When in Doubt, Bow

I’m not sure if you’ve ever been woken up by a shamisen concert, but if not, I don’t recommend it. A shamisen is a stringed Japanese instrument with a pretty distinct nasal sound. You’d probably characterize its sound as “Japanese.” I can’t really blame the shamisen-ist for waking me up. The concert, which took place directly below my apartment at the temple, started at around 11:30 a.m., so it was probably time to get up anyway. All the same, it was a tough start to the day. Now, I won’t say that I don’t like shamisen music. In fact, under the appropriate circumstances, it can be quite beautiful. When you’re being woken up by shamisen, however, it can also sound like a bunch of braying cats in a pool choking on nails. That was how my day started.

Soon thereafter, I received yet another (exceedingly polite) reminder about how properly to use my bathroom. You see, one of the quirks of my apartment here at the temple is that I share the toilet room with the administrative offices of the temple school. During the day, if I want to use the bathroom, I have to unlock one door from my apartment, enter the toilet room, and then lock the other door from within the room. Upon leaving, I’m supposed to unlock the door connecting to the offices and then re-lock the door from the toilet to my apartment. I seem to keep forgetting, though, to unlock the door from the toilet to the administrative offices, so the office ladies keep (very politely) knocking on my apartment when they want to use the toilet to ask me to unlock the door for them. The whole situation is incredibly awkward, but I’m trying to adjust to it.

It won’t stop raining in Tokyo! I think it’s rained just about every day since I’ve been here, and the weather forecast calls for thunderstorms for nine of the next ten days! I’ve been told that this is extraordinarily unusual, and the major news in Tokyo right now is the diluvial downpour overtaking the city, but regardless of its extraordinariness, I’m finding it to be a huge bummer.

Just as one of the nice office ladies finished explaining the bathroom protocol to me for the umpteenth time (though, it was, of course in Japanese, so umpteenth time or not, I still couldn’t understand it), I heard a pretty loud pitter-patter, pitter-patter coming from the spare bedroom in the apartment. Ordinarily, a leak in the ceiling, even a large one as was the case, wouldn’t be a major cause for concern. I would have liked to have just gone up to the roof to check it out, but I wasn’t sure the temple folks would take kindly to my do-it-yourselfmanship, so I reluctantly notified one of the office ladies that there was a large leak in my apartment. This is a great example of Japanese kindness and courtesy going a bit too far. Within a minute, I had both office ladies and one of the temple priests in my apartment excitedly chatting about the leak and trying to calm me down. I tried to reassure them that I was just fine and indeed calm and that the leak wasn’t a huge deal, but the more I spoke, the more concerned they seemed. Another one of the priests ran up to the roof to do something, and, finally, the leak stopped. After much bowing and apologizing on everyone’s part, the temple ensemble left my apartment, and I—finally—had my first moment of quiet all morning. Then the shamisen started up again.

So, living at the temple presents its fair share of oddities, but I’m trying to be easy-going about everything. I feel like it’d be pretty tough not to be easy-going about most of the stuff here.


There were a few other things I had wanted to write about tonight, but I got severely distracted while writing by the discovery that Google Maps has JUST added Street View for Tokyo! I’m pretty excited. Now, you can check out my life in Ryogoku in street-level detail! It’s pretty easy to find the temple. Here’s what you should do: search on Google Maps for “Theater X, Ryogoku, Tokyo, Japan,” center yourself on location A, zoom in, and select Street View. Then, while looking south, side-step about half a block to the west, and you should be able to see the entrance to the temple. You’ll definitely know when you see it!