Till Every Lightning Bug is Caught
I arrived in Japan yesterday, three in the afternoon, leaving SFO at 1 the previous day. Somehow I beat the lag in flight, or at least got on top of it enough to think it was about time for dinner by the time I got to Tsukuba at 6:30.
I remember when Billow fell in love with all things Chinese. He was blase about just about everything, then I guess sophomore year of college he just dug into East Asia. Moved to Taipei after graduating and just didn’t look back. Not so much a passion but a level of comfort, excitement, and engagement I hadn’t seen in him before.
I can’t claim to be as cool and removed as Billow, but as I woke up from my nap on the plane I was excited to be going to Tsukuba, getting my lab on, drinking beer and eating chicken every which way. Giddy, really. That my Nihongo level is still at sub survival is quite pathetic, but I can pick shio and negi out of a waiters description of food, and I know I want both.
So, Murata-san takes us to his house tonight, where we eat a quick rice-ball dinner, and I gladly give the gifts. The whole gift thing is so ritualistic and automatic you’d think with my adversion to the dogma of tradition I would shutter. But when I pull out a Death Star shaped pez dispenser, I see Murata-san’s face light up, and it’s great.
We drive to Mt. Tsukuba. It’s humid and Murata-san thinks the lightning bugs will be out. And they are, in force. Yukiko-san has a friend who lives in an old farmhouse, and her husband and daughter join us in walking down the dusky paths. The fireflies here glow green. Aren’t they red in NY? And they’re slower. Well not so much slower, but more relaxed.
You can just scoop them in your hand, no grasshopper nonsense, just pick them up as if they were glowing tic-tacs. And I’m sitting there, in the summer breeze, watching the sunset, smelling the incense wafting from some big budhha hanging out in the rice field, watching the kids play with the fireflies, straight out of Miyazaki.