Just before six o’clock tonight I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. The sun had just set and the streetlights were coming on around me, one by one. I wandered to the grounds of the Buddhist temple nearest our home and noticed the temple bell, which looked quite impressive against the twilight sky, and so I took a photograph. Just as I was leaving, the priest emerged from the residence and saw me. He invited me to ring the bell for the daily six o’clock ritual, which we can hear every night from our home: six slow rings of the temple bell, a sound that we and our neighbors find very comforting. I hadn’t planned to be present for this evening’s ritual, let alone participate, and thus I was quite surprised. I gladly accepted.
I ascended the short set of wooden stairs, took the thick rope in my hands, and looked to the priest for instructions. He nodded his head, signaling me to begin. Each time I rang the bell I waited for his next signal to ring the bell again, while a cool breeze touched my skin and the sound of the bell faded beneath the chirping of crickets. Only when the ringing had faded to near silence — which took nearly a minute — did the priest nod his head again, and again I rang the bell. After the sixth ring had faded completely, the priest nodded a final time, and I bowed to the bell and descended the stairs. Facing the priest, I bowed and thanked him, and he returned the bow. We wished one another good night, and parted.
In our area of Hyogo Prefecture it’s now the harvest time for chestnuts and grapes. My wife and I are fortunate to have two chestnut trees in our yard. This year they’ve been especially productive, and the chestnuts are huge. Not only are we fortunate to have the trees, but we also have a close friend, Sato san, who is a professional fruit tree pruner (among her many other talents). The size and number of our chestnuts this harvest is largely due to her efforts over the whole year.
Unlike Sato san, we know nothing about growing chestnuts. Yesterday, seeing they were ripe, we plunged in and went about shaking the trees to dislodge the sharply-spiked shells containing the nuts. With some prodding and clipping, a number of these prickly little cannonballs came crashing through the trees, causing us to duck for cover. We gathered them, together with the ones that had fallen to the ground without our assistance, cracked the shells open with our feet and with our hands (protected with leather gloves), removed the little delicacies, rinsed them, tossed them in a big, flat wicker basket, then pointed a fan at them and left them to dry overnight.
Today we showed our daily harvest to Sato san, who was impressed. She thought we may have harvested a record-sized chestnut, and so she decided to weigh it.
Photo by Yurika Kinugawa
According to Sata san, this chestnut is three levels above the top level of the common scale that is used to compare the relative sizes of chestnuts. I couldn’t quite grasp that. If it is above the top level, and by definition there are no levels above the top level, then how can this chestnut be three levels above that? I tried to sort it out with her, but she just happily repeated: yes, this chestnut is three levels above the top level. I had the feeling she was teasing me with a Zen koan, like asking me what is the sound of one hand clapping, or whether a tree that falls in the woods makes a sound if there is no one there to hear it. But I recognized that, as usual, my limited Japanese language skills were probably the cause of my incomprehension, and nothing more profound than that.
As pleased as Sato san was with this enormous chestnut, she admonished us after we told her we had shaken the trees and had cut some of the branches near the shells. Let them fall on their own, she advised, otherwise you’ll hurt the trees. Now my wife and I have cleared the undergrowth so that we can easily spot the fallen shells and nuts in the dark shadows under the canopy of the traumatized trees. We hope they’ll forgive us.
My favorite way to eat chestnuts is boiled, diced, and mixed in a bowl of rice, spiced with just salt and pepper. But of course there are a lot of people who think of them as dessert, especially in the form of a Mont Blanc. I’d never even heard of this treat before I came to Japan, but it’s very popular here, and is offered in many varied forms, with certain restaurants vying for the reputation of having the best Mont Blanc. This specimen is from one of our favorite places, Sticks Coffee.
The yearly chestnut harvest in Tamba corresponds to the tail end of the grape harvest. Many grapes are produced here — for eating, not for drinking. Sato san also knows plenty about grapes, since she works part-time in a nearby vineyard. I visited her there this week, to take a few photos and to buy some of the last grapes of the season.
She explained that most of the grapes still on the vine at this time of year are for raisins. That’s Sato san’s hand in the photo below, culling some bad grapes from a bunch destined to become a box of raisins.
I bought about two kilograms of grapes, of two varieties. It cost me ¥4,600, which I was happy to pay because the vineyard employs two of my friends…and because the owner has five children and I feel obliged to support any effort to repopulate the Japanese countryside, given that my wife and I are not directly participating in that effort, aside from having moved here…
And because the grapes are really good.
I bought so many grapes that I had to give some away. Apparently, other people in my neighborhood are in the same situation. I went to a local coffee shop later (a great place called Ajun Coffee & Yums) and a customer came in with a bag of grapes and handed them to the owner. She placed four each on beautiful, matching plates, and served them to all the other customers.
It’s been almost a year since I moved to Japan. At the time I arrived, in early October, the red spider lilies were just past full bloom. I had visited Japan often before, but never during this season, so it was my first opportunity to see these beautiful flowers on display. I was thrilled.
Now they’re back, and in full bloom, marking an anniversary for me. In the interim I’ve learned (among many other things) that spider lilies are associated with the Japanese Buddhist holiday called higan, which is held yearly around the autumnal equinox. Businesses and schools are closed, and people gather to tidy up gravesites, honor ancestors who have “crossed to the other shore” (i.e., Buddhist heaven, or Nirvana, or wherever one imagines the hereafter), and to celebrate the passing of summer and the arrival of fall, usually with a drink or two. It’s a wonderful time of year. The oppressive heat has waned, and nearly all the rice fields have been reduced to stubble and are rimmed with red spider lilies, which in Japanese are called higanbana, after the holiday.
Earlier this week, taking advantage of the cooler weather, I went on a long bike ride through the neighboring rice fields to the largest nearby town. There I discovered what felt like a secret path along a canal that cut all the way across the town’s center, miraculously avoiding traffic. The road was lined with higanbana, so I stopped and got off my bike to take a photo. It was strangely quiet. I felt the enormous presence of the year that had passed, as if I were standing in a long shadow cast by a mountain at my back. I stood there for a while, looking at the road before me, breathing it all in, feeling like a soul who had crossed to another shore.
