This is actually a composite photograph. I zoomed in on the photo to take a picture of it, and without advancing the film, I cocked the camera and took a double exposure picture of the castle. This trick turned out nicely.
This is actually a composite photograph. I zoomed in on the photo to take a picture of it, and without advancing the film, I cocked the camera and took a double exposure picture of the castle. This trick turned out nicely.
Nicknamed Shirasagi ("White Heron") Castle, the origins of the majestic Himeji Castle date back to the year 1333. It's right in the middle of Himeji City, and the wide boulevard starting from Himeji Station heads north to where the castle is. There is an inner moat and a sort of outer moat as well. The castle is surrounded by cherry trees and large grassy areas, making it a prime spot for cherry blossom viewing parties in spring. There is a large park in the back of the castle, to the north. I have fond memories of playing frisbee with Mayu and my friend Mike there.
Before moving to Japan, I had worked on-campus at ASU West, the university where I graduated from. Teaching English in Himeji was my first actual employment as a regular job. When I arrived in August 2000, I really had no idea what I was getting into. I didn't know much about teaching at all. I had volunteered as an assistant and to just sit in and observe some ESL classes at Glendale Community College and I had tutored my friend Bic and a woman named Reiko in English, but as far as developing lesson plans and activities, I really had no idea how to do my job. I was rather lousy at my job at first, but I was just so excited for the experience to live in Japan
All of us ALTs lived in an apartment building called Shirasagi Residence, which was owned by the board of education. Having us all live together and help each other acclimate to life in Japan made it feel like we lived in a commune. We guys would often do stuff together, but I also had trouble fitting in. There was an Australian man named Tony who was Christian, but we didn't have a whole lot in common. He was a nice guy though. The one who lived directly next to me was a guy named Mark and he smoked like a chimney. He smoked Marlboros, which are the worst-smelling. I once asked him, "So you smoke Marlboros?" and he replied, "Yeah, how could you tell?" "Because you smell like shit," I said. I had a Dreamcast, and he always wanted to play Marvel vs. Capcom 2. He was nice to me when it was just the two of us, but in a group he would constantly put me down. He was a raging atheist leftist, so of course he treated me like I was a complete idiot. He had a girlfriend in Kyoto, but he would cheat on her and would have them over at his apartment that reeked of Marlboro tobacco. At times I could hear him in the act too. He was a genius linguist, having studied so many various languages, but he was a dickhead. And I had already learned the lesson of thin walls the hard way. One night as I was folding laundry, I was loudly singing the "Masturbation Song" my friend Denise had taught me in high school. Suddenly that had come to mind and I found it amusing, so I sang it loudly, not knowing how thin the walls were. Mark was sure to give me crap for that the next time we all went out to a restaurant together as a group. Well, whatever dude. At least I didn't cheat on my girlfriend.
That's the problem with so many guys like this: they come to Japan and they treat this country as though it's some sort of sexual playground. It's this mentality that is the reason why Koreans are cold to foreigners and do not trust them marrying their daughters. After the Korean War, too many mixed-race babies were born and the American military fathers responsible for those children ditched their Korean women and went back to the USA, leaving these women with fatherless babies. I've heard many opinions on why Koreans are not so nice to foreign expats, and this is one reason that keeps coming up. It's shameful because there are stories such as my wife's, who married a monogamous boy who loves her. Other Japanese girls, wanting a romantic foreign man, get caught up with guys like this neighbor I had, thinking that sex is a pact and a precursor to marriage. There was another teacher in that building, Carlos, who was sleeping with his Japanese girlfriend all along. Her parents came to his apartment and confronted him, demanding that he marry their daughter or break up with her. I don't think he complied; he just kept leading her on. Then he moved back to Arizona and left her behind. A few years after Mayu and I moved to Arizona, I caught a glimpse of Carlos as I was leaving the Ranch 99 Market Asian grocery store and he was on his way in. He apparently recognized me and glanced at me, but I just ignored him. I just didn't want to engage with him. I'd had good times with him, but just was not interested in talking with him and just kept walking.
So when I wanted to be alone and avoid the others, at night I enjoyed walking along the outer moat. There were occasional benches along the path, pointed towards the castle. The neat thing about Japanese castles is that there are floodlights shining on them at night. With Himeji's stark white color, that castle looked so brilliant as it shone in the darkness, a brilliant beacon of Japanese culture shining in the night. Let the others carouse at Tiger Pub, the local bar that was a hot spot for foreigners. I, on the other hand, was intoxicated by this beautiful castle. I found solace in just sitting on those benches, imbibing the silent beauty of the castle at night. This is Japan, I would tell myself. I live in Japan. This is my dream come true.
I did go to Tiger Pub a few times, but I wasn't much of a drinker then. My group of new ALT arrivals went there on the first night we all arrived in Himeji from America. It was an interesting place to meet other foreigners. I had a conversation with some guys who were submarine drivers and their job was to lay high speed internet cables along the bottom of the Seto Inland Sea. It was also a place to meet Japanese chicks looking for a foreign boyfriend. "My name is Yumi, but you can call me 'Yummy,' tee hee hee!" No thanks, stupid bint. I'm not interested in an STD. So although that bar was a way to meet other foreigners, I just wasn't interested in doing so, particularly since I was a shy introvert and was never good at meeting new people. When asked if I drank alcohol, I would say, "I only drink sociably, yet I am anti-social. Thus the conundrum." Anyhow the longer one lives in Japan, the more difficult it is to not become at least a slight alcoholic. It begins to grow on you, and if you don't want to seem like an asshole, you learn to tolerate alcohol to the point where it becomes comfortable. I thought I hated beer until I had Japanese beer, and I grew to like the taste and associated it with fancy Japanese food.
So I lived the life of a bachelor in Himeji for the first seven months or so of my life there. Then Mayu and I got married March 24th, 2001. Then she moved in with me in my tiny, 1K apartment. It was cramped, with the kitchen table next to our bed, but we were happy to be together. Up until then, we'd had a long distance relationship while living in separate countries, and even when I moved to Japan we could only visit each other once a month. We were always saying goodbye to each other, but once we were married, that no longer happened. We lived in that tiny one room apartment for about four months. Then in July we visited America for about a month. When we got back, we stayed a week at her parents' house in Nagano Prefecture, then returned to Himeji and moved upstairs to a 1LDK apartment, which was double the size of the previous one. (I'll have to do a Greg's Life gallery of that old apartment we lived in. It was quite charming and we lived a good, happy year there.) It was a nice apartment, despite the lack of air conditioning in the bed room. Unfortunately, I could only work a maximum of two years for Himeji. I've no idea if they still have that limitation now.
Mayu loved the castle and she had never had the experience of living in a castle town before. Some of my most beautiful memories of our first year of marriage was when Mayu and I would ride our bicycles around the castle at night. We'd also walk there for evening strolls around the castle. There was a duck that would follow us along, swimming next to us in the moat. I think we called him Bob the Duck, but I think Pepe would have been a more appropriate name because he would mutter "peh peh, peh peh" as he swam along next to us as we walked along the moat path.
There was a small park in the back of the castle, inside the outer walls. We would find turtles sleeping in the grass. Mayu and I would surprise the turtles by picking them up. We'd put them down and they'd scurry into the water. Mayu loves turtles and had some as pets. They are cute when they are babies, but as they grow older they become difficult. We'd see herons and other birds there too.
During the cherry blossom season, pretty lanterns were strung along the huge ground in front of the castle, as it was lined with cherry blossoms. It was such a sight to behold. During the day, I would shake the cherry trees and Mayu would prance around in a shower of pink flower petals. But maybe once or twice a hairy caterpillar landed on her clothing and that's dangerous because those caterpillars' hair irritates your skin and can hurt you. There are different types of sakura (cherry blossom) trees. There are early blooming ones, the regular ones, and the later-blooming ones that have puffy bunches of flowers. Being a desert rat from Arizona, I'd never experienced this before. The closest we ever have in Phoenix are the flowering pear trees, and those tend to bloom in late January because in Phoenix, there are essentially only two seasons: "summer" and "not summer." One can comfortably wear short sleeve shirts during a typical day in January in Phoenix, which makes it funny to see people wearing big bulky coats during the day as though they are expecting a blizzard in the desert.
I've never had the experience of living in a castle town since then. I'll always cherish the memories I had in Himeji. At the time, Mayu and I were newlyweds, and our future was wide open to us back then. We did not know what the future held for us; all we knew was that we loved each other and wanted to make each other happy for the rest of our lives. As we grew more intimate together, our souls merged and we created our own unified personality together. It was such a wonderful experience, and I will never forget the times we had, circling that castle at night on our bicycles. Walking along the moat in the dark, hand in hand, with Bob the Duck following alongside us in the water.
Mayu and her mother came to visit me in Himeji in November 2000, four months before our wedding. They first visited Kyoto together before coming to visit me in Himeji. There was a cold front before then, and then it became warm. It confused the trees enough to cause the cherry trees to begin to bloom in November! The term akizakura commonly refers to cosmos flowers, but in this case it can also refer to cherry blossoms that bloom in the fall.
Outside the castle.
Mayu and I entered the castle, and I took this picture of her next to a window. I am proud of this photo on the left. It's one of the best I've ever taken of her. This was back when she was young, of course. Now she hates it when I try to take her picture. I'm sure that 20 years from now, she will complain about how I stopped taking photos of us.
To the right is the outer moat of the castle in wintertime.
The picture on the left shows the cherryblossoms at night, with the pretty lanterns decorating the premises. I used my tripod and a slow exposure to take this night photo. The photo to the right shows the castle with scaffolding for restoration work.
Next: Kinosaki Onsen memories
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