Masks
There's something deeply sad about the city or it might be the winter. On a one-to-one level people are fantastically warm and friendly. As a grand movement there is something frozen and lost. On the train the stares and mouths drooling open. The eyes trained on phones, games. The shuffling, the face masks. It's enough to make you freak at times. Big cityness in all its impersonality.
More inspiring face masks could be found at the Setsubun festival in Shimokitazawa. It is a festival that celebrates the coming of Spring even though it's still plainly winter for another six weeks. Still, it gives you hope. Little children in devil masks threw soy beans at men dressed as devils. The littler ones wept and screamed with fear while their parents laughed. A good way of bringing trauma into normality at an early age. The soy beans were quite tasty and would make a good bar snack. But no-one else was eating them, preferring to lob them at the devils and then crunch them under foot until the streets were dusted in brown powder.
My coat burned to a crisp in a little bar in Asagaya where the barman supposedly plays Beatles songs on his guitar sometimes though that was during the holiday period and now when we were there it was definitely not of a holiday atmosphere and the coziness was provided by small electric braziers which were rather close to the customers, which is why my coat caught fire. By the time the thick smoke had become too invasive to ignore, the barman and some wrinkled regular were already in the doorway beating the fire out with vigour. I used to have a whole coat, and now I have a coat with a hole.
Onsen Mania in Nikko
We went to Nikko famous hot springs area to "take the waters." The hotel was fabulous and our window gave onto an enormous lake encircled by snow-capped mountains. The view from the milky mineral and viciously hot water was a cement wall. There were lumps of snow and icicles around, which were something to look at, but Mayumi was upset. Though not by the food which was elaborate Japanese gourmet style, with hundreds of tiny tidbits such as sea urchin pâté and sea cucumber, roe, sashimi on a plate made out of rock salt, beef stew, a DIY shabu shabu involving big red fish with large eyes and a "risotto" that was basically an eggy-rice soup cooked in the old shabu shabu water. We sat in yukata robes and felt imperial. The whole being naked in the onsen thing is okay. You have a little towel that David explained was a "modesty towel." Still you could catch glimpses of other men's knackers if you so desired. There was an incredibly thin man whose entire back was a bone and had no bottom.
The procedure is: go in, sit on a stool and wash yourself thoroughly with a high-pressure shower. Try not to think about the history of the plastic stool you're sitting on. Get in the various hot spring baths available. The one outside here was searingly hot and unbearable while my feet and hands were inside. I had to balance my feet out on the wall and use my middle back as a fulcrum to keep from drowning. It was quite effective.
Onsen etiquette seems to forbid chatting with strangers, at least in my experience. And also if there is more than one pool, you might want to move along when someone else comes. At least that's what everyone did when I turned up. But maybe that should be telling me something.
Monkeys and Dragons
The famous world heritage site Toshogu temple had lots of construction and an world heritage-worthy price tag. There was a big black and white dragon swooping around on one of the interior ceilings constructed to give out a ringing echo when a monk smacked two sticks together underneath it which one kindly did for us four times. The snow was deep everywhere and weathered men shovelled it with multicoloured spades. The three monkeys of "see no evil..." fame were carved in bas relief on the front of one temple. A parable of blissful ignorance, if you can get your three monkeys coordinated, which seems a bit of a tall order. Better off giving them typewriters and waiting for them to produce the Complete Works of Danielle Steele.
Mara and I continued to Kinugawa Onsen, a set of concrete blocks in the middle of a ring of snowy mountains. We ate lousy pasta and for the same money got the run of a huge hot springs emporium with eight baths for men and separately for women, including jacuzzis and one freestanding copper tub that I didn't go into because it had been recently vacated by a fat old man. The outdoors ones were something. On a promontory extended into the wide valley, sitting in the 42ºC rock bath, the snow fell thickly all around. I closed my eyes and emptied my head to the rush of the water and the patter of the falling snow.
Hermit Holes
Those crazy little bars are limitless. Going for these bars requires a leap of faith. Scaling stairs that would look especially dangerous and urban in the middle of Hackney can lead to a lush emporium of swish chairs, cocktails and elaborate decorations, or a small dark corridor filled with mumbling men. But how are you to know from the 30 year old battered neon sign outside? Answer: you're not.
Up on a fourth floor up some horrible steps, behind a door with no sign, we found a little red place packed with hanging musical instruments, chandeliers, birds, old telephones, an avalanche of period props. There was enough room for probably five people but our arrival pushed it to ten and the warm convivial atmosphere was an excellently-decorated rush hour subway train that's not going anywhere and doesn't want to. The barman put on some jazz - and then I realized that it was he, playing on an upright piano under the bar.
Then there was that place, Mother's Ruin in Shimokitazawa, with a gigantic dragon-cum-lizard on the ceiling, made of solid gold and threatening to crush the drinkers in case of earthquake. The toilet had handpainted wallpaper showing scenes from the Ramayana or something like that. I had a hot rum with a knob of butter floating in it like it couldn't care less.
Flowers on the subway. Tress in winter dress. Empty branches. Cold frozen ground. Plum trees blossom in the center of the university campus. The days are short and blue and very sunny. The air is dry and originates sometimes in Siberia.
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