The Peace Correspondent (3 page)

Faded photographs outside the bath show water nymphs disporting themselves in the mineral waters, ignored by men performing their ablutions along the wall. This, finally, is the place. I undress in the locker room, tended by an old woman inured to even the strange sight of foreign flesh, and enter Japan's largest bathroom.

It is a massive, steamy tiled cavern, noxious fumes rising from the many tubs, rows of washing places along the wall, a swimming pool with a slide running into cold water. Each pool is identified by a small sign in Japanese, listing its curative properties. Wrinkled elderly men go from one to another, sampling the
waters like wine connoisseurs.

At the far end, a tiled wall some three or four feet high blocks the view. A scrawny septuagenarian in flimsy shorts and head band walks along the wall, the only man in an all-female world. I move over to the pools near the wall to test the waters with my toes, trying not to be too obvious. Across the effluvia of the bath, I catch a quick glimpse of female flesh, cursing my lack of peripheral vision as I slide into the stinking water.

How old are those photographs outside the bath? Nemoto-san, you old rogue, how long is it since you were here? Customs change, even in the Land of the Rising Sun. I have taken a dozen baths in three days; my skin is wrinkled and I feel like a waterlogged rat. But I am protected from atonic dyspepsia and even chronic stomach catarrh. It is time to go home.

I meet Nemoto-san again in our favorite sushi and sake shop where I relate my failures in the onsens. Nemoto-san selects a piece of raw tuna, shakes his head at my Western timidity as I tell him of the big bath and the low wall. “Ah, Marchant-san,” he remonstrates, “but why didn't you climb over the fence?”

BY day three of the official North American Press Tour to the Japan Alps, we are laden with gifts and our wallets are thick as Japanese toast with business cards, but we have seen precious little of the region's attractions and nothing of the ski slopes we came for.

As official guests of the Japan National Tourist Organization, we four visiting scribes quickly learn the truth of the old Japanese adage, “There is no such thing as a free bento (box lunch).”

Nagano Prefecture in central Japan has invited us to publicize its bid for the 1998 Winter Olympic Games (the largest international event marking the end of the century) and to show off its winter sports facilities.

But this is no casual jaunt around picturesque, pastoral Japan. The tourism officials meeting us at the Matsumoto city train station set the tone of the tour: “At 12:40 we will have lunch. At 1:45 we will meet the mayor, then sightseeing. At 5:40 we will arrive at the hotel and at 6:30 we will have dinner.”

The hospitality is grandly bounteous, if structured. The “noodle shop” on the itinerary is a stylish Japanese specialty restaurant with low tables made from foot-thick slices of an oak tree. Lunch in the private tatami room upstairs is somewhat demanding for first time foreign visitors; roasted, sugared bees (the town specialty), horse meat sausage and rainbow trout soaked in soya and smoked.

National tourist organizations habitually ply visiting travel press with the finest of food and drink. In Japan, it is local delicacies such as potatoes smeared with a kind of custard that makes our lips itch, alien tubers and strange sealife and grasshoppers in a tiny sake cup. After a few days, we long for a simple bowl of soba noodles.

At Matsumoto city hall, where Japanese, American and Canadian flags poke from a tabletop stand, there is much exchanging of cards and bowing with local officials. When the mayor and his entourage enter, the ceremony is repeated.

We are celebrities, or at least curiosities, here in the hinterland. TV crews, news photographers and reporters crowd into the board room, strobe lights flashing as they photograph us like eager paparazzi. The reporters have become the news, the watchers the watched.

The mayor extols the virtues of the region's mountains and facilities, and joshes gently with a Salt Lake City, Utah, reporter because his city is also bidding for the Games. The brief press conference introduction over, we pose questions over ritual green tea.

Calgary applied for 17 years before it got the 1988 Games. Will Nagano bid again if they do not get the 1998 Games? The mayor does not anticipate failing (and Nagano does win the right to host the Games).

What budget have they set aside for hosting the Games? Financial details are not yet decided.

The traditional Japanese gift-giving rite follows, with our generous hosts bestowing on us an embroidered bag, 500 yen telephone calling card, carved hand mirror and a glossy souvenir book of the region. We have shamefully neglected to bring even national lapel pins of our homelands.

Finally, we traipse off to visit the six-story stone castle, oldest of four designated as National Treasures, trailing the local media who photograph us photographing the sights.

With all the formalities, there is little time for the sightseeing
that is so crucial to travel writers. Our visits to the important sites are not serious research but Japanese-style, token gestures, the way they visit a temple, clap, bow, buy a small memento and depart, chalking it up on a list. At the Ukiyoe museum, with the world's greatest collection of 100,000 wood block prints, we admire Hokkusai and Kuniyoshi masterpieces before the curator rushes us to a slide show of these very prints, with taped Japanese and English explanation. He then distributes books on wood block prints, in Japanese.

Following a perfunctory tour of the Sasai Sake Brewing Company, an industrial plant of vats and pipes and drying rice, we retire to a small tatami room to discuss and sample the wares. It is like a European wine tasting, without the vulgar spitting. The beaming brewmaster bestows on each of us a bottle of the expensive house brand to add to our booty. The Utah Mormon offers to exchange his for one of the silk ties we picked up on the way.

Dinners, where all of the Japanese and none of the foreigners wear ties, are long, liquid and loquacious, with copious sake and beer and endless polite introductory speeches. Mr. Sato from the San Francisco JNTO office, our overseer, introduces each of us in a ceremonial litany. “Rynn Ferrin-san, Motorland Magashine -- Petah Callahan-san, Travelage Westo … Jerry John-stone-san, Salt Lake City shimbun … Marchant-o san, Bancouber Magazine…” We now appreciate that much of Japanese food is not heated because it would turn cold anyway during the endless obligatory discourses.

Between speeches and liberal mutual pouring of drinks, our hosts present their cards: the chairman of the village council, treasurer, vice mayor, director of the Nagano prefecture, director of tourism for the prefecture, principal of the ski school, chairman of the tourism committee, president of the tourism association, manager of the tourism division …

Later, the party gets somewhat ribald, with the flushed senior bureaucrat filling my tiny sake cup suggesting with a wink and a nudge that I should see the Ukiyoe museum special prints, “For
adult people.”

Donning lime-green happi coats, we perform a fan-waving, hand-clapping festival dance around the tables, chanting choruses of the “Matsumoto Bonbon” song. Tonight's gifts include the happi coat, a cassette of the festival song and the town trademark souvenir, the Matsumoto Temari (hand ball) a basketball-sized, silk-embroidered ball on a wooden stand. My concupiscent male dinner companion slips it under an American writer's happi coat, like a giant breast, shocking her speechless in a lively cross-cultural encounter.

After much drinking and camaraderie, our hosts dismiss the women, saying they should rest, and take us to a karaoke bar for whiskey, beer, and singing of national songs. They have nothing Canadian, so I escape performing, (although I do hear Paul Anka's Diana played later). Late in the night, the Mormon reporter sings a touching Tennessee Waltz.

Over a Western breakfast of bacon, eggs and salad, Sato-san distributes two local newspaper clippings with photographs of the visiting foreign press.

At checkout, an earnest housemaid shuffles to the lobby with the bulky Matsumoto ball, which I have thoughtlessly left behind. On the crowded train higher into the mountains, I shove the hatbox-sized container safely behind the seat and settle back to savor the view. Twisted, stark apple trees flit by, and rustic homes with shiny blue and grey tile roofs, fed with messy tangles of power and telephone wires. Straw, kindling, and round, vermilion-red daruma wish dolls, both eyes blackened in, are piled up in frosty fields ready for Bonfire Festival burning.

In Nagano, I am first off the train and down the platform, but a skier chases me with the large box I had somehow forgotten.

Our new retinue includes three driver/escorts and Sarah, an American who works for the prefecture. Sarah, who appreciates all things Japanese, expresses admiration for the ungainly Matsumoto ball I still clutch, but declines the offer of it as a gift.

First stop is the city hall board room, crowded with more
officials and local press, for introductions and card exchanges (Wago-san, Yamazaki-san, Usui-san…). Available light fades over the temples and castles we wish to photograph as the speeches and a few polite questions (nothing pointed now) drone on. Finally, they bestow their largesse: an international digital time zone clock, cassette tape, Japanese noren door curtain and press kits with musical guidebooks which play a Nagano song when opened. By now, the tiny closets in our hotel rooms are piled high with souvenirs.

In three cars, we take to the countryside, our Japanese companions desperately chewing gum to avoid upsetting the gaijins (foreigners), who, they understand, do not like cigarette smoke.

In Obuse, the town that artist Hokkusai visited for inspiration, we admire what has been designated as one of the country's 10 best toilets. It is closed for the winter, so we do not experience it.

Near the town temple, we happen on a winter festival, with food kiosks and souvenir tents displaying blank-eyed, legless daruma dolls from the size of a fist to bigger than a beach ball. When we separate to wander on our own briefly, our guides, armed with walkie talkies, follow each of us, concerned we might get lost, while also exhibiting the Japanese love of hightech gadgetry. There will be a traditional parade and fire-walking ceremony within the hour, but we have to move on. It is not on the itinerary.

At Nozawa Onsen village, a scenic ski resort town, the skiers look longingly at the slopes as we are ushered into city hall for tea and talk. A resort official explains that of Japan's 650 ski resorts, including 107 in Nagano prefecture, Nozawa Onsen has the finest facilities, with 23 hot springs, two gondolas and 30 lift systems. With 26 ryokans and 360 minshukus (family run inns), the town accommodates 20,000 skiers, or about 800,000 a season.

The mayor (his card identifies him as the burgermeister) then
hands out peach-colored silk scarves for the ladies and moss-green ties for the men, as well as life-sized woven pigeons on wheels. A printed explanation of their legend points out that the straw birds are designated as a number one craft in Japan.

On this, our last day, it appears the outdoor writers will finally get on the slopes when the chief ski instructor and village officials lead us past long lineups to jump queue onto the gondolas for the 18-minute climb up Mount Kenashi.

At the summit, they lead us past the lifts, straight to the lodge. Looking longingly at the cafeteria yakisoba, curry rice and other basic dishes, we are ushered into a private room for the official lunch, an exotic Western hybrid of oyster soup and tender steak accompanied by a local mashed radish and onion dip. During the gift-giving (head bands and gloves for tonight's festival), Sato-san mentions that he has received a telephone call that a Matsumoto ball was found in our Nagano hotel, and will be returned. Welcoming speeches, lunch and card-passing leaves just a few hours for the visiting skiers to get on the slopes, finally.

Tonight is the Himatsuri Bonfire Festival, held every January 15 since 1839 to eliminate evil spirits and honor the male offspring born that year.