Back in my office, I view this long ago, never again world from my computer. There I can find pictures of the folk of Tohoku who encountered the GIs. I know I can also locate pictures of Sendai as it once was. Back then my adopted hometown was leveled in the war; one reason that its boulevards are now wider than those in the average Japanese city. This is significant because roads are one of the major causes of stress in Japanese life. Traffic lights may stay green longer than in the States, but that doesn't keep traffic from idling at a bumper-to-bumper standstill. That only doesn't seem to matter for drivers braving one particular street, Jozenji dori, the half kilometer signature stretch of this so-called "City of Green". There, zelkova trees adorn the median promenade, bearing thousands of sparkling bulbs during December's "Starlight Pageant". The trees also provide a colorful backdrop for the Aoba matsuri in which floats, taiko drummers, armor-plated samurai, and a traditional dance competition are featured. The majestic canopy of green offers needed shade for the thousands who flock to watch the marching bands and indigenous dance troupes during Tanabata's August parade. And the leaves rustle to the sounds of the scores of amateur rock, folk, pop, hip-hop and country ensembles that gather to pluck and strum and croon during September's "Sendai Street Jazz Fest".

The pollution caused by the resulting gridlock has prompted public "Idle Stop!" campaigns: a plea to turn engines off at stop lights. The inordinate amount of waiting prompts impatient drivers to routinely run red lights; those who stop on a yellow often receive rude, sustained, noisy rebukes from behind. It is not uncommon for the second and third cars in a turn lane to shoot abruptly from formation, bypassing a motorist who has decided to pull up short on a red. There isn't a day, it seems, that the late night news doesn't run a story of a traffic fatality somewhere in Tohoku, replete with footage of skids marks, chalk-lines signifying inert bodies, and vehicles crumpled as if by the force of Godzilla's careless step. So much of Japanese life, it seems, is the result of the fickle, the inexplicable, the awe-inspiring act of the ethereal, the god-like, monster-step. Whether it has been a sudden typhoon sending a fleet of Ghengis Khan's attacking ships to ocean's bottom, or else America's attack planes expunging an entire city with the release of one bomb, Japanese have been conditioned to accept unanticipated, cataclysmic fate. It is written into lore as an accepted part of everyday mythology. Of course, it is precisely that viewpoint — that "this is the way it has always been and this is the way it always must be" — that has so many of the younger generation chafing at the bit. So many exclaiming: "Not with my precious seventy-eight point five years, Jack!"

Sendai received savage Allied attention in the war because it has a port: THE northern port where the Japanese navy was moored. Although it is little discussed, Tohoku University, were I work, helped feed the Japanese war machine with production technology and ideas. For instance, many of the 9,000 trans-Pacific bomb-toting balloons were manufactured here, then launched from the Tohoku coastline. At least 285 of these incendiaries traversed the 6,000 miles to America, some carrying as far inland as Michigan. Only one resulted in fatalities, though: six picnickers in Oregon who made the mistake of dragging the balloon out of the woods, only to have it detonate for their unwitting efforts.

Tohoku's Kids

Tohoku University is still a seat of technological innovation in this country. The kids I teach are often those who go on to fill the rosters of the major corporations and ministries throughout the country. To a professor who has routinely observed them choke on the act of voicing their own opinions or stumble in their ability to synthesize data and extrapolate to possible ramifications, that's a scary thought. When I first came here these kids had worked their butts off, cramming in worthless byte after unnecessary tidbit of information for regurgitation on standardized tests; tests that measured nothing more than competence in memorization, and the (questionable) virtues of stoicism and regimentation. Those who endured, nay excelled, were assured a cushy post simply for having gained a slot at this prestigious national university. Fifteen years later, the winds of change have blown such that nothing is guaranteed. "It's a new world, Goldie" the dairyman, Tevye, famously intoned to his wife, and there is no more fitting a phrase for a Japan in financial, political and moral decline. The kids I teach are now hungrier and livelier — understanding that all bets are now off — but they are also more anxious. They are no longer insulated by the cool certitude that once they exit my Tohoku world they will be guaranteed a free pass across someone else's Boardwalk and Park Place. In this brave new competitive world, all these kids can feel sure of is that they may very well fail.

Above all, what this means is that these are young adults with eyes open to life. They live it more raw-boned, more on edge than their parents. They live life for keeps. Thinking this, I turn my gaze from my computer screen to a signed piece of cardboard — a trope of ceremony and ritualized respect called a shikishi — which people in Japan sign and give for special events to special people. Shikishi usually provide names, dates, and/or inspirational messages. On this particular shikishi is a line drawing of me — with an exaggerated receding hairline, a goatee — holding a stick of gum. There is a cartoon-like bubble hovering above my head. Within it are words often attributed to me: "Be yourself, think for yourself, act for yourself". A radical idea-set when I first came to Japan, now a message that most students take for granted.

Among the students who have signed the board, I recall, is a young woman who came to my office to confess that she was contemplating embarking on an affair with another teacher at my university — a part timer who was married, with children. Apparently, he had initiated the overture, but she was expected to make the next move. Prior to jumping in, she asked me, her chosen confidant, what to do. But I soon realized she didn't really want to hear my advice. Instead, she simply wanted to offer confession, express her passion aloud, concretize the fantasy, and transform a dalliance into high drama. "I can't resist him! I LOVE him!" she cried out. "It may not be right, I know . . . he's married, he has a little boy . . . but I LOVE him!" After blurting out these words she broke down in tears. I offered her a shoulder, a tissue, some meaningless babble about being careful but following her heart. She rose to go, having secured whatever it was that she came to secure. Watching her shoulders brace as she left, I found myself concluding that the melodramas of Tohoku are no different than those in, say, Greece or France or America. We are all humans, after all, contending with the exigencies of human thought and emotion.

Tohoku's Characters

Behind the shikishi is my window, beyond which is a majestic elm. Beneath this tree, in the "L" of a shadow formed by its trunk and a thick extruding branch, sits a lumpy form, swaddled in multiple layers of shirts, skirts, scarves, and blankets. She is Sendai's most visible homeless person: a woman without a name, of indeterminable age, but probably well into her 40s, who has slept beneath a blue tarp attached to her bike for all of the 15 years I've been here. She washes in the metal sink outside the restroom in the park and gets moved from place to place by the navy blue foot patrol. One day she's camping out beneath the Hirose Bridge, washing her feet in the cool waters of the 50-meter wide river that cuts south by northwest through the city; impassively observing the middle-aged men in grey hip-waders who stand in the shoals, casting 10 meter lines from three meter poles in hopes of snagging 30 centimeter Ayu.

The next day she's trailing three bags of possessions — pots, clothes, foods, electronic discards — down Ichibancho, Number One Street, downtown. There, a kilometer from the park, a click and a half from the university, she trudges, without acknowledgement of the life coming to an abrupt halt around her, to witness her progress. She rolls past the HMV, pumping its hip-hop and bubblegum tunes out into the canopied cobblestone; marches beyond the McDonalds, featuring its "I'm Loving It" fish dippers in wasabi sauce; she is oblivious to the gourmet lingerie store, boasting its multi-colored assortment of fishnet stockings, lacy garters, and push-up teddies; stoically she ignores the Prada store, broadcasting its array of obscenely priced bags, belts and baubles. The homeless woman is reputed to be a former Tohoku University medical student. Her eyes are hidden behind sunglasses out of The Fly, her feet wedged into leather Birkenstocks, with elastic bandages spun around the soles to keep everything securely attached. Perhaps in a nod to her university roots, the homeless woman often makes my campus her home base, particularly in the cold months.

Tohoku is snow country, which means that it can be bitter in winter, and snow will pile high. This makes it tough to shop, take babies and dogs for walks, or jog, but the powder does make for good skiing, sledding, and trekking. Some friends of ours run a small lodge and ski school in nearby Zao, taking in clients a week at a time for endless runs down the mountain and two daily meals at base camp. The proprietors are identical twin brothers and a wife (of which brother I have trouble discerning even after a decade of yearly visits). The wife is a pudgy, feisty, no-nonsense lady who runs a tight ship and dishes out her share of unsolicited opinion about human foibles and preferred action. She's precious in that way, as long as it isn't you at which she is directing her moral fusillade: "That prime minister is a worthless, vote-for favor, good-for-nothing son-of-a-gun!" or "Can you believe that professor — at Waseda, our best private university, no less! — was only reprimanded for staring up high school girl's skirts on the escalator? He actually built a special mirror and took photos and they didn't do more than slap him on the wrists! What kind of example is that for our youth today?!"

The three owners — all products of an earlier generation of limited nutrition and unrequited want — are diminutive. Their two boys, however, are strapping, rugged lads. The elder is a professional skier who splits his time between Japan and America; the other, college educated, dreams of working as a park ranger. Their parents, proud of their independence, nonetheless fret openly and often about their kids' future in an uncertain Japan. Under these boys' assured tutelage, though, my kids have become fearless down-hillers, threading their way through snow as if they plopped out of the womb on skis.

Joining Tohoku'S Circle

My son and daughter have spent their entire lives in Tohoku and it hasn't done them noticeable harm. As they grow, they grow not much differently than those inhabiting your world, wherever you may be. My daughter dances ballet five times a week; my son plays soccer four. They take piano, drum, and ensemble lessons, then bask in the spotlight cast across stages and playing fields. They attend field trips to Disneyland, schlep into Tohoku's alps and camp out with their pals, making "curry rice" in huge vats over an open fire. They fish with classmates in the pine islands of Matsushima, one of Japan's three declared scenic treasures. Matsushima, the site where Basho, a peripatetic 17th century poet, won a contest by penning the simplest of observations:

Matsushima Ya!
Ah, Matsushima Ya!
Matsushima Ya!

As my children grow, as I age, as those whom I've encountered pass out of my boxed view, we all create lives and inhabit worlds that spin of their own logic and act of their own accord, until they inevitably brush against and tug on the separate dimensions of this Tohoku world. There is no better example of this than Kunii, the scrawny young adult with the sheepish smile who forever inhabits a snapshot propped against my computer. He is lolling on a parquet gymnasium floor, wearing a candy-apple-colored basketball uniform, beckoning my infant daughter; she, no bigger than the basketball in his hand. That young lad — who once stormed out of a practice vowing never to return, only to captain my first championship team a year later — went on to take a job with the transportation ministry. He was building roads, helping to keep the wheels of construction companies greased. Within five years he quit this job to pursue his dream of running his own coffee shop. When he returned to my office to deliver the news — along with a pound of freshly roasted beans — I saw that he was balding and paunchy. But his smile came quicker and his laugh was more genuine than I remembered it when he last visited in his middle management prisoner garb. Sendai is better off for providing him a space to pursue his private bohemian dream.

More surprising still was the odyssey of Kunii's high school kohai (his underling), Takao. Takao was a kid I recruited after witnessing him dominate and win a basketball game almost single-handedly on the defensive end. Never before had I seen such a display. What made it even harder to compute was that Takao was tiny even by Japanese standards. I, myself, listened in disbelief as I made the pitch to him — my first recruiting spiel — a speech that brought derisive snickers from Kunii, standing off to the side. For, as Kunii would later explain: "There's no way Takao can get into our school. He doesn't have the grades. He's not smart enough." Nonetheless, it wasn't two years later that Takao, that microscopic man-child, stood before me excitedly gushing "do you remember me?" And, as I searched my memory banks in befuddlement, Kunii whispered over my shoulder (and not without a hint of pride), "It's Takao! Remember? He didn't pass the entrance exam last year so he went ronin (masterless, without affiliation) for the year. He studied all by himself for 12 months just to enter Tohoku University. To play for you."

And that story would be sweet enough even without the championship that Takao helped bring us a year later. It would have been heart-warming even if Takao hadn't then gone on to major in education, secure a teaching certificate, and become a basketball coach, like me. But what made it all the more poetic — even mystical — was that Takao now teaches at the school my teenage son has just entered; waiting anxiously to return the favor and teach my boy the game I helped teach him. Most lyrical (if not curious) is that Takao happens to be married and has a child with one of the players from the bank that I coached years after I had coached him.

Tohoku being that small a world; this familial a place.

Tohoku is not all Japan, it is not any Japan . . .Tohoku is a Japan, my Japan. At the same time, it is not only Japan. Like my Tohoku, the places we inhabit, the people we encounter, those who shape and define our lives are all unique, all special; they are also, in important ways, comfortingly familiar and shared. No different here, in Tohoku, than there, where you read this, the land in which you dwell. And, as it turns out, these people — those who constitute the stuff of our lives — are often of one cloth. Inseparable, interconnected, indispensable.

Incomparable. Just like this time, this place.

* * *

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