Joetsu, one year later

It's that time again--JET placements are coming out, and in the next few days 11 lucky people will be frantically scouring the internet for information about Joetsu. I wrote this post a little over a year ago, before I came to Japan, and apparently it's come up in Google searches about Joetsu, so I figure this is as good a time as any to update those impressions now that I've been here almost a year.

(I also posted these pictures from Google Earth, which I now find hilarious because you know that "OMG, snow" picture of Takada? That's clearly beginning-of-winter snow. That's PUSSY snow. Two months later, shit gets real.)

Um... anyway, I may or may not continue to indulge in this kind of good-natured hazing, but the truth is that I love it here. I was more or less bang-on with my attempt to describe the layout in that old post: there's a town center (Naoetsu is north, Takada is south), and outside that, miles and miles of rice fields and some teacher housing. Joetsu itself isn't total inaka; there's a JUSCO, a Uniqlo, a movie theater, restaurants, a coffee shop, three McDonalds, a nice park, some okay bars (though the regular Saturday night crowd is nothing to write home about). There are also a ton of big box stores, which might surprise you if you've never been to Japan; apparently suburban sprawl and architectural eyesores are not unique to my homeland. It ain't San Francisco, but it has more or less everything you need.

And then there's the rest. There are still vast parts of it that I haven't explored (a project for an upcoming weekend, I think), but Yoshikawa, where I live, is a more or less typical example. It takes 30 to 40 minutes to get here from town. There are a few shops (conbini, pharmacy, gas station) within about 10 minutes' walk, and a bit farther out there's a 7-11, a sake brewery, and a nice little onsen with a restaurant (typical teishoku fare). There are two mountains, Yoneyama and Okamidake. The nearest supermarket is about a 10 minute drive away, in the next ward. Other than that, Yoshikawa consists entirely of rice fields. 

I probably haven't sold anyone on it with what I've said here, but Joetsu can be a great place if you let it. I was never a nature type before I got here but watching the changes in the rice fields throughout the seasons is an awesome thing (awesome as in "full of awe," not "totally tubular"). The mountains, the coastline, the snow--all of them are absolutely stunning. We're no more than an hour away from awesome snowboarding (by that I DO mean "totally tubular"), and Nagano City is a lovely little city (with real shopping, jazz bars, Starbucks, Thai food and a famous temple) that's about an hour and a half away by train. 

It has been a pretty intense year, but Joetsu has been good to me, good enough that I've signed up for another year. Bring on the snow!

3. Yasunari Kawabata: Snow Country

Snow Country, Yasunari Kawabata

Vintage International, 192 pgs., 1947, translated by Edward G. Seidensticker in 1957

You want to hear about snow country? Let me tell you about snow country. You know, in case you were wondering whether I was qualified to review a book about wasted effort and lots and lots of snow:

(all taken from the front of my house)

Now that that's out of the way, Snow Country. I'll be honest; I didn't like it. This was the book club book for January, and I also know a few other people around here who have read it in English, and all of us have the same opinion: something was definitely lost in translation. It's about the relationship between a geisha and a visiting Tokyo urbanite in Niigata Prefecture in the 1930s, and it was one of three novels for which Kawabata won the Nobel Prize, which I think is the reason none of us have just dismissed it outright. Not only is it critically acclaimed, it's also about the little corner of the world that we've chosen to call home. We want so badly to be proud of it, like we are of our sake and our rice and our Kenshin, but I just couldn't make myself like it. There are some beautiful images contained within it, but the story left me cold.

(See what I did there?)

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Kawabata says this:

Yet in the sad, austere, autumnal qualities so valued by the tea ceremony, itself summarized in the expression "gently respectful, cleanly quiet", there lies concealed a great richness of spirit; and the tea room, so rigidly confined and simple, contains boundless space and unlimited elegance.

Kawabata's writing was heavily influenced by haiku poetry, which I think also shares the qualities which he here associates with tea ceremony--wabi-sabi, mono no aware, all those Japanese cultural ideals that have to do with transience and imperfection. I haven't spent much time reading or learning about haiku, but when I have read them (and other forms of Japanese poetry like the waka of the Kokinshu--all in translation, of course), I've generally found them to be pretty accessible, and I'm totally down with the idea of wabi-sabi.

Yet I still couldn't get into this. I think when it comes down to it, I just didn't find the characters compelling enough to invest the time and energy into exploring the book's relationship to haiku, which seems to be its main redeeming factor. The chronology of events was difficult to follow. I don't know a whole lot about geisha culture, which I'm sure impeded my understanding of the book. It was originally published in serial form, and parts of it were written much later than others, which gave it a choppy, non-continuous feel.

I have a hard time accepting cultural relativism in literature. A lot of people who read Snow Country in English seem to explain its impermeability by saying that it's just "too Japanese" to be accessible to the Western reader, but I hate that, and not just because it reeks of orientalism--I want to believe that if it's art, that it will resonate with the human experience no matter who you are or what time and place you come from. Maybe that's silly--I haven't read a whole lot outside of the Western tradition, and I don't have the energy or the desire to really spend a lot of time trying to find redeeming qualities in books that don't speak to me when there is so much else out there to read, so I may never find out whether it's a cultural divide or my own laziness that's the cause. I can say that I found The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea much more compelling, even though I didn't like its characters, either; the writing was much more consistent and I found the story absorbing in spite of myself.

Anyway, womp womp, can't like them all. I finished this quite some time ago and I've actually finished two other books since then, so those entries are coming up, I promise!

Next up: Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

Joetsu-shi, Niigata-ken (上越市, 新潟県)

(I copy-pasted that kanji from Wikipedia. Come on, you think I know how to write that on my own?)

I just received word of my placement on the JET program. I'll be in Joetsu, which is a city in Niigata Prefecture.

Niigata is the only prefecture I requested, and it's where my great-grandparents were born, so I'm super stoked! I'm not sure I really have a feel for what it's like yet, but these are some of the things I found out:

• The "city" is really an amalgamation of various towns and villages that have undergone mergers to become one municipality. I can't seem to find a good map or photos, but I believe there's a central urban area and then some smaller villages with lots of nature and countryside in between. The population is just over 200,000, but the total area of the city is larger than LA, bringing the population density to 212 people per km². (For comparison, Folsom is 318/km²; San Francisco is 6,688.4/km².)
• Niigata-ken in general is known for rice farming, excellent sake (made from the rice, duh), SNOW and onsens (hot springs). Joetsu-shi seems to be no exception.
• Joetsu is about 2.5 hours from Tokyo by shinkansen. That becomes 5 or 6 hours when you take a regular train or bus. Shinkansen is pretty expensive but I'll be making a lot so maybe I'll be able to pop out to Tokyo for the weekend once in a while!
• In addition to the summer fireworks festivals and springtime cherry blossom festivals (which are common to most places in Japan), Joetsu hosts a Lotus Festival, a sake festival, a firefly festival and a snow candle festival. 

• There are also temples, castles, an aquarium and a planetarium. It sounds like there's a lot to do!

I still haven't gotten in contact with my predecessor and may not hear from them for several more weeks, so all the specifics of my situation (apartment, rent, car) are still up in the air. Chances are I'll be teaching middle or elementary school, though.

Here are a few extra links:

Joetsu city English website
Joetsu tourism guide
Joetsu region guide on the Niigata JET page
Joetsu Wikipedia entry