On The Write Path

Dried monkey and a choir of angels (Yamagata, March 2015)

Dried monkey and a choir of angels
7月24日2019

         Memories of Mintaro Hut in Yamagata, Japan, March 2015

Sato-san asked me to try some dried meat. The others were more skeptical. It tasted like dried meat, like beef jerky. It wasn't beef.

It was monkey.

Sato-san is one of the most gracious hosts I've ever met in my travels across the world. His table was often full of salty snacks and he would join the guests when he was free.

Nobuki and other men chatted with me in their limited English, but since I don't know Japanese I could only assure them that I understood and that they were doing fine. The questions did get a bit personal but everyone was friendly. I took a picture of one of them with me in my long sleeve grey shirt and one of Nobuki with my toy dog travel companion Esteban.

In the rear garden it was the last gasp of winter. There isn't much smell after a snow has cleansed the air. The old plum tree wore its diamond necklaces gracefully.

There are other images I remember when walking around town. In the pottery district, ceramics were displayed in glass cases along the roads as water streams down baffled canals.

In a cemetery stone statues were wrapped in coats. One seemed serene with a blue-green jacket and a yellow Pooh scarf. Snow mounds marked the corners of temples; cones of ice with a hole bored from the dripping melt. On the way back, a store with jade plants in bloom with small white stars enticed me to enter. I stopped in a bakery with Pikachu buns. I took a picture of a café: Snow White and Chocolat Noir. A good joke for those of us who know both English and French.

By the fortress, a cedar snuggled in its canvas cover, protected from snow. A fisherman stood along the moat as snowflakes fell. Not even a cold March day had deterred him.

Back in the warmth of the wood stove, Sato-san introduces us to his 8 voice choir. They sing a French carol to Alyssa and a friend. They sing Ue o muite (Sukiyaki) to me. I am moved to tears.

My lasting impression was Sato-san at the table with his cat, 20 year old Little Boy. It only saddens me that I've never gone back.

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