In junctions

Meetings and reviews

It’s the tenth new moon of the year.

It’s been seven months since I moved to the deluxe nun quarters, and new seasons still bring new tidings.

After another summer of record heat, it looks as though the weather has changed, and it’s possible to walk around the neighborhood. I find I miss my old hood in Jiyūgaoka, walking along the teeny path of trees and shrubs, studying the bougie façades and gardens, choosing between the two bakeries en route to the 17th-century temple.

My new apartment, and my life in it, is objectively better, and my new neighborhood is by most measures worse. There is a Dominos, a karate dojo, the utterly grim chain mini-supermarket Mai Basuketto — that is, My Basket — and a sad playground.

Now that I’m outside more, I see them more: Men in matte black suits looking like they’re going for job interviews, women in black jackets and skirts, modest black heels, pearl strings, clutching the hands of children dressed in their school uniforms, socks pulled to their calves or knees. They hover in the streets, which always have several vested attendants directing traffic in and out. At first I thought the building with a gleaming front hall might be a government building, so somber and stately as it seems, but on a subsequent walk, I saw the newly fabricated sign and understood it’s a funeral home.

What’s funny about a funeral home, is the Google reviews. For one thing, the Google reviews for funeral homes in Japan run on a single system, which is to say, they are not diluted by foreigners. Japanese reviewers do not give 5/5 stars for a service or establishment that is good. If it’s solid, it gets a 3. If it’s really good, it gets a 4. Nothing gets a 5. On Tabelogu, which is like Yelp for restaurants, the highest rating I ever expect to see is a 3.49. A typical review will read something like, “Food was super delicious. It was a perfect night. The server had messy hair. 2 stars.” It’s why Shake Shack has 4.5 stars on Google and the best udon you’ve ever had in your life has 3.8: Foreign reviewers love grade inflation.

The Google reviews for the Ochiai Funeral Home, however, suffer from no such clash of cultural systems. In this slice of a slice of a slice of internet, you can see a surprising number of things at work: nationalism, pastoral nostalgia, budgetary concerns, hunger, pride, grief.

There is of course the requisite “It’s very beautiful” with a picture of a pretty decent looking teishoku set. (3 stars.) “It seemed like we were being rushed, like we should hurry up and do it quickly because we have so much to do, without immersing ourselves in the sadness.” (1 star.) One reviewer is surprised that there is nowhere to get a drink and you have to use the vending machines outside. (1 star.) There are several complaints about the bones being handled directly by the hands of the staff, without gloves, and how rushed it feels, compared to the countryside, where more care and patience are given to the ceremony. A lot of comments are about where the parking is, how much it costs, where the smoking section is, and how hard the roads are to navigate. A couple reviewers use this opportunity to give screeds against the Chinese, as the for-profit funeral home has been reportedly bought by a Chinese parent company. A few mention that imperial family members and other celebrities have been cremated here. One person is only in the Google reviews to say rest in peace to their best friend of half a century.

Death isn’t weird, but funerals are. All that expectation, all that loss, all those rules and etiquette and formalities and customs, unspoken for years until the knowledge finally or suddenly becomes relevant to those left behind, who don’t feel it’s their time to be in charge yet. I’m not really bothered, though, by all the chaotic mourning that I assume is happening several blocks over. I like seeing families all in black at the 7-11 tucked inside the narrow residential alleys, and I like that they have to stand in line with me, hungover at 3pm on a Sunday, buying onigiri and Pocari Sweat in tattered jean shorts.

I just hope I never become numb to all the sadness in these streets. Jiyūgaoka means “freedom hill,” and this neighborhood, Ochiai, means “meeting” or “meeting place.” And indeed, if the last few years were characterized by being free but lonesome, the last seven months have been stuffed with the mirth of frequent gatherings. But all this love is perilous, I think as I bike home at the end of a long, full night; more meetings means more grief.