Tanabata (Star Festival)

     No question that the biggest adjustment to life in nihon is becoming illiterate. Not even 180 hours of nihongo lessons nor passing Level 4 Japanese Proficiency makes a dent: I need help to decipher everything that lands in the mailbox.  As a result, telephone service has been cut off and parcels remain uncollected. Inside the Manor concierge Okutsu-san kindly irons out these domestic struggles; but how to manage in the outside world? Alice, our first visitor, found the answer in her SF Chronicle: Tokyo Free Guide. Generous Edoko (natives) donate their time to help tourists navigate around town. Through this service I made my first native friend, Senichi-san, a reliable source of answers to all questions including: Can you please guide my next visitor?

    For our farewell tour we made three stops along the Toei Oedo line. First stop, (E09) Ueno-okachimachi. Since Meiji Era (late 19th century) the Honkan (Japanese Gallery) at the Tokyo National Museum has displayed rooms of designated National Treasures and Important Cultural Property. Rooms of scrolls and calligraphy tools spark our conversation until a guard was forced to hush us. En route to the Y 800 lunch set at Ganko in Ueno Koen (park) Chinese street performers entertained the sweaty passersby with a magical mask changing dance and impossible contortionist poses; when they passed the hat afterwards, everyone was generous in this country without panhandlers.  

   Before heading to (E 32) Nakai, to see what remains of the Edo era cloth making industry, we hopped off at (E07) for a stroll at Koishikawa Korakuen  ("the garden for enjoying power later on") designed by the daimyo Tokugawa about 350 years ago. Turtles lolled on stones in the central pond, as the resident heron preened. An obliging fellow visitor snapped our photo by the Engetsu-kyo (Full Moon Bridge). On the way out, visitors were invited to write a wish on colored strips of paper and hang it on a bamboo tree to celebrate Tanabata (Evening of the Seventh) or Star Festival, the 7th of July, a great excuse to make a wish that I might return to nihon to visit all my tomodachis in the near future.