We Live Where We Are

April, half gone.

April is ushered into Japan with a fleeting bloom of the cherry blossom trees that line railways, riverbanks, and avenues, their petals hanging in papery bunches over shrines and backyards, pink and blown like candied snow in the wet winds that always precede or follow rain showers. In a week they'll be gone, replaced by green leaves, the last blossoms washed down storm drains or browned and bruised underfoot. It's this ephemeral nature that gives sakura-season its significance, and this sense of temporary existence also underlies wabi-sabi, a strain of Japanese aesthetics/philosophy that emphasizes the acceptance of the imperfect and transient.

Fittingly, April is also the start of the new school year in Japan and, as we all know, there is nothing more fleeting than our school days, our years of youth blown by in a taut wind like so many petals. But we're getting much too flowery here.

Yes, the new school year has begun and I am in the process of introducing myself to some 640 new students in the two schools that I visit every week. Perhaps most dramatic has been the arrival of 70 female students at my base school, Sendai Niko, which was formerly an all-boys school. The classroom atmosphere has changed considerably, as the girls, with their, let's face it, better English abilities, have proved to be positively talkative and even willing to ask questions. The English Club at school has also increased from four to a staggering twenty eight members, three fourths of which are 1st year girls.

During one of my self-introductions today, I asked the class if they had any questions about me. Normally when I ask something like this I am greeted with a sea of silent, black-frocked faces. But today I actually got a few interesting questions, the most entertaining being "What kind of woman do you like?" I wasn't quite sure how to answer that one, and ended up explaining that my wife has dark brown hair and looks a little like Audrey Hepburn (someone they all recognize). I stammered a bit, eventually saying that I like "smart, beautiful women." Umm, woman.

I'm at school right now, nursing a bottle of Asahi "Bireley's" orange drink, a twenty percent juice concoction that is, almost certainly, eighty percent sugar. I've got a class in ten minutes, a second year writing class, and after that I'll have English Club for an hour after work. This weekend, two of our friends from Tokyo, Yuko and Chie, are coming up to Sendai to stay with us. I'm not sure what we'll do yet, but visiting Matsushima, the famous bay dotted with 160 pine-clad islands, is in the talks.

I'll post some cherry blossom pictures later today...