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Kayla had figured it out, though. We’d pretty much stopped trying to live-chat because of the time difference.
On email it’s never now. It’s always then, which is why it’s so easy to get lazy and let your inbox fill up.
I tried to have a blog for a while. My eighth-grade teacher in Sunnyvale, Mr. Ames, told me to start one so that I could write about my impressions and observations and all the interesting stuff that was going to happen to me in Japan. My dad helped me set it up before we moved, and I named it The Future Is Nao!
I kept it up for a while, making these cheerful, chirpy postings to The Future Is Nao! but I felt like a total fraud.
There’s nothing sadder than cyberspace when you’re floating around out there, all alone, talking to yourself.
Kayla is totally the opposite of me. She is superconfident and has lots of money and isn’t afraid of anything. Even though we haven’t corresponded for a while, and I don’t even know what high school she’s at, I’m 100 percent sure she is the most popular girl there, because she is the type who will always be the most popular girl wherever she is.
“OMG i luv yr uni4m! its soo manga! u gotta snd me 1 so i cn go as a jap skoolgrl 4 haloween!”
To her, my new life was just cosplay,
Our chats and emails went nowhere, and then she started taking longer and longer to write me back, and after a while she just kind of disappeared.
I tried to find her online and she was always off even when I knew she had to be on, I realized she had blocked me from her buddy list.
After that, I forwarded her the “Tragic and Untimely Death of Transfer Student Yasutani” link to my funeral. Mostly it was to shock her, but like I said, I was kind of proud of my stats too. I waited and waited for an email to show up from her, but it never did. Maybe this is what it’s like when you die.
So, you can see why I was feeling like a ghost.
Basically, if you’re a Japanese kid, these exams decide your whole future, and the rest of your life, and even your afterlife. What I mean is: where you go to high school decides where you’ll go to university, which decides what company you’ll work for, which decides how much money you’ll make, which decides who you’ll marry, which decides what kind of kids you’ll have and how you’ll raise them, and where you’ll live and where you’ll die, and whether your kids will have enough money to give you a classy funeral with
I’m American, and I believe I have a free will and can take charge of my own destiny.
He said that at first everyone thought she had a sty, which was gross, and one boy even dared to call her a baikin. But Reiko just laughed gorgeously and told him it was cosplay, and she was being Jubei-chan the Samurai Girl in The Secret of the Lovely Eyepatch.
While I was asleep and dreaming, my spirit had actually escaped from my body to wreak revenge upon my enemy.
“Yo, Dad!” I yelled back into the room, in English. “There’s two bald midgets in pajamas here to see you.”
In Sunnyvale, I used to think I was adopted. Some of my friends there were Chinese girls adopted by ordinary California parents, but I felt like the opposite, like an ordinary California girl adopted by Japanese parents, who were strange and different, but tolerable, because in Sunnyvale it was kind of special to be Japanese.
Here’s a thought: If I were a Christian, you would be my God.
The only thing lonelier than cyberspace is being a teenage kid, sitting in the bedroom you have to share with your loser parents because they’re too poor to rent a big-enough apartment so you can have a room of your own, and then listening to them discussing your so-called problems.
I backed away. “I’m going to bed,” I told her, still in English. “I was studying. I’m tired.”
“Your great-granny Jiko had a wonderful idea. She has kindly invited you to spend your whole summer vacation at her temple in Miyagi . . .”88
I hate it when grown-ups watch you like that. Makes you feel like a malfunctioning cyborg. Not quite human. “It’s so exciting, don’t you think?” Mom chirped on. “It’s very beautiful on the coastline, and so much cooler than the city. And the ocean is right there for swimming, too.
Miyagi prefecture is located in the Tohoku region, in the northeastern part of Japan.
Old Jiko’s temple was located somewhere along this stretch of coastline.
Before the tsunami caused the catastrophic meltdown of the nuclear power station, people believed Fukushima to be a happy place, and the banners stretched across the main streets of the nearby towns reflected this sense of optimism. Nuclear power is energy for a brighter future! The correct understanding of nuclear power leads to a better life!
Their island had a nickname, too, a shadow name that was rarely spoken: the Island of the Dead.
Other people said no, that the island had always been a tribal burial ground, laced with hidden caves known only to the elders, where they entombed their dead.
Ruth liked the nickname. It had a certain gravitas, and she’d brought her own mother here to die, after all.
Ruth had overcome her aversion to telephones twice that week, the first time to call Callie, and the second time to call Benoit LeBec. She had left a message, but when he didn’t call back, she figured Dora would know why.
Ruth was feeling oddly protective of Nao and her diary and didn’t want everyone to know.
“You mean that French notebook you found on the beach?” Dora asked. Damn, Ruth thought. Muriel. There were no secrets on this goddamn island. “A diary, too, eh?” Dora asked. “And some letters?”
Their access was supplied through a 3G cellular network, but the large telecommunications corporation that provided their so-called service was notorious for selling more bandwidth than it could provide.
The Future Is Now?” the engine asked her, helpfully.
She had already made several exhaustive searches for Jiko Yasutani, anarchist, feminist, novelist, Buddhist, Zen, nun, Taish, and even Modern Woman, in various combinations.
Results 1—1 of 1 for “Yasutani Jiko” and “Zen” and “nun” and “novelist” and “Taish” and “Miyagi”
“Shsetsu and Shishsetsu—they are both very strange. You see, there is no God in the Japanese tradition, no monolithic ordering authority in
Ruth scanned the beach. The scavengers looked possessed, like zombies, the walking dead. It was ghoulish. “Has anyone found anything yet?”
You can’t believe how many steps you have to climb to get to it, and in the summer when it’s hot, you think you’re going to die of heatstroke or something. This is a place that truly could use an elevator, but Zen Buddhists aren’t big on modern conveniences.
I’d gotten this childish idea that we could make a little detour to Tokyo Disneyland so I could shake hands with Mickey-chan.
and I knew Dad was not a Disneylandish kind of person.
When we finally got to Sendai, we transferred to a local train that took us to the town nearest Jiko’s temple, and then we humped my wheelie bag onto an ancient bus filled with really old people to take us to her village.
How much can you really trust the promise of a suicidal father?
my dad’s friend was a psychology professor. He was nice enough, an old guy who got famous in the 1960s for doing drugs and getting high and calling it research, so you have to figure he was a bit of a flake and probably pretty immature, too.
<Hey, Jiko, how old do you have to be before you’re really grown up? Not just your body, but your mind?>
It was nice of Kayla to stick up for me, but actually I don’t think I’m so healthy at all. I’m pretty sure I have all kinds of syndromes including ADD and ADHD and PTS and manic depression, as well as the suicidal tendencies that run in my family.
As I bathe myself I pray with all beings that we can purify body and mind and clean ourselves inside and out.
The way you take a bath in Japan is first you rinse your body really well with hot water to get the sweat and dirt off so you don’t make the
bathwater gross, and then you climb into the bathtub and soak for a while to kind of soften things up. Then you get out again and sit on your stool, and that’s when you really wash yourself all over with soap and a scrubby cloth, and if you’re going to shampoo your hair or shave your legs or brush your teeth or something, you can do it then.
Maybe this is a good time to describe how old Jiko looks, because actually I was totally shocked that first day in the bath.
