We tidied up Yayoi's room, had bread and cheese, and trundled downstairs where the school was waiting to sing us a good-bye hymn. Why had Camilla sewn a big pink swatch onto the back of her pants? Oh. It was a rip. She nipped back up to the 3rd floor bathroom to change clothes, and I smiled warmly at people and did not explain why Camilla was making everyone wait. The song was beautiful.

Japan has an amazing overnight delivery service. We have used it twice now, once to send Tokiko's kimonos from Sendai to the school, and now to send two  suitcases stuffed with 50 lbs apiece of books, kimonos, and pottery, to the airport. It was $20 per item. People use this service a lot because it's door to door and completely reliable. Or so I am told.

The 1 hour bus ride to Tokyo was $15 apiece. We went to lunch with the editor of Bio-City Japan, a magazine dedicated to thinking about environmentalism from a spiritual as well as technological and political point of view. He picked an Italian restaurant (the second favorite choice here, after Japanese food), and watched happily as we ate. He said that Japan has an unbroken tradition of experiencing gods in the natural world, it is the nation of 8 million kami. With that attitude, it is natural for people to think of addressing environmental problems from a spiritual point of view.

We said that the Native Americans had a similar point of view, but that for us, who are historically new to the Americas, our mythology is science. So, approaching the natural world through Citizen Science is a good way to get people engaged in effective environmental change. We bowed and exchanged assurances to connect our organizations with each other.

Then we headed for our meeting with Allan West, but got sidetracked on the way by a pottery fair. Japanese pottery is about what you'd expect from having seen it at Uwajimaya and other such places, but here it is inexpensive. A bowl, for example, will cost about $6, and a large plate about $10. We wandered about, dazed and delighted. 

Finally, we broke free and wound through the alleys of that district to Allan's. I presented him with a watercolor and Camilla presented him with the copy of Andrew Henry's Meadow that she'd taken to Japan with her. What a fortuitous coincidence, that both of them should have been so inspired by the same childrens' book!

We sat and discussed lots of things like the role of artists in inspiring change, and living in Japan as a foreigner. Allan does a brisk business; lots of people dropped in or peeked into the windows and he seems to have a large following here. However, the Japanese screen painters do not recognize him as a colleague. Is it racism or what? He doesn't know and has found a way around the issue by simply selling so much good art.

We parted reluctantly. In that short time, he's become a friend.

We closed the evening by going to the same restaurant we found last time, and eating enormous amounts of delicious food; eel, raw mackerel, squid intestines, pickled daikon, caramel pudding, and wobbly greyish purple stuff. Mmmm.

We checked out of Andon Ryokan this morning, regretfully. It was a nice guesthouse, with a youth-hostel feel to the common room, but privacy and cleanliness in our room. 

We took the subway to meet Yayoi at 9:45, but there were four exits, not visible from each other. Hmm. I tried a nearby telephone, using my handy ability to recognize the kanji for yen (円) and the knowledge that even if it went badly, horribly wrong, not much was at stake. Well, it did go wrong, but not badly. I had a string of numbers, but didn't know that the first two were only for use outside of Japan. I should have entered a 0 instead of an 81. Just as I finished my third permutation of when to insert coins, when to dial, and when to panic, Camilla showed up with Yayoi, and we set off down the road together, with our luggage rolling heavily behind us.

Where were we going? To the Tsukiji fish market. It was a noisy street and walking three abreast wasn't possible, so I simply accepted this explanation instead of quizzing Yayoi on why we were doing this at 10 in the morning instead of 4 when it opens, or even why we were doing it at all. We strode along with the insouciant confidence of tourists, and then met a crowd of people who were going with us. Why? I do not know. One of them, I learned much later in the day, was a manga illustrator for Clamp. I would have been very excited except that I didn't find out which one, and it seems a bit extreme to be thrilled about meeting somebody you can't exactly remember. Anyway, we all trotted along to the fish market.

But first, an early lunch. One of our group distributed the rest of us, three or four at a time, amongst the teeny sashimi booths outside of the actual market. We sat in a phone-booth sized restaurant and had amazing sashimi, the texture of ripe Brie, the flavor of persimmon. Also tea, rice, and miso soup, of course. Then we regrouped and went across a road to the fish market. 

There it was, the largest fish market in the world, closing up for the day. We edged between careening handcarts, scooters, and forklifts, and watched men at countless booths wash down their area. Some of the slower ones still displayed an astonishing array of crabs, shrimp, shellfish, and fish. We didn't see the whale section. The enormous slab of red meat Camilla thought was whale was tuna. Finally, it was clear that we were seriously in the way of people who just wanted to go home and were actually willing to skirt along the edge of being rude about it. We scurried away and waited for the others in a parking lot. They eventually appeared, with handbags and brief cases full of reject fish, sold to individual customers at a discount after the chefs are done with their shopping earlier in the day. Everyone looked smug.

On the way to the next destination we stopped at a Buddhist Temple. In the States, on the West Coast at least, most people think of Buddhism as an exacting, extremely holy sort of religion, mysterious and blessed by Alan Watts and Gary Snyder. Well, here, it is just another damn religion. The temple was huge, new, and ever so slightly cheesy. There was a small crowd of drop-in worshippers, and room for about 200 in the main room. It seemed a bit like a Protestant church as far as furnishings and emotional feel, except that it was being used even though it was an off-day.

After that we walked through narrow alleys to a block that was the only one in that part of Tokyo that hadn't burned in World War II. There was the stamp studio. Stamp? 

Japan is a stamp culture rather than a signature culture. If you want to do something major at a bank or other scary institution, you use a stamp to make it formal. This guy carves them from stone. We sat down to tea and friendly conversation about the Chinese origin of kanji. Eventually he said that we should go shopping because the workshop would start in an hour. Workshop?

All eight of us went out and walked briskly about, stopping to smell the kim chee in Koreatown and look at wedding dresses like bells. We ended up in the same open air market near Ueno Park that we visited before. Camilla and I got roast chestnuts and everyone else did mysterious things.

Back at the hanko studio, we were given a choice of stones, each with a square face on the ends of a 2 or 3 inch long prism. We could choose a design from some sheets of paper he passed out, or make our own.

A few nights ago, Tomomi's friend had given us our names in kanji, and Yayoi discussed them further with us last night. Mine can be tree/hometown/wild boar, and Camilla's goddess/tall orchid. I decided to do a design of the kanji for hometown (里) inside a tree, and Camilla designed a kitsune, or magical fox.

To make the stamps, you either glue your paper onto the end of your stone, or draw the design with pen. Then, you use a sharp chisel to gouge out a hole, and crush the stone around the hole in successive waves until you've crushed everything you don't want, leaving the design. This was finicky and slow work, and so while our workshop leader paced around or cooked dinner, the rest of us crushed rock.

Everyone was pretty pleased with their end product. To stamp, you use special ink paste made from cinnabar, glooped into a ceramic bowl. 

Dinner! There were 14 people in all, and the meal was a feast. We started with pickles and quickly moved through many dishes including crab and cabbage soup, sashimi from the fish market excursion, and Italian-ish pasta. At the far end of the table, the guests were chugging through bottles of wine, and then sake, as though the word "hangover" has no meaning. One of the guests got more and more informative about Japanese customs, until we were much wiser and his friends were trying to get him to shut up. 

Finally it was 8:30 and we had to run to catch the bus back to school. Subway to Tokyo Central, bus to the school, school van up the hill, shower, and bed.

This morning we saw 1/3 of the Dürer exhibit at the Museum of Western Art. Along with Hokkusai, he was my favorite artist when I was a young adult. The part we saw were his etchings of the 12 stations of the cross, which are kind of a turn-off for a non-Christian. His detailed depictions of Jesus' suffering were a tad too voyeuristic, but that was the spirit of the times so I forgive him. We didn't have time to see his portraits and natural history etchings, which was too bad. I particularly love his "Knight, Death, and the Devil," which hung temptingly on the wall as we rushed past to get to our appointment with Yayoi.

We met her at the fountain near the museum. Where would we go? To the bookstores, of course! There is an entire section of Tokyo near the University devoted to them. We took the train and then the subway to get nearby, and then walked through a pleasant afternoon. The bookstores were full of books.

Problem is, books mostly appear as spines until you pull them out of the shelves. Reading Japanese is not one of the things I do. So, we poked around, pulling likely looking things off the shelves, and zeroing in on bookstores that had ukiyo-e. Prices ranged from 1000 to 80000 yen, about what you'd find in the States. Reports of shockingly high prices here are not always true. Some things are very expensive, such as fruit, but most things are only about 20% higher than we expect. For example, our Chinese restaurant lunch was 1000 yen apiece, about $12, no tip expected. Not cheap, but not crazy expensive either. 

Around dusk, we wandered through Ueno Park to visit Allan West, an American ex-pat from Utah who came here as a Mormon missionary and stayed as an artist. He learned traditional screen painting from a Japanese master, and uses mineral pigments with deer bone glue and big floppy brushes. His screens are even better than they look on his website. The colors are deep and mineral looking, as though the land itself is participating in the art. He keeps to traditional themes of trees and leaves, but adds motion to make his screens seem to pulse. We talked for a long time, and then he suddenly realized that we lived on the same island where the author of "Andrew Henry's Meadow" lived. 

Wow. That book inspired him to become an artist. To find out that there really was such a meadow, and that Camilla and I have personally viewed it with our own personal eyes made him light up. We all ended up grinning at each other.

After our visit, it was late. We went to a drinking restaurant, one that serves all kinds of traditional snacks to go with the alcohol. Yayoi had a clear drink from fermented miso soup. My sip was quite interesting, a fruity, salty, freshwater kind of a taste. The snacks were really well done. Tuna, bream, and salmon sashimi; kebabs with liver, kidneys, bacon, and weird things; skewers of tomatoes and quail eggs; salad with a very soft boiled egg quivering on top; leek aspic; mushrooms in butter; caramel pudding. 

We took the subway home and actually got there without incident.

Words of the day: The kanji for Camilla mean: kami - god, divine, up, or paper, and la - orchid. The kanji for Julie mean: juli - large tree, i - wild boar.