Many western people have the mistaken impression that the Japanese people are primarily Christian with some heretic religions thrown in among the masses. In fact, virtually all Japanese identify as being Shinto, a very open religion that encompasses every other religion. Many Japanese people will claim another religion when it suits their needs. There’s a Japanese saying that goes something like “Shinto at birth, Buddhist at death.” A friend of mine was trying to explain Japanese secularism. I asked him if everyone in Japan is secular, then why are there so many temples? He replied, “We all die sometime!” 

One afternoon I convinced my buddy Kaz to help me do a little yard work at my house in Sagamihara. It was a nice fall day, and we were taking our time pulling weeds, talking to neighbors, and generally goofing around as the work progressed.  

At one point the conversation had stopped, and we could hear the song “Let it be” playing in the background. After a few seconds of the song, Kaz asked me “Chuck, is this song about the Virgin Mary?” “No,” I replied, “I believe it is about Paul McCartney's mother who died when he was young.”  

This seemed to satisfy Kaz for a few minutes, but then he asked “Chuck, why do they call her the Virgin Mary? I mean, she had a baby.” With a little bit of a laugh, I replied “Well... Christians believe that God put the baby inside Mary, and she never actually had sex.”  

“Bullshit!” came the reply. “They don't really believe that, do they?” “Yes..." I assured him. "Yes they do.” “Bullshit!” he proclaimed again. After a few more minutes of work, Kaz paused and asked “But Chuck, you don't believe that, do you?”
 

““Yes,” I replied. “I have to or I will go to hell.””

Headline: Dog Hits Car

A friend of mine I used to work with in Japan, Jon Bennett, sent me this picture and a note that read, "I thought of you this afternoon. I thought, 'If I were Chuck, I'd have a concussion right now and I'd be wearing a dead dog on my head.'" Jon's e-mail reminds me of a story...

When I was five years old my family took a vacation to the Pacific coast of Central Mexico. My dad's best friend, Jack Jordan, joined us in Mexico, and he brought his dog, a Shih-Tzu who's name I have blocked from memory.

We were staying at an old beach hotel with exterior hallways running the length of the building. The rooms were boring, so my brothers and sister and I spent a lot of time exploring the old hotel, climbing the fire escapes to the roof, and generally doing things that, in retrospect, I know my parents would not approve of. The hallways had solid masonry short walls instead of regular metal railings, and I remember I was too short to see over them so I had to pull myself up on my forearms to be able to see the beach.

One afternoon, my dad and Jack had gone somewhere and my mother was trying to get us kids together to go to lunch or something. As all of this was going on, I was running back and forth along the exterior hallway outside our third-floor room. Jack's dog was playing with me, chasing me down the long tiled walkway running the length of the hotel. I would run in one direction, and when the dog would catch up to me, I'd switch back as fast as I could and run in the opposite direction. The dog would try to turn and run with me, but he would slip on the tiles and slide backwards a good ten feet before he regained his grip and could come after me.

We were both having a great time with the game of chase. At one point I ran for a distance, then stopped short and turned earlier than I had been doing. The dog didn't expect it, and was even slower in switching the direction of his momentim, giving me time to duck into an alcove and hide from him. The dog slipped and spun as he tried to turn, but eventually gained traction and started running as hard as he could. He flew right by me and I thought "Aha! Tricked him!" And then I watched as the little dog reached the end of the hallway, and with one giant leap, jumped over the wall and off the balcony.

What I had witnessed took a few seconds to register. I had just watched a dog I was playing with accidentally commit suicide. I didn't realize this at the time, but this would be the start of a recurring theme in my life (see the soon-to-come "Dog Story II"). I stood for a second, waiting for clarity of thought, and then slowly walked to the wall. I pulled myself up by my forearms to look, and saw that the dog had landed on the hood of a car pulling into the driveway. The driver was getting out the car with a shocked and hurt expression on her face; her hand covering her mouth in that classic "OH MY GOD!" pose. A groundskeeper of the hotel was standing hearby looking completely perplexed.

In a period of no more than 15 seconds, my five-year-old mind experienced joy, elation, sneakiness, shock, horror, guilt, depression, amazement, depravity, remorse, and most every other incongruent emotion I can think of. My first coherent thought was "Oh my God! He's dead!" Then, as I hung from the edge of the wall looking at the scene of the crime, the true colors of my personality surfaced and my second thought was "I can get away with this! Nobody saw what happened. Well, except that gardener who is pointing at me. And he doesn't speak English!" No sooner had the thought crossed my mind than I heard my brother, Don, say "Uuuuuummmmm... I'm tellin'..." Dang. It wasn't the perfect crime after all.

By way of coincidence (and because this is just the way these things go) my dad and Jack were in the car behind the car hit by the doggie kamikazi. Possibly the only thing more unexpected than a little boy watching a dog fling himself off a building to his death would be for that dog's owner to see his pet fall from the sky and onto the hood of the car in front of him. Only more unexpected, of course, would be for the dog to hit the car the owner was driving. Fortunately, karma wasn't entirely out to get me, and this did not happen.

My dad's friend was seriously pissed off. He was convinced that I had murdered the dog and wasn't just an "accidental accomplice." There's a saying that goes something like "A friend will visit you in jail, but a true friend will help you hide the body." I would like to think that Don would have covered for me had I actually thrown the dog off the balcony. He's a nice guy. I think he probably would have my back. So it turned out it was actually good fortune that Don had seen the whole thing and could attest to my innocence.

For the record, the dog suffered only a broken leg. Jack found a vet to set the leg, and everything was fine, although Jack never let me near the dog again.