Chapter 52: CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

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CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

After breakfast and the Yamadas had bid us "Sayonara," the Okusan asked, "Well David-san, what are you going to do today? Are you going to go to Gokayama?"

"Umm. Not today I think. I'm kind of tired from all that driving I've been doing on my cub. Didn't you say there was a demonstration of how they make Japanese washi paper?"

"That's right. At two o'clock. And the Gassho Zukuri Village is open now. Are you going to go again?"

'Now that you mention it, I think I will."

"Then you should go now before the tour buses arrive."

Going back to the village turned out to be a lot more interesting than I first expected since I'd already been there before. But now the explanations were about things that I was already familiar with. And making it much easier for me to remember more of the details about how the gassho houses were built and how the people lived here during Japan's feudal era.

Yamanaka's shitloads of explanations about making saltpeter from excrement for gunpowder turned out to be lots more fun, too. Not so much for what he said since I was expecting that. But from watching the shocked expressions of the guests from many of the other minshuku were if any thing more hilarious than his explanations. I wanted to take photos of them with my pocket camera, their expressions were so priceless. But of course, I didn't.

The last house with the photos of the village during the different seasons, particularly the ones of the making of washi paper got me looking forward to actually seeing the process myself.

"Since there are so few of you today, I can let you all try making your own washi paper," said the male guide in a four story gassho-zukuri house I hadn't been to before. And the only one that charged an entrance fee.

I looked around. Only the equipment for making washi paper was on the ground floor with no raised tatami mat platform in the middle.

"I don't see any irori here. Where do you sleep?" I asked the guide.

"In my house in Takayama. I commute by car from there. But only in the summer months. The snows they get here in the winter would give me claustrophobia. Besides, because of the snow, there are almost no tourists here, either. But you folks came here for a demonstration of making washi paper, not hear about where I live. So let's get to it."

His demonstration made making washi paper look easy. But when I tried it myself, I found out the hard way it definitely wasn't. I took a large square wooden sieve called a su and dipped it into a watery mixture of various plant fibers, water and other ingredients that I didn't really understand and swirled it back and forth and up and down and shook it until I had a fairly flat layer of the white mixture inside my su. Then I had to get that would-be sheet of paper out of the su without ripping it, which took me several tries. Finally I got what seemed to a be a flat sheet of washi and hung it up on a wood rack for drying.

"How long does it take to dry?" one of the other guests asked. "We have to get to Kanazawa tonight."

"Well, it shouldn't take more than an hour or so if you're really in a hurry. Though it's much better if you keep it on the drying rack longer so the fibers can tighten and make the washi even stronger," explained the guide.

"Can I keep mine on the rack until tomorrow?" I asked. "I'll be here for two more nights.

The guide smiled, "That would be much better. By then it will be nice and dry and strong."

"How do you make this solution that we've been dipping our su into?" I asked.

His answer about how you first had to strip the fibers from the plant leaves and mix them with water and other ingredients left me kind of lost. It seemed that was the hard part that took much more time, days maybe, and much more tedious than the dipping with the su. The guide was only having us do the short and interesting part of the process, thank God.

When I got back to the minshuku after the exhibition, I saw a different car parked in front of it.

"Are you going to have different guests tonight?" I asked the Okusan as I entered the genkan.

"Yes, a rather elderly couple. Their children are full grown now and have moved away from home. So there will be plenty of room for all of us around the irori for dinner tonight."

Dinner was again vegetable tempura from the forest, broiled fish from the river and all those boiled vegetables and whatnot from the cauldron over the irori the Okusan kept scooping up. It was delicious, of course. But I wondered if I was going to eat it every night I stayed here.

The elderly couple seemed to be rather quiet and weren't particularly surprised to see a gaijin joining them. Wisdom coming with age?

I learned they were from the Tokyo area. But not Tokyo City, they insisted. Since I'd hardly been to Tokyo itself, let alone the much larger suburban area surrounding it, there wasn't much I had in common with them for conversation. And the only thing the wife really said was that she was still suffering from "empty nest syndrome." All in all, it wasn't the real homey atmosphere I usually experienced sharing a meal around the irori that I had hoped for and enjoyed.

After dinner, I went to my room and laid down my sleeping futon.

But I didn't slip into it right away. I checked my road atlas for the way to Gokayama again, and the road to Kanazawa. I also spent time reading about Kanazawa in my travel guidebook.

Only then did I finally slip into my futon.

Submitted: August 17, 2024

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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B Douglas Slack

Informative chapter, Ken. When I left Japan, I brought back several Sumi hangings that are now on our living room wall. They were made with washi paper.

Bill

Tue, August 27th, 2024 7:36pm