I managed to sharpen the knives

My dog and I have been ill like “baton touch” as the Japanese would say, which means, as if we were running a relay race and passing on the baton of illness to one another. 

First it was my dog’s ears, I believe. They became infected after she scratched them to bits, possibly because she had an allergic reaction brought on by the summer’s heat. Ah – the summer. 

Yet even though it’s October the warm sunny days seem to be here to stay. Nothing wrong with that, apart from when I was ill and bed bound, I was forced to watch the beautiful blue sky days pass by through my windows. 

In the garden I felt the warm summer breeze caress my dry skin, my tan already faded to old terracotta. In the bathroom I squirted aloe vera gel onto my arms and legs and wondered when did summer happen, exactly?

When I talk with my Obaachan in Japan the summer has definitely been happening. Too much, too hot – unbearable. 

People ask me how is your grandmother doing? I tell them, well, she’s doing well but she’s almost ninety and we’re going back to Japan to see her for her 90th birthday. Then I follow up with the caveat that because Japan’s summer has been so hot, so humid, she’s housebound. Everyone needs an air-conditioner to survive; she can’t get out to walk to the shops or meet her friends, so she feels weaker. Also, bored. The old people in her area are all locked up in cooled rooms, like during lockdown.

I’m getting married next year. Which is why I’m going to Japan for Obaachan’s birthday and also taking an entourage of English folk with me who are all related to my husband-to-be. There will surely be a lot of culture-shocks form both family clans. I’ll have to be the translator. The lone translator between ten people all of whom want to understand one another – I’ll not think about how difficult or fundamentally impossible this task may be until I’m on the very expensive flight to Haneda, to save my wits.

The reason I got ill is because I was trying to be good at all my jobs and it took its toll. I have my paid job then my charity job then my wedding job then my house job – all the while pulling along my little brown dog ROLO with me wherever’s dog friendly. (I also think I have an aversion to rest, or I’ve taught myself how to tolerate being too busy, whichever it is, my habits aren’t great.) No wonder the two of us get ill together.

Here's how it went: I was thinking about different people and languages, and working to a school calendar at the same time as the standard calendar, and then my dog hurt her paw, so she was a hob-along in bandages wearing dumb paw-boots; I did First Aid Training which made me afraid of everything killing everyone, specifically through catastrophic blood loss, then I gave a speech in front of an audience at a Japanese festival on an unseasonably hot day and cried in front of everyone when I mentioned my dead mother, then a girl wearing a green headscarf and pink kimono (rad combo) handed me a tissue from the crowd; I got thrush and back at home I curled up in a heap under a cheap blue velvet duvet with my dog and slept for 80 hours. 

The torrent of activities made me miss summer, during which I had this strong desire to use my whetstone I had bought a year ago to sharpen the kitchen knives. I was slicing some chilies and realised the knives were blunt – right after my First Aid Training course – and freaked out about the dangers of blunt knives, so became determined to sharpen them. 

But alas, I went to Norfolk to visit friends who have a little girl and live next to the ruin of a Norman castle. Then I went to my fiancée’s family home to help clear the garden because they’re hosting our wedding next year. I also went to Oxford to walk through ancient Wytham woods with a friend. 

The rail strikes finally put an end to my weekends away. Once the plug got pulled on my adrenaline, I got ill and then all my other inane worldly tasks were forgotten too, like updating Instagram or boiling eggs.

It then became October and half-term was being mentioned and it was still unseasonably warm. The charity has finally begun to close down, and I’ve had some rest, and I’ve even stopped drinking alcohol to give my immune system the helping-hand it was crying out for.

I’ve spoken to my Obaachan, and she says it’s finally started to cool down in Japan as well. She tells me she is able to go outside again; she is so grateful for Autumn. 

I have noticed the immense number of spiders living in and around my house. Munching flies and leaving their corpses dangling by threads like mobiles from my ceiling. They’re fattening themselves up and I say go ahead, just please don’t be poisonous. ROLO ate some poisonous red berries from a yew tree, and I had to go to an emergency vet to get her stomach pumped. I wish she had more canine street-smarts, but in good news, I am no longer ill.

Today I have turned a momentous corner in my life. I managed to sharpen the knives. I know that the seasons are turning, and I’m pleased with the way things are going. Even though, when I look at my garden the tulip bulbs I planted three days ago have been unearthed by some squirrel (or my dog), I know I’ll live to fight another day.

Unbroken life

Everything feels the same but it’s different. Our house has had holes in the floor. Big chunks gouged out of it; rubble went in the black-top wheelie bin outside making it heavy to roll on to the street for collection. And yet, the floor is now smooth. Sanded down and varnished a rosewood colour, so that it is whole. Simply beautiful. No scarring. You wouldn’t have known we’d been through months of walking around damp wood, being careful not to tread on splinters because a mouse had chewed through a pipe (probably to sharpen its teeth) causing water damage to the woodwork beneath our feet. Having knowledge of something bad happening somewhere invisible scares me.

*

I have been on holiday to Japan. The itinerary was already planned, and we had bought our JR Passes in advance, so that we could shinkansen-hop all over the long island. Of course, I loved it, but it’s as if I’m still there – or never went there in the first place – I dreamt it all up. A few days before my flight I caught covid. They were the worst symptoms I’d ever had from the virus; it was my fourth time having it, even though I’ve been vaxxed three times already. I quarantined myself in my fiancée’s family flat in London which was empty. I ate crisps, cheese toasties and drank fluids, drifting in and out of sleep for three solid days. 

While I slept, I became covered in sweat, unbeknownst to me, so that when I awoke, I’d be lying in a puddle the shape of my own body. I would run one foot over the other and the sole would return soaked in cold water produced by me. I knew I was not well, but I had to be on that flight to Japan; there was the important death anniversary of my mother’s, which I couldn’t miss. I would wake up from my feverish sleeps in that foreign bed and doze like an inanimate thing. A slab of something half-alive, like one of the sarsen stones at Stonehenge. An unnatural blue hue was percolating through the blinds, and I could hear noises from the street, distant sirens, the shunt of trains, the soundscape of a city, and I believed for a moment before I fell back to sleep that I was in Tokyo. 

Soon enough I was. How I’d got there was a blur. I exited the airport and headed directly to a friend’s empty apartment in Tokyo, riding aboard a doll’s house aesthetic monorail with dusty pink carriage compartments. I sweated and slept in her bed too. The hue of the morning light was paler but still blue. The noise of the city dropped to a pregnant hum at nightfall, as if God the DJ had lowered the levels on the mixing board. Before I holed-up in her empty home, I had stocked up on crisps, onigiri and strawberry milk from the Seven-Eleven down the street. Days passed. I tested negative. Finally, I arrived in Japan.

It's like a fiction that I’ve visited some of these places because at the time I was sleepwalking. I would take naps at odd hours during the day. Covid made my mind foggy and I was always tired. I remember when I was in New York I was taken to a photo aura fortune teller in China Town. She took one look at my photo and said I was FOGGY: No direction, don’t know what you want, unsure of everything. I nodded like a child who'd had something explained to them they still couldn't comprehend. That was the last time I felt this foggy.

Where did we go? Kamakura with the large-scale statue of the Buddha Daibutsu, gazing serenely across the tops of tourists and buildings towards the glistening ocean. The weather turned lovely and summery, it was like July in England, but it was only April in Japan and the winds could pick and become blustery. We went to Izu Peninsula over winding roads through the verdant foothills of Mount Fuji. I peered into a bubbling pool of water, crystal clear, the colour of acrylic turquoise. Tiny fish darted to and fro across its shimmering mirror-like surface.

I remember fragments – not fully formed memories – but maybe that’s the way it is with holidays. I ate so much delicious food, there was never a moment I felt hunger. We stayed in Yamazaki and climbed a mountain where a famous battle had taken placed between the fighting samurai of feudal Japan. Up this mountain I made my first and only sighting of the uguisu (Japanese bush warbler) whose song had been following us up and down the country.

There was a daytrip to Kyoto where we met up with friends who were staying in the country for a sabbatical. My mother’s husband joined us here after having completed a walk over an ancient passageway through the mountains connecting the old capital Kyoto to Tokyo. We toasted his achievement with a clink of glasses, ‘Kampai!’ Then feasted in a brightly lit fast-food gyoza and ramen bar and drank our fill of tankards of ice-cold beer. The gyoza were pan-fried and crispy, the ramen broth salty and delicious. 

I was enjoying everything but also flagging from the virus. I held on tightly to every moment of happiness, but they would invariably melt away in my fog. Just before I fell asleep in a futon, a creeping worry would lodge itself that I’d wake up the next day in London.

*

The most unbelievable part of our trip was visiting the art island, Naoshima, set in the dazzling blue Seto Seas. To travel there we crossed a gigantic red railway bridge and caught a ferry. What can I say? My experience of the Benesse Art Site was wholly uplifting. I hadn’t expected the contemporary art to be so good.

We hired electric bicycles to explore the island, going up and down steep slopes cutting through luscious scenery. We got tickets to the Art House Project, a collection of old disused Japanese houses which had been renovated by architects in collaboration with site-specific artists, all set within a living village community. I walked into an unassuming house marked on the guide map, and inside it was as elegant as Ryoanji Temple with its famed zen garden. Huge cascading waterfall ink paintings were hung from the ceiling in a dimly lit room with lacquered floorboards, which had been polished to a shine to make it look like the surface of still water. 

We had a timed entry ticket to a place called Minamidera (the old site of a shrine) which was an artwork by the light artist James Turrell. Here I had my “Rothko Moment”. We entered a room that was pitch black. You slide your hands against the wall to feel your way to a seat, as the gentle voice of a museum guide truly guides you in. Then as a group we sat down and waited in silence. Minutes pass. There is absolutely no light. You can wave your hand in front of your face and not see where it is. The museum guide had told us all outside to turn off our phones properly (actually switched off, which I’m sure is a profound experience in itself, for some). 

We wait in silence for something to happen. After five minutes which feels like an eternity a hint of a white box appears in front of us. It is a soft white glow, like the ghost of a blank canvas floating in the near distance. The image grows stronger until we can definitely see a square of white at the end of the room. The guide re-enters the space and tells us in his sotto voice that this light has been here all along. Nothing has changed but our vision. Our perception of the space has changed but not the space itself. 

He tells us we can stand up and walk around the room now, as our eyes have adjusted, we shouldn’t fall over. We gather ourselves and wander about and walk towards the light. When I get there, I put my hand out to touch its surface but there’s nothing there. It’s pure air and I cry. The delight moves me to tears. I feel so stupid and worldly at the same time. This conceptual art has made me realise that if I just sit still and be quiet for once the world will reveal itself to me. I shall be awed. I feel shame and joy course through me, as I wipe away tears before anyone notices, even though they won’t because I’m crying inside a dark box.

*

I come back to myself in my Woolwich sitting room. Things have changed, so I must have gone away. The seasons have moved on and it’s May. The unknown plants on the windowsill have sprouted magenta pink flowers. The holes in my floor are fixed. I’ve recovered from covid, even though I’m still weakened by it. I have memories of a conceptual art island floating in the misty seas of Japan. I’ll believe that I’ve come back from a honeymoon to an unbroken life. 

The concept of sitting

I like to sit on the floor to work and write. If I was allowed to sprawl out on the floor in my office then I would but I don’t, instead I sit on a swivel chair with my legs tucked under. I like my centre of gravity being low to the ground and being able to stretch – maybe to even touch my toes.

This might be a Japanese tendency which I’ve inherited. In the not-so-distant past, every household sat on the tatami mat floor to eat their meals and watch TV. My Obaachan grew up getting up and down off the floor, she would work at her sewing machine with her legs tucked under her. 

My aunt bought her a new navy-blue armchair for the sitting room lately. It was a nice gesture because Obaachan who is ninety snoozes on her hard dining room chair every night watching television. This new armchair gave her something to feel embraced in, however, like grandmother like granddaughter; Obaachan one night toppled over the armchair and banged her head on the side of the kerosene stove, which upon impact turned itself off immediately. The boiling kettle atop the stove did not fall but teetered.

Obaachan didn’t tell her daughter (my aunt) who had bought her the armchair about what happened until a week later, feeling ashamed and silly for causing a near emergency. Her head had swollen but nothing had cracked nor bled. She now tells me she can’t go to the hairdressers anymore in case they ask questions regarding the bruise on her head.

When I found out about her accident a month later, I was mortified. She could have badly burned her face and died. Then what? 

I asked her, ‘Oh my goodness how did you fall off the chair?’

She said, ‘It was my fault for having sat in it.’

I was confused as this conversation (like all conversations with my grandmother) was happening in Japanese. 

‘I don’t understand, of course you sat in it. It’s a chair.’

‘Yes, but you’re not supposed to sit on chairs, are you? You’re meant to perch on them with your bottom.’

‘What?’

‘I tucked my legs under: I sat on it. That was the problem.’

‘Oh.’

And I realised to sit in Japanese probably does mean something different than to sit in England. All this time I’ve been sitting in London, I’ve just been perching on chairs! No wonder it felt uncomfortable. It makes me wonder if this verb “to sit” contains within it a generational difference as well as a cultural one. 

If I asked Japanese passers-by on the street what their idea of sitting means – does it have to involve a chair? Or the ground? Or can you arguably sit on both – like I had imagined it all these years; even though in my body I knew I preferred sitting on the floor; had I expanded the idea of sitting to encompass all furnishings and elements of the world one could sit on, like a tree stump or a toadstool in the case where you’re a tiny fairy?

Potluck zine

© Rhia Cook

I have a piece of writing published in a dedicated food magazine called Potluck zine. The piece is called Our Rice Relations and you can read it here. 

This zine's issue 5 was all about ritual. How food, recipes and meals can make memories and tell stories. It was a delicious publication to be part of.

If you'd like to get a copy then you can order here. Part of the profits from each magazine sold is donated to The Trussel Trust - the UK's largest food bank organisers.

All illustrations by Rhia Cook @rhiacookmakes.

© Rhia Cook

Christmas in quarantine

Almost finished the first half of my quarantine in my hotel room with a view overlooking Yokohama Bay. Each morning I open the curtains to see a different dawn and through the day new cruise liners and ships sail into the harbour across dark blue waters. There are factory chimneys in the near distance emitting elongated plumes of smoke that look static, like a collage cut-out stuck on the sky. At night, city lights glow and glimmer over vast unfamiliar terrain looking like an alien city.

‘Please report your daily health condition’ my app says. ‘Do you or a family member living with you currently have a temperature of 37.5°C (99.5°F) of higher? Please take the temperature if you do not know it.’

‘No.’

‘Thank you for responding.’

The hotel gave us a thermometer when we arrived and each day you have to enter your temperature into an app, otherwise a person calls you and waits for you take your temperature, awkwardly hanging on the line for the bleep bleep bleep of my reading. 

Every day I get two calls through my government covid monitoring app, either from a bot or a real person. The bot simply asks you to blink and records your face for 30 seconds. Initially, I stood still for these mug shots, but now I wink and blow kisses at the bot. It doesn’t seem to mind or interfere with its work. When I got a real person, I was gazing out across Yokohama Bay at night and the caller screen was blank even though there was a woman on the other end checking on my condition. She was probably trained to study whether I “looked ill” from our one-way video call. We had a nice chat and I showed her the view outside my window and she said it was キレイですねー　(very beautiful indeed, I mean, then I was probably hindering her work). 

She asked how I was feeling, and I said I felt really sad because I was having to quarantine for the whole 14-day period because someone on my flight had omicron. I just wanted to go home and see my Obaachan whom I hadn’t seen in over two years. My blank screen caller really did sound sorry for me and made exasperated noises of concern.

‘I actually meant how do you feel physically; do you have a fever or a new cough?’

‘No.’

‘Thank you for giving me your time.’

The next real person called me on Christmas Day and when she hung up, she said a cheery ‘Merry Christmas!’ and that was quite cute.

//

I’ve had to stop my newly reset iPhone from creating “memories” with my photos because the albums were very sad. It kept cycling through limited snaps of the plane, meal boxes and the view from my window. It was like a dystopia where I'd spent my entire life in quarantine.

The meals are very good. Can’t complain about the three meals a day the hotel staff deliver and hang from my doorknob. The boxes get progressively nicer as the day goes on which is better than the reverse. I look forward to the yoghurt pot at breakfast (blueberry is the best), though not a fan of the vacuum-packed bread rolls like the ones you get on aeroplanes. Lunch and dinner you get an assortment of things, always including rice and some meat, fish and veg. The presentation is like a bento box with different compartments for different dishes, so that the flavours stay separate and clean. 

The most tragic thing about this quarantine is that there is no booze. No alcohol on the premises! Agh. Why had I brought tins of biscuits to give as gifts to the neighbours when I should have packed tinnies? You can’t have Christmas without a drink. I felt like I’d been checked into rehab. 

Hark! There was a Christmas miracle. My aunt Mariko (angel) sent me a festive selection of Asahi beers which arrived on Christmas Eve! Just in time for dinner and before a surprise display of fireworks that went off outside my window. Praise be. I had a PCR test and the results came back negative. Hallelujah. 

On Christmas Day my lunch box contained a piece of roast chicken and dinner included a slice of chocolate roulade affixed with a figurine of Santa Claus playing the trombone. The TV was showing Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence – with a storyline I couldn't fathom – but seeing David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto playing side by side as massive pop stars of their era felt like a blessing. Also, that hauntingly elegant score. I had calls with family in Orkney and Aidan’s lot in Northumberland, who were all preparing feasts to be had later in the day. Bang whizz pop! Gorgeous fireworks were set off again outside my window and I had a special Christmastime indeed.

I Slept

I slept. 

Woke up to a colourful dawn of pink grapefruit hues across Yokohama Bay. There is a rainbow coloured ferris wheel and a theme park outside my hotel window. The spiral rollercoaster with tiny people on it – probably shrieking in excitement – is the antithesis of what I’m like in my compartment.

I did 45 minutes of Yoga with Adriene. I said 'hello' to Benji the dog and on-screen yoga companion – the first time I’d heard my voice all day, which was quite a surprise. 

Played my Gameboy in bed (dusted off for this trip). I could only find one cartridge that was already inserted. In my other life, I am a novice Pokémon trainer named Yellow with a Pikachu nicknamed ROLOCHU on the way to Veridian City.

I slept more.

To be pulled out of sleep aggressively by the ringing telephone. It was hotel reception, they were connecting me to the ward officials of the town where my Obaachan lives.

‘A fellow passenger on your plane has tested positive for omicron. You will now have to do the full 14-day quarantine at a government designated hotel.’

Oh no! I knew this was likely to happen coming from virus riddled London, but still I was aghast. I asked her whether the whole plane was being put under extended quarantine? The ward official said no, only passengers who came in close contact with the infected person. (I must’ve been sat close to them! What bad luck.) They told me I would be moved to a new hotel at the end of my 6 days here, and that because this was going to be a longer stay than expected I could order items such as pants online.

Then I began to cry because I’d come all this way to spend お正月(New Years) with my grandmother and now I was going to have to miss that too! Was there no way if I tested negative to complete my isolation in her house instead? She sounded sorry for me, but said I had to remain in a government hotel for the full 14 days, ‘What if you were to pass the virus on to your Obaachan?’

I let the news sink in for the rest of the day. I don’t remember what I did. All I know is I talked to my loving friends who all sympathetically suffered alongside me. 

//

The next day I woke up thinking it was Christmas Eve, but I was a day ahead of myself. 

I started to unpack my suitcase and took out my portable fairy lights – thank god I brought decorations to brighten the place up a bit – and a cardboard cut-out of a wintry tree house with woodland creatures, which I could assemble as a Christmas activity. I placed all my belongings on the racks and shelves, hiding the hotel toiletries and instruction manuals in the bin liner they gave me for my used linens, shoving it all under the bed.

Jumped around to a hip hop work-out video on my travel yoga mat then danced to Charli XCX.

Still getting used to the small kettle the hotel has provided, as it’s more like a hot water pot. The water remains warm a long time after it’s been boiled and there’s a button you press down to release the steam to humidify the room.

Things I’m glad I brought with me for hotel quarantine:

1. Tin mug. The ‘return to Japan support group’ on Facebook were correct, the cups provided are too small and you can’t have a proper brew in them.

2. Tea bags. They provide small sachets of instant coffee but that’s no fun, nor does it help pass the long stretches of time.

Basically, the elements that make a good cup of tea.

Yokohama Bay (quarantine hotel)

At APA Hotel & Resort Yokohama Bay Tower, not slept in the bed yet. A totally tiny room with a beautiful view of the glittering lights of Yokohama. 

My destination for the next six days of quarantine, before, hopefully (pray for me because if someone on my flight tests positive for covid then we all get locked up for the entire fourteen-day quarantine duration) I get to move to Obaachan’s house to finish off my time there. At least then I’ll be able to spend New Year’s with the family. 

Obaachan welled up with tired tears of joy when I called her from my hotel room; her shoulders dropped with a sense of relief. She didn’t think I’d be let in and fair enough, I’ve come from omicron infested London. 

I tested three hours before boarding with a Fit2Fly PCR to get the certificate – Japanese authorities love certificates. 

I was standing in line with other Brits who wanted to go abroad, one wrinkly man in a polo shirt and a blue-eyed stare kept banging on about how he had paid £119 for the privilege.

‘They told me come back here for 12:45 – it’s 12:40 now – and when it’s 12:45, on the dot,’ he pulled down his mask every time he addressed us for emphasis ‘I’m marching back in there. It’s bloody chaos, Terminal 2 is.’

A kid whose flight was boarding soon, politely asked us if he could jump the queue and this old man said, ‘Where you off to son?’

‘Zimbabwe,’ replied the clipped accent. 

‘Bloody hell.’

I received my negative test result (yes!) as check-in opened, where I also handed over various other documents. Tellingly, everyone in the JAL queue whipped out plastic sheets containing their physical pieces of paper to get into the country. One of which is a Written Pledge, which waives your rights to privacy if you bring covid into the country. For Japanese nationals (that’s me) their family members can be named and shamed i.e. publicised to the media, if their relative unknowingly brings in the virus in. For a foreign national your visa status can be revoked, also you could be put into detention. So much for herd immunity.

Nevertheless, I was allowed on the flight. The cabin attendants asked us all politely to keep our masks on and refrain from talking. I thought, damn right. Mask up and shut up. Stop the virus. I ate my meal and covered my head with a blanket and slept most of the way. Super tired from the stress of it all. The past weeks had been filled with waiting for a single line to appear on LFTs, cancelling plans, booking scarce PCRs, feeling groggy and foggy from the booster and watching friends drop like flies. 

We arrived in Japan; the red sun was setting. Shadows were stark and long. Uniformed people drove boxy vehicles around the plane for inspection. I couldn’t believe while looking out through my small porthole window that I could see Mt. Fuji in the distance, emblematic, behind the Tokyo skyline. I had landed!

I got tested at Haneda airport again. Currently Japan’s borders are closed to foreign nationals, so everyone there had to be on a Japanese passport or an exceptional visa. There were lines and lines of us being corralled from one part of the airport to another. I downloaded apps via QR code, printed and signed documents. Ticked checkboxes, removed my mask for facial recognition, scanned my passport. Filled out a medical assessment questionnaire. Got given a green tag to attach around my wrist, so I didn’t stray from the flock. Spat into a vial for the covid test. Staff checked my phone had the government apps installed and explained how to use them. 

I stood and queued and sat in front of bureaucrats behind plastic safety screens, who scribbled on my paperwork and directed me to go stand somewhere else. I waited about six hours from disembarkation to receiving my negative test results, phew. Those of us who had travelled on the same aeroplane got sat on socially distanced seats to wait for a bus to take us to our designated government-paid hotel. Destination unknown until we got there. A woman with two children sat behind me said to the bus inspector, ‘Why can’t you tell us where we’re going? I’m honestly scared.’ The tubby man apologised profusely and said he didn’t know why, but rules were rules.

I switched on my Google live location and sent it to my aunt Mariko, so she could track where I was going. Luckily, it was only a half hour drive from the airport and we pulled into Yokohama, a scenic coastal city. We were let off the bus in small cohorts. We sanitized our hands, got more QR codes and a thermometer to verify our daily temperature. I was given a non-smoking room and handed a very much desired bag of food and sent up in a lift to my room. 

I have a king-sized bed that’s more than half the room’s width and a TV that’s almost as large. I have a small writing desk and an excess of mirrors. Even though the TV and bed dominate, when I open the curtains what do I see? A most elegant view of Yokohama Bay, with a lit up cruise ship docked in its placid waters. Not bad at all to hunker down in over Christmas. 

All My Relations

Photographs of my great-grandmother Ito-san (top) and my grandmother Obaachan (bottom) when she was young

I have a piece about my Japanese grandmother Obaachan published in a zine in America called All My Relations. It's a new publication about ancestry, memory and the meaning of family.

My piece is called Where have the waterways gone? on p.79-83. You can read and download the full issue here.

If you like the writing and artwork in the zine then kindly send a donation via Ko-fi saying in the message that it's for All My Relations. The donations get paid out to BIPOC, gender diverse, and disabled creatives.

Tanabata 七夕

I celebrated Tanabata at home in South London, with my new housemates.

This is a traditional Japanese summer festival which is connected to the stars. Legend goes that there is a weaver and a cowherd up in the Heavens who fall in love. But because they fall in love so deeply, they abandon their duties. The sacred silk stops being woven and the cattle wander all over the place. The god who oversees Heaven is pretty angry, so he splits the lovers apart by the Milky Way. Now, only once a year on Tanabata are the couple allowed to meet at the stellar river. To aid them, a flock of magpies appear to create a bridge for them to cross and meet.

It’s a pretty sweet story and has a relation to the stars in our actual galaxy: Altair and Vega. These are part of the summer triangle, which are the brightest stars you can see in the northern hemisphere at this time of year. When the two stars become brightest it means that it is the height of summer, and if you are able to look at them during a dark night sky – in between Vega (the brightest of the two stars and the weaver) and Altair (cowherd) you can distinguish the Milky Way.

On Tanabata, one of the things we do is write wishes on colourful strips of paper called tanzaku, then hang them from a bamboo tree. Here is the emoji to prove it 🎋 You can wish for anything really, like passing your driving test or world peace. Whatever you want. I made somen noodles for dinner, which are thin and white and symbolise the Milky Way, while Simon fried tempura. The best combination is the crunchy fried-ness of the vegetables, dipped in the light noodle broth.

I told Obaachan about me celebrating Tanabata with friends in London. She told me that when she was a girl, she remembers her father going out on Tanabata to gather very long reeds from the river. He would sit on their front porch and wind the reeds around each other. She remembers he would weave out of the reeds two horses, then face them towards each other and bind them together with bamboo. On Tanabata he would release the two horses on to the river for them to be carried away by the water.

‘Why did he do that?’ I asked.

Obaachan makes a hmmmm sort of noise, as if both recalling and trying to work it out.

‘I wonder? It was probably something to do with the region.’ She grins, ‘They were really good horses though.’

Saeko's Tadpole Story

Her father said, ‘She was an odd one.’ The child of his that most changed his perspective on the world; before her he was hard, unbending in his ways, brittle, even. Actions took place according to rules, and to defy them was to do it wrong. Saeko changed all that. She was his eldest daughter out of four.

‘I was the first girl!’ Saeko claims, opening and shutting her wide eyes, like two clam shells out of the sea. Her father says she behaved like an odd-ball, always speaking out of turn, living in make-belief and not playing with any toys, or other children. An un-favourite of the teachers, she would get picked on at school and get in the way at home - because of all this - Saeko would take herself off to the woods and play games on her own. Her family still live in the mountains, at the foothills of Mount Fuji, surrounded by tea farms and forests.

One time, Tetsurō her father, came across a glass tank made for insects filled with pond water and silvery fish in the middle of his corridor. These were fish you could fry and serve up as bar snacks, and he wondered about them, as he carried them into the kitchen for his wife to deal with. He then went and found Saeko and asked her where she had got all the silvery fish from. She replied she had caught them in the river, but Tetsurō was doubtful, ‘Surely not - they swim very fast. It would be difficult to catch one. How did you do it?’

She had gone down to the riverside with a butterfly net and some bonito flakes from the cupboard. She had placed a stone in the net and let it sink to the bottom of the riverbed, while holding onto the handle, then sprinkled some flakes into the net. When enough silvery fish had come to feast, she very slowly, incrementally, pulled the net upwards until all the fish were caught inside and couldn’t escape. Then she emptied them out into her tank of water, and repeated the steps again, and again.

That night her father ate the fried fish snacks with his cold beer, salty and crunchy, while reading a magazine in the lamp light. Many moths fluttered into the lampshade, sounding like the occasional ping of a rubber-band. Saeko slept soundly upstairs in her futon, in the room nearest to the rafters, where her family used to keep the silkworms.

At school Saeko kept herself to herself, to avoid being bullied by her classmates, or being called up in lessons to be made an example of, although she never studied hard, she was still coming top of her class. She thought big thoughts and roamed around freely. Her father was bothered about her attention span and wondered whether all girls were so weird, her mother didn’t mind so much, at least she seemed happy. When Saeko’s class went on an excursion to the river mouth, the teachers gave every child a bucket and spade and organised a competition. Who could catch the most tadpoles?

Children ran off in all directions, being told to stay near the shallows, which is where all the tadpoles were swimming anyway. Tetsurō recounted this story with a sense of held-back pride and a wide grin. The other children collected three or four, maybe, even six tadpoles. Saeko caught thirty-nine! The teachers and the other children crowded around Saeko’s teeming bucket to see how she did it. She cupped her hands under the surface of the water and waited, until one tadpole swam into her palms and she lifted it up. Everyone watched her calmly pick up tadpole, after tadpole, to place into her bucket. After the competition was over, everyone clapped as she released her colony into the waters, like nothing had ever happened.

‘I don’t know why they chased them. If you wait, they come.’

A way of calling Love

So, I called Obaachan because every weekend I call my Japanese grandmother. Apart from the past three weekends, because one weekend I had a sore throat and, on the others, I’d been doing flat viewings and/or parties. I called her on Sunday and caught up with her news. She’s been trying to snack less and thinks it’s working because her face looks thinner. I think she just cut her hair, framing her face differently, but I didn’t say that – got to be encouraging. Mid-way through our conversation, she told me that my aunt’s husband, Toshiya, had gone back to his family home to visit his old mother.

‘Oh, that’s good’, I said. Toshiya had been saying recently that he should visit his old mum. His father passed away a year ago.

My aunt Mariko said, ‘You should go.’ Of course, he should: what a good idea. So, Toshiya got the car ready for the weekend and headed up North. His hometown was a five-hour drive away towards the Snow Country; icy temperatures mean you have to put snow-chains around the tyres. My aunt refuses to drive up there anymore, because one time she skidded and almost hit a telegraph pole.

His family were all there to greet him. He went inside and sat around the kotatsu, a warmed-up low table, with his brothers and their wives and their children, and the sickly looking cat and his nephews. Food was dished-up and everybody ate and drank and did what families do. In the adjacent room (traditional Japanese rooms are tatami; divided by partitions you choose to leave open or slide shut, depending on what you’re using the room for) was his mum sleeping in a futon. When Toshiya arrived, she was tucked up in her futon next door with the door wide open, and she greeted him from there.

 ‘Mother. Are you sleeping already?’ She didn’t stir but told him she was glad he had come and that she was tired, and only wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to disturb her so, kept on with the rest of the family. He presented the standard gifts you bring home from the city, like nicely packaged cookies with almonds and vanilla essence; and them being country folk, brought out the homebrew saké and freshly grown delicacies, you could never purchase in a store in Tokyo.

The next day Toshiya had to make his way home, as it was only a weekend trip and the drive was a long one. His mother was again laid out in her futon, and she didn’t get up all day. Toshiya went into her room and kneeled beside her soft cotton mattress. It was layered over with heavy blankets and shawls, like a cocoon. His mother’s wrinkled face peeked out from the pillow, and when she opened her eyes, she smiled a warm, toothy smile. He asked her if she was feeling well.

‘You haven’t got up the whole time I’ve been here Ma. Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m fit and fine, I tell you. Only I’m tired these days.’ Toshiya didn’t speak and looked patiently down at his mother, who blinked twice. ‘I’m so pleased you came. Travelling all this way. You must take some apples.’ He turned the engine on to heat up the car before he left. Family who were still there on the Sunday came out to see him, bowing until they were out of sight in his rear car view mirror. Toshiya made his way, across small country roads that cut through long stretches of paddy fields.

I ask, ‘Is Toshiya’s mum OK? Is she really ill?’ Obaachan continues. When Toshiya got home, Mariko asked him how his mother had been, and he told her that she hadn’t got out of bed the whole time he was there, and so, Mariko had asked the same question as me.

She was clearly worried, ‘What if there’s something wrong with her heart?’

Toshiya didn’t know. In five days time he got a phone call. It rang after work hours, but not too late, a considerate time to be receiving a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of the line was his old mum.

She said, ‘I want to apologise. You made your way up here and I was asleep the whole time. The truth is, when I heard you were coming, I went out early to the fields to pick the best vegetables and pulled my back. Then you arrived.’ Toshiya, held the phone receiver tightly against his ear and bowed many incremental nods, listening carefully.

‘Wait! Why didn’t she tell Toshiya that when he was there beside her?’ My question hangs in the long-distance fuzz between me and Obaachan.

‘Mmh. I only heard this from Mariko. Probably, she didn’t want him to feel guilty.’

‘But… he went all the way up there. Five hours there and back in the snow!’

‘Mmh.’ Obaachan agrees with me slightly. To her this seems plausible, simple, yet to me it’s inexplicable. I think of all that time and opportunity wasted, when they could have had a proper conversation. And now we’ll never know what they didn’t say to each other, truly.