A shared language
I am far from mastering Japanese, my mouth is merely nibbling at its edges. But thanks to the super Collins Gem, I can – when I know what I want to say - prepare a sentence and deliver it. Successfully – thanks to the wee book. There is instant understanding from the other party, but then a stream of words in response, like a line being cast out and I have no idea how to unravel it. What are sounds, what are words what are umms and ahhs?
It does tend to dawn on the other party pretty fast that I am no linguist, but somehow it doesn’t prevent conversation. Crikey, I was even upsold a knife. I had my eyes set on a nice pale handled one, around the 3000 yen mark, but the canny lady manning the stall managed to convince me to buy one almost double the price. Language was no barrier as she demonstrated the knife’s superior ability to cut through paper, how nicely it handled, how well it was made. Maybe she was a terrific sales lady and maybe I am an easy mark.
We had two assistants helping us to choose a wallet. Their descriptions of the finer attributes of each make were easily understood, as was the other half’s protestations that this one was too bulky, this one too bling and this one too complicated. It wasn’t like Goldilocks trying all the options before settling on the one that was just right – there was understanding and a very speedy (thank goodness, given the rows and rows of possible purchases) narrowing down of the options.
Our attempts at Japanese – I think- are appreciated, even although we stumble after one sentence. The most commonly asked question to us is where are you from and then with our response, usually a five-minute pronunciation master class as they are so keen to be sure they are saying “Scotland” accurately. I’m ashamed that my own attempts with the Japanese language are so lackadaisical. So long as I am getting close to the mark, I’m happy. The Japanese sales assistant repeating Scotland twelve times to be sure she had the emphasis right is an example to me and my slovenly ways with the spoken word.
We had no real language issues on our trip to Nao-shima this weekend. Though in Tamano very few folk speak English (and why would or should they) most of the people – or rather most of the staff at the Chichu Art Museum had either very good English or a card for us to read to keep us right. Nao-shima is about a twenty-minute ferry journey from Uno port. The vessel was a sleek wee passenger boat, with airline seating and two crew. It would be ideal for all sorts of trips, anywhere in the world. A point that almost needed not to be made, but was with a sigh on both our parts. The cost of this boat trip - 280 yen. Not quite £2.
The quiet efficiency and good organisation of all aspects of the visit to Nao-shima nearly leave me speechless. The ferry dropped us off at Miyanoura port, where a very sleek glass and concrete bus station and information point allowed us to get our bearings. The young lady at the café kept us right about using the machine against the wall to make our selection (with me quickly copying down the characters or kanji for coffee for future occasions, when someone so helpful might not be too hand), gain a ticket and then present it to her to bring us our coffee.
We planned our trip. The brightly coloured buses whisk you to any of the places of interest on the island for just 100 yen. You don’t pay when you get on, you pay when you get off, once the bus has delivered you safely to your destination. Oddly civil, but I suppose only really works in a place like this, where it is a flat fare wherever you are going.
We had settled on the Chichu Art Museum – a museum that considers the relationship between people and nature. The entire building, or more of a build-in, is underground – from above it looks like one of those toddlers’ toys, where you have to slot the correct shaped bit of plastic through the right opening. Inside, its sophistication and simplicity is so far from Fisher Price it seems silly to have made the analogy.
Designed by Tadao Ando (a self-taught architect from Osaka) the gallery houses five Claude Monet paintings, an installation by Walter De Maria and three spaces created by James Turrell. The Monet’s were no great driver for our visit here, we’re neither of us huge fans. His paintings are nice enough, but I never really understood what all the fuss was about, why he is such a big figure in the world of art … well, now I know. I had the opposite to the feeling I got when I saw the Mona Lisa (“Is that it?”). The Monet’s literally stopped me in my tracks, and I wasn’t moving fast seeing as we’d been kindly asked to take our shoes off, and had donned white slippers before entering the Monet space; a huge underground room designed in such a way as to somehow light the paintings with daylight. The floor, though I didn’t examine it too closely – my eyes being mainly on the walls - seemed to be made of tiny little white mosaic tiles that were somehow soft. So shoes off, we entered through a lobby and came from the dark into this beautiful white space and these five fabulous paintings. Awe inspiring. One of them two metres high by three metres long.
I’m no artist and only have the vaguest of understanding of why I subjectively like some things and dislike others but these were beyond beautiful. From a distance, calm and delicately coloured, close up the brush strokes had such energy and vibrancy it was unbelievable to think they produced such a serene and peaceful portrayal of water lilies, weeping willows, grass, water when viewed from afar. I found I couldn’t walk backwards in my slippers, so had to keep shuffling round like some sort of milk float. My lack of elegance and grace before these paintings only hit me later. Even in handmade, perfectly fitting delicate pumps I would have felt like a carthorse.
Eventually ready to leave I stood off to the side to let a Japanese lady gain the full effect – a screen shields the Monet’s from view while you’re busy with your shoes and slippers, and makes the space feel like a private safe place once you are inside – all without doors. In her face, as east as mine is west, I saw the exact same expression, a mirror to my own wonder and amazement from half an hour ago. Our eyes met and we smiled. Language is so much more than words and sometimes you gain meaning and understanding with none at all.
I’ve probably gone on too much about the Monet’s. The other installations and spaces were as dramatic and clever and well conceived. The simple presentation of pale blue light in a corner, a flat square of light that presents as a cube or an opening, a lit and shaped room bathed in one light yet somehow presenting a whole array of colours and with no shadows, despite the eight of us that are inside it, exploring and experiencing its oddness. It was just that I had no prior expectation as to what they might be or what they might mean. As the gallery assistant at the Walter De Maria installation commented, what sort of gallery asks you to take your shoes off twice? The best, we decided, most definitely the best.
