Nagai Botanical Gardens
Eluned Gramich’s postcard is addressed to her five-year-old daughter, Angharad.
It’s a strange coincidence that while I’m in Osaka, you’ll be dressing up in Japanese costume for Diwrnod Rhyngwladol (International Day) at your primary school in Aber.
All week you’ve been learning about cherry blossom, sushi, and Hello Kitty, and now I am in Japan, finding a million and one things that you and your 5-year-old classmates would adore – the bright lights of the city, the colourful pictures and models of food outside eateries, the shops full of toy-like things that appeal to children and adults alike – the cartoons and anime figures like Draemon and Pokémon.
In particular, an exhibition in Nagai Botanical Gardens full of weird, mesmerising lights: huge glistening light-up eggs, floating lake lanterns and illuminated rabbits hopping through trees… You would have loved it.
I’ve only ever lived in Tokyo, many moons ago, and as soon as I arrived in Osaka, I felt the difference between the two cities immediately. Osaka – perhaps like Frankfurt – is a commercial centre, with its skyscrapers and shopping districts. However, the atmosphere, the people, even the weather is warmer than Tokyo. Perhaps it’s the natural state of a city which isn’t the capital, I’m not sure.
Overwhelming
I can’t tell you how overwhelming it is to return to Japan after 10 years away. The first night I couldn’t sleep for the flood of Japanese that cascaded into my brain, my body aching from the flight, and the rushing of the Nankai line and Sakaisuji line trains.
So much has stayed the same despite the years. For instance, paying for my train tickets in cash and dropping the coins into the machine, and the difficulty in finding English on signs, and the quick, necessary learning of the kanji place names to find my way around the city. My ears are ringing with irrashaimase, arigatou gozaimasu, sumimasen.
Photo Eluned Gramich’
At first, there was trepidation at the long journey and leaving you and your little sister, but now that has been replaced by a kind of temporary euphoria. I felt it on seeing the boxes of natto and dango and piles of persimmons in the supermarket. Places and foods and phrases that I have been dreaming about for the last decade are now suddenly all around me.
Shrine
Yesterday, I went to Ohatsutenjin – a shrine in the centre of Osaka which was a site of a famous lover’s suicide in the early 18th century. It’s half hidden between imposing skyscrapers – a small, humble space. I did the ceremonial washing of hands and thought of you. How one day I would show you how to do this, taking the wooden ladle and letting the water run through your fingers and onto the pebbles below.
A man offered to take pictures of me as I stood awkwardly in front of the shrine, smiling in a dazed jet lagged way. I’m glad I have these pictures to show you of your mother in Osaka.
I know you’re excited about what present I’ll buy you and your sister. Already you’re fixated with a place you do not know. You can say hello in Japanese and you love the word for baby – akachan – repeating it and giggling to yourself. I wonder if you’ll come here to Japan one day as I did?
Business trips
Many years ago, when I was a child, my Opa showed me pictures of his business trips to Japan in the seventies. It inspired him to make a Japanese garden in his Munich house, complete with bonsai trees, maples, and gravel.
I remember playing his Japanese language tapes as a girl and taught myself basic kanji. I wonder if the same will happen to you and that you will find yourself, one day, on a plane heading east, ready to adapt and grow in the presence and influence of another culture, another way of living.
In the meantime, I’ll pack some children’s chopsticks and hello kitty wares for you from Osaka.
See you soon, cariad bach. Mata ne!
Eluned Gramich studied Japanese as part of a Diawa scholarship over ten years ago and produced the award-winning memoir The Woman Who Brings the Rain. A title referring to how Gramich was referred to in her time travelling in the north of Japan and a reference the renowned damp climate of her homeland.
She travelled to Osaka as part of the Arts Council of Wales, British Council Wales and Wales Arts International
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