The beginning of the spring in the northern hemisphere brings about the necessity to leave my comfortable existence on the other side of the world, leave golden and sunny April, unusually warm this year in Dunedin, and expose myself to the uncertain and often wet and moody April in Europe.
My daughter and my four-year-old granddaughter Sophia are traveling with me and that is very pleasant. As I get older I hate travelling by myself. But my daughter has got conditions. She wants to see some interesting places on the way. I am lukewarm about interesting places. Anyway most famous sites are overrated.
How about Tokyo? She asks.
It is spring there, the famous gardens are flowering, and this is once in a lifetime chance to visit, she said.
I looked at the weather report. Tokyo just survived one very nasty typhoon, but I was willing to accept a reasonable suggestion that from now on for at least a week the weather there would be settled.
Japan interested me; it was one Asian country, which was never a British colony, never, experienced the alleged misfortune and abuse of the British rule. So I agreed to visit Tokyo.
Tokyo’s airport was impressive enough, well organized, although I noticed already that not many of the custom officials spoke English. There was a direct bus to the city and we reached our hotel in downtown Tokyo two hours after we landed, which was pretty good by the world standards. The bus took us around rice fields that were lush and green, we could spot in a distance a replica of the American version of Disney land.
Then we entered the city, the highway was going directly through it. That was surprising. Japan has a score of wonderful urban architects; I thought that they could manage the transportation in more efficient and elegant way.
It was getting dark and the street lamps were not doing their business properly. The streets looked dark; there was no dazzling brilliance of American and West European cities. Our bus was passing lots of huge office buildings that looked unoccupied, one or two rooms only have lights on. It reminded me of my visit to Egypt in early seventies, the similar lack of lighting, and oppressive darkness in the streets. But of course Cairo was an ancient city, hardly any skyscrapers that were abundant in Tokyo. But a skyscraper with only few lit rooms in a vast building looks very depressing.
There were not many people around in the streets till we approached the very center of the city. The evening was pleasant and warm; we did not see any restaurants where people would be dining at outside tables in the gardens like in Europe.
The hotel was vast, our room was tiny. We were warned that the space at Japanese hotels was very limited, so we did not have huge bags and we did not find it very difficult to squeeze all our possessions inside.
We were hungry, the sushi bar was open but we went outside in search of restaurant, which would offer us a better fare. But we did not find anything in the vicinity except MacDonald’s and a small supermarket. Nobody spoke any English in the supermarket and what was even worse we did not have a clue what to buy. Nothing was packed in a familiar way, so we could recognize what was inside packages with Japanese script. The only recognizable thing was French bread, truly excellent. So to our shame we bought Big Mac from MacDonald’s and supplemented it with the French bread.
Next day we decided for Sophia’s sake to visit the Zoo. Sophia likes to visit a zoo, she likes to see the animals and since she already seen several zoos in the world she is in her small way an expert. It might surprise my readers than one of the 10 best zoos in the world is in Prague. The city is not well known for its tropical forest or lush jungles. The Czech republic is not a natural habitat of lions, tigers, giraffes or crocodiles. The domestic fauna is not exciting, mainly the hens, the pigs, few horses and cows. All the exotic animals have to be caught elsewhere and brought to the country with moderate climate which majority of them do not enjoy. Yet the Czechs are for some reason enthusiastic zoo builders and the Prague zoo is outstanding. I must say that the zoo in Tokyo was ugly, and disorganized. The animals did not have enough space there, not enough room for their usual activity. They were obviously stressed, not happy, I would say they were even looking depressed. Our Sophia sensed it immediately and when we wanted to buy her an ice cream, she refused, saying that the ice cream would not be any good in such a sad place.
Tokyo zoo had a one great advantage over Prague, they did owe a real and very cute panda but even so Sophia did not change her opinion that the garden as such was inferior to what she saw in Prague.
As I said above Japan was never an English colony and that maybe was an advantage for the Japanese people but it is a major disadvantage for today’s traveler.
I have found it difficult to cope with the language problem. Since only very few people understood English it was difficult even to take rides in a taxi. The concierge had to write a little note for a taxi driver about where we want to go and I was always worried that if we lose that note we would be lost in Tokyo forever, we shall vanished without any trace.
The primary goal of our sight seeing now was to find a special Japanese garden, uniquely beautiful and tranquil. We searched travel books and decided that Rikugien garden, created several centuries ago, might be what we were seeking, a place so uniquely beautiful and spiritual that when we enter it we would never want to leave it. It owes its name to six principles of poetry. I do not write poetry, so I do not know the six principles of it, but I was willing to learn.
Rikugien was a place so remote, so far away from our hotel and the center of the city that at first we decided to find some other garden, close by, a place where even I, with my broken Achilles tendon, could walked to., We decided that we did not need all six principles of poetry. One or two would be quite sufficient.
Concierge recommended a fantastic place nearby and we went to explore it. Alas this fantastic garden did not seem fantastic to us, from our perspective of the splendid well maintained public gardens in New Zealand. It looked unkempt the lawns were not properly mowed and the weeds were flourishing at places they should not. We decided that the gardeners there could not be professionals. We soon tired of this particular garden. There was no beauty, no harmony, no poetry, and no deep spirituality there.
Next we tried two other gardens, which were even worse. We were ready to give up the idea of gardens altogether. The trip to Tokyo did not seem such a good idea after all.
Then my daughter decided that we should make one last effort, and go to Rikugien just to give Tokyo the chance, however difficult would be to find it. And difficult to find it truly was. Concierge wrote the name in Japanese script on a piece paper, the driver of our taxi seemed to understand where we wanted to go, so we settled in a taxi full of hope for a favourable outcome. After half an hour drive we left the city well behind and started to circle outskirts. Soon I got the impression that the taxi driver was lost. We were driving around several kilometers long brick wall. At the end we arrived to some gate in the wall, and the driver mimicked to us to exit his vehicle. He pointed to the gate. We paid the fare and he quickly vanished out of sight. The gate proved to be the gate to some football stadium, no trace of Rikugien garden, and no trace of any garden at all. In desperation we showed our note to the gate keeper, he was puzzled by it and after some hesitation he pointed out to the same long brick wall we just left behind. We tried to interpret his signals, and he seemed to be telling us that we have to go back to follow the brick wall to the end and at the opposite end was the gate to the garden we were seeking. We were quite desperate at the moment. I can hardly walk, we both lost faith in the existence of the garden, and we were tired, hot, and thirsty. We would have given a kingdom for a taxi. But nobody wanted our kingdom, so we had to march along the blooming wall. After we were marching at least half an hour a miracle had happened, proof that one should trust providence, be patient, never give up even when things look hopeless. Another gate loomed in the distance and that was the gate to paradise, to Rikugien garden.
Maybe I was too thirsty, too exhausted, and too delirious but the gate led to the realm of spirituality I never seen before or after. Yes, visit Rikugien and die seemed quite appropriate description of my feelings.
I am a realist, what I learned about Japanese culture and their attitude to women made me believe that this spirituality was not meant to be accessible to me or any other female. For years I now study the attitude to women in different cultures. I am eternally grateful that if I had to be born as a woman I was born to the kindest of all the culture towards women, that I was born as a Christian. Jews and Muslims are quite open about their deprecation of women. By far the greatest distrust of women in my opinion is shown in Japanese culture where even the language norms and vocabulary is different for males and females.
However whether I was meant to imbued the spirituality exhumed by this garden or not, somehow I managed it.
I realized that for Rikugien garden Tokyo was worthy this otherwise tortured visit. It is very difficult to describe the place because its magic is not given in what you actually see but in what is hinted at behind the appearance of things. I grasped immediately that the Japanese garden does not care for flowers. It is all about stones, their shapes, and stones submerged in water, stones emerging from water, reflections of stones in water. It is about sand, trees, peculiarly twisted, about shadows.
We came to one corner of the garden where the azaleas were planted, their best time was over, the spring moved on, but there was still enough bloom left for me to realize that in contrast to stones and water, shapes and shadows, there was no proper place for flowers in this garden. Their shapes, colours even scent were misplaced here, they destroyed the harmony of being. They were imperfect, impure even hideous in comparison with the purity of elements, water, earth, air.
If you ask how we managed to return from this paradise of spirituality to our hotel, I must honestly say that I do not know. The only rational explanations are that the gods took a pity on me and send a taxi my way. Not immediately, though.
It was a miracle.
My advice is do not go to Rikugien if you are not sure that the local heaven is on your side. You might be stuck there for eternity.
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