From Japan, Tales of Delight, Rain, and Silliness

What was it like, teaching my first two-day workshop in Japan about reading faces? For me, it began by having an adventure with the toilet.

Here’s the back story. Literacy has been a big blessing throughout my life. Actually, reading is the ONLY skill in my life where I have been precocious, somehow figuring it out by the age of three. (By contrast, I was more than a year old before I could sit up on my own. And it wasn’t until age 14 when, thanks to a fascinating aha! experience in the New York subways, I finally realized that I could move my eyes in my head without moving my entire head.)

Yes,  in this lifetime I’ve been slow in many ways, but at least I have always been able to read. Except not now, not in Japan.

So here I am, at the Bkkyo Dendo Center, a stately meditation center, some five stories high, with teaching rooms rented out to speakers like me. Four years ago, I taught aura reading in this very same building and vividly remember the huge thought form that once dominated the place. It went like this: “You may study all you like, but never will you truly master this knowledge.”

This was used to create a bit of drama in my workshop, back in the day. I invited my students to close their eyes while I did a verbal healing; then they would be able to notice if anything shifted for them. Afterwards, every hand went up and I explained about the removal of the big ol’ thought form. Students were somewhat impressed. More important, I was able to actually teach them successfully, whereas otherwise this might not have happened.

Returning to the Buddhist center this last weekend, I remember the thought form. It hasn’t returned, so it should be easy to teach my students. What I don’t remember nearly so vividly is the toilets.

WAY TOO HIGH TECH FOR ME

You may know that Japanese toilets come in many varieties, from a hole in the ground to a regular Western-style toilet to the triumph of technology that awaits me at Bkkyo Dendo. This comes with two rows of buttons. The bottom row contains pictures. I can read these pictures:

• Would you like the toilet to squirt you with water now?
• Where exactly would you like this water to be squirted?
• Would you like a rushing sound of water to cover up any embarrassing human sounds, like substances departing your person?

All this I can deal with fine, although I’m not especially delighted that the toilets warm themselves up automatically. My toilet seat feels like a toaster but, so what? At least it isn’t like a rotisserie.

Still, what about that second row of buttons, all written in Japanese? Do they explain, perhaps, exactly how to flush the thing?

I am totally clueless. If someone else hadn’t come into the Ladies Room, I might still be there. Because one does have the sense, from other aspects of Japanese manners, that it just isn’t done to flee a bathroom ritual that hasn’t been respectfully terminated.

I count all this as helpful for my role as sensei. Arrogant teachers can be so annoying. Thanks to this humbling reminder of my total lack of literacy, I may avoid coming across as overly arrogant. Overly stupid, maybe…..

WHO CARES?

So I play with my students and their faces for a couple of days in our classroom at Bkkyo Dendo. The class includes an auricular acupuncturist, a professional aesthetician, and a massage therapist, along with other sophisticated (and absolutely delightful) students. My talented interpreter, Sayaka Kai, keeps up with my detailed explanations, attempts at Japanese-style jokes, and strange analogies.

Among my spontaneous creations that weekend, I remember making an analogy about giving children tiny baby-sized chopsticks to use. Hilarious yet meaningful to a Japanese audience – I think. Incorrectly.

On my students’ faces, after Sayaka translates my improvised words, I see slightly dazed looks. Or maybe I am only seeing a reflection of my own expression, not so much dazed as crazed.

It is a very, very strange feeling, having somebody repeat every word that you say. The interpreter also struggles mightily to help make your words extra understandable. For me, teaching with an interpreter is sort of like having an extra brain, and I have to say I enjoy it. Enjoy it.

Fast forward to about 11 a.m. on Sunday. We’re in the midst of some juicy details about cheeks (at least, I remember it as cheeks; could be ears) when the heavens open up with the most amazing downpour of rain.

June in Tokyo is rainy season, so no big deal, right? Well, it’s still quite a shock to someone like me when the entire sky turns into a vast shower stall loaded with invisible, high-pressure nozzles. Imagine it: Super-fast rain, falling down straight and hard, with a noise that combines wet and squeaky. For a moment, I don’t want to teach. I just want to look out the window, giggling with wonderment like a two-year-old.

Meanwhile, however, I consider that my inner adult is carrying on quite nicely.

Then Sayaka-san asks me, between translated sentences, “Did you feel that?”

 ”Feel what?”

“Oh, the earthquake.”

OH, JUST AN EARTHQUAKE

The next tremor, I do feel. This is not like a fun ride in an amusement part. It feels like a big space has opened up deep inside my belly, where there is suddenly far too much room. This feels like an inner belly of weirdness where The Buddha might enjoy cognizing the perfect suchness of “wobbly.”

“I felt that one,” I tell Sayaka, after giving her another sentence to translate.

“Yes, we’re having a little bit of earthquake,” she answers back between sentences.

Another shake comes. Just one weekend ago, there was a 6-point earthquake several hours to the north of us. I wonder, what are we going to get here? Will it be the big one that all Japanese people wait for, the humongo destructo adventure that has long been predicted for this precarious part of the earth?

“So what do we do?” I ask, no longer waiting for the “cover” of interpreting.

“We do nothing,” Sayaka says. “We’re all used to it. There are two kinds of earthquake tremors, really. This is the sideways kind, a rocking sort of motion. The other kind is up-and-down, a slamming tremor. That can be a little intense.”

“Nothing?” I say, in a strained voice, as if I’ve spent way too many years eating with miniature chopsticks. “We’re supposed to do nothing?”

“If it were bad, we’d get under the tables,” Sayaka says. “But this is nothing.”

Nothing.

O.K.A.Y.

I keep on teaching. No way am I going down in history as the wimpy, whiny American teacher who can’t stand a nothing kind of earthquake. Inside, I feel so wobbly, it’s as though I have time traveled right into the middle of a hiccup.  I’m waiting for the other “hic” to drop.

By the end of the workshop, everyone is happy. A few of the women have shed healing tears. Everyone has laughed really hard at times, including our brave male students. Face Reading Secrets(R) have been imparted. Sayaki has one more successful workshop to add to her collection of interpreting triumphs. And I have survived earthquake tremors and squeaky rain . Also, I’m now alarmingly capable at flushing toilets.