Treehugging on Trains

Returning after a brief hiatus, I am exploring the world of trees today. We grow them and climb them and chop them down for toilet paper. And it turns out, Japan is the best place to see them!

Hello, Substackers! This week's post includes a soundtrack. My notes on the album will be listed at the end of the post, so for now, enjoy the music, and thanks for reading!

I keep seeing videos and memes saying, "If I ever win the lottery, I won't tell anyone, but there will be signs." The phrase is always accompanied by pictures of fashion-packed closets, built-in bookshelves, full sets of Le Creuset cookware, or a zillion cats. I will tell you now: if I ever win the lottery, you can find me living in the woods. 

When I was about 11, my parents considered moving. As a family, we toured houses in and around town, rating them on yard space, kitchen lighting, choice of wallpaper, and general location. I loved our little home on Manitoba Drive, so the thought of moving was unwelcome. That is, until the house. The house was in the woods somewhere southeast of town. The neighborhood was nearly wholly wooded, and the homes were spread out with space for forts, paths, and gardens. The wooden exterior was camouflaged with the trees, and the inside was just as lovely. It had a den area for TV watching and computer time, a bedroom up a spiral staircase at the top of the house that my brother claimed, and a bedroom with its own bathroom and a balcony for me. The room I'd have was serene, with French doors leading into the hallway, white curtains, and 2000s-appropriate ivy-covered wallpaper. Multiple windows and a massive sliding door led out onto the small balcony where a chair sat in the afternoon shade.

Stepping out onto the perch, I could see branches all around me. A breeze rustled leaves and birds called nearby. I imagined myself having friends over after school at this house and reading Harry Potter with a glass of lemonade on this balcony. No other house we toured mattered after that. I had found my pick. When we got back into our car and began the usual critique, I made sure my approval was loudly announced and was happy to hear my brother's agreement. My parents, ever diplomatic, listened as we raved before voicing concerns only adults would care about: the layout of the entryway, the price, the darkness of the den, and the termites sure to ravage any house located in the woods. Though they didn't say it out loud, I knew a no when I heard one. I was crushed as we drove away, my house and little tree-top balcony shrinking into the forest.

If you had to choose one to live by, which would it be: the mountains, the beach, the desert, or the woods? I am always happiest and calmest under a ceiling of branches. My childhood obsession with the balcony house was an early sign, but there were others. I read many books about the woods, believed strongly in tree spirits and fairies, designed intricate homes inside hollowed-out trees, and loved summer camp not for its socializing and games but for the hidden cabins and the smell of damp wood. 

In the woods around Maibara, Japan.

Obviously, I am a woods girl through and through. I love the dampness, the thickness of the air, and the smell of dirt and growing things. I love the way light filters through leaves, dappled and green (komorebi 木漏れ日). I love how sounds echo and die, bouncing from branch to branch before falling into the soft earth. I love moss, skittering bugs, fungi colonies, babbling streams, dripping leaves, bird calls, and finding a good stick to walk with.  

If you like the woods, Japan is the place to be (lucky for me). Approximately ⅔ of the country is covered in forests – an astounding amount when considering its 32,000 years of human inhabitation. Though climate change and deforestation have taken their toll - I even had to start paying a tax here in Shiga to help replant trees in damaged areas – overall, the country is pretty green.  

Teaching here, I am continuously impressed by the efforts of my schools in fostering a strong relationship between students and the natural world. The kids are always busy growing plants in pots on the classroom balconies, capturing bugs and lizards and raising fish or turtles, harvesting the lettuces, tomatoes, and corn grown in the school gardens and greenhouses, making art out of foraged seeds, and building working toys out of pinecones and twigs. They come to school armed with bug nets and plastic boxes that fill throughout the day with all the crawly critters they can find. While my elementary school back in Ohio had its share of nature-based curriculum (planting flowers for monarch butterflies, raising chicks from eggs, and planting pine trees that died embarrassingly fast), I don't remember having nearly the educational and emotional bond with my natural surroundings that kids here have. It has become one of my favorite aspects of life in Japan.

This is not to say that American students are out of touch with nature or aren't hungry for it. When I taught AP Language and Composition in Texas, my classes and I always did an analysis of an excerpt from The Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, published in 2005 (used in the 2013 AP exam rhetorical analysis essay prompt). His words, we found, evoke a strong nostalgia for days not too far gone and still within reach if we take the time to try. 

"…for a century, children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and fields and water beyond the seamy edges—all that was and is still available to the eye. This was the landscape that we watched as children. It was our drive-by movie."

Do you remember tracing designs into foggy car windows, counting telephone poles, watching rows of trees flash by while you searched for deer? My students and I do. In the excerpt,  Louv hints that the rise of technology is creating a distance between us and our world. Instead of watching farm fields and rivers for car ride entertainment, kids watch movies in the backseat or scroll endlessly on social media. Eyes glazed, thumb to screen.

Views of Toyama, Japan, in November while on a scenic train.

This brings me to another reason why I love Japan - the train. In Maibara, the ALTs cannot drive to work, so we take the train. The lack of freedom made me nervous at first; I remember the frustration of relying on public transit when I lived in Paris. Unforeseen delay? Hope you have time to wait! The last train was at 12:00 am, and you missed it by 5 minutes after a trip to the bar? Good luck! I spent hours that year in the underbelly of Paris, rocking with the train's motion, eyes on my phone screen like everyone else; nothing to see but blackness outside the windows. 

Here, I look forward to my commutes. I watch the countryside and villages blend in and out of one another seamlessly. I count mountains and wonder if there are trails to their peaks. I see farmers in their rice fields or gardens, backs bent over their work. Mostly, though, I look at the trees. They rise suddenly at the edges of fields and towns, jutting up over rocky hills before being swallowed by clouds. They flower pink and white in the spring and flame orange and red in the fall. In the summer, I am reminded why Kansai is a tropical island when I watch its thick green leaves hang heavy in the humid air. In the winter, their bare branches and trunks spike against the sky like spines on the backs of great mountainous porcupines. I want to sketch, write, and climb into them. I am obsessed with the trees here and see them all from the train.

While I have been able to explore tiny bits of Japan's forests, there is, of course, still much to see. The fiery orange of Autumn in Toyama Prefecture's Korobe Gorge was breathtaking, but I am still dreaming of crisp fall days under the golden trees of Sapporo in Hokkaido. The tiny one-car train I took to Shigaraki a couple of weeks ago was like magic in how it weaved slowly through the forest, so close to the branches I could have reached out to touch them. Still, I want to see the forest crabs and fireflies that make the Koajiro-no-Mori Forest in Kanagawa Prefecture so famous. 

In the forests around Shigaraki, Japan, at the top of a waterfall, there is this tiny shrine.

In college, I was lucky to get into an upper-level literature course called Tree Huggers and Terrorists. For homework, I read literature like Silent Spring and The Monkey Wrench Gang. Our class emailed students in Lebanon about how they experience and define terrorism, and we tried to better understand eco-terrorism here in America. On the first day of class, we picked out trees in the college nature center and adopted them as our own, going there weekly to journal and reflect. It was weird but totally fantastic. While I didn't realize it then, that class, just like the house in Ohio with the balcony bedroom, was like a seed for me. Many of these seeds have been planted; now, I see them sprout and grow. I know that I'll always pick the forest over any other landscape. As long as I'm in Japan, I'll seek out greenery. Maybe I'll take up shinrin-yoku, or "forest bathing," as it's called in English (森林浴). I'll go out into the woods on my weekend mornings with my bear bell and a good hiking stick (as I have learned are needed here). I'll breathe the damp, mossy air and look up. 

Ending Notes

Listening To: Today's recommendation is for classical lovers and is entirely here for the mood. New Ancient Strings is the 1999 release by Malian musicians Toumani Diabaté and Ballaké Sissoko. Each track is a duet by the two musicians praised as the best kora players of their generation. I love how the 21 strings of the kora bounce and ring through the melodies. In fact, the first track, "Bi Lambam," sounds just like shimmering light through green branches. The album also carries familial importance, as Diabté and Sissoko's fathers were the best kora players of their time. Together, the fathers brought the music of the kora to Europe and recorded Ancient Strings, the first studio album to feature the kora. Today, we reap the benefits with New Ancient Strings. The person who recommended this album to me said to listen to it outside. I did. It was awesome.

Reading Recs: I mentioned above that I loved reading books about trees and forests as a kid, and that has not changed. Here are some of my favorite titles that I can go to when I am too far from the woods but need their restoring energy. 

(Note that the book links will take you to independent bookstore sites. If you choose to check out any of these titles, I encourage you to shop small or utilize your local library!)

1. Nonfiction - Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel

2. Fiction - The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

3. Children's Fiction - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham

4. Fiction - The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino 

5. Nonfiction - The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate--Discoveries from a Secret World

6. Fiction - The Overstory by Richard Powers

7. If you can find it, the comic series Concrete Man is a fun and exciting read, though it might take some work to track down. I have a copy I read in my Treehuggers class stuffed somewhere in a box, but I'm unsure where my college bookshop got it from….good luck!

   What tree or forest-related books do you love? Leave a comment with any ideas!

Recent Eats: It's been too hot to cook lately, so it is sliced veggies most nights. However, on my recent trip to Shigaraki in southern Shiga, I had a delicious Okonomiyaki dinner that can be recreated at home. Okonomiyaki is like a savory pancake. Meat, often pork, is fried in a pan with cabbage, potato, batter, and whatever veggies you like. It is hot, filling, customizable, and perfect after a long day of exploring shrines and waterfalls. Plenty of recipes are online, but here is one to get you started!