Easing Ourselves In

Dearest Rachel –

After spending the entire evening yesterday within the hotel and shopping complex connected to the Nagano train station, thinking that we might be confining ourselves more than we ought to, I was looking forward to having a reason to get out and actually make our way around the city. I say ‘I’ because I can’t really speak for Daniel on much of this; he’s actually quite fascinated by the lights and décor here in the hotel, and could easily content himself with spending time examining the fixtures throughout this facility. In some ways, he hasn’t changed all that much since his days of gawping at the lights on his very first cruise ship.

Still, there are hotels closer to home that are similarly appointed, and there’s this outside world that needs to be taken in. Not only that, but for all that we’re familiar with certain areas within Tokyo (even from before arriving there), Nagano is terra incognita to the both of us; we need to get out and about and absorb what we can while we can, as we’re not likely to get the chance again. So now that we’re starting our first full day here, I’m looking forward to doing it.

However, at the same time, the tour group really only has one stop on the agenda for today; they are really easing us into this place. So maybe this isn’t such a hive of activity and historical significance, after all.

And with that having been said, I should mention that the whole trip has been surprisingly low-key in terms of its educational content. Since Jack’s channel is devoted to the study of history – with tongue firmly in cheek, sure, but a little levity goes a long way toward helping some of us learn – I have to admit that I expected there to be stories aplenty told by him about each of the places we’ve been to; the great rulers who consolidated power here, the battles that were fought there, and the shrines built to memorialize them and other things of great significance. Instead, he’s really been ‘one of us’ throughout this whole trip thus far, just another member of the tour group as opposed to being the ‘leader’ per se. Indeed, one of the others – who, admittedly, had been to Japan some twenty-plus times, as he works for an airline and can travel on standby whenever he likes – has taken the reigns on offering certain side trips, some of which we’ve taken up, and others of which we’ve declined.

Not that this is any criticism of Jack, by any means. While he has lived in-country for a while, that was in Osaka, rather than Tokyo or Nagano. It’s quite possible that he’s as unfamiliar with the area as the rest of us, and is taking it all in as we are; that’s understandable. Indeed, it rather humanizes him, as he openly accepts his limitations when it comes to offering insight about any given place we’re at; he knows how little he knows, and refuses to claim expertise about these sites that he doesn’t actually have.

At the same time, I’m so used to travel where the organizer and the guide are one and the same (or, as in the case of our travels to Israel, working in tandem) that it feels a little odd for the former to all but blend into the group once we’re here, leaving the latter to run and explain everything. It’s a very different experience than I expected, to be perfectly honest. But I can certainly live with it.

Still, this particular excursion, as the focus of the day, feels a little strange. Zenko-ji temple (I kept mispronouncing it as “Zenzo-ji” – I thought that it was a dialectical shift where the temple had essentially the same name as the one in the Akasuka ward of Tokyo) is indeed the central point around which the city grew up – complete with being in the highest point in the city, as far as we could tell, although we didn’t attempt to go around to the north of it to confirm that – but apart from housing an ancient statue of the Buddha (just like Tokyo’s Senso-ji), it wasn’t clear to us as to the significance of this particular complex, apart from its obvious age. I don’t mean to be rude or disrespectful, but as a non-believer, I would want to know more about the history of the place, and why would come here, as opposed to somewhere else that might be more historically significant – which is to say, perhaps, in some other town.

Basically, I’m wondering “Why are we here in Nagano? What is consequential about this place compared to some other destination? Are we visiting this temple simply because it’s the temple in the city?” It feels like it should be important, given that it’s the one stop for the day

Then again, one of our group (I think the one who has taken up the ‘expert’ mantle that Jack refuses to wear) has mentioned that Nagano is a place of “side quests.” There are places to go and things to see, but they require getting out of town, for the most part, in one direction or another. We have to pick our venues; the fact that this one is in the middle of town, only a few miles north of the station, makes it an easy one for us to start with, but anything else requires more of a commitment, in time and money, and the tour has decided to let each of us choose for ourselves what and whether we want to do any of it. It’s kind of nice in that way.

Of course, it’s a little more of an issue for Daniel and me, as he is openly (if quietly) averse to these religious site. He grasps their historicity – which is sort of why I mentioned such questions earlier – but has no patience with the worship of deities he considers false. For my part I have to remind him that Siddhartha Gautama never claimed deity himself – which, now that I think about it, parallels a bit with Jack’s easing off on the reins of this tour – and his Eightfold Path lines up with our Ten Commandments, not to mention the fact that craving (which we might call ‘covetousness’) being the cause of suffering is not unlike some of the tenets of our own faith:

You ·want [desire] things, but you ·do not [or cannot] have them. So you ·are ready to kill [^Lmurder] and are ·jealous [envious] of other people, but you still cannot get what you want. So you argue and ·fight [wage war]. You do not get what you want, because you do not ask God.

James 4:2, Expanded Bible

As Daniel observed after being explained this, “the man was so close.” Indeed he was, since human nature is the same no matter where or when you are; it’s just a matter of being able to observe and record it, perhaps.

***

Given this, our time at the temple is mercifully short; we’re basically on our own shortly after eleven. Some of the others head to a lake outside of town – one of those “side quests” spoken of earlier – but the two of us simply make our way back down to the station and the hotel. Not directly, mind you; we take our time, and wander off into one shopping arcade or another on our way.

But by and large, we’ve done what we intended to, so we’re continuing to take things easy. Almost too much so, in fact. Once we get back, a couple hours later, we think about where to go for a late lunch, but as Daniel fires up his computer to check on the news of his world, I decide to take a short nap, as I’m not even motivated enough to edit the footage of our walk back ‘home.’

The next thing I know, it’s five in the evening, and Daniel is nowhere to be found. I head out to the lobby and into the shopping area, but he’s not in the former, and it’s too crowded in the latter to spot him, even though he cuts a distinctive figure. I head back to the room and message him; I want to make it clear that he’s free to come and go as he pleases, but I just want to know where he is at the moment, as I can’t imagine where he might have gone without either his coat or any cash. It turns out he’s been doing as I mentioned at the top of this letter, honey, and taking pictures of the various sconces and chandeliers that have attracted his attention throughout our thus far brief stay here. I tell him he can continue to do so, but almost before I can send the text, he arrives back to the room.

With that said, and both of us reasonably put together for the evening, we head out to find a place to eat. CoPilot had offered a few recommendations, some of which are right over in the attached shopping area – and which I discovered while out looking for Daniel (up until then, I hadn’t thought about the fact that there would of course be multiple levels of the complex to investigate. At least now I knew where everything is, in terms of eateries) – when we were contemplating lunch, but we could just as easily do dinner instead.

And that was pretty much our day, honey – which feels weird to say, what with this arriving at home at a time before we were experiencing some of this in the first place. We’ve taken the day easily, though; what comes next might be a little bit more to deal with. So with that said, please keep an eye on us, and wish us luck, as we’re going to need it.