A Most Difficult Week

This has been a rough week. After learning that my son has been tested and ASD suspected, the despair of learning that my exwife's actions and my inability to stop them for 9 years contributed greatly to my son's current dire situation is at times almost more than I can bear. Last Sunday was hot enough that I decided to not go on the hike alone. With my son, battling the heat would be worth it, alone, no. So I ate lunch at a mom and pop soba restaurant that my wife and I used to go to for toshikoshi soba every December 31st and occasionally for lunch once our son was born. They no longer offered their signature meal but what I had was quite good. I had my camera with me and decided to take some photos of sights that were part of my every day life for two full decades. I captured my barber shop and recalled that I was trying to figure out when to get my hair cut and realized that with my son bailing on our day together, I had time to get it cut today. Thanks for reading Kitsune, Maskless Crusader! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Our situations leading up to and through our divorces being almost identical, after them quite different. He and his exwife are the same ages as I and mine but their son is 5 years older than mine. A freshman in collage, he decided to live with his father. This puts his father in financial crisis but closer by far to his son. Since his divorce, he has had no communication with his ex. I have had some, mainly about our son. This has ended last when she angrily 'asked' me to stop asking about him when he stops checking our message app. My son's 13th birthday was Thursday and I sent him a 'Happy Birthday' message through the app. It is Monday morning and he still has not checked the app. (It is now Tuesday night. He finally checked the message app and saw my wishes for his birthday to be happy this afternoon. He already has his gift from me. A year ago I shared that he was so excited for his birthday meal that he couldn't sit still and that I despaired at the thought of how he would feel at his next birthday dinner without his dad. Seems that I am not missed. If his mother and grandparents took him out this year, this past week end would have been the most likely time. My Friday classes are off until the next school year so I had the time to go to a yearly Japanese craftsmen exhibition at a department store in a nearby city that I have a long history of patronizing. Our first time was a little before my wife's 2nd secondment to her employer's head quarters in the US for 3 months. The first time was during our first year of marriage. I do not recall how many years we were married when she went on this second extended trip away but it was before we had our son. We attended yearly until sometime after our son was born and then I went alone. During the first time my wife bought a fountain pen. She tried to get me interested in them but I could not see why anyone would pay hundreds of dollars just for a pen. Eventually, I would and began to collect them. With a fountain pen my penmanship for the first time in my then 30 plus year life became legible with not a few recently complimenting me on my 'beautiful' handwriting. I would become a repeat customer of the pen maker we met this day as he attended this fair yearly and I would see him at others too. I have five of the pens he turned. He stopped going to this fair several years ago because a new yearly pen specific event began being held on the same dates. He sadly has since gone out of business. While during covid, it was not the panic that did his multi generational business in. Long ago his grand father or even a generation before entered a relationship with another company for the nibs for their pens. This other company later grew into one of the current big three Japanese pen makers and in recent years made it harder and harder for him to get the nibs he needed from them. He used to make limited edition styles for major international pen fair held yearly at one of Japan's oldest Western stationery and book store. These were PRICEY. I never bought one of these. He suddenly pulled out after all the promotional material had been printed and distributed featuring the model pen he had already finished. All his social media including his private accounts went dark. It is believed that he was unable to get the nibs for the pens he had already turned and had lacquered. Thus it was no surprise that this once yearly attendee was not there this year. Still, sad that he was not. I had conversed with him often while he serviced both my wife's and my pens, a service he provided free for all who bought pens from him. I eagerly anticipated the event this year. When we first went, we ordered a bespoke iron tea kettle. After listening to the sales pitch in which the ironworker explained the quality, features and current rarity of satetsu, the kind of iron ore they use, we choose our design and ordered one. A way to tell if a testubin is made with satetsu is to gently strike the lid on the body. If it rings like a bell with a long decay of the sound, it is satestu. If it makes a heavy clunk and the sound dies away quickly, it is not. Traditionally, satetsu was used. As I understand, the source for this high grade ore was mostly depleted during the war and traditional ironworkers in Japan had to make do with other grades. This one maker has secured a new source of it, perhaps in part from recycling of junk that was made with this material. It was ready after my wife had left for the states and I picked it up and was the first to use it. I brought it back some time in a later year to ask about how to treat the light rust inside, somethings that I would learn more on how to care for it. My wife would not let me take it and it has a lot of fond memories associated with it, mainly the whole day at this small but nice event when we ordered it. I have chanced upon another such fair and another maker had their iron tea kettles on display. Very nice looking but expensive. None were satestsu. They told me that no one has worked with satetsu since the war. I planned on ordering another just like they one the wife and I had at the show Friday. Sadly, the foundry did not attend this year. I did not learn why. I brought with me a small satestu testubin I found at one of the antique fairs for advice on its usability. In side there is what appears to be remnants of an enamel coating. I boiled water in it a few times and think it is safe to use but want the advice of an expert. I was going to ask after ordering one from him. His absence was a great disappointment. I saw one of my favorite incense makers there. It was he that alerted me to this year's event. When I first bought some incense from him, he asked for my contact information and each year sends an event postcard to me. It was forwarded by the P. O. to my new address in time for me to plan on going. He recognized me immediately. Sadly, over the years I have been buying from him, there are no scents he has that I am interested in that I have not already bought. I did buy two as I was low on them. When I first took my son there, this old gent gave him some floral incense which my son loved until he suddenly decided that he didn't like things daddy likes. The lacquerware shop was there again. They gave us some small items when we first visited when they learned we were newly weds. Sadly, the designs they use, though traditional, are not to my liking and we did not buy anything. Still, it was nice to see they still attend the event. None of the furniture makers were there, either. More clothing than I recall seeing in the past. In addition to the incense, I bought coasters made of traditionally dyed and woven cloth, mainly to place under incense censers or lacquerware atop my antique tansu and a fire treated piece of wood for the same use. A fruitful trip but a melancholy one. Tuesday was my last day of the school year at one of the vocational schools I teach at. Prior to the panic, I taught 2 semesters of two 90 minute classes for them. Now just one 90 min. class for just the first semester. As is common in Japanese education, the first semester for this school ends after summer vacation. After 2 months off, we return for one day. Will never understand this. After the last class before summer vacation I planned to go to the newly reopened Tokyo Edo Museum which is a block away from this school. It was closed. Last Tuesday I had planned on visiting my favorite ukiyoe shops in Jimbocho to see if I could find good copies of the few I am missing for a complete set of Hiroshige's 53 Stations of the Tokaido. I then recalled that I had not yet visited the museum and opted for that instead. Glad I did though I found the new displays disappointing. They did have great displays and large scale mockups of buildings and rooms from the different eras the city lived through but there was far less on the Edo Era than I recall and significantly less on the war. They did have a display on the war years I did not remember. It was on the balloon bombs that school girls made the balloons for. They made a large number of these and set them free for the winds to take across the sea and indiscriminately kill Americans. Surprised to see them make this known as that was a war crime. They gave a number larger than I had previously known for those killed by the bombs. I only knew of 2 and read there might be a couple more but not as many as the display gave. Gone was the ceramic hand grenade they once displayed. This was to be thrown by young Japanese boys at allied forces as they hit the beaches after which slightly older schoolgirls were to charge with their bamboo spears. No mention of this in the small display on WW2. Tuesday night was to be another dinner with my son so I left in rather a hurry to reach the meeting spot on time. However, a miscommunication followed by a general lack of communication had me waiting for him and he not showing up again. As he was not answering messages on the app nor calls made through it, I asked his mother what the situation was. She got angry and told me to stop bothering her. Lost track of time and got only 3 hours of sleep before I had to leave for the first day back at the med school. After class I went to Jimbocho and found several of the prints on my wish list. One is a copy of a print I already have. One of my favorites I lost to my ex I had difficulty finding another copy of. Eventually I did and it was quickly ordered. It arrived in good condition but the vagaries of hand carved and printed wood block prints has the most important line in the composition partially obscured by the applied mica. Worse, looking at it again later, it has developed spots upon the subject's face. Faint at present but likely to grow worse with time. My favorite ukiyoe store has this print for sale for a great price and I believe it comes with the frame it is in. It too has this all important line obscured partially by mica. After visiting this shop and finding one of my hoped for additions to my collection, I found a copy of this other print for less and the line in far better condition at another store. I found several of those I was missing from the set I am trying to complete and replacements for two prints I have but have stains on them, two of an area close to where I have lived for these past 20 some years and two of a triptych that I also hoped to find. Exhausted from sleep deprivation and the heat of the day, I showered and crashed by 8 pm getting 10 hours of that restorative elixir before awaking for my first 8 hours of class time in a day since the Spring. There is an excellent Mexican food chain restaurant near my new med school and I have lunch there each time I have class there. It operates the same way Subway sandwiches does, you start at one end telling them what you want and as your order is either carried past the ingredients by the maker or passed on to others you tell them what you want on it. One lovely young woman is especially kind and friendly. Not just with me, but with all her customers. Still, I liked to think she was more so with me than others despite a lack of evidence to support this. On my last day at the school before the break, she thanked me again for patronizing her store and I said it was my last time. before I could continue with '... until after summer vacation.' she all but burst out in tears. She made me promise return again once classes resumed, an easy one to make. She also uncharacteristically made two sweeps though the dinning room it what I took to be an effort to allow me to either ask for her contact info or offer mine. As she came over to my table each time and no one else's, I may not be just suffering from wishful thinking. In a funk that day, I did not take the bait. When I returned this past Thursday, she saw me from the kitchen, came flying out of it and pushed two of her coworkers out of the way to wave to me from the order line. Maybe I'll give her my card this Thursday. A bit of news I had been reluctant to share with my mom was finally made known to her during our Saturday Zoom meeting. As I have picked up a substantial number of new classes and offered more for next school year, I told I was considering staying on another year here. She began crying. After a while I explained why. Despite her emotional state, she was lucid and after a short time offered her own reasons why it might be best. I am currently earning a living again and with the settlement from the divorce, have what is for me substantial savings. As my mom then pointed out, we still have not solved the question of how to get my money across to the US. When I return home I will for some unknown length of time be entirely dependent upon her, a situation neither of us are looking forward to. Monday was the first day of new classes at the maid cafe. I use with them an introductory activity I use with most of my classes. Instead of me introducing myself, they have to ask me questions. Any question is okay and I will help them with the correct English. My favorite question for them to ask is, 'How old are you?', to which I reply, 'How old do you think I am?'. Their jaw drops and their eyes go wide every time and I say 'I said any question is okay but I did not say there would be no consequences.' All students must state how old they think I am. The most fun is when one or more guess older than I am. I those cases I get to yell in mock anger, 'Not yet! Out the window!!',to uproarious laughter by all. This time I also had a question I had never been asked in my 30 years of using this activity. A maid asked me, 'How many girlfriends do you have?' As you may understand, this elicited laughs from her classmates and myself. Once I regained my composure, I answered 'None. Are you applying for the position?' and she emphatically denied any such interest and the laughter increased in decibels significantly. I miss my son terribly. Thanks for reading Kitsune, Maskless Crusader! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.