Takayama

September 5, 2023

I remember setting trash on fire outside of Yakata Yahei. I don’t know whether the sound of crackling flame or the smell of cigarette smoke more vividly evokes childhood memories of summer trips to Japan. My grandmother didn’t smoke, but the woman who assisted her at the ryokan did. It was always unclear to me what her relation to our family was, but she was always there during those busy summers. I had never heard a voice so raspy before meeting her. I remember learning about the rituals in front of the family altar in the back tatami mat room where I used to play video games and once attended a Buddhist wedding in a clip-on tie. Walking by an incense shop will take me back to those delicate moments with my grandmother as I picture the candles waving goodbye. At Yakata Yahei, my grandmother showed me how to cut bamboo shoots that appeared to grow out of the ashes from the piles of trash, and we prepared and ate them together. At the end of those meals, I purposely left rice in my bowl so that I could feed the koi. It was my favorite activity.

Yakata Yahei is a ryokan that my grandparents had owned and operated since 1971. The traditional Japanese inn is located in a remote mountainous area called Sugo. My grandfather died in 1989, and since then, my grandmother lived there alone and ran the ryokan with the help of relatives and, of course, the woman with the raspy voice. Summer was the season of traveling rugby teams, and because a rugby field was within walking distance, groups of big men would stay at Yakata Yahei. Whenever we visited from the US, my mom, brother, and I slept in the annex separate from the main guest rooms, but we had breakfast and dinner together with the rugby players in the dining hall. My grandmother’s hospitality vitalized the old ryokan where she cooked meals for dozens of guests and prepared hot water for the shared baths. As wildly different as it was from growing up in a four-bedroom brick house in a metropolitan area of Texas, the ryokan became my idea of home.

By adulthood, I had spent most of my life in America’s most densely populated cities, and after each summer break in Sugo, I grew more intrigued about what it was like to live in rural Japan. Once I entered graduate school, I started visiting my grandmother in the winter and the fall on my own without family. During those times, Yakata Yahei was quiet. Business was lucrative enough in the summer that my grandma didn’t need to work the rest of the year. In the absence of other guests, I could spend more time gardening and cooking with her. But without the cadence of big men walking around the place, the ryokan felt different. Without access to modern technologies and regular social contact with other family members, life in the mountains was isolating. I began to wonder why my grandmother stayed. I wondered why my mother left.

My grandmother retired from operating Yakata Yahei when she was 83 years old, and as the ryokan was being sold to another family, she moved into an assisted living residence in a hot spring town in the region. I visited my grandmother there once from Boston with my mom and another time from New York with my dad, and both times, she was excited to tell us about her new arts and crafts activities. Based on the messages and photos that my relatives sent me, she enjoyed the hot spring town, but several months into the Covid-19 pandemic, she started experiencing health issues. The eventual plan was to move her to a hospital in Takayama about an hour south of Sugo.

Three years ago, I didn’t know much about Takayama. My grandmother had taken me there maybe a handful of times during my visits to Sugo. There was a multistory arcade called Sega World, and the mall also had an arcade on the top floor. Whenever I was old enough to help in the kitchen, we drove there for the nearest supermarket. Although some of our relatives lived in neighboring municipalities, no one in our family actually lived in Takayama, but because it was the largest city in the region and provided access to the healthcare she needed, it was logical for my grandmother to stay there.

I don’t think I still really understand the dynamics of my extended family in Japan during the first year of the pandemic. But at home in Dallas around Thanksgiving, my mom started talking about a future where she would quit her job, move to Japan, and become a full-time caretaker for her mother. Citing Japanese expectations of obedience to the elderly, she reasoned that physically being there with my grandmother would be helpful, especially if her health declined further.

My mom loved living in Texas, and she loved her job. The reality was that Japan had severely limited travel into the country, and even if mom could get to Takayama, there wasn’t much she could do while my grandmother was in the hospital. I knew that she felt guilty for not being able to do anything for her own mother, but I also believed that my grandmother wouldn’t want my mom to sacrifice her livelihood in the US either. After all, my mom was able to leave Sugo for a life in the US because my grandmother worked her entire life at the ryokan.

For weeks, I mused over how I could personally help my grandmother and, by doing so, help my mom. My mental state was buried under a cheap weighted blanket whose filling material was unevenly dispersed, and I didn’t feel helpful to anyone, including myself. The idea of living in the mountains of Japan lifted me.

Over homemade tacos in January, I told my mom that I would go to Japan. “I’ll take care of grandma.”

In the way that my mom often did, she instinctively responded, “You can’t do that. Don’t be silly.”

Conceding that my presence there might not be as impactful as hers, I explained to my mom that she had so much to lose by quitting her job. We had acknowledged that any of us going to Takayama would largely be symbolic anyway, so why not me? As I spoke, the expression on my mom’s face changed from careful incredulity to solemn empathy. My mother was around my age when she decided to move to the US, and I think in that moment, she saw something in me that she had recognized in herself. My conviction, visible through my teary eyes, convinced her that I needed to go not only for some semblance of filial benevolence but also for my self-worth. She knew that I needed to do this.

Over the next few weeks, my mom and I clicked through government websites and printed A4-formatted paperwork onto 8.5-by-11 paper. We asked her cousin in Japan to mail us a family registry form from city hall. By April, I had purchased a $90 one-way ANA flight to Tokyo for September and decided to go to the consulate in Houston sometime in June to obtain my Japanese passport. Pandemic restrictions were easing in the US, so I would be able to officiate a wedding that summer in California before I left for Japan. Uncertainty faded until it didn’t.

My grandmother died on May 21, 2021.

I was in front of the upstairs bathroom mirror putting an earring on when I heard the ringtone of the Japanese messaging app LINE coming from my mom’s iPad. The sound stopped after a few seconds. My mom probably answered the call on her phone at work. It was the afternoon in Dallas, middle of the night in Japan, and because she only really used LINE to contact people in Japan, I knew that something important had happened. I paused for a moment and put the earring down on the counter. Seconds later, I received a message from my mom in the family text message thread that my uncle had called with the news. A jab in my throat was the realization that, for the past five months, I was racing against time. I don’t think my grandmother even knew that I was trying to make it to her.

Boarding an international flight to a mildly foreign country on a Star Wars-themed aircraft transporting more flight attendants than passengers was surreal. As I tried to fall asleep to the 14-hour white noise, I asked myself why I was moving to Japan. Between May and September, there had been long discussions about whether it still made sense for me to move. Yes, my grandmother no longer needed my help, but I wanted to go to those mountains because she could still help me. I wasn’t able to verbalize it back then, but that was the truth. I was always curious about my grandmother’s life in Sugo, but new discoveries about her led to questions that required me to go there to answer. As an adult, I searched for continuity between history and me, and by the time I was wise enough to comprehend that, the past became too old. With her head down, my mom encouraged me to go.

During my two-week quarantine in Tokyo, I wrote chapters. What I aimed for was at least one year in Japan so that I could really study it, and what I promised myself was less than two so that I could go back to my people in New York, if they would have me. I took an empty train to the mountains, and with the invaluable guidance of my relatives, I found an apartment in Takayama within a month. By Thanksgiving, my life in rural Japan truly began.

Between the first snowflake and the last cherry blossom petal falling into the Miyagawa, I learned about the history of Takayama and the nature around it. My education quartered, my patience doubled. I shopped at my grandma’s favorite supermarket. I fumbled at the cash register, and I felt ashamed for all the times I was embarrassed that my parents didn’t act in accordance with American customs. I walked by incense shops, and by the end of my first year, I wrote more chapters.

Shortly before I finished graduate school, my mom told me that my grandmother had been taking antidepressants since my grandfather’s death, which meant my entire life. When I found out, I started scrutinizing my memories of Yakata Yahei to determine whether she did anything to reveal that she was sad. My grandmother was quiet, but since the mountains were quiet, I always perceived her silence as contentment. At that point, I couldn’t talk to her about how she really felt because her senescence allowed her only to share about what she crocheted that day or to repeat the story of a black bear that unexpectedly visited the ryokan circa 2013. I wish I had the opportunity to ask her if she ever felt lonely in Sugo, especially when she wasn’t busy taking care of those rugby players. All those years, maybe I could have learned something about my depression.

Takayama is the largest city in the region, and by area, it’s actually the largest city in Japan. The neighborhoods surrounding the main train station are lively during business hours, but Takayama is still the countryside and a contrast to the setting of any previous phase of my life. With few external sources of validation, I have to find confidence in other places. Because of time zones, my world sleeps when I’m awake. I find healing in the unfamiliar familiarities of rural Japanese society where truths about my grandmother become as clear and crisp as the sake that’s brewed down the street from my apartment. The mountains are lonesome, but I know that, despite everything that my grandma lost in her life, she created so much more. Thanks to her, I’m able to create more too.

My mom grew up down the street from where Yakata Yahei was built. When I asked my mom why she decided to leave Sugo for America, she told me that she felt different from most people around her. She recalled the frustration of driving an hour to Takayama for English lessons, and her peers rarely expressed interest in traveling to a foreign country. Where generational sameness is viewed as stability and loyalty, it was common for children in the countryside to obtain jobs that their parents did. My grandmother was a schoolteacher before running the ryokan, so my mom also became a teacher. She found fulfillment teaching, but staying in Sugo for the rest of her life was a carousel my mom didn’t want to ride.

When my mom had the opportunity to visit the US as a student, she felt a sense of freedom away from the rigidity and strict dress code of Japanese society. After college, my mom returned to Sugo for a few years working in the area, but against the wishes of her parents, she moved to the US thereby giving up a modest but stable lifestyle near her family. Learning English and earning teaching certifications in Texas, she now works with young people enthusiastic about different cultures. My mom enjoys the comforts of a big American city.

I wish my grandmother was here to appreciate the irony that my mom and I switched places. My grandmother worked her entire life to ensure that my mom could venture beyond the mountains. What would she think if she knew that her daughter raised a son who was determined to start a life in those mountains?

This month marks the end of my second year in Japan, and I think about the promises I made. I lost one race against time, but in the wake of my grandmother’s death, I found continuity. I’m now building my own idea of home in Japan. Songs teach me how to mourn in two languages, and I learn new ways to go up and down mountains. I send letters to friends who write me birthday cards and forgive those who didn’t. I surround myself with beautiful things. As the kind people of rural Japan remind me to stand taller every day, I became helpful again.