April 5–9玄鳥至 Tsubame kitarun - Swallows return
April 10–14鴻雁北 Kōgan kaeru - Wild geese fly north
April 15–19虹始見 Niji hajimete arawarun - First rainbows
Everything's always fine until it isn't.
I'm sitting in the back seat of an un-marked van in the company of two Immigration officers. My hands are done up in one of those plastic zip-tie things that you sometimes see cops using on suspects in lieu of handcuffs. All I've been allowed to bring is a knapsack and hastily packed suitcase. The clothes I'm wearing. I've been forced to abandon everything else.
I'm completely on my own. I have no idea where Mina is, or anything about the chain of events that precipitated this situation.
Under duress from the officials at Immigration, I've basically been ordered to leave Japan immediately - or face an indefinite period of incarceration in Nagoya's infamous Immigration Detention Centre while I await the results of an appeal to stay that I'll likely lose.
Last year a young woman from Sri-Lanka died in there. She'd been apprehended on an expired visa, and had been locked up for several months waiting for her 'stay of deportation' case to be heard when things started going terribly wrong. Evidence gathered by the legal counsel hired by her family suggests that she suffered fatal mistreatment in custody.
She's not the first foreigner to have died in there.
Wishing to avoid a similar fate, I'm now being unceremoniously 'escorted' to the departure terminal at Chubu International Airport. They'd told me that I'd be sent 'back to Canada', though I've had no confirmation that would be my final destination, being an American citizen and all. When I try to ask, the only response I get is,
"うるさい!!" (Shut up!!)
<Urusai!!>
Everything sort of fades out from that point. Maybe I'd been slipped some kind of sedative and passed out.
After a time in transit; with everything I've known for close to thirty years an ocean behind me, I find myself in a sort of composite place...at once kind of familiar, yet alien feeling. An urban area. Perhaps it's somewhere from my past? It's unclear. My surroundings seem to keep shifting. I feel groggy. Like I've been out cold for quite awhile. It seems as if I've just been dumped on some random street corner, and left at the mercy of the fates.
At points it looks like Japan, with its narrow shopping streets, crowds and bicycles everywhere - then I see landmarks that suggest I'm possibly in Canada. Is this Vancouver? It's been a long time, and places change.
Along the way, I encounter people that I recognize... random groupings of casual acquaintances from here and there, friends long gone, and estranged family members - not as they are now; but as they were years and years ago. Old people young again. The dead living. For some odd reason, I'm not freaked out. I don't question it. I'm glad to see them.
Maybe they'll know me, or offer to point me in the right direction...
I'm bone tired. Utterly exhausted. I haul my suitcase along, and keep shifting my backpack from one shoulder to the other. Everyone I see seems to be pre-occupied with their phones. I don't have one. I attempt to approach a few people who look somewhat familiar; but they only nod or smile faintly and keep walking.
Who did I know here? Assuming that I was in Vancouver..would I know anyone? To my knowledge, all of my friends and family had either died or moved away. I had a cold, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.
Could anyone point me toward a place to stay?
"Hey! Shaun!! Mate!! Over here!!"
Suddenly, there's a long gone friend from high school, clowning and doing his old routine...as he was, before he died in that plane crash back in the early 90's. Enter Jehangir 'John' Engineer. A boisterous, barrel chested fellow with the look of a young Saddam Hussein...funny, smart as a whip, and bat-shit crazy. He hadn't aged a day in over thirty years. Did he notice my age? The grey hair? If so, he didn't let on. That wasn't like John. He was crass. He'd point it out right away.
Maybe it was at around this juncture that the veil between here and there shifted slightly, and from far in the background I somehow figured out that this was all a dream. From here on we can either jog ourselves awake (like we do when we're having a really traumatic nightmare), or just go with it.
My subconscious mind determined that 'we' were going to play along.
He says he's got his Dad's old Mazda Rotary Wagon parked up the street - the very one he'd play chicken with buses in on the Granville Street Bridge back when we were in the twelfth grade. Without asking where I'm going, he offers me a ride. I heave my suitcase and knapsack into the narrow backseat, and climb in shotgun. I'm glad to get off that street. He laughs and talks a red streak, as if barely a day had elapsed since the last time I saw him, back in 1987. He toys around with the car's old cassette deck, and it comes crackling to life in all of it's mid 70's lo-fi glory. He's got that old Beastie Boys Licensed to ill tape going.
Suddenly the scenery out the window starts looking very familiar. He turns left at 4th and Stephens, drives down to 7th and hangs a right, finally idling the car in the middle of the block.
My breathing started to get shallow. I wanted to cry. I needed to keep my shit together. I couldn't let him know that anything was off - like that I knew he was dead, and none of this was real. Maybe I was afraid of waking up and finding myself back in that Immigration Detention Centre in Nagoya?
"This is your stop, matey. You need help with that suitcase? What the fuck do you got in there, anyways?"
"No, man. I think I can manage. Thanks."
I got out and opened the rear right passenger side door. Just as I remembered, I had to give it a good pull, on account of it being old and slightly 'sticky'. It made a sort of hard cracking noise as it swung back and open. I leaned in, grabbed the suitcase, and heaved it out onto the grassy boulevard, and pulled by backpack over my shoulders.
"You gotta fix that door man. One of these days it's just going to snap right off."
"Ah, fuck it. The car's a piece of shit. I'll just duct tape it shut and tell people to climb in the window or use the door on the other side. Hey...call me later and I'll come and get you. We'll smoke some spliffs at the beach and go get curry beef brisket at Bill Kee Restaurant"
"Yeah, OK, sounds cool"
Never mind that I hadn't had his phone number for over thirty years.
He leaned in and started mocking me from the open passenger window.
"Yeah, OK, sounds cool... then I don't hear from for a week. Seriously. I'm going to pick up an eighth from that white rasta Fletcher guy. You know who I mean? The one with the dreads who lives with that DJ idiot Mark Pooley...the one you hated, whose hair you tried to light on fire in my car that one time?"
" I know the guy. Sounds good. I should take this stuff in and get sorted. I'll call you later..."
"For real mate. I'll be waiting. Bring that tape"
Tape? What tape?
At that, behind a tinny backdrop of distorted scratching and break-beats, he hit the gas, swung a hard left on to MacDonald, and was gone.
Funny. As I remember, it seems that he and I hadn't parted on the best of terms. Then there was the plane crash, and he was gone. I remember seeing it on the lunchtime news, in Gramma's living room. Wreckage strewn out all over what looked like a farmer's field. When the newscaster read out his name, I couldn't believe it. From what I'd heard back then, he'd been close to getting enough flight hours logged to apply for his commercial pilot's license. On a short trip to Seattle with a group of friends, he'd pulled some stupid stunt - no doubt showing off to the four or five guys that were along for the ride. The story was that he clipped wings with another plane, and damaged his aircraft's flaps or lift mechanism. He lost control of the plane, and crashed it in a field just short of Sea-Tac airport.
They all died.
Bunch of bike couriers, apparently. Back then I recall my art school pal Kurt saying something to effect of,
"...and if you'd kept hanging out with him, you'd be dead too"
Quite possibly.
It was as if time had been rewound to a different point...or that in this 'alternate reality', nothing really mattered.
I couldn't say what time it was. It might have been mid-morning...or mid-afternoon? It seemed like full spring. Sunny and warm. The grass out front of the house was freshly cut, and the little flower patch to the left of the concrete path from the sidewalk to the steps was well maintained. She'd obviously been out puttering. I hauled my suitcase up the red cement stairs to the landing in front of the door.
What if she wasn't there? What if some stranger answered?
I decided to forgo ringing the bell, Somehow I still had that old house key on my wallet chain. It slipped easily in to the lock. I turned it, and it clicked.
It worked.
My grandmother was standing between the living room and dining room table, regal as always. The next thing I knew, we were in her kitchen. She was at the stove making that awful old lady coffee... and forcing me to sit down and have a piece of toast with marmalade. Of course, the bread and the marmalade were homemade. She'd been doing all these things up by hand for as long as any of us could remember. Generations. She took a great deal of pride in the things that she made.
Born in 1910, Gramma was the product of early 20th century immigrants...an English mother, and Finnish father, joined through an arranged marriage. I would think that she took after her father - she definitely had the Scandinavian stoicism down. Tall, broad shoulders, icy blue eyes. Even well into her 90's, she stood up straight - never hunched or stooped.
She spoke clear and sharp, and took an extraordinary pride in herself.
In her twenties, she'd looked for all the world like a silent movie starlet. Full of confidence, she left the outskirts of a nascent Vancouver for Hollywood, California. It was the height of the depression; but she had dreams to chase.
Apparently it didn't work out.
Within a few years she was back in Vancouver with a handsome grifter husband and young baby in tow.
Then there was that awful coffee...
"Shaun, look at you. Put down your bags. Eat something. Sit with your old grandmother"
How did I get here? I know that this place is gone...yet I'm seduced by the warmth and familiarity of the surroundings. This kitchen. This unchanging old house...seemingly flash frozen sometime in the late 1940's. And Gramma. It feels safe....just like it did when I was that shy three year old kid fresh out of a scary ordeal in California in the summer of 1970.
I know that none of this is real... but I want to make that toast and old lady coffee last forever. To stay and listen to her go on about her sister Violet in Seattle, that old 'bohunk' woman Iris next door, the price of bananas at Safeway...and her inevitable complaints about my Mum's generally miserable disposition. She doesn't ask about Japan, or what I've been through. Does she even know that I was gone? No matter, I suppose. She has her old stories to reel through.
That's more than good enough for me.
That horrible, pinchy five am alarm sounds from the little orange Casio on my night table, and I'm back. I don't know whether to feel relieved... or disappointed. I feel ripped out of my element. I mean...I was happy to be home; but what about Gramma's stories? My old lady coffee and toast? Or John, the spliffs and curry beef brisket?
He'd be pissed that I didn't call him.
I sit up, hit the stop button on my CPAP console, and pull off the nose piece. There's still a wintery chill this early in the morning; yet Mina's sleeping outside of the comforter again. I gather it up and throw it over her. I want to grab her and give her a good hard squeeze, just to make sure she's real. What an ordeal.
It had been good to see John and Gramma. As they were. It's funny how people leave these perfect impressions on us. When they revisit us in our dreams, they are so absolutely real.
Yet the whole business of being hustled out of Japan by the Immigration police. Deported. What had happened? Where was Mina? Where had she gone? Absolutely horrible. The rest of it starts to fade, and by the time we're sitting down to breakfast, it's mostly forgotten...though I do feel somewhat uneasy for the rest of the day.
I've been having variations of this particular dream for years now. The cast of characters always shifts and changes. If I'm lucky, I'll end up at Gramma's house. In the worst case, I'll end up alone in some condemned old building, or dilapidated, piss and vomit stinking residential hotel on Vancouver's downtown east-side. I'll often have a key, for which there will be no visible lock or keyhole. Stuck outside the room or derelict property, I invariably end up being circled by shit stinking, scabby, yellow toothed junkies. They're pawing at me, begging for change and attempting to lift my bags. When I try to tell them to get the fuck away from me, I suddenly find that I can't speak English anymore.
" やめろ！私から逃げる！！(Fuck off ! Get away from me !!)
<Yamero! Watashi kara nigeru ! !>
This only seems to further incite and encourage them. In fairly short order, it ends up looking like a scene from one of those zombie apocalypse movies.
Finally, all I want to do is go home.
The question is...where might that be?
The last dregs of a bitterly cold winter 2021-22 look to have finally taken their leave. While last weekend was cold and nasty, yesterday it felt like spring had finally settled in for the duration. The baka-tsubomi (idiot buds) gave way to sakura in a big way around the middle of last week, and the cherry trees in the park across the road and up the Horikawa canal have been nothing short of spectacular this year. I wonder if it has something to do with the colder than usual winter season? In any case, it's made my daily slogs up the canal a lot less of a chore. My pollen allergies also appear to be remaining in check...though I don't want to jinx my good fortune or tempt the fates by prematurely announcing that I've dodged the bullet this year. If I can make it through to the Golden Week holidays at the end of the month without having a round of sinusitis or a bronchial asthma meltdown, then I figure that I'm home free. So far I've had a few bouts of sneezing, itchy eyes and a tiny bit of a transient wheeze, but nothing bad enough to cramp my routine. Fingers crossed.
'Sparrows start to nest' - March 21 - 25th
The first baka-tsubomi were tentatively starting to open, and while the mornings were still decidedly cool, the afternoons were pretty mild, actually getting up into the upper teens. Can't say much one way or another about any avian nesting activities in these precincts, as I neglected to climb up any trees to check.
'First cherry blossoms' - March 26 - 30th
The first blossoms actually started coming out almost a week earlier than the aforementioned 'ancient wisdom' suggested they would. As expected, daily COVID count figures also started to rise in tandem. It's been almost three months since the sixth wave rolled in, and the daily numbers here in Aichi seem fixed at around the three thousand mark. it's safe to assume that there will be no temporary respite, like we saw at the end of the fifth wave in early November. Vaccine uptake numbers also remain surprisingly low this time around. As it stands now, only around 43% of the eligible population have bothered to show up for their boosters. Despite consistently high rates of infection, hospitalization and death, there simply doesn't seem to be much interest.
Persistent online anti-vax propaganda and misinformation seems to have effected a kind of grass roots resistance to getting the jab, particularly among younger, more socially active people - the ones who are increasingly getting and spreading the virus.
'Distant thunder' - March 31 - April 4th
The sakura were in full bloom, and we were treated to an unseasonably warm and pleasant week until April 1st, when temperatures dropped from a balmy afternoon high of 18 or 20C, back to around 10. The weekend was cold and wet...more characteristic of late February than April. If there's a silver lining here, it kept a lot of the Omicron spreading mouth breathers at home, as opposed to swanning around the parks and riversides unmasked, taking selfies and guerilla picnicking and drinking under signs that clearly say "NO PICNICKING".
None of this bodes well for the upcoming Golden Week holidays, when it's expected that Omicron BA-1 will officially be unseated by it's more belligerent cousin, BA-2...and we'll be into our seventh, and most extreme wave yet. If there is any good news here, it's that the government claims that they're 'already planning' the fourth round of vaccinations.
I sincerely hope that they get their shit together. Mina will be needing her six month booster in mid-June.
As far as 'distant thunder', it was our weekend to take okasan. Apparently there'd been some drama at Mayumi's regarding a yakiniku restaurant party that was being planned to celebrate Surly Sumo Son's birthday on Saturday night. It seems that the old lady either hadn't been invited, or had been dismissively informed by Fat Wife. In any case, she'd taken umbrage at the situation, and was hurt. When Mina asked Mayumi what was going on, she insisted that okasan had been invited, but declined the invitation. As usual, there were two very distinct and conflicting narratives at play.
'Someone' was making a story.
Again.
At our place, she moped about, either complaining and brooding over what she perceived to be an unforgivable slight, or weeping and feeling sorry for herself. She sat in uncharacteristic silence over lunch on Saturday, and only seemed at peace working on her postcards. The atmosphere was dank, and unpleasant. I decided to attempt some damage control over dinner, and told her that we would get KFC for her on Sunday, and have a little party for HER over here, so that she wouldn't feel bad that she had missed out on anything with Mayumi's crew.
*(the old lady adores Kentucky Fried Chicken; but we can't feed it to her often because of her health issues - so when she gets it, it's a treat)
That seemed to lift her spirits somewhat - though the waterworks persisted on and off until it was time to drive her back early Sunday evening. After they left, I found a folded over sheet of writing paper with a ¥10,000 note tucked inside, slipped in between the two boxes of tissue paper at the end of our kitchen table. We've told her again and again not to do this. I get where she's coming from, but when she does pulls this kind of stunt, it makes us feel like staff or something. This isn't a hotel or restaurant. We're family. If she feels like she's been a pain in the arse, it's because she has. She knows it. All we want is for her to try to rein herself in a little. To be a little more cooperative, and less selfish.
Maybe that's too tall an order?
In any case, when Mina got home and found the apologetic note and cash, she was predictably pissed off. I told her that I'd handle it, and give it back to her mother the Saturday after next.
As far as okasan's bi-weekly report card goes, this time around she manages a sympathy 'C'. The self pity, weeping and maudlin posturing was a side of her I hadn't experienced yet. It seemed out of character. Mina thinks it may have something to do with the combination of medications that she's currently taking. Steroids, in particular, can be problematic.
And there we have it. All the bits that matter, and a lot that just don't. A wrap until sub season six, Kokuu - Grain rain. That'll be in two weeks (or thereabouts).
As always, you'd do well to remember that, "No matter where you go, there you are".
There, and nowhere else.
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