The opening chapter of my novel seeded long before I knew I was writing it… When I first traveled to Japan with my notebook that got filled up with cherry blossoms…
Life-Long Personal Affection
I’ve been enchanted with Japan since a very young age. It was actually my father who gave me Sakura Branch written by a Soviet journalist Vsevolod Ovchinnikov. I was ten years old. As I was growing up, I’ve reread it quite a few times. Considering the monstrous censorship of the Soviet regime, it was a uniquely unadulterated depiction of a foreign land. Nearly free of underlying political agendas.
It talked about the country and its people without prejudice, focusing on the culture and the traditions. The journalist’s own fascination was vividly palpable. It ignited my life-long interest in The Land of the Rising Sun. I had that book in my possession up until the day I escaped the Soviet Union as a political refugee.
Decades later, I still can’t formulate exactly why I feel such deep connection with Japanese culture. Why the exquisite aesthetics of that enigmatic land have such spellbinding effect on me?
Why Hokusai’s images 
put me into a virtual trance? The same goes for Miyazaki’s animated sequences
and Takashi Murakami’s wonderfully ugly fantasy creatures 
. And don’t get me started on the old mythological monsters 
of various shapes and forms… Sanrio’s endless variety of adorable character-driven merch 
still gets me excited like a little kid.
My God! Takarazuka Revue’s all-female cast! 
I must’ve been eight… The West-German documentary – The Girls of Takarazuka – was by some miracle acquired by the Soviet ministry of culture. My parents took me to everything they went to see. I remember asking my mother if we could go back as soon as we got out of the movie theater. I wanted to watch it again. I still remember some of the dance sequences…
And so on and so forth…
You had to climb to the top third floor in Hermitage Museum for the Japanese Decorative Arts section. Amidst the relatively sparse collection of swords and armor, painted scrolls and masks, tea kettles and vases – there was a tiny Netsuke Hall. Only one of its displays was actually populated by the miniature carvings… Their storytelling artistry held magnetic powers over me. So, I kept coming back to them every time I was in the museum.
Of course, I went way beyond Sakura Branch. I’ve read novels by Japanese writers. I explored essays about the country’s arts and cultural traditions, as well as about its historical past and present. It’s a land of complicated, tumultuous narratives. Some of them are terrifying…
I usually do try to be sensitive to the feelings of my Korean and Chinese acquaintances. I acknowledge the imperialistic atrocities their nations suffered in the past. Yet, sometimes I forget myself. I express my love for their neighbor in their presence, which ends up setting off their visible irritation. I guess, my affection for Japan is just too strong… That whole mysterious strangeness and beguiling enchantment of it… We, westerners, experience it so acutely every time we get exposed to it…
And so, most of Regina Cohen’s Japanese experiences in the first chapter of Fireworks and Other Illuminations are my own. But, of course, not all of them are…
The Trip
When it comes to my personal travels (quite different from the business kind, as you can imagine), I abide by a handful of my very own rules:
No groups
This absolutely applies to the very concept of organized tourism. I believe that it robs you of the freedom of choice. Everything is predetermined: how to go, where to stay, how long, what to visit, when… That and the nearness to absolute strangers… Hmm, a basic misanthropic loner here, okay?
So, naturally, I wouldn’t travel with “friends and family” either. It’s just too much of a hassle to take everyone’s quirks into consideration. The largest number of traveling companions that fits my comfort zone is 2. My ex-husband and my daughter. Then, scratch the ex-husband out – just me and my daughter (that’s the best way for me). My daughter and her best friend. Then my daughter and her husband…
I only broke this rule once – for the sake of my eternal love of theater. Since that trip is mentioned in Fireworks and Other Illuminations several times, I’ll probably talk about it on another occasion.
The flexibility
Most of my best-earning years were spent under the thumb of megalomaniac entrepreneurs. And that usually translates into very limited flexibility of time. I believe that 16 days (a weekend plus two weeks ) was the longest vacation from work I’ve ever had.
Yet, within the negotiated time rations, I’ve always been determined to give myself enough breathing room. I never understood the touristic determination to pack some insufferable amount of activities into every single hour of every trip.
Nobody can possibly see everything at any destination. It takes years to get yourself truly familiar with foreign lands. Being selective about your primary goals guarantees the structural flexibility, which results in memorable and enjoyable experiences.
The quality
I absolutely refuse to opt for “cheaper” traveling solutions. I mean, I wouldn’t suggest to bust anyone’s credit lines, of course. Condemning yourself to 30 years of minimum payments for the sake of one unaffordable splurge is not wise. But, at the same time, it’s undignified to go below one’s means.
It irks me hearing people say that they wouldn’t pay for more expensive hotels. They claim that “the only thing they do there is sleep”. Rest and relaxation don’t come easy to me even in the most luxurious accommodations. Why make it even harder by booking something that’s just bearable? And what if you want to unwind from your extensive travels within the confines of your hotel for a day? I prefer my surroundings to be enjoyable.
I have always been willing to spend my hard-earned money on vacation-time elegance and refinement. If you can’t afford an adequate level of quality, just don’t go. Otherwise, it’s not leisure, it’s checking a destination off some trivial list.
My late mother used to do that. Every place I went, business or pleasure, she and my father had to go there too. To achieve that they would join “the most reasonably” priced group arrangement. She also went to Japan: galloped through 10 cities in 7 days. Stayed God knows where, ate God knows what.
The preparations
Thus, careful research, planning, and advance bookings are mandatory requirements of my independent travel. Freedom of choices are paramount, but you don’t want to leave ALL the matters to chance. If you do, you will end up helplessly bumping around in the unknown territories like blind kittens.
And it’s true for domestic travel as much as for overseas. I mean, even LA – if one must – turns somewhat enjoyable with an advance reservation of a satisfactory suite. Hotel Bel-Air or Chateau Marmont would do. But it’s particularly vital for the foreign travel.
And it’s not just the flights and the accommodations. I recommend to strategize and make arrangements way ahead of time. Plan out your local transportation, museum visits, and routes of sightseeing. Otherwise, you will end up wasting a lot of time on pointless pondering, uninformed decision-making, and dumb queuing. That sort of cancels all the enjoyment.
Once I have the preliminary structure in place, then I can pick and choose how to go about it. And if I don’t feel like going to one or another place, I skip it. There is no reason to get paranoid about the whole thing… Oh, and by the way, paying for it from home in dollars – you wouldn’t believe the savings!
It’s an actual fact of my life that Cassandra shares with her friends in the novel. When my daughter and I traveled through Italy, I had advance tickets to La Galleria dell’Accademia. These biglietti let us bypass the queue that was two blocks long. The same was true for Uffizi Gallery, Duomo, Vatican, Villa Borghese, San Marco Basilica…
It’s the same every place we go…
May 2006
And so, some time in April of 2005, I started making digital and analog intelligence inroads into Spain. The plan was for us to go there next spring…
It was a Saturday night. I was jotting down some notes about traveling from Madrid to Barcelona by high-speed AVE trains. My daughter came into my study and looked over my shoulder. “Don’t you think it’s time for us to go to Japan?” she asked.
You probably guessed it. It’s just like between Regina and Cassandra – I’m very susceptible to my daughter’s suggestions and intimations. She said it. I closed all Spanish links, books, maps, etc. And instantly switched my gears into arranging our Japanese trip… Which we took in May of 2006.
As in the novel, we flew from JFK to Tokyo’s Narita Airport by JAL Business Class. We stayed in Mandarin Oriental in Nihonbashi. We slowly crawled through the gardens of the Imperial Palace, inhaling the aroma of sakura in bloom. We let ourselves to get overwhelmed by the crowds of predominantly Japanese visitors storming Sensō-ji Temple and Meiji Shrine. We shopped for luxuries, delicacies, and knives. We stacked our plates high at the conveyor sushi joints and indulged in lavish shabu-shabu.
Then we went west by a bullet train. Yagyu-no-Sho inn specifically named in the novel is a very splendid guest house. That’s where my daughter and I stayed at Shuzenji Onsen of Izu Peninsula. I hope I managed to convey in the book the magically unforgettable experience of that little town. The memory of it resides in a very special compartment of my heart – where only the unyielding loves live.
Naturally, from there we went to Kyoto, the oldest of Japanese municipalities. While it’s not the official seat of Imperial Japan anymore, it remains the country’s cultural capital. There is so much to see and experience… It probably would’ve taken me months to develop a comprehensive familiarity with its rich heritage.
With just several days at our disposal, we simply chose a few special sights to visit. We tried to focus on absorbing the intellectual atmosphere of the city, getting the impression of its history and traditions. The Philosopher’s Path had the most profound effect on me… And I did come across a very real geisha…
And no, the precious Niko wasn’t bought there… My little daydreams about her famous lovers came to me a dozen years later, when I started writing the novel. Yet, I did shop for netsukes at the astonishingly cluttered shop of the grumpy proprietor in Gion.
But my netsukes and I… that’s a separate tale altogether…
A Bunch of Mishaps
What didn’t get into Fireworks and Other Illuminations at all was the series of awfully unfortunate events that happened to us on that trip.
The camera
First, it was the fancy-camera malfunction. My daughter, the photographer, decided to bring her medium-format Hasselblad on this trip. She could’ve brought her Nikon or her Canon EOS, or maybe even one of her cheaper tools. And I probably should’ve been prudent and dropped my tiny Olympus into one of the suitcases, just in case. But truth be told, the touristy snapshots were not on my mind when I was packing. And for her art, she chose her prized Swedish apparatus.
On our second day in Tokyo, the Hasselblad’s digital back stopped functioning. That was the reason we ended up in Akihabara in the first place. It wasn’t part of our original plans. But the trip couldn’t continue without working photographic equipment. So, we went there to acquire a replacement for the broken part.
It was a strange experience, to say the least. One electronics store after another. With exception of the traditionally Latin-alphabet brand names like SEGA and SONY – all signage was exclusively Japanese. Inside, there were endless rows of merch with barely any humans around. And not a single English-speaking sales assistant available.
Well, when it comes to professional-level photo instruments, the language barrier is not really a very significant factor. My daughter placed the camera and the faulty back on the counter. They brought out the new digital back. She checked and fitted it in. I paid for it. Easy peasy Japanese-y.
The purse
Two days later, right in front of Sensō-ji Temple, my handbag was snatched…
There is no excuse for the glaring and embarrassing lack of sense on my part. But I do want to explain. I got really tired from crawling through the 200-meters stretch of shops between the temple’s outer and inner gates. I think we peeked into every single kiosk… Afterwards, we were trying to figure out where to go next, and I was looking at the map… And I put the bag down on the ground by my feet… And it was gone in a millisecond… I didn’t even notice how…
Don’t even get me started on what possessed me that day to carry a handheld Burberry purse instead of my usual foreign-travel-proper crossbody! But my mind was definitely clouded by the silly notion that “There Is No Crime in Japan”.
If Jake Adelstein’s highly debatable Tokyo Vice came out before that trip (and technically, it could’ve, since it covers events through 2005), I would’ve known better. I would’ve been aware of the false crime statistics and local police/media cover-up. But it didn’t get published until three years later. So, while I was in Tokyo, my New York vigilance took a vacation in a fantasy land.
If all I lost with that bag was the wallet and the regular purse tchotchkes, I would’ve just replaced all credit and bank cards. (They were all delivered to me the next morning, by the way.) And then I would just work on getting over that bad taste in your mouth—so familiar to everyone who’s been robbed.
Unfortunately, I fell victim to yet another misconception – that in Japan, you MUST carry your American passport everywhere. And it is true: they actually do ask you to show it every time you pay with plastic. However, as it turned out, copies of the said documents do just fine. The passports could’ve been left in the safe. But I didn’t know that on my fourth morning in the country. So, our original passports were carried away inside the damned bag.
So, I had to obtain a police report. (I can probably write a separate novella about that singularly extraordinary experience. No computers – it was all hand-drawn on special columned forms!) And the next day, instead of taking a day trip to Nagano to see snow monkeys, we had to bring that report to the American Embassy and apply for the new passports. Which, by the way, the blessed State Department in Washington processed for us in 24 hours. They truly surprised me by being just as expedient as American Express and Chase Manhattan Bank.
The departure
The next 10 days passed as planned. Aside from my first little seismic fright in the hot springs, there were no tribulations. The days were filled with enjoyable activities and unforgettable experiences. I even succeeded in achieving some inner balance—a condition difficult to come by for someone like me…
I enjoyed it all the way through our coming into Narita’s International Departures… And then, on the overcrowded small escalator that led to the registration counters, I lost it… The balance, I mean… Not just the inner one, but the actual physical footing…
My prefrontal cortex didn’t quite register how it happened. Did my foot slip off the tread? Did somebody press too hard on my rolling carry-on from behind? Or did I lose control of it myself? I honestly can’t tell you. What I know is that all of a sudden I was falling on the people in front of me, forcing them to stumble, topple, plunge, and altogether lose their shit… With my poor daughter squealing and trying to pull me upright.
Somehow – by the miracle of fate, no doubt – no one got hurt. Moreover, it’s a testament to Japanese efficient practicality as well as their mental resilience that all those people I… hmm… to put it lightly… discomforted in this bizarre and semi-disastrous way, just righted themselves up. They held on to their luggage, shook the whole thing off, and hurried up to their respective destinations. And so did we…
***
The most remarkable thing I have to report to you is that none of these mini-calamities (and yes, that’s how I think of them now) tainted our memories of that trip. I guess, the enchantment of Japan overrides all the setbacks and gives one the resolve to dismiss them as insignificant. To this day, both my daughter and I count that Japanese voyage as one of the best vacations we’ve ever had.
If you’d like to see how the impressions of that journey unfold in fiction, Chapter 1 of Fireworks and Other Illuminations is where it all begins.
For bonus excerpts and more insights into the novel, visit it’s dedicated page here→“Fireworks and…” the Novel
The feature image copyright by ©Yana Alexandra Crow, 2006
“Hot Springs at Shuzenji, Izu Province” print by Utagawa Hiroshige, 1853
Photos of Shuzenji Onsen are royalty-free and embeddable from Getty Images
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