Otsu was a city on the shores of Lake Biwa. I stayed there with Mariko, an aerobics instructor, and her parents. In the mornings, I took a bicycle up the mountain to the temple where I took Japanese class. The roads were lined with deep gutters, covered by thick metal grate.
Near the temple was a pond full of turtles. My friends and I would walk past at lunchtime, and see hundreds of them sitting on the shore. As the rainy season went on, the lake grew larger and deeper, until it overflowed. The turtles followed the water, and when I looked down into the deep gutters, I could see them staring back at me.
Hikaru and I were supposed to meet Mariko at her studio at 4:00. She was rehearsing for her flamenco performance that night. Mariko was a dedicated dancer, and had sewn her own costume. I think Japanese people like flamenco because of its tight poses, and because of the paper fans.
Hikaru took me to see another temple while she prepared. I remember drinking water from the hand-washing spring; pretty funny. Kyoto was filled with crowded historical temples where tourists and worshippers passed through, single file.
It was a hot August afternoon. Hikaru had a small purse with him, that he put down on a low wall. When it was time for the show, he went to get a cab. The doors of Japanese taxis open automatically, but he'd left his purse on that wall, somewhere outside a temple.
Hikaru had a few hundred yen with him, and so did I, so we asked the driver to take us as close to the recital hall as we could afford. After that, we got out and ran. We didn't have much time; I was a pudgy teenager, but Hikaru was a lean jazz dancer who climbed poles for the phone company. He kept outpacing me, and I begged him to run ahead. Instead, he urged me on like the rabbit in a dog race. I was soaked in sweat when we arrived, just five minutes late.
There were no seats left in the tiny theater, so he and I stood behind the last row, between the seats and a wall. Sweat dripped from my nose onto the neck of the patron in front of me. She was stoic and ignored it.
Mariko was a beautiful dancer, and she was accompanied by a real Mexican musician, who I didn't expect to see in Kyoto. He sang traditional music in a frightening wail. She cried throughout the performance, although I never found out if it was because we were late.
Hikaru's bag was returned to him the next day by mail. Japanese people are very honest.
I went to a party hosted by Chika, Mariko's friend. She was older than Mariko, about as old as my mother, and she liked to pinch my ass. She and her friends were followers of Sai Baba. One of them showed me a framed photograph of SB, and then flipped it around, revealing Jesus on the reverse side.
At the party was a strange, small dog, only about as big as a tissue box. It was clumsy and wandered around the party, occasionally getting kicked. When I looked at it closely, I saw that it had no eyes, only sticky-looking raisins.
The first half of the party was cocktail-style. I didn't drink at the time, so I had tea. A woman approached me and touched my shoulder-length hair.
"Your hairu: very nice. But, ah... homos?"
"All my homosexual friends have short hair."
She nodded. After cocktails, we had an exercise where we were supposed to make collages. There was a system, but I've forgotten how it worked. I made an elaborate collage using a lot of fish, which are easy to find, cooked, in Japanese magazines. Once we were done, the collages were read like tea leaves, and that the upper-left quadrant, which featured a lone fish on a plate, was meant to represent my feelings about myself in the present.
My class had a special trip, to the married rocks at Ise. After seeing the rocks, and buying a special plaque with our romantic fortunes written on them, we went to Parqué España, the Spanish themepark. I went on "Donkey's Sherry", a fun-house ride taking us by scenes of peasant donkeys. As they drank more, the tableaux grew more complicated, and the robot donkeys grew more raucous. At the climax, the donkeys overindulged and suffered the DTs. A two-story high devil donkey with lasers for eyes threatened them with a axe.
On the second-to-last day of my stay, Mariko took me up into her room and showed me her collection of movie posters. I didn't know that she was a movie fan. She had a poster of every movie released in Japan that starred Richard Gere.
When I left Japan, I flew back through Los Angeles, and missed my connecting flight home. When my parents arrived at the airport to pick me up, the only things there were my bags, and the doll Mariko had given me, "The Spirit of the Wisterias".