Around every corner
- cherylmurfin
- Sep 17
- 9 min read
I’d never seen anything like it. We’re walking along our thousand-year-old path, winding up into the trees, navigating steps that definitely never heard of the international standard for stair height (7ish inches), tired, thirsty, and there, at the bottom of the descent, where the path crosses an asphalt road before returning upwards on more uneven stairs, sits a vending machine. A vending machine offering coffee for the kodo—hot or cold—and other cool drinks.
I’d heard so much about Japanese tea culture and ceremonies in Japan that I assumed we’d have to beg for coffee. But no, in every village, in every city, turn a corner or two and you are likely to bump into a machine.
We stopped at a lot of vending machines for coffee along the Kumano Kodo.
I was curious about this ubiquitous part of the culture. Of course, the caramel-colored boost has been in the country since 1877. But then the vending machine arrived in 1962 (yup, you guessed it, courtesy of and profit to Coca-Cola), and plunking coins for drinks, food, trinkets, and more became the rage. I can’t even remember the last time I used a vending machine in the U.S..
Still, according to the Knower of All (ChatgzPT) and the Japanese Coffee Co., vending machines align with the Japanese value of time management and convenience, not to mention the country’s love for Robotics and automation. It’s also a cash-based economy—vending machines are the answer to an abundance of spare change. Japanese Coffee Co. notes that the nation has fewer and fewer workers to feed the working masses due to an aging population and low birth rates. That means, “it’s cheaper to install a vending machine and let it do its job than to open a convenience store and pay employees.”
I admit it, I was dubious. I am a coffee S.N.O.B. (Seattle Native drinks Only freshly Brewed). So, as the coffee lovers in our group raced to the slots and got a kick out of trying different cans of different colors, I suffered through until breakfast the next day, when most hosts offered both coffee and tea. I felt maybe a little left out of all the caffeinated mid-walk bonding.
That is, until the day the coffee ran out at breakfast.
And I had to hike several miles up a mountain without my morning hit.
I wasn’t cranky, mind you, just internally miserable as I slogged along half asleep. Then, literally, we walked through a village, which one I cannot remember, turned the corner, and there, I kid you not, literally shining like a holy halo was a vending machine.
Let’s just say I am a convert. Dark brewed, milky, and perfectly light on sweetness, Gold Milk Coffee made me a vending machine junkie.
I'm going to try to convince the elderly owner at the corner convenience store near my house to install one. I've been practicing:
"You know, Nate," I'll say. "You're not getting any younger ..."
Among our prompts on this walk was this one: Labels. I don't remember how this prompt came to us. The group brought so many interesting and thought-provoking creative exercises and ideas.
The words flowed, as did the wisdom. Read on.
Writing from the road
What’s in a name?
by Tracy Weise
What’s in a name?
Truth be told, she was a little jealous of the boys in her family. Her older brother was named after a beloved great uncle, and his middle name was their father’s, It had a stately, solid feel to it. Her younger brother really took the name cake, though, what with his first and middle names being those of their paternal and maternal great grandfathers. In both cases, they fit with the Danish-Norwegian feel of the family’s surname.
Her name, on the other hand, was a bit of a mystery, to those who didn’t know the story. When asked its origin, the girl would simply say, her mom liked it. Or, she liked that it was a popular name at the time. Or, there was this famous football star with that same first name that year. That last one was entirely a lie, but it caused most people to say, “Oh, interesting…” and move on.
Every once in a while, people from the area where she was born would put two and two together, and wonder: you weren’t, by chance, named after the town with your same name? Until adulthood, she would just wave the question away.
The story of her naming happened the night she was born. Back then, c-sections were a last resort. Her mom struggled in labor, as in the last days before her water broke, the baby turned breech. The doctors convened: this was an experienced mother; she’d given birth to two other healthy babies. Time to push.
Outside the hospital, there was a storm raging in the dark; the wind shrieking, hail clacking on the windows. Her mother labored, and to distract from the pain, her father was counting the seconds between thunder and lightning, over and over. The intervals were getting shorter and shorter until: one, two, CRACK! Her mother let out a final muffled scream. Her daughter entered the world, breaking her mom’s tailbone as she did.
They would learn the next morning that a tornado had smashed through a town just down the road, right as she was giving birth. The tornado took a lot of peoples’ houses, and a few peoples’ lives. Her mother took her baby’s rather violent entrance into the world as a sign, and named her appropriately.
Through the years, her mother would remind her of the appropriateness of the moniker with a twinkle in her eye: her room looked like a storm had blown through. Her gymnastics floor routine was quite the twister. Her life could be loud and blustery and disruptive.
The daughter, on the other hand, felt ashamed by her tornado name and did not tell the story to anyone until her adulthood, when finally her boyfriend pulled the story from her. It was hard to be labeled the same as something so destructive, she said. Why couldn’t she be named after her grandmas? Because, he said, you’re so much more than a Gerry or a Norma.
Labels
by Jonathan Bing
At our best, labels help us organize a confusing world. Friend or foe. Coke or Pepsi. At our
worse, labels make it easier to drop bombs on each other.
I think about this a lot. I name things. My work is labels.
“The great thing is he’ll be able to balance your checkbook!” Simon, our Japanese-American
son, was a toddler, too small to track that he’d just been labeled a mathematician in the
checkout aisle at Target. It was maybe the first time we encountered positive racism on Simon’s behalf. I wonder if it made teachers disappointed in him to find that he was good at some math and average at others. Like any other kid.
The label fit us: White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. WASPs. I think it meant we were middle
America and average Americans. The norm. To my own Japanese-ish sensibility, it felt like a
tight suit. I wasn’t baseball and apple pie. But I knew there was power in that label. It’s what
we’ve come to call unearned privilege, where you’re born on 3rd base and you pretend you hit a home run.
My brother’s ex, Christa, was a black woman from Detroit. I hadn’t thought very hard about
levels of racism, but she said offhand to me, “At least Simon’s a lucky minority.” I actually
responded, “What do you mean?” when the answer was obvious. No one said about Christa
when she was a toddler in Target that she could balance her parent’s checkbooks. Christa now has a PhD.
During junior high, I was diagnosed as have TB in my right ankle. As as result, my ankle was
immobilized in a brace, and I walked with a Canadian cane. I heard someone behind me ask if I was retarded. Even in the 80s, we knew not to use that word. But I wasn’t retarded. In fact, at the 8th grade award ceremony, I was labeled as the kid with the highest GPA. I heard someone say it was just because I had a cane. So with a single disability, I was labeled twice: diminished for walking awkward and diminished again for doing my homework. I never showed my parents that award.
I would walk Simon to school during his first years of elementary. As we turned the corner of
our small neighborhood, one of the boys that lived there yelled out to Simon, “I know you’re
adopted.” He said it twice in case Simon didn’t hear. Adoption is hard. You want your child to
know, more than anything, that they belong. And some kid from the corner undoes your deepest wish with a label.
I’ve been a freelance writer since I was 26, long enough ago that I was one of the first to have
an email address on my business card, back when email was still hyphenated. This being pre-
internet, I used to carry my large portfolio of ads and brochures to design firms and ad agencies.
At one such meeting, the first words out of my potential client’s mouth was a label—or his relief that I didn’t have a particular one. “I’m so glad you’re not a woman,” he said. “Women always come in here saying they’re freelancers and they’re actually taking care of kids at home.” I understood several things in that moment. “Not a woman” meant was a reliable and superior option—because it appeared one couldn’t run a business and also raise kids. My label said all of this, and not that I was a stay-at-home dad, sharing babysitting duties with a woman who managed accounting for two daycare centers.
Wayzata is a swanky town on the swanky Lake Minnetonka, the place where people powerboat in to pick up their dinner at a restaurant called Cov. It’s also where Tracy and Simon were walking on the boardwalk when teenagers drove by and yelled the N word out the window at him and laughed. It’s a move only the most untouchable people can do. The same kind of person that calls a senator Pocahontas, or mocks a reporter for being disabled.
They drop these words like grenades that never stop exploding in your heart.
I volunteered in the classroom for every one of our daughter Ellen’s school parties, coming in
costume for Halloween and giving out prizes at the Winter Carnival. I also did this for Simon.
At one such party, a second grader came up to Simon and asked, “What are you?” For this boy, the fact that I was there with Simon was dissonant. Simon looked at me and said, “I’m
American, right?” “Yes,” I said to the boy, “American, just like you.” I liked that Simon came up
with a label that included all of us, even if I knew the glue on that label wasn’t very strong. In the next year, Simon asked us to stop coming to his parties. He said he didn’t like having to explain that he was adopted.
One too many labels.
Name, first and last
by Cheryl Murfin
Before my son was born, we couldn’t decide what to label him.
I had one name in mind. My husband had another.
My mother sided with my husband. I refused to back down.
We made a deal: An actor whose name happened to be my pick as shooting film on an island near where we lived. We went to the island and agreed that if we had a star sighting, our son’s fate would be sealed to my pick. As the ferry floated into dock, we both saw the actor act-fainting on the pier. My son rolled over in his watery hotel and kicked. We glued the name onto the birth certificate that did not yet exist. And to make my husband happy, we made his choice a second label.
My son’s birthday was followed quickly by his grandfather’s (my husband’s father’s) birthday.
My husband’s father was a man I loved but who sometimes rubbed me the wrong way. He was on ophthalmologist but also a doctor of everything.
But that’s besides the point. The point is, unbeknownst to me, my husband forgot to get his father a birthday present. So on the day his parents drove over to meet the baby, my husband presented him with our son’s birth certificate.
An interesting gift, I thought. But OK. Whatever. His father burst into dramatic tears, which was his way. I snatched the birth certificate out of his hand, trying not to be obvious or aggressive. There in black and white letters was the name JOHN. John, as in JOHN. IN FRONT of his REAL name, and his second label. A three word name.
I screamed. “What is THAT?”
“Happy birthday!” my husband hollered at this father to mask my scream.
I had left him in control of turning in the birth certificate at the hospital.
The roque name change hasn’t impacted my son much, beyond for his 14 years of school, whenever the authorities called they asked to speak to John’s parent. “We have no John here,” told them out of spite.
They always called back.
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