Don't Let It Bring You Down

Telephone card of Sendai Castle and statue of Date Masamune.

I have always had this thing for castles. Most boys do when growing up, as they dream of defeating the sissy, goody-two-shoes knight who comes to take away the gold you have stolen from the peasant-folk - gold, by the way, which enables you to have the best-looking women in the shire throw themselves at you.

Hey - you dream your dreams, I'll dream mine!

Anyhow, growing up in London, England and Toronto, Canada, I only had images of the standard European castle. I had no idea that there was such a thing as a castle constructed anywhere else.

And, believe it or not, that naivety stayed with me through the first few months of Japan, when I traveled alone for the first time.

Back in 1990 through 1993, I was an assistant English teacher (AET) on the JET (Japan Exchange & Teaching) Programme, working out of the OBOE (Ohtawara Board of Education) and teaching at seven local junior high schools in the city - one school, four days a week. I know - it was tough. I sometimes actually had to do work for about four hours a day! I'm getting tired just recalling that fact.

Don't let anyone tell you differently, working as an AET on the JET Programme wasn't that difficult. What was difficult was the constant bombardment of people wanting a piece of your time - anxious to find out more about you and your country - to speak your language - to buy you drinks. Okay... it's not a problem either - especially to an ego maniac like myself.

Still, for some people who value privacy, the lack of it caused them to construct walls and baileys and install a moat to keep people out - only lowering the drawbridge whenever they were horny. I could be talking about many of my girlfriends, but truthfully, I could be talking about a lot of my male friends, too.

Anyhow, that paragraph above was a crappy description of a castle. When I first traveled to Osaka-shi (Osaka City) in the fall of 1990, I only then learned that besides it being an easy city for a stupid gaijin (foreigner) who gets lost in, one could get laid quite easily. As well, they had a cool looking castle. That was my first exposure to one - Osaka-jo (Osaka Castle), and like sex and girlfriends, I wanted more. I also got lost more frequently.

In November, my then girlfriend Ashley and I, traveled to Sendai--yes, near where earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit a couple of weeks ago on March 11, 2011.

Sendai-jo (Sendai Castle 仙台城 or Aoba-jo/ Aoba Castle 青葉城) was constructed by Date Masamune (surname first, pronounced 'da-tay') atop Mount Aoba (pronounced 'ow-bah' where as far as castle defenses go, was quite impressive, over-looking the small fishing village of Sendai. When the castle was completed at around 1600 AD, Sendai was now a city (Sendai-shi) .... a city that by 2010 had over 1,000,000 people.

This castle - Sendai-jo - was a major player in the Boshin War (1868-69) a  civil war in Japan between the forces of the Tokugawa shogunate (military government of the past 250 odd years) and those wanting a return of the Imperial Court as the real political power. The Sendai folks backed the Shogun - and lost.   

As a result, Sendai-jo was partially dismantled in the 1870s. Unfortunately, a lot of the remaining building were bombed by the Allies in WWII when the Imperial Court utilized a military-like rule for a couple of decades.   

While sections did survive - hence Ashley and I visiting it - a lot of the stone walls and structures were rebuilt.

And you know what I remember most of that trip--besides not getting any--was that it rained, got colder, and then snowed.

Along with getting lost, I always seemed to have issues with dressing properly when traveling in Japan. This is especially true when traveling hundreds of kilometres by Shinkansen (bullet train) - the weather is quite different from wherever your starting point is. After three years, I never figured it out.

I mean, I did know it was going to be different, but you have to remember that the Internet wasn't a big deal then (though I had been surfing a make-shift Tron-like world since 1978), there was no 24-hour weather station  - and even if there was, it would have been in Japanese, so I had no way of knowing what the weather was like in other cities.. I suppose I could have asked my bosses at the OBOE for advice, but I didn't want to look any more incompetent than I was.

Somewhere slaying the White Knight,
Andrew Joseph
Today's title is by Canada's Neil Young: OLDMAN