration to do another dip. The water is too warm to stay in for endless stretches.



For me, the very best, the absolutely very best is to sit half in, half out and to feel the very light rain prickling with its cool but not cold drops, while the warm spring water works its way up the lower limbs. Heaven.

Anywhere from 3 to 10 women are in the hot spring at a time (sometimes in three-generation sets of grandmother, daughter and toddling granddaughter), but there are plenty of corners and spaces so that you can have solitude if that is what you crave. Everyone is at once discreet and open. You learn quickly what is allowed and what is considered shocking.

I want to post a photo of one of the pre-soak shower stalls because I groaned so much about the scrub-down in my earlier Matsushima post. Please do note the number of soaps you have to work with. Is this indicative of obsessive cleanliness, or what?



And I do have a locker secret to reveal: so many of the women here wear firming half-tights under the slacks. I was surprised. They hardly need corset-like additions – for the most part, they are slender. Is it vanity? Is it a long-term firming device? I do not know.

I don’t want to so often write about money issues, but this ‘day at the spa’ was shocking in terms of price. Let me give the low-down (divide by roughly 100 for the dollar amount):
- croissant at station: 150 Y
- coffee at station: 250 Y
- train to and from hot springs: free because of JR pass
- day at the fancy hot spring spa: 600 Y. I might note that this is one fourth the price of a day-guest pass at the Princeton Club in Madison.
Japan is full of surprises.


THE SPICE OF LIFE

I had dinner with two of my law colleagues here. I had always thought that they were a bit at odds with each other, but tonight proved me wrong. One of them brought along a friend – a Fukuoka prosecutor who was teaching a class this year at the university. The prosecutor did not speak English well and so much of the time the conversation between the three of them was in Japanese. That was fine. Occasionally someone translated, but more often, all three got lost in the spirit of their talk. It was so animated that it was a pleasure to watch.

We ate at a Chinese place, run by a former student of theirs, a prominent Tokyo international law attorney who had decided that he had had enough of the legal culture. He opened the restaurant and has been successfully in business for a number of years now. I talked to him for a bit – the restaurant world is different in Fukuoka than in the States. For one thing, it is surprisingly more egalitarian here. Cooks from his place routinely travel to Shanghai and come back with ideas for dishes which are then incorporated into the menu. The chefs in the States and in Europe cling fiercely to their hegemonic rule in the kitchen. Even at “Madison-pseudo democratic” l’Etoile, ideas of line cooks are only given token recognition. The chef makes all menu decisions and rarely does she encourage the cooking staff to come forth with suggestions.

The post is getting long. Let me just end on a fiery note: I have never seen a dish of this nature: chicken with chopped hot peppers. It is FIERCELY spicy, demonically so. If you ingest just one sliver of the hot stuff, you will surely gag. One of us did tonight. For once, the error was not mine.