Delightfully Lost and Human

Onsen, yukata, tatami, futon.

Those are some of the things I knew about Japan. Most of my knowledge about the Japanese language and culture came from my extensive manga reading. You may have friends who faithfully follow scanlations the Shounen Jump Big Three — One Piece, Naruto, Bleach — but the amount I read is much more. For example, to my own astonishment, I have to spend one whole day catching up on my manga reading after a two-week trip to Japan, during which I didn't read manga that much due to the limited screen estate of my puny laptop.

My manga obsession aside, I've learned that I have nuanced knowledge of the Japanese culture that my travel companion, an advanced-level student of Japanese language, does not know. I recalled telling him that in several mangas I read, people enjoy a drink of cold milk after soaking in onsen — I was telling him this when we have just finished our own share of hot spring soaking. So I wandered to the vending machine to verify my own trivia, only to discover other bath-related stuff in the vending machine: shaver, soap, shampoo, a pair of boxers — the latter an interesting finding notwithstanding, there was, to my dismay, no cold milk. However, imagine my delight when I paced to the other hand of the changing room and found, you guess it, a cold-milk vending machine. Needless to say, we teetered gleefully to it and fed it some coins. 

There were other moments like this, when my knowledge of some obscure aspect of the Japanese culture showed. On the other hand, there were also moments when my companion has to rescue me from drowning in the verbal torrent that is Japanese speech. And there we go, two people who have some knowledge in the Japanese culture and language, and somewhat lacking in travelling experience.

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Where one goes on a journey, is quite inevitable really, that one will sooner or later get lost. In my native language, there is an aphorism that says he who is too shy to ask directions will get lost. My companion, who was keen to apply his Japanese language and finding our own way, was averse to asking. Myself, following wisdom of the ancients and being emboldened by the fact that we were in a land of strangers, would go up to policemen or other young-looking people in businesswear (more likely to speak English), said sumimasen (excuse me) and went straight to a mixture of dumbed-down English and animated, flailing, Tarzan-and-Jane sign language. Fear of getting lost triumphs over introversion.

Towards the end of the trip, we visited the Ghibli museum. There was one sentence in the pamphlet that is decidedly stuck in my mind, namely, I paraphrase: The visitor is encouraged to get themselves lost in this museum. Indeed, if you have seen even one or two Ghibli animations, the brand of the fantastical will soon be impressed upon you; what seems like a normal scene gradations into the magical, the preternatural. True enough, for an establishment that encourages one to get lost inside, the interior of the museum is delightfully confusing so that one would be delightfully lost. Upon entering reception, one would choose to view a short animation à la Ghibli, that would jumpstart a fantastical journey; or, one can choose to view various zoetropes of familiar Ghibli characters. Real time animations are hypnotic; it sucks you in, it transcends to your plane of reality: like Hey, this is not the animations you see on your silver screen, these characters come to life; right here, right now. Only after visiting Ghibli museum, I understood that getting lost is okay; that one should wonder and wander in lostness; bringing out that childlike quality of marvelling in everything, worrying not a farthing about how to get home, because one would be home eventually, for now be hypnotised by the present and seize it, the present and the day.

The writing of Augustine of Hippo was described to be 'digressive'. Although undoubtedly this gives headaches to his translators, the commentator mentions this in the tone not of derision, but of delight, because eventually everything would tie in together and the reader is brought to the home of the argument. Augustine would take his reader to a journey with a lot of detours, just like life, that grand scheme of things, is itself a journey with a lot of detours. (If this is not obvious to  the reader by now, I'm using this digression to justify digressions. Feeling delightfully lost yet?)

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I read travelling accounts sometimes, and now I understand why there is a whole genre dedicated to travellogues: travels expose you, force you to rethink your assumptions and prejudices, shove a new paradigm down your throat. And if that doesn't wring creative juice out of you, I don't know what will.

I foolishly only recently made the connections between manga and cartoon. During my travel in Japan, I was confronted several times with a nagging feeling. The nagging feeling that the real thing does not hold up to my expectations. We were lucky enough to witness summer festivals, where stalls of food and other amusements were set up in the neighbourhood of nearby temples and shrines. In my mind, it was a magical place — you would go to one wearing yukata, treating yourself to takoyaki, candied apples and a game of goldfish-scooping; you would pray at the shrine and give offering, buying charms and draw fortunes; you would wait until late at night when fireworks like a spontaneous field of blossoms would burst, colouring the night sky. Yes, I did witness some of this, but somehow something was lacking. The first fantasy-shattering thing: the price of takoyaki (and other treats) was exorbitant. Secondly, and this is the major source of that nagging feeling: Real people actually do this? The moment this thought surfaced, I realised that I have been treating the Japanese culture as precisely that: a fantasy. In my own imaginations, it has become glossed over, raised to the ideal. In my mind, the Japanese have become 2-dimensional, cartoon figures of themselves.  Kierkegaard would call it a repetition.

And this brings me to the second big thing I learned from this travel, besides getting delightfully lost; that we are not that different after all. Strip that shiny veneer of culture and language and fancy clothes and we are not that different after all. And of all places, I learn this at onsens.

I had an inkling of this already when I first joined the lifesaving team. We strip down to our swimsuits, which are all Lycra, which are all of similar thinness. Understandably, this would make anyone anxious: your fashionable clothes are not there, your fake mannerism is not there; everyone speaks the same language and passion of swimming while laid bare in the bodies you carry with since birth with all its imperfections and what separates you from other human beings is just a thin layer of Lycra. 

And this is also the onsen philosophy: that every man and woman is forced to shed the onion layers of labels that society and oneself have plastered upon. The onsen etiquette prescribes that, firstly, one takes off all one's clothes in the changing room before entering the bath area. Needless to say, what one should take off is not only his regalia, but also his own social status that is implied by that set of regalia, for in the onsen everyone is his own naked self. Secondly, one should wash oneself clean before soaking in the public bath. What one previously has taken off is not enough, one should go a step further and take off the dust and the grimes; and the implication is quite clear: that wickedness and prejudice should be washed off, too. Only then, one is allowed to soak in the public bath. When one has traded his regalia with a cloth of vulnerability; when one has traded his prejudices and wear a robe of humility and open-mindedness. In From A Distance, Bette Midler sang, "From a distance, you look like my friend", but the onsen philosophy asserts that we should transcend that distance and stand nakedly side-by-side and the verse would go "From up close, we are actually the same, you and I".

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I would close with another aphorism from my mother tongue that came to mind: "Where the earth is trodden on, that's where the sky is supported", which is roughly equivalent to "In Rome, do as Romans do". And I think most travellers would come to this same conclusion: That deep down, we are all the same. That deep down, we are all humans. That yes, we tread on different earths and burden different skies, but we stand on the same Earth and hold up the same Heaven.