Keridwen Cornelius

Zen and the Art of Japanese Home Stay

A visit with a Japanese family shows that it’s not the name of the place that counts

By Keridwen Cornelius

Eiko, a bird-like woman in a 1940s-style dress, fluttered over to us through the subway’s throngs while her husband, Tom, beamed silently beside her.

“We take you sushi. Then house. Very small house. That okay?” she asked.

“Daijobu,” we replied, and they whisked us away.

Keridwen Cornelius
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Unlike American houses, the kitchen and living room in Eiko and Tom’s home were upstairs. The bedrooms were below.
My friend Tui and I were playing in a golf tournament in Tokyo, and Tui had arranged for us to spend a day with Eiko and Tom, her hosts during a previous tournament.

I had been to Japan before, on a dizzying tour through neon-loud streets, clanging pachinko halls, and the list of important sites. It wasn’t the Zen experience I’d anticipated.

But Eiko and Tom’s suburb was as serene as a meditation garden. We strolled through hushed, cartpath-narrow lanes, where every home had .5 cars and Lilliputian gardens. We met up with our hosts’ English-speaking friends at their local sushi joint, chatting for several hours while sampling a sea of sashimi. I felt, for the first time, that I’d entered a slice of Japanese life.

Keridwen Cornelius
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Tui Selvaratnam pushes a mini-cart around a Tokyo grocery store, searching for Asian pears, sake and–inexplicably–green
–tinted scones.
Afterward, we pushed a pint-sized cart around a grocery store and bagged our own purchases. I’d read about the economical, egalitarian Japanese culture, but it was altogether different to act it out. In Eiko and Tom’s bamboo bathroom, I eased into a tub so tiny and deep I had to sit cross-legged, bobbing like a happy Buddha. At their family dinner, we sipped sake and soup, communicating with the aid of a Japanese/English dictionary full of handy phrases like “We signed the contract on our house today.”

I never learned the name of the suburb, at first because of a prejudice that if it wasn’t in my guidebook, it didn’t really count, and then because I realized that the name of the place wasn’t what made it important.

Reach the reporter at keridwen77@yahoo.com.

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