Yesterday, I left Shibuya and headed for Yamanouchi. It took three trains and three hours, which isn’t so bad considering the distance trave

Jennifer Hasegawa

Yesterday, I left Shibuya and headed for Yamanouchi. It took three trains and three hours, which isn’t so bad considering the distance traveled was 300 miles.

For the longest stretch, I rode the Hokuriko Shinkansen (bullet train) for 90 minutes and traveled about 200 miles. (For the record, that’s a smooth and silent 130 miles/hour, BART!)

So, what’s in Yamanouchi?

The delightful onsen I booked by mistake on Expedia. Well, not so much by mistake, but I booked it thinking it was in my intended destination, which is Myoko-kogen. No changes, no refunds — so Yamanouchi it is!

Yamanouchi and Myoko-kogen are super popular during the winter. (They are both in Nagano Prefecture, which was the location of the 1998 Winter Olympics.) But in the rainy summer season — deserted!

I arrived at the onsen yesterday afternoon and was greeted by a man best described as being like one of my uncles in Hawaii.

When he saw me enter the front doors, he called out, “Expedia!”

He doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak Japanese, so there is a lot of bowing and smiling and me saying, “Arigatou gozaimasu” (Thank you very much [for not scorning me because I don’t speak Japanese]), “hai” (Yes [I don’t know what you are saying, but I want to stay positive]), and “sumimasen” (Excuse me or sorry [for not going to Japanese school when I was little]).

What I love most is that even if we’ve established that I don’t understand Japanese, my Yamanouchi Uncle just keeps speaking to me in Japanese.

I enjoy hearing him speak Japanese, even if I don’t understand a word because our interaction reminds me a lot of spending time with my paternal grandmother; my only grandparent who lived during my lifetime.

She didn’t speak English, but spoke to me in Japanese all the time when I was a child.

We’d play hanafuda and eat soda crackers.

When we’d head to the mall as a family, she’d sneak a dollar into my palm as we rode together in the backseat.

She’d sit next to me on the sofa and hold my hand and say things in Japanese that sounded like facts, not sappy “Grandma loves you so much!” stuff.

I imagine that she was sharing advice for the future and telling me about the way the world works, gripping my hand tighter at moments for emphasis:

It’s a hard world out there.

See my face? See my hands? That’s the world.

Don’t let the assholes get you down.

They’ll try their hardest, but fuck ’em.

Even my own children will betray me.

Be strong, girl.

I gotta go cook the rice now.

Bastards, even after all of these years, I’m still cooking the goddamned rice, can you believe it?



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