Disorientation

Somewhere near Tokyo is what I had been telling people when they asked where my son would be teaching English in Japan. Frankly, I had no idea of the name of the town, but how far could it be from Tokyo, or anywhere else for that matter in that tiny little archipelago of a nation? My son was appalled by my ignorance, more appalled knowing that even if I had been accurate and said somewhere a bit south and west of Osaka, nobody -- including me -- would have known the difference.

When I was growing up in New York, my mother and my brother used to give me geography quizzes each weekend as my father would drive us from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Not so much quizzes as the same question over and over, week after week. "East River or Hudson River?" they'd routinely ask, except on the days dad inexplicably decided to forego the relative speed and convenience of either riverside highway and buck the city traffic by driving up through the middle. Really, I never got that. But at least I could avoid the humiliation of getting the river wrong.

You would think that a child of slightly above average intelligence who sat in the back seat of a Cadillac with large, clean windows at least once a week for the journey from an outer borough into the real city would eventually be able to distinguish between the two rivers bordering the north-south sliver of island metropolis. I'd like to think I at least knew, when we came out of the Battery Tunnel at the lower tip of Manhattan, that we were at the southernmost point, since the street numbers -- once you got to them -- went from low to high. South to north. There was no reason to believe the urban planners had done it backwards. Life in the big city is hard enough.

The aptly named East River indeed ran up the east side, while the less obviously named but much prettier Hudson bordered the west. Heralded by the welcoming outstretched arm of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, the Hudson, on a sunny day, was a crystal and twinkling blue, the shores of New Jersey looking nondescript across the wide expanse. No big buildings, no sign of Snooki and her gang, just what appeared to be a giant suburb. Until you hit midtown, that is, to see the beginnings of the somewhat spectacular cliffs of the Palisades and, after that, the lighthouse at the base of the majestic George Washington Bridge, but, truthfully, we rarely headed that far. The views along the murky East River (officially not even a river but a "tidal estuary," as my brother loved to point out) were not quite as scenic, at times even unpleasant -- no offense intended to the residents of Long Island City.

With a fifty per cent chance of getting it right, I was pretty much wrong about half the time, much to my brother's amusement and my mother's frustration. Dad, my most steadfast cheerleader, always seemed not to care. Either he knew it didn't matter, in the grand scheme of things, or he was confident that, as with everything else, I would figure it out one day. Both, as it turns out, were true.

Granted, I know very little about the geography of Japan, very little about anything Asian, except maybe the food. All I know is my son is going to be so far away he might as well be on another planet. Culturally, that might not be so far from the truth. But insomnia in the wee hours of the morning can occasionally be a gift, and, this morning, I took advantage of that gift and decided to give myself a little geography lesson.  Looking at the map on my laptop, I cut myself a little slack on the Tokyo thing. Certainly less than a day trip. Sapporo in the north seems like it would be a bit of a schlep, but I'm sure the beer is available in Himeji, the town where my son will be living for the next year. Hiroshima and Nagasaki seem perilously close, but I worry far less about the ancient radiation there than the relatively fresh stuff emanating from Fukushima in the northeast.

The good news is Himeji is more southwest than northeast, and hopefully the ocean breezes have blown away enough of the nuclear cloud to render Himeji relatively free of radiation related illnesses. I was a little dismayed to notice that North Korea appears to be only a short boat ride away to the west, but as long as the lunatics over there keep shooting blanks I'll try not to give it too much thought. Bottom line: Himeji is far away, and I will have to try very hard to not count the days until my son's latest Japan adventure comes to a close. Selfish, I know, but I've done worse things.

For Mother's Day, I am getting a trip to Japan. Funny, it's the Far East, but I'll travel westward to get there. And I thought the whole East River/Hudson River quiz was confusing!