07/10 - Papa's Arrival

Heat, humidity

many strange faces to see

and Paddy appears

-Aengus Watson


Today's haiku is written by a special guest, my father. He arrived in Japan today.

After work I went to meet him at Ikebukuro Station. He got to Japan in the afternoon and took the train from Narita Airport to Nippori Station and the Yamanote Line from Nippori to Ikebukuro. I gave him extensive directions, but he did a very good job, making it to the now standard place meeting point that is the Ikebukuro Station West Exit before Aykut and I arrived. It was nice to see him and to introduce him to Aykut. They started to hit it off right away, which was great, but also something I expected. The three of us went for supper at a restaurant Aykut and I have both been to a couple times, but it was definitely a new experience for my dad. Tired from flying all the way to Japan direct from Calgary and then trekking around Tokyo on three different trains, he was not prepared to hear our server, who he rightly thought looked twelve-years-old, speaking in long strings of Japanese. Nor was he ready to start learning a couple Japanese phrases, but we gave him one to start on anyway. He was also bemused by and not exactly enthralled with the screen we ordered food off of, but it will definitely be something he gets used to. The pronunciation of Japanese may not. He kept commenting on how "onegaishimasu", a very polite way to say please which an old lady who kept bringing us dishes said every time she left our table sounded like "Christmas".

My dad's haiku is the first he's ever written and I think it is a very adept entry into the form. After a small amount of editing from yours truly to get the syllable structure right, I think the poem flows beautifully. The content, which is all from his mind, reminds me of some of the feelings I tried to convey with some of the first haiku I wrote in Japan, which is fantastic because I really want to share many of the experiences I've had here so far with my dad. The poem also follows traditional haiku form fairly well, mentioning the heat and humidity of summer and using a nice juxtaposition of faces in the last two lines. I also think it is reminiscent of Ezra Pound's "In a Station of the Metro", a poem inspired by the traditional haiku form and Japanese art and one I have mentioned in this blog before. But I should stop there before I go "Full English Major" on everyone. I will say it's nice writing about someone else's poem for a change, this being just the second time I have had a guest writer, the other being when students of mine teamed up to write haiku in one of my classes.

I'd also be remiss not to mention a couple of strange occurrences from today. In the station in the morning I spotted a poster and immediately turned to Aykut and told him, you're on a poster over there. We went up to it and decided we definitely look like reasonable real life versions of the guys on the poster. Turns out they are the lead characters in a Manga series about brothers who want to become astronauts. We were pretty chuffed to find out there is a series about us as brothers striving to get to space. The series is called Uchū Kyōdai in Japanese and you can read about, at least on Wikipedia, here.

The second strange occurrence was that my 62-year-old student Toru came to class today with the watch he gave his "Show and Tell" presentation on two days ago. He had told us how his parents gave him the watch many many years ago when he graduated and how he wants to pass it on to his son who will pass it on to his son in turn. He was asked if he ever wore the watch and reacted hilariously before telling us, "No! This watch is broken!" It actually looked like the watch was working, but he said it stops after an hour and had done for about ten years, but that he keeps it in his desk and looks at it every couple days to remember his parents. Today he was wearing the watch and eagerly told me how the watch had started working again. It was a complete surprise and he attributed it to the "POWER of [my] pa-RENTS!" I thought it was fitting to happen to a SEIKO watch the day I was to see my dad, who also gave me a SEIKO watch for a big occasion, my 21st birthday, which I wear almost every day.