big apples

i just received great news from jason who works for the united nations in new york at the moment. he’s getting married with his long time boyfriend, ivo! not in new york but in san francisco where same sex marriage has been legalised, though. i’m absolutely happy for them. i always respect the liberal, open and wholesome side of the united states.
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as i got older, my palate changed, so did my interests. american culture such as disneyland turned me off; my eyes were fixed more firmly on the european continent. but when it comes to new york, it’s a different story. a long time before carrie bradshaw came to life, natalie of ‘me, natalie’ written by a. martin zweiback, holly from ‘breakfast at tiffany’s written by truman capote and eleanor of ‘slaves of new york’ written by tama janowitz were my kind of heroines: independent women who live in manhattan. my first solo american trip had to be to new york. it was eventually realised in the august of 1990. i flew across the atlantic for the first time.
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the first place i visited in new york was a local super market as i was a bit peckish after the long flight. the first thing surprised me was the size of apples. it was actually big! many things like apples and bagels in new york were much bigger than tokyo or london. i also realised things tended to shift a bit like tokyo in terms of tempo, not like london where i lived at the time. and, unexpectedly, it was muggy and humid just like tokyo, which made me less eager about exploration on foot. so i went by bus since the subway had an ill reputation for safety at the time. i love bussing it, anyway, anywhere, anytime.

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while i walked between art museums, i bussed up and down to move around the haricot vert-shaped island, manhattan. no matter how and no matter where i went, police sirens followed me. that’s a new york thing, isn’t it? on one afternoon, i headed south as i planned to view the statue of liberty from a ferry. when i got on a bus, i asked the driver whether or not it was the right one for taking the staten island ferry. ‘what? where? oh, steitn island? oh yeah’ he answered, correcting my pronunciation of ‘staten’ in the strong ‘t’ sound, which was sort of my adopted british accent. like him, new yorkers sounded pretty candid. i began to cotton on to their ‘naked’ kindness.

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on another afternoon, i headed north to visit harlem by bus. as soon as i got off the bus i got nervous about becoming presumably the only yellow woman entering harlem. in the late 90’s, harlem was not a place for a girl on holiday to experience gospel music yet. i asked a young man in smart outfit where i could take a bus bound for midtown. ‘are you alone, miss? that’s no good’ he said, ‘this is kinda rough neighbourhood, you know.’ escorting me to the right bus stop. ‘here we are… wait a second, i guess…better be with you till you’re off’, he continued, ‘that’d be the right thing to do for an uptown boy like me’ – it was one of conversations i had with strangers, but never escapes from my mind even after 18 years. if you asked me, ‘but what’s great about travelling solo?’ i’d answer you, ‘chance encounters like that.’ i do cherish them.

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“global financial crisis” is the headline for almost all the newspapers around the world this week, as one of the big american money towers has collapsed and another been pillared. in this global-scale financial turmoil, who can read the future now? meanwhile, there is one more headline that has caught my eye this week. it’s been seen in european and american newspapers, which presents such a contrast to the darkest news of the world finacial markets.

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new york has become a safer and cleaner city than london and harlem is a tourists’ destination now. i revisited manhattan in march this year. it was early spring and i had a holiday companion, my closest girlfriend masaco, so my impression of the big apple was quite different. besides, we had jason, whom masaco and i used to hang around together with in tokyo. he put us up in his upper east side apartment so that we could enjoy being instant new yorkers. what’s more, my old pal gary flew to see me all the way from laguna beach during my stay. i truly loved the reunions and togetherness with friends in new york.

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on the other hand, while sipping coffee in the city bakery or being wide awake in jason’s guest room in the middle of the night, every time i heard the sound of police sirens echoing round the town, it brought back those innocent conversations with those strangers in the scorching heat of manhattan’s august. i'd be briefly reliving my previous solo trip when i was much younger. then i wondered what had changed and what had stayed the same since then…

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there was one thing i knew for sure: the police sirens would remain unchanged in the big apple.
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homecoming queen

yesterday, i had a little celebration. it was my anniversary of homecoming: it’s been exactly one year since i came back from shizuoka where i had cancer treatments.
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although i don’t want to recall my trying ordeal, i never forget how i was saved by my brilliant doctors, nurses, technicians, therapists, pharmacists and all the staff of the hospital who were great. more importantly, i never forget how everyone cared me: my family who are my daughter, son, mother, brother and his family; my ex-husband and ex-mother-in-law; all my old friends around the world; my new local friends; as well as my new young friends who sent me divine strings of one thousand origami cranes and video messages that made me cry. everything they did for me still means a lot to me.
* the hospital was beautiful and had almost everything from a library (even a spa!) to a café with a superb view of mt. fuji, which is mostly behind clouds in summer, though. there were also gorgeous gardens designed to encourage patients for both exercise and comfort. from day one, i’d talk to god literally while having a walk in the rose garden. i’d ask god not to give up on me in return for my promise to be a better person. then, i’d sit on my favourite bench in the ‘london pride’: a small but lovely english garden with a shed and a pond, named by the english gardener who created it. it was always there as if it was set all for me. i’d recall my london days or even i’d often lost a sense of where i was now – because it made me feel as if i was passing a summer in london.
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radio-chemotherapy was indeed a long and hard medical treatment. it’s like suffering from 24 hour-morning sick and nasty attacks of diarrhoea. but luckily, it did work for me. after 4 weeks of my initial treatments, kind of a miracle happened to me. my doctors informed me they’d cancelled the operation, which was supposed to enable me to get a further (pretty intimidating) treatment. that was why i was there. almost no other hospitals including my local one could offer patients in a particular case like me. it was only two days prior to the scheduled operation date. i had been given a detailed explanation of general anaesthetic by an anaesthetist and even a simulation on the operating table to be ready after taking a series of test and scanning. my doctors studied that the latest result and found my tumour had remarkably shrunk: small enough to continue usual treatment. shion, my daughter who regularly visited me, was with me to share the breaking news. she was speechless. with joy.
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among other fellow-fighters who were from shizuoka prefecture i was alone miles away from home, but i never felt forlorn nor minded it at all. that was convenient for me to ask everyone not to visit me. i didn’t want my friends to see me in hospital, though i looked quite well as i didn’t lose my hair. still, as shizuoka is relatively close to tokyo where my old friends and children live, masaco and osuzu, two of my old best friends, ignored my request and came to see me, and mr piano-man, my ex husband, too, managed to find time for several visits, taking me out of the hospital for a short drive. i was more than touched by their visits.
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day-tripper

i know telling everyone this won’t do me any good, but i just can’t help telling you: it’s been boiling hot and humid!! particularly in the western region of japan where i live.
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when i lived in london i complained about the english weather too often. now that i even miss those cool and damp miserable english summers i had. sunshine is more precious than any english heritage over there, you know, so londoners may go unbelievably hedonistic on a hot summer’s day.
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i also know that england will take my breath away when it’s sunny. english towns and villages look absolutely gorgeous when they stand against a background of cloudless blue sky. bath, an elegant georgian spa town, for example. on a fine day of august many summers ago, i fancied going on a day trip to bath from london.

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bath is an idyllic region and was perfect for me to discover the quintessence of england. i was happy to be a tourist there, having lunch at the pump room, crossing the river avon, lying in the grass and spoiling myself a cream tea at a lovely tea room. everything in bath was simply exhilarating… everything i did there seems like yesterday.
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i had an opportunity to visit bath again years later, when i was offered a magazine assignment working with a photographer and a writer (who specializes in pets, yes, companion animals) from tokyo. we were to report on an annual dog show taken place in bath. it was fun. i mean real fun. besides, we stayed at a hotel whose rooms had an excellent view of the rolling hills. we however, were, never lucky enough to escape rain.

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the summer heat is mercilessly wearing me out, but i hope this post finds you well.

august in sarajevo

hiroshima on 6th and nagasaki on 9th, the a-bombing remembrance days are approaching. i surely will pray for peace from home. it’s a huge disappointment that many conflicts, between different ethnic groups in particular, never seem to cease on earth. in the meantime, i don’t really think most people were familiar with the name, radovan karadzic, until recently. he was the bosnian serb wartime leader who’d been on the run for 12 years. he was eventually arrested on a blgrade bus late july and now is detained at the international war criminal tribunal in the hague. when the news broke i recalled seeing his posters on a rusty tank in the early august of 1997. i flew to sarajevo from london to get together with my then lover, mr diplomat, who was working for the ohr, an international peace implementation agency, to help bosnia and herzegovina to reconstruct the country.
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i visited sarajevo only two years later the civil war ended. in fact, mr diplomat worked hard on the peace projects from 8 a.m. to 8 or 9 p.m. or even much later time he’d often come home. he was renting a modern and spacious furnished flat where his landlord and his whole family lived downstairs. the flat was well equipped including satellite tv, but city-dwellers had to go on living with limited running water and electricity that were supplied only in the early morning hours and the evening. i found myself at a loose end at first. i’d be doing nothing but waiting for the lightning and the thunder-shower to pass. before long i got used to being all on my own in his flat. when electricity came back, i’d watch the video of il postino i brought him, repeating my favourite line of pablo neruda’s poem: ‘love is so short, forgetting is so long’ to get myself in the mood for self-pity... or i’d cook dinner, hearing a mad woman who lived across the street yelling loud every evening. obviously, she still was haunted by the ghosts of the war.

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august in sarajevo, which demanded enough stamina to survive sticky days and muggy nights, was not so great. but i grow to like it there partly because the climate and the hazy blue silhouette of mountains from his balcony reminded me of my home country, japan. as always, i went out for a stroll day after day. sarajevo had almost everything among bullet-riddled buildings: a local farmer’s market; super markets; a make-shift tourist information centre and even an interesting contemporary art exhibition. although people relied on the international aid, they looked keen on fashion brands like nike and levi’s. i found a flagship store of benetton in downtown. benetton was politically provocative at the time. you might remember the photo of a blood-stained t-shirt and camouflage combat pants of a soldier killed in the bosnian war. that was, as part of the brand’s shock-tactics, a controversial advertising campaign directed by oliviero toscani. how ironic!

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on a sultry afternoon, i happened to realise people passing stared at me. i wondered why. was that because i was probably the only oriental woman in town? later, i learned one thing: i as the only woman going abut in a black straw hat, for sun-protection, of course. i had no idea why sarajevan women were not accustomed to putting on a hat. mr diplomat told me the majority of sarajevo, which was once hailed as the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural city, became now muslim; tensions between the main three ethnic groups of bosniak, serbs and croats were excessively high. from their appearances that many of them were blue-eyed and blonde, it was hard for me to imagine they were muslim, just out of my prejudice, though. unlike in other islamic countries, those women wore no head scarves, either.

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my first weekend in sarajevo passed as mr diplomat drove aimlessly his red vw covered in dust to show me (as a matter of fact, he just wanted to see himself) the war-torn country. he and i then encountered the posters somewhere between pale and the eastern border where radovan karadzic was rumoured to be hiding. the country’s once boasted ski resort had turned into a dangerous landmine field. we witnessed the aftermath of explosion in a bucolic remote area. during my stay, late princess diana was also in sarajevo for an anti-landmine campaign. yes, that was her last peace mission before her last holiday with the egyptian billionaire lover, dodi, being chased by frenzy paparazzi to end up in the tragedy.

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we drove down to croatia’s adriatic coast to spend my second weekend on korčula, a fairytale-like tiny croatian island where marco polo was born. all the same, as an exodus to the coast reached the peak due to the high season, there was a desperately long queue of automobiles before the main bridge, which was under construction. mr diplomat was not a man who could sit and keep still behind the queue, he left the main road, trying to find an alternative route from mostar. to my dismay, he, in his private life, appeared not to be patient for anything (which made him look somewhat comical...). he was much worse than i initially knew. he even switched off his car radio when i enjoyed listening to stevie wonder, saying ‘he’s way too nice, huh?’ and, he was a man who could not help but overtake any vehicle in front of him. no matter how fast he struggled to move, it took him 10 hours to drive each way. no wonder our weekend escape drained him completely.

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notwithstanding my bumpy ride with mr diplomat, i did enjoy my stay in sarajevo. the thing is, i’d been hopelessly ignorant in politics until i visited there. sarajevo sort of opened my eyes to see the world not trough rose-tinted glasses. our rendezvous didn’t go romantic like i expected to, however. mr diplomat, at least, did all he could do for me. i appreciated his efforts. on my last day in bosnia and herzegovina, he managed to sneak out his office and drove me to the airport. was there supposed to be a little drama, then? --we parted shedding no tears, after all. that’s life, isn’t it? he rushed back to the office. a few seconds later he dumped me at the airport, i realised mr diplomat waving to me from his car window. so, until his red vw disappeared out of view, i kept waving back to him and goodbye to my own private sarajevo.