The warrior monk
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I waited with T-sensei, C-sensei and H-sensei at the airport, holding a sign for Y-san and someone else. We were waiting for two Korean Eglish teachers to find us, who would be staying with T-sensei and visiting our school as part of a teaching exchange for the next week. H-sensei especially seems enthusiastic about this program, and has typed up a detailed schedule for the next week. I think he’s more eager to share his teaching with them than he is to take in theirs, as I’ve judged him as being arrogant about his teaching ability, but I later heard him timidly ask Yoon, a female Korean English teacher, “Why is it that Koreans can speak English than the Japanese?” She explains that the Koreans incorporate more listening and speaking from the very start, and the college entrance exams require listening and speaking sections, where as the Japanese do not.

We get some food first, and everyone speaks in English, with the occasional digression into Japanese by the Japanese teachers. There is a brief discussion over the written language. H-sensei asks The woman how the Korean alphabet came to be, and she explains that, like Japanese characters, they were modified from the Chinese characters. I overhear Yoon, who is a fairly attractive married woman in her 30s, reading the Japanese menu.

“So you speak Japanese?”

“No. I just know the characters.”

“But you said the right words, that’s Udon.”

“Yes, but I don’t understand!” That seems very funny to me, and we both laugh. How strange would it be to be able to read your own language, but not understand it—sort of like reading German or French for me, I guess.

We drive for just under an hour to some Buddhist temples in a neighboring prefecture, Wakayama. The site is called Negorodera, and 500 years ago, it used to be the center of activity in the area.

In the car ride over, it’s me, H-sensei and Yoon-sensei. She’s immediately impressed that I’m trying to learn Japanese, when it’s not even her native language. White people don’t have to do much to impress these days, but if you’re Asian and you don’t speak accent-free, fluent English, you’re automatically an idiot to Americans. It’s sad, but true, like most things in life.

She’s easily amused with me—I say things like how she speaks English better than my president—which is true, and she loses it. The other thing that cracks her up, is I recite some of the English loan words in Japanese—words like, “suturaikuauto” (strikeout) or “Makudorunarudo,” (McDonalds). I’m not sure H-sensei thinks this is so funny.

Almost as soon as we get out of the car, everyone pulls their camera out and I have to suppress a laugh since I think the site of Asian people with cameras is funny for some reason. They snap shots so diligently and carefully. They seem to be primarily concerned with getting the whole temple or building in the shot, rather than taking an interesting angle or focusing in on anything of interest--like, for example, I later took a picture of some ducks, and they didn't seem to understand why I cared.

On one of the stone sculptures outside, I ask H-sensei what the writing is, and he translates it as, “eternal flame.” The Korean woman also reads it, but she gives me the literal translation of the characters, which is “starlight all through the night.” I think it’s a fun coincidence that it rhymes. I wish I could read them for myself since it seems like a form of time travel to be able to read something that was written 500 years ago. Of course, I’ve read books that old and older, but this stone was actually carved 500 years ago, and the books I read the classics from were made by some venture capitalist’s press. I touch it, like a child might touch a book when his parents read it to him, and I’m a bit jealous of the connection that the Japanese have to their own language, culture and land. I start to think that if America’s youth had this connection, we might not be at war, but I can’t explain why. It just seems that our adults in America are running around like adolescents trying to find something meaningful. They go to yoga at expensive health clubs or buy, “tai chi for senior citizens,” and do ancient traditions from their big screen T.V.’s. It seems so ironic that Americans practice elements of a religion that preaches non-materialism in a society that values cable and fast cars.

Leaving the temple, T-sensei tells me that there was a greatly feared man that lived at this temple, who was both monk and samurai—usually people were one or the other. “Sounds scary,” I said. “Very scary,” he says, nodding and raising his eyebrows.

Before we enter one of the larger temples, H-sensei tells me that I’m dirty, and must clean myself as we approach one of these little water fountains that have a dragon spitting water into a basin. We all take the cup-on-a-stick and pour water over our hands. I watch other people do this and pray. Shoes off, no pictures allowed, and I can smell the incense form outside. Other visitors stop halfway on the steps, pause, bow, and continue inside. I am jealous of whatever they’re feeling and thinking (or not thinking…zen) as they enter. I just try to take in the place and see if any of the energy fields will penetrate my body that the trendy, yuppie spiritual scholars are always talking about. I think the Western people that make money selling books that regurgitate eastern philosophy into bite-size pieces that suburban housewives can understand never really understood what they were writing about, but were so amazed at religions like Buddhism, that they figured if they talked about it long enough, they’d finally understand it. Ironic, but Buddhism would naturally discourage overthinking it’s own philosophy, but rather to clear your mind.

The inside of the temple has the similar sacred feeling that a Christian church has—which some people call the presence of God—a sort of warm stillness; but there’s something else here. I can’t quite figure it out at first, but after waiting, meditating, just taking in the environment, it comes to me: care. I am surrounded by so much care. Christians hire carpenters to build their churches in suburbia, where maybe there was an old Indian mound, or at lest an old farm. The temple was built by monks over 500 years ago. The set up of the sanctuary has such intricate trinkets and statues set just so. I saw a monk weeding the impeccable garden of trees, rocks and water outside, which I’d prefer a hundred times over to the sod in suburbia.

H-sensei demonstrates how you do a prayer by taking a pinch of incense, holding it to his forehead, and then putting into a basket. He also shows me that the 50 yen coin is most appropriate, because it has a hole in the middle, making it into a circle, somehow symbolic of the year to come. He said that he prayed for success in our work relationship in the year to come, and says that’s the most appropriate thing to do. He likes the word, "appropriate." I try my best, but I think of someone else when the herbs fall from my fingers.